#51 - Coronavirus, Being on Shark Tank & At-Home Testing Kits with Julia Cheek

Let me make one quick announcement before we get into it and what I wanna do is I've heard about these people say subscribe, unsubscribe, subscribe again. Alright, and I wanna test it. So last time we asked our our viewers for more reviews and we now have Five hundred and fifty maybe. We got five four hundred reviews in in just a couple days. You guys are really active. I tried to reply to everyone did you? I did now. Yeah, I went to the reply. I thought you did get a reply. So here's what I want people to do. The reason I'm gonna uh I wanna do this is because I think people like seeing us succeed and they like seeing the journey. Yeah. So you're gonna help us succeed. So here's what you do if you have an iPhone, you're gonna go to like the the the menu where you can like turn your wifi and Bluetooth off and all that. There's a button on the bottom right where you hit record. Okay, record that. That's gonna rec record your screen. Then go to the podcast app Go to my first million, click subscribe, cli and then unsubscribe, and then subscribe again. Send us a video of that happening. And if you do, also send us a question that you want and we'll answer your question. Yeah. We'll bake a Q and A

And this will tell us the truth, right?'Cause there's we need to run the experiment. We need to know is this how th is it does this actually work or is this just like a myth? And if you send us your question, ideally send it. Via Twitter. Yeah. So everyone can see and can comment. And that way it's easy. So just record yourself subsc what is it? Subscribing, unsubscribing, and then re subscribing. Do it a bunch of times. Record yourself Post that on Twitter, tag one of us or both of us, and then on that same thread ask your question. And if you don't have a question, that's fine too. And then we're gonna look at the charts and we're gonna see what this does to the chart movement. I think it's gonna actually boost the chart movement if I if the theory is correct. You know, I I believe this is why podcasters ask people to do this, is because this shit actually works. And if it does here's what we'll do. If this does work and people keep doing this, what we'll do is with only the people who do that we'll like

Take a screen of our analytics and send it to them. Yeah, yeah, we'll share the data. Yeah, no problem. How was uh the big stage? You went to New York. Yeah, so what I did was I went to New York and I originally went to meet with some advertisers of ours and to be Wine and Dining, or what? M Yeah. We yeah, kinda. I I'll tell you about it. And then I went to uh be on the Gary Vanerchuk podcast, and then I went to be on P is his name Pomp? Yeah everyone knows him as Pomp. Huh.

Yeah. And Anthony Papolano or I did his his podcast. It was cool. Did Gary Baynerchuk's podcast first thing in the morning at eight or nine or ten A. when I got there. I was a little groggy from my flight because I took some medicine when I flew. It went okay. We'll see what happens. Um so you walk in, what what happens? Yeah, so walked in. So he has two offices in New York, one Hudson Yards, which I've been to before, it's Buzzin'. This one was the studio, it's a little quieter, but still pretty badass. Um it was awesome, man. Uh And you guys know each other, you don't know each other, so this is like the first time. He knew who I was and obviously I definitely know who he is and he knew who our company was. He uh He was totally nice and he was really low key at first. He wasn't

Like cocaine Gary. Yeah. He was like a little chit chat small talk beforehand, or you just got into it. So here's what happened. We sat down And uh There's like an audience. There's like an audience of like ten maybe five or ten people. And we sit down and he goes, All right, go and he looked at me and I was like I looked at Adam, I w I go, Gary, I think you're interviewing me He goes Oh I am? I was like Right, Adam? Like is that right? And Adam looked at he goes, Yeah, that's what we set up. Out of the safety blanket. Yeah, and Gary was like Oh, okay. So tell me about who you are. Like And uh it was good. It was great. So he's a nice guy. That's good to know. Yeah, you know, he's an easy target because he's so loud. Yeah. Um I believe that he is totally legitimate and a really good business person. I think his company, Vayner

is really, really hard to run. And he said that he was currently the COO and CEO. Good business. And he's totally legitimate. He's like'cause he you can like it. Well you could put him in like the Donald Trump category of a guy who talks a lot and you're like, I don't know, this guy the real deal. What were the little p tidbits that gave you that impression, right?'Cause I I believe that. I I'm not saying you're lying. I I ask them, I go, So how do you like working here? I always ask employees, I ask the front desk, I go, What what's what you know, and you can kind of f tell if they actually like it. Yeah. And when he he has eight hundred employees, so the in and the office space was it was really expensive real estate. There was really nice furniture, uh, everything was set up professionally. It's a real business. Right. So you could tell what's legitimate and what isn't once you go in there. Um In this Hudson Yards office they had uh V Vayner media water, bottled water. Um, the office was buzzing, everyone had nice computers. It it wasn't it it's not a startup. Right.

Felt like a legit operation. Totally, one hundred percent. And uh kudos to him, man. He's he's talented. And uh you did the podcast. Uh you know, rate your performance. I gave myself a C plus Because I was uh it was a I hadn't done any reps that day. Like I did a pot l a podcast later that day and I had a rat. You were firing. Yeah, and I was like all right, I'm on it. Uh it just was it just fell a little flat, but Adam and his people said it was one of their favorite ones they've ever done. And d do you have a uh l little prep routine you would do if but let's say before you get on stage, before you do an interview, how do you you know switch the light? Yeah, well I typically will like

You know how it is, like when we're doing this thing, I was in a piss I was in a shitty mood a minute ago and then these lights turned on and you're like all right, I gotta like snap out of it. Um and uh what I do is I talk to the receptionist or I'll talk to the Uber driver um just to like start getting out of your head. Yeah, get my words going and get in a better, happier mood. Yeah. And that's usually what I do. Um is that what you do? Uh no, like everything. I try to like study and come up with like a framework for how to do it and like a technique. And so I picked up two things. So I picked up one from Connor McGregor, uh that he I was watching this documentary of him. Pencil in your mouth. Pen in your mouth. Yeah. So uh this I I tried it and it actually works fantastic. So basically you take a pencil or a pen, uh, you hold it sort of horizontal sideways, you bite on it, so it's in your mouth, you know, sort of going out past your cheeks. And then you just talk for one minute and What happens is because the pencil's there and your mouth's in this awkward position, your tongue has to really work to like flick over and under this thing to get to the spots it usually goes to. So you end up enunciating way better.

I don't know if it's placebo, I don't know if it really is like an actual warm up for your tongue. But this shit works. I've recorded myself before and after, and I could tell the difference. Um and other I had other people listen to it. I said, Tell me which one of these sounds better. And um I don't know, whether it's placebo or not, it that one works for me. The other thing is um like a quick uh physical change. So um Push ups or something. Push ups, a windsprint, a jumping jack, a scream, music, whatever. Um, I am a big believer that that that uh the fastest way to change the way you feel is through changing your body rapidly. And it works. That's like a Tony Robbinsism. Tony Robbins has this great YouTube video if you go look at if you just YouTube young Tony Robbins, and it's you know, the same guy minus twenty five years, and he's in a tank top and he's given the speech and he's he talks about he goes, Before I get on stage, you know, people always ask me, Okay, you're you're a public speaker, you do you do a really great job. How do you do a great job of this? And he goes, Because I don't make the mistakes most people do. He goes, Most people or sitting in a low energy shell. The body body posture sucks. And then they just get up on stage and they don't warm up. Like an athlete would never do that. And he's like, I treat myself like an athlete. I get myself in a mental state, a physical state. And he goes, the second thing I do, I don't try to memorize what I'm supposed to say.

'Cause when you try to memorize what you say, you're trying to prepare. But what ends up happening is your mind is then editing. It's comparing what you're saying versus what you kinda remember you were supposed to say. And so you have this other whole thing going on in your head that takes you away from the moment. Third thing, and this is the last one, he goes Before I go up there I convince myself that the audience has to hear this. Like their lives depend on this information. Like they need I'm here to help. And if I can get this across, like even with this podcast, for example, it's like, you know, somebody is out there, they're commuting, they're, you know, they're they have this idea that they haven't taken action on, they're kind of beating themselves up about it. Or, you know, they look around at the five people that they hang out with the most and they're just like, These people are not like me. And we're in their earballs and they're like, Oh, there are people like me out there. And yes, I should take some action and yes, I should have some fucking energy today. And so he's like, I just convinced myself that they have to hear this and that I'm here to serve them. And I was like, okay, I do that. Just hearing that has made me feel better. There you go. Um Another thing that I did while I was out there is uh on Sunday night I tweeted out so w um when I fly, I take a lot of Xanax.

It's the only drug I do. I don't do any alcohol and Sometimes the night before, I'll take it a little bit as well,'cause I really hate flying. And so on Sunday night I tweeted that I rented this Airbnb, which I did, and I'm gonna host a meetup and I got two hundred replies saying let's meet up. Right. And that I couldn't do that. So I only let twenty trend subscribers come. And so the trend subscribers are also uh not one hundred of you listeners or not a hundred percent of listeners are subscribers, but all subscribers are listeners. Right. And They so I met I think at thirty ended up coming. And

It was fucking awesome. It was so cool. Uh this one kid flew up from South Carolina or something. And I tweeted this on the meetup was Monday night. I tweeted this on Sunday. Like it I there was no preparation. Like we all we did, me and Adam w landed on and on Monday morning we Went to the Mexican place next door and said, Hey, can you bring over enough tacos for twenty people? Here's two or three hundred bucks. And go buy us some beer, we'll pay you more money. And that's all we did. And it was awesome. Yeah. These people are fucking fanatical. It is crazy. Um It's nuts. It's really odd. So many interesting people. One guy there was this one guy, I I forget his name, maybe he's listening. He was an older the eldest guy there, which is not old, but in his fifties or forties, and he Built it it builds custom electric cars c cars and through the trends group sold fifty cars. Custom electric cars. Yeah, like he was making uh like they took a

They take a Prius or No, they took yeah, they took like a some type of pickup truck and made it an electric delivery van. Oh wow. For a cannabis company in LA'cause um Who else did I meet? I mean, I met all types of people. One guy who sells fake boobs for a living So he sells um his name? Fairchild. Did this guy ever talk to you on Twitter? No, his name's Fairchild. Hunter Fair. Yeah, yeah. I see this guy on my Twitter all the time. Yeah, he his boss He sells fake boobs for Liz? Yeah, his his boss invented like a better. Dude, what's in his bio?'Cause I've looked at this guy's bio and he's not advertising this. So let's see what's going on. He was Hunter. It was me and this girl Adidi were just sitting down and Hunter came and we were just shooting the shit. We were like, Hunter, what do you do? And this woman, Adede, she's nice. I met her before Um we were just sitting there and she he's like, Well, I sell breast implants and we were like and we just started talking. I was like So do you have like a woman who comes with you and like shows you like shows the buyers like you need like sales brochures like how do you have like how do you show that your boobs are the best? And he was just like walking through this whole process. It was crazy. Uh I had never heard of such a thing.

Yeah, me neither, but of course. He came up from Virginia for this. That's great. All right, cool. So you can do more of that or what? Well You and I need to do more. So what we can do is New York the we could get I Easily we could have gotten two hundred people. Yeah. So we can do one in New York. Um I think

ACAS or whatever we use tells us where people are. We gotta go to Canada. We gotta go to Utah. When we shouted out Utah, they'll get more than that. Dude, the number of these friendly ass Utah, you know, citizens, whatever they're called, Utahans. Reach out all the time like hey when you guys are here I got you. So maybe like And it feels good to be taken care of like that. It does. It feels great. Maybe Great hospitality. Hm. What's what month is it? February? Yeah. When you end of February. We we should do a thing where we could try to hit up like three cities in five days. Right. Or maybe maybe a little longer. I got into this thing, I don't know if I told you about this uh this thing called reality. Have you heard of this? No. So basically uh you know how Jewish people have birthright? Yeah.

And I don't know exactly how m uh the mechanics of birthright work, but from what I understand if you're Jewish you get to go, it's paid by the sort of wealthy Jewish people around the world. Fundamental Christian uh Christians who believe that Israel's the land for Jews paying for the people. Oh wow, okay, I didn't know that. So basically that's a cool thing for Jewish people. You're shaking your head. Are you Jewish, Henry? But you know all about it? You just stunned? All my friends like on it. Yeah, but I've I've never been more jealous than when my friends go on birthright and then come back. It's like this mini study abroad. Yeah, it's great. And so then I was like, All right, um What is this? Uh you know, how do I get more of this? So they have this program called Reality, Reality 2020, if you want to look it up. And it's basically you can be in these different groups, you can be in entertainment, you can be in technology, you can be in whatever social impact. You apply to get in. If you get in, I apply I've applied before I got rejected a few years ago. This time I applied, I got in and it's like a group small group, I don't know, thirty people, forty people. that get accepted and get to go. It's not all expenses paid, but it's like most expenses paid. And so um yeah, anyways I'm going on this trip late May now and I'm gonna see what this is all about to Israel. And um I've heard of the see if it does it is it a Jewish thing I don't think it you don't have to be Jewish. This one's not like birthright.

Uh, but it's for like you know, Israel's you know, sort of start up and kind of thought leadership and young people, that sort of thing, like future leadership. I mean it's like a uh not in a bad way, it's a propaganda thing. It's like to get you into the Israelites. Yeah, it's like a program, yeah. Yeah. So I'm doing that, but um It's late in May. So first uh Scared of coronavirus may not go.

Um I was supposed to go to Germany in May. So we should talk about coronavirus in a second. But secondly, why do Jews have all the good things? Why don't other people do this? This seems like a great birthright seems great. Jews and Mormons. Yeah, Mormons have been. Do Mormons have these perks like that, like birthright or something? Yeah, they all have all types of shit, dude. They and they're all real good at basketball. And Jews love basketball too. I mean they're they're all like real similar. Well the thing I I like uh is the sort of pay it forward thing. I think Silicon Valley has this a lot where um A lot of people who move here, they hesitate to reach out to people because they're like, Well, why would this person want to help me? I you know, I have nothing to offer. Uh but like that is the culture of Silicon Valley is to pay it forward. It is to help the like next person who doesn't know anything. And um I feel like Jews have this in their culture, and I feel like Mormons have this in their culture. Yeah, I'm Indian. I don't feel like there's this same it's not as strong for Indian people, uh to sort of try to help out the next. Uh and I think part of it's'cause there's such a big population you can't afford to do it. There's like I don't know. Six million Jewish people on Earth or something crazy and they run the world. So I think you know, with a small number of people you can offer this like much more high touch help each other model. Um

I agree. Okay. You want to get into some stuff, you want to talk about coronavirus or you want to Yeah, coronavirus. Okay, so I'm terrified of coronavirus. Um And uh you know, generically I'm terrified w you know, I was terrified without information, and then I started looking into it a little bit more. So there's I don't even know about it. Can you explain what the coronavirus is? Yeah, so basically there's a couple of these viruses they're uh Influenza strains. And so the flu. The flu. Yeah. So basically a few years ago you probably heard, you know, SARS or swine flu. And so uh you know, the very first time I think SARS happened, there was uh you know, a kid got this flu, goes to the doctor's office, they're like, Okay, this is the flu. And kid dies within like a very short amount of time. They're like, Well that was odd. That doesn't usually happen. So they took a sample and sent it to like the CDC or whoever, right? Like they sent it to some lab to say You know, what do you see here? There was this was a very unusual case. The health deteriorated so quick, that's not typical to the flu. And what they realized was, hey, this is a new strain called I think it was like H one N five at the time.

And it was like this is only ever found in animals. This is the first time it's crossed over from animal to human. And so that was bird flu when that happened. And then so there's been these different um sort of uh very very deadly viruses. SARS, which are which was very, very popular, MERS, which happened in the Middle East, respiratory syndrome. So it's kinda what these Middle East respiratory I think syndrome is the what MERS stands for, and SARS is sort of the same thing. And um So the thing with these was that, you know, although s there's a lot of hoopla around SARS Um and bird flu, like SARS l killed less than a thousand people. Less than a thousand total fatalities. Not a big drop in the bucket as far as the death bucket goes on Earth. Uh coronavirus already killed like three thousand plus people. So already much bigger than that. The reason it's scary though is actually be and and for a while people were like, Oh, don't worry, the fatality rate is low. Fatality rate's like, I don't know, three percent for this, whereas for SARS it was like super high. I don't know, I I I don't think it's that number, but it's like majority of people who have it die. Uh, whereas with this, three percent means you get it, but you have a good chance of living. But the big problem with that, and the article that I read was called why you're probably why we probably can't contain

coronavirus. Why you probably are gonna end up getting coronavirus is because this virus is extremely contagious, but has these symptom has these trademarks that are very problematic. So um it takes a while for your symptoms to show up. So you have it and you carry it for like, you know, 14 days without showing symptoms. So you'll be spreading this around and not even realizing you have it. Then once you have it, you don't just like deteriorate and like your health doesn't go to shit where they, you know, you're in the hospital, they quarantine you. It's like, you know, it starts innocent and it gets worse over time. So the infectious period is so much longer that there's basically no way to quarantine this thing. There is no way for us to contain this. And so what the article was saying was like Ironically, because it is not as fatal and is not as Bad for you right away. This thing is gonna be unstoppable, most likely case. Second thing with that was

I guess there's four like an you know, typical strains of the flu, which is why you can get your flu shot and still Catch the flu. um every year. Sort of all the all the different variations. And um and so this guy's case was that most likely this is now just a fifth annual you know, f uh strain that we're gonna have to live with and it's just gonna suck. Um it's a very, very, you know, kind of a downer. Also, I'm sure, you know, sort of the bio nerds out there are gonna be like, no, there's fifteen million strains. That's right. Um but like that's the summary that I took away. And if you wanna just get the point, that's the point.

And so um what you have up here is D to C stuff. So like my I looked at my portfolio yesterday, I was like fuck. So lost money yesterday off the stock market. So so crazy shit's happening all around. So generically stock market You know, people get paranoid, bonds you know, people flee to bonds, stock goes down, that sort of thing. Other c funny stuff happening. You know, Zoom, the conferencing software. So The stock ticker Zoom uh goes up fifty percent today. Because shit it's up fifty percent today? But wait, there's more. It's the stock ticker Z O O M. Zoom. But that's not Zoom's actual handle. Zoom's actual handle is ZM. So people are buying the wrong stock because they think people are gonna be working from home and teleconferencing in. And so they're buying Zoom, which does something else altogether. It's a very small cap stock. Uh I don't know, Henry, check my what

The stock for Z O M actually does. And it's a tiny stock, so it jumped fifty percent today and like, you know, but you can actually predict this because this happened also at the IPO. Whoever bought Zoom the other thing got a huge pop at Zoom's IPO because of this. I love that. We could have predicted this one. I love when that happened. But all kinds of fucked up things. Some other things. Uh smart friends are basically saying, Hey, if you need my smart friends, you know, people who actually read the real information and like understand how the world works. They were like, Hey, if you need prescription drugs, uh but you should start stockpiling because most of it's coming from China and the supply chain globally is fucked. And like the world doesn't have Uh like friend friend of a friend, basically. Um how the fuck do you stockpile prescription meds? Uh basically buy uh buy your refills and um And so the there's no global plan B for what happens if China gets sick or slowed down. We don't have another

Like supply chain. And so all kinds of things are suffering. And I have friends that have D to C companies that buy their ship. And they're saying shit. Yeah. Months months back down. I was talking to a supplier yesterday and he was like even if we come back to work, there's you know, all the other factories that we depend on, the printing factory, the packaging guys And they're not coming like the workers are just not coming back'cause in most factories in China, the workers don't actually live in that city permanently. So for Chinese New Year, which is when this happened. So Chinese New Year is a month long holiday. Yeah, well, we have they all Chinese Internet, he tells all about it. He goes he goes, It's the largest travel day in the world. Right. Every Chinese person goes home. Everybody goes home. And when they go home, they go back to very rural areas. And already there's this problem where they don't cut you know, often they don't come back'cause you know, they don't want to be living in some other city working in a factory. But with this, people are just not coming back. Um and so there's no

Replacements. It's like a very dire situation. Well and like obviously at a human level also incredibly dire situation. So to turn shit into gold, where's the opportunity here? I mean what's gonna happen. Do you think that this is gonna impact uh long have long term impact with Chinese China making shit and you have to go elsewhere? I don't know. So there's a question of like um So two two theories. One is for stuff like this, the people who are gonna do really well, they didn't start now. They started something two years ago, a blog on being a prepper or whatever. And um Today's your day, you know, like this is your month. And so I don't think the I don't know how much I am interested in the sort of like today opportunity. Also just feels kinda fucked up. We talked about Judy the other day. Right. The Judy sort of survival kit or bags. I my friend Joe Spicer bought something from um like survivor kit dot com and he got an email from them saying we have a hundred times our normal volume. We apologize, but we're gonna make it happen. Right. So those the Judy thing that which uh the respiratory masks along top th those are not in the Judy bag, but the respiratory masks are just like out of stock. You can't get'em. And that's like the thing you need is like to protect your nose. No, that's long gone. Yeah.

Um we covered this guy who launched a company called um Jud is it Judy? Judy, yeah. Judy. It's a emergency kit. Yep, an orange like Emergency backpack. Ready to go. Uh my wife texted me today and said, Let's go and buy a bunch of stuff. I feel the same way. More people are doing this. Have you ever been in an emergency t situation, by the way? Have you ever like been in a city when like a flood happens or anything like that? It's really bizarre how it feels. No. I was in Hawaii our honeymoon. There was a hurricane in Hawaii. Oh I the week of our honeymoon. And so we went to the grocery store. First we go to the hotel and they're like, Hey, um we have early check in available. And we're like, Well, that's cool. Thanks, because we're honeymoon and

They're like, No, we just have like a lot of open rooms. I was like, What's going on? They're like, Well, have you seen the weather report? Like there's our hurricane this week. And of course I don't take the weather, so I booked my honeymoon on a hurricane week. And um so we go to the grocery store and it's like The zombie attack has happened. Like all the water bottles are gone. Like the shelves are empty. People are just checking out like four carts worth. It's really like it's an odd, eerie, eerie feeling when that happens. Yeah, this thing the my issue here's an opportunity if someone wants to go for it, you know how pul uh is it uh there's a political check. That was called politic political fact. You mean like the fact checking thing? Yeah. I don't know what's called, but you do is like Did Bloomberg really say this?

That's what I want for a coronavirus right now. I don't know what's true and what isn't. So there's a blog called I believe it's called theprepared.com. It is exactly what you want. It is plain English. It's like here's the facts, not the overreaction. And by the way, we'll tell you about the overreaction, why it's an overreaction, but here's the facts. What's it called? Presented in a calm calm way. The site is beautiful. It works great on your phone. I tweeted at the guy who started I was like this is a like thank you for making this. Yeah. I was like thank you for making this site because this is exactly what I need in this situation. It auto filled nicely. A bunch of people must be going through. I feel like it's selling kits. He's selling kits. Oh God, this guy's awesome. Cool. I'm into this. So scary situation. Um yeah, scary all around. Um Best of luck to everybody. Yes, for sure. Um okay, you wanna move on, or

Okay. Um I'll I have a few interesting things that happened. Uh cool companies that we can talk about. The first thing is something that has made a huge impact on me and I think more people need to take advantage of it, which is transparent numbers. So basically there's a group of people out there who believe that transparency is good. Um And they share all of their revenue. They chair they share their every metric about their business as deep as everyone's salary, their bank balance, Churn.

how much it costs to um acquire customer, how much a customer stays on for. Everything. Some are a little bit less. Well they'll share how many customers they have, how much revenue they have, what their bank balance is. Uh more people should Follow uh these businesses. I for one am totally against that. I don't think you should ever reveal that.

But I'm happy they do and I and Yeah um examples so throw my first of all, my friend Encore. What's Encore's last name? He uh runs Teachable. Uh I don't remember his last name. Um if you go Google On can you tell me Encore's last name uh Founder of Teachable. Okay, so he reveals uh on Twitter the valuation of every round. Yeah, not not Paul. Yes. N say the Nog Paul. Nog Paul. uh

He reveals the uh valuation of every every time they're gonna be able to do it. They just raise like twenty million bucks at uh whatever. Two hundred. Something really good. And he reveals how much revenue they have, how many customers they have. It's awesome. Yes. Love that. The other guy is Sahil. Sahil uh from Gumroad. Shitty business. Seems like an awesome guy. Uh he reveals every single month. All the r you could Google Gumroad Founder Sa Hill. It's on his Twitter if you he just he doesn't have a tweet lane sitting after you don't even have to dive into the books. It's like forty characters. Um Joel from Buffer, he does this. They actually just switch. So if you go to Bearmetrics.com or Google Bearmetrics They have like eighteen different companies that do this and it's pretty cool. And Joel from Buffer used to be on there. They're a twenty two million dollar year company. So pretty valuable. And they would would would would reveal everything. Everything employee salaries like name, salary, equity. Yeah.

Level everything. And you know what? They're changing. They're showing less and less. Have you talked to them? Do you know why? It becomes problematic when you add more people. Um It's like a you know guy you know creates you know turns his kitchen into a man cave instead, gets a girlfriend and is like oh she doesn't like it Like, yeah, no shit, man. Like I could have told you this like when you bought the plasma and put it on the fridge. Grow up, doll. People don't like their salary being public. What so they still do salary, they still do equity. People get upset when they see their co worker who slacks off and works from home two days a week and they see his salary. Because people don't understand that like pe different people have

Different situations. It's not like So they did it, I think in a smart way, which is they basically were like they used it as customer acquisition. Yeah, it's part of their story because they got their ass kicked by HubSpot. And so they like Hootsuite. You know, this has become a bit of a playbook for small business to business SaaS companies, which is look, you know, acquisition of customers is hard. Wha uh m if my customer is a small business owner, what a small business what would bring a small business owner to me? What content could I put out there that would make a small business owner come? So instead of saying seven tips to have more effective meetings, they were like Here's our pro here's our PL for this month. And sure enough, a lot of people wanted to see that. So a lot of people discovered their product through this. And so you know, maybe this lines up totally with their values and that's why they did it. But I just def definitely it was a great way for people to discover their business. I didn't use buffer, but I read all their shit. And if anybody ever needed a solution like Buffer, I was like, Oh, Buffer, you should use Buffer. Why? Because otherwise I wouldn't have even known about them. And so this was a pretty counterintuitive thing that they did. And uh they were the only ones doing it. And so you always get paid when you're the only one doing it if it's juicy.

Yeah, and so on one more person who's doing it and the his business is way better than Buffer As I love this guy's business. So it's my friend Nathan Barry. I've met Nathan a while ago and Nathan has this company called Convert Kit. They do m close to two million in monthly recurring revenue, so twenty four million. He owns one hundred percent of it. It's my it's probably a hundred to two hundred million dollar company. Like it's really valuable because once customers are locked in, it's basically a MailChimp competitor. It's a email competitive. That seems high. Two two million a month, you said two million. That's for sure. That's how much they do. So they're doing two million one. No, no, that part's not. So twenty four million a year. So twenty four million, you think they're worth what? Ten times. Ten times that. Okay. Maybe. People don't switch from their email platform. Yeah, it'll all depend on the retention. So can you pull up actually can you open open up their their metrics. So just as high. Like bare metrics dashboard or something. I forgot what the URL is, but it's like something.bear metrics dot com. And it's like their whole company it's like here's how many new customers we got, here's how many people churned this month. It's like all their graphs and you can use it for your company. He even showed how much profit they make. I think it's like convert kit.

Uh it's it's like yeah, here it is. You gotta zoom in. There you go. So this I don't know if this is their business or this is like the example thing, but it's like monthly recurring revenue, net revenue, fees. Yeah, that's not it. This is somebody else's business. Yeah, do convert kit bare metrics. Type in convert kit revenue, maybe if you can't if you can't spell. Uh I also use convert kit. I I actually I pay for a subscription because I'm like this product is so fucking powerful. I don't actually have many sequences set up. I have I have a sequence of one email right now, which is not a sequence, it's just an email. But um I think it's a great product. I love Convert Kit.

I love Nathan. Nathan's a great guy. Nathan's only twenty six or seven years old. Um We talked to s we talked about the idea of doing a drip sequence to build a newsletter for uh women going through pregnancy and like week by week and I had a friend uh or sorry, no I had a random listener reach out on Twitter was like, I'm doing this. Here's my kind of unique asset I have to go about this. And uh how should I set this up? And I sent him to convert kid. I was like, dude, your problem is gonna be solved and like You know, the next ninety minutes. Um w are people leaving bare meters or something? Why can't you find it? One point seven million Oh, is that it? Is it what's the URL? Yeah, so one point seven million monthly recurring revenue.

And you could just look at the It'll say churn. So annual run rate doing twenty million a year, which is up one point seven percent. That's gotta be how much this month? Revenue churn five point one percent per month. That's not bad. Well, it's'cause it's a small m to medium business.

Like if you're churning five percent a month, that's uh like what's his what's the net growth? So five percent a month is the churn. What's the new business every month? One and a half percent is less. One and a half. Yeah, so he's net negative then. Per month. No, I think that that churn that that Growth mu that growth number takes into account churn. But this is because it's the the average revenue got it even says so they make on average sixty dollars Uh is it sixty dollars a month?

Per user. Right. Um, medium business gonna have a h it's gonna have higher churn compared to other stats. But dude, if you're if you're a real sicko, you can just look at the live stream on the right and see every minute when somebody pays them, it'll say like right now, it says twenty nine dollars paid by you know anonymous company. Um Dude, he's got a lot of failed payments here. Get on that, Nathan. What's going on? You can't be failing is three out of the twelve payments here are failed. Four. It he has a chart that says which ones fail. So these these companies are are badass. I uh So you wouldn't do it. No, I think what you do?

The email list size, the revenue. I don't want to share anything publicly. Um Well I'll say like eight figures or something. No, I just don't think it brings a lot of good. You know when a company's trying to raise or sell their business because like two months before all these articles will come out? Just like handing over information. Yeah. Um why why is that happening? 'Cause they wanna raise their out or they wanna sell their company within the next six months. I don't can you go to the next go back to the Google Doc. No, I'm not a fan of it. Uh Uh one time when I when I did my first conference uh when I was younger, it made like sixty grand in profit and I told everyone in the blog post and I hated the attention, so I'm never gonna do that again. Um okay, so let's talk about pipe.com. Do you know pipe.com? I saw this and I was like, dude, this is awesome. I was I came to the I came to a little scratch pad to write it down and you already had it written down. Okay, so here's what here's here's let me set the stage here. So when you have a subscription business, s uh I'm talking about software subscription, but maybe it could work for all types of stuff.

Um, what happens is you do one of two things. The first is you say, All right, you sign this deal and you owe us two hundred dollars a month. And so that is a twenty four hundred dollar a year subscription service and the company that is your customer will pay you two hundred dollars a month. Um what a lot of companies prefer to do, but this is actually a lot harder, is they say, All right, you signed one year contract, let's get all of your payment up front. Right. Now the here's the balance here is Do want or this is what people think. They can either get more customers and allow them to pay monthly, right, or they can get less customers but allow them to pay annually and get all that cash flow up front. And what What's it called? Pipe. What they do Pipe.com. If you have a business like Convert Kit and they have a history of three years and it says look, every month our churn rate historically is five percent uh pipe can go, okay, so you have all these customers paying you each month

Let's just I don't know how they discount it, but they probably they probably discount it a lot, so they derate risk it and this will say, Well let's just s assume that you're gonna have uh twenty percent monthly churn. Right. We're just gonna we'll give you all that money up front and you owe us as the money with a little bit of interest. Right. Awesome. Awesome business. So I have so many thoughts. All right, so uh couple things. First, the financial infrastructure w what's what's really going on here? The financial infrastructure for software companies and tech businesses is being rebuilt. So we already had investors, right? Angel investors, seed investors, uh series A investors, blah, blah, blah. But then you have A bank for startups. Mercury started by you know some s successful founders from Hayes App. They started Mercury. It's supposed to be a bank designed for startups. And then you have things like BREX or RAMP, which we talked about, which is like business credit card designed for startups, because the legacy institutions don't understand how to value these companies, how to assess risk. or how to like fund and finance these companies. Then you have things that are um you know like marketplaces where you can buy and sell to to buy and sell online businesses like Quiet Light Brokerage or wherever. You have due diligence firms that pop up that specialize in software businesses like Centurica. Then you have um you know guys like Pipe, which basically say great

You know, you have a cash flow problem, but you have steady we know you have a predictable book of business. Uh we will give you the cash up front and we'll take a vague off the top of that. And so I think these are all really smart businesses. Um, each one at a different part of the the financial stack for software and technology company. We use it it's it's it's Pipe but for media and publishers and Pipe has raised seventy million in funding. They're kind of stupid because we use them and and we have uh uh millions millions of dollars in credit from them and We won't leave them because it's a wonderful service, but the reason why they're kinda stupid is because the market's a lot smaller than software and the numbers are a lot smaller. Right. I think Pipe will be a multi billion dollar company. Yeah, or or the one problem with these is there's a lot of there's a lot of competition. Yeah. I think the aggregate will be so for example, this is also happening on the customer side, right? So um f companies like a firm Or CESL or afterpay. Yeah, that's on the consumer side. But same same idea, which is like they're trying to provide different financial instrument that like the traditional

um financial company like the the cur current sort of incumbents aren't really figuring out how do we help c e commerce companies, sort of how do we help merchants um You know. turn their their products into monthly payments for their customers. But a firm came out and did it and you know Fast Pay or sorry, not Fast Pay, After Pay. I think Afterpay is like a eight billion dollar company or something like that in Australia. Uh a firm is a multi billion dollar company here doing the exact same thing and they're all fighting over these merchants. I love this shit, man. I say fuck the big banks. I fucking hate'em. Yeah. I hate'em so much. I hate having to talk to our rep. They don't understand me.

So Ishan are the producer and editor for the podcast, he had an idea. So I asked him uh one day, because I you know I have him on as sort of my right hand man. So sometimes I just ping him with just random questions. I said, what's the biggest idea in your head right now? I was like, you know, what's the biggest startup idea you got? And uh you know he's twenty, twenty one years old. I don't know exactly how old he is, but he's a young guy. And so he goes Well, I've been a you know freelancer contractor for you and uh many other people for for last few years. And um He's like, why doesn't a a sort of fast pay or pipe exist for contractors? Like I have my invoice. Um just give me the money now and then you wait to like when the company pays, you take it and you take five percent off the thing. And uh I've actually heard this idea a few times before of like, you know, l my my wife was a in a you know, a consultant for you know, and so she always got paid like this on a

thirty or sixty day cycle and she's she would have, you know, twenty grand sitting in outstanding payments. If she could just get the twenty grand, you know, m headache free, she would take nineteen fifty. Uh you know, she would take nineteen thousand out of that just to get the money now and not have to keep following up via email to be like, Hey, have you paid it yet? And like all that stuff. And so The problem seems real, and this is more of a question to the audience of like, What what am I wrong about? What don't I get about this idea? Seems like a great idea on the surface. Um, what's the problem with this idea?'Cause I've heard it bandied around a few times over the years. It's not a It's not a like super niche idea. I think a lot of people could have this idea. So what's wrong with it? And I think that you can learn just as much from common ideas that don't work as you can from great ideas that do work. Um if you start to identify why does this seemingly good idea not work? Why have people tried and failed over and over again? There's a lot to learn as an entrepreneur. Yeah. I'm digging that. Um I uh so pipe dot com's out. I'm loving those things. Yeah, one thing. Hey Henry, there's a guest downstairs. Would you mind letting her in and she's gonna join us uh for like the next segment. Um Julia, what's up? Hi. How are you? Doing well, thanks for having me. You're already in my good books because you actually listen to the podcast. Not all the guests do. I do my homework. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. Yes. I I have a there's a bunch of employee fans.

Great. Um they found out and it was I mean like they had been really gunning for me to have a chance to make it. Shout out to them. Do you have like that like corny name for your employees like Everly Wellians. Oh my god, okay. Well, but then everyone's like, Hey, did you just like come up with that?'Cause that is not that great. Um And so I think like, you know, someone better with words is like how about just Everlees? Oh that's fine. That sounds much better. We've shifted it to that. Do you guys have this for the hustle? Do you have like Hustellonians or some shit? No. Yeah. No. You're fired actually if you say something like that at the hustle. No, we just people. Yeah. Exactly. We you know, with Bebo, somebody tried to like do that and I was like, Thank God there's not a nice one'cause I don't want this as like a thing. Yeah, Beaver's that would have been it. By the way, I'm followed by Justin Bieber on Twitter. No big. Cross ten thousand followers and Justin Bieber follows me. I DMed him, he did not reply. How many people does he It's gotta be one of those bots that just follow people follow. I don't know. Henry Justin Bieber number of followers. We'll find out. Uh the only way this can go is down for me where he follows millions of people It's not a low number, my friend. It's not a low number. Yeah, okay. I'm one of the

Top three hundred thousand friends of Justin Pieper. So let's just leave it at that. I would have thought. I thought the number was gonna be like ten million. So Okay, so speaking of so you have uh so your Julia Everlywell is your company name. Uh but your name's Julia Cheek. Yes. That's a cool name. Thank you. Um I hate my last name. And so I'm always thinking like of you know, just totally rebranding it to something cool. But I then I know people will be like, Did you just change your last name to try to sound cool? Which is probably the least cool thing you could do. I kinda got the opportunity to do that because I decided I had a choice to do Juliet Taylor Maiden Name or if I wanted to when I got married. Take on cheek. Yeah. And it was just sort of it. You did it. Uhhuh. Okay, great. And so for people listening who are like, Okay, great, who's this person? Why are they joining the show? Uh give us the like thirty seconds about what's interesting about you. Yes. So, uh I'm Julian Cheek, I'm the founder and CEO of Everly Well. We are based in Austin. We are about to celebrate our five year anniversary, which is hard to believe. Probably the most interesting thing about me starting this company is I

started a company in the blood testing space, um in the direct to consumer space. coming with no entrepreneurial background or or healthcare background whatsoever. Right. Um and had every kind of X in the box of why you wouldn't have a Right you were a consultant, right? I was a management consultant. I went at Deloitte, went, got my MBA, had a really traditional Harvard had a really traditional corporate. Sam's all about the pedigree. I hate it, I don't care. Sam's like Harvard. Okay, I'm in. Yeah. There's definitely some interesting ties I think that turned me on to being an entrepreneur when I was there, but certainly like I was really on the corporate path um and then had this idea when I was working at MoneyGram and left my job to do it and I can confidently say a hundred percent of people who know me was like I'm definitely gonna fail. Yeah. So what's the company do?

Yeah, so uh when I was five years ago when I was working at MoneyGram, I had a bunch of all these unexplained health symptoms. This is super common, which you hear from women in their late twenties and their thirties, is they have chronic fatigue, AIDS, and pains. They're not taken seriously at doctors and so um I went to five or six different doctors on good health insurance and each of them ran different blood tests. I never got my results. Um I paid over twenty five hundred dollars out of pocket. Nothing material showed up or was communicated to me. What do you mean you never got your results? Like you personally didn't receive it. I personally receive it. But the doctor looked like it. Or even if they called me, like I missed the call, nobody ever called they said, Well, call you up anything's abnormal. Well, like what does that mean you tested a hundred different things? Like just cause something's not totally out of whack doesn't mean that There's not interesting or useful information there. So um I sat down and I looked at the

health insurance land thing but I thought man people are gonna have to start paying for all this in a more meaningful way than we are today. And I'm at least confident that my cohort of women between like twenty five and forty five can't get the testing that they need. Right. And I think I can solve that. So it really started out honestly, not that it wasn't a big vision but it was a little bit like if you if you think about the first group you're solving a problem for, that's what we launched for. So today we have thirty five different tests on Iverlywell.com on Amazon, Target, CBS Kroger. Um we work with Humana and we offer consumer initiated testing for everything from STI testing, heart health, food sensitivity, et cetera. Basically is it every test? It's like ninety percent of common test coverage. Um for the doctor, I've raised over fifty million dollars from five zero, you said five zero from West and East Coast VCs. Um

That was after obviously having like three rounds of clawing my way through um funding and then suddenly things did get easier. Um and we actually grew from zero to See, we did forty million in sales last year? Yeah, wow our third year in operation. Is that okay? Okay, no coronavirus, but fish pounds for the for for the forty million. Especially for the uh for the healthcare entrepreneur and we have to have to learn not to do that. We're talking about coronavirus. Do you guys sell coronavirus tests? Yeah, you know, if we did I think we'd I wouldn't be here right now. Doing something else, but um But I'm hopeful there's progress, uh as we learned today from Gilead and a couple of other companies. I'm hopeful someone's close on it. No, but no, we don't unfortunately. Are those one time purchases, the forty million? Um, it's I mean it's a combination of new customer acquisition and repeat. We have a really healthy repeat business because a lot of our tests are things like cholesterol. But it's not recurring, is what I mean. It's not recurring. We do have um enterprise contracts that are recurring for Medicare.

Right. Um but it's a mix of what I would call one time repeat and then actual recurring contracts. Um, which is there's challenges, there's good and bad. I think when you have a one time heavy business up front. You have to build a good set of unit economics from the get go. So that you're not just optimizing on this like promise of payback. Right. Right. So that's been good for us. Um on the other hand, we've had to be super, super disciplined in a way that I think Sabbath been. Right. Um so you're based out of Austin, you do this D to C at home. Test that then gets sent to a lab, a partner lab, they analyze it, you get the full report. It's like

Here's everything, here's what's interesting about this, you can share it. Uh it's like the way that it should be. Like if you didn't even you didn't have to like invent this. If you just asked a lay person, you're like, How should this work? That's the description, and then you just made that like happen in real life. Uh the other thing that's interesting is you were on Shark Tank. I was So as a fan of reality TV, me and Sam both watched the challenge, probably the trashiest reality show that there's. No, the one where they get married after living in a room. Love is blind? Yeah. Wait, didn't it all come out already? Then they just release it. I'm at I'm at episode three of that one. Um

Good show. It's pretty off. Pretty good show. Uh have you seen it? I haven't seen it yet. Do you know the premise? I do know the premise. They put people in rooms and they don't see each other. It's actually pretty cool as a seriment. Yeah, they have to get married. Or you get caught off the show. Like literally you don't even get like eliminated survivor style. They just edit you out. Like you're just not shown ever again if you didn't propose. And so what ends up happening is it's ten days behind a wall. You talk to this person and you're speed dating basically behind a wall. So you're kinda like deciding who you like. And then someone proposes through the wall. So they're like, Can you come close to the wall, please? I'm I'm on a knee now and I wanna you know ask you to marry me.

And then but the thing is that I thought that's where the show would end, but then they like put them in the real world together and they're like, All right, you're gonna get married in thirty days and see what happens. And uh it's pretty interesting stuff. So good job, Netflix. Shout out to you ask her about uh shark tank because um Tell me about how it came about. You appl you applied many times, one time. How did you get on? Yeah, so Shark Tank was an honestly, I am a huge fan of the show. I also am a huge fan of my own experience. And that's not I think what everyone has to say, but I always tell people I think it can be a really game changing thing for entrepreneurs, um, if you do it the right way. It is a lot of freaking work. Ton of work. Really I Once you're on or before you're on? Before you're on. Okay. Um so I would say like so I we aired in November of twenty seventeen. Go to the beginning. How'd you even think about like a nine month process of I would say the year of twenty seventeen, eighty percent of my year was Short. So we applied, um it's a and by Wee Me, um it's like a fifty page written application. Online or no, it is printed and written out. I tried to like use a PDF editor. I mean, it takes forever. Yeah, like it was like a decade ago. So you write this whole thing. I write this whole thing out. I will be honest, I was

I I was um a finalist at Tech Crunch Battlefield in twenty sixteen. The producer scout from Gotcha, so they reached out. So they reached out. Oh that's cool. Um so it's kind of like if you're thinking about American Idol maybe, which I would never be, but you're you either can get contacted and sort of in the front in tradition or you kind of buy it. So it's not that I had necessarily a better chance, but I did get shortcut into the application process. So Fill that out. The application probably takes forty hours. Um and then you have to sign all their contracts, basically sign your identity and image away. Um to A B C for in perpetuity. But um and then from there you do a voice interview with producers, you do a video interview as well with the application, then a another video interview of your pitch and then from there the producers work with you for about four months.

To get it right. what is your story, what is your brand, what is your structure. Ultimately your what I think people don't realize not. It's a human interest story. It's a human interest story. You're there to make good reality TV, but it is your decision. The producers will help you and advise you But this is your gig and it's up to you to decide how you want to display yourself and on T V. Um but not to air you. Do you still remember your opening?'Cause you probably drilled it like a thousand times. I did I did, and I will tell you, I thought I was like really good and comfortable at public speaking and then I did this and I was like, Okay, I was really bad. And now now I've I feel comfortable. Yeah. Um I did, so I signed or I shook on the largest deal ever for a female entrepreneur valuation. So yeah with Lori Grenier. She is on board. She's been tremendous. Um because of QVC or what? And for me it was really at the time we had no brick and mortar retail presence.

And I knew that that was a priority for us to create a product that was like actually accessible and ubiquitous. And that's actually high been a really good move for us, but I felt that she would be invaluable in helping us to get those stores. Yeah. She really helped with packaging and branding and making something that's accessible when you're trying to like sell a testing kit where either people think it's a DNA kit or they have no idea what it is. Right. Um being able to differentiate that when you have like ten seconds to grab something. How much of a check did she write? Um, so the deal we shook on was Why do you keep saying shook? Because there's the shake on it and then there's the actual deal. What's the actual deal? I can't disclose that. Oh, it was different, yes. It was better or worse. Better for the company. And it's probably better for Lori. And better because why does the deal change? So normally there's like they do diligence and they might change it probably for their favor. You're saying it went better for you guys. It went better. How does it improve after you shake on the deal on the show

Um, a fair number of those deals, I think it's something like over half never come to fruition at all. And then another quarter or so. actually change and then another quarter get done if the terms that I've had a bunch of friends say they screw'em the sharks. Each shark each shark has a different approach. So like I they're totally you then go into their management company. Right. So you're going into Mark Cuban companies or Lori Garnier's companies, and so it's not a um I don't know what each shark's process is. I can say Lori's was super fair. They go through very detailed diligence on everything. But but you know what, the show actually does diligence on you. They have a venture analyst on board. So they run diligence on you before you ever pitch. What was your valuation um that you guys agreed on? I s I pitched I I my valuation was twenty million post money. And how much did she invest? So that was a line of credit deal.

at an eight percent interest rate for five percent of the company. And was it like uh you know he hey deal offer on the spot or do you have this like long pause where you're like can I think and write this down? Well in my case every shark was out and I actually knew I wanted either Lori or Mark Grin or uh sorry, Lori or Mark Cuban. And so I was really excited about it and so I really did want to work with her and it was a good deal. So I actually sat on the show because you're supposed to negotiate. I said because it makes good TV. Yes. Um and so I said, I know I'm supposed to negotiate, but I want to take this deal. So I didn't. Um you do have it is really what you see. Like you can exit, you can talk about it with your partner, you can call a lifeliner a friend. Um they may edit that out or whatever else, but you can take a minute to think about it. What's something people don't don't see or don't realize that is different from having actually gone through it versus watching it? It what's a what's one difference? I think people know it's edited. I don't think People realize how long the actual time filming can be.

from when you walk in and walk out to like what they edit down to five minutes. So it it varies, but mine was probably an hour and they edit it to seven minutes. Some people's have gone on up to two to three hours. um sum or fifteen minutes, right. And so I think you know it's edited to a degree, but I don't think you realize how much discussion actually happens. Was Mori investing her own money? She is investing her own money. Um then Does she have a fun or is it literally just hers? fun structure, but it's her capital.

How w how much do you think she's worth? You know, I don't know, I will say she is a prolific um salesperson in the sense that like the top three or four companies from Shark Tank and I mean companies that have done like a quarter of a billion in sales. Um Squaddy Body Yeah. It sh those she it has a relationship with each of those companies and is invested in each of those companies. Um so I suspect quite a bit, not to mention her own. patent portfolio and the success she's had products. But do they have green but do those pay cash flow I mean who cares if you I mean it's important, but if you own equity in that business. Yeah, so where is her cash coming from? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know because I'm fat checks.

Well, and I also don't know. She takes that Saudi money. The deal is different, right? So like she does it just like an NEVC deal is different, right? She's negotiating a deal with me that's different. I don't know what what terms are, you know, with the rest of her companies. I do know she has put all of these companies on the map from Scrub Daddy to Squaddy Potty, these companies that have incredible consumer power. She delivers I've got a spotty puppy. I'm telling you, I think ever it seems to me actually I don't have them, but it does seem I mean it does seem very popular, apparent apparently. So how much traffic d did your site get? Oh yeah. So we uh got three years ago it was it was November. We even better than now'cause there's more tr uh people watch TV more than it aired the night before Cyber Monday. It was Thanksgiving weekend. It was couldn't have been a better day. Although my poor team, they were wonderful. They canceled all their Thanksgivings was

you know, a lot of work. But um what h we got about thirty times our normal traffic, but we had an interesting experience. We didn't have this tremendous, like huge spike the night of in terms of purchases. But we ended up doing about a million dollars in sales, which at the time was a tremendously large number for us. um in like the four day period after um the show. So there's been a little bit of this interesting thing for us that I haven't heard many other companies which is we Doubled. Oh like we doubled in that week on a run rate standpoint and then we continue doubling the next month and we never had that decline. Right. But we didn't have this spike in like the three hour period that we aired. Yeah. Well how much traffic traffic it was? A million. A million uniques in twenty four hours. Yeah. So and we did, I mean, we had to I mean at the time we were not set up for that scale. Now we don't have to think about it. We know we we've always been on um uh on um WooCommerce, not Shopify, um Big Commerce. We've built on it now and like totally customized it.

uh something else not I know but it's one of the big ones that actually I think we should have gone to Shopify but we didn't. Gotcha. So I should now I shouldn't name that because Right. Shout out to Toby from Shopify. Yes, exactly. I like to think he's listening. Yeah. So um Might be. We're trying to get'em on. I was gonna say that valuation.

Right? Yeah, that' it also streams on Twitch. Great guy. So yeah, so we saw really good traffic increase, but it was an it was a very different pattern. And Lori warned us about that. She said some companies it's like they sell out immediately and some companies it's just a slow kind of slow burn. So um that was what it was with us. But we did not crash, um, which was essential. Do you did you I have a bunch of questions. Do you have some? I have some not about Shark Tank though. Close the chapter on Shark Tank. I'm I I know enough about Shark Tank now. There may be a uh there may be an upcoming I don't know. You're become back as one of the glory children. Potentially, potentially. We are actually in two years. We're the number I think we're number ten on the all time best selling list. Right, but number one squad. Socks and then squatty potties. What's the socks? Bombas.

How about that? Oh, they're on their team. I didn't realize that. Two hundred and fifty million in sales. Shit. Yes. I'm wearing bobbles right now, I think. When we sold the company, I was like I'm gonna buy unlimited of the best sock. That was the thing I'd always told myself That's cool. When I become a millionaire, unlimited best socks. And Bomb Bus was like what everybody said. Do you love that? Um

Yeah, I love them, but I need more. That's all too. Like I ran out of involved. Yeah. Yeah, I I bought the whatever the like sixty pair or whatever. But like I need I think I need like five hundred pair of socks. Like laundry. You know, that's like one of the best hacks you could do is what I did was I bought I only have one pair of underwear, but I own like thirty of them and one pair of socks and I own fifty of them. Yeah. So I never match socks. Yeah. It's the greatest hack ever. Yes. I've been doing since I was eighteen. Should we

Um Okay, so I I got a question for you. So uh let's say I buy the product, what do I actually do at home when I take the test? Like physically, what is this what do I have to do? So this uh people are often surprised how many people we get to take their blood at home, but that's often what it requires. So like most of our testing is pricking your finger to draw a small sample of blood. Um some are saliva, some are urine, but Obviously there's a reason why they normally take your blood at a lab. It's because you can analyze the most number of markers and the the broadest um assortment of markers using blood. So it's dry blood spot testing. It's like a very frankly old school model. Um your method? Yes. Quest, lab core, all of the labs have dry blood spot testing. It just means you're pricking a finger and you're dropping blood onto a paper or a treated device that is then uh the blood is then drying. But you guys aren't doing the test. You're a m you're a middle person.

We're a middle person, which if you were A VC responding to me back in 2016, I was a marketing company. Right. Um That's what I was gonna say, but I didn't want you to take a fit. No, they're own the customer relationship. So like that's the most important part. Right. And and I think you know it's interesting when people like oh you're just a middleman or you're just marketing. But I really view us more as okay, the labs are our manufacturing partners, right? You don't buy things directly. Yeah. Manufacturers typically, right? You buy them from a brand. Right, who is your provider? So we have seven different partner labs we work with. Probably the the one that runs the majority of our business, um, is Perkin Elmer, which is a publicly traded life sciences company. They're huge, they're global, um and they've been really a good partner to Steel and they have a lot of credibility. They're the worldwide leader in dry blood spot testing. Right. So Of the fifty million. The worldwide leader. I know, but you know what? Like for us in our space and we're in the medical space, it's really important to have that that stamp, especially with

all the failures. So I really want you to hear Sam's thoughts on food allergy testing. Sam, take it away. I'm excited. I think that a lot of'em are bullshit. Yeah. Am I right or wrong or what do you think? No, it's it's important and it's um But they do every test though. It's okay if I don't buy one of them. You know it's interesting Well, first of all, so to correct you, there's a major difference between a food allergy and celiac disease and then a food intolerance or a food That's what I'm referring to is intolerance. Okay. So but just for you know listeners, I think it is important because even doctors just say allergy and sensitivity is the same thing. I I compare the intolerance test to chiropractory. Interesting. Yeah. I was like, I think that it sounds good, but But it doesn't work.

Іно історій, Associated this food sensitivity testing in general has become associated with Everly Well, which I suppose is like I'm proud of from a brand standpoint, but on the other hand, um it's been going on for over thirty years and there's thousands of doctors that do both IG IGG IGA testing um around the US And most people that you talk to, if you've talked to them about food intolerance, they'll say, Oh yeah, I had that done at my allergist or I had it done at um a nutritionist or at my general practitioner. It has to be used.

in a specific contest. Context. to be valuable. And so I do think that is why it's really important that you educate people on how it should be used. It should be used with an elimination diet. It is not a be all end all, it's a guidance. It is something, it is our test where we have more people quantitatively say it's changed their lives. than any other test. Um but and there's good research around it for that use. What there's not good research around is saying like it's it it diagnoses you with an allergy. It can just be used as kind of a black and white guidance of what you should and shouldn't eat. That's absolutely not true. Um so I think there's a lot of misinformation. I think there's a lot of different types of testing and the nomenclature gets mixed up and things it shouldn't be used for. Um and I think

It's great that Everly Well has been known as the brand for that, but honestly we're offering a test that has been around for decades and needs to be used in the right way. And if we can take the lead in educating people on what that should be, then we'll do that. What category of tests do you think are is the biggest opportunity for sexual sex what we call it sexual health, STIs. Yeah. Um and there's several reasons for that. One, right now our tests are too highly priced um because the lab itself is expensive for us to run the test. Um so we've price I mean right now our single marker STEs are a really good price for um between thirty nine and forty nine dollars. It's also H S and FSA covered, so for some people that's a great solution. But many people for obvious reasons want a comprehensive test. And that test is I think two hundred and Who's the leading the leading company in this space for S

Well yeah, well S T I keep saying I keep saying S T Ds. It's STI. High school. Yeah. Sexually transmitted infections is the correct nomenclature. We call it sexual health testing because we think that this is something people should just be too active about. So who's the biggest in the space for digital? Uh for at home. Yeah. I would say it's probably us just from branding standpoint. There's a couple of companies. You guys in revenue? Wow. Yeah. Um which to be clear should tell you how under served this opportunity as well. Shouldn't that be like a multi-billion dollar revenue business? Yes, this is a multi billion dollar opportunity I'm gonna again if we're gonna rev

Lots of other people can come into this space. Um there's a specific company that only does SCI testing, but they haven't been well funded. They've struggled. Um, and we really believe that this is not only how you can best Close public health gaps. You also can get people on board to then use testing it from home over their lifetime for any other health issue as well. Um people don't want to go into a clinic. You don't want to go. period. Right. And our solution, you actually can not only um get your results, but then you can diagnose and treat through an independent physician if you have a positive, if it's a relevant STI that can be treated. So it's a full service solution. Um, and what you're looking at right now is we have a really good business, but

If you look at the price sensitivity, there's a certain age group that's gonna be willing to pay two fifty to go get a test versus going to a clinic. Are you potentially are you acquiring customers profitably on first touch, or do you hope to l do you lose money on them on the first touch and then hopefully come back? Profitably on first touch. Correct. That is For me, we're in Austin. I'm a first time founder. We're building a sustainable business. We didn't go out and raise money on this premise of just negative contribution margin and then hoping to do it. And it's what Facebook's the main channel or No way, search. Well, it depends. Search for different categories, but search has a ceiling. Yeah, it does have a ceiling even when it's S T D test online, you need that shit right now. Right. So for that category, certainly search is great for us, but Facebook, um, slash Instagram was for a long time our our largest acquisition channel and both by force. And um by proactively moving away we've really diversified, which has been a good move for our business. And what T V now or no? Uh some T V we've had mixed success with we again because we are on this profitable unit economics.

from the beginning um play. We when we can't fully measure attribution and ROI on first purchase, sometimes it's hard for us to want to invest. So we've had mixed success with T V, but we do believe it's important for brand building. Category education. Is all that fifty million going into marketing spend? No engineering. Product clinical. A lot of it goes into clinical and medical affairs. Um

But you're not doing the clinical so what's the is it the kit making sure the kit is as robust as it should be or what? Well we have a regulatory and compliance team that ensures that either the lab partners we're working with or new lab partners that we're making sure that they're meeting the highest quality standards. We're starting our own research studies to prove outcome data, which will take time, but we think is really important. Um We do have obviously a healthy paid marketing budget, but we're trying to hire more in-house around content SEO. organic in those pieces as we start to actually build out like a healthy marketing engine and not just be dependent on this like paid social right thing that we were the last few years. Could you have bootstrap this? No. And that I think is a really important if you could've I would have if I could if you it's a really important question though. If you just said like you're a marketing company, I'm like oh okay so just white label this thing

Do you see it and put this cute millennial pink on it and then just start buying traffic. What where's the I mean That's it it that's how simple it sounds. What was what were some of the challenges beyond the like, you know, send traffic to a landing page and order this like white label product. So we don't white label, we actually fully end to end construct and brand our kits. Um and really what the lab does is run the sample. That's the goal of the lab. Um but there's also a really complex product from an engineering standpoint. Um so not only creating obviously what is somewhat basic an e-commerce site, but then a results platform that is able to speak with a third party physician network, translate lab results that were often really messy. and then be able to say that in a meaningful way to consumers. And five years ago that was not as easy from a like a UX standpoint as it is today. So a doctor interprets all the results? An independent physician.

Why couldn't they do something where they just like say like the normal ranges and if you are in range or out of range. So like I I use Wellness FX and they do a blood test and they just say like you they also use doctor. No shit, really? It's for regulatory reasons. It's to make sure that you basically have a doctor in the process of saying, Okay, I've made sure that this test is appropriate for you. I've made sure that if there are critical values. So for example, if you took our S T I test and you had an abnormal, you would have a physician call you and talk you through your next steps and offer you a telemedicine contact. Yeah, because that wouldn't be Right. And so there there are checks and balances in place. You don't always have to interact with the doctor if it's just a normal result. But there's certain like levels of escalation. And so when you're at the beginning, it is similar to Wanus FX except it's home kits and Wanus F really kind of stayed on the quantified cell for brand and never was able to scale. That business f totally fizzled. Yeah. Wellness effects. I thought it was gonna be awesome.

It's all right though. I use it, but it's not like that successful. But it's interesting, I mean there have been a lot of companies, many, especially after Shark Tank, I would put it in the two dozen range that launch an Instagram Create a pretty logo. Have a kit. And then about six months to twelve months later, you never hear from him again. Um and it does speak to the power of brand marketing and experience. I mean our NPS is a 60, we have a world class customer base. I think in this case first mover advantage really helped us in the category. It doesn't cause us to keep winning. But it mattered a lot here. Right. So

I'm not an MPS uh I'm not super savvy with MPS, but is sixty good? I thought sixty would be sort of like that you compare it to. You got you have to compare it to others that are similar to your for your industry. If you're a bank and you have a sixty MPS, you're the best bank on earth. If you're a sixty but you're like a movie Yeah, exactly. World class would be like eighty or above, right. So certainly it's below that. Um, but I think how we view it is we look at other healthcare services and most are around a zero to a negative. Don't measure. Right. Right. And so we feel good about our product rating is four and a half. out of five stars on average. So we do look at that and say, Okay, this has to be qualified. It's a very um favorable V C metric, one that I think has sometimes limited actionability or limited kind of data data driven decision making or what do you do with it. But um we like it in terms of saying okay just benchmark. Yeah, it's a good benchmark. So when you were starting this and'cause I'm thinking my sister is a managing consultant, my wife is a managing consultant. And you have this idea, you're sitting at Deloitte and you have this personal experience where you're you know, you

Do this test and you're like this is crappy. Um That's what I'll call like every entrepreneur has the stated story, which is like, you know, I was trying to get a test and I just, you know, was so frustrated and therefore I decided to create a solution. And um behind the state of story is like you know more of the real story and our our audience is very entrepreneurial, um and they feel this on a daily basis. They have these ideas, they also have doubts, they want to vet the idea So tell me like that. From the moment you had the idea that first couple weeks, you know, what was what was going through your mind, what were you doing, and what got you over the point where you're like, Okay, I'm actually gonna do this?

Yeah, I think this is important'cause I it is the real story, right? So I'm like, Oh, I just had this idea and I you know we moved we moved to Austin in a U Haul. All those things are true. Um but there's we a few things my husband and I Um. Uh but there's a few things that I think are important. It's not like I woke up one day and was like, Oh, I'm gonna go do this crazy thing. So I did go to Harvard and I was in this weird time, it was during the recession in two thousand nine, when everybody in my class and the class above me were becoming entrepreneurs. And so you had rent the runway, you had purge box, you had guilt of years before, Stitch Fix, Oscar.

I had two unicorn founders in my section alone and at the time uh grabbed taxi out of Yeah, and then um Grab's huge. Who is oh cooking. Okay. Uh both in my section. Right. So at the time it didn't feel that unique, but I was being exposed to this day in and day out. And so I had this kind of roadmap for how to go about it once I started thinking about becoming an entrepreneur. And so

I the reality is I probably spent two years on the weekends, in my spare time, not making any money, but going through different industries, different business models, advising different companies on their business plans and seeing like what would really stick. Do you have all that research saved? I do, but it's really like I look at it's kinda boring. That's an out to me. I don't know. I will s I will send it, but it's it's like I I would be very literal in how I would go about evaluating all these ideas and honestly Uberly Well was probably the craest and the worst of the ideas for me to go and actually do given my background. Well but the other ones um it was like travel Um luxury resale, something like what The Real Real is doing, um, I mean house decorating curation online, like all kinds of different spaces where There's probably opportunity in any of those things. How so you're you're choop for choop is a dog company ideas.

But um, you know, the match with Everly Wall was not necessarily one where you'd be like Oh, right, it was not obvious. But um it was the one where like I realized really early on This is a decade long thing. Right. So if it actually works, you're in it. So you did it right away after after you did this exercise, you sort of started it or no? I mean until I had this health experience in twenty fifteen and then I kind of matched the two together. So this was early twenty fifteen. I ended up incorporating the company June eighteenth, twenty fifteen. And then I left my job in August. And did you think of yourself as an entrepreneur? You said you were on the corporate path, but sounds like you had dabbled in the idea of being an entrepreneur. Did you think of yourself that way? I didn't. Um both my parents are lawyers. Um I didn't realize one that being an entrepreneur was actually a career choice and a path that you could like become

good at doesn't necessarily mean financial success. You could be a serial entrepreneur and actually make that a career. Um and I also frankly didn't have a lot of confidence. So It was interesting at Harvard because I kinda looked around and thought I think I'm just as smart as all these people who are like really founding successful companies. So maybe I can do it too. And I honestly did it just to see if I could do it. I never I like I truly couldn't even imagine having made a million dollars in sales.

And so I'm not sure I necessarily thought about what it would look like today. I just thought it was a really big opportunity and something that I wanted to see if I could go do. And that was how I made the decision is I thought I'm passionate. I think it's a major thing. I was in the fintech space and I thought that was already really oversaturated by 2015. tons of apps, et cetera. And so I knew that this was an area I've been here about. I know. Turns out I was a little wrong about that. But um But and and you know, I do think Wellness Facts is an example where I think they were just ahead of their time. They were too early on the curve. Right. Are like scientists or something like that. Or they're they're in the industry. And I actually think that's a weakness. You have to kinda be a marketer first. Or you don't have to be but it's a consumer market.

Um A as you were you were an outsider, right? For this industry. Completely. What opportunities have you un uh uncovered where you tell people, Man, just so you know like there's this huge problem in this industry, I think it can be solved for you. Because I'm a total outsider, but I but I but when I hear about the these types of businesses I'm like It's like it's if you can like solve a a handful of problems, it's so easy to crush it.

Price transparency, which may seem obvious, and I think there's a lot of companies that talk about in healthcare doing price transparency, but they don't actually do it and even the digital startups trying to do it, um, they can't actually tell you what something will cost in healthcare. So we just got side of insurance so that we can actually tell people what something will cost. But if you were able to do this in a really big way, And say, hey, we can accurately tell you. your cost commitment for this service, I think you would crush it and within the insurance system. Within insurance, but I think there's a much, much larger Growing acceptance.

of consumers who are happy to pay for something in healthcare as long as they know what they're gonna get and what it costs. Right. And so I don't know that it has to be within s insurance. You also have this H S A and F S A space that's exploding in terms of people on FSA and HSA plans and then what they're using those dollars for. Um I think there's an interesting play there. So what does that look like? What's an example? Like if you started a company throw out a half baked pitch. That's okay, that's what we do. Man, if you could be a So if you had physicians

And you said, Okay. I'm going to have you pay Fifth anytime you see the physician. We're gonna own a pharmacy. and any of your drugs are gonna be transparently priced and you can't use a coupon everything is the same price and it's all generic.

Um and then if you say, Okay, and then I wanna be able to get you know, testing done and then they can tell you the pricing on that. But here's the problem with it. You have to actually own the supply chain and the services You have to be vertically integrated to do this because otherwise a nightmare. I know. But my point is you almost build a system External to the system.

And you can do this at affordable pricing. The reason healthcare so expensive is because you're adding cost into the system through the insurers. Right. And those contracts and when you get the bills. you're getting the bill for whatever they didn't want to cover, but that was intent like the provider billed the insurance company what they'd hoped the insurance company would pay. Not at all what it costs. Um be healthcare. It could be whatever. For example, uh when we started our company we realized that like paying freelancers r is uh I was like, wow, I didn't realize how hard that was. So like along the way where you've like where your your entrepreneur do you keep a little notes after some of them get fought. So for example, like three years ago uh two years ago on on uh Black Friday

We hit a bunch of compliance limits with our banking system on spend in Facebook. So I was like, gosh, I wish there was a product where you could actually get like a Cash Advance. Cash Advance for social media advertising. Um now we're big enough to wear We don't have to use a product like a brackster at the time. We just started talking about that. Or like Clearbank. Right. So but at that time, if those solutions had been around, we absolutely would have been able to take advantage of them. And then of course they came out and I was like, oh that would have been a really good idea. So we really hit a bunch of challenges with that. Um and it it really can bring it. young businesses and then I think you know other places are

How do you make Like as she think about doing a startup, I mean the amount of time we spend on contracts and HR and legal and templatising, I mean there's so much cost in the system that I would love to take out of it. in healthcare and in highly regulated industries it's really hard to do things Quite dirty and cheap. And it's unwise.

So what do you guys use for your company's healthcare or uh your company's HR system. For our system I mean these really Like we used to use Gusto. Uh but these really kind of

heavy, clunky systems that look like they're, you know, for Fortune 500 companies. And there's nothing great between like Augusto and then the next step up that you need. Right. And why do you use that? Why? Yeah. Versus the gusto? Yeah. Because the services start they couldn't get all the functionality. It's like more sophisticated, more enterprise. Yeah, it's more enterprisey. But the jump between like, hey, you're less than fifty people to like Hey, we need something much more sophisticated and scalable is Evil. And that's because you're paying all these physicians.

W that's an independent network, but we are paying all of our people, um and we have So these independent physicians are they doing this on the side of their normal practice? Are these freelancers or typically not. They work for another company. Typically some are ten ninety nine, but typically in these structures and there's a lot of these structures. normal telemedicine company or these kind of separate entities. Um and they typically are either full time employees, like Doctor on Demand.

entirely employs all their doctors. Right. Um or some of them are. So like HIMS is using one of these third parties to employ doctors. I don't know if they're using a third party or if they have their own. But those third parties exist? Uh those those third parties exist. That's a are you in or out on the hymns row. You're in. I'm in. Okay. Heavily in. Oh nice. Um And you know, I think they've done especially Ro has done a nice job of publishing their decision making criteria around prescribing. um and how they weigh risk and how they have I think responded to a lot of the criticism in the space. those companies are good for us because people still don't realize that you can

get a medical product, whether it's a prescription or a test. Consumed online and have it at home. And so it helps just saving things. Yeah. I did my eye test at home, you know, because why would I want to go to the eye doctor if I could put my phone ten feet away? Simple contacts. And so the first time you do that, you're like, Okay, cool. Yeah, I'm not gonna leave home if I don't have to. So Next time I have a problem, great food sensitivity let me Let me use another at home product. I do think it's a lifestyle. Yeah, and and for me, like I'm on one of the hers, um Face uh per or uh rin oil.

prescription for skincare and for wrinkles and that just saves me time from having to go to the dermatologist where they're trying to get a male order pharmacy to get me to reorder any Right. Him's and hers created the model. That's how physicians are Well th they're a marketing company too. Yeah, for sure. I just uh we were talking about have you heard of Legacy? It's for sperm company. Oh it's a it this is a controversial one because of the marketing practices that imply that there's more of an issue than there is. Um we we diagnose you with the problem and then you buy our solution. Well they just store your sperm too though. I think the the concern in the healthcare space around this particular problem has been

the percent of men that actually need this is so minuscule, but their advertising practices make claims that make it sound But why wouldn't you want to store your sperm if it costs so much. So this is where so here's what we believe is that really well. So for example, we get a lot of questions around, well Like how dangerous is it for people to be over testing their cholesterol? Well my opinion is you can buy as much Coca Cola as you want. on the shelf. If you're over eighteen you can buy as many cigarettes as you want and those things actually do you harm. and you're still have independent thought and agency of making those decisions. And so

Cholesterol testing or sperm freezing, if that's what you wanna do and you're gonna pay for it. then that's your right to do it. Um and so I'm I'm with you but I think you have to then still have a fine line. Like we have to be as Everly Well, as himself, Rowe and Legacy and all these companies, you have to be super careful about the claims you're making and how how kind of what scare tactics you're taking.

for people to wanna buy it. Um because there is going to be some backlash eventually from the FTC and there will be some regulatory kind of engagement on this. It's just lagging right now and that's what happens with regulation. It catches up later. I love those businesses because I can't imagine having gone to the doctor and do that. Yeah. Like that just sucks. Yeah. It's pretty bad. It's a good I mean and that's that's exactly what the morals are for. That's exactly why when I talk about the opportunity with STI testing, I think it's real. Same with that. It's because people don't you actually what what Everly Well's doing in general is we're getting people to comply with something they don't want to do otherwise. So like forty percent'cause you want to you want to get tested, but you don't want to be like, Hey, I uh I'm doing yeah. STI people just don't get it done. Right. The requisition from their doctor. So particularly men. Exactly. Yeah. So the assumption the data shows about forty percent of tests that doctors issue never get completed.

So Yeah, I treat it like a suggestion. It's like oh I I should do what this says. You just have to help people actually get done what they need to. And on top of that, you know, that'll obviously I think make the pie as well. What's the most common STI, Clamidia? Oh gosh, I actually don't know from the statistics, but I think it's chlamydia. We couple those together. That's our that's our top selling scale. So everybody's Who's listening, we want you to get your self tested for Chlamydia. Uh go to Everlywell dot com.

Down? and uh order your test today. Uh Julia Cheek, thank you for for coming. Um Do you want to give people a way to follow you, find you know, hang out with you more? How how should people get more of these thoughts? Yes, uh Julia Tee Cheek on Twitter and private on Instagram. Try and keep that. Yeah. Yeah, feel free. All right, thank you for coming by. I appreciate it. Thank you.

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