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How Jolie's Co-Founder Built $50M Betting Against Meta
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Ryan Babenzien sold Greats, the first D2C footwear brand, to Steve Madden. Then he built Jolie into the #1 filtering shower brand in the world. $50M in revenue, profitable for 15 of 17 quarters, with Meta at just 25% of the total marketing budget. This is the full anti-paid playbook.
Everything from this episode, structured into a free playbook:
https://www.elevatorgoods.com/talks/ryan-babenzien
In this episode:
- How to set a hard cap on Meta spend before it owns your margin, and what to put in the rest of the mix instead
- Why Ryan's North Star is first purchase profitability, not ROAS, and how that one decision changed every other number in the business
- The pre-launch brand playbook: how Jolie seeded brand in New York before the product existed, using curated events, oysters, and zero paid media
- The question every founder must answer before launch: what do you actually want out of this business, and what does the exit look like?
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Everyone in e-commerce is playing the same game. Pour money into Meta, chase ROAS, make the numbers work. Our next guest looked at all of that and said, no. Ryan Babincian built Joli, the filtered showerhead company you've seen all over your feed, into a nine-figure brand, profitable from day one, barely any Meta spin, and never discounting once. So how do you build a nine-figure brand without the playbook that everyone swears by? Well, you wrap trucks and send them through New York. You put your product in thousands of people's hands with no script, and you let the customers do the selling. Oh, by the way, Ryan's done this before. He built greats, sold it to Steve Madden, and then tore up the playbook he helped write again. His whole thesis, meta is a trap. Brand is the last real moat, and the stuff you can't measure is the only stuff worth betting on. Today, he shows us how. Ryan, super happy and grateful to have you on the show. It's been a it's been a while.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it has. Good to see you. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_01So one of the things I've always loved about your persona in e-commerce, just in general, is how much of a thought leader you are. Um, you know, obviously we've met in person several times, but we've also I also follow you on LinkedIn and I constantly see your thoughts and your thought leadership on where the industry is, um, what works, what doesn't work. And so I guess just to kick this off, first question is when you look at e-commerce today versus five, 10 years ago, what's fundamentally changed from your perspective?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it is very different. I think the biggest difference I would say is sort of how how um the access to build an e-commerce business. Like there are just so many tools available off the shelf that can get you sort of up and running and building a proper e-commerce business that picks and shovels, if you will, over time. You know, when I started great in 2000 and well as end of 13, Shopify was brand new. It was sort of like a you were making it, it was this new thing, and people are like, oh, you should still go. I can't even remember what the other, the prevailing service provider was Magento. And most people at the time were still saying you should build this on Magento. And it's stuff like that. That you know, it's not even a consideration anymore. Like nobody would even start uh an e-commerce business without Shopify. And there's a host of tools like that. So so the speed of which the speed and the um efficiency you can get an e-commerce up and running and just a smaller need of capital, right? This is sort of you don't need millions of dollars to to start a website. And in the early days of the internet, and I remember because I was there, it was like, you know, people were charging hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe even a million, to build a website. It was a it was a wild west environment. So, you know, as the network has been built out, everything is, you know, prices have come down for everything for access to it. And that's sort of the biggest difference. There's a whole other version of that, though, with consumer side. Like, you know, it's a a norm, right? There's no sort of, I think the e-commerce world has normalized and is not as explosive as it was in the beginning. A couple of things have happened. E-commerce has been sort of it's penetrated. And I'm talking about the US very specifically. So this might not apply every market around the world, but it's it's a norm. At the same time, over the 15 years, retail has corrected. So we lost 50, 100,000, hundreds of thousands of retail stores over time. And now you're sort of this equilibrium of like, okay, the retail stores that are here are still valuable and meaningful. E-commerce is a part of a mix, but it's not growing in the way that it used to, right? Uh so those are two big differences.
SPEAKER_01What do you think is what do you think are the modes these days? Because when I look at e-com today, everyone is just super powered now with all the tools that are available. And those tools aren't even expensive to use, right? Like you could get a Cloud Max subscription, give one to everyone on your team, and everyone is just, you know, Superman. From your perspective, what's the most? To that same argument. There could be hundreds of thousands of new stores. It's not that complicated to get on a plane, get on a cafe plane, come to Hong Kong, you know, or go to the mainland, find a supplier, you can go to the Canton show, you can meet people. Like it's not rocket science, obviously, running the business well, running it profitably, it's harder to do. But the tools in which, like you said, making a website, building a brand, it's not that difficult to get started.
SPEAKER_00Well, so this is this is you know what you just said, building a brand, not that difficult. And all the other stuff you were saying doesn't equate to building a brand. So the answer I have for, you know, this is sort of it brand and brand equity, and which usually equates to outsized demand from a consumer without having to market and do all these big things. When you have a brand that's so good, of course we everybody advertises, but it returns differently. So there is no edge anymore. Like you said, like there used to be people that were better at meta. There used to be all these hacks that you can do that um allowed you to be more competitive. And I think those are less and less, maybe even none. But brand still matters, right? And this is sort of like in the analog world pre-internet, it was building brand that made the most sense and how you showed up in the store and what stores you were in, and who who was using your product and who was talking about your product. So we focus on brand like a lot. And when we looked at the space, it actually wasn't part of a thesis, but we realized after launching Jolie that the space we play in, one, it didn't exist, right? So there was no, there were filtering showers, products, like you said, go to the show in Canton and pick up a product. There was a there was a ton of that shit. It it lacked brand. So we we wanted to make sure we we had the brand part right. And and then we realized that in the shower, like the number one shower company in the world, it's a US-based company, $10 billion in revenue. Excuse me. The number one shower brand in the world wasn't recognized by the user. So we would post-purchase survey for the first two years. What did you replace your Jolie with? Most of the market had no idea. So they are using this thing that is a massive company with no brand association at all. And that was like a we knew we were on the right path. We were going that way anyway, even if they all knew who who they were replacing with. But it was a pretty big discovery for us to realize that building brand in this space is going to matter over time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that's super interesting. I mean, to clarify, I guess, the brand bit, anyone is any website is quote unquote brand, like the way we colloquially refer to e-commerce businesses, I guess, is brands, but maybe the the real differentiator is like quality of the brand, like real brand versus just another drop shipper or small e-com person that doesn't really care about customer experience in that sense. Um that makes sense. Would you say brand is the ultimate moat?
SPEAKER_00I believe so. I mean, because if you build a brand, it means you're gonna have momentum and awareness coming from other sources that are not paid for or engineered. And as we just I think we agree, when there's no edge in marketing from a paid standpoint, right? Like, you know, content matter, so what the ad looks like, I think there's some, you know, there's some art to advertising and you could have a slight advantage. Okay. But other than that, like deploying and targeting and you know, this it is like on autopilot, right? So that was not the case. Exactly. Like, you know, if you use Tatari, you're gonna get a decent like outcome of your media buy. No, Mark. Um Zuckerberg. That you literally said, but but 10 years ago, that was not the case, right? Like you actually had people with like a super skill that were better than others, and then they were just like athletes that were better. So that goes away, and now you're back to brand. And here's where I think brand really matters. If and we we think about this, it's our sort of core, how we launched, how what we still do. Like, we need word of mouth. Like all of this other stuff is equal, right? Like all of the paid stuff is equal. Like everybody has the same toolbox. I need other people to help support that. Those other people are consumers, right? Those are customers, like they're doing the heavy lifting for me because they're referring, not in the, you know, click this link and get a buy a only referral, but they're talking about it's in the real world. They're they are showing it digitally. Like I just got Jolie, here's the results I've had over the last two weeks. All of that adds up. And that's when brand, when you have, and I'll I'll sort of put a fine report on this, when you have consumers that become advocates for your product, your brand, that's when you know you're you're you're probably gonna get a competitive advantage over another version or a competitor that doesn't have the same loyalty from your fan base.
SPEAKER_01So, where do you think most founders or brands, you know, are wasting time and and money right now?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think most founders are not building brands. I think they're like, let's just talk broadly in the consumer space.
SPEAKER_01Sure. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I shouldn't say most, that's unfair. There's great brands in e-commerce, but I think a lot of what you you know, from where you are, right? Where you guys are, you're in Asia. We just see shit coming out of there all the time. It's just like another they'll they like they just slap a logo on it and off they go. They buy it off the shelf. Yeah, but but that's and that that's always gonna be there. That that's gonna be part of the market forever because e-commerce is easy to sort of spin up. And now this distribution channel doesn't have a financial barrier to entry that it once did. And that's gonna be part of the market in everything. And there's no way you can get around that. But the bigger winners are the guys that are building brands. And what do so, what do I think founders are doing wrong? I think the market continues to overinvest in paid marketing specifically on meta. I I I just don't I've never supported meta to the mark the way the market does. I am an outcast in my peer set about how my opinion on meta, how how we use meta. Like it's all everybody just thinks there's opportunity. And I'm like, there isn't. If there was, I take it. I'm not a, I'm not a, you know, I'm I'm actually agnostic to channels. If it worked better, I'd spend more there.
SPEAKER_01No, and this is I mean, we're getting to the crux of why I wanted to chat with you in particular.
SPEAKER_00I knew this is where you wanted to go.
SPEAKER_01Because you like the way I see it right now, especially as the market of founders gets younger and younger. I'm talking like 20 to 25-year-old first-time founders that are young blood, super high energy, able to work late hours. Like, what from what I see, the strategy is now who can find the lowest breakeven ROS? Like people who are going out and say, hey, I can make a profit at a 1.5 ROS or something. And this whole notion, I don't know if you've heard it, but it's been talked a decent amount about, which is like natural CAC, which is like, you know, the CAC is what it is, just make it work. Uh whether it's raising prices or uh upsells or bundling, and and it's basically a race to the bottom. Um, you know, brands that are saying, hey, 1.5 row ass, I mean, you're giving over 50% of your margin away. 60%, you know, more to market.
SPEAKER_00It's it's absolutely crazy to me. And this new terminology of natural cack is a derivative of meta. It's basically saying the market has said, I don't say this, but this is what that audience says. Hey, we're just gonna have to pay the piper. This is the fucking tool for meta. And they view it as the only way. It's the only road for them, right? That is the difference between a 25-year-old spinning up a thing, trying to sort of engineer this outcome. And they'll grow revenue. It's just the revenue grows, the profit goes down. They don't understand where the end of that is. I do, you do, others that have done it do. So let them work fucking 100 hours a week. In the end, they're gonna have absolutely nothing because they won't. What do they like? They have a revenue machine with less and less profit as it scales. They can't sell that. Or they could, but they it would be like, you know, not really all that interesting to the market. Who buys it?
SPEAKER_01Uh again, like I um is that just a glorified dropship brand?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, of course. And there's nothing wrong with a dropship brand if you can get the economics to work. Like, I'm not criticizing the model. I'm saying it usually doesn't work. It just doesn't. Even if there's like lightning in a bottle for a moment, it doesn't last very long, right? Like, how do you how do you scale those things? I haven't seen it. If you if we've seen it, it's sort of the anomaly that everybody talks about. Like one guy did this out of a million, and it's like, yeah, uh, sure. I don't like those odds of trying to replicate that, but sure, I guess it's possible.
SPEAKER_01So if you were starting Joe Lee today from scratch, would you take the same playbook that you took?
SPEAKER_00I wouldn't change a it's not that I wouldn't change a thing. It was obviously smaller things. But yeah, and I I give that advice every day. Like anybody that wants to be like, what do you think I should do? And I'm like, I sort of just share my philosophy on on how to build it. I do think it takes a bit more time. And and I think that's where Joel Lee gets confusing to people because they're like, Yeah, but you you did $50 million in the fourth year and you've been profitable for, you know, almost the you know, 17, 15 out of 17 quarters. And I'm like, okay, that is true. I don't think you should target that. The playbook works and it should, it will likely take a little longer, but you'll have a a more sustainable brand in the end. And um I do think the playbook is is the the only one left, frankly. Like if you're not focused on brand, you're just gonna have a fast up and down, likely. Even if assuming you could get out of the gate and generate real revenue.
SPEAKER_01Obviously, this is a super complex question, and you can get into so many layers of detail, but like what does that mean in execution? It like let's say you're a first-time founder, it's 2026, you found a product or a category that you've, you know, there's opportunity in your mind, whether it's newness or pricing arbitrage or disruption in innovation or something. What's the playbook? Is it is it press? Is it influencers? Is it affiliate? Is it TikTok shop? Like from your perspective.
SPEAKER_00I think this is this is the other thing. As much as I'm against meta, I'd be lying if I told you we don't use it. We do use it. The ratio of like our media mix, our marketing mix is is different than everybody else's. We we sort of spend, you know, 25% of our marketing on meta, and the rest is a a mix of other. So all of what you Yeah, right. And we're and I'd like it to be 5%, frankly. And we will get there. This is where time, right? So this is where time. It's like, what are you creating? Are you trying to create a fast revenue machine in five years that has, you know, low single-digit profit? Okay, well, the go that's one way, or maybe never profit, by the way. That's more likely. Um, or you're trying to create a sustainable brand that's gonna be, you know, might grow slower over those five, or then let's even talk, because now we're coming into five, as we are literally coming into our fifth year, and we're now thinking about the 10 year. What we focus on is like, how do we expand our profit profile? So that's that takes longer. That just takes longer. So that's how we think about it, or I think about it.
SPEAKER_01Hey, I'm Anish. And I just want to quickly give you more context on the world of elevator. Elevator goods is where we build our brands from the ground up, owning the product, operations, and growth. Elevator capital is where we invest in brands worth betting on, backing founders with capital, mentorship, and connections. Elevator Talks is where we document it all, sitting down with operators who've actually done it, going deep on their frameworks, their numbers, and the decisions they made to move the needle. Elevator Creators is where we help creators build brands, leveraging their audience and turning them into a real business. The studio is our private members club with its first location in Hong Kong. Built for founders and operators who want to be around people building at the same level. If you're building a brand and you want the systems and the playbooks to do so, you're in the right place. Check the link in bio to learn more. So, last but not least, thank you so much. Please subscribe because that will help us a ton in getting you better guess and more wisdom and more value. We really appreciate it. And back to the show. What's the real leverage for Jolie? Is it attention? Is it retention? Is it community? Is it product? Like where do you put the most important thing?
SPEAKER_00I think we have a couple. Retention is definitely something that we you just have the lowest churn in the history of beauty. So that's a pretty big, you know, statement. So that's sort of our superpower, right? And we they'll never we'll never master it. That's what I'm convinced at this point. Like we try to get better all the time, but it's sort of a you just sort of it's just a moving target. You it's just a forever focus, try to improve quarter over quarter. I do think we found something really novel, or at least it was, and now it won't be. This I think the beauty industry overlooked the biggest source of issues that they were trying to solve in a prescriptive way. You have an issue, wear this, use that, try that. Yeah. The water, the water is causing so many. Yeah, right. And we believe that there will be over time, everybody will use a filtering shower. I don't know if that's in the next five years, 10 years, or 20 years, but it will be an absolutely massive market, so so big that it'll be accretive to the beauty industry itself. It'll be multi-billion dollar industry filtering showers. And there'll be other brands, and there are other brands. And, you know, just recently one of our competitors got an investment from Brita, the drinking water company. And, you know, I actually reached out to the CEO and said, congratulations. Amazing. Well, because I just think it's great. I think it sort of uh is a is a validation of this business and what this market is gonna be. We're the number one filtering shower in the world. So I I I welcome other brands and competitors. It would be boring if it was just yourself, right? It's nice to have comp I like competition, so we're fine with it.
SPEAKER_01I mean, one of our brands is a betting business. We sell pillows, and it's just funny because I mean, if you go on Amazon and you type in pillows, you know, hundreds, thousands of pages. But I think my fundamental belief has always been like there's room for everyone, especially when the TAM is so big, right? Like for you, everyone takes a shower, right? It's just it's just a fact.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and everybody sleeps at night.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Everyone has to go to bed, whether or not you're whether or not robots exist and autonomous driving and everyone's now wearing Apple goggles and we're living in the Jetsons, you still gotta go to bed, right? You still gotta take a shower, right? So like I've always said that you just go after the biggest tem. Would you agree with that?
SPEAKER_00I think that's a I don't think you have to, but I think it gives you a lot more room for for failure and time and and opportunity for sure. And it's an you know, you're you're in your your business and mine are it's like interesting. There, like there are two things, there's not a lot of things that you do habitually, and sleeping is definitely one of them, right? So is showering. So when you have those things baked into the behavior, and this was sort of part of our, you know, our platform of like, what do we, you know, shifting consumer behavior is very, very difficult. But if you have a behavior that people are doing all the time, that's an interesting space to play in.
SPEAKER_01So what's like a I asked these questions because, you know, this is a new show and we've only put out a few episodes, but actually I've seen that a lot of our audience are younger or newer brand founders. And so I ask these questions with sort of that perspective in mind. But what what would you say is a popular belief about building brands that's just like flat out wrong these days? Is it revenue chasing, you know, misconceptions in that sense?
SPEAKER_00I think revenue is probably the number one, right? Like everybody believes that revenue will solve alone, will solve all the problems, and it doesn't. It can. If all of the unit economics are making sense and the ratio of spend making sense. But look, Albert just got sold for $39 million, right? And this was this is a company that's raised hundreds and hundreds of millions. It was valued in the billions. Their revenue was explosive. Didn't matter. Again, this is what I'm talking about. Like now it was, it was a what was that? Uh 13 years for it to go from zero to zero, but didn't none of the revenue growth saved them.
SPEAKER_01That story blew my mind because $39 million. I mean, Albert's whoever bought that, I thought was actually pretty good buy. I mean, just for a brand.
SPEAKER_00They're a liquid. The company that bought them, this is what they do. So they'll license the shit out of Albirds. You're gonna be buying pencils with Albirds on it. And like, you know, that's that's a business. I get yeah, right? It's what they do. Um as brand builders, we look at that as like, you know, God forbid, you know, I hope that never happens because it's just not what we're all trying to build as brand builders.
SPEAKER_01I think the concept of patience is another thing that you've really mastered and you've touched on this a little bit, but it's like, especially for Gen Z and below, it's like a generation built on instant gratification, right? You want something, you press a button, you go to Amazon, you get it the next day. You know, with with AI now, you want a document or a website, get it immediately. Whereas prior to all of this, it was, you know, it took time. Like you said, like building a website could have costed $100,000 and it would have taken two months, right? You would have had to get on a call, you know, and every week and you check in, some guy would be screen sharing, and oh, you give notes, you'd screenshot, oh, this needs to be there, and all that's done, right? And so I think the concept of patience is like this is insane to say, but I don't think younger people know what that even means. Like it's literally it happens so instantly.
SPEAKER_00And I I think you're right. I mean, that's part of the problem, right?
SPEAKER_01And so, you know, I look at you and you're talking about Joe Lee, you're talking about building this brand, you're talking about going after the biggest shower head competitor, 10 billion year. I know which company you're talking about. Like it it's it takes time, right? And building a brand takes time, and you have to be patient versus I'm seeing a lot of people just launch these like shitty products and whatever, right? Like you can scale that at a 1.5 ROS, maybe you clip like 5-10% margin at the end of the day, but you're kind of just throwing shit on the wall, and it's not really clear how long that lasts because there's no real moat, right? Like at the end of the day, there's no moat behind someone selling that same product at that same margin. If you just built it super fast, like you've established no brand, you've established no customer base. I think that's the biggest mistake that I'm seeing right now. People don't have patience to build real value. Now, again, it doesn't matter for some people. Like, I I think you've also been outspoken on this. Like your goal is one day to build Jolie, sell it, have an exit, have a moment, like have an impact on the category. Whereas some of these younger, newer founders are just like trying to clip their 5% profit margin every month, you know, rack up some Amex points and call it a day.
SPEAKER_00But but when you're 25, that's okay, right? Like I've been doing, I'm not 25. I've been doing this for 20, 30 years, right? So look, I'm in a different stage in my life. And I want to I create, I like to build things of value, right? And those things are different. Like, there's nothing wrong with building a business that you can have like a nice salary, and like that's a great thing for a 25-year-old with very few responsibilities, probably doesn't have a family. It's just a different time of their life. And and over time they may shift and learn. And one other thing though, that mistake back to because you had mentioned something that just reminded me, you know, margin. I I think it's the most misunderstood thing in e-commerce. And tell me more. I just my simple advice is always to people like be greedy with margin. Like you have one moment in time where you can actually define your own margin, it's before you launch. Like if you're building a thing, you're gonna compete on price, right, against the dominant player. But maybe you shouldn't think about the dominant player because if you're trying to sell, you know, this silicone cover, which is a generic item for an AirPod, maybe you should make the higher margin, more expensive, smaller market part, right? Like this is available on every street corner and every bodega and everywhere for $5. Maybe you sell yours for 12 and you come up with a reason that it's worth 12, right? I'm making this up as we go. But you get the point. And like you have a higher margin, and therefore you don't need to take that much in the market because you can make more with less. And this is where margin is like the great equalizer. If you have a really high margin, of which I think you need to have an e-commerce business, because if you have an e-commerce business and you even find some scale, eventually, you know with us, it was almost immediately, you should be in retail because you need this balance of distribution, different margin profiles and different CAC profiles. Your acquisition cost at for us, let's just use Ulta, the beauty store, is different than our direct. And when you blend it all together, it's actually better, right? Like it's a lower CAC. And that's what everybody should be focusing on. How do I get this? How do I get my product into the hands of users, cheapest and fastest? I'm not saying speed isn't a valuable tool. Come up with your own metric of like what your North Star is. For us, it was first person, first purchase profit. Like that's just how we do it, which meant slower growth.
SPEAKER_01Did you have like an aha moment with the showers, with the shower heads? You mean like how it came to be? When I look at new products these days, there's a very particular framework. Size of product, weight of product, shipping cost, ability to ship global, some lifetime value, ideally a subscription element, if it's possible. Like there's a framework. It's funny because I don't like for me, brand, it's like you once you establish the product and the category, then you figure out how to build a brand around it. Is that sort of how you approach Jolie the same way?
SPEAKER_00No, it's totally opposite. I had founded a footwear brand that I ultimately wound up selling to Steve Madden, and it was during that experience, it was the first D to C footwear brand in the world. And at the time of all birds, when everybody you could put D2C on anything, and you're like, I'm a D2C coffee cup maker, and like here's five million dollars. Boom. Yeah. And we didn't, and even then we didn't raise as much money as we could have because that was just my philosophy on how to build a business. But during that time, I realized almost overnight, I was like, oh shit, D2C is not a business model. D2C is a distribution channel and it's a good one, but it is not a business model that is getting all this capital. And the the the the reason I got to that place very early was because I saw what was happening on Meta. It went overnight from an arbitrage channel where it was essentially free to acquire customers to the most expensive part of marketing in your mix. And I was like, uh-oh. That was in 2014.
SPEAKER_01What's crazy about Meta is it actually still works. Like to some degree. Yeah, but it's still, it's still the like call it what you will. Uh and I agree with you, by the way, but like, you know, the the pricing is the most expensive. But you it's still the most gigantic customer acquisition tool. Like there has not been a second channel, maybe TikTok shop, but even then, it's not yet.
SPEAKER_00You're not, you're not wrong. It is a massive channel and user-based. The issue is the cost they charge you. And because it's this black box, here's the here's one thing that I've never not seen. The more you spend on Meta, the more you will pay for customer acquisition. Year over year, customer acquisition goes up without question. So there's no economies of scale. It's the only channel I've ever seen where the more you spend, the worse it gets. Okay. If we know that and we agree on that. So what does year one look like, five look like 10 year, right? It just be they are taking away more of your margin every day. That's not something you should lean into. And unfortunately, what happens is you get to a place where you can't undo it. It would mean your revenue would be cut in half overnight, and then you have to figure out how to like glide if you're at 100,000 feet. Maybe you don't crash because you get to 10 and you can finally figure it out, and that takes two years.
SPEAKER_01So for you guys, yeah. Let's go back to brand, showerhead company, right? It's not, dare I say, it's not the most like glamorous product in that sense. Like it's it's a utility.
SPEAKER_00Not sexy at all. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So how do you build brand or community or following? Like, I know that's a very broad question, but let's just get to the like sort of like the high level of like what is your playbook?
SPEAKER_00We have always leaned into from before we even launched, before we had a product, we hosted an oysters and wine event because oysters are a natural filtration for the for the for the water. One oyster can filter 50 gallons of water a day. It's an amazing they're delicious, but it's also amazing that for for aquatic life. And we sort of just said, you know, we hosted this oysters and wine. Water is essential to each of these things, and we told everybody what we were going to be bringing to market in this like very curated culture creator community, not creator online, like actual people that move the needle in New York from art, fashion, design, because that's that's been our philosophy. Like these are the types of people that shape culture, right? It doesn't mean they're influencers with large followers. There's people that you never heard of that are influencing us right now, and that's always been the case. So we've relied on the analog world. I just call it the analog world because it's like a non-digital experience, in real life event. We've been doing that before we launched. We've done more of them. We're going to continue to do more of them. And I think ironically, not ironically, but now you all you read about in sort of beauty and fashion is like all of these big activations that are happening and will continue to happen because somebody realized, like, oh, digital only gets us so far. We need to sort of like reinvest in all these things that matter that are non-digital. Digital is like so easy, right? It's a function of capital. You hit a button, you spend it. That's not the case with like actually doing an event. Yeah, you know, it takes planning, it takes time. Then you would ask, well, what's the ROI? Right. That's another, this is another mistake I'll get to in a second. Like, I don't know the ROI. I don't know the ROI. I have 25 trucks driving around Manhattan with this incredible ad. And here's what I can tell you. I don't measure it in a return on ad spend basis. What I do know is that every day somebody is commenting on our trucks. I don't get that from a from our digital ads, right? It doesn't even have that emotion. I'm not even sure we're getting it in front of the people that Meta's telling me we're getting in front of. I find it hard to believe that you know, three million people can see this ad and it has a.03 click-through rate. Like that, again, that to me is measurement, but it's it's nobody should be applauding the meta performance. Because when even you, who are probably excellent at, you're like, let's just put you in the world-class category of this. If you really thought about the number, you're like, why am I happy with this click-through rate? Think about the click-through rate, because this, like passing their eyes, is pretty worthless. It doesn't resonate. They don't have attention, like you said. So you think it's going to matter? No, if you show it to them a hundred times, then eventually it might catch them and they might take an action. But think about the money you spent to get to that, right? Like it starts to, if you really break it down, it's like, whoa, this this is a this has a bad outcome in the in in the end. Every year it gets worse. The other stuff though, so playbook, real events. We're doing more and more of them. This summer we're doing more. We've always done uh a summer series, you know, where we have a house in the Hamptons and we invite over 15 people every Saturday, 15, 20 people to do yoga. We've been doing that for every summer since we started. We'll continue to do that. We're doing something in Copenhagen this summer, right? We're not even in Copenhagen. We don't even sell in Copenhagen. Why are we doing that? Well, like I said, there's people that shape culture: art, music, fashion, design, food. We like to leverage all of that because it has this impact. It takes longer, but this is how you used to build brands pre-internet. This is how it was done. The sneaker culture, reverse buying. Before the secondary market, there were guys that would leave America, fly to Japan because there was a bunch of colors that you couldn't get in America. They'd pack them up, ship them back to America, and then sell them for 10 times more than they bought them for. That's how secondary sneakers started. Again, also pre-internet. They had a shop, you would go in there, you'd see all these colors from Nike you never even knew existed. They were only available in Japan. Then they did it in Europe. Like that is how the market started. That was a very laborious analog way to make a living.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But it worked, you know, it really worked and it made money.
SPEAKER_01This is what I was saying, though, about patience, like and the instant gratification. Like you're doing the things that don't have immediate ROI. Like the trucks, you know, the events, the events in multiple parts around the world. Like this is this is the biggest theme I'm seeing between experienced vets like yourself and kind of new people on the block. It's just like investing in the things that don't have instant gratification, ROI, building a real mode. I was saying this earlier to someone else, but in 2026, I think there's only three modes in e-commerce first is brand, obviously, we just spoke about that. Second is supply chain excellence, your relationship with your supplier, your cash flow management with your supplier, your product quality. And then the third is your team, the quality of your team, the loyalty of your team, the excellence of your team. I think those are the modes, and you've clearly got that down. And so, you know, ultimately, I think long-term thinking is like the core theme of this conversation. Like big picture thinking, patience, investing where it's not obvious, swimming against the current sometimes, right? Like the meta-current is so easy to swim with. Like you get into the beach, the current's going that way, you can easily just swim with it. But you're swimming sort of in the lane that everyone's going. It's very easy. Whereas you're kind of saying, Hey, you know, fuck that. I'm going to go my own way. And you've been very vocal about that, which I appreciate. And I've I've been following your journey. And I think that's like the crux of why I really want to speak with you.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. What do you think is more important? Wait, I have a question for you. Do you think revenue or profit is more important in a business? So if you had a so if you had a $20 million business that had 20% EBITDA, that would be better than a $50 million business that had 5% EBITDA.
SPEAKER_01Of course.
SPEAKER_00I mean, that is not an obvious answer to many people.
SPEAKER_01Revenue, what I've learned over the last few years, revenue means nothing. At the end of the day, you don't get that money. It's not in your pocket. You know, I've I've in even in other stages of our business, me and my co-founder, we always talk about this. Like we're just moving money around. Money comes in the door and it goes right back out. It just feels like we're like juggling cash. And it makes no sense, right? Like we're we're not just in business for MX points, right? Like it's it has to stay in the bank account. If it's not staying in the bank account, what are you doing? You're just you've just racked up a liability, right? And so I think it's not obvious. I think revenue is a dopamine head. I think it's sexy, and I think it's really cool to see the numbers get so big. But at the end of the day, profit all the way, especially if you're a self-funded bootstrap and you don't have big VCs. Well, honestly, I think the trend is not to rate raise VC in in e-commerce anymore. I think that trend, like you said, is finished. I think nowadays, if you're a brand in consumer, you're not raising at a a a big venture fund, you're you're self-funding it or friends and family or family office or or something much more private, so to speak. And so, yeah, I think in the future it's it's all profit all the way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so here's where the misalignment is because the market, the MA market, demands a level of revenue before they will even consider anything. And that number has gotten bigger, at least in beauty, I think in every industry, frankly. Um, so then you're sort of you have to ask yourself, and this is a really important part of that founder journey. Before you launch a company, you need to ask yourself, what do I want out of this company? What do I want out of this business I'm about to build? Do I want to sell it? Do I want to kick off a 5% coupon every year and just, you know, keep building? Am I going to build it over 5, 10, 20? Like what's my time horizon? That'll help define what you will should be doing very quickly, as opposed to being on this hamster wheel that you didn't realize you were on. You need to ask those questions first.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's wisdom right there. I look at business the same way I look at marriage. Like, why are you getting married? What do you want out of this marriage? Literally, you know, yeah. Marrying someone, it's the same thing. You know, you have to think about why are you doing this? What do you want for your future? The line with your partner, this is the kind of life I want to have when I'm 40, 50, 60, 70. This is what I'm expecting. What are you expecting? It's the same conversation with you know your business partner and with the business planning. It's like, where do you want to go with this? Uh, and I think that is like such a rare thing that actually so few people literally do. And so, like you said, you just like do it, and then all of a sudden you've got a liability on your hands because there's so much money coming in and out the door. You've got inventory, the market's volatile. That's that's that's the other thing that I think one of the flaws of e-commerce is it's so volatile, right? Like, you know, Trump attacks Iran. That has impact on the consumer market. Price of oil goes up, that has impact on the consumer market. People are not shopping when gas is eight dollars at the pump, right? And we live in a world where volatility is insane because of who's at the you know, the leadership table. They're just getting more erratic every single decade. And again, these are the things that people don't talk about is the volatility of e-commerce. It's so volatile.
SPEAKER_00It's insane. And this is like building the businesses that you and I are building in the moment we're building them. Like I've been through some cycles. This is crazy. Like, as an operator, you're sort of like, what next? You can't even plan for that. You can't plan for it. You have to have a worst case scenario model. I, you know, that's all you can do. But then you're like, oh my God, I can't believe this actually happened. Like, tariffs went from here to here to here. And then, like, and then we're gonna get all the money back because it's fucking illegal. It's like, okay, so now we have this surprise cash bonus coming in later. You know, it's just crazy stuff. It's crazy stuff.
SPEAKER_01So, Ryan, just to kind of wrap up the conversation, I like to do this rapid fire segment. Your gut, your gut thoughts. First one is favorite brand that's not yours.
SPEAKER_00Favorite brand that not oh, any category? I mean, this is a I have so many brands that I really admire, but let me get this right. Well, this is gonna sound weird. I just think Uniqlo is like this magical brand. Here's why I think it's so amazing. It's very hard to be essentially generic. There's not a there's not a logo on a you know, you know, most Unique Low of stuff doesn't have a logo on it, which and we always associate logo and brand, right? They're heavily scaled. They do very few products, like at their scale, they're pretty narrow in what they make every year and they repeat them over and over and over. To do that from Japan and then globalize it is fascinating. As a brand builder, that is a fascinating. Brand to me. I'm I I wear it. I have things that are 15 years old from Uniclo. Like literally, I have a pair of khakis that are 15 years old. And I still wear them. Like, talk about durability and like value. And it's I'm I'm fascinated by Uniqlo.
SPEAKER_01It's an amazing, amazing answer. I absolutely love Uniclo. Next one is favorite e-commerce or business community as far as cities in the world, right? I know you're from New York. Now you're in London. Favorite city business community.
SPEAKER_00You know, I moved back from California when I launched my first business, greats. I was living in Santa Monica for a really long time in LA. And I moved back to New York specifically because I thought this belongs in New York. Whatever, you know, it was sort of a growing e-commerce community. It wasn't nearly as established as it is today. It certainly, you know, became the brand CPG city as opposed to LA or San Francisco, which had vibrant venture markets. San Francisco obviously being one and now LA, Silicon Valley or Digital Valley, whatever they call it, Silicon Beach. But the product brand, CPG, things that you could touch where that was all going to come out of New York. So I would have to say New York. I'm clearly biased, but New York.
SPEAKER_01Also agreed. Say if it's software or tool that's changed your business?
SPEAKER_00Slack is definitely one that has changed the way our business functions, but there's a sequence of them, right? It's like Slack, any handful of AI tools that we use, but then how we integrate them into Slack. So we have all this automated reporting that's just showing up in our Slack. So again, like time management, and I sort of circle this all up. Like, how do we just get more efficient everywhere? Like all the things that we used to do, pull reports, do this shit, like automate everything we can. So it's a combination. I think I think there's Slack is one, but then there's the AI powers behind it that basically divide MCPs that pipe into Slack. Exactly. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Most overrated founder habit.
SPEAKER_00Working a hundred hours.
SPEAKER_01Most underrated founder habit?
SPEAKER_00Having I was gonna say this is gonna sound wrong. Having some balance in your life. I don't want to uh so I don't believe you can have work-life balance and create something big. I think you have to invest more in the work and not the balance part. But I do think you need to um the most undervalued is like making sure you are physically and mentally dialed in because all of the shit we're doing is really, really hard. And if you don't invest in this machine of yourself, you won't get the best outcome. So the most underrated is sort of taking time physically and mentally for your own health.
SPEAKER_01Last two best perk of being a founder.
SPEAKER_00Well, it depends what where you are on the scale, but I would say work flexibility. You know, there's no job in the world that I'd be able to just decide over being the founder of a digitally enabled business allows me to do that. So that's a pretty nice perk.
SPEAKER_01Last one, and I don't I don't know if you're gonna have an exact answer. I'm curious, but ideal revenue range or profit range in your business for maximizing for personal happiness. You know, we just spoke about balance and having a life.
SPEAKER_00I think this is hard for this is not a generic answer. I think it's different for everybody for sure. But I think if you can, I do believe like businesses should try to get to 20% even at a $50 million plus range. Like it takes time to get things right. So like up to $50 million, there's lots of things happening. There's investments that aren't returning right away. There's brand building. There's, and I don't know if 50 million takes five years, seven years, or two years. But beyond that revenue range, then you should really start to be dialing in on profit improvement. And, you know, $50 million in revenue should be enough revenue to start going past 10% EBITDA and on your way to 20. So that's how my own sort of, I guess I'm not sure it's I don't know if I define it as happiness. It's a it's more of a goal, but it allows us to sort of like operate with clarity and think long term. Invest, play offense. Invest. Exactly, which is what we are doing and have been doing. And that's peace of mind. Profit equals peace of mind, period. When you don't have to raise, you don't have to think about it. You just sort of like, hey, I can do more, do less. Making money, make the business making money and self sustaining it itself is a life changing experience as a as a as a brand builder, as a founder.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, could not agree more. Um, Ryan, this is awesome. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00That was super fun.
