Advice Line: "Strategy Sessions"

Summary

How I Built This with Guy Raz – "Advice Line: Strategy Sessions"

Episode Date: August 6, 2026
Host: Guy Raz | Wondery

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Episode Overview

In this special "Advice Line: Strategy Sessions" mashup, Guy Raz is joined by three legendary founders—Jeffrey Hollander (Seventh Generation), Sarah LaFleur (MM.LaFleur), and Shazi Visram (Happy Family, Healthy Baby)—to answer real-time business questions from founders across diverse industries. Each segment features a caller with a distinct business challenge, followed by candid, actionable advice from both Guy and his guest co-hosts. The episode is a masterclass in entrepreneurship, leadership, and strategic thinking, delivering wisdom on partnerships, branding, sales, and scaling.

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Segment 1: Navigating Partnerships in a Multipronged Business

Guest Expert: Jeffrey Hollander (Seventh Generation)

Caller: Tony DeRosa, founder/owner of Hearsay Brewing and Theater, Ann Arbor, MI
Timestamps: [03:51] – [14:19]

Key Discussion Points & Insights

• Business Complexity:
  Tony runs a composite business: a microbrewery, a food truck operation, a comedy theater, and corporate improv workshops, with $667k in year-one revenue and projecting over $1M in his second full year.

• The Hat-Wearing Dilemma:
  Tony struggles as a solo founder, balancing the demands of multiple business units and wonders when/how to bring in partners for growth and alleviating his workload.

• Pros & Cons of Bringing in Partners:

  • Jeffrey Hollander: “Bringing on partners is a challenging thing to do. It's hard to find the right person and partnering with the wrong person can be very dangerous to your business.” [07:31]
  • Focus on what you do best; hire for everything else.
  • Consider profit-sharing or granting small ownership stakes to key employees, rather than ceding significant equity or control at the outset.
  • Guy Raz: “It's expensive to give away equity and it's permanent.” [09:57]
    Experiment with milestone-based vesting and test-fit employees before moving to full partnerships.

• Practical Hiring Advice:

  • Don’t make hiring decisions alone. Use multiple interviewers to get a balanced perspective.
  • “Someone else might see challenges that you're not paying attention to.” —Jeffrey Hollander [10:59]

• Website & Messaging Feedback:

  • Jeffrey suggests shifting Hearsay’s messaging from a generic greeting (“hi there”) to highlighting its mission: “crafting community through joy and laughter.” [11:23]

• Profit Centers & Growth Focus:

  • Improv workshops for companies and universities are the most profitable and promising segment; Tony realized he’d been underpricing his product relative to established competitors.

• Memorable Moments

  • Guy Raz, on partner selection: “You bring in a partner when they can bring something you can’t bring alone, like capital or network or real expertise and somebody who's really aligned with the long term vision.” [13:30]

Notable Quotes

• “Having them be small owners in the business will be hugely motivational and I think they'll be very different as owners than they would be as employees.” —Jeffrey Hollander [08:46]

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Segment 2: Building Brand Buzz for a Niche Premium Kidswear Label

Guest Expert: Sarah LaFleur (MM.LaFleur)

Caller: Monica Soni, founder/creative director, Trace London (luxury, minimalist kidswear)
Timestamps: [22:28] – [36:05]

Key Discussion Points & Insights

• Brand Positioning & Mission:
  Monica focuses on British-made, minimalist kidswear supporting local craftsmanship and sustainability, with intentional, small-batch collections.

• The Brand Heat Challenge:
  Monica asks, “How would you build real brand heat and word of mouth excitement with a niche audience of style-conscious parents that can drive sales—without a marketing budget?” [25:35]

• Lifestyle-Driven Messaging:

  • Sarah diagnoses the brand as fundamentally “selling a lifestyle”—a slower, curated, less-is-more philosophy for children’s clothing.
  • “Your kid doesn't need a hundred pieces of clothing... So where my head went to is like, I think this is. It's a capsule collection for kids.” —Sarah LaFleur [30:28]

• Iconic Details & Recognition:

  • Guy suggests a signature detail or motif (like “Thom Browne’s tag”) for immediate on-sight brand recognition.
  • Monica reveals plans for a chrysanthemum flower logo inspired by her mother. [28:51]

• Authentic Community Building:

  • Sarah recommends prioritizing real-world connections: trunk shows, pop-ups, and neighborhood gatherings over influencer marketing, which Monica found to have “mixed” conversion results.
  • “I think it starts with a neighborhood and not on social media... People will want to emulate you and your style and I think buy from you. And I think you're as much a part of the story as your product.” —Sarah LaFleur [31:55]

• Retention & Content Strategy:

  • Collect customer emails at every purchase for ongoing relationship-building.
  • Sarah advocates for content-led engagement (e.g., MM.LaFleur’s original “M Dash” blog), offering valuable lifestyle content rather than just product promotions. [34:19]
  • “WhatsApp is a channel that we’ve actually used with our customers... Because this is a lifestyle brand at its heart... ripe for that kind of communication.” —Sarah LaFleur [34:58]

Notable Quotes

• “The world needs beautiful things that are, you know, ethically manufactured.” —Sarah LaFleur [26:01]
• “The point you’re also trying to make is your kid doesn’t need a hundred clothes... it becomes an investment piece that’s worth having even for your kid.” —Sarah LaFleur [30:28]
• “It was an honor to speak with you guys.” —Monica Soni [36:05]

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Segment 3: Pricing Strategies & Channel Differentiation for EdTech

Guest Expert: Shazi Visram (Happy Family, Healthy Baby)

Caller: Sandy Dinniger, founder of Brain Buffs (adaptive SAT prep platform)
Timestamps: [38:42] – [54:09]

Key Discussion Points & Insights

• Business Model:
  Sandy’s company provides diagnostic, misconception-targeting SAT prep tailored for school districts, teachers, and eventually students—currently in six districts, aiming to scale.

• The Pricing Conundrum:
  Trying to launch a low-priced, direct-to-teacher option to expand growth without cannibalizing higher-value district sales:
  “...our concern with that is how do you give them a really good product without it not making sense for a district to be able to buy this in the future?” —Sandy Dinniger [49:57]

• Dual Channel Strategy:

  • Shazi: “Typically, it’s hard to sell the same exact thing for two different prices. Is there a way to differentiate?” [50:31]
  • Suggests tweaking the package for teachers (smaller feature set, easier entry point) and keeping the district offering richer and more robust.
  • Channel parity approach: like retailers, create different bundle sizes or features for different channels.

• Freemium & Data-Driven Value Proposition:

  • Guy and Shazi recommend a “freemium” starter model—let select teacher ‘influencers’ use the product free for a year in exchange for detailed student progress data.
  • “I stand behind it so much, I’ll give it to you for a year for free. It’s not cheapening it.” —Shazi Visram [53:04]

• Targeting Influencers & New Markets:

  • Use data and testimonials from respected teachers to convince districts; consider independent and private schools as early adopters.
  • Expand roadmap into additional standardized tests (ACT, AP) and state assessments where improvement metrics are deeply valued by districts.

• Customer and Market Understanding:

  • Standout value is in bridging the gap between what is taught and what is measured—providing granular misconception data to teachers and administrators.
  • Shazi, drawing from personal experience with special needs education, underscores the value of accessibility and ease-of-use for teachers.

Notable Quotes

• “You bring in a partner when they can bring something you can’t bring alone, like capital or network or real expertise and somebody who's really aligned with the long term vision.” —Guy Raz [13:30]
• “It’s nicer actually to say, I stand behind it so much, I’ll give it to you for a year for free. It’s not cheapening it.” —Shazi Visram [53:04]

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Memorable Moments & Takeaways

• The “Permanent” Cost of Equity:
  “It's expensive to give away equity and it's permanent.” —Guy Raz [09:57]

• Community and Lifestyle Lead, Not Just Product:
  “People will want to emulate you and your style... you’re as much a part of the story as your product.” —Sarah LaFleur [31:55]

• Advocacy for Founders:
  “It's hard to start a business, but it is the lifeblood of our country, the lifeblood of new jobs...we need to give these people more support.” —Jeffrey Hollander [14:40]

• Risk, Experimentation, and Validation:
  Each founder caller is encouraged to experiment with incentive structures, marketing, pricing, and channel strategies—always with an emphasis on test-learn-adapt.

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Timestamps for Segment Start

• Hearsay Brewing & Theater (Partnerships): [03:51]
• Trace London (Brand Building): [22:28]
• Brain Buffs (Pricing & Scaling EdTech): [38:42]

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The Episode’s Core Message

No matter the industry or stage, founders face universal challenges: wearing too many hats, finding the right team and partners, forging authentic brand identity, sustaining growth, and finding their ideal pricing and channel strategies. The wisdom shared in this episode is that business success is as much about mindset, support networks, and community-building as it is about product and process.

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Special Thanks

The episode features valuable, real-world advice from returning founders and reveals the ongoing, “human side” of business-building. If you enjoyed this mashup, Guy Raz recommends checking out the full founder episodes featured here.

Transcript

[Guy Raz]

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[Guy Raz]

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Hello and welcome to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz.

This is the place where we try

and help solve your business challenges. And every week I'm joined by a

legendary founder, a former guest on the show who will attempt with me to help you.

And this week our episode is a

bit of a mashup.

Three callers and three different former guests.

By the way, if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call. You might just be the next guest on the show and reach all of our listeners.

Our number is 1-800-433-1298.

Leave us a one minute message that

tells us a little bit about your

business and the issues or questions that

you'd like help with.

All right, let's get to it. Our first return guest today is Jeffrey Hollander. He's the co founder of 7th Generation. That's the company that specializes in plant

based household cleaning, paper and personal care products. Jeffre came on the show back in

2021 with his co founder Alan Newman. It was an amazing and intimate conversation about the challenges and being one of

the very first green household brands to

hit the market back in the early 90s.

If you want to hear the whole

story, we'll put a link to that episode in the show notes. Anyway, here on the advice line, Jeffrey and I talked a caller through the best way to bring on new business partners.

[Tony DeRosa]

Hi Jeffrey and Guy, My name is Tony deroza. I'm calling in today from Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I'm the owner of Hearsay Brewing and Theater, which is a two in one company with a microbrewery offering a full menu of beer, wine and spirits. And then an adjacent comedy theater that primarily focuses on improv comedy.

[Guy Raz]

Cool. Thanks for calling in, Tony. So it's a brewery and theater, but they're in different rooms.

[Tony DeRosa]

Yeah, they're kind of adjacent spaces. So the theater is in this contained space sort of within a larger kind of a picture, a big long rectangular brewery. And then in kind of the middle of that, there's a black box theater where we do improv and some stand up comedy. Roughly 40 events a month actually.

[Guy Raz]

I got it. Okay, so you're brewing beer, you've got comedy. And do you serve food too?

[Tony DeRosa]

We do. So we own and operate a food truck. But a big update Is we're actually going to be renting the food truck to another party who's well known in Ann Arbor, which should help me to kind of alleviate some of the many balls I have in the air at any given time. But we do operate that food truck and focus on Smashburgers.

[Guy Raz]

So this is a complex business. Before we dive in, tell me a little bit about the sales. How are you guys doing financially?

[Tony DeRosa]

Yeah. So last year was our first full year in business. We did $667,000 in revenue, and that's pretty evenly split across the bar and the theater within, food being another kind of 100k in that equation. We're growing so far in 2026, about 25%. So we're really getting some good feedback from the community. And I'm working on planning a really large improv comedy fe the Michigan Theater downtown, which we expect to bring in another 300 to 400,000 over the summer. So I'm projecting us to exceed a million dollars in our second full year just based on some of those major growth opportunities.

[Guy Raz]

Okay, so now that's.

And are you profitable?

[Tony DeRosa]

We took a small loss last year. I expect us to be profitable this year.

[Guy Raz]

Great.

Okay, tell us your question, and then we'll dive in further.

[Tony DeRosa]

Yeah. So it can be really hard to break out of the pattern of wearing too many hats as a solo founder. How would you evaluate staying the course as the sole owner of all these different business units versus bringing in partners that might have some skin in the game to lead one or more of those business units?

[Guy Raz]

Got it. All right, Jeffrey Hollander, I want to bring you in complex business. A brewery. There's food, there's theater. Is there anything else we're missing, by the way, Tony, A big part of

[Tony DeRosa]

my business and actually a huge growth opportunity is workshops for the corporate world. So I worked at Google before moving. We were in California, and I was doing workshops for teams. I think improv is so helpful for communication and trust with any kind of small group. So I still do a lot of that. And that's even another area where I'm often kind of dividing my time beyond the other things I've already mentioned.

[Vanguard Representative]

Wow.

[Tony DeRosa]

But, yeah, that would be the only other major business unit.

[Guy Raz]

Okay, so you've got classes, you've got shows, and you've got hospitality. Okay, Jeffrey, I want to bring you in here. Thoughts or questions before we tackle Tony's question?

[Jeffrey Hollander]

Well, I'll jump right into your question. I mean, I think bringing on partners is a challenging thing to do. It's hard to find the right person and partnering with the wrong person can be very dangerous to your business. I would think about what are the things that you do best better than anyone else can do and think about how you can focus on where you add the most value to your business, then hire people that can do the other things that are critical but not where you can do it better. Do you need capital? Is that why you want a partner? What's the purpose of having a partner?

[Tony DeRosa]

It would certainly help. Yeah. And I've felt burned a couple times by bringing in people as employees, kind of key employees that didn't pan out exactly as I hoped. I think I felt that being a first time founder, that dynamic of there's just a different feel when somebody is kind of working for a paycheck versus hey, I've got a significant amount of either stock options to vest or I've put in capital. I remember from your interview you talked about having more silent partner investors and that could probably be an option for our business as well. But it's been largely driven by some of the feedback I've just had working with employees so far.

[Jeffrey Hollander]

At times I love the idea of having skin in the game and giving your employees a way to participate in your success. I think you don't want to have them controlling the business, but having them be small owners in the business will be hugely motivational and I think they'll be very different as owners than they would be as employees.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah, you can. Or profit sharing. I mean there's ESOPs. Profit sharing is a great way to start. I think that's a great idea because once someone has skin in the game they show up very differently. But you've got three different businesses, right? You've got hospitality because you're doing the food and the tap and the beer. And then you've got an entertainment business which is the shows. And it sounds like you've got a whole nother sort of educational classes kind of business. Right. And, and so finding like many CEOs for each unit, like somebody who runs the hospitality, you know, just that's their portfolio. Somebody whose portfolio is like ticketing and programming and then the other person is education. So I agree with Jeffrey that finding partners who will then be equity partners is.

It's tricky because that's permanent.

It's. It's expensive to give away equity and it's permanent. And I wonder whether you might want to think about finding or experimenting. You're not going to find the perfect person, but experimenting with people who could kind of own those different units as paid employees maybe who gain a little bit of ownership over time when they hit milestones, but something like that before you bring in full equity partners.

[Tony DeRosa]

Yeah, I love that idea. I think it actually riffs on something that I've identified as maybe a weakness for myself at times. I think I occasionally just get really excited and tend to see the bright side of people versus maybe having a sharper eye of is this person the perfect fit? Are they really checking all the boxes that we need? And so I've kind of looked at that as I'm bringing in some of these key folks just getting extra help because I have had to really figure things out on the fly with, you know, food. Sometimes it's like you're the owner of the company and you're flipping burgers one night because, hey, somebody called out and you've just got to, you know, you got to make it happen and get it done. And I'm looking for people to come in and help me.

[Jeffrey Hollander]

I wouldn't do the interviews alone. By having other people with me, they see different things than I see. You might see just the good, but someone else might see challenges that you're not paying attention to. So I never like to have one person make the decision about a new employee. I always think it's good to have more than one person interact with them.

[Tony DeRosa]

That's great advice.

[Jeffrey Hollander]

Also took a look at your website and you know, you open with high there, but I think your message of crafting community through joy and laughter is a more powerful place to start the communication than just hi there.

[Tony DeRosa]

Appreciate that. Yeah, yeah, I think that, yeah, we could get our mission more front and center because we are operating at a time when, you know, craft beer is actually declining. There's quite a few breweries that are closing and sales across the border are down. So for us to open a brewery at this time, it was really important to us that we were appealing to people that, you know, drink only non alcoholic beverages. And that community building with just the number of partnerships and events we do was a really important part of our founding. So we could make that more front and center. I like that.

[Guy Raz]

What part of the. It's a. I think having a diversified revenue stream is really critical in this business. And the same happening with wine. Which of these three businesses are you seeing the most growth potential right now and then which one right now is the most profitable?

[Tony DeRosa]

The. You know, there are much better margins selling classes and workshops, obviously because you're not dealing with cost of food, cost of, you Know, the, a lot of the labor I'm providing in that, you know, we've run them for large companies, small companies, a lot of university teams that is both growing and the most profitable. Such is kind of the same part, I would say. It's the, it's the workshops and we've started to get bigger leads. I did some competitive analysis and learned I was way underpricing my workshops compared to competitors like Second City, which has a lot of gravitas and name recognition and the comedy world. So I am cognizant of that. But I felt that when I looked at what we were charging, I actually got feedback from a client. So just so you know, Your bid was 20% of what second City had quoted us. I was like, okay, it is time to really evaluate that. And, you know, I'm looking at that as probably where I could even be spending more of my time to, you know, benefit companies. Kind of tell that story of how improv can be a really powerful tool for business and as you said, have kind of these mini CEOs running some of the more hospitality driven business units.

[Guy Raz]

You know, you said something, Tony, about improv, and I agree with you. I mean, I remember interviewing Jason Sudeikis and he talked about doing improv in high school. There were programs that he was part of. And improv is so it's such a great skill for people to gain confidence and presence and it's a wonderful. So I love that that you're doing that and you bring in a partner. And Jeffrey, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think you bring in a partner when they can bring something, you know, that you can't bring alone, like capital or network or real expertise and somebody who's really aligned with the long term vision here, who's going to bring real value. That's when you bring in the partner.

[Jeffrey Hollander]

Yep, I agree.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah. The company is called Hearsay Brewing and Theater in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Tony DeRosa, thanks so much for calling in. Good luck.

[Tony DeRosa]

Thank you guys so much.

[Guy Raz]

Appreciate it, Jeffrey.

I mean, one of the things I

love about the thing I love about doing this is just the variety of categories and brands and ideas that we get.

But there's always the same core challenges, no matter what.

There's. It just puts it all into perspective.

[Jeffrey Hollander]

It's hard to start a business, but it is the lifeblood of our country, the lifeblood of new jobs. And I think that we need to give these people more support than they get. It's hard to find capital. It's hard to grow a company. And because it's such an important part of our economy, I would love to see more support given to those startups so that we can have more of them.

[Guy Raz]

We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, Sarah lafleur, founder of the women's clothing brand MM lafleur, joins me.

[Sponsor Voice]

Stay with us.

[Guy Raz]

You're listening to a special mashup episode of the Advice Line right here on

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Hey, welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab.

I'm Guy Raz and my next guest is Sarah Lafleur, founder of MM Lafleur.

Sarah was first on the show back

in 2020 and told us her incredible journey. She was building a career in finance when she realized that just picking out her outfit every day had become completely exhausting. And even though she had no background in clothing or design, she set out to create her own fashion brand for women. We'll put a link to her episode on the show.

Notes.

Anyway, when Sarah joined me on the advice line, we helped a caller figure

out the best way to build a

lifestyle around her brand.

[Texting Assistant]

Hi Guy and Sarah, My name is Monica Soni calling in from London and I'm the founder and Creative Director of Dress London. We are a British made, quiet luxury kids wear brand with a design led intentional pieces for the cool Modern family.

[Guy Raz]

Awesome. Welcome to the show Monke so Tres London, not Trey London.

[Texting Assistant]

Yes, yes, I get that a lot.

[Guy Raz]

And this is a. It's a clothing brand for kids aged

[Texting Assistant]

what, aged six months to eight years.

[Sponsor Voice]

Okay.

[Guy Raz]

And what I mean, you know, some people might think of Like Gymboree or. I don't know. But what we're talking about, this is a premium brand of clothing that you're making.

[Texting Assistant]

Yes. So we design very sort of modern minimalist pieces that. Similar to kind of what Sarah has been able to build with. Mm. With lure, intentional design led. I come from a luxury womenswear background, so my, you know, I work, I went to Parsons and what I was finding in the kids wear industry when I first had my son back in 2019 was it was very surprising that I couldn't find kids wear brands that spoke to my design aesthetic or which was sort of this modern minimalist curated wardrobe.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah. So you are, so you, you, you're a designer, you've designed this line of clothing. And, and I see that they're made in the uk.

[Texting Assistant]

Yes.

[Guy Raz]

Which means that that's, that's more expensive than making it in a factory in China.

[Texting Assistant]

Absolutely. That was a huge part of the mission for me because when, when I first began to conceive of the brand back in 2020, the British, the manufacturing industry in England was having a really hard time with Brexit, with COVID it was all but diminished. And so part of my mission was obviously I want to be able to be right there to see the product, to be able to have quality control on the ground all the time and to be able to then also support incredible British craftsmanship at the same time. It sort of worked hand in hand.

[Guy Raz]

Where are you selling the clothing right now?

[Texting Assistant]

At the moment we're just D2C.

[Guy Raz]

Okay, so not in boutiques or anything yet?

[Texting Assistant]

Not in boutiques just yet.

[Guy Raz]

And give me a sense of how you're doing with sales. Like, how did you do last year?

[Texting Assistant]

So we are very much a limited edition brand. So everything we make is small, small batch. So we are around the low five figure mark at this point, which I was very happy with because it really gave us proof of concept to say there is clearly a market here.

[Guy Raz]

All right, before we dive in further, what is your question?

[Texting Assistant]

So for a premium niche brand like ours, how would you build real brand heat and word of mouth excitement with a niche audience of style conscious parents that can drive real sales without a marketing budget?

[Guy Raz]

Okay, that's a, that's a challenge. And really, I mean, I love this. Like you probably right up your alley, Sarah, in looking at these designs with, you know, with sort of how you think about design aesthetic for sure.

[Sarah Lafleur]

And I mean, I'm speaking both as like a fellow fashion founder. So Monica, so, so nice to meet you. And welcome. Welcome to this business. You know, I know you've been in it for a long time as a designer, and it is not for the faint of heart, but the world needs, needs beautiful things that are, you know, ethically manufactured. And so I really commend you for starting this. And I'm on your website. I mean, the aesthetic looks beautiful and really, I think, reflects a lot of the training that you've been through. So. And now I'm speaking as a mom, I think, you know, one challenge that I definitely feel as a parent when I'm shopping for kids clothes is like, wow, like I really want to buy my kids beautiful, well made things. And I also know they're gonna get tomato sauce all over it and go out of it and they're gonna go out of it in six months. And I'm curious how you've thought about that tension and what do you say to parents who have that question?

[Texting Assistant]

Yeah, that's a great question. And that's definitely been a point of tension. I think what I tend to usually say to customers, number one, there is always a way to get out of stainless. Once you understand a couple of different ways that most of these sort of simple, basic ones can be taken out, you really are kind of, you're stain free. Because I put my kids in white and all these beautiful cream colors and a little bit of vinegar and water can go a long way. And I know that ends up being a little bit more work. But when you have a process in place, then being able to buy something that you actually can use for more than say those three, four washes that you'll get out of a, you know, fast fashion brand. Because these products really last two, three years even with your child growing. Because we, we build in the sizing. They are naturally oversized for the look, but also so that they age with the child and you get at least two years out of them, then it becomes an investment piece that's worth having even for your kid.

[Guy Raz]

Monica, when you, when people wear these art, these items, right, I noticed that you've got some, you know, like the sleeves are really interesting. You notice the sort of the cut. And it reminds me a little. I just saw a documentary on Thom Browne and you know what a Thom Browne item is because it's got that red, white and blue tag or somewhere on it. And I wonder, like, if I saw your pieces on a playground, how would I know it's Trace London? Like, do you, have you thought about even like a label or something that can be sewn on the Outside or something that makes it instantly recognizable.

[Texting Assistant]

That's a great question. We are actually in development right now for a very simple design for a little chrysanthemum flower that is actually based off of. My mom was named Flor angel when she was alive and she's a huge inspiration for me for this brand as well. And what she represents as sort of this beautiful being in, in my life. But also that when we were kids, I don't know if you guys ever did this as a kid, but we used to always doodle chrysanthemums. And I thought it was a great parallel to, to look at the beauty of a flower and the. And, and also what it means and then this sort of creativity in childhood and be able to use that as a mark in. In little sort of hidden places.

[Sarah Lafleur]

I feel like, Monica, you are really selling a lifestyle just even in when you were talking about how you should care for the garment. And that's like a slower lifestyle movement. Right. That I think a lot of parents are very curious about. I think even like, you know, busy working moms like myself, like, we're kind of horrified by the amount of toxins that we use to clean our kids clothes and, and vinegar is like a much more environmentally friendly and healthy way to take care of our clothing. But I think the point you're also trying to make is like your kid doesn't need a hundred clothes, 100 pieces of clothing. Like, you only really need a top and a bottom. And how many of those do you actually need? And so where my head went to is like, I think this is. It's a capsule collection for kids.

[Texting Assistant]

Absolutely.

[Guy Raz]

Monica, I have a quick question for you and also related to marketing, have you tried influencer marketing?

[Texting Assistant]

I have. In very small strategic ways.

[Guy Raz]

And success or not much?

[Texting Assistant]

I would say it's been mixed. I think we've had a lot of traffic come to us from a couple of great influencers. But in terms of conversion, it has, it has been mixed. And I think part of that is really being able to find that, really, really find that niche that understands the brand.

[Guy Raz]

I'm not surprised that influencer marketing hasn't really panned out because I'm not convinced that your customer necessarily follows influencers for kids wear, let's say. Right. I think that they're probably noticing like the woman in Notting Hill who at school drop off who's so elegant or like a creative director type of person.

Right.

And I would say instead of paying influencers, I would try to identify people like that. People that you probably already kind of know or know of or have some

kind of connection with and just say and do whatever you can to get it on their kids say, can I

give you a piece? Because that's really where you're gonna find, I think, at least initially, more traction.

[Texting Assistant]

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

[Sarah Lafleur]

Yeah. With guy, actually when you first posed your problem, like where my head went to was actually like trunk shows. And I don't know if you've had a few of those, but I think it starts with a neighborhood and not on social media. And so Monica, we're able to see your face and talk to you here. You're clearly a very elegant person and you have great taste and sensibility. Like people will want to emulate you and your style and I think buy from you. And I think you're as much a part of the story as your product. So trunk shows.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah, trunk shows. A great idea or pop ups in, I mean, I imagine, you know, London has so many beautiful boutiques and awesome spaces and you know, a pop up or maybe a collaboration with a boutique somewhere where people can see these articles and touch them. Because I think, and it really is the kind of thing that the kind of person going to that boutique is gonna be interested in. And that becomes the flywheel. That's where people are like, wow, look at what that little girl is wearing on the slide. It's just a beautiful cardigan or jumper or whatever it is.

[Texting Assistant]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we have had most of our sales have actually come from our pop ups because they have been instantly converting when people come and touch and feel the fabrics or, you know, you can see the, the value. I, I'm reminded of, of your episode, Sarah, when you mentioned about when, you know, you were able to have the trunk shows and people came and were able to touch and feel the, you know, little black dress and realize, okay, this is why there's a difference between, you know, why I'm paying $198 for a dress. So. Yeah.

[Guy Raz]

And Monica, make sure to capture those emails when they buy and contact. So you can, you know, you've got a newsletter you can do Newsletter, Maybe. I don't know. If you do one, you may want to do. Okay, great. And that you just want to make sure that you, that purchase results in a relationship, long term relationship.

[Texting Assistant]

How would you recommend reaching back out and really capturing them again? Because sometimes I feel like emails just get lost even when they were very excited about the merch purchase.

[Guy Raz]

Sarah, thoughts?

[Sarah Lafleur]

Yeah, email. First of all, I think is just a declining channel. And that's just the hard truth. It's not that people don't read emails anymore, but people get so many of them every single day that it's impossible to keep in track. I go back to the lifestyle thing because I think, Monica, you're presenting a unique point of view and you have a perspective. And I think for. Mm. A huge differentiator for us as a brand was our blog. It was called the M Dash, and it's a weekly newsletter. And we actually launched the EM Dash even before we had the products ready. And it started out as weekly interviews of professional women that I admired, and now it's become a substack and it's still one of our most opened types of emails. And I think to be able to engage her in content, not just in product promotion, Yes, I think that's the way to really hook her in. I also think if you're able to build this small community, WhatsApp is a channel that we've actually used with our customers. And, you know, it has to be genuinely. It has to feel beneficial to her. You can't just, you know, be like, saying, like, 50% off, you know, you know, every week like that, or, you know, new launch every, every other day. Like, that's not really the goal of the WhatsApp. But I think because this is a lifestyle brand at its heart and there's community that you're trying to build around it and a consciousness that you're trying to build around it, I think it's ripe for that kind of communication.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah, agreed. 100%. The brand is called Trace London. Monica Soni, thanks so much for calling and good luck.

[Texting Assistant]

Thank you so much. It was an honor to speak with you guys.

[Guy Raz]

We're going to take another quick break, but when we come back, another caller with another question for a former guest.

Stay with us.

You're listening to a special mashup episode of the Advice Line right here on

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on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz.

So our last return guest this week is Shazi Visram, founder of Happy Family Brands. Shazi was first on the show back

in 2020 to tell us the story of building an organic baby food company

from scratch and knowing nothing about the industry. And then after her son was diagnosed with autism, Shazi launched Healthy Baby, a non toxic baby care brand that she now runs. We'll put a link to her episode on the show.

Notes.

Anyway, Shazi joined me on the advice line to help a founder consider different pricing strategies to attract a new type of customer.

[Sandy Dinniger]

Hello, my name is Sandy Dinniger. I'm calling from Boulder, Colorado and I started Brain Buffs, which is an adaptive learning platform that unifies standardized test prep with real time misconception diagnosing. So teachers, principals and districts are able to kind of understand not just what students are missing, but the underlying misconceptions on why they're missing it.

[Guy Raz]

Got it.

Okay Sandy, welcome to the show. So you've got this test prep. This is for the SAT or other tests?

[Sandy Dinniger]

Yes, it is from the SAT and it's more about the underlying proficiencies of math and reading. So our goal is to kind of expand it to math and reading in general from the sat.

[Guy Raz]

Okay. So you basically explain how it works. You go on as a student, and I've got a junior in high school who's done with testing, thank God, but we went through this. You go online, you take a practice test. Like, how does it work?

[Sandy Dinniger]

Yes. So I just graduated college last week, actually. So we started kind of in college. Thank you. And looking back, we were amazed how separated the SAT is from school when it matters so much to the students. And we wanted to integrate it back into the school day. So on the student side, they take a diagnostic test. We're able to identify what they're missing, why they're missing it, based on what wrong answers they're choosing and things like that. And then on the teacher side, we aggregate that at a class level and can give recommendations like, hey, overall, maybe it was supposed to be taught this year, but your students are missing this. It might be good to go over this again. And then at a district level, they can look overall at their curriculum and say, hey, look, it seems we have a large gap in this thing that we think we're hitting. We need to look at why we're not hitting that.

[Guy Raz]

Got it.

[Sponsor Voice]

Okay.

[Guy Raz]

So you get a diagnostic, and you do diagnostic test, and then it tells you where you need help, but it also trains you. It gives you exercises.

[Sandy Dinniger]

So it is like an adaptive learning that goes along with you and updates your predicted score as you go as a student.

[Guy Raz]

Okay. And your customers are not individual students or parents. It's schools.

[Sandy Dinniger]

Schools and school districts. Yes.

[Guy Raz]

Okay. And so right now, how many schools are you guys in or school districts?

[Sandy Dinniger]

So we are in six school districts aiming this year. Obviously, it's very cyclical. We're aiming for about 12 this coming year with our current talks, and that'll be about 6,000 students last year. We're aiming for around 20,000 students this year across those districts.

[Guy Raz]

Okay, and right now, what was your. What were your sales looking like last year?

[Sandy Dinniger]

So last year was 120,000.

[Guy Raz]

Okay.

And so you've got these through these six school districts.

And.

And they're basically paying. They pay per student. Is that how it works? Their cost? Okay. And then the teacher can use this in the classroom for sophomores and juniors, seniors as well, if they want. Okay. All right. So you've got this going on. And tell me how you just graduated from college. So you started this while you were a student at the University of Colorado?

[Sandy Dinniger]

Yes. So we all started together, just me and a couple of my friends in college. And it started Actually literally just as SAT tutoring. And then from there we were like, we want to know exactly what the students are missing. And it just kind of stacked on top of each other until we got to where we're at today.

[Guy Raz]

All right, before we dive in further, tell us what your question is for us.

[Sandy Dinniger]

So my question is, obviously we're aiming for district contracts, which can take six months to a year or two years, especially with piloting programs. But the more students that use our platform, the better we can make it. And our goal is to create a direct to teacher model that we've seen worked in a lot of ed tech companies where it is very affordable for a teacher to try it for their class. And we want to make it really cheap and affordable for teacher growth nationwide with not anchoring out ourselves of district sales.

[Guy Raz]

All right, I want to bring in Shazi in a sec. But just to clarify, the model you're talking about is that you can make it available to teachers at a lower price. So the teachers would basically use their own money to buy this?

[Sandy Dinniger]

Yes.

[Guy Raz]

Okay.

[Sandy Dinniger]

And sometimes, like a math department might have a small budget as well that they use for this.

[Guy Raz]

Got it.

All right, I want to bring Shazi in.

I know a little bit about this

from a kids company that I have called Tinkercast. We make kids podcasts and science toys, and we have made an edtech platform and we've tried to sell that. It's tricky. But I'll get into that in a sec. Shazi, want to bring you in. First of all, questions or ideas or thoughts for Sandy?

[Sponsor Voice]

Well, I love what you're doing. I think it's really meaningful because it sounds like you're democratizing something that has been a challenge for most people to get that additional support. I also have a child with special needs and he has an iep, so I'm familiar with the way the schools work and the challenge in even just getting him approved for a certain ATEC device, which is an adaptive tech device to help him communicate. It literally took me like a year of PPT meetings. And so I love what you're doing. I don't know what the competitive landscape is. Like, are there a number of products like yours or similar and why is yours better?

[Sandy Dinniger]

So there are, like, very tangential products, but how our product works with, like, talking to the teacher in their way. And we've like, very much focused on making it simple. Like the number one thing you hear from teachers, like, I don't want another thing to deal with. So we have really focused on making it, like, extremely easy. There's, like, one or two clicks a teacher would have to make to do anything, essentially, on our site and making it really easy for them to navigate. And just, like, how we talk to them in their language has been our biggest moat in terms of why it's been different.

[Sponsor Voice]

Do you have data that shows that students who collectively, let's say in a classroom, are taking the program perform better?

[Sandy Dinniger]

Yes. Yes. Not this past year, as we're still waiting for the SAT data. Our first cohorts were the year before, and the average student increased 148 points, and that's about, like, 0.75 standard deviations above their expected growth for our engaged students.

[Sponsor Voice]

Wow.

[Guy Raz]

So what is the. I mean, I'm curious about. You know, there are free SAT prep resources, right? The College Board has one, their own Khan Academy, and they have their own stats and seem to suggest that their prep really does help improve outcomes. What is the sort of the value prop here? What do you say in response?

[Sandy Dinniger]

Yes. So that is what almost everyone is using. And the main thing is that is really talking to the student. Our goal is a ton of teachers are annoyed with standardized tests because they don't feel like it tests what they're teaching. So one of our biggest things is essentially speaking to the teacher where we can aggregate this data. But it's not like, in relation to an SAT question. It's in relation to a misconception that their students are having, which the teachers that we work with have found, like, a ton of benefit in. And I've spent so much time just driving around to all of our schools and talking to teachers. And although there is so many options, we've never had anyone that isn't frustrated with the disconnection between it and their normal curriculum.

[Guy Raz]

I see. So basically, this really, what you're selling is a data set, right? You are saying to the schools, hey, you can have this data that can then enable you and your teachers to adjust how and what they're teaching.

[Sandy Dinniger]

Yes, exactly.

[Guy Raz]

Got it. Okay. Now, my question is, I mean, you're in six school districts, but I'm imagining they're pretty small school districts, right?

[Sandy Dinniger]

We actually have some of the biggest ones in Colorado.

[Guy Raz]

In Colorado.

[Vanguard Representative]

Okay.

[Guy Raz]

All right.

Tough to get into school districts, as you know, but if you can do it, it's great because that can scale, Right? Like, if you've got a contract at the New York City schools or the Los Angeles school district, the two biggest in the country, you're good to go. Very hard to do, you know, there's. The RFP process in these big school districts is challenging. So I guess my question is, in addition to trying to reach out to the public school districts, what about independent schools or consortiums of independent schools, which might be a little bit easier to deal with. And independent schools sometimes are more incentivized to say, hey, we have the average SAT score of our graduating seniors is, you know, 1450 or something. Right. It's another way for them to say, come to our school.

[Sandy Dinniger]

Yeah, a couple parts. So first, we totally agree on that. It is something we're really considering, but we've had great results in our districts. And although they're very hard to get into, it's a very close knit community. So we've had referrals from one district to another, which has helped us get in that way. But we are looking, and partially also with our direct to Teacher 1, into those private schools where they have more autonomy and can move faster.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah, I'm looking at your dashboard here that you offer. You've got a sample of what it looks like for the school district of a teacher, which is really impressive, Right. You can get really granular here, like nonlinear functions or quadratic equations and how it sort of maps out on student outcomes. I mean, to me, that is like an interesting approach, right? Which is to say, hey, you can. And you may have used this in your pitch, but it's like, not only can we help you improve outcomes, but this is. Imagine being the school district with the highest average SAT scores in Colorado, right. Imagine being able to. To show that as a metric. And I wonder, because your question is, how do you price this? Right. And you've got to price it in a way that is competitive but also reflects the premium nature of this product. But I wonder whether you try to kind of split this in two, which is to say in year one, we really want to show you we believe that this will improve outcomes and we will put, you know, we're putting our reputations and our money behind this. So we will actually give it to you for, you know, a third the price in year one. I mean, it's a risk, but it's a. But if you really believe that this product is transformational, it might be a risk worth taking.

[Sandy Dinniger]

Yes. And that is kind of the angle we're going. And I guess, like one teacher, right? They could have 120 students, so you're not licensing them per student. So it would be remarkably affordable for the teacher. And I guess our concern with that is how do you give them a really good product without it not making sense for a district to be able to buy this in the future.

[Sponsor Voice]

You're saying that you've created something really premium. You want to capture the premium price point, which is the district level, and that's more like an enterprise pricing. And then you're kind of considering the teachers as individual licensees.

[Sandy Dinniger]

Yes, exactly. And for the districts, it's student licensing. But for teachers that are not in our districts, our goal is for someone to just be able to log in in that day, be able to have their students on it for something that a teacher just wouldn't bat an eye on.

[Sponsor Voice]

Typically, it's hard to sell the same exact thing for two different prices. Is there a way to differentiate? Sort of like a channel strategy, like in retail. Let's say we were selling, I don't know, ten pack of pouches. Maybe at Target, it's on sale for a certain price point. And then at Walmart, you might have a 20 pack that hits a similar price point so that there's parity. Do you have, like, a way that you can tweak the product offering?

[Sandy Dinniger]

Yeah, I guess.

[Sponsor Voice]

So that it's better for. One way is better for teachers, and one way is actually, you know, hits the needs of the district and those managers who are reporting back.

[Sandy Dinniger]

That is probably the best way to do it and make it like a parody of two products.

[Guy Raz]

I mean, or a freemium model. I mean, I think that you need to really collect that data and use that data as evidence to show the benefits of this platform. The challenge with teachers is that they just don't. They just don't have the money. I mean, I think. And they're not, you know, it's hard to ask a teacher to out of pocket, you know, spend 100 bucks or 500 bucks or whatever a month on this product. I mean, the one way to maybe do it is to identify three to five really influential teachers in math, let's say, for example, in Colorado, and you give them the opportunity to use this for a year and you have access to the data, and then you can go to those districts and say, you know, here's what this teacher. Here's what happened the year before, here's what happened the year after. And, you know, but that's also a risk because you're going to have to, I think, give it away to try that in exchange for data.

[Sandy Dinniger]

Yeah, so that sounds. Yeah. So like, are you saying that, like, you would find teachers, obviously, that are really, like, interested in actually engaging and then choose a small subset, three to

[Guy Raz]

five or maybe more, if you can afford it and you give it to them and you say in exchange, we're going to, you know, we want to see, we want to get a sense of overall test scores from last year, if we can get them. If you can get an average math SAT test score, let's say, and then you can compare it. So I think you need to find a really respected group of teachers, well known in the district and see if you can experiment and say, hey, we want to give you this. We want to measure what happens to your students.

[Sandy Dinniger]

Yeah, okay. Yeah, I know. And I think I could build kind of like a small community even within those teachers and be able to, like, you can obviously talk to them directly and stuff a lot more, which is good.

[Guy Raz]

Yep.

[Sponsor Voice]

I like freemium, too. That's a good one, guy. Because you don't want to cheapen your product by offering deep discounts. It's nicer actually to say, I stand behind it so much, I'll give it to you for a year for free. It's not cheapening it. And you're going to consistently, I'm sure, improve the UX and the product itself. And yeah, I like the idea of having influencers, teacher influencers.

[Guy Raz]

And there are ways to really grow this. Right. Like, you can focus on, of course, the ACT and the AP exams. But I think where schools are really, and this is tricky because for many years, schools were teaching two tests, which also created problems. But districts in some states, they get rewarded if standardized tests are higher. Right. If the math and reading scores of 8th and 9th graders improve. And that could also be interesting to see if over time, you also have the state and national standardized tests that schools and states take.

[Sandy Dinniger]

Yeah.

[Guy Raz]

Sandy Dinniger, brain buffs. Good luck, man.

Congrats.

Awesome.

[Sandy Dinniger]

Thanks. Thank you, guys.

[Texting Assistant]

Good luck.

[Guy Raz]

Hey, thanks so much for listening to this special mashup edition of the Advice Line. And special thanks to Jeffrey Hollander, co founder of Seventh Generation, Sarah Lafleur, founder of MM lafleur, and Shazi Visram, founder

of Happy Family and Healthy Baby.

And again, if you haven't heard their

original episodes or their full episodes of the Advice Line, you'll definitely want to check them out.

We will have links to them in the show.

Notes. This episode was produced by Kerry Thompson with music composed by Ramtina Rabloui.

It was edited by John Isabella, and our audio engineer was Jimmy Keeley. Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, Carla Estevez, J.C. howard, Sam Paulson, Kathryn Seifer, Chris Masini, Alex Chung, Neva Grant and Elaine Coates.

I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening

to the vice line right here on

how I build this lab.

Thanks again to Engine for their support. If your business is growing and your team is traveling, Engine makes it simple and saves you money doing it. 33,000 businesses have joined. Now it's your turn. Engine com built.