Michelle Legro (3:09)

Grow. We discussed what brand building strategies have worked for them in the past and more importantly, what they believe will work in 2026 and beyond. All that and more coming up after a quick message from our.

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Michelle Legro (3:41)

More. Sonja Tyler, thank you so much for sitting down with us for this founder group chat. We are actually recording this at the Inc. 5000 conference where hundreds of founders are gathered here in Phoenix. I want to start by asking you a very broad question. If one of these founders came to you maybe at the gala tomorrow and asked how can I make my brand brands stand out, what advice would you give them? Tyler, let's start with.

Tyler Fish (4:09)

You. Sure. I would say you have to get creative and you can't trust or let the algorithm define you. Nowadays it's a very saturated market and so you have to find I think more non traditional types of marketing and branding channels to stand out. I think gone are the days where brands can just rely on 90% of their ads or brand strategy going towards Meta, TikTok or Google. So I would find where does your target market live and who do they like to interact and intersect with? Are that certain types of creators or other brands and finding a way to align yourself with.

Sonja Komunovic (4:51)

Them? All brands are created to solve some sort of a human truth, a human problem. Right. And because all brands are created to solve some sort of a human problem, you have to really figure out what human problem you're solving and why. One thing that I'm really big on is, and you kind of mentioned this is like you can't really chase trends. You can't really sit there and look at what everyone else is doing. You have to really figure out why your brand is special. You have to dig in deeper into your why. You have to sit down with your consumers. You have to ask your current consumers why did they decide to buy you. You have to keep going further and further down to figure out what is at the core ins of a very core deep human truth that you're in, a problem that you're solving for these people. And with that, that's how you create marketing and strategies that work for.

Michelle Legro (5:42)

You and Tyler, for the sauna industry, you really did have to get in there and you found that it was an industry that really had to be disrupted.

Tyler Fish (5:49)

Right? Yeah. When we launched the company there were only two other big brands out there that were launched in the 90s that were not E commerce today or even back then. Consumers wanted the ability to purchase even high AOV items online, add them to a shopping cart and check out. But with these other websites you had to get pricing, you had to put in a lead form or you had to call them personally. And so we wanted to disrupt that and bring the DTC E comm model to Infrared Saunas and disrupt that space because we felt that was a huge gap in the market. Also, from a customer experience perspective, a lot of these websites were just very antiquated. From a UX design to CRO. It was really clunky. The imagery looked like it was like from the 90s and everything just looked like it was like way too outdated for what you're trying to sell. Because Infrared Saunas, right, it's a technology product, right? So when you go on the website you really want to feel like you're interacting with a brand that is advanced and has the features that you're looking for. And so we felt that it was important to bring that up to speed with the modern day.

Michelle Legro (6:54)

Consumer. What was like the human problem that you felt you were.

Tyler Fish (6:56)

Solving? The human problem was just. There were three things. One was the friction. Back then it was very difficult, as I mentioned, to buy a sauna. Either you had to go through this multi step process and sales funnel or you had to buy and build a custom sauna which was 30 to $50,000. There was no easy kind of plug and play way where you can order one online, have it show up to your doorstep and then assemble it yourself, plug it in and you're ready to go. Secondly, all the saunas back then were pretty ugly. They were a wooden box that you would put in the corner of your gym. They weren't necessarily like a marvel that you wanted to show off. And we wanted ours to be highly aesthetic, highly unique and really the centerpiece of a room, not just a piece of wood in the corner. And so we wanted to innovate not just the website, the customer experience, but how it looked and how it felt. And then lastly would be the feature set as well. Right where we're in 2025 now, people don't want to have to go to their sauna, turn it on and then come back and check every 20 minutes to see what temperature it's.

Sonja Komunovic (8:02)

At.

Tyler Fish (8:02)

Right? You want to be able to preset that from your mobile app. You want to have integrated Bluetooth speakers you can put on your meditation. You Want to have red light therapy stacked with it so you don't have two different sessions. And so we were like, how can we technology and habit stack and then make it just a more intuitive experience for customers to own and operate their.

Sonja Komunovic (8:20)

Products? Yeah. You also made wellness more accessible then. Right. Like at the core of it. You know, I think that there's often with companies that undermine brand identity or brand marketing, meaning, like you get to a website and it's a clunky experience, but beyond that, the price of the product doesn't seem to match what you're looking at. You're looking at this like outdated text and you want me to spend thousands of dollars or even hundreds of dollars. It just doesn't match in your mind what you think you should be getting for those thousands of dollars. The experience that you're having with not just the website, but then at home. And then on top of that, I would say you're also solving for like, esteem. Right. Like how somebody feels when they have products in their house and what people think about them. Like there's a point of connection between humans who can see, hey, we both have great taste. Right. Or we both have an interest in wellness. Or. Or I think that that is like that being the centerpiece in your home. That's what that kind of says about that human being who owns it now for.

Tyler Fish (9:22)

Sure. I think it's like at this point in time, it's wellness and design are almost.

Sonja Komunovic (9:27)

Intersecting. I.

Tyler Fish (9:28)

Agree. Right. And if everyone's starting to get into longevity and wellness tech at their house, they want to make sure that it can blend in with the environment and their ecosystem that they're in and not just something that's in a drawer or I mentioned the side of the room. So I.

Sonja Komunovic (9:41)

Agree. And you don't want to get to a website and have sticker shock like, you want me to pay this for this?

Tyler Fish (9:45)

Right?

Sonja Komunovic (9:46)

Yeah. So like sometimes when you see something sleek and well designed, you. Your brain almost immediately clocks. This is not going to be like inexpensive. This is like a premium.

Tyler Fish (9:54)

Product. And I think it's important that you have that like premium offering from not just when someone lands on the site, but that entire experience. If someone's going to be spending $15,000 on a sauna, they want to make sure that they have a consultant call them to run them down on. Here's what you need to have prepared for your sauna when it arrives. When it arrives. You want to make sure the logistics and fulfillment team know what they're doing. They can saf get it off the truck, into your room of choice. When you open the pallet, it has the instruction manuals and everything goes together.

Sonja Komunovic (10:22)

Seamlessly.

Tyler Fish (10:23)

Right. At least the customer demographic that we sell to, they really, they expect a five star experience in handholding. And I think that doesn't stop when someone's on the site or when they purchase. It's through that entire.

Michelle Legro (10:35)

Journey. And how do you think that brand authenticity will evolve when AI generated everything is flooding the market. How do you think founders can maintain human first storytelling and in creative integrity and emotional connection in a world where content can possibly feels increasingly synthetic? I feel like this is a good question for you and your.

Sonja Komunovic (11:01)

Agency. Yeah, I mean, look, I love AI for all the things that it could help me shortcut, but I don't think that there is a shortcut for the human voice and human creativity quite yet. I think what makes humans special is our ability to come up with out of the box ideas and make things unique and different. When everything starts looking like a carbon copy of itself, you land in ubiquity. Because truly these algorithms, they're pulling from, you know, multiple sources, but they're pulling all from the same sources. So I think personally in our industry you're always going to need thinkers and you're also always going to need like doers, meaning like people who are doing the thing on the ground from time to time, client relations, et cetera. But what I think AI can really, truly help with is that middle piece of making the thing right. I think you're going to always have to bookend it with someone who is really, truly putting their own original idea in and then on the other side, making that thing happen in a way that feels, to your point, authentic and connected to your brand. That's my first thing. My second thing on like brand authenticity as a premise in general, I think it's extremely important I mentioned at the beginning, within the first question that, you know, all brands are created to solve some sort of a human problem. I think it's really, really extremely important that people keep that mind as they grow over time. Like if you are, I'll give a really quick like top of the line example of something that's happened recently within culture. You know, we saw the whole target deni debacle because they didn't believe in necessarily de and I @ their core, it was so easy when the trend changed for them to change back to whatever the policies of the current administration are. That is an example. And then we have now seen there like obviously them falter for their stock for the last couple quarters and I haven't kept up in the last one, but all I've seen is that their stock price is down, Their stock price is down. And it's because from an authenticity standpoint, they didn't come out with what they believed in in the first place and then it fell apart. That's why we're not seeing the same issue with Amazon, because Amazon never came out and made these bold statements about something they didn't believe in. So as far as brand authenticity goes, I think it's super duper important that brands really stay true to what they believe and never ever say or do anything that they don't believe in the first place. Just make a couple.

Tyler Fish (13:40)

Of bucks. Yeah, that could work in the short term, but at the end of the day you're going to fall flat in your face. And I think now than ever with the acceleration of AI, it's important that organizations are oftentimes founder led as well, especially when it comes to branding and marketing and being the face of it. Because it's just once there's AI driven ads or imagery or Instagram posts and content, obviously your authenticity is going to diminish significantly. But that's why we've invested more in like, all right, let's get camera crews out here, let's document more about what we're doing, let's talk about the benefits in our story and see collaborations where we can be in the front of the camera. Because I think the more that you can engage with your audience and show that you're real, you know, you care about the brand, you're a part of the brand, you're here in the United States. I think your audience is going to gravitate towards you and obviously see you more.

Sonja Komunovic (14:35)

As authentic. I also think that what you're doing by doing that is that you're sealing your brand truth. And like you're almost packaging it up not just for your consumers, but for your internal employees as well. Because you know, there's something special about what founders, when they start a company about what they believe and packaging up that truth to others and being able to distill it in a way that's easy for them to understand, digest, and for them to see repetitively over time is super.

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Michelle Legro (17:09)

To learn more. Consumers are really growing increasingly wary of institutions and influencers and even their own eyes, you know, through the proliferation of AI slop. What does it take to earn trust through design, transparency and founder visibility? I think you just had a really good example there. But you know, how are the ways that you can.

Tyler Fish (17:34)

Really build trust? I think you need to find a way to stand out and be true to yourself and not try to replicate or copy what anyone else is doing because consumers are going to be able to see through that, right? When we're designing our saunas, we never look or compare across any other brands. We want to make something that's truly bespoke and unique to our industry and our brand. On the other side, there's plenty of other e commerce companies out there that we see pop up and we see on Google Shopping where they're trying to look identical to us, right? They copy our signature matte black look or certain feature sets and oftentimes they fall by the wayside because they're just obviously seen as someone that's not authentic. But especially with the Influencer economy, you have to be pretty careful because I think it's dependent on the content and who you're working with. It can really come off unauthentic if the creator isn't truly using and has an affinity for your products. Right. We only align ourselves with creative partnerships and athletes that we know would use our products for their recovery or their longevity, not just because they want something pretty for their house or their husband wants it. And so they're forcing them to do a post. Right. We've done that in the past, and the comment section is atrocious and it looks bad on us and it's low engagement. It's a shit show, actually. And so everyone that we work with now, they end up. We have certain deliverables. Well, you know, we're. If, let's say you're, I don't know, like a Mike Tyson as an example, we'll send you this product and we expect.

Podcast Announcer (19:12)

This.

Tyler Fish (19:12)

From it. Right. But. But we end up getting so much more from it organically because these creators and athletes absolutely love the products. And so they'll throw us up on stories, they'll mention it on the podcast. And when they do that, it's so obvious that it's not a pay to play partnership. Right. It's not like a podcast where. And now, like, thank you to our sponsor, Sun Home Saunas, you know, the leader in infrared wellness. Right. It's someone like, oh, like, I had, you know, incredibly sore back after this game, and so I jumped in my Sun Home cold plunge for three minutes for three days before my next game, and I felt amazing. Right. And that alone, it just sounds more authentic. It is authentic and it has way more meaning from, like.

Michelle Legro (19:51)

A brand perspective. So you could tell right away when the fit was not right because, like, the comments called you.

Tyler Fish (19:57)

Out right away. Yeah. Or even, you know, the creator will be up front being like, hey, my husband really loves cold plunges. You know, would you be open to sending us one? I'll post for it. Right. And we did that once, and then we found out the influencer was on a podcast a year before that, saying how much she hates cold plunges. I'm like, now we look unauthentic and that we're just trying to strike a large partnership for followers, and it backfired. And so we have various influencer analytical tools, and then we vet and interview either the talent agency or the influencer themselves to make sure that they're truly aligned with.

Michelle Legro (20:35)

The brand first. And then how do you make sure that the celebrities that you work with, it's really aligned with them.

Sonja Komunovic (20:44)

And their brand. Well, first thing I'll say is that I think brand trust, and I think you mentioned this is the ultimate currency, right. To consumers today. Right. They want to know that the thing that they're buying is worth their dollars. Right. And as far as whether it's a celebrity or it's a brand, we talk about like be do say in order to be able to say something, you first have to be something, then you have to do something and then you're able to say the message from a marketing and advertising perspective. But before you can obviously say something, the first two have to exist. Similar to how you guys look at influencers, when we work with brands we look at the same thing. Is there an actual, an affinity for that brand to begin with and, or is there an affinity for the brand's values and what they stand for already? Because it's not always necessarily a connection back to the brand from like a product usage standpoint. We don't always have that, especially if it's like an up and coming brand or something that the person isn't, hasn't been exposed to. But maybe there's some sort of a value system that we feel like we can really sell the influencer or the celebrity and on. So oftentimes we do really actually I don't know if you guys do this, but we do really lengthy pitch process with all of the talent we hire for brand campaigns. So we'll first like reach out via email, but then we'll sit down with a deck and explain to them the concept and the idea to make sure that they are into the thing before we even talk about any sort of compensation or any, anything else. Because it's really, really important to us that the people want to do the project and they're not just trying to, you know, get paid for posting. Because to your point that's always very, very transparent and oftentimes when you do that there is a follow up with another brand right after. I kind of want to say something else here on the, on this front that I think is important. I think sometimes we look at industries and we tend to want to work with like talent or people who are directly in that industry. And sometimes it's better to work with people who are on the adjacent side of that industry. What do I mean by that? Instead of like if you have a beauty brand instead of working with necessarily beauty influencers. Because everybody's going after beauty influencers and in your case maybe everybody's going after the same wellness people per se. Maybe it's an opportunity to work with somebody who sits to, adjacent to beauty. So like an athlete or a, you know, a mom that has a really great following because she's super engaged with her community. She still uses products, beauty products, but it's not her primary income. So then she's able to like authentically speak about your brand to her audience in a way that's not like followed by oh, now I'm going to try to sell you the same thing two weeks later. So I really like that idea of like really looking at people who have your audience as well, but have, and have a connection, authentic connection to their audience, but also maybe just slightly as adjacent to the.

Michelle Legro (23:57)

To the brand. I was thinking about that with your, the work you do with the HBCUs.

Sonja Komunovic (24:01)

And Ulta beauty. I thought that was exactly the perfect example is like, you know, we were tasked with like working with athletes, you know, in the world within beauty and there's no better representation than the dancers of HBCU schools. Right. If we wanted to talk to black women and we wanted to talk to athletes, that's a great like. Yep. Most people wouldn't.

Tyler Fish (24:25)

Think of that. Yeah, I think it's a really important point and we see that as well where if we're selling health and wellness products, you don't necessarily need to go to athletes or health and wellness influencers. There's plenty of other partnerships out there that can tap into your demographic that still have interest for that category, but they're not necessarily right in that field. Like an example for us would be we do really well with high end architects and.

Sonja Komunovic (24:54)

Real estate agents. Yeah, that's.

Tyler Fish (24:55)

A perfect example. Right. Because they have access to the affluent homeowner that is now typically longevity and wellness conscious. Or an example would be young mom influencers and younger families as well that they want ways where they can have their own personal sanctuary and their sauna and their space away from their kids and have their moment. So yeah, not directly correlated as a wellness influencer, but very much so still has interests.

Sonja Komunovic (25:21)

That particular domain. And you actually just sparked another thought for me. I think it's so important when you think about who your brand is connecting with that the attributes of that person and values of that person actually match what you want your brand to stand for. Like I think people forget they'll hire, you know, maybe the biggest person they can get, but maybe that's not what you want to be known for some of the attributes that person has. And I'm not Even talking about necessarily negative ones I'm talking about it just doesn't lead you down the right direction. Like you're trying to sell X but you're not going down Y. I don't have a specific example in mind per se, but you know, I think that it's really, really important for people to remember that everybody that represents your brand, and you said this earlier like kind of a couple questions ago, is going to leave an impression on somebody about you. There's gonna be some sort of like remnants left there. So I think it's really, really important to be careful about who you.

Tyler Fish (26:20)

Align yourself with. And I think bigger is not always better. Oh, I guess partnerships or influencers. You know, we found that, you know, we've worked with some A list celebrities that would do the same style post. Like we're known for these sauna giveaways where, you know, we'll partner with a big creator and then they do a classic like, like and follow son home. And then we pick a person at the end of the giveaway and send them the same sauna that creator has. So the engagement is massive. Cause a lot of people are giving away $10,000 products and we do.

Sonja Komunovic (26:48)

It pretty much. Tell me when you do.

Michelle Legro (26:49)

The.

Tyler Fish (26:49)

Next one. I'll. Yeah, we'll send it to you comment 100 times. But we've noticed that if we do a giveaway with let's say an A list celebrity that has followers across many different countries and interests and demographics and engagement rates versus someone who's really dialed into a specific niche and has a really loyal following but has maybe a tenth of the followers, those will always outperform just someone that has a more generic audience or offering. And I also feel like the Instagram algorithm is kind of.

Sonja Komunovic (27:24)

Attuned.

Tyler Fish (27:25)

To that. Yes. Right. They'll know if someone's posting something that is aligned with what their audience wants to see and what their engagement rate is and.

Michelle Legro (27:33)

They'Ll prioritize that. Yeah, I think what you found with the giveaways, if you've really tapped into a new form of, of community driven marketing because the cost of digital ads and social algorithm are very unpredictable. But you've really found that the giveaways have really.

Tyler Fish (27:51)

Worked for you. Yeah, it's become a more efficient way of deploying marketing dollars in a more unique way to interact with your audience versus just having a scrollable Instagram post, I would say it also adds a lot of brand validity and allowed us to punch above our weight for a long and so when we first got Started within three months of launching the brand. I was basically saying, all right, it's gonna be tough to sell Asana through a Facebook ad that's cost $10,000 to convince someone to buy it when they have never heard of Sun Home. We have, like, five followers and, like, no employees. And so I was like, what if we align ourselves with another brand or creator? That's huge, and that can help kind of boost our following and legitimacy. And so I emailed the CMO of Onnit, which is Joe Rogan's supplement brand, and it was like one out of 500 emails. I got a response from him. He ended up buying a sauna. He responded because he was just shopping around. He's like, your saunas look cool. And then I was like, all right, I'll give you a discount if you can introduce us to Rogan's social team. And so he was like, sure, why not? We got an introduction, and they were like, by the way, like, Rogan's been talking a lot about saunas on his podcast, and that's kind of just when he started socializing his love for that type of wellness tool. And they're like, what if we do a Rogan's Favorites giveaway where we'll donate $6,000 worth of on it gear? So, like, kettlebells and supplements, cool things like that. And then you guys donate a sauna. And back then, we were like, whoa, we have to give away a sauna? That's gonna cost us, like, six grand. We only had, like, our small savings from our tech sales career, but we're like, it's fricking Rogan. So if there's any. Any time to do.

Sonja Komunovic (29:31)

It, it's now.

Tyler Fish (29:32)

Right audience too. Yeah. And so. So we launched it with Onnit. And this was before there was a collaborator feature. The first few hours, it was like five followers, 10 followers. And I had the notifications on Instagram where I can see every time someone follows us. It would send me a ping. And then around lunchtime, basically, I look at my phone and it pretty much breaks. I can't even open Instagram because Rogan went on it and he started reposting it to his story. And he had, like, I don't know, 40 million or something followers. And so then it would, like, fizzle out. And then a few hours later, I was like, going to the gym, broke again. And so overnight, we got 30,000 followers. This was within three months of starting the business. And it just costed that sauna. And if you compare that to, like, CPMs or how much we would have to pay to, like, get those followers organically. It was out of this world and then enabled us to really punch above our weight because we are represented now by Joe Rogan. We were validated by him. And then it was this snowball effect because then we had all these other athletes and creators reach out to us, all these other brands that wanted to give us opportunities to work for them. And so I think sometimes for brand authenticity and punching above your weight and brand building, it's thinking outside of the box paired with pure Hustle can enable.

Michelle Legro (30:50)

Pretty big breakthroughs. That's all for today's episode. We're going to pick up my conversation with Sonya and Tyler next week as we dive deeper into community building. The Business Model returns on Monday. Be sure to subscribe to the Business Model wherever you get your podcasts and on.