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Proven Podcast
How to Steal $500 Million From Barkbox's Playbook - Henrik Werdelin
00:49:34
In this energetic episode, Charles sits down with Henrik Werdelin—creative entrepreneur and co-founder of BARK, the brand behind BarkBox—to explore how play, empathy, and identity fuel the growth of beloved consumer brands. Henrik unpacks the...
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to the Proven podcast, where it doesn't matter what you think, only what you can prove. Everyone says building a brand is about solving a problem. Today's guest, Henrik Verdelin, proves it's about understanding who you're building for. Even if they've got four legs and a tail. He's proven that when you lead with empathy, joy and creativity, you don't just build a business, you build a movement. The show starts now. Everybody, welcome back to the show. Today I'm joined by Hendrik. Thank you so much for being here.
- [00:29]
B
I appreciate it for being here too.
- [00:32]
A
For the five or six people who don't know who you are, can you kind of give a little bit of a debrief of who you are and.
- [00:38]
B
What your accolades are for everybody outside my mother, I am an entrepreneur. I spend the last 20 odd year building companies. I'm probably best known for being the co founder of Bark, the company behind Barkbox and Bark Air.
- [00:52]
A
Gotcha. So you've had some really intense success and you've also done some coaching. You've helped a lot of people out when you were going to talk about things about why to start a business, AI relationships and all that. But if we were going to tell one person right now, you know, going back 20 years ago, what would be the one thing you would tell yourself to do no matter what?
- [01:10]
B
Hmm. You know what the one advice that I always kind of like go back to, the guy from, from Virgin got asked this once and he said, if you only had one advice for an entrepreneur, would that be. And he replied, go to the gym. So I think I might actually go back to that because I didn't start getting into shape until in my 40s and it didn't definitely would have been easier if I start a little bit earlier. So I might echo that.
- [01:34]
A
Well, you know, shape, it depends. Round is a shape. So technically it's still a shape. A buddy of mine, he's a very large guy and he's like, I have a body of a God. Too bad it's Buddha. So we have this conversation. So yes, I agree with you. Health is wealthy. People talk about all the time, that time's the most important thing you have. And it's not. There are people who have had polio and they're paralyzed from the neck down, stuck in a coffee can. Forget 90 years health as well. So I agree with that. But when we're talking about building huge wealth, you know, you've, you've got a book coming up and, you know, to help people understand how you build entrepreneurship and how you build successful businesses is very different than other people that have told about it. So what is your take on that? Especially when people come and they want to be kind of mentored or coached by you on this?
- [02:15]
B
I think, you know, different people have different pedagogy of entrepreneurship and I definitely have my own flavor. I think what makes mine may be different is that if you go to an mba, they'll talk about marketing sizing and product market fit. And if you go to some kind of avenues of the Internet, they'll talk about like how to hustle and stuff like that. The way that I think about it is that the two most important thing to ask yourself is who do you want to serve and what is the problem they have. And so if you have those two, then you basically have a lot of shots on goal. And these different ideas you have to how to solve those problems are just kind of different permutation of ideas that you can then test yourself into. But I really like not starting with an idea, but starting with a person you'd like to work with for a long time. And then what's a really mean problem they have? I use this framework I call it sucks that framework. And it sucks. That is kind of like a nice way of thinking about a problem that is meaty. And then it's a good way of kind of like just having that in your brain. So if somebody really goes it's really sucks that then you're like, ah, there might be distant opportunity.
- [03:21]
A
So can you give me an example of one that it sucks that and then that's good. And then another one that probably not so good.
- [03:28]
B
I mean like I'll give you one. I mean like you could take the ones in my world. Like it sucks that it's really difficult to make your dog happy. You know, it's very complicated to find the right toys for them or it's really difficult to travel with your dog. Which is some of the things that I've tried to solve, the business I've been involved in. I think one of the things that people should be a little bit careful about are these things I call the cocktail party problems. And these are things where people say, hey, what do you think about this idea? And then most people honestly will say, oh, that sounds pretty good. Like people are pretty kind to you. I have this kind of little rule I call the swipe. And which is the most honest thing, which is basically can you get anybody to swipe their credit card? Because if you come up with an idea and then people say, that's great. And you said, okay, well, I have, you know, square on my Venmo, on my phone. I square on my phone, I'd like to take your money. Then they'll start to ask the real kind of, like, serious question, and you can kind of figure out the actual. Actually believe that you can solve this problem or not.
- [04:26]
A
Yeah. It goes to the conversation of, okay, do they want it? Can they afford it? Will they buy it? And the example I always use is Bugatti, because when I'm normally in South Florida, it's like, does everyone want a Bugatti?
- [04:37]
B
Sure.
- [04:37]
A
People in my world, can they afford it? Absolutely. Are they going to pay for it? Absolutely not. Steer out of your mind. Just. Why would I buy something that ridiculous? That's millions of dollars. It make no sense whatsoever. Sorry. Bugatti.
- [04:49]
B
Miami, where people do that kind of stuff?
- [04:52]
A
Well, yeah, I'm a little bit farther north. I'm in West Palm. But, yeah, in Miami, people do lots of stupid. Lots of stupid.
- [04:58]
B
I've been to the hotel, hotel with my wife once in Miami, and we were out, had a night out, as I guess you do in Miami. And, you know, the next morning she kind of crawled to the minibar and kind of like, took the first bottle of water and then was drinking it. And I was like, looking at the menu, oh, God, the produce, $50 or that. And apparently it was like a gold kind of infused thing. And I was like, what are you doing, honey?
- [05:23]
A
There's a think. What are you doing? Yeah, there's a lot of stupid of.
- [05:28]
B
Florida is that everybody buys ridiculous things.
- [05:31]
A
We. It's. It's. The thing is. I know, I know you're not American, so you're probably not pronouncing this properly. It's not Florida. It's Florida. Duh. It's D U H at the end. It's not D A. It's just, duh. I've been there since I was 5. I get to say these things about the state. So deal with it. So.
- [05:47]
B
All right, so people very much going in there.
- [05:49]
A
For the record, though, it's Florida is. It's when we only have two seasons, there's hot and oh, my God. So, yeah, the oh, my God seasons are. You just. You don't want to be there. But so when you come in, you know, you've got a different opinion about this. And you. You're very pragmatic about it. You're like, listen, you didn't put you as part of the factor in this. You're like, okay, who do you want to serve and what is the massive pain that are in it? How can you resolve that? When people come to you and they mentor with you and they ask these questions, they don't understand how important relationship capital is. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
- [06:20]
B
Yeah, I mean, like, we've always felt that relationship capital is important. And I think it comes back to the pedagogy of the entrepreneurs that we have. If you look at the business that I've already done, always done, they're defined by who they serve and the problem, not necessarily by what they do. And so bark is a good example. We want to make docs and their people happy. And that's been kind of like the North Star. And so when we launched a new business after we had the box, a lot of people assume that we do cat box because they're so used to thinking of people defining their business as what the function is. Put stuff in that box, send out to people. Now we're in the business of making dogs happy, so sending stuff to cats makes very little sense. And so we. So the. So I've always been on that kind of way of thinking. And so over the years, we defined this as a relation of capital, which basically have three components to it. One is like what we call depth, which is basically how does the customer feel truly understood? Like, do they, do they. Do they feel seen? And that could be kind of like in a simple kind of way of like, if you email the company, how fast do they respond? I think about that as like the customer effort score. The second part is what I call density. That is, do they feel that you kind of make them part of a community? Lululemon is a classic example of you wearing Lululemon. People feel not just that they're wearing a nice garment, but also they express something about themselves. Patoni. Other kind of the same thing at Harley Davidson. The third one, which I think about as durability or the resilience layer, is, do you have permission to solve other problems than the initial one that you were asked to solve? And so we use Barkbox. Again, like the example could be, first we're selling toys and treats, and the second one is that we're providing an airline service. But if you give you kind of like a kind of an example you could think of, if I said to you, imagine a Nike hotel, you probably have imagery kind of going your brain immediately. But if I said, now think of a Hilton shoe, you probably would have less so. And so some brands have the relationship where they're allowed to kind of offer something else than the initial product. And so these three things, depth, density and durability is really like the, the kind of, the cornerstone of what I think about as, as relationship capital.
- [08:40]
A
So when you're talking about relationships, you're not talking about a relationship with vendors, you're talking about relationship directly with your, your client or your customer, building that dynamic and then building brand equity on top of that. Because you know, again, to use your example of Nike, if I said, hey, you can have every piece of inventory I have for Nike, it's yours, but you can't have the name, you would be less excited about that. You're like, oh man, I want that. I want the name a little bit. You know, if you're.
- [09:04]
B
I would be excited. Like they have a lot of good stuff, but I would be less excited because I do think that in the age of AI, where everybody can bytecode themselves into most things, it actually goes a little bit back. If you look at the half life cycle of companies, how long for example, they stay in the Fortune 500, that has kind of gone down over years. 10, 15 years ago, it used to be 37 years. And I think as we get to 20, 30, it's half that. So I think that what will happen if, when everybody can do most things very fast with AI, you need to figure out what is the thing that would make people give either their cash or their data to you. And I think that basically this thing that I read a book called Sense Making, they think about as thick data, the relationship, all the things that you can't kind of measure is going to be the thing that will make you stand out. And so. Yeah, sorry.
- [09:57]
A
So no, so I'm curious about that specifically because I'm not a dog person. I grew up with dogs and then my dog passed away and I just broke my heart. So I just, I can't do it anymore. It's just like I can't go through another one of those. But when you have someone and you're like, hey, we're going to make dogs happy. Why am I going to wait for.
- [10:14]
B
And this.
- [10:14]
A
I'm curious about your model. I can just run over to the store, I can go get a tennis ball. You know, with cats, you give them the little ring off the milk and they just play with the ring all the time. How did you differentiate? How do you get. People say no, I want bark box. How did you build that relationship in a model that says thus? Clearly people love their dogs. More than they love their kids and God bless them for they call them fur babies. But how did you separate yourself? How did you have that density? How did you penetrate into there? Because I get customer service that's relatively. Especially with AI and we'll talk more about AI in a second. Rapid fire and responses, making it seem like it's a real human. We've got automated agents that we're rolling out that are just unbelievable. It's gotten to the point where you can't really tell the difference on a high level from voice or outgoing calls or all that. But to get someone, say, listen, I could go to my local pet store, I could go grab a tennis ball. I can do whatever to keep my dog happy. How did you breach that barrier so that people are like, oh, I want br. You know, in your case?
- [11:07]
B
Yeah, I think for us, I mean, like, it starts with really, I think, how much authenticity and how much authority do you have? A specific space? And I think we had authenticity because we were solving the problem for ourselves. And the thing is that most dog toys, I guess I'm biased. That before we came around, was pretty boring. And I think we then basically saw a few things. One is that a dog has very specific play styles. So there's a whole science to it. They have seven different play styles. And you could basically figure out if there's. There's. They might be a super chewer or there might be a D fluffer or a squeaker seeker. There's like different ways that you. There's a whole thing, but there's also a thing that the energy of play often comes between the owner and the dog together. And so the owner don't feel the dog is. The toy is funny or they don't find any enjoyment out of it. Then they don't have energy. And the dog also feeds off the energy of the owner. And so one of the things that we really kind of, I think, discovered was this idea of, like, I think that's also the secret of, you know, Lego and other things where both kind of like parent and the kid enjoy playing with at the same time. And so they get more play out together. I think you only really discover that if you truly are somebody who understand your customer. And the best way to understand your customer, of course, to be one yourself. And so that's where we started. Now people buy our dog toys through us or through the local pet store. Like, we don't mind. Like, you know, we. We are like. Like Nike. We distribute directly. You can buy it on our website but you can also go down to your local target or your local wall model. So truly just to stay in Florida.
- [12:44]
A
So I'm, I'm selfishly have a question. There's something called a super chewer. And what would be the best toy for a super Chewer? What is that?
- [12:52]
B
Well, Super Chewer is some of these remarkable dogs that are very good of destroying a toy very fast. And so there's some breeds that are very good, but there's also just some like ferocious kind of like small dogs that are very good. And so to invent is a specific fabric that make it tougher than to tear the stuff apart. But you don't want to make it too tough because they can damage your teeth. Right. You know, we have tried to make stuff out of Kevlar and then you.
- [13:18]
A
Know, it's probably not a good idea for the teeth.
- [13:20]
B
You don't want that. Yeah. Super Chewer is a product that we made that has like this special often bacon scented infused rubber that basically is very durable. So the dog can play for a long time. But they can also kind of like tear apart if they really give it a go.
- [13:37]
A
Gotcha. Yeah. So when I was growing up, our idea of what a super chewer would be would be a tennis ball. We had a rotty and I just gave a Roddy the tennis ball and he would just sit there and just chew on them till they popped, which was very scary whenever he broke them.
- [13:48]
B
So now you like, you know, tennis ball ada fun. We have tennis balls too, but they're not ideal for their. Right, they're not like for a lot. A lot of dogs can tear a tennis ball up in a second. And so, and like it kind of have limited fun like so we have toys like what's a popular toy? Consuelo the cactus is a cocktail. It's a cocktail. It's a, it's a toy we have. And she's happy on the outside, but when the dog tear it apart, it has a toy inside.
- [14:16]
A
Oh, okay, I know that one. Yeah, it's like you win Sad.
- [14:19]
B
She's sad in the inside because she's complicated. And so like the owner will have like a giggle out of like that kind of a little bit like Pixar, you know, like you watch a Pixar with your kid and like the kid will just enjoy it because it's a great movie and the parent will understand all these kind of like other into.
- [14:33]
A
Windows and all that. All right. So that's how you build the density of it. And when you're stacking your products, you're building that relationship. Where have you seen where people have just completely failed at this? Like, okay, hey, you know, it makes sense with what you guys have done for, you know, Barkbox. How have you made it where, like, they just completely misfired and you've had to coach them through that or mentor them through that.
- [14:51]
B
I mean, like, I think most people are failing this because I think most people will see having a relationship with the customer as a bad thing. They're like, you know, how can we put as many layers as possible between the people we serve and ourselves? Like, Nicole, like whatever airline or credit card company, and they go, like, your call is important to you. And you go, like, that's something, right?
- [15:09]
A
Exactly.
- [15:10]
B
Please be aware because this, like, the menu have recently changed with, like, I've called you for 15 years. It's the same. And then like, for you talking to somebody, like, press three, press eight, press two, and you're like, this is only designed to make me go away. Now, obviously, go down to your local pet store example. Then you have somebody, they kind of know you, but they don't necessarily creep you out because they don't go, hey, user3yC. But they do say, hey, like, it's very hot today, right? So they understand the context of where you are. And then they're able to kind of like, see what you want and help you with that. And so I think that again, back to the point of, like, when everybody, when products and service become so easy to make, like, what will make you buy something from me? And I think that is that you truly feel seen by me and that I also show that I can understand what some of your problems are and I can cater my solution to you to such a degree that it's basically almost like it was made just for you. And so that's why the book that we have coming out articulate that there will be these new type of businesses emerge, which are very much like the old mom and pop stores, but obviously living on the Internet. And so the idea of a neighborhood doesn't necessarily need to mean that they're physically in your neighborhood, but it might be they're in the kind of like your tribe in your neighborhood. As in, like, this is the substack Reddit that you belong to.
- [16:34]
A
So how do you, again, as your neighborhoods are no longer physical or geographical and they're just digital, how do you, when you're running into substack or Reddit or emails, how do you do that? Is that when you kind of do what you were talking about before. Like, hey, there's seven signs to your dog. People are like, wait, what? I know there's seven different chewing patterns or whatever it is to the dog. And then here we make it fun for you as well. How do you get someone to stop? Because again, we're competing with, ironically, puppies and bikinis on. On Instagram now and all the other ones. You're just trying to break through that. How do you break through that noise and even get to build that relationship? Because there's people as we grow up who some of us have social skills, not me, but they have the ability to show up, and they instantaneously are magnetic at a party. Other people takes more effort to cut through that noise. There's a ton of noise out there. How do you differentiate yourself? How do you become signal versus noise?
- [17:23]
B
Well, I think there's some tactics we can go back to, but I think it starts with a good founder. I think one of the pedigrees of a good founder of anything is that they have what I think about as kind of gravity. They have something that's a little bit magnetic. And we all know them, right? And they're not always kind of Internet entrepreneurs. Sometimes they're the people who work in our church or the people who work in our communities, or the people who run the sports club or whatever it is. And so I think those people are out there now when it comes to purely starting a business. 60% of Americans say they'd like to start something, and only 9% does. And so you have a lot of people with gravity and real insight into specific communities that don't go and build a business. And part of the reason why they don't do it is it's incredibly difficult. But also, you used to need a lot of technical expertise to make something on the Internet. And so what have happened over the last 15, 20 years is basically the knowledge that you need. You know, what you need to know about the skills that are required to start something on the Internet have just gone way down. I mean, like, when I started my first business, the first $5,000 I had to spend was to buy a Windows NT server. And then I need to find somebody to connect it to the Internet. Like, this is like 15, 20 years ago. And then obviously, when we started Barkbox, we didn't have to think about how do you make a subscription technology, finance thing, because we just swiped our credit card and some SaaS provider had provided that service for us. And I think now, of course, with you Know all these Mid Journey and chatgpt and replit and all these tools that are now available for people who want to be entrepreneurial. You don't need really to code anymore. You don't really need to be a graphic designer. You can just basically express your idea to a bot and then it will render something for you. And what we hope will be the result of that is that the 60% might not all go and start businesses because I'm sure some of them shouldn't. But it doesn't have to be 9% either, right?
- [19:15]
A
I love that you think windows nt was 15, 20 years ago. That's as a Microsoft certified systems engineer. I love that you, you think that it was only 15 to 20 years ago because I'm certified in the damn stuff. And it was, it was not 15 to 20 years ago. But I love that you have that in your mind.
- [19:30]
B
What is that closer?
- [19:32]
A
Oh no. Oh no, no. Because remember, NT was operational at the end between 95 to 2000 and then Windows 2000 came out. We still had a little bit of NT going around, but you're talking 25 plus years ago, man.
- [19:47]
B
So my first business, you know, like on a server was in 98. So that.
- [19:52]
A
There it is, there it is. I love that you think that's 15 years ago. Don't feel bad. I still think we have to deal with a Y2K problem that's going to be coming up. So I'm, I'm old. It's the gray in the beard that's happening. So, okay, so I get that and I get, you know, you can use technology and I think everybody has access to technology and it's getting a lot easier. I remember when, you know, your first web websites would cost 10, 15k and now they're free. You click, click, click and you're done. Or you buy a template off, you know, themeforest and it's $17. It just doesn't matter. I get that side. Where I'm still missing is how do we become that lighthouse in the fog? How do we really again, cut through the noise? Because if everybody has the access and now technology isn't a hurdle for us anymore. Because it's not. There's no hurdle whatsoever. I can set up right now and click. I got an email and I get an address and I get the phone number and the website's operational. I have social media posts and I can use Mid Journey and blah, blah, all of that works. How do you still become that beacon? How do you become that light?
- [20:44]
B
I will say this might be a little bit controversial. I think one of the best places to go is to buy ads on one of the social media platforms. If, if Facebook can't find your customers then you're very unlikely to find them yourself.
- [21:00]
A
Yeah.
- [21:01]
B
And so then the question then becomes can they find them cheap enough for you to have a business? And so metrics that we normally look at is cac. So how much does it cost you to get a customer and your ltv, how much money can you generate out of the customer in the lifetime that you have them? Right. And you need like you would like to have a three times kind of like cactus minimum.
- [21:21]
A
Yes.
- [21:23]
B
And I think you'd like the payback obviously to be immediately, you know or at least like within a period. Like ideally within a. In a 30 day window because then you can basically put on your credit card and get it paid back. And so many times I feel that people have an idea and basically they can by running pretty simple tests figure out if the CAC they'll be able to buy in Facebook is within batting range of what they'll be able with what they can sustain. If this actually works and most people don't now CAC will always slowly creep up. So you need some room and you can definitely run a smaller business where you just do kind of different social hacks and stuff like that. You have organic traffic or SEO and stuff like that. But a real fast way of testing if your thing kind of has legs is basically to pay. Pay $50 to Facebook,000%. See like basically an at work and then see what it will cost you to convert a customer a thousand percent.
- [22:25]
A
Yeah. And I think the other ways that. And people reject this a lot but just be a little controversial. First off I agree with you and understand your tax is going to be vitally important. Also I think I love that you snuck in. You could just put that on a credit card. I can't tell you how many points I've got by doing this and just constantly running the stuff through there. I'm like whatever. I'm like where do you want to go travel to now? So that's. It's one of the hacks that come fun started that.
- [22:44]
B
So when bar was just getting. We were about 100 people. We fly flew a hundred people to. To Florida to go to Disney World on our AMEX credit card because basically we had everything on the AMEX card.
- [22:57]
A
Absolutely. Thank God for amex on that one. But there's also the. So I agree with CAC running your ads but I Also, I'm a huge fan of influencer marketing, the idea of inherited trust. Because if I walk into a room and I say I'm amazing, no one listens to me. If I walk into a room and a complete stranger says he's amazing, there's a massive amount of trust that I get. And if you already have, if you know that Influencer A has your audience, just go pay them to say, listen, this stuff's great. Go do it. It'll just speed up your process and I get. And then it'll go back to your swipe conversation. Will they be willing to spend money with that?
- [23:29]
B
I think, I think Influencer and I think Influencer honestly had a bit of a bad rap to start with. I think people a little bit poo pooed them in the early days and I think that was like a big mistake. We were lucky that our influencers had four legs. And so makes it a lot easier. Influencer dogs that we got to work with at the time, nobody really took them serious. But, like, if you go to who's a good one? Tuna Melts My Heart is a quirky looking dog out there. She has millions of followers. Courtney, her mom is an incredible human and we work with her a lot. You know, from When Tuna Melts My Heart didn't have that many followers. And all the way up, I think Bark had at one point, like, you know, hundreds and hundreds of influencer docs, you know, on payroll. And so I very much agree with, with that.
- [24:15]
A
Yeah, just it's. It's the easiest. We talk about this all the time. There's four ways to get an audience. You build it, you borrow it, you buy it, or you beg for it. And only two of those work. And I'll let the audience just listen to the rest of this episode and you'll figure out which are the two that we like. I'm just. You should have figured that out by now. All right, so you get that audience and they're excited and they're still, you know, they're going through the process. Right. They're going through the five stages of awareness, and they're going through this. And we're hacking the system because we're using credit card and we're using influencer marketing, and we're doing that in the book. You know, you continue to talk about how to build this. What is the next step that you review specifically in the book? Because I know you got it coming out. When is it released, by the way?
- [24:51]
B
12Th of August. Okay. So I think if you take really like, if we really kind of, like, atomize our process, it start out by figuring out who can you be bothered talking to for 12, you know, 10, 20 years? Like, you know, who's somebody? And it's often somebody that is close to you. It could be yourself, but it could also be like, you know, a peer or somebody who've experienced something like you. The second thing is this problem we've talked about. It sucks that then we do something we call signal mining. The signal miner is that kind of CAC discovery phase. As we say, we basically put up landing pages and we buy ads, and we say we articulate the problem, and then we make that ad, we give it to Facebook, and we basically see how much trust we've generated. Like, people come into it. And often we have some kind of landing pages that create some kind of, like, promise or some kind of, like, value exchange.
- [25:36]
A
And.
- [25:37]
B
And we often like doing what we think of as a service system where we say, well, can we solve this manually first? And so if this is about sending you a box of toys, you know, in the early days when we only had 70 customers, you know, I didn't need, like, a big algorithm. I could just basically find products myself and then send it out to you. And so we try to kind of like, walk ourselves more and more into these businesses under kind of an umbrella that we call an easy start with a big finish that a lot of people get very kind of big on. What is the big vision of the idea and how they're going to solve all these big problems as they scale. The reality is that most business never get there. And so I really, really like kind of getting over the very first long mile, which is, can I get anybody to buy anything? And can I basically kind of like, totally kind of handheld kind of fix it for them? Because if I can kind of get that, the flywheel to work, then often I can come up with kind of smart ways of making sure it becomes repeatable.
- [26:39]
A
So when. When you're going through and you're building this, are you a B testing, or do you sit there and you write down different text? Or, you know, is it just one funnel at a time? Or how do you figure out what that funnel is going to be?
- [26:49]
B
I think in the early days, it's just very, very dumb and very manual. Like, a B testing, I think, is clever. But at this point, I think a B testing is probably more kind of good for optimizing things. This is when I want to increase the CAC and stuff like that. You know, I'LL give you an example with Bark when we come in with Barkbox. I made a. I made a. I bought a template on WordPress. I can't remember you mentioned, like, a template provider. I went on Upwork. I had wired frame, like, something of what I wanted to look like. And I had somebody at Upwork basically make the first version. And so I managed to kind of stumble myself into having it on my phone. And we walk down to the dog park and we ask people, what do you think about this? And they say, oh, that looks cool. And I go like, I've squared my phone. You want to buy it for $25? And they go, like. Then they gave you all the questions.
- [27:40]
A
Right, right.
- [27:41]
B
And then we ended up having 70 accounts. And obviously, as I went around and pitched it to people, I would, like, change the pitch a little bit. And based on the thing that people were asking me, I would kind of change how I would position a little bit. Sorry. So I would do more than. So it's more kind of like just. I think of it as stone carving. Like, you have, like, a rock, and you're basically trying to figure out is there, there, there. And so I'm kind of like, just kind of like measling away and trying to see what this thing will look like. A B test, kind of, for me, is more in the world of, like, I kind of know what it is now. And now I just need to make sure that I have the optimal way of positioning, the proper, optimal way of positioning product and stuff like that. But maybe I'm just not smart enough. But, like, maybe something come later in my world.
- [28:29]
A
Yeah, I love that. You know, they asked Michelangelo, like, how did you build the David? He goes, I just took away all the parts that weren't David. And that, to me, is just what you're talking about. You just chisel away at it, like, there it is. That was just underneath. Just had to figure out how to get there.
- [28:39]
B
I was still going to steal that quote. That was such a better way of saying it than I did.
- [28:43]
A
Yeah, it's not my quote. I didn't create that. What you can have. I stole it from someone else. Whoever it is, whatever. Thank you. Okay, so you're going through and you start to get the momentum, and you go from 70 clients to significantly more. How do you deal with that at scale? Obviously, with AI, there's only so much you can automate. We're going to talk more about AI and how you integrate it. But how do you deal with scale? Because from my experience, There is. There is this drought. For every business I've ever had, you start with either you've done it well enough that someone wants to buy it because you figured it out, and you start and you're like, oh, God, there's this. This influx of traffic. Or you start with this, is it going to work? Is it going to work? And then it. Hockey sticks. And how you deal with that hockey stick and how you prepare for that hockey stick and how you maintain that relationship with your customers during that is important. But with what you've done and what you've run into, what are the secrets that you've been able to handle?
- [29:28]
B
With scaling, I think, like, you. It probably for me had gone more in step functions, right? Like, you do a little bit, and then you get to the next kind of, like, step. And I will say that a lot of the things that I worked on that worked. It worked pretty relatively fast, or at least like you felt there was, like, a signal or like some sizzle there. And I think one of the things that actually a lot of founders should do is they should create like, a kill switch for themselves or default dead kind of dating, where they go, like, if this doesn't fly, fly by. I should just start again. Like, I mean, sometimes you see these people and they spend, like, years and years and years, and the duck just doesn't hunt. Like, they'll never fly anyway. So back to, like, how do I think about scaling? I think about scaling in different phases, and I am very kind of big into solving the problem when it's actually slapping me in the face. Not before. I'll give you an example again for Barkbox. When people ask me. One of the questions that people ask just when we started was like, how are you going to pack the boxes? And, like, I'm going to pack them myself. Yeah, that whole scale. And you go, like, I have stuff.
- [30:34]
A
I'll deal with it when I get there.
- [30:35]
B
It's really fun. You know, not only I'm not going to cross the bridge, I might not. I'll build the bridge. I might not even go over, like, the water at that point. And so, like, the second part then was like, we then had thousands of customers, and it became a lot to pack ourselves. And they were like, oh, how do we fix this? And we don't have that much money. So we invented this thing we call packing parties, where we basically would call our friends and say, hey, next Thursday, come to the office. We're going to serve, like, basically cheap wine and cheap, cheap cheese. So cheese and wine. And then people will come and they'll go like, haha, now they hear like, we're also going to pack some boxes together. That'll be fun. And so we would have these packing parties where like I would, our poor friends would pack thousands of boxes while we were trying to give them. And then obviously then we became bigger and then we could afford a warehouse and like. And so yeah, I solve problems as they appear and then I don't try to solve them too early.
- [31:28]
A
Yeah. The best example I gave of this, and since you grew up on nt, you'll know this. There was a video game called Mike Tyson's Punch out on nes and everybody was so focused on how to beat Mike Tyson and none of us ever got to the point of beating Mike Tyson because we didn't beat the three guys or seven guys you had to fight beforehand because we never got past that. So fight the guy in front of you. You know, we've always said that really.
- [31:50]
B
Well, so very, very much the same thesis. And I think then you know, there are obviously problems that becomes difficult when you scale. But I think the, I kind of almost rather have scale issue than momentum issue. I think once you lose momentum then like you're really, really in a bad shape. But like once when I, when you have the problem that everybody's like just trying to buy your product and you can't make or ship or like, or your server is breaking down to produce enough like that seemed to be a problem that most people solve.
- [32:19]
A
Yeah, that's a, that's a really easy problem to fix. Again, to your point, I'd much rather have a momentum problem. I mean this is, we'll figure out the other part. Scaling's relatively easy. It's either out of pocket or out of hide.
- [32:29]
B
And that's such a good question because everybody talks about it all the time.
- [32:32]
A
Yeah.
- [32:33]
B
How are you going to scale? I'm like, I don't know what, deal with it.
- [32:35]
A
When I get there, it's like, how are you going to fight the fight that's in front of you? You'll get there. And then I love what you said earlier where it's like, listen, give yourself a day that's such a pull out day. At the end of the day, if you're not doing this at this point, just stop, just, just move on to something else.
- [32:48]
B
I think that's so important. I mean I honestly am pretty promiscuous about ideas and businesses. You know, like, I mean everybody. And when I pitch vc, like don't get Me wrong. I tell a story of how I thought about this my whole life, and it's the only thing I've ever thought about. It's the only thing I ever do in a deal. The reality is, like, 36 hours earlier, I was kind of thinking about these eight other ideas. That's kind of intrigued about. And then I'm constantly just trying to get external validation for this idea. I need something to fuel kind of like the insanity that is building something. Right. And that I think the best one, of course, from customers. Like, if customers really love something, then it's very seductive. But otherwise, you have to find it from other places. And so I do think that people should find something where there is momentum. Not like in the first few days, but like, maybe first couple months, six, eight months.
- [33:40]
A
Yeah, Anything beyond six months, you're wasting your time, in my opinion.
- [33:43]
B
I think so, too. So I think this default debt date is one that's pretty healthy.
- [33:49]
A
Gotcha. As someone who's been a VC in the past. Yeah. I don't care about your stories. Just show me numbers. For the love of God, just show me numbers. So I don't care if you've been thinking about it since you were five. If you guys are going to pay. Yes. Get your Sequoia deck. Make it pretty. But I don't care about you or your story. Just show me numbers, for the God's sakes. I'm doing this to get an roi, Please. All right, so once that's done, let's talk about AI. You know, you've talked about how heavily you are into it and you read about it. You wrote about it in your book Walk me through that. Walk me through how you see AI changing things. Changing jobs, changing the market, changing business, changing entrepreneurship. How do you see it changing things?
- [34:24]
B
Yeah, I think I definitely drank the Kool Aid. And so I. As you. We explored earlier, I'm an old fart when it comes to computers, so I am as well. When the Internet didn't. Wasn't around, Right. And so I remember seeing the first kind of. Kind of parts of the Internet back then for people who really want to go back, there was something called Fidonet and then there was Gopher and Veronica and stuff like that. And this was before the graphing Internet was. But the second the browser was made, right. Which was Mosaic, I think it was called then, it was very basic. It only was gray and blue and black. And like, the only command you really had was, like, how big the size was and a blink command. Everybody used too Much. But I think for most of us who saw it, we were like, this is going to change everything. Like, when you saw it, you couldn't unsee it. And it was pretty clear, like all the stuff you could build on top of it. And I basically decided this is what I'm going to spend my time on. I think I had the Same experience in 22020 when I tried the OpenAI playground, I think it was called. This was before ChatGPT, and you could, you basically had a text module and you could write something and you could press a button and it basically would continue writing. And it was, it was magical. You were like, holy shit. Like, this is going to change everything again. So I got access to it early and then I just got obsessed about what are all the processes I have, what is the workflows I. I do things with and how do I analyze that and how do I then replicate it with agents when possible. And that comes both through the organizations that I'm involved in, but then it also comes through entrepreneurship. Like, how can I, can I. Can I stop helping maybe four or five people a year building something? And how can I make tens or hundreds of thousands of people? And so that was really my venture into it.
- [36:15]
A
So for me, with AI, I'm very similar to you. For me, it's again, I was there when the Internet was just starting. I remember the first time I saw an ad that had a web address on a billboard and it had the HTTP. I was like, oh, that's adorable. They have no idea what they're doing. It's like they think that that's important. I remember people like, oh, I have to get a domain. I don't want a domain. I remember thinking, okay, that's going to change things. That's not how I feel about AI in any way, shape or form. For me, AI is to humans as fire is to humans. It is going to fundamentally change our entire experience across the board. And the head of a of Nvidia came out recently and he said, my job is I'm going to have AI replace every job or change it. That's our purpose, and I firmly believe it's going to do it. Now, how are you learning how to weaponize AI? Because in my opinion, there's going to be two type of businesses, businesses that use AI and businesses going out of business. That's the only two that you're going to have.
- [37:09]
B
Yeah, I agree with that kind of directional sentiment. Here's the thing, and this, you can always cut me short if it gets A little bit too philosophical. I run a podcast with a Stanford professor about AI called Beyond the Prompt. I spent a lot of time thinking about it and the more that I understand AI, the more I understand the way that we become good at it is to understand people.
- [37:33]
A
Yes.
- [37:33]
B
This is basically a tool that if you understand how to codify, how to articulate, how to kind of go from thin data to thick data, then you would really get an Ironman suit. And I was talking to the CEO of the Atlantic and he was talking about saying if you, if you. It's like an Ironman suit and if you can bench press £200, then with this you could do 2000. But if you can only do a hundred pounds, then you can only do let's say like £500. And so it is really exponential technology. And so over the. So I think, and back to the point of the book, that the more that I understand how you connect with people, how do you create an emotional reaction, the better I think I can use AI because AI don't care about anything. It is just a statistical model. And so I need to basically codify things that are special, things that are unique, things that have taste, things that has ethics, things that have originality, all these words which we all intuitively understand what means. But if you try to basically create a metric for a machine to do that, it'll kind of give up, right?
- [38:50]
A
Oh, I think understanding behavioral science and behavioral economics is huge going into this because if everybody now has the ability to your point to websites and servers and copy and funnels and blah blah, blah, blah, blah, what is the differentiator? Just like with Bark Bite, you know, I mean Barkbox, you know, how do you set up that differentiator? So for us going into a world with AI, you have to understand that if I want you to drink more wine, you're talking about cheap wine earlier. If I want you to drink more Italian wine versus French wine when you go to buy it, I'm going to play Italian music in the store. You are going to. Your chances of buying is going to be exponentially more. If I want you to buy more French wine, I'm just going to play French music. So we know that human beings are influenceable now that we have to that next level being understanding your customers on that level. Again, to your point, what's the difference here? There's seven or nine different types of, you know, know, play styles, which didn't know that until this conversation with, with. With puppies. I think if you can learn that it Changes. Now, what are the tools that you're using the most? What are the ones that you're like, okay, this is. This is. I mean, obviously chatgpt, because no one writes emails anymore, but. And by the way, ChatGPT, if you guys can get rid of dashes, that would be really helpful. It's really annoying. You're putting dashes and everything.
- [39:53]
B
What's. It's the whole, like, emoji con.
- [39:55]
A
Thank you. What the hell? Yeah. Oh, my God.
- [39:57]
B
Can we just drag one thing without an emoji?
- [40:00]
A
I'm not 12. I don't need dashes. I don't need emojis. And put. Quit putting lines through everything because I have to delete you bastards. But what are the things that you're using and the ways that you're. Because we have stuff, we call it weaponizing. We're weaponizing certain things. We're making it so that I don't ever have to be on camera again. And we're. There's some stuff with Google v, I think, VO3 that we're using that's just unbelievable that we're releasing and pushing out. And I'm just like. I didn't say that. I didn't. Wait, was I here? Was I there? There was a. There was a picture once of my father when he was 16. They handed it to me and I was like, wow, those are the ugliest shorts I've ever worn. Because it looks so much like me. I look so much like my father. With ChatGPT and Stuff, we're doing Google. I'm like, wait, I was never in Mogadishu. Why does it look like I. So it's. It's really gotten powerful, what we can do with it. What are some of the tools that you're using that you've seen have helped entrepreneurs the most?
- [40:48]
B
I think from a pure tactical point of view, we're gonna start there. Then we can go a little bit more philosophical on a tactical view. I've gotten very into replit recently and. And what's it called? Cloud code. Now, I. I don't. You know, I can. I've have. I've been to a code class before, but I'm not a code.
- [41:08]
A
That's about it. Yeah.
- [41:09]
B
Now what I'm doing now with replit, replit is a tool that basically allow you to kind of write whatever you want, and it'll write the code for you, and then it'll deploy it to a server. And then if it doesn't work, there's also one called Lovable What I am doing now is basically any service, any, anything that I do repeatedly. I will now build my own essential, my own SaaS service for myself. So I built my own CRM system. I built my own to do backend server. I have a podcast and so people who apply for it now it runs through our system where it listen to a bunch of their previous podcasts and look at what they've done and look at how we normally interview people and give it a score. And so I am now used, I used to just put everything in ChatGPT and increasingly now I'm trying to build like small systems that basically makes everything for me so I can spend time on what I enjoy doing, which is talking to other humans and kind of like figuring out how I can solve problems for the customers I serve.
- [42:09]
A
Gotcha. Which one has been your best roi? Because my best ROI is not AI. It's weird, but it's not AI.
- [42:16]
B
ROI is a Google script that I got Claude to write that that looks at all my newsletters I get in within a 25 circle period and then it basically writes a short summary on all these different ones and bullet points using language I enjoy and then it highlights anything that might serve any of the specific business objectives I have for that quarter. And so I only read one newsletter every day and that's that. And then when something happens of piques my interest, I go deeper. But I do now get like a pretty large amount of newsletters come into my inbox and then I kind of use them like this.
- [43:02]
A
Use your tool to simplify it.
- [43:03]
B
I just feel overwhelmed. I used to kind of subscribe to them and then I see it once in a while I go like, oh, I should have read that.
- [43:08]
A
I probably should have read that.
- [43:08]
B
Yeah, I just don't.
- [43:10]
A
Yeah, it's information overwhelm when you're going into. And you wrote the book everyone and people don't understand this. When we write books as authors, others we are so insecure that we dump all of our best knowledge into the book because we're like, please, I hope this is at least good. What is the biggest takeaway that you want someone who has your book to implement immediately?
- [43:30]
B
Well, I think the first one, if you listen to this and have this inkling about I'd like to start something. I just don't know how to is to start something. I mean like there's just so many people, there's. Let me go on back. I think basically if you look at the US the whole backbone of the country is our Entrepreneurship. If there's one thing that we as Europeans like are more impressed with than anything else, it is just the entrepreneurial optimism that this country have. And it is just incredible. And it's on. There's nobody else in the world that has that now. I think that a lot of people then go around and just say hey. And so you built like a whole country based on like all these small businesses too. I think a lot of people who might listen to this go like, oh yeah, but I don't have a big idea. And I think the first thing takeaway is that it doesn't have to be a big idea. Firstly, it might become a big idea once you get going. But two, like let's say you can build a business that makes 500k, a million dollars a year. That's huge amount of money. I mean like that's not a venture backable business. That's not something that's going to put you on the COVID of Fast Company. But it's a very, very nice life to serve somebody and make a decent amount of revenue out of that. And so I would say if there's one takeaway is like, like, if you have even like a little bit of an urge, like just get going. Right?
- [44:49]
A
No, I agree. And there's ways to get going. And I think what you talked about earlier and I think if anybody's listening to this, the most important part is put your stop date. Just if you're, don't, don't sit there and smash your head up against the wall. And then also take your you out of the picture. You don't matter. You're never going to matter. I mean you might matter to your mom, but other than that you don't matter. The pain you resolve matters more than anything else else. It's the result. So people get caught up in. I want to create an offer that's amazing. I'm like, stop with the offers. For the love of God, stop telling me about your damn offer. Tell me the pain you eliminate. What is the result that you produce on the highest level? And then you call it swiping. I talk about taking my wallet out and throw it at your face. Pitch me in a way that makes me want to throw my wallet. Your face that's angry that you're no longer selling me. And that changes the ball game. So what was the name of the book?
- [45:36]
B
The book was called Me my customer and AI and it has the story about how now the 60% of people can become entrepreneur and then talks about these new type of Companies that I think is going to be built, we call them Donkey Kongs. They're not unicorns, they're Donkey Kongs. They grind like mules, but they part of like unicorns. And so they're a different breed. And I think of them as kind of like two people companies. Dylan dog turnover, that kind of like thing. And the third kind of part of the book is this relationship capital. What do I think are some of the ways to build a moat in a world where everybody can build anything with AI? And so we go through those kind of like three things that I mentioned and give a lot of examples of stuff that works for us.
- [46:17]
A
Can you give me an example of each one just before we wrap up? Before I want to drive every book off the top of your head, could you give me an example?
- [46:23]
B
Yeah. I think on depth, for example, with bark, a good way to feel seen is that we as founders still kind of read the email like customer support. We still kind of have evolved in those kind of things. And one our biggest team is our customer support team. It's in Columbus, Ohio where people are naturally very sweet. And so we spend a lot of time making sure that when people talk to us they feel truly seen on the density share. I think a good example is probably how much people share content that we make and how engaged they are in in our products. So and we don't see it only as a success that people kind of like listen to us. It is that we kind of have a omnidirectional relationship and durability. We stay in the bog world is that we used to do treats and now we do airlines, which obviously is a pretty big lead.
- [47:26]
A
So that's a big jump.
- [47:28]
B
As we go through the book, there's more examples that are kind of a little bit more closer to home and that makes it easier for people to compute.
- [47:35]
A
Gotcha. If someone wants to track you down, because there's a lot of questions. Because I want to get my hands on the book and I want to read it. Because you've done, you've been so successful with it. I'm just going to know that it's actually 2005 because NT is five years ago.
- [47:49]
B
I'll give you a hack though, for the book. If you don't get time to read it, which I do, you buy it on Amazon, you find a way of getting the copy out, the text out and then you put a notebook LM and you get them to do their 20 minute little kind of discussion about it. It that's basically Like a way to kind of compute. I think a good book in 25 minutes.
- [48:08]
A
If you don't have it's definitely. I can just get the audiobook and listen to it two and a half times speed. When I'm not walking, it's just easier. It just which is funny because then when I meet the author I get very confused because their voice doesn't match anymore. I was like, you don't sound like Mickey Mouse.
- [48:22]
B
I actually read the my first book. I didn't read it out but this time I stumbled. I sat through like the hours and hours of reading it loud with my, my co author Nicholas and so people can listen to my Danish accent for, for a long time go.
- [48:36]
A
So if people want to track you down because there's going to be a lot more questions and they're going to hit me for it. How do they track you down? What's the best way to get a hold of you? How do they do that?
- [48:44]
B
I'm very active on, on LinkedIn so that's probably my the best place to go. I have a substack that people sometimes read and then obviously have the podcast beyond the prompt and I have the book. But I think the easy way is just to hook me up on, on LinkedIn. I, I, I accept to have people into my network and I, I look.
- [49:03]
A
At all that and what is that exact way to find you on LinkedIn? I'm going to make you plug yourself here because I you down.
- [49:07]
B
Thank you. I my last name is Wortland. Maybe we can put in the show notes.
- [49:12]
A
Yeah, it's going to be in the show notes.
- [49:14]
B
Oh you write Henrik barkbox and then LinkedIn then I probably will show up on Google. So gotcha man.
- [49:20]
A
I really appreciate you coming on. Thank you so much.
- [49:23]
B
Thanks for having me.
- [49:25]
A
Stop scaling products, start scaling connection. The best brands speak human, build trust and lead with heart. That's how profit follows.