Fulfil is an ERP designed for DTC brands like Ridge, HexClad, and Grüns. Manage orders, inventory, accounting, purchasing, fulfillment, EDI and manufacturing in one place. Native integrations with Shopify, Amazon and 400+ 3PLs (no middleware required). Go live in 8–12 weeks with fixed-price implementation (no third-party consultants).
Get a Demo“We’ve done it before. Can we do it again?” Five executives put half a million dollars on the line to start a new ecommerce brand. Operators Build follows every step, in public. You get the math, the disagreements, and the cost of launching an online business in 2026. This is not dropshipping. We bought inventory, formed an LLC, and registered our domain name: https://getwinks.com The plan? Shopify + paid social (Meta) with online marketplaces like Amazon and new channels like TikTok added as the numbers earn it. Curtis covers the category and the year they spent on the product + inventory management (sourcing, co-manufacturer, 3PL). Sean frames subscriptions and the CAC goal. Cody runs email and social-media marketing with AI to keep OpEx low. Mike pushes for constraints while Matt argues for high conviction, one big bet. Powered By Skio https://9ops.co/skio-9operators Aftersell https://9ops.co/4i3bb5 Omnisend https://www.omnisend.com/9operators SARAL https://calendly.com/maxx-getsaral/operators Motion https://9ops.co/motion-runneth Shoplift https://shoplift.ai/operators Operators Portal https://portal.9operators.com/dashboard Operators Newsletter Chapters 00:00:00 New Ecommerce Business 00:03:30 Why Make a Sleep Product? 00:07:52 How to Start a Brand (2026) 00:13:43 The $500K Investment 00:21:44 Mercenaries Over Martyrs 00:30:01 We’re Not Dropshipping 00:36:40 Drive Traffic, CAC Ceiling 00:41:28 Go All In Or Spread Bets 00:49:25 Email & Digital Marketing 00:58:26 Culture And Low Ego 01:04:31 Need a Business Plan? 01:14:44 Choosing Co-Founders
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If you've been listening and watching us for the last few years, I am sure you have asked this question. Can these guys build a 9-figure brand if they started over today, or are they just lucky? Well, you're about to find out. Introducing Operators Build is a new series where 4 e-com titans and a new-to-D2C founder are going to build a supplement brand in public from the ground up. And yes, we're starting a supplement company and our reputations may even be at stake. We're gonna document the entire thing and we are here to learn as much as we are here to share and teach real failures, real fights, actual fights, real decisions, real wins on camera. There are 10 episodes that are coming. Number 1, how do you start an e-commerce brand? Number 2, how did we come up with the product for this brand? Number 3, how to start a supplement company. This is a supplement company after all. 4, the design of the product, the packaging, everything. You can watch us do this real time. 5, from the first idea, how do you get to your first PO, that initial Order, the big bet. 6, setting up the subscription business. This is a subscription-first company. This is our first time doing this. We wanna take you through the whole thing. 7, all things AI. We've built this company to be AI native from the start. Everybody's talking about it. We're actually gonna show you how to do it. 8, all things growth and marketing from launch to how we're thinking about scale channels, the whole thing from scratch. 9 is all things offer price. promo, and 10 is the launch itself. That is season 1. You're gonna wanna watch every episode. We have built 9-figure brands before, but can we do it again? Today, boys, today is the how to start an e-commerce business episode. Uh, and for those of you that have watched and listened to us for a while, this is gonna sound like a strange episode for us to do. Everybody here runs a big brand. Why are we going back in time and saying, how do we start an e-commerce business? Well, Today is also episode 1 of a new series that we are calling Operators Build, and you're going to watch us build a brand in real time. And everybody that's on this episode are the co-founders of this brand. We've got Curtis, who is a new face. We have Sean, Mike, Cody, and myself. Today we're going to go through the category we're building in. We're going to talk about some of the basics of how we thought about choosing this category, why we're doing this right now. Why are we going to record this and document it in public? That seems kind of risky, so we should hit on that. Uh, and then after this episode, this is like a present day episode. We're gonna take you back in time for a few, and we're gonna go all the way back to last year at the beginning of this whole journey where we started working on the product. 'Cause those of you that have done this before know that product takes a long-ass time. So if we were to try to record that, there would be nothing to talk about for like 12 months.
So this is today.
Today is the How to Start an Ecommerce Business episode. This is Operators Build episode 1. And if you've been following us for a while, I hope you like it. We are, uh, we're gonna try not to make a fool of ourselves, I think is, uh, is what Mike and I have agreed as like priority number one. Let's not make a fool of us this week. Speak for yourself, Matt. Speak for myself? Well, dude, so why don't we start off for everybody? Curtis, since you are the new face here, why don't you start off and tell people the category we're building in and why you wanted to do this? Because like, we're all here because of you. This is your product idea. We liked it. We decided to back it. And then, we can kind of go from there and talk about how we're going to do it all.
Put me on the spot. Yeah, no worries, man. Well, appreciate you guys having me. And yeah, why do we tackle sleep? So, I think the conversation started when myself and Matt were talking, I don't know, year, year and a half ago. I've been in the health and wellness space for the last 23 years, seeing the trends, everything from recovery, sleep, protein. And, what we know is that over the last, let's say, 6 or 7 years, thanks to wearables like Oura, Whoop, and even products like Eight Sleep, people care about their sleep. It's a big problem. It's a massive problem. If you look at— it's a one-graph business. I mean, if you look at the rise of anxiety and how that's correlated to the lack of sleep and awareness of sleep. And, everybody's measuring it now, but they can't figure out how to shift and change it besides going to bed early, I guess. And so, when we looked at it, we looked at also all the supplement brands that exist. And, most of the time, the brands that win, they have a category or they have a product or a SKU that's either magnesium-focused, sleep-focused, recovery-focused, but no one's really built a brand around sleep itself. So, you have all these brands that have multiple SKUs, but no one really actually owns the sleep and recovery side of it. And so, when we looked at it, we're like, why don't we actually explore what that looks like? I think another factor and category is that for years, let's call it the last 40 years, people have dialed in their morning hygiene, morning routine, whether it's brushing their teeth, taking their supplements in the morning, and getting fit and active. And no one really actually manages, owns, or has mastered the sleep hygiene. So, why don't we actually introduce a product that people can get regular, build habits around, and solve one of the biggest pain problems and pain points that people have in today's world, which is the sleep side of it? And, that's kind of how this started.
And, Shawn, from that, maybe when you first heard the idea for the product because I think I My initial like, hey, I think we should try this, was to you. What about this product category did you like and not like?
Well, yeah, first, you know, we're building a new product from scratch. Matt, you hit this. All of us have ran 9-figure brands, currently running 9-figure brands, and are basically, I have the easy life. You know what I mean? I have an idea, I send it over on Slack, someone takes care of it. And some of the comments were like, look, these guys are out of touch. They're like, you know, we're in the, We're in the trenches launching a new brand today, $1 million, $5 million, $10 million. Does the operator's advice really apply to us? So we said, hey, we're gonna do it too. Can a bunch of CEOs remember how to log into Facebook ads? We're gonna tell you that today. Can a bunch of CEOs actually set up email campaigns? Look, I think it's a great time to be building brands. It's the best time ever. And we have learned from the failures of Simple Modern, Ridge, Pela, Jones Road. Like all of these businesses have like the same problem, right? It's where most of us are in durables, which means we get money one time for a transaction and then we have to beg those people to come back. And the best brands in durables might get somebody back 20%, 30% of the time. And all of us love the Zach Stucks of the world, the Jordan Menards of the world who have launched these subscription brands and just scaled them to the moon very, very fast. So we all want a taste of that. So I've been investing in, looking to do more subscription brands. Ridge launched Gut Culture internally. This is just another shot on goal for that, right? It's like health and wellness is the hottest category. Obesity is solved. So that's $20 billion in spend that has to go someplace else. And what are the failures of Ridge that we can port over here? It's like, let's not sell something that's guaranteed for life. Let's sell something you put in your body so people have to buy it over and over again. So that's what drew me to this. One, I love the challenge I wanna see us launch a business that actually makes some amount of money. And then 2, you know, right now there's a wave happening and we should ride that. Cody, why are you excited about this project?
So I'm excited. I'm coming in later. So I, first of all, told you guys, but I really appreciate you guys letting me in 'cause I'm coming in later. But I saw Matt a few months back at the Meta conference and we were catching up and he was telling me about it and I was like so jealous 'cause like I knew in my mind that I was gonna step down. from, uh, from Jones Road. And I'm like, this sounds like literally perfect, uh, for me. So I really appreciate you guys coming in. Kind of just good timing. I didn't even, you know, know there was an opportunity, but obviously I, uh, you know, tweeted last week and stepped down. I just was, again, like, like Sean, same thing. I mean, you know, this was my first business. This was a very big business for my first time doing this and made every mistake in the world. Um, myself, I was just also not enjoying it and trying to be just like honest about what I want to be doing. And was just not enjoying what everything that comes, or a lot of what comes with being a CEO of a nine-figure business, and just missed what I would consider the fun stuff. Right? Like yeah, I want to make money and all that, but I also want to like enjoy it. And so for me, like this next phase is about you know doing really fun things, like things that just like fire me up to like wake up in the morning and and start building with people that you know I can learn from and get energy from. And so this is kind of a perfect opportunity. I mean, same thing. I always told people that like, if I'm ever going to do a D2C brand again, like, it's got to be subscription, like bootstrapped, you know, bootstrapped company, like, you can't go, you know, bleeding, you got to be profitable on first purchase. And it just is playing these days is playing the game on hard mode. So I'm, I'm excited. It's like, it feels perfect for me. Like, I don't know if you guys know, so I have like a strength conditioning background. It's actually where my wife and I met, we used to own like a few gyms and physical therapy clinics. So Like really passionate about health and, you know, health and all that stuff, obviously really into subscription. And like, I just want to go back to building. Like I, I've been working on this for about a week and a half and like just having more fun than I've had in like a year or 2 years, obviously. I'm like really AI pilled. So that's a big, a big part of this as well. Um, and then obviously excited to learn from you guys. So it just feels, it feels perfect timing, feels perfect opportunity.
Sean, you know, Cody has not forgotten how to log into Facebook.
Just so we're clear.
He's the only one here who knows how to do it.
We'll see. I haven't yet. I haven't done it yet.
You know, Cody, we're going to tell everybody you quit Jones Road for this. So if this ends up working out, that'll be the story.
Huge pay cut. Huge pay cut.
Yeah, huge pay cut.
Yeah, you're making zero.
But zero direct reports, and that's what matters.
Totally.
You have been listening to us talk for years about building 9-figure durable goods brands— HexClad, Ridge, Simple Modern, Pela. When we sat down to build Winks, there was never a question it had to be a subscription brand. And being the veterans we are, we could work with anyone, but we decided to work with Skio to build Winks. Working with the team over at Skio has been awesome. We get to see all of the stuff that the fastest growing CPG brands are actually doing to acquire more subscribers and keep them Longer. My favorite example of this has been incentivizing new customers to go from a monthly subscription to a quarterly subscription right after their first purchase, but before they get their first order. The team at Skio has been sharing insights on how much in-portal flexibility to give subscribers, when to change frequency, when to offer product swaps, when to do gifting, what rewards should look like, what is cancel flow optimization. The list is freaking endless and they have shared it all. They have been incredible to work with. They are bringing so much value to this partnership. It almost feels a little unfair. If you run a subscription brand, you should be talking with the team over at Skio. They know their stuff.
This is still not a real company. So like, you know, this is episode 1 for everybody. Like we haven't launched it yet. We still got samples. I, no one knows what they're really supposed to be doing. So this is very much like the early, you're, you're seeing the cake being made. That's what people have asked for on this, this series. People wanna see us make mistakes, be stupid, fight. That's all gonna happen here. So it's gonna be some great content. But yeah, I think—
Yeah, I think, Sean, you actually had a good point. So like one of the things that we're gonna try to do as we build this, when we say build in public, like we are going to record real work, right? So like when we talk channel, channel strategy, when we talk even creative, creative supply chain, how are we working with creators? We're just gonna record all that. So for some people it's probably gonna be a little boring, but for people who are in the weeds, It's going to be about as real as you could possibly get with how a business gets built. Like none of us have any roles. We have a company formed. We have decided to fund the company ourselves. So like all of us are putting our own money into this business and that's kind of how we're starting it. So like it is very much bootstrapped. And if you're watching and you've been watching or listening for a long time, like there are things that we have that somebody starting from scratch to build a new e-com business, would not have. Like, we all know each other, we all have network, right? Like, that stuff is an advantage. We're not gonna lie about that. But we're gonna try to keep this as like true and honest as possible. Like, literally the last week and a half, Cody and I have just been smashing out a bunch of stuff. Like, we're using AI to do as much as we can 'cause we don't have any employees. We don't intend on having any employees for a little while. Like, we're gonna try to keep this as like scrappy and in the dirt and in the weeds as possible. I think Sean might even build some emails for us. Like, we're gonna see what Sean remembers how to do. Um, but yeah, this is, I think you hit on a good point, Sean. This is like, this is fresh. This is as about, about as zero as you get.
Yeah.
You know, and we should probably just think about the Q&As we're gonna get. Okay. You said we bootstrapped it. How much is this? How much is it gonna cost if you wanted to launch a subscription brand from scratch right now? What, what are you spending?
Yeah. So I think what we've agreed on is we're gonna put, uh, well, let's start with like from the beginning. When we went to go build the product, which we're gonna do an entire episode just on product, we committed $100,000 to creating the product, testing it. Um, you're gonna see all, like, you'll, you will see a full episode just on product because we put a lot of work into the product. Like, that's Curtis's sort of genius and he knows that space really well. Um, but I think, Sean, all, like, all in, we're probably gonna put about $500,000. into this business just to get it rolling. So I think for people listening, like, you could probably do it for less. It doesn't mean that we need $500,000 on day one, but that's the amount of capital that we are committing to giving this a real shot.
So guys, we're putting $500,000 into this. $100,000 is going to product, $400,000 is going to everything else. At the end of those $400,000, when they've been spent, What does success look like to have everyone re-up and put more money into this thing? What are we looking for?
Mike, you want to start?
Yeah, I think this is actually one of the places where I hope to contribute. What we've learned with these businesses is that the income statement, the P&L, like how much money am I making today, doesn't necessarily tell you about the value you're creating. It's all about looking at the economics of the user. How much are we acquiring users for? what's their 30, 60, 90-day, 180-day user value, user profit, and that you really hone in on those metrics to help you understand, are you building something? Are you just kind of flushing money down the toilet? So I think for me, when we burn through that $500,000, if we're seeing really good signs in terms of that spread between what we acquire a user for and what we think they'll be worth in the first half year of their life, year of their life, then I'm going to be really excited to put more capital behind it. But even if we're acquiring users, if that spread doesn't look good, I think myself for sure, but I think all of us are going to be pretty skeptical about putting more money in until we can figure out how to get that compressed. So to me, that's what I'm going to have my eye on is the individual user economics. And I think that's probably one of the more interesting things about this compared to Simple Modern. With Simple Modern, like we had to make money very first purchase, right? And here we know that it's pretty much impossible for us to make money on the first purchase. So the analytics and the projecting out of user values actually are gonna matter a lot.
That's actually okay. So like maybe, uh, Cody, I'll go to you on this one cuz I think the basic question is like, what does it even mean to start an e-com, like an e-commerce business or a brand? Because like what Sean's hitting on and what Mike's hitting on is we're gonna seed the money company with money. This is what every business has to do, whether it's like $5,000 or in our case, we're putting in half a million, but you still have to like decide on what you're trying to build at the beginning, right? So like maybe Cody, for you, when you heard about this or when you started getting involved, like, did, do you look at this? Like, if you're gonna say like, what does it mean to start an e-commerce business? Is this just a Shopify store? Do you think multichannel? Do you like, How wide and how big do you go initially in your thinking about how to build the brand versus like day one, what am I trying to accomplish?
Well, I first came in and like wanted, wanted to know, like didn't want to have any opinions because you guys had been at this and I had been thinking about it. And so I didn't want to be like, oh yeah, we should, we should do this, whatever. So I just wanted to like understand. And what was cool is like nothing had been decided yet. And, you know, there were opinions on, oh, should we just go D2C? Should we go TikTok Shops? Should we go Amazon? Like, I think that's the biggest thing is we just have to align on like, how, how fast are we trying to grow this thing? And like, what does success look like after that? And I think part of that is like, what we'll decide if we continue is like, are we all aligned? Right? Like, we've probably all been, maybe, hopefully not, but we've all been part of businesses where the co-founders aren't aligned. And it's like, I want this outcome. I want this outcome. Like, we need that. I think that's a really big one. And then we also need, uh, you know, product market fit. But I guess we should talk about that. It's like, what does success look like? I don't know. We have clear ones, or I know, Matt, you and I have talked about it. It's like, we'll see.
Yeah, it was like the first question Cody asked me.
Yeah, maybe we just bootstrap it. Maybe we go and raise like something like that. But I think we definitely need alignment. We definitely need to not hate each other by the end of, by the end of whatever that time period is or the $500K. And then like, yeah, we should, we should get alignment on, on how fast we're trying to grow and like, what does success in a few years look like?
Yeah, I think first thing that Cody asked me, was, uh, all right, how fast do you want to go? Right? Because I think that's like, you see some, some companies are like vertical lines straight up, uh, and they just choose to do that. Um, but I mean, no matter what, they found some form of product-market fit. They got what Mike is hitting on, like they understood their CAC to LTV, they figured out their unit economics, and then they just went blazing fast. I don't know, like, do you guys have a strong opinion on this? But my, my answer to Cody when he asked like, how fast are you trying to go and what's the out— like, what's the goal? My gut was like, as fast as we can, that's reasonable, right? So like, and then I think there is a question of the faster you want to go, you got to solve this working capital problem. And this is like fundamental to any, like if you're beginning, if you're starting at zero in consumer and you're like, I'm going to start a Shopify store, an Amazon business, a TikTok Shops business, like whatever your first channel is, working capital is like a major problem. We've talked about it on the show a lot. The faster you grow, the more money you need. So I don't know, Mike, if you have a strong opinion here, but like, let's say this.
I have some strong opinions. My strong opinion is that we need to set a constraint of we're going to grow as fast as we can within this constraint. Uh, because I think that if you don't have some kind of like, uh, lines painted on the field, then it's just kind of chaos, you know? Like, so I think we should set a constraint and whether that's $500,000 or we say, hey, we'll go up to $1 million or whatever. We know one thing to be true. The faster you try and grow, the less efficient you get. You lose efficiency as you try and go faster. And so that, I think that when you're saying, well, what's, how many miles per hour are we trying to drive? You really have to just kind of have some kind of efficiency constraint that says, well, we're not going to go past X. So for me, I think we will want to walk through like how much capital is kind of our max amount of capital in. Because, and this is the problem that a lot of e-commerce businesses run into. You might say, well, hey, my enterprise value, my revenue is growing, but if I'm having to burn $2, $3, $5 million to get that enterprise value up, there's going to be a point where even with this group, we're like, hey, we don't want to be out of pocket this much cash, even if we're accruing this much enterprise value over on the other side. And so, uh, I, anyway, that'd be my thought is that like, I think this first $500,000 probably gets us stood up and hopefully gets us to a point where we really understand the numbers. Then we can kind of say, all right, in light of this, how much more do each one of us want to contribute? And then let's, let's make this work. Like, this is our, this is our amount of money that we're giving ourselves to get to kind of sustaining cash flows. And we're going to grow as fast as we can within that. And one of the reasons why I think that discipline is really good is that the point of this exercise is that we're trying to show, you know, how much money does it start? Does it cost to start an e-commerce business? Um, how do you actually stand up an e-commerce business? How do you make decisions about growth rate? And I think it's generally unhelpful if our answer is just throw more money at it. Like we have the ability to throw more money at this that other people don't have. And so if I'm just like watching this episode and if our solution to every problem or every, you know, difficulty we run into is like, hey, we all just contributed another million dollars to the entity, then what does that teach me about starting a company or building a company? So I think it's most helpful to other people, but also I think it's just what I've learned is like most of the mistakes I've made as an operator is not setting enough constraints because I got so excited about growth.
Huh. Okay. What does it mean to start an e-commerce brand in 2026? First, we should identify that we are all mercenaries on this. We are not martyrs, right? And what I mean by that is we are looking for a success and we're taking an educated guess on what that success is going to be.
Right?
Element, that guy, he's a martyr. He was going to do that business if he made no money or if he's a billionaire, right? He really believes he's going to go out there. He's like, people need salt. He'd be on the street corner selling salt like it was methamphetamine, right? Now, to contrast this, we are going to be mercenaries in this business. We think subscription is necessary. We think sleep's a great category. We think we have the right formula to make this work. What that means though is if it doesn't work, we're gonna shut it down because, you know, we're not gonna throw endless money at this thing and just pray for it to work, right? So what Mike's talking about with setting the discipline, what we're looking for is, is there a clear path to $100 new customer CAC? That is the gold standard, right? Now if we get to $200, I think that's still a winner, right? But like if we're out here spending $1,000 to acquire a customer, Like the churn will just—it'll never pencil out, right? We're okay losing this $500,000 because at the end of the three or six months that it takes to build this business, we're going to be like, okay, the cohorts are worth X. That's what makes us mercenaries in this business, right? We're really trying to make those numbers actually pencil out. So what does an e-commerce business mean in 2026? It's you're thinking about those things rationally. We are not in the irrational free money era anymore. Like e-commerce is not going to the moon like COVID. You actually have to be like principled in this approach and deploying this. Money as, as a weapon. So that's, that's how I think about it.
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What about you?
Do you have a strong take on like what needs to be true to keep going in this?
Well, I don't want to like repeat everything that Mike, Sean, and yourself said like about LTV and CAC, but if you think about We have an opportunity to evaluate what product market fit is. Like, if we can nail some level of product market fit by the time our first lump kind of invests into the company, I think that's when we're going to have to evaluate like if we move forward or not. And I think also what's worth noting is that we have a unique advantage in the fact that we're starting a business with AI extremely relevant. Like, You know, what can we do to implement tools, agents, platforms that are AI-driven, that we can keep our costs down, that we can— and that's another reason why I think, to Mike's point, that we can't go super fast. We don't want to go super slow, but what we can do is we can build in real time using AI tools so we can keep, you know, our headcount down and be efficient, be effective, and like build something in real time to show people that.
Yeah.
Yeah, you might not need $500 grand to start a business, but can you implement AI tools to be more efficient, more effective, and build an AI-first company? Because you couldn't do what we can do today 3, 5 years ago.
That's actually a great point. One of the things, Mike and Sean, that we've talked about is, I know Cody and I talked about too, is like, of the money we're putting in, we want as much of this to go to marketing as possible. Yeah, right. Like, we really want to like take that capital and go and test and, and try as— like, just basically try as many things as we have to to figure out PMF, like whatever we define as PMF, to figure out what CAC and LTV look like. So Curtis is hitting on product-market fit. The PMF would be the, the what you hear a lot of us say. Mike, do you have a— give us your take on like what do you think that means? Like, you've started a supplement uh, not even supplement, but like you literally have a product with Trevi in market and you've, you're the furthest ahead on this out of all of us right now. What does that look like for Winks?
Yeah, for sure. Well, I mean, I think there's 2 elements of product market fit, and one is, are you solving a pain point problem and the market really is looking for a solution? And do you have a great solution? Do you have a great product? And I think the great product piece, you just have to get your product out there. You have to sell some to people. You have to look at the reviews. You have to look at refund rates. You have to look at churn, retention, things like that that we're going to look at. We just don't know. We try, we'll try obviously to design a great product. And I think that that actually could be one place where we're elite is being able to come to market with a truly great product. I think the days of like, hey, I'm just going to show up with a so-so product and Meta is going to power this thing to be awesome. I just think those are over. I think you've got to have great product plus great marketing, plus you really have to be addressing a need. And we're gonna find out if that's true. And really the thing that'll probably show that over time, like I said, is retention and your customer acquisition cost.
Mm-hmm.
Because my intuition from having talked to all the people that we know is that you're gonna have insane customer acquisition cost if you're not getting some good word of mouth. And that if you're not retaining people, if you're not getting people on subscription and retaining them, the economics just can't work because you just cannot make it work with acquiring people that make 1 or 2 purchases. You really have to have people that stick around. So I actually think in going back to the discussion about how much money is this gonna cost to start this business, I actually don't think we're gonna burn through $400,000 really quick. I think the, the experience is actually gonna be, we're gonna feel like we're going quite slow at first because until you start to get some economics you like, you're really not gonna wanna ramp your spend at all.
Totally. Totally.
So like another thing that is worth talking about here is what is the cost in time? All of us have very expensive time, and so I actually don't think burning capital, burning money is really the bigger risk here. I think it's that it just takes us a long, a lot of burning time to get to figuring out what it's going to take to get to product market fit. And we're also doing something in a category that I mean a lot of people are trying to do this. I think that this is obviously kind of the playbook that is out there right now, and a bunch of people are trying to replicate this strategy that you know Pablo Escobar proved that selling powder is one of the best business models in the world. So if you can find a way, it's like the perfect e-commerce product. Like if you can sell a powder, it's super light, it doesn't spoil. So it's perfect from the fulfillment end and super high margin. Like there's a lot of reasons why this is such an attractive category, but we've talked about this on NineOps all the time. The more attractive the category, the harder it is to get to product market fit because there's so many people that are going to compete in that space.
Yeah.
So I'm fired up. Like, this is like putting it on insane difficulty mode and saying, with our chops that we've developed running all these companies, can we come in and can we compete with everybody in the world that is going after this in e-commerce and build something of value? I'm super excited to find out what the answer to that question is.
I guess on the other side of that difficulty though, is large TAM, right? Like it is like, Sleep is a massive market.
Yeah, it's like I just said, direct relationship. The bigger the TAM, the more people that are going to be, you know, it is going to be the absolute octagon here. And I'm here for it. Like, if you don't love competition, like, why start a business? Why be in entrepreneurship? So like, part of the reason why I'm doing this is like, I want more competition in my life. This is like my drug of choice is like actually pushing myself. What can we do? And I love the idea of trying to do that with this group.
So I want to hit on— there's a few things that we have decided to do starting this business that I think is relevant for people who are going to be listening. So the first, actually, let's start with like what we did, what we're doing and what we're not doing. So what we're not doing is this is not a dropshipping business. This is, we've bought inventory. It is at a 3PL. So we are using a 3PL. We are not, none of us are using our own warehouses. We've— we're going the normal route. It's at a 3PL. We are starting direct consumer. So this is like Shopify, Meta ads out of the gate. We're running a playbook that we're all very familiar with. And we are, I guess, initially also just single channel. So we're not trying to boil the ocean with our go-to-market, right? We'll do a whole episode on why we're choosing this, like around like what our channel strategy is and how we're thinking of launching. But I think one of the key things when you're starting any business is like, we actually, while we know the market's big and we know powders are great and we understand like all that, we also don't know what messages are gonna connect with customers. So like, we don't know who our initial customer is. We don't know like that beachhead persona. We don't know the ones that scale. So like what Mike is hitting on is it's, it is a little slow to figure some of that out, outta the gate. Right? Like, we're not just going to come out, hit the gas pedal. It's like, no, but there's a lot of discovery and, and sort of like marketing that we have to go do just to figure out who the hell we're selling to.
And we got to figure out roles with the team. Like, what are the ways that we play together? We got like, you know, 5 cooks in the kitchen. And so like, we've got a ton of chef expertise, but like, somebody's got to run the food, you know, like somebody's got to, got to do some of the other stuff. And I think that like, that'll be fun too, uh, in, in a team that's as talented to figure out What is the way that each of us is able to contribute and where do we defer to one another?
Yeah. Cody's, uh, I think Cody's first favorite Slack message to me right now is he's like, am I okay to do this? Or are you doing this? It's basically how he starts every conversation.
Like delegating work to a CEO, to Matt. I'm like, I'm like, hey, can you, can you, can you integrate this? Can you do it? But, um, no, on the, Mike, I forgot what it was that you said you felt strongly about, but like one area that I definitely feel strongly about is just the low OpEx, like I just think it is so hard to go backwards and talking about all the lessons that we've learned from our businesses, like trying to, again, for to be a D2C brand, like you have to have low OpEx. It pretty much is impossible without it these days. You're as much of your P&L should be going to CAC as you can reasonably afford. And I think we're in such a great time with, with AI, obviously, but like, that's, I think one of the biggest constraints we should give ourselves. Um, and it is, is so hard to do for an existing brand. So that's one of the things that excites me about this. Trust me, I've tried very, very hard at an existing 9-figure business. It's really, really, really hard and really frustrating. So that's, and that's it where it's like, before we go and hire an email agency, like I built all of our emails that we'll need. Right. And so we can do that and then statics and then landing pages. So like, we are able to have a really lean OpEx, at least for now. But I also think that goes in like Connor McDonald talks about this all the time, like high leverage businesses. Like if we're launching multichannel from the beginning, like we need a lot more people to do that. And so I think before we need to, let's keep it very consolidated, right? We don't need massive TAM and like, let's dial things in, which really means low channels and low SKUs. And that allows us to keep low OpEx. Do you guys have, I haven't like seen P&L yet. Like, do you guys have a number in your head of like OpEx percent of revenue that you think we should be targeting for this to be successful?
Zero? Yeah. Well, like I've talked about this with brands. We were actually just chatting about it the other day. Like, I want it to be 1%. And I think if you think about the 3 big drivers of your P&L, you've got your people costs, you've got your product costs, and you've got marketing costs. And I think all of us are seeing a future where the people costs and the product costs have to be as small as possible. That leaves as much room for your marketing costs to still be big and there's still to be a margin. Uh, I, one thing I would disagree with, by the way, that we've already said, we should be on Amazon. Because we can stand that up and that is going to be a demand capture. Like, I'm not saying we need to like, and also like, I guess this is a place where I have personal experience where it's like, you can automate a bunch of that stuff.
Yeah.
And so Cody, I think your principle is really good, but I actually would say like, the principle is more like you want to be as broad as you can with as small of an OpEx footprint as you possibly can. So if we can be on Amazon, this is also as a side note, This is why supplement companies like absolutely print in wholesale because they're, it's a low SKU count. It's not complex. It's just money that comes in with almost no additional headcount. So actually like the best situation for us would be to get multichannel because we could, we would find that we could get a lot bigger without growing that OpEx very much. So anyway, my, my one thought is like the best in class right now is that you have a demand creation engine. And then your demand capture engine is a combination of your website and Amazon. We should, we should definitely at least stand that up.
Yeah. And it's really just what positive signals do we see before we go to the next level, right? Because right now it's single SKU, no employees selling on .com. If we get a $250 CAC, okay, let's, let's throw Amazon on there, right? If we get a $150 CAC, we'll set up TikTok shop. The other thing is those can be very high leverage, meaning you don't need to do any work once they're set up, right? Like I could set up our Amazon in 3 hours. It's like, it's like we got all the assets, we got the listing, I could just set it up, right? Um, so I agree with all that. Uh, cool.
So one of the things that we did, guys, that I would say is not, maybe not normal for somebody starting a company. So like, Usually before you enter a new category, you start a new business, you would do some amount of testing of your idea before you even place your first PO. Like, we have already bought our inventory, and I think it might be good to hit on like, what would you do differently if you were starting another brand, like another business? Would you just do what we did, which is like, we just really believe in the category, we worked on the product, we invested in the product, we ordered the product? Like we ordered inventory, or would you do some amount of testing customer message, like price? Uh, would you run ads first? Like Sean, I don't know if you've, if you've got any strong views here on like, what would you advise somebody to do?
Well, they, I don't think they should do what we've done. I mean, Curtis spent a year making this product the best to launch and most people just don't have a year. Like I would just take whatever is off the shelf. And start selling it and then see if there's demand and then and then merge and then eventually land on the product you want. Right? Like if you if you're proud of the thing you launched when you launch it, you launch too late. It's a very classic thing in tech, and we're very proud of the thing we launched. It's just you know I I would have just launched the melatonin gummies or whatever, like whatever whatever the earliest sleep thing I possibly could. And then once you get CACs, once you get traction, once the Amazon account set up, go towards. the ultimate goal. So I think everyone listening to this is not gonna have $500,000, right? And what you just need to do is find whatever you possibly can to sell that's close enough if you squint to get to what you wanna sell.
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Well, that's a great question.
Mike, okay, so we talk about this all the time, is it's like, what is that balance between putting shots on goal versus just having conviction? And I, I don't know what the answer to this is. I think I can tell you where we came out. Where we came out is make the best product that you can, that ultimately efficacy is going to lead to retention and happy customers, and that's what's going to drive the business. So the product that we ended up building is one that is very scientifically proven, we have experts weighing in on, and I'm sure we have a whole episode about how we got there. But it's going to be a very effective product that actually solves the problem. And right now, like, you've got— I mean, gummies are so huge. But also with gummies, like, there's all kinds of problems with that form factor. Like, I guess adults love eating candy. And so like, gummies are pretty close to candy. Like, I like eating gummies. So like, I understand the appeal. But in terms of like, if you're actually trying to solve a problem, I'm really uncertain that gummies are the best way to solve it. In fact, I know they're not the best way to solve it. So I don't know, I think you have to kind of like, ask this question between how much am I trying to crowdsource judgment versus having judgment and discernment myself? And this is a— this is coming up over and over again in an AI age of, okay, in an age where the computers can do everything, what's my role? And I think it has to be editing and judgment and discernment. So for us, we were like, we're gonna go big. On what we think is the best product. We did a similar thing with Trevi, and there are times that I've been like, man, if I could reorder that, I would have done A, B, and C differently. But also, like we've got the best reviewed electrolyte now, and I think that that's going to power the business to success. And so I'm always a believer if you have the best product, that in the end that wins. And I think that that's where we came out. I'm pretty happy with with the product that we did. I certainly know from like a scientific. basis. Like, we were really intentional there. Honestly, Cody, it'll be interesting for us when we do like the, um, kind of postmortem on this. Should we have done that? Yeah. Um, because, and I, I do think some of this is that we haven't talked about yet, is like, what are we trying to do? And if the answer was we were trying to make a quick buck, like, definitely we should have just shot a gummy out there last summer and just immediately tried it. But I think if you're like, hey, we're really trying to build enterprise value. And I don't know that we've actually kind of really clearly said that either. Yeah. In this, like, what is a good outcome? And I think that one of the things we should really like emphasize is that with a group like this, that's basically pouring in their time, that's very valuable for sweat equity. Like it needs to be a really big enterprise value outcome for this thing to make sense.
That's what I was going to say. I think Cody, the, the, like taking $500,000, making $500,000 bets. To me is, it just, I mean, it's not how I operate. I tend to be with Mike. I tend to be a, I do the work and the research to get high conviction on something and then I go all in. And the reason for that is what Mike is hitting is that I'm not looking to make like 5 $20 million businesses. Like I would rather go all in on something with high conviction in a large market where you put the right team together and you can actually like take a decent chunk of it. That sounds more interesting to me. So like, that's like sort of the business side of how I thought about it. The other side of it was in this category in particular, like Curtis knows this because I've known Curtis a long time, but I happen to have a child. My daughter's almost 11, but she's an awful sleeper. Like, I think I've said this on the show, like she has been a terrible sleeper her whole life. Sleep is the thing that plagues my house. My wife is a terrible sleeper. I'm a great sleeper, but This is a product that is like very, uh, close to home for me. So I think it also was a let's do it right, because I know the power of, of like, if you can just figure sleep out, it is extremely important, right? So, and I've been on the other side of that where we haven't figured it out, and this product is freaking awesome. So I'm, I'm, yeah, I think I'm more like concentration of bet, and I'm with Mike that like, if we're gonna do something and put our time into it, our time is valuable. Let's just go big on something, then test a bunch.
Yeah, I think we should. And I don't know if this is the time or the place to figure out what the goals are. And maybe we, you know, Sean just hopped off because yeah, I think we totally should. Because one of the things that's exciting to me, like I agree all that is like, if this works, it also feels very repeatable is obviously with, with our network, with the funding, you know, with audience, which I don't know if we want to use. It's like, all right, cool. How do we, how do we spin up a few of them? How do we? You know, do more. And then like, that would be like, for me, it's like, I don't know if it doesn't sound that much fun trying to build a $300 brand, like million-dollar brand. Like maybe you guys would be better there. Like maybe I could be more of the starter if we did more of those. So I think it would be, I think we should, yeah. The earlier we get alignment on that, I think the better.
Curtis, what about you though? Like, I want to, I want to hear your thoughts first on like the, the why not try multiple things? Why this one?
Yeah. Or, or speed to speed to market. I mean, I think at the end of the day, that's how this conversation started. Sean had mentioned, most times you bring something to market in a very bootstrapped, quick way, assess, evaluate the market, see how it responds, iterate the product, iterate en route for product-market fit. And this did take longer than we all expected, myself included. It totally did, like a lot longer. There was delays, there was challenges. I think the category we play in, I think Also, it was important to actually analyze and evaluate the assumptions that we made is that we're launching a product that is speaking to both adults and kids, to families. It's a consumable product. That's a good point. It's consumable. And so, it's not a hard physical product that people don't consume that you can iterate over time. I mean, at the end of the day, efficacy is being scrutinized more and more often and more frequently with supplements. We're trying to market to a family-oriented product. I think that's even more important. I think there's a lot of reasons why we wanted to do it right the first time and spend the money on quality, efficacy, ingredients, product, and then therefore, we layered on marketing. The one good thing that we have is that we all have experience both running businesses but also we got 4 to 5 guys that are marketing savants. And so when you look at that, that is the biggest problem and challenge I think people have. It's usually not the product. It's actually how do we drive our cost of acquisition down over time and figure out how we actually bring this thing to market. And I think our experience allows us to make a lot more assumptions than most people. So we can spend a little bit more time on getting the product right beforehand, versus, you know, getting it into market and then trying to figure that out. Um, I, I would say that we are making a lot more assumptions, uh, than we typically all would, but I think our experience and our time running businesses and understanding this market allows us to do that.
Uh, that's a fair point. Like we, we sort of did skip some steps.
Something that you said, Cody, that I think is interesting is, you know, that you don't really want to run a $300 million brand. I, I, one challenge to that is you don't want to run a $300 million brand the way that it was trending with Jones Road. Um, but I think that part of this experiment, part of the experiment that I'm running internally with my brands is how big can your brand get without getting away from a very, very small team? And that could be a really fun part of this is like, can you get to 9 figures with 5 people working on the project? Can you get to, you know, $200 million, $300 million? I don't know if that's even possible here, but I think it's interesting and I think it's more possible than ever before. And one of the things that I think all of us have experienced as leaders is that As the organization gets bigger, so much of your time starts to be like managing and things other than like doing the work and scaling the thing. And so, uh, I think it's an interesting kind of challenge for this. And when we talk about success criteria is how much can we scale this up without adding people? And that being an interesting constraint is like, realistically, how big can the business get when you're using AI and you're using these tools? How big can you get without adding all of the parts of business building that are maybe more of a drain than life-giving for this group.
Yeah, I'm with— I think I'm with both of you guys there. I think I'm not anti-people. I think it should be said, like, I actually like building companies with people. I think that's actually part of the fun, right? That's the reason why we're all here is, you know, we're friends. We're— I mean, Mike, Sean, and I are business partners in this media company that owns this podcast. So I think I'm with you, Cody. There is like an old way to build a company and then we're gonna go and part of our goal here is to say like, can we find a new way? Or a version of the old way that we all like, and then just see how far we go. I think Cody, you're also hitting on an important question, which is like, what are the other goals of this, right? One of the reasons that we decided to do this and why we're doing it publicly, and we'll share this publicly, is we'd like to launch a brand every year as a group, right? Like that's sort of one of our ideas. So like if we go all in on an idea like this and we put our full weight behind it, to what Curtis is hitting on, is like, we're pretty good at go-to-market, we're pretty good marketers, we've all done it a bunch of times. If we figure it out and we have a model we like, then we are also looking for a model that we can repeat in the future. So that was definitely part of, of the conversation, Cody, what you're asking.
Yeah, no, fair. And, and also agree with Mike's point, like That's partly why that's probably why this is so fun is because we can take our experience and, and what would we not do again, you know, second time and like, all right, yeah, like, Mike, that's a really good point and pushback. But it's like, all right, I'm not gonna do a non-subscription brand again, we're not gonna do durables. But also like, here's how we want to build a team. Here's how we want to build culture. Like, that's what's fun. And then the other thing that's fun about it to me is like, is I really feel like I'm the dumbest person in the room. And so I feel like we have so much to learn from each other. And I didn't feel like that. I felt like I was the smartest person in the room for a while. And so it's great to be like, hey, I actually think Mike is going to be a way better leader than me, or Matt is going to be a way better leader for me, is going to be better at that phase. And maybe I'm better for standing up a new website and getting, you know, and getting into a Meta ad account. So I think that's the other thing that's fun. But maybe that's a good segue for us figuring out like, what are our roles? How do we divide who's calling— I don't want to say calling the shots, but like, how are we thinking about that? Even good, like, for people listening as well.
Yeah, actually, it's funny, uh, we're already starting to see this, Cody, right? Um, so like, we have vendors, we have partners that we've brought on to help us build the company, and their— one of their first questions is like, okay, who approves things? You know, I'm like, uh, I know I don't want to say me all the time, so like, sometimes I'm basically like, nope, Cody will do that. Um, but yeah, no, I think the, uh, I would say like less role and more like areas of accountability is how I would guide us to think about this. You know, like Mike has already hit on the Amazon thing. I'm not gonna do that. Like that is absolutely gonna be an accountability area for Mike. And Mike's probably also gonna be sort of like taking lead and accountable for like all things modeling and financials, right? 'Cause that's also like knowing Mike, that's like another zone of genius for him.
That's how I want to help. I think that I want to be, and I'm happy to do some of like the organizing leadership stuff also, but I'm also happy, you know, like I trust Matt, I trust your leading, I trust all you guys as leaders. So it's like I'd happily follow any of you. And I'm kind of happy to serve in that. But yeah, like I love, I think the numbers really matter here. And I think that just like you, Cody, one of the things that is awesome so far is to watch how like you needed basically zero spin-up time. You're like, I know exactly how I'm gonna attack this. And you just started to attack it on the marketing end. And that's exactly how it'll be for me on the Amazon numbers modeling end. It's like, I'm ready to go.
Yeah.
And part of that is that we're all able to draw from the experience of things that we're building with our own companies or that we've built outside of this project. But it'll be a lot of fun. And that's what I think more than anything else, what I want to be able to do with the group is be able to say, Here is what the numbers say. And based on that, how do we want to proceed? And I think that's so much of these businesses. Like, hey, if we want to do A, then just know that's going to mean B, C, and D. Or we could do this thing over here and that comes with this other set of trade-offs. And I think that being able to, uh, kind of not only plot out the numbers, but then qualitatively communicate what does that mean?
Yeah.
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Yeah, yeah, I think, and then just taking it a little further, 'cause we should have this conversation. Like, I think Curtis, you're clearly product, right? And sort of like, I would say product and then like key relationships with creators. You've got a lot of big ones there, just given your background, like in sports particularly. And I also think Curtis, like face of brand, right? Like none of us can probably get on a podcast and talk with intelligence about sleep health and sleep hygiene and wellness in the way that you can. Like, you've been in the space for so damn long. Like, you are the, like, a longevity guy. I'm not. I, I, like, when I have a question, I call you. Like, literally, that's my life, guys. Like, I call Curtis for all this crap. So I think that's another clear area of accountability. Honestly, I think the blurriest lines are going to be between Cody, myself, and Sean. Because It's like all things like marketing, all of us are probably deepest there. And I think right now, like Cody, you and I are trying to figure out like, okay, day to day, who's doing what, right? Like I'm taking most things copywriting. Cody, you'll take most things like building out the systems and I'll contribute to it, right? Like I've got a pretty good ad builder. I'll add that into Cody's code base. So I think some of it's gonna be pretty obvious, but then Who takes sort of lead on, uh, like for, for our creative teams, like who is actually approving or looking at all of that stuff, right? Is that Cody? Is that me? Is that Sean? Like, I think some of that still has to be sorted out. Um, I think the other answer, Cody, is like we're also not deep enough there yet to have hit a point where it's like, uh-oh, somebody needs to actually own this.
Yeah, no, I, I agree with you. Yeah, because no, one of The one agency we have that we brought on, they sent something the other day and they're like, Matt and Cody, take a look. And it was like a messaging thing. I'm like, I'm gonna let Matt get that. But I agree. I agree with that. It's like, and it's also like, I'm like, I'm also totally cool. Like, for me, it's like whoever's faster, like we kind of almost can read each other's brain at this point. And like, I can hop in if whatever it is. Like, I also want us to move fast. So I don't want us to be like, oh, we need to go get approvals from this person or worry about stepping on toes, but also have the respect to be like, hey, like. He's got more strength here.
Yeah, you know, it's actually like, Mike, this is an interesting one, right? The usually in a business, uh, there is actually like pretty clearly defined roles in a traditional business. Like you would have somebody who owns finance and somebody who owns supply chain and somebody who owns marketing. I think the interesting thing with how we're going to try to construct this company is this is a little more like a hedge fund, right? Like we're all pretty capable in most things. And I actually have like, it's not just trust in leadership. I actually just have trust. Like, I'm pretty sure I could trust any one of you guys to make any of the calls. Like, you've done this a long time. And, and I think that I'm saying that because what Cody hit on earlier of like, you know, building up a large company, I actually wonder if, if this is sort of like gonna be a, uh, if we're like directionally correct in that the future of business building is actually just like smaller, much higher capability teams working together. So like it might only be a 10-person company and it's just because you got 10 superstars that are just like max leveraged with tooling and outside partners and AI and whatever the hell else. Like that is a question for me as we're building is like, how far can we take this?
Yeah, I think the, the general environment of a startup, all of us have been a part of several of these, is that everybody's a generalist to some extent.
Yeah.
Because there's just whatever needs to be done has to get done and somebody's got to do it. And, you know, you don't, you're at the beginning of a business. So who's, who's an expert? Nobody's an expert at those things. Now, in this case, a lot of the things that need to be done, we are coming in as experts in them, but there'll be other things that, that we're not. And we're going to have to learn. I think the single biggest threat to this model and this experiment is responsibility and having a single, like, authority on things where it's very clear this needs to get done and this person is doing it. Because everybody's task is kind of nobody's task.
Yeah.
And we need to make sure that there's real clear accountability, not because we're worried about the follow-through or the drive of any of the individual principals, because it just might be ambiguous and, and you nailed it. It's like, oh, we really need to figure out which of these, you know, ways we're going with this aspect of our email marketing. And if it's kind of like, well, we've got 3, we've got 3 awesome people kind of that, that are giving input here, but it's not really clear who's in charge of it or when we need to get this done, then it just doesn't get done.
Yep.
Or we're pulling in different directions. So that's probably to me what we're going to have to really work on. Like, if you tell me, here's what I want from you, Mike, or if whoever's job it is to kind of like, it's like, it'll get done and it'll get done the best I can.
Yeah.
But also it's like, if, if it's not clear, if it's just kind of more general, like, yeah, Mike, you're in charge of the numbers, then it's very easy that there might be a deliverable or something that Cody needs that he doesn't get because it's just not clear to me that I need to execute on this thing and get it to him. So that's probably the piece that we'll have to, we'll have to work on the most.
Well, I think the other one that's, that's really important, like, in addition to that is, when we disagree, what do we do? Because I think we're all used to being able to call the shots. And being, you know, CEO, and we get, we get final say. And this is going to be really, I don't want to say challenging, but, you know, personally, a part, it's kind of, there's gonna be times where it's hard for me. There's also times where I'm like, hey, this is not my, like, it's actually nice not having the responsibility. Mike being like, hey, we'll just go on Amazon. I'm like, great. Like, I have full trust in that. Like, thank you for making that decision. But we do have to at least figure that out of how we're going to make decisions when we don't all see eye to eye on something.
Yep. Yeah.
You know what we should do is this is, this is kind of how you get to culture. And I think culture always matters. Um, you know, like having a really clear understanding of what you want. The way I think about culture is culture is the norms of how you will operate, basically, like the value structure and the norms of how we're going to work with each other. And this is a good example of why talking about culture early on can be really helpful. So one thing that I would propose for our culture, cultural mindset, is that, uh, we have a very data-driven, uh, approach to making decisions. And so one of the reasons why that's so great is that often we will be faced with decisions that we don't know the answer to, and we don't have the data to make the decision. And it will come down to, like you said, Cody, uh, okay, we have different opinions. Whose opinion are we going to go with? But the thing that makes that easier to digest, especially for really talented people, like let's say you and I have a different perspective on how we should handle funnels or free gifts or, you know, subscriptions, whatever. Well, it's much easier for me to say, all right, Cody, let's go with your thought process. If I know that we're going to be checking in on the numbers and making sure that the data validates that that was the right way to go. And that you and I both know if that, if that is not working out the way that we hoped in the numbers, Then we're going to be willing to pivot and take another direction. What makes people dig in is where they feel like it's, it's not really data-driven. And so I just have to fight tooth and nail for my way, or it's not going to happen, even if it is the best. So I think if we can create that kind of a culture early on of like low ego, we're going to be willing to do what the numbers say. And sometimes we're going to get these forks in a road where we don't know which is best. Um, and we'll try one fork and if it doesn't work out the way that we think it will in the data, then we're willing to go the other way. And, uh, that we don't, I, the way that I think about it is mainly like that we're not finding identity in our ideas. So like, if I have an idea and the group uses it, great. That doesn't mean that I'm, you know, smarter or better than anybody else in the group. And if it doesn't get used, that's fine too. That doesn't, that's not a poor reflection on me either because I just want the group to win. So I think there's some things like that that we can spend some time defining, or maybe those will just organically get defined over the first few weeks. But I am a big believer in culture and really clarity on culture among us is going to be part of what'll make the venture successful.
Yeah, we're going to figure it out. I think it's a great call, Mike, because I think it's, I think Cody and myself, I know Curtis, like we're all very data-driven person people. Um, and in the absence of data, step one is probably go get some. So like run some experiments, right? And then in the absence of that, it's, it's debate, uh, and then we're all smart guys. So like, you know, having a culture of like, we don't care who's right, it's just about what's right and how quickly can we actually get to what we feel is right, um, in the absence of data. So I think that'll be an interesting challenge, right?
A culture of curiosity helps a ton with that also.
Oh man, totally.
Because in a culture of curiosity, uh, it's more about questions than answers. And so no matter what path we pick, it's not like, okay, we figured it out. It's more like, and the learning continues, you know, going down this path. And I love that. I love being around people that are curious and love asking questions. And one of the things that I've learned about myself is that when I'm in environments like that, is that I love being proven wrong. I love having a perspective and then through some kind of experiment or data, realizing that actually that wasn't the best way to view it. And so I would love it if in this process I have lots of ideas that are proven wrong, uh, as we operate the company, because that just means I'm getting better at my understanding of people and markets and processes.
You're learning.
Yeah, exactly. And so, and maybe like I said that early on, and maybe that is really the principle is that we want to have a culture of learning and learning requires curiosity and question asking and low ego.
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I was just about to ask because like, I feel this interesting tension and I was gonna ask about this and like, do we do core values, things like that? There's one side that's just like, Nothing matters if you don't have customers, just like everything is PMF and you should only be focusing on the things that are going to, that are going to actually grow the company. And then another is like, maybe sometimes I feel a little arrogant. It's like, all right, if this does take off, like I have so many things where I feel like we didn't build the right way at Jones Road that like, I want to set those up from the beginning. Like I want to bring on a data warehouse from the beginning. Like I want to have this financial model. It's like, if you know where you're kind of going, it is really nice. So I don't know, like I'm not answering the question. But I think just more generally, it's like, how much do we spend the time building those things now that like don't even matter when you're small, but we just know it's gonna be real. We might look back and be like, hey, it was really nice that we have this brand deck or we have this core value document cuz it gets everybody on the same page and ensures we build things correctly.
That's a great point. Um, Mike or Curtis, do you guys have a strong opinion on do you need a business plan?
I think that At its core, what a business plan represents is a theory that you have about the market and about a problem the market has, a need the market has, and how you're going to address it. And I think the data really clearly shows that when you are first entering a market, your theory is almost always wrong. Like almost always.
Yes.
And this is why, like, there's a, there's a famous like business plan competition that I think, uh, maybe it's MIT or, um, Wharton or like one of those, you know, really prestigious colleges holds. And I looked at something where it was like out of the last 10 winners, like 9 of them had gone on to actually try something in market and like all but one had pivoted really significantly from the initial business plan or something. It was something crazy like that. And I think it just shows that your, your ability to create a very good theory with no data is going to be low. But I think so, like, do we have to have a business plan? Do you have to have, like, do we have to print it off at Kinko's and put in everybody's desk? No, we probably don't need to do that. But do we need to have clarity around our kind of theory about the market and, uh, our proposed solution? Yes, because otherwise we're going to talk past each other. Like there does need to be a collective understanding of the idea behind the brand and how that idea is evolving. So in that respect, yes, we need to have like that theory, but I think a lot of the kind of traditional business plan stuff is like, and here's how we're going to handle supply chain and here's how we're going to do this and here's how we're going to do that. And the point that you're making, Cody, that I think is really relevant here is If your kind of fundamental central premise is wrong, then none of that matters, right? It's all irrelevant until you understand if your central premise of like what you're— the need you're addressing, how you're solving a problem for the market, until you get that right, nothing else basically matters. How do you answer a question of team when you don't know that? You can't. How do you answer the question of channels until you know that? You can't. How do you answer the question of how you're gonna run your supply chain, whatever else? You just can't. So, What we need to do as quickly as possible is find a central premise that works, and that's what product-market fit is. And then it'll be real— it's so much easier to kind of start to flesh out all those other pieces.
Yeah, it's funny. All that is true, Mike. And I think then for people listening, like, we still did the basics, right? Like, we still When Curtis and I initially started talking about this product, it was like still, what's, you know, we still looked at like, what do we think this thing's gonna cost? You know, we set up an LLC, we got all the paperwork done, we bought a domain, right? Like we went out and we like, we figured out the name, like we did all these basic things. So like there was no formal plan and that was pro— maybe that's part of it. Like we just know what to do. Um, I'll make another comment, which I've been finding very fun to watch. Is as we go through this process, everybody has like a natural place that they're strong in and that they default to that place. Like when I first, when we first brought this to the guys, Mike immediately went and was like, I got to figure out the model. Like, what could this possibly look at? Because you just know that like, that's Mike's happy place, right? And Curtis's happy place is product. Like he's, he's focused on, you know, like what, how do I make the best thing and what's the brand going to be and what are we trying to do? And Cody is like coming at it AI first, fully red pill.
Well, yeah, I like knew that I had done, I had done some like Claude research before when I was considering starting my own thing. And I was like, oh, I know that's a growing category. I like have been doing that. And like, here are the angles that could work for it.
That's what I did too. I'm like, I went after research and angle. I'm like, okay, who's the customer? You know, like, what is everybody saying on Reddit? What's all the, who are all the existing players in the market? It was just getting at what you're saying, Mike. It's like, We, we did all of this work to kind of come up with a strong thesis on why we want to pursue this. So like, is that a business plan? No, but it is pre-work to doing—
Yeah, yeah, you gotta, you gotta do work. I mean, just to be clear, not saying— I'm not, uh, saying that no business plan means no work. I just think, um, I think that— I guess what I'm saying is that things are so fluid early on And a business plan is more rigid, and that you just need to expect really high fluidity. Another thing that was really interesting about what you were saying is that one of the things I've learned is depending on your personality, what you tend to do is triangulate onto the all the things that need to be done based on your area that you're the most comfortable. So I tend to start with numbers and kind of say like, what are the numbers that are required to get to this business? And then I work my way down into like, well, what does that mean for acquisition? What does that mean for product? What does that mean? You know, and And whereas I think other people like Cody, like you just said, you start very high, like what is market? What are the demand patterns of the market? What are the marketing flows that would be required? All these different things. And I think that that's really interesting and just more indicative of our different skill sets of the way that we kind of gradually pull back the layers on the onion looks a little different depending on what you're best at.
Yeah. Yeah. I think the two, like, I don't care about business plan. You got to know 2 things. Is there a market for this? And so for me, how I would think about that is like, there's so many available trends data, right? Just look at Google search trends, look at like the brands that are doing well. Is there existing demand? And is it going to be growing? Right. And then if we are successful, if we can then get product market fit, can it even be a viable business? And that's where then you have to go and model it and understand your, what your margins look like, because there could be a great market for it, but if you're only going to be able to do it, you know, if it's whatever it is, right? If you're trying to do a D2C beverage brand, like that's never going to be a viable business.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, you know, starting a brand is sort of like you pick your category. Can you make a product in it that's like different or, I mean, different, not just better? Who is the target market? So like, who are we actually going to go serve? What are the— if you've got partners, it's like, okay, how are each of us going to divide the company up and like have different roles, areas of accountability, responsibility? And then it's like the go-to-market. It's, it's like, well, what do we think step 1, 2, 3 is? Like, where do you find your first customers? We've already said like, well, we're gonna go and just try to acquire them with the thing that we know how to use, which is paid advertising. Um, but these are all questions that like anybody starting a new brand today, a new e-commerce business, this is what you have to answer.
Yeah.
Like these are the basics of it. So is it a business plan? No, but it's the work you have to do, right? That doesn't mean it needs to be a formal document.
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I think people, you know, didn't— what they didn't see is that we actually did a lot of research and, you know, batted ideas after ideas after ideas of figuring out what product, what category, where did we want to win, what was going to work, what wasn't going to work. Like the amount of conversations I had with Matt alone around, thoughts and ideas before I came up with even a sleep product. And then we built a to-do list, a to-do list to bring this to market. And you talk about speed. I mean, I think gone are the days when you put a 30-page business plan together before you even know what you're building. Like, I think in today's world with how fast business moves, look at AI and adapting to that. Let alone, you know, the consumer market. You know, I think a business plan is really good for growth and keeping the train on the tracks. But to get there, you know, you have to cover the fundamentals, like Matt, what you said, and Mike, like what you said. But 90% of it might change the minute you bring it to market. So, you know, you have to be, you know, adaptable and resourceful enough to, you know, shift and change. And that's why I think it's— We're lucky enough that we actually know what needed to get done. You need to get a business license, you need to get a co-man, you need to get a freaking formula, needed to do this type of stuff. And it was more of a to-do list for us rather than a business plan. And I think we can further enhance what you would call a business plan once we get to market and have the data to actually create it, to keep the train going in the direction we need to. I think also business plans, Cody, you talked about everything from culture and core values associated with that and what the brand looks like, the identity, you name it. I think once we, the 5 of us have a fairly good understanding of who we're going after and what that represents, the more that you scale from a resource and people like a headcount perspective, the more that that's important, right? Because you don't want the dilution of purpose, Dilution of identity, dilution of you name it. Like when you start hiring marketing, you know, building out a marketing team, you don't want other people's egos or experience or identities being reflected into the brand when the brand actually has its own. And so it's, I think that's when it's also important.
Yeah, totally.
Picking your co-founders is such a huge part of starting a business. It is basically like getting married in a business sense. It's your work spouse and One of the things that I have learned through my career so far is that if you're going to found something and you're going to have co-founders, you should be exceptionally picky about who those people should be. They should be people that you admire, people that you want to learn from, people you want to spend a lot of time around, people that you're willing to have some fights with, because that's what's going to come. And I think that I'm the most excited probably because I really love the co-founding group that I'm going to be doing this with.
Hell yeah.
You guys are going to be a lot of fun to build with. And, uh, that was my first requirement of doing this is like, am I, are these people that I want to be partners with at this level? And like you said, Matt, I think the experience doing operators has really taught us a lot about, um, our enjoyment of working together. I think it's gonna be great and I think it's gonna be one of the things that sets us up to be successful here.
Okay, so we've covered, uh, what is an e-com business? What is a brand? How are you building a brand in 2026? We've talked about Do you need a business plan or not? We've talked about success criteria for winning for us. So like we're putting a decent chunk of change into this business. We need to know like what does traction look like and do we want to keep going? There is target audience, there is product. You guys know the category, it is sleep. Our domain is getwinks.com. That's it. It's simple, easy to spell. W-I-N-K-S, Winks. And what I think as a listener, watcher of this new series, you should expect from us is like, we're going to try to do as much work in public as possible. Like we want you guys to see the process. You can already see Cody is like literally just asking questions because he is the newest member of the team and he's not afraid to ask those questions and we're just going to beat them up. Uh, and then we're going to try to show you everything that we're building in, in, in like as close to real time as possible. I think to set the expectation, every episode that gets dropped is probably a month Maybe six weeks delayed from when it actually happened. So you're going to hear this when we release it, and it's probably recorded about a month before we actually release it. So that's just expectation setting. The next sort of like number of episodes of this show, of this series, is going to be as close to the order in which we would do things if you were building a company. So this is like the very intro to how the hell do you start a business and what do you think about? And what's coming is gonna be us getting into the weeds on every single topic from the product to the packaging, to the go-to-market, the channel strategy, the, the how the hell are we sourcing creative, all of that stuff for a brand new company. All of that is gonna get covered. So I hope this was helpful and I hope you stick around and watch the rest of what we're now calling Operators Build as we build Winx, a fricking sleep supplement. And, uh, Mike, it's funny, Mike and I, Cody, were texting, I think last weekend. Mike's like, hey, we're, we're co-founding a business together. I'm like, Mike, it's literally our second one. Like, like we already own one together, dude. So yes, we are, but it's number 2 now.
Physical businesses feel a little different. They feel a little bit more real. They do.
Yeah. This one feels more real. Yeah. Yeah. All right, boys. Episode 1, In the Tank, In the Bank. That's the pod.