From $10K Losses a Day to an L Catterton Deal: Zach Stuck’s Full Story

Summary

OPERATORS Podcast: From $10K Losses a Day to an L Catterton Deal – Zach Stuck’s Full Story
Episode Date: June 4, 2026
Guests: Zach Stuck (Mars Men, Holo Socks, Homestead)
Hosts: Matt, Sean

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the career and operating philosophy of Zach Stuck—an eCommerce operator who has built an eight-figure agency (Homestead), exited successfully, and scaled two nine-figure brands across different categories (Holo Socks and Mars Men). The conversation spans Zach’s humble entrepreneurial beginnings, his growth and exit strategies, the realities of owning multiple brands under a Holdco structure, risk tolerance, and the lessons that led to deal-making with major private equity players.

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Key Discussion Points

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Zach's Background & Early Hustle

• Upbringing in Wisconsin:

  • Grew up lower-middle-class in Wisconsin, learning grit and entrepreneurship from parents who ran small businesses [03:00].
  • Early e-commerce experience: Selling niche tractor enclosures online (PayPal buttons on HTML pages).

• High School Side Hustles:

  • Resold Microsoft license discs for profit.
  • Started first WooCommerce apparel business at 19, dropped out of college at 20 for marketing agency jobs.

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Homestead: Building & Growing the Agency

The Catalyst

• Inspired by mentors David Herman and Andrew Foxwell to start his own agency [05:04].
• Initial clients often sourced as "discount Dave" for those who couldn’t afford industry leaders.

Service & Revenue Models

• Started with performance-based, revenue share models, leading to rapid ups and downs in agency fees [07:20, 12:00].

  "We took them from tens of thousands a month in revenue to millions a month in like less than six months." – Zach [08:55]

• Shifted away from pure revenue share due to churn and client pushback ("starts to feel like a tax" – Matt [12:09]).

Scaling

• Built a full-stack marketing team (content, paid, email, web, SMS) [12:15].
• Went from 0 to 35 employees in three years—rare for a founder in mid-20s.

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Turning Point: Working with Hexclad

• Zach’s team helped scale Hexclad from ~$30M to $150M in a single year [13:01].

  "I never saw a brand that could spend seven figures a day on Meta and it would just work." – Zach [15:03]

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Transitioning to Brands: Holo & Mars Men

Early Vision

• Always wanted to use agency as a launchpad for brand creation [16:14].
• Structured agency with the intent for employees to become CMOs or leaders in eventual brands.

The Why Behind Zach’s Brand Wins

• 1. Product Fundamentals: Simple SKUs, clear supply chain, and multiple positioning angles for broad audiences [19:25].

  "The brands that hit the most scale...their product mix is very simple...and the product has to be able to be sold in 50 different angles." – Zach [19:25]

• 2. High Risk Tolerance: Willing to support brands during non-profitable periods if the long-term vision justifies it [18:01].
• 3. Ownership & Structure: Controlled most of the cap table, enabling decisive risk-taking [18:01, 23:22].

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On Risk Tolerance & "Killing" Brands

• A major differentiator: Willingness to take brands to the brink, shut down poor performers, and “walk away if it loses” [24:06, 25:25].

  "I always thought I could go back to zero and I would be just fine because I love the game." – Zach [25:27]

• Cites upbringing and perseverance learned from parents’ small businesses.

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Playing the Long Game

• Zach notes his personal benchmarks (“make $100K by 30”) shifted as he saw what was possible, especially watching clients like Hexclad scale rapidly [27:12].

• Advocates for patience and suffering to build real skills [31:14].

  “...You have to suffer a little bit to actually get the skills and to be grounded in reality.” – Sean [31:14]

• The Role of Proximity:

  • Proximity to opportunity matters. While Zach didn’t move to a "hotspot," he leveraged online communities (Twitter) to build his network [31:14].

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Brand Failures & Learnings

• Shut down or sold five other brands besides Holo and Mars Men (sleep tape, Frey laundry, home decor, notebooks) [34:18].
• Key failure patterns:
  • Bad partnership structures (“pause on manufacturers as partners”).
  • Lack of unique positioning or commoditized products [36:33].

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The Anatomy of a "Cold Start" Brand (Zach’s Playbook)

[43:41]

• Category: Health & wellness—huge TAM, recurring need.
• Model: Single hero SKU, MRR/subscription-based, U.S. manufacturing, simple ops.
• Channel: Start with Facebook ads (where Zach excels), test angles rapidly.
• Scaling: Lean staff; use AI tools for email/SMS/content.

  "You could stand up [a $100k/month business] in 30-60 days with $30K." – Zach [46:31]

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Structure, Team, and Holdco Lessons

• Holdco "Easy Street" Structure:
  • Rolling multiple brands was method to discover winners, but “not the best model”; need a true GM for each brand [41:18].
• Mars Men Team:
  • Flat structure, single ops lead, the rest on growth (ads, creative, landing pages) [80:54].

  “We got to nine-figure run rate with one ops person.” – Zach [80:54]

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Approaches to Partnerships and Team Incentives

• Generous with equity and incentives to align operators and partners [48:17].
  • “A lot of times I find founders who won't give up 1%...You're very into aligned incentives.” – Sean [47:50]
• The Mars Men partnership is truly 50/50, complementing Zach’s growth with Ben’s vision, product, and operational focus [50:18–53:17].

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Subscriptions, Angles, and Category Expansion

• Subscription MRR unlocks paid social scale and retail velocity—it’s why Groons, Neutrophil, etc., win big [54:39].

  "When you have MRR, you can spend into that MRR... awareness by the time you do hit retail, the velocity is just going to crush." – Zach [54:39]

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Mars Men: Product Insight and Growth Tactics

• Mars Men’s Genesis:
  • Ben (cofounder) formulated product after personal struggles, aiming to combine several effective supplements [57:46].
• Insight:
  • Market is vastly larger than typical TRT—addresses all men 25+ suffering from declining testosterone.
• Breakthrough:
  • Switched to subscription-first as a strategy (per Jordan Menard’s advice), willing to “torch money” for months to build predictable MRR [62:12].

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Capital Strategy and Deal-Making

• Self-funded cash gaps for Mars Men rather than bringing outside money too early [63:16].
• Ran four deals in 60 days: Sold Homestead, partial sale/raise for Holo, PE warehouse purchase, and Mars Men investment from L Catterton (no banker used) [64:50].
• Why L Catterton?
  • Credibility, guidance toward a 9/10-figure outcome, blue-chip brand value (comparable to Neutrophil → Unilever exit) [75:08].

  "We wanted a partner... that could properly coach us and reverse-engineer our way to a very big exit." – Zach [74:32]

• Multiple businesses/roles:
  • Addressed with buyers by showing transition plans and partner-led operations [77:27].

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Product Simplicity and Angles:
  • "Product first... find something you can sell 50 different ways to different buyers." — Zach [19:25]
• On Shutting Down Brands:
  • "So many people get stuck with businesses that suck, but there's sunk cost fallacy. I've watched you shut down at least two brands." — Sean [24:06]
• On Scaling with One Ops Person:
  • "We got to the nine-figure run rate with one ops person." — Zach [80:54]
• On Profit vs. Cash Flow:
  • "Profit doesn't matter as much as people make it seem." — Zach [85:25]
• On the Realities of Doing Multiple Deals:
  • "There's gonna be really great days where you're like, it's happening. There's gonna be days where you're like, it's falling apart... four times in 60 days." — Zach [64:52]
• On Subscription Businesses:
  • "Subscriptions are guaranteed... with LTV and recurring revenue, you can spend into that on Meta to build awareness faster than any organic play." — Zach [54:39]

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Timestamps: Key Segments

• Zach’s Upbringing and E-Comm Start: [03:00–05:04]
• Building Homestead Agency: [05:04–13:01]
• Scaling Hexclad & Agency Learnings: [13:01–16:06]
• Brand Launch Vision/Transition: [16:06–18:01]
• Why His Brands Succeeded (Product/Risk/Structure): [18:01–23:42]
• On Risk Taking & Sunk Costs: [24:06–26:58]
• “Cold Start” Brand Playbook: [43:41–46:31]
• Team Structure at Mars Men: [80:54–83:35]
• Rapid Fire Q&A (Desert Island Metrics, Leadership, Contrarian Views): [84:18–88:49]

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Takeaways

• Relentless focus on product simplicity and having multiple marketing "angles" is key to DTC scale.
• High risk tolerance, decisiveness (including when to kill a failing business), and firm owner control of vision/structure allow for faster, bigger outcomes.
• The agency experience provided skills and cash flow, but transitioning to brands and subscriptions provided true leverage and outsized exits.
• Aligning operator incentives and not shying away from generous equity grants is crucial for attracting and motivating talent.
• In Holdco/multi-brand models, appointing strong GMs is a must; direct operator bandwidth is the biggest limiting factor.
• For health/wellness MRR businesses, paid social is still king for scale if the brand can justify ongoing ad spend (thanks to high LTV).
• Doing multiple high-stakes deals at once is brutal—focus on partner strength, clear transitions, and resilience.

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Closing Remarks

If you're an eCommerce operator or builder, this dense and candid episode is a blueprint for scaling, risk-taking, and learning from both wins and losses. Zach’s no-fluff, data-driven mindset—balanced by humility—underscores why he’s considered an “operator’s operator” today.

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End of summary

Transcript

[Matt]

I'm just gonna say it. Today's episode is so damn good. Let me tee it up properly so you know what you're about to get and why you want to stick around and listen to this one. So our guest is a longtime friend of the pot. He's built an eight figure agency. Recently sold it. He's also built two, yes, two nine figure brands in two wildly different categories. He is one of the few people I know who is willing to just kill a company and move on if it isn't hitting his goals. He's easily one of the top bad guys in the game today. You're going to have to really try and not learn something from this episode. Welcome back to another Operators Titans, brought to you by our friends at Applovin. And yes, we are talking with Zach Stuck for Mars Men and Holo Socks.

[Sean]

Professional podcaster, former agency salesman. He has sold brands for eight figures. He just raised eight figures. He's on top of the world. He's the coolest guy in Ecom right now, and he's about to pull out his summer car. What's up, Zach? How's life? How's the G Wagon treating you?

[Zach Stuck]

Yeah, well, sadly, the G Wagon is gone now, but the, the GT3RS is here. I don't know if you said G Wagon or, or not, but that's, that's what everyone keeps asking me about. They don't even care about the Porsche anymore. They're like, where's your G Wagon? So. Well, yeah, yeah, I got rid of Zach. We got.

[Matt]

We got to teach people about taste. That's what we got to teach people.

[Zach Stuck]

I got the Hennessy truck, even though I wasn't. Everyone thought I was a winner of like the, the, the Ridge giveaway. Not. Not a winner. I did it myself.

[Sean]

You just bought one?

[Zach Stuck]

Just bought one? Yeah. Because, you know, Wisconsin, right? So might as well.

[Sean]

Yeah. You're in Wisconsin. I assume you have a boat. So how many boats do you have?

[Zach Stuck]

I have one boat. I have one boat. I have one boat. Yeah. Yeah, one surfboat. But it's. Yeah, it's. I mean, you know, we get summer for three. You know, we get nice weather for three months out of the year, so got to take advantage of it.

[Sean]

Well, beautiful, brother. Okay, so what is the background? Who is Zach? Why are you in Wisconsin? Why do you have the number one email agency on earth? And what are you doing now? So early days when you're 8 years old, what's Zach like? What's he doing?

[Zach Stuck]

I mean, I was gonna say we're going back there. I mean, candidly, I don't remember much of my childhood, which I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. But I mean, I did start, I did start an E commerce business when I was 19. Started a WooCommerce apparel business. And that's really where it got started was I was, my dad was a small business owner, mom was a small business owner. So entrepreneurship was like in my, in my like, you know, ethos of what I could maybe do when I grew up. But small business, when I say this is not like when we talk on DTC, Twitter. Oh, small business under 100 million. No, this is like, does less than a million revenue, barely survives type of small business. So grew up in Wisconsin, went to, you know, just like very casual normal schools. Didn't go to anything, you know, prestigious as far as like growing up. So was, you know, lower middle class in Wisconsin, which is basically poor everywhere else throughout the US and, and yeah, I mean like I think I, my dad had a business where he was manufacturing enclosures for tractors, which is like super random and niche. But at one point he was selling them on online. And so I like learned, I learned about E commerce when I was like 13, 14, which was like a PayPal button on a, on a, on a HTML page, which is gnarly. So that got me interested in the Internet. And then as most kids do, you just like tinker and so tinkered with a bunch of stuff, started building websites. Like my, my most famous story from when I was in high school is I got our, our school districts, like Microsoft like Suite disc with like the full licensing and I would sell it to people as like a side hustle. So I basically sold it to like 50 to 70 year olds when I was in high school, charged them a small discount. So it was like great margin, 100, you know, 100% margin just installed on their computer. So anyways, like that's like the og, you know, had entrepreneurial stuff back then. But yeah, started an E commerce site when I was 19, dropped out of college when I was 20, got a job at a marketing agency here in Wisconsin and did that, worked at another one, worked at another one. And then that led me into the time where I was like, I think I want to go out on my own finally and had a conversation with Andrew Foxwell. And then he introduced me to David Herman. And that's where the Facebook ads world of my background really started to kick off.

[Matt]

I think in order to be in consumer I have a theory before we keep going. I think in order to be in consumer, you are either currently a degenerate or you at least flirted with stealing something at some point in your life. Like, I don't think you can actually be in DDC if you haven't been one of those two things.

[Zach Stuck]

I don't disagree with that statement. I think the young degenerates make great entrepreneurs. I mean, Sean is a perfect testament of that. So, you know.

[Matt]

Oh, yeah, no, Sean's absolutely a dj.

[Zach Stuck]

Let me completely.

[Sean]

If only guys knew.

[Zach Stuck]

Yeah, but that, that. That gets me to, like, Homestead days. So, like, basically Homestead started out of. And I. I try to give David Herman as much credit as I can because he really was kind of the catalyst. But Dave. Dave was running like a. His small agency, and he wanted me to be an employee. And so I went and kind of got mentored by Dave for a few months and started tweeting stuff. This was, you know, a while ago, eight years ago, of small little, you know, case studies like that. And then people wanted to hire Dave, but they couldn't afford Dave. So they'd reach out to me because they knew that there was some association there. And so I started building a book of business. Yeah, I was discount Dave. And then discount Dave turned into like 15 clients that I was running on my own on top of, like, three with Dave. And that was just too much. And I was like, okay, I have to start an agency. So that's really how like, the catalyst of Homestead got started. So a lot of. A lot of kudos to him. A lot of kudos to people like Andrew Foxwell, who pushed me over to say, hey, it's time to go out on your own instead of working for other people.

[Matt]

Did you go into the agency thing knowing what it was like to build in, like a sort of a service business, or was it kind of like ignorance is bliss and I'm just going to figure this out.

[Zach Stuck]

Yeah. So, I mean, I was at three agencies prior, so I got to see, like, how each one did it. One was like a traditional marketing company, which is more like tv, radio, like very basic print, and then two digital agencies. And the. The one that I was at right before working for Dave was. Was a digital marketing agency. So, like, I was able to scoop, like, service agreements, you know, kind of learned the. The trade of, like, the op side very lightly. And so I kind of knew what I was doing, but definitely, I mean, I knew what I was doing to start it. I had no clue. Feel free to Beep. That what I was actually about to go build and what was required to build an agency. So, yeah, I mean, to an extent, I kind of knew what I was doing.

[Sean]

Let's talk about the agency, because I think it's a great launch point for building all these great brands you've built. So eight years ago, you started originally. Who were the clients? Who'd you end up growing with? How big did it end up getting? Like, let's really talk about Homestead from day one. Like, you leave David, you're like, hey, I can't work with you anymore. Shout out David Herman. Love the guy, but you're like, I'm gonna do this thing myself. You have 15 clients. Are any of them good?

[Zach Stuck]

Well, one is still. One is my first ever client, which was actually not through the David affiliation. It was just like through a connection in Wisconsin is a company called Fix It Sticks. And that. That is still a client of Homestead today. So my first ever one is still with Homestead, which is cool, but they're like a multi tool product. They were basically just like this cycling multi tool that then they started selling to, like, it was like a weapons accessory. It's like a complete shift and. And then that just like, smashed. So that was like one of my first proper case studies for Homestead, where we grew a brand from doing, you know, 10,000amonth to like 500,000amonth, like, very quickly. Outside of that, I mean, the OG brands, like, if I'm really trying to think back, I mean, a lot of them were. Were brands that couldn't afford Dave. So they were like, either like this weird, like, hybrid brand dropship thing where there's a lot of, like, apparel. There was a lot of random, like, ex, you know, home good stuff. So I couldn't name many of them, to be honest, anymore. One of the OGs was this brand called She's Birdie. I don't know if you guys are familiar with that brand, Richie. Yeah. Okay, so She's Birdie was one of the first ones that we brought into Homestead. And I had this concept of like a revenue share model. And I was like, hey, we think this product can smash. I think there's a huge opportunity here. Give us 5% of your revenue and we'll help you grow. And let's see how this goes. And so originally I was just charging, you know, 5k a month to run paid social, which was so easy eight years ago. Like, when I compare it to today, it was like a breeze, basically just like load ads in and do a little bit of interest targeting and shit and lookalikes and it just worked. But Cheesebury was our first, proper, first client that we did this like revenue share concept. And yeah, we took them from, you know, know, tens of thousands a month in revenue to millions a month in like less than six months. So Homestead went from making five grand a month to like fifty, sixty thousand dollars a month within six months on one client. And I was like, this is the model to do until the brand started being like, hey, I'm paying Zach in a team of three people, you know, people like Connor, Rolaine and some of these other folks, they're like, we're paying you a bag to basically just do what probably would have been pretty easy with anyone kind of smart and that understood E Com for the right products at the right time. So yeah, I mean, like we had, we had brands like that that were a blast that ended up churning because our fees got too high. But yeah, I mean that was kind of like the initial catalyst of, of like what really allowed Homestead to grow. Because I didn't, I wasn't taking any money out for the first two years. I was literally just dumping it into hiring. So we'd get clients that were paying us 50, 60, 70 grand a month and I would just go hire five people and just keep growing the team. So yeah, I mean, we went from zero to 35 employees in the first three years, which was like quite good for any agency, especially someone that was like 26, 27 at the time. But yeah, I mean, that's kind of how it got started initially.

[Sean]

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[Matt]

Did you and I ever talk about this? So like your story in mine with services is very similar. Like we. All of my initial contracts, I think we talked about this years ago, were all percentage of revenue based and they tear down with scale because like when I did mine in like the, like let's call it mid to late 2000s, it wasn't even a marketing problem. My pitch to people was like, you don't even have E commerce and you're this massive retailer. I'll build it for free, but I want to take a piece of anything you sell. And then like we would tear the rates down with scale.

[Zach Stuck]

That's what we ended up doing was having to tear it down pretty quickly. And then we just kept tearing it down more and more and more and we just kept getting pushed down. Then it was like, okay, yeah, because

[Matt]

it starts to feel like a tax. That was like where we ran into the issue was like there's just no way around it feeling like a tax.

[Zach Stuck]

I mean the cool thing about Homestead in the early days is we had a bunch of people that were really driven and scrappy that were willing to do anything. So like we were shooting content without that that fell underneath that. We were like actually shooting content in ads in a small studio that we had in Wisconsin. We were doing email, SMS flows, we were doing web, like front end web. We were doing paid social, paid search, like the whole gambit. So there weren't many small shops that were able to kind of like actually do a decent job at all those things. So to me it felt like it was a fair offering because it was like, hey, you basically have a whole marketing team here. You don't have to hire anyone. You could be ops and product and let us just cook. But it got to the point to what you were saying, Matt, that we had to pull back and go more traditional with our fee structure.

[Matt]

At what point did Hexclad come along in the Homestead journey?

[Zach Stuck]

So this was a, I mean, shout out to Sean and Connor at Ridge because you guys were the ones that recommended them in the beginning. This was when they were doing, I mean, what was this five years ago? So this was, I think the like 50 million year. The 30 to 50 million year. They came. They. They came into Homestead and yeah, that first year, I mean, I was like. I think it was 30 to 150, I think was their first jump, if I can, if I'm remembering that correctly. And that was the year that we, we worked on it. And yeah, wild. I mean, they came in, they're like, yeah, I don't know. We're just doing like a few million a month. And like, we're running ads. What else can we do? It was insane.

[Matt]

Was this pre Gordon before the Gordon deal?

[Zach Stuck]

This is right when the Gordon deal was like happening. Yeah. So it was like, as it was being signed.

[Matt]

Yeah, just cutting that deal. I got introduced through another friend of ours on the.

[Sean]

Sorry, before. Before going to Hexcloud on the percentage of revenue thing. It's funny because Matt did it, Zach did it. That's how we worked with Ridge too. So, like the. The deal with Ridge is that they would give us 70 grand a month to cover our fixed expenses and then we would get. It's like 2 and a half or 5% of top line or whatever. And we ended up getting. It was like $250,000 a month when. When I had my service business. And there is. There's like a. There's an allergic reaction to clients paying above 30 or $50,000 a month for a service business. If you have a service business, you will be shut down eventually by the CFO as soon as you get above 30 or $50,000. Like, it's like a 10 grand a month service. Can go. Can live forever, but as soon as you get a little too rich, like the CFO comes out just. And just shuts you down.

[Matt]

So the CF headcount, right, Sean? Like, all they see is like 30, 40, 50 grand a month. It's like, how many people can I hire for that?

[Sean]

And. And they just think nothing's worth that. Even if the work you're doing is fantastic and you're driving all these. These results, they just. Like a CFO is like, no. No amount of work is worth that much money. But it was so hexclad. You take them from 30 to 150 million. And at this point, have you launched any of your own brands or are you still just 100% service?

[Zach Stuck]

This is no 100% service at this point. And the following year, where we were then, they really ran it up was the year that I started hollow because I remember going to. Going out to LA to meet with Jason and me and Riley, CEO of Homestead, my partner in Homestead, went out to LA to meet with Jason and the team to basically help them forecast Q4. And I just remember like putting the forecast together and in my mind I'm like, this is crazy. I think we can do it. Like, let's push them. Let's just see how hard in, how big they want to go. Like, we absolutely smashed through the forecast that I thought was like, almost impossible. That business was craziest business I've ever seen outside of some of these new health and wellness brands that are just ripping. But yeah, it was nuts. Like, I, I never saw, you know, a brand that could spend seven figures a day on Meta and it would just like during Q4 and it would just work. It was nuts. So, yeah, that, that was the year though, that Hollow started.

[Matt]

And how long, how long before that, Zach, did you start thinking about doing your own brands? Like, where, where did the sort of germination of that idea come from?

[Zach Stuck]

I told everyone day one at Homestead that I wanted to start brands eventually. The idea was to, yeah, if you go talk to any of the OG employees, like, they'll tell you that I was saying that from the beginning was that we're going to start this agency, then we're going to build brands and you're going to be able to grow within the agency and then become maybe a CMO of a brand one day and I'm going to build a portfolio. Like, I had this concept from the beginning because my background again going back to like when I was 19, was like, I did it, it just had no clue what I was doing. So I wanted to get back to it at some point. I just didn't know how long it was going to take. So, yeah, year three of the agency, I started getting into the brand building

[Matt]

side and that was. What did you hand it over to Riley at that point?

[Zach Stuck]

So, yeah, so that was an interesting conversation. Hey, guy, like a partner, like, you need to take over now and I'm going to dip. Like, he was like, what is going on? Because, you know, he was a minority stake partner in the business at the time. He came in as our head of. Head of Google and just like immediately became my cmo. And then it was, it was pretty obvious that he was the guy to run it. But yeah, I mean, that was a tough conversation to have and try to convince him and be like, I promise all is going to be good. You're going to crush this. Like, I have full confidence in you, but I'm going to go do this Other thing. So yeah, he, that was like a six month transition of me kind of out him in and then yeah, I think it was 22, 23, he took over fully and he's been running, running the show since.

[Sean]

I just want to talk about the idea. Day one you have an agency and you're like, hey, we're going to launch a bunch of brands. And I think that was such an attractive idea for every agency owner. You know, Taylor holiday famously had four by. Was it four by 400 or whatever it was called. And he was going to launch a bunch of brands and they did Bamboo Earth and they had that wallet company. Why did your book of brands work and other ones didn't?

[Zach Stuck]

Products, I think is a big piece of it. I also think my risk tolerance is higher than theirs. I think that's the other part of it. If I look at how hard I pushed Holo to the point of like maybe losing that business, which I'm happy to talk about in a little bit, like I pushed harder than I think they did. And I think that was part of it. I think it was product first and then it was, it was the fact that I just like sent it because I had this agency that was just churning out cash and I'm like, even if we have a hard couple of months in this brand, we can like survive because I can just pull more cash out of the agency and just pump it right in. And I didn't think that they wanted to do that because their cap tables were so like crazy. Between 4 by 400 the brands, between the agency, they had different partners in all of it. And it was like just mostly just me. I mean I was, I was the majority owner of the brands. I was the majority owner of the majority owner of Hollow and Homestead that whole time. So I think part of a structural advantage working for you that I would say that would be the third piece. That would be the third piece because I don't have anyone else saying, hey Zach, we have to be profitable most of the year. I was kind of like, you know what, we're going to just run non profitable for Hollow for most of the year and then we're just going to send in Q4. We're going to make a, make our hay.

[Matt]

Then can you expand on product, Zach? Like, what does that mean? You said like that was the first thing you said, number one product. Like can you just unpack your sort of theories or your how you think about product?

[Zach Stuck]

Yeah, I mean I've, I've been thinking about this a lot Lately also is that the brands that hit the most scale, from my perspective, that are kind of fall underneath a few things. One, their product mix is very simple and that allows supply chain, that allows complexity, like everything to be just easy to manage inventory to manage. The other piece that's really important is that the product has to be able to be sold in like 50 different angles, 50 different ways to position something to sell the same product. So you look at like an iM8. Everyone's talking about iM8 right now. Go look at iM8's ad library. You go run it through Atria, run through motion, whatever. They're running so many different positioning angles. They're running. They're even. They're even talking about testosterone, which is like crazy that we're in that space. I'm like, how are they making this tie into testosterone? But they're like, hey, it helps with your recovery, helps with your sleep, which will improve your testosterone. So to me, hollow was that from the very beginning I had these socks that were made out of alpaca that were better than anything else. But I was like, how can I go sell this to a bunch of different people? And that's how the business started to build. And like, as we grew, we just found new cohorts, new angles that we could just keep doing. I think that helped us a ton. And I think that that's what a lot of the brands that grow super fast, that are, are scaling really quickly on Meta, is that they have the ability to sell it to a bunch of different people, have a huge tam, but sell it to a bunch of different people. But it be very simple from a supply chain and product mix standpoint. So that was hollow at the end of the day. I mean, we had eight SKUs the first year. I think we had 20 this the next year. I mean, it was very simple from an apparel brand perspective.

[Matt]

Does margin matter?

[Zach Stuck]

Yeah, margin matters. Margin matters. I would say that's an important piece. But my margin for Holo is not incredible. There's many brands that have better margin than us. I think it's the fact that we can position things in a bunch of different ways throughout the year. We're going to sell product to 20 different cohorts of people, different types of people that completely are from tradesmen to ultra marathon runners, to people that have. That are moms, that whatever, just stay home all day to nurses, to like, these are all completely different types of people that are buying products that are like a very simple product mix. So I think that's. That's a huge piece of why we've been successful is that I didn't have to go make, you know, our product is more function over fashion. That's what I always say internally. And. And when you're function over fashion, you can usually be problem solution based. So again, like, I think that that's what's allowed that business to grow so much, is that we have a very simple product mix, but we can sell to tons of different people and talk to them a bunch of different ways to try and convince them to buy the product.

[Sean]

Yeah. And I think this angle piece is what Groons got, so. Right.

[Zach Stuck]

Like, it's exactly what Groons did.

[Sean]

Right.

[Zach Stuck]

It's exactly.

[Sean]

They're talking immunity, they're talking fiber, they're talking, you know, kids, they're talking everything. Right?

[Matt]

Dude, GLP1s like, they hit every frigging. You go through their ad library, same thing. It's like there's. There's six, seven major angles in there at all times.

[Zach Stuck]

Yeah. And I would say that this is why Marsman is growing as fast as it. As it is also because testosterone as a male hormone is tied to everything that you feel. So everything that a man feels or could feel is tied to your hormones, which is tied to your testosterone. So it allows us to talk about the full gambit as well. So, yeah, I think that that's it. I think that when you sell, I mean, like, again, I'm not trying to diminish, like, the brands the 4x400 had, but I think it was baby clothes. They had like the. The leather wallets that were made out of baseball mitts. And then it was the pen thing, and then bamboo Earth, I think, was the last one. And Bamboo with is the one that survived. And I think that brand has the ability to sell to more people in different ways. So I would say. And it has mrr. So, like, you combine those two, it's like.

[Matt]

Yeah, so the three things are like product. Your thing is like your product choice was different, better, whatever. You had higher risk tolerance. And then you. Because you had higher risk tolerance, you also had the structure to back that up. And like, nobody. There was no, like, competing interests that would hold, I guess that would challenge that risk tolerance, as I understand it.

[Zach Stuck]

Yeah, yeah. That's basically it. I mean, I had no investors in either the agency or the brands, you know, so it was kind of just up to me.

[Matt]

Sean, how does that contrast, like, the. The angles thing with. With Ridge? Like, did the original wallet, was that more function over, like. Well, basically how Close to what Zach is saying was the original. Original Ridge Wallet. I don't know why that's so frigging hard for me to say.

[Sean]

The original Ridge wallet. Yeah, you. You want to avoid being fashion for as long as possible. Our wallet business is now a fashion business, but when the original came out, we invented it. It was like the first wallet that could expand to fit as many cards. We've now transitioned to being a fashion company, and it's harder because you have to have launches and color stories and brand campaigns. And some launches do better, some launches do worse. It's hard to predict that. But, like, our luggage business is essentially a fashion business. It's like, all luggage is basically the same. That's a hard business to be in. Where our rings business is a function business. It's like, hey, it's a ring. We have some special stuff about it. And, like, I'm not going to try to win you on color or design or story. Right. That's very hard to do. It ring's very traditional. I want to talk about the risk because I think, Zach, you have a legendary risk tolerance, and I don't think people know that or appreciate that about you. You're willing to put it all on the line and then walk away if it loses. So many people get stuck with businesses that suck, but, like, there's sunk cost fallacy or whatever. I've watched you shut down at least two brands, and you've taken brands to the point of bankruptcy and saved them back. Like, it's really a very legendary level of risk tolerance. And that's actually, I think, the most undersold part of the story. So let's talk about where that comes from. Are you a gambler or.

[Matt]

Let's go back to being a degen.

[Zach Stuck]

I mean, if you. If you really want to go deep on this, it's like, my understanding of money is, I think, a very unique understanding of money where I grew up with, like, none. And so I think everyone that's that. That talks about, like, you could always go back to zero. I think, Sean, you've even said this. Like, I always thought of, like, I could go back to zero and I would be just fine because I love the game. So it's like, I think I, you know, outside of now, obviously, I have, like, nice things. I have nice car, boat, whatever, and I'm grateful for those things. But, like, I was always willing to kind of go back to zero and if I needed to, to, like, get to the final winner. So that's really it. You Know, grew up in a, you know, 1100 square foot house in Wisconsin. You know, didn't, didn't, didn't have a lot of things. So the things weren't really the exciting thing I think of like winning was the important thing and I just knew that eventually I would win. So you know, I think the perseverance part of that comes from seeing my parents run small businesses for my whole life and them just continue to push through and push through and push through. So it's that and then my idea of money is just kind of, you know, a unique one.

[Sean]

Yeah, nothing scares rich people more than being poor. But like if you were already poor, you're like, no, that's not that bad. It's like Taco Bell's still there. Like, you know, you still got the Internet. Like it's all still pretty, pretty chill.

[Zach Stuck]

Yeah, I mean give me a MacBook Pro and like let's cook. Right? So that's usually it. MacBook Pro and Wi Fi and we can figure black T shirts and I can figure some stuff out. So yeah, I mean that's really it at the end of the day. Nothing, nothing more special than that.

[Matt]

Did your over time then has the, I guess the watermark for what is winning changed to you?

[Zach Stuck]

Right?

[Matt]

So like you're, is it always moving up? So like you're always pushing it out further and further. Is the horizon always the horizon?

[Zach Stuck]

Yeah, I mean it for sure has changed. I think like, you know, my, my original goal, I wrote, you know, I have notebooks from back when I was like 19, just writing notes to myself and like what I wanted to accomplish and stuff. And my, my goal was to make a hundred grand by the time I was 30 a year. And so you know, started, started, started Homestead and that was my first like, you know, business that I was generating, you know, good money and so smashed that at like 25, 26. And I was like, okay, what's next? And then when you see these businesses like Hexclad go from, you know, small, basically some guys that were selling pans to, you know, mid nine figure business in a short period of time, your reality changes. And I think that that was really helpful for me to see just to kind of open up like what's possible. Yeah, I mean when I started Easy Street Brands, which is like my holdco of brands, the goal was by 20, 28, 100 million in revenue. And you know, we hit that last year. So like it was like, okay, change, spread the horizon, push it more like, let's see what else we can go do so. Yeah, I think it'll ever be forever be changing, but I don't know. At the end of the day, I'm a pretty simple person. I like nice things, but I don't need nice things. I grew up not having them, so I don't really need them. And now I have a kid, so I kind of want to embody this idea of these things are sick and cool, but we don't need them to be happy and have a good time. I think that that's what's really, really helpful about me being here in Wisconsin still is that when I go to a bar on the weekend, no one gives a about how big my business is, what car I drive, what watch I wear. No one cares. They could care less. They're talking about things that are in the moment and having a blast. And that is such a good reset for me to have because it just doesn't matter. So as much as building the bigger business is the game that I enjoy playing the numbers getting bigger. Part of that, I think I'm grateful to have this, like, grounded ability to like stay in Wisconsin, stay around my family and the people that I care about that, like, don't really care. Right. So, yeah, I don't know. That's, that's my take at it.

[Matt]

Can I add on that? Like, I think that's such an important. It's an interesting take, Zach. Like, I live in a 200,000 person city in the middle of the mountains in British Columbia. I used to live in Toronto, which is like 8 million people. It's like Canada is New York. Built my first company in a city where like, everything is so big and there's always another level in front of you. And now I'm in a place where like half of my friends are just, we call them like they're dirt bags. Like, all they want to do is just like go sleep in the forest in a hammock. And some of them are insanely wealthy, but it's like their best day is like, dude, did you see the stars last night? Like, that's how they think. And I find it so refreshing to just not be always around the shiny of like, more and more and more and more and more. And it just is very freeing for me. So I'm happy you said that.

[Sean]

Yeah. Well, look, we can talk about LA all day, man. I mean, you guys have seen my tweets.

[Matt]

Nobody said anything about la.

[Zach Stuck]

I think we're talking about Miami more than we're talking about la.

[Sean]

But yeah, I want to go back to look, I was also 18 and I thought if I could make $100,000 a year, that'd be the most amount of money ever. I'm like, oh, oh, I could, I could buy everything. Right. And I want to talk about how long that journey actually took you from 19 to 26. Right. You had to start your own business to do that. And just an education for all the young kids coming up because there's 22 year olds listening to this and they're like, I need to make a million dollars a month. And it's like, no, no, no, you don't. It took, it took Zach, who's an amazing operator, five, six years in that journey before he actually cracked 100K. And now another five years later he's doing, you know, he has a nine figure brand. So it's, it should just take you five or 10 years to actually build something worthwhile in this and get the skills. And it's just a warning for all the people who are 18 and they want to start being comfort tomorrow. It's like you have to suffer a little bit to actually get the skills and the, to be grounded in reality. That's my perspective.

[Zach Stuck]

Yeah. Yeah. I think the other part of it too is like, I was also not around the opportunity. You know, I flirted with the idea of moving out to Santa Barbara when I was 18, 19, and my girlfriend, who's now my wife, we met our senior year in high school. So we've been together this whole time, which is also a rare kind of unique story. She was going to go to culinary school. So it was like I was either going to stay with her or break up or go to school in Santa Barbara. And funny enough, like the team and not the team, the group of people that went to Santa Barbara and went to the university that year was a team for movement watches. And I was like, I would always think in my head when I was like 19, 20, 21, 22, I was watching them start to build that business and I was like, like, I should have went to Santa Barbara. What was I doing stuck in Wisconsin running radio ads, running TV ads, like just this, like for plumbers, like, what am I doing here? So I think, I think it's interesting of like, if you know what you want to do, I wouldn't say you have to do. You don't have to win right away. But proximity is also so important for learning these things. And I didn't get the chance to like have that opportunity until like Twitter was around, where then I was able to talk with all these E commerce people while I was still in Wisconsin. Right. So I had that opportunity and then obviously I started making enough money to travel and all that good stuff. But I will say for the young people listening to this, like proximity is important if you have big ambitions. And so if you're thinking about it and it's not going to risk a relationship that may turn into a future partner like take the shot, go move to a town, go, go, go live in la, go bother Sean for a month or stuff like that. Because it's. I think there's a lot that you can just learn by the proximity piece.

[Sean]

So you would have met Daniel, the original founder of Ridge Wallet. He, he also went to school in Santa Barbara. He knows the movement guys. So you would have been there as an E commerce hotspot, bro. The world would have been different.

[Matt]

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[Zach Stuck]

So we've shut down or bought and sold five other brands outside of these two. So seven in total.

[Sean]

And also look, Homestead is also an eight figure brand. So this guy, this guy is three out of eight. He's got three eight figure outcomes out of out of eight brands. That's fantastic.

[Zach Stuck]

Yeah, so we, yeah, the most recent one was Sleep accessory brand that was focused on mouth tape that got commoditized. We just like Shut that one down. That was a miss. Another one was a brand called Frey. This one, I think actually probably had the most opportunity. So full quick, very quick story on this business. We had a client that was a manufacturer that manufactured the product, Frey. It was a laundry detergent company and they were their original manufacturer. This brand, Frey Frey Laundry. I think it's just frey.com was raised a bunch of VC money torched it all, went bankrupt. And we were buying it out of bankruptcy. And one of our clients brought us the idea and said, hey, we can buy it out. I can manufacture the product and you guys can sell it. And you're so good at this. I was like, this is a magical opportunity. We can have great cogs, we can do, you know, on time, inventory, all, all this good stuff. And this was like a couple. This is a year in the Holo. And I'm like, this sounds great. And basically what ended up happening is I took it over, started to build it and started to build a team. And me and the partner of the manufacturer just like, it wasn't working. The partnership, like, basically like hit a point where I won't go into details, but like, I hit a point where I was like, I'm done. Like, I can't deal with this anymore. We were running into inventory issues. All the, all the benefits I thought I was going to get by having a partner that was a manufacturer, like, didn't end up panning out. And so I've had a lot of conversations with other entrepreneurs that are like, hey, this manufacturer wants to start a brand with me. And I'm like, pause, like, do not necessarily do that because a, you don't know how good of an operator they are. You don't know how big their manufacturing business can be. You don't know any of these other details about how they run their company. So I, I make people that I've talked to like, pause on that. But anyways, Frey was a business that we started to turn into a great opportunity. Basically took it from 100, 100k a month to like 700k a month in about a year. And then we were just starting to crack through where we were profitable on acquisition with a 50% take rate on subscription. So I was like, this thing is going to go. And like, that's right when me and this other partner of mine just like, it didn't work out. So that one we killed, or I killed because of the partnership, basically sold my shares that I bought in with. So that was like a zero outcome for me. But from like, my mental headspace standpoint, I was like, whatever, I'm better off without it. So that one, I think, could have been a monster if I would have, like, kept working on that one. Outside of that, there was, like, a licensed, whatever home decor brand that bought, sold, that one didn't work out, didn't scale. And then a notebook company and. Am I missing anything else? I think that's it. So, yeah, I mean, we took. Took. Took a decent amount of shots at goal, but if you really look back at what were the products that had those same three elements, it's like, okay, it's Holo and Marshman.

[Matt]

So, yeah, so the other ones were missing something. Right. So it sounds like Frey had a structure problem that, you know, back to your thing. So the product may have been right, your risk tolerance was there, but structure sounds like it was an issue. Just cap, table, whatever else. And then the other ones just, like, I'm thinking out loud, but, like, they may not have actually had the, like, the angles to sell.

[Zach Stuck]

They didn't. Or they were commoditized to the point that it just didn't make any sense that the margin and, like, the opportunity got depleted.

[Sean]

I was going to say, do you think it's important that Hola was so successful to start, or do you think you just put more blood, sweat and tears into it to make it successful? Because it was the first one and that kind of set, like, it sets you up to do more of them later on, but your first one and your last one are the big successes. So do you think that's just a coincidence?

[Zach Stuck]

I think I would give that product. I think that the product itself. Our reviews are insane. They're socks. But people write novels. It's crazy. So I think that that helped us. But it also checked that other box. I don't know. I. I think that. I think it was just good product, good time. No one knew what alpaca socks were. No one knew that you could make stuff out of alpaca fiber. They didn't know the difference between alpaca and Marino. Most people still don't. But, like, it. It was a. It was a unique opportunity and it solved. It solved the problem. And it checked all the right boxes. It was light, you know, margin was pretty good. Returning, you know, customer existed. It's not like we did not have a returning customer. Like, our LTV is not crazy, but it had it. So that. That was working and helping. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I also would say, like, back to the Risk tolerance point. That was the business I pushed hardest compared to any other business, even compared to Marsman. Like, we hit a point where we were. We were. So let me think about this. We were 1 million, then 8 million, and then 21 million in between the 8 and 21 million year we were in the spring. And I was like, okay, we need to start selling this product in Q2 or Q1, Q2, Q3. So it's not just Q4 product. And I was making POS in preparation for Q4. So I got to the point where I had debt from Wayflyer outstanding. I had payments on that debt, like hitting tranching every single week or every single, like every other week. And so we needed to generate enough cash to pay for the way flyer payments to, to buy the raw materials, then buy the. And make the product for Q4. And we got to a point where we were torching like 10k a day. And so I'd wake up, open up triple whale, and it was like negative 16k yesterday, do it again the next day, negative 14k. And it was like every day. And like hit a point where, I mean, that was the most stress that I've ever had in any business where I was like, I thought it was all going down because I was like, okay, I have so much debt on this business now that I could actually lose Homestead because Homestead was like, successful, but it wasn't millions of dollars sitting in the bank successful. And so, yeah, that was terrifying. But I mean, that also taught me how to run a business properly. I had to have some really hard conversations with manufacturers. I had to lay off some employees. I had to do all the hard things to turn it around. And I had to build a proper financial plan. I really needed to get in the weeds in our cash flow modeling on our P and L, like, on everything, on all of the debt and how we were structuring debt and what partners we had. Like, I really had to learn that, which I think was obviously helpful. Then when we started a business like Mars, where, you know, it started to click and we were like, okay, I know exactly what to do and not how to. I know not how to ruin this at this point. So, yeah, yeah, I guess I got

[Matt]

one question I have for you, Zach, is like, do you have a strong view then on the Holdco model, like, you're multi brand, like the Easy street brands concept, you clearly were like, I can do this many times over. Why do you think that that's the case for you? But like, we've also seen Other hold codes completely FL like flame out. And we, and we, we all have friends who have multiple, like actually have made this work. So I'm just curious like your stance on this model because I think I get this approached on this often.

[Zach Stuck]

You need a gm. You need someone that's not you running the company. So like if you want to do this, you need individuals to run the business. That's not you that can worry about the day to day. That's not you that that's the take. Because there's always going to be a problem in one of the companies every single day. Like I think if you talk to most of the Holdco people that tried it or try to do it like one of the brands was struggling every single day. So you as the CEO of all of them, that is your problem now. So you are going, you're just constantly shifting from inventory issues from importing alpaca to hey, our manufacturer is not. We don't have enough, whatever, whatever. We don't have enough inventory for, for this like laundry detergent business to, you know, CAC went through the roof on, on the sock business to like every single day there was a different problem. And I think it's really hard to do that unless you have someone like running it and owning it. I think that that's where like Roman did a really good job. He's got like operators running the companies. I haven't seen anyone else really do it quite as well as him, but I think that that's the distinct piece is that he's not CEOing a bunch of different businesses. So I mean my honest take is like, it helped me find winners. Right. I don't think it's the best model. I think like I had risk tolerance and it helped me find these winning businesses. But even like today, so like we are, you know, I have a GM of Hollow now, Josh, and I am so happy because there's no way I can give Mars the energy that it needs if I'm still focused on Holo. So yeah, I mean I think that you have to have gm, CEO, whatever, someone running the business to build a proper Holdco. Otherwise it's just like too much for one person to do.

[Matt]

Okay. So I very much, you know, I've noticed a pattern now. The more of these episodes, the show that we do, it's very easy for us to like go from had an idea to like now it's big. Would you be willing to share like how you think about literally cold starting a brand? So like you've done this Multiple times. Where like you didn't buy an existing thing you like, I got, this is a product. Here's an idea. I'm going to cold start a brand in like 2025 basically today. And I would love if you could just for people listening, like how the hell you think about this? Like right now, if you were to start another one, how would you do it? What's the playbook that runs through your head over and over and over again?

[Zach Stuck]

Everyone's talking about health and wellness, but like that is the space that I would play in if I were to do it again. Seeing what we were able to category matters. I would create one product. No more than one, just one. And I would try to build that product and set it up in a way where I could talk about it 50 different ways to a bunch of customers. And I would love the ability to sell it to both men and women. So not necessarily like an ima, but like in that range I would try to do something about that. Maybe I would go a little bit more niche where I would maybe make a heart supplement. Something that's for like heart health, where it could still be 40 to 70 year olds, it could be men and women, but it's a, it's a comprehensive product. And then it needs mrr, it needs, it needs returning revenue. Like any brand that tries to say that they're an LTV brand, like it's so hard. Like there's been some of these apparel brands, like there's represent, there's, you know, some of these other ones that customers get super loyal and they come back and they buy and they buy again. But that's so rare to see. So I would much rather lean into a business that inherently is a returning customer, revenue driven business. Because Facebook ads has just gotten more expensive. Like acquiring customers has just gotten more expensive. And especially if you want to hit scale, you need the ability to lose money on your first customer or on that, on that, on that first purchase to actually achieve proper scale. So yeah, I mean if I were to like start from zero, just whatever riffing health and wellness brand focused on heart health, which is like holistic health for 40 to 70 year olds, that's a, you know, multi ingredient product that has some clinicals. So I can make some pretty bold claims, I can tie them to clinicals that has MRR and you know, I try to find a manufacturer in the states that can make a holistic product like I, that I wouldn't have to worry about sourcing packaging or bottling or boxes or any of that just make it all for me in one so that my like operations of the business are super lean. Then literally one person, me could run that business because I could use AI for, I could use AI for, you know, BSing, email and SMS. Like I think you could kind of get away with it for a little bit and then it's just Facebook ads at the end of the day to get it started. I think you can, yeah, 100%. I mean I think like that's just my, this is my playbook. Like everyone says, like do the organic content piece. I'd say do that as well. But to do that properly you need the ability to have the cash to seed the product in the first place and you need to seed at volume to actually get enough content to actually get the banger. I, that's the route that I would take. I mean I, I'd run static ads up to, you know, a six figure a month business and then I'd start incorporating video and then I'd maybe go into the organic thing. But yeah, I think, I think you could literally that concept right there, you could stand up with 30 grand, you could stand that up and get up 100K. MRR business and 30 to 60 days.

[Matt]

Give me your take, man. I want to know how you compared to what Zach is saying. Like from a cold start perspective.

[Sean]

Zach's right because Zach's a ruthless operator. Like you know, I would do organic but I, because, because you wouldn't be testing a product. You'd be like, this is the product I care about and I'm passionate about. I'm the face of it. I'm going to go post videos about it all day long. But that's not what Zach's describing. What Zach's describing is he's like, I'm amazing at ads. I've done this four or five times. I, because if the heart health thing didn't work for whatever reason, if there's not a tam there, he'd pivot to gut health or sleep health or else. Right. And like what you don't want to do is put your social brand on the line, like making videos of yourself and like on your own organic social channels for a brand you're going to shut down and then relaunch with a new ingredient. Right. So it's, it's, it's so right. If you're a ruthless operator, just follow exactly what that, what Zach is saying. But Zach's just better at it than other people. So it's like you have to, yeah, like you have to be good at ads and actually understand this process. You know, I want to talk about. And this is going to be a little bit of a pivot, but like the structural, structural advantages that you typically produce when you're doing brands. People know this or not. You're a very generous person when it comes to equity and partners and stuff. Right. Like, you know, a lot of times I find like founders who won't give up 1%. Right. But like on Homestead, you're like, hey, Riley, you're going to run it now. You're, you're an equity partner, you're going to fucking run this thing. You're the president. If we sell, you get a bunch of money. And with Marsman, it's the same thing. It's like you brought a partner in this business. Like you're always down to partner with people. And that is something I think people don't appreciate is you're in like, you're very into aligned incentives, like the team that's working on it or the co founder. You're going to make sure that like they are healthily taken care of. Do you think I'm, I'm overstating that or you think that's a big part of your.

[Zach Stuck]

The only thing that I'll correct is that Benjamin Smith brought Marsman to me. That was not my idea. Um, so Ben, my co founder, and Marsman, who was previously the founder of Disco, which is a men's skincare brand, brought both the mouth tape idea and Marsman to me. And so we started those together and we said, you know, his whole thing was, I'm great at product brand vision, organic, and I know how to build a brand which Disco crushed. If everyone ever, like you look back three, four years ago, people knew who Disco was and they were like a sub eight figure, they were a seven figure business. It looked like a eight or maybe even nine figure brand. So Ben was so good at that that I saw him do that and fail. And I'm like, but I'm good at growth. So like, this could be really interesting. And I'm not really a product person at the end of the day. Like, I feel like I have my opinions on product, but I'm not, I'm not the innovator on product. So he brought that concept to me. I think that Marsman is working and it has worked the level that it has because he invested in things and wanted to invest in things that I normally wouldn't have. Right. So he wanted to invest in brands, he wanted to invest in like Making things sick, Making the packaging great. Making it, you know, fully paper unique. Like, no one else had done anything like our packaging. And he was all into that. I'm like, I think we're wasting money. We should just do a plastic bottle and like, let's just sell this thing, right? So that's like my end versus his. And I think that a lot of those decisions that he made were really important to people buying into it. So, yeah, I don't know. That's the only correction that I have is that Ben did bring Mars men to me and present that to me, which, when you run an agency and people see you grow a bunch of businesses like those, I've had a bunch of those opportunities. This one with Ben was just unique enough that I figured it was worth taking a shot on.

[Sean]

Okay, well. And Frey was the same thing. Like, freight came to you with an opportunity. So you've seen it work once and you've seen it not work once. Do you think incubate incubation by yourself is going to be the future, or are you looking for more partners to launch stuff with?

[Zach Stuck]

It's a hard question. I don't know. I don't know. There's, there's, there's a lot of peace in running a business by yourself. Partnership can be hard, you know, depending on, like, who, who that person is and like, their, you know, their goals. I will, like, give. I don't know why my camera keeps going blurry, but I will give Benjamin, like, a lot of credit on how hard he pushes. I think people in the DTC X space think Marsman success was because of me. It literally is 50, 50. Like, Ben has pushed so hard on that brand. Like, we'll set a forecast to be no, bigger, bigger, bigger. And then it's up to me to be like, okay, can we actually, like, pull this off? And is that even reasonable? So I do have to give him like, a ton of credit. I think there's been moments in this business with Mars that he's definitely carried more weight than I have, certainly. So how can you, can you go.

[Matt]

Go deeper on that? Like, what does that mean? Because people listening are going to know you as the paid guy. Like, what's, what's been doing so sorry, Ben. I'm not discounting what Ben does.

[Zach Stuck]

No, yeah, he's super in the weeds. Like, he is reviewing every single email that goes out. We have a channel where we still were reviewing between Ben and I every single ad that was going out. We, I, I approve every single lander that Goes out website changes, Ben me plus our designer in Figma making the design changes. Like he's very in the weeds every product change. Like we were review packaging together, making tweaks of the product packaging. Him and I, he's done a lot and he also like what I will give him a ton of credit for too is he's been patient with me while I've been making this transition into like creating more time for Marsman because I had hollow, I had Homestead, I had these other businesses. And so he was like all in on Mars. And so from a time perspective, I mean like he was. It was 8020 for a while there from time committed me versus Ben. So I mean I think a lot of that credit is, you know, credit is due to Ben for that is just the commitment. And he's, he is very, very good at identifying problems in the business. Like he will find pockets of problems that I, I wouldn't find operations issues. Hey, we don't have a system for this. Like he's, I'm much more like run, you know, fly by the seat of my pants. And he's much more like, we need an SOP for this and we need this in notion and we need this automated and we need an AI person to come into the company and build out this full automation so I never have to do this again. I will just do it over and over again. So he has a lot of really unique skill sets that have made the partnership work. And then his idea to push is like, you know, Ben wants to build a billion dollar outcome business. Like that was his intention. Was like, I want to go big. He thought that was disco. He's like, this is going to be Marsman. So when you have a partner that is like, we are going for it. No matter what your intentions are of the business, it's like, okay, like I'll try to keep, you know, the train on the tracks while we keep pushing. But yeah, I mean that is, that is a big attribute of his.

[Sean]

Yeah. And for people who don't know, I mean disco, great product, great branding. They were trying to sell makeup to man, which is just a very, very tough market. So the fact that even got to seven figures, I mean, hats off to them, like that is. That is generational change. If they could pull that off.

[Zach Stuck]

Yeah, yeah. A very, very tough market.

[Sean]

You said, you said one more thing. You know, LTV is not guaranteed and that's something people should take away. Is that like the reason why all the subscription brands are working right now and selling for Hundreds of millions of dollars or billions of dollars. It's because subscriptions are guaranteed. Like, you know, the problem with being a fashion brand and ltv, it's like, yes, T shirts, you know, do wear out, but go in any guy's closet. They have shirts from 10 years ago. It's like, unless they gained a bunch of weight, they're gonna keep the shirts that they have for five years, 10 years. And the only way to get them back in is to do new and more exciting stuff. And that's why collab culture has gotten so big. It's like kith gets me because every week they're like, oh, here's a new, you know, 90s retro collab, or here's a new, you know, we're partnering with on running or New Balance or whatever. And it's like that hype machine is really, really hard to build. And it's really like. And if you have something that flops, you don't get the sales where mmr, every single week, every single month, sales are coming in regardless. So that's why there's been so much push to anything on subscription. And it's physical products are harder because of that.

[Zach Stuck]

Yeah. The other thing that I will say about the subscription, like health and wellness brands that I don't think people are paying enough attention to. Maybe they are. Maybe this is just like a thing that I've been thinking about lately, which is how do you drive? So to get a big outcome with a strategic, you need retail velocity, right? DTC is important. Amazon's Cool International's Meh doesn't really matter as much. But retail velocity is important. When you have mrr, you can spend into that mrr. So these brands are spending more money on paid social and just awareness than everybody else. So when you think about brands like Grooms that then went into Walmart, everyone already saw grooms ads. They like, they noticed it, of course, when they were walking past it, like, oh, yeah, that's that like green gummy thing that I saw Facebook ads over. So I think like, there's a unmatched value add when you have MRR for the fact that you can literally spend into that MRR and keep pushing, pushing, pushing the awareness that by the time that you do hit, you do hit the stores, the retail placements, the velocity is just going to just crush everybody else that's in there. So that's another thing too that I think is people don't give enough value to because they're like, oh, yeah, these brands are growing really fast. But Some of these brands are spending $10 million a month on meta ads. Who else is spending $10 million a month? Like, you go to, like, even, like, the huge, like, Fortune 500 companies don't spend $10 million a month on that ad. So the awareness is there, which is. Is. Is a huge piece.

[Sean]

It wouldn't be surprising if Groons marketing budget was way bigger than Liquid iv. Right. It's because, like, they are in a. They're in the scaling phase right now. So, like, yeah, I. I totally. I totally what you're saying. But the impression that they're pumping out in the world is just scary because what you end up seeing is, you know, they're really. They're really getting 10 billion impressions a month on paid social. Like, they could take over your whole category if they wanted.

[Matt]

I saw some Instagram is basically carpet bombing America.

[Zach Stuck]

Yeah, totally. I saw something super interesting on Twitter yesterday. A friend sent it to me, and there was. I forget who it was, things for Sarah V. And they're like, hey, Sarah v has a YouTube channel that got 150 million views. And I did the math and I'm like, on a $30 CPM, that's $4.5 million. Like, there's brands that cook through $4.5 million in a month. So it's like, yes, organic is interesting and 150 million views sound interesting, but when you're actually spending real dollars and your CPMs are decent, like, you can blow past any organic reach that you're going to get from building, like, a big organic brand. That's my. And so I think brands like Groons like Sarah V got 150 million views on. On YouTube. Who gives? Groons got 150 million views in the last seven days on Meta ads. So I think that's what's. That's what's super interesting about these brands.

[Matt]

Can I ask a thing on Mars, man? Where did. I mean, this might be more of a Ben question, but, like, it seems sort of counterintuitive to me to go into this category. Like, TRT is a. Like a. I felt like that was a common thing. Like, there's a lot of TRT out in the world. Like, what was the. The insight to create this product and to go into this space?

[Zach Stuck]

Yeah. I'll try to tell Ben's story as best as I can, because it's his story. So Ben was a little bit of a wild child, let's call it that, in his early 20s, and he depleted his hormones massively. He hit a point where he was like, you know, getting pretty out of shape, not feeling good and started to try to go down the path of fixing that. So of course he did the like, okay, quit drinking, start eating healthy, start doing the things right. He started trying a bunch of different products. And so he ended up building basically a stack of products that cost him, I think he says $300 in total. And then that thesis of like, okay, here's the stack that I've been taking now for a couple years is what turned into Marsman. He's like, someone needs to just buy a product. That is my stack of natural tea boosting stack. And that's where the shilogy, the tonga, the boron, all that stuff, the vitamin D, all of that comes into one. And that's how the idea was, was created. So it was actually like a true founder story that led to the product innovation being, being what it is.

[Matt]

And how come when you looked at it right, so Bren, Ben brings you the idea. You must have seen more than just like angles and, and what we've talked about before. Like you, there's gotta be an insight that you had where you're like, you're looking at it, you're like, oh, this could actually work.

[Zach Stuck]

Ben will talk about this probably till the cows don't come home. But I thought the Maltape brand was going to be bigger than, than Marsman. So yeah, that's what I thought. I'm like, ah, this T booster thing, like New Genics has been around forever. No one really cares about this. TRT exists. Who cares? That's what I thought until I realized that there are millions of men that hate needles, that want to go natural first before they go to, you know, something that they have to inject every single month or every couple weeks for the rest of their life, otherwise they're going to mess up their hormones. So there's a huge market. The TAM is massive. And then the other part of this too is it's not just the 50 year olds, it's everyone. Now that is literally 25 plus. Because if you look at the chart, there's like a really important chart that shows testosterone levels over the course of time. Now 20, 26 men in their 20s had the lowest testosterone they've ever had in the last hundred years that they've been tracking this because of our diets, because of sedimentary lifestyle, because of all of the things that we do that lead to just sitting and scrolling on our phones all day. None of these things are helping us create the natural hormone that regulates our body. So our TAM got a lot bigger. Right now we have 25 plus. We have, we have guys in their 20s that don't, like Ben didn't want to go to TRT that wanted a natural supplement to do it. So, yeah, I mean, I think that was, that was the kind of the eye opener for me when I realized that, you know, Ben had his story, but I was like, how many people are there? Like Ben? There's a lot of them. And then I think, you know, the other piece is like, testosterone has always had this weird stigma, and our goal with Mars is to, like, push that stigma away. Like, testosterone doesn't mean, like, you're just like, horny all the time or whatever. It, it has a huge impact on how you feel. Holistically. It is the energy, it is your focus, it is your sleep, which is a huge piece of this. So there's, there's. We have customers that tell us that they take it specifically because of the sleep benefits, which is super interesting. Um, so, yeah, I mean, I think I was proven wrong. Thought it was going to be melt tape, but obviously, you know, this is a great product. And then the ability, you know, I've shared this publicly a few times, but we were at a point where the business is doing, I don't know, 200k a month in revenue. And we were kind of flatlining and we were kind of struggling to get NCPA in the spot where I felt really comfortable. You're running, you know, an offer for a subscription versus one time. And I had a conversation with Jordan Menard from Instant Hydration, and he's like, dude, you've got high risk tolerance. What the hell are you doing? Send it. Go all in on subscription. Just go. Just do it. He's like, torch money for two months. Track the cohorts. It's gonna back out, I promise. Jordan. If any of you don't know, Jordan, Jordan had the, you know, had the opportunity and he was the main kind of guy behind this. For brands like Everyday Dose, he was the guy behind Rise. Like, he was the marketer behind those brands. So he saw it and he was starting to, to come up with this idea for instant hydration while we were talking. And so we, we, we, we sent it and we basically we torched 250k over two months building our, our MRR because we went all in on subscription.

[Matt]

So you took away one time purchase as an option.

[Zach Stuck]

So we have to, you have to show it. FTC regulation. You have to allow it. So we allow it, but it's just like, not the forefront offer on our site. And so we went to 99.99% of orders were subscription only. And because the product's good and it does what it's supposed to do, the cohorts held and MRR started to stack. And we're like, holy, this is interesting. So that is where then the company started growing by, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars a month to then a million dollars plus a month every single month. We were growing by consistently. So that. That's really what allowed us to kind of kick things off. So it was a good product. It had the opportunity, but it took the extra push from Jordan to be like, dude, torch some cash, like, build, build the mrr, go all in for us to really hit the gas on it. And once that started it, you know, just kind of lights out from there.

[Matt]

How you fund the cash gap on. Because I'm assuming you're not. You're not profitable day one. You've got a payback period. How did you guys bridge the gap?

[Zach Stuck]

Founder investment from us?

[Sean]

Yeah, okay, let's actually, if. If you're down to unpack that, like, you have businesses that are cash flowing. Did you guys go 50, 50 on the cash in or did you take the lion's share of putting the money in? Like, how did it actually break out?

[Zach Stuck]

Yeah, I took the lion's share, but Ben, again, going back to, like, the original point, Ben was working 80%. I was working 20% of this business because I didn't have the capacity to work on it because I was still the CEO of Hollow and I was still an owner of Homestead and still involved in that business. So, yeah, it was. It was me basically saying, I'll take the bet kind of on you, on us, that this is going to work out. We were 50. 50. We still are up, you know, up until the raise. We still own, you know, the fair share, majority of the business, but our. Our equity is split still today. But, yeah, I was like, I'll take the bet on you. Like, I think there's an opportunity here. I trust Jordan Menard. Like, let's. Let's give us a shot. So, yeah, Ben put money in, but I definitely put, you know, the lion's share of it.

[Sean]

Okay, so let's talk about the last couple of months because you're a titan on this episode because you had the craziest 20, 26 of anybody else I know. So I think you started off announcing the official sale of Homestead and maybe, maybe talk us through that process. You hire a GM for Hollow. Hollow is now ripping, growing. It's going to be an amazing nine figure brand hopefully this year. And then you sell and some. Some percentage and then there's some investment in from El Kattered in into Mars Men. So how did you survive the past four or five months?

[Matt]

That's a lot of processes all at once.

[Zach Stuck]

Yeah, I had technically four deals because I raised for Holo as well. That wasn't public, but we did a small PE round for Holo during that same period of time as well. So, yeah, gnarly. And then we purchased a large 100,000 square foot warehouse facility which is now our fulfillment center for all the brands. So, yeah, it was nuts. My accountants, my tax team, my attorneys were like, we've never had anyone do four deals in 60 days. But yeah, it was gnarly. I don't know, like, I think I will, I will say and give credit to Riley. Riley led a lot of the Homestead deal because I wasn't the CEO. You know, I kind of put him in charge and not even put him in charge. He was in charge of that, of that deal and did a great job. Verndale was a great opportunity. It was a good fit. So I'll give him a lot of credit there for doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Ben led a ton of the, of the heavy lifting with all Catterton. Ben is. His whole kind of pitch to me also is like, if we need to raise, I know how to raise. I've done it before. He raised, I think almost $10 million for Disco he has. His Rolodex is insane. He's one of those people that you name someone in the health and wellness space or an investor, they know who Ben is. He did a great job with that. So, I mean, Ben led a lot of that. And then I led the raise for Hollow because I was the CEO, so I did that. And then also this warehouse deal. So, I mean, yeah, it was a crazy 60 day period. I survived the other end of it now, which feels good. But yeah, I mean, it was definitely a. I don't know, like, I try to give advice to people now when they're doing a deal like one, not four at once of just like try to just level set. There's gonna be really great days where you're like, it's happening. There's gonna be days where you're like, it's falling apart and it's never gonna happen. We're never selling this business business. So, yeah, I mean, I think that the goal of the buyer usually is to not share their, their temperature. And that happened to me four times in 60 days because I thought I was maybe not going to get the warehouse. I thought Homestead deal was going to fall through. I wasn't quite sure about how the Hollow Raise is going to go. It's a great business. I didn't really know if El Ketterton was going to be the one. So, like, full context with Mars. Like, El Ketterton got first look. We didn't, we didn't shop that deal around at all. Like, Ben and I spoke to five PE funds like very loosely. But Alcadon got first look. No one else saw our financials. No one else saw the business. They were the one to look at it. And we've obviously seen what they've been able to do for a handful of these companies. I mean they're, they're a blue chip fund. So we, we had the opportunity. We're like, we're gonna go all in on this one. So. Yeah, I mean I have to give credit to, to, to my partners, to be honest. And the other two were a little bit smaller, but.

[Sean]

Well, you're, you're probably your lawyer's favorite customer. You're probably going to get a great gift basket. This Q4.

[Matt]

Dude, they better buy you a second boat. Yeah, they got, they did just fine in the last six months for you. Did the success of the brands have any impact in your decision to sell Homestead?

[Zach Stuck]

Yes. Yeah, for sure, for sure. I, you know, we candidly, we went to market a year prior or we're going to go to market a year prior with Homestead. And we started to have a little bit of a downturn and that was a good reset for the business. Like, it gave Riley and me an opportunity to like really sit down and be like, okay, what do we have to do to sell this company for a number that we're both excited about and a cash out amount that we're both excited about. So that helped us kind of reverse engineer our way into the exit. So when we went to market, it was just like, it was quite easy to sell Homestead because our churn got, got better. Like the, you know, the retention got better. No one on the team was like, we didn't have any turnover. We had like, much more of like a stability from a leadership standpoint. Like we were able to like level up a few people and put them in a role for, for like an entire year. And our service offering became so heavy on the retention side, which our retention clients like. The, the longevity, the LTV of our Email and SMS clients is way higher than our paid clients because obviously paid is much more email and SMS is a little less volatile. So the business was, was kind of primed. So we, we did try to go a little bit earlier but then yeah, obviously as Marsman was ripping hollow have been ripping like it was, it was a pretty easy decision to say, all right, now's a good time.

[Matt]

Would you be willing to hit on just. I know we have a lot of people that actually own agencies that listen to the show. Could you give like a quick, like here are the things that are most valuable when it comes to selling an agency. Business.

[Zach Stuck]

Business. Yeah, I mean I think number one is deciding like a lot of people are like, I'm going to sell it and I'm not. I'm, you know, I don't have to go with it. Unless you have a CEO or a gm, you are going with that business. So like, I think a lot of people think like I can check out. Very likely you will have an earn out. We have an earn out and you're clocked in and you're pushing for one more year. Even after like all of the stress of getting the deal done, you still have a whole other year to kind of hit that. So be conscious of that. The other piece I'd say is, I'd say invest more in your best people. If you have good people at your agency, continue to pay them more, continue to invest them more as much as you can and keep them around. Because what usually happens in the agency space is an agency is arbitraging people so they can only pay their employees so much. And it's not like brands where brands are arbitraging their products, not their people. So a brand can usually pay more. So we would usually like have all these incredible people kind of come up through Homestead and then there'd be a brand that would come in and offer them a job for 50k more, 100k more salary. And so we just kept getting awesome people swooped. And I wish that if I, like look back, I would have paid our best people more and try to incentivize them and potentially even give more of them a piece of an outcome to stick around longer to try and push for an exit. Because I think the outcome gets much bigger once you have more people bought into it, especially when your business is the people, which is an agency. So those are kind of the main two that I would say outside of that, like if you can have a service offering that isn't tied to daily performance, green Light. That's what you want. You don't want the service offering that's tied to daily performance. When you're, when your service offering is like, hey, when, when any E Comm founder is having a bad performance day, they go, who do they go talk to? Media buyer. They go talk to like the head of pay. They go talk to their agency that's running their media. They're not looking at their email, not saying agency, they're not looking at their dev agency, they're not looking at their, you know, organic social agency. They're not looking at any of them. They're looking at them. So the paid team. So that was always hard for us. So as soon as we started to switch and be like kind of 50, 50 between paid and retention, it really helped us level set and like keep clients around longer, which then build stability. And yeah, that's. Those are kind of like the main, the main three I'd focus on.

[Matt]

You know, Sean brought up the, like doing a bunch of deals all at once. And the last one I think that sort of got announced was the LCAT deal for Mars Men. Why did you guys choose to go to them, like almost exclusively? Right. It's like one thing to talk to a few guys. But like, what, what was the thinking behind that?

[Sean]

Oh, sorry, no, great, great line of questioning. And I want to know, did you use a banker or not? Or, or this was all you guys self negotiating?

[Zach Stuck]

Yeah, no banker. No banker.

[Sean]

But

[Zach Stuck]

we were in a spot where the business was growing literally million dollars plus a month every month for like seven or eight months in a row. And so we were like, okay, how long can this stay this good? Was like my number one concern. How long can this actually stay this good? And what other factors are we not thinking about? And so Ben and I basically were like, okay, this helps us take some downside risk, just take some chips off the table, which is great. It also builds our balance sheet up bigger in case it starts to slow down. It also builds up our balance sheet if we want to go to retail. And we knew that always the intention here is to build a great business that's growing. MRR on D2C on Amazon. But we initially need to go to retail and to do that we need a balance sheet that, that allows us to go to retail and send it in retail to have the ability to do a nationwide roll up. So there was that. And then the other part of it too is like we wanted to have a partner in the business that we felt like could properly coach us and Reverse engineer our way to a very big exit. And Ben and I have never had that. I've never done a deal, a nine figure deal before doing, you know, even just like the, the Homestead deal was like stressful enough. And so I really wanted a partner that could help us think through this and be like, here's the timing, here's how you think about it. Here's the business really want to build. And you know, we talk with, we talk with the LCAT team a couple times a month now and even sometimes like a couple times a week just getting feedback, getting feedback on our model, getting feedback on, hey, we're going to maybe go sign some celebrity. Like what do you think about this? Are we thinking about this correctly? Like they've been incredible to be able to bounce ideas off of because they've seen such big businesses and they've seen these transactions happen. So Ben and I figure that if we did the bet, especially with, with with an Alcadon that our chance of outcome would go up because we're like, yeah, we might be able to build $150 million business but like is the business going to be structured in a way or are we going to think about it correctly? Are we going to lean too much into international and then a strategic doesn't care about it or PE doesn't care about that. We wanted someone that was going to help us kind of coach us and guide us to have a high likelihood of a 9 or potentially even 10 figure outcome.

[Matt]

Can you comment on. You made the, you refer to LCAD as a blue chip, which I think we would all agree like that that's a, that's a like a very legit fund. Can you comment on the brand value that having an LCAT as a sort of on the cap table brings to not just to Mars Men but like even the category, right? Like men's testosterone supplements. Like these can be very hard categories from a like perception brand, like long term brand equity. You know, maybe just go there a bit because I think you guys thought this through.

[Zach Stuck]

They, they know this. So the closest comp that Ben and I would always think about when we thought about Marsman was neutrophil or like it's a very simple product mix and they, you know, were heavier in the men's product because it's mostly about hair loss. It's very simple, it's subscription based and they sold, they sold to, they went in with, they did a round with El Catterton and El Catterton helped sell them to Unilever. So we were like, okay, what other comp do we have? Because, you know, there's other. There's other ones out there. I mean, obviously there's. There's Groons, there's, like, brands like Primal Queen, which are crushing Single, sku, whatever. Like, there's some of these other ones that exist in the ecosystem, but we haven't seen many of them actually have the outcome. Like, when we did this round, we obviously didn't know that Grooms was going to go sell, so we knew that they had the track record. And then we also knew that they've done and have a deal with Thorne. Right. They're an owner of Thorne. And so we thought if there's any fund that has access to data about holistic health, it's going to be Catterton. And they see it on a massive scale. So we thought if we were going to do a deal with a partner instead of partnering with another, maybe smaller private equity fund that maybe would have got us a bigger valuation, we figured that our likelihood and chance of having this blue chip, like I said, partner, would increase the likelihood of an outcome. And so, yeah, I mean, to your other question, like, we've gotten. We've gotten like, the rollout treatment, right? Like, the Google team was like, hey, we have a team that, like, wants to support you. Met is like, hey, we have a team that really wants to support you. You know, any. Any agency, creative agencies of, like, like, thrown themselves at us to, like, do work for us because of this news. They're like, we'll work for free for a month and just, like, try it out, run our ads for free. So like, we've gotten a lot of that, which has been. Which has been great and really cool. And so I'd say, like, that also has helped even in the last, like, 30 days, help with our trajectory and help us keep winning.

[Matt]

How did you navigate if there was at all the conversation with lcat about, like, you having multiple companies? You've still got hollow like, Zach, where's your focus, dude? Are you gonna help build this thing? Like, dude, I mean, like, I've been in these processes. Like, it's gonna come up, right? So how. How did you just talk this through?

[Zach Stuck]

Luckily, luckily, while we were doing that, the Homestead deal was happening. So I was like, hey, selling my agency. I know I'm a majority owner of that, but I'm selling it. It's literally like, it's going down right now. Sold. 30 days before the LCAT deal closed. Closed, hollow. I was like, I'm hiring a gm like I promise you I'm hiring a GM was able to bring in Josh, like found Josh really quickly and hired him, brought him on like right away. So I was able to be like, hey, Zach's hands are not in you know, a million different cookie jars. They are in the Mars Men one. And I think they were also understanding like there was going to be a little bit of a transition and Ben's the CEO. Like I, Zach, I'm not the CEO. I'm the CMO of the company. And they have a lot of confidence in Ben as, as do I. And I think that that was the, the underlying piece is that Ben led the raise. Ben was, it was and isn't the major main face to all Catterton. So I think that that also helped. It's not like I was the, the only guy. It's not like I was a sole founder that also had other stuff going on. Having my partner that was all in on it was definitely helpful too. But yeah, they know now like Chris, who's the partner at El Catterton who's been absolutely, Chris Roberts has been absolutely incredible. We've gone to him with a bunch of ideas and concepts and he's been the chillest like best like I couldn't, we couldn't ask for a better partner. He, you know, I like was able to let him know recently I'm like, hey, like you know, I'm able to go fully in on Marsman now. And he, you know, he was supportive of that along the way. So where I don't think some of the other funds would have been as willing to do that. I think that, that Elkat saw the business, saw the opportunity. They're like, Ben's a great, great operator as well and these guys got it. So.

[Sean]

So Zach, is this the end of Easy street brands? You have Hollow, you have Marsman. There's no I can't bring you soap ideas, I can't bring you beer deer, I can't bring nothing. It's over.

[Zach Stuck]

Well, I mean I have a pretty strict non compete now that Elkats in the, you know, in the mix. So depending on what it is, we'll see. But no, I think I'm going to focus on these two. I think Hollow has an opportunity to have a nine figure outcome. It's a great business. It's growing very fast. We're profitable. Morrisman has an opportunity to have a potential 10 figure outcome. So I'd be kind of silly to keep taking even more and more shots like goal. So for now I Will say no. And maybe this is the end of Easy street brands and it's just going to be these two.

[Sean]

Okay. We'll do well for now. Yeah, yeah, I'm looking forward to. You sell both of them, you get a billion dollars and then it's, you know, then, then we're really on Easy Street.

[Zach Stuck]

No, I was just gonna say for what it's worth, like the name Easy street was the most cocky remark of I did Homestead, which was the street I grew up on. And now we're on Easy Street. Now we're, now we're on the easy part of it. You know, agency was tough. Brands are easy. So that's where it came from. That's the honest take of where it came from, which is like the most arrogant ever. But whatever. It is what it is, dude, if

[Matt]

I could ever give you advice, don't, don't jinx your with stuff like that. Like just, you know, stay away from that. I'd love to just talk a little bit about sort of like Mars Men today. Let's just pick one. Like Mars Men today. What does for the growth that you guys have experienced, what does the team look like and has. How has it changed over the last like 12, 18 months? You know, like where did it start and where are you guys today? And then how do you think about team and scaling brands like right now with how the market is and everything we're experiencing?

[Zach Stuck]

Yeah. Well, I'll say one thing that's blows everybody away. We have one ops person. We have one ops person that was a junior ops person that is now our director of operations. He was working with me on some of the previous projects and we were able to kind of like work him into to Marsman. We have one operations person, which is crazy. We're hiring a VP of Ops now. But we got to know nine, nine figure run rate, eight figures a month in revenue with, with one ops person. We have a head of CX who oversees a team of about 15 reps. We have a head of retention who oversees our agency, which we use Homestead still. And so he oversees that and then oversees kind of the, the day to day of, of the back end of the subscription side of things. And then I'm trying to think. We have a brand director, we have a creative director. Those are newer role, newer hires. Creative director is one of the newer ones. And then pretty much, no, I'm missing something. We have a chief of staff. She's been absolutely incredible. So technically goes Benjamin, myself, our chief of staff of Vita and then very Flat line of a bunch of head or VPs and almost all of them. Everybody else is growth. So we have a head of growth, we have a head of paid, we have a VP of performance creative. We have, I don't even know. We have three, three designers, we have four creative strategists, we have five video editors. I mean like everybody else is the growth engine. We have five creative agencies right now. Yeah, it's like it is a ad creative and landing page. We have head of Ecom who handles our CRO. It literally is Ops cx. We have no head of product, we have no product people. It's basically just Ben and everyone else is just growth. So it is pretty wild to see. And I think that candidly, I think this is more the future of these types of businesses, especially if they're in the health and wellness space. And even if it's not, even if the SKU count gets a little bit bigger, I think all the AI things that you can do to oversee OPS now I think is getting way better. I think it's basically like hire the people that are going to help create the growth engine. And that's exactly what we did here. And funny enough, like Holo is very, very similar. Like we have one product person on Holo, two ops people and everybody else for the most part is growth. So that's how, that's how we've structured things and that's what I've obviously we've seen some success with, with.

[Matt]

We, we like to finish these things off with this, like this, these ten rapid fire questions. I do think because you have agency background and brand background, I'd love to like, if you can like do the quick context switch, like give us one and give us, then give us the answer from the perspective of the other. So I'll start it off when we ask everybody the same questions. And I, I'm amazed at how much variety I get in these answers. Like we're all in consumer, shouldn't they be the same? So first question is, you get to a desert island, you get a dashboard to manage your business. You only get three numbers on that dashboard that tell you how the business is doing. What are the three numbers that are most important to you?

[Zach Stuck]

New customer, cpa, cash in the bank month, six cohort retention.

[Matt]

Okay, so like net revenue retention at six months.

[Zach Stuck]

Yeah, six months. I'd say that's relevant to both brands. That's, that's my brand side, agency side, team retention, client retention and pipeline. Yep, yep. In pipeline, yeah.

[Matt]

Okay, so then you also get to take a book or a resource, but it cannot be about business. And this, this might be just like a one, one answer. Like, what is the thing that you're. You're on this island? What are you going to read?

[Zach Stuck]

I'll go with something, like, super, like, childish, because it's fun. Like, I'll go with, like, Harry Potter, Sorcerer's Stone, first book. Just kick it off with just like a Harry Potter book. Yeah. I don't know. If I'm stuck on an island, I might as well just try and enjoy it a little bit and be playful because it's pretty brutal. I don't know.

[Matt]

You just may have made this the first time ever that my daughter might listen to this damn show because she loves Harry Potter. So thanks for that. You made me cool, man. What is your one contrarian belief about business? That other people think you're crazy for profit.

[Zach Stuck]

Doesn't matter as much as people make it seem like it's the most important thing.

[Sean]

That is a very contrarian belief.

[Zach Stuck]

I love that.

[Matt]

That's. That's great.

[Zach Stuck]

Cash flow is great. I'll add the context. Cash flow is incredible. So I'll call that out. Free cash flow.

[Matt]

Love it. What's the single most important word in leadership?

[Zach Stuck]

Patience.

[Matt]

Okay, then. What's the single most important word in business?

[Zach Stuck]

Grit.

[Matt]

Best meal of the day and why? Oh, and dude, I want to know, has this changed pre and post, baby?

[Zach Stuck]

Best meal or words?

[Matt]

Best meal of the day and why?

[Zach Stuck]

Breakfast, obviously, I don't know. You can. You can rip savory, you can rip sweet, you can rip whatever you want. I mean, best meal today is definitely breakfast. Pancakes, breakfast burrito. I mean, how can you go wrong?

[Matt]

Were you always a breakfast guy or is this like, oh, now that I got a young kid, I'm up.

[Zach Stuck]

This is the fact that I married a chef and she went to culinary school and she makes everything dope, but specifically, like, we can have, like, incredible breakfast every single day. So. Yeah, that's awesome.

[Matt]

I think it's the most underrated meal of the day for sure. What. What do you think the most overhead growth tactic is right now?

[Zach Stuck]

Creative volume.

[Matt]

I dig that. Okay, then, what's the most underrated funnel congruency?

[Zach Stuck]

If you want me to go into details on that. That's my big one.

[Matt]

Yeah. Okay, so, like, yes, just give us the. The. The TLDR on what the hell that means for people.

[Zach Stuck]

You're talking. You're talking about whatever. You're talking about weight loss in an ad, and then you push People to, you know, a 10 reasons why everyone's starting to do listicles now because listicles work. Maybe you mentioned weight loss once in those 10 reasons and then you push them to a product page that maybe mentions weight loss like in A Room review 1 review. Why would you not build an entire funnel that tells that story from A to Z? Especially if they're watching a video ad that they only watch 5 seconds of before they go through. So the intention is that you're making an ad with a whole concept of weight loss. You've got all of your, you know, awareness ads that are about weight loss. You've got your, you know, product aware, solution aware, whatever. You've got all the awareness stages there. Your page should be able to tell that same story all the way through about weight loss. And then your product page should also tell the same story all the way through. So yeah, I mean if you go study Marsman stuff lately, it's, it's doing that. We don't launch ads unless we have a funnel that's congruent with the ad. And we've seen a big bump in performance based on that.

[Matt]

So you could even go further for people listening. Like you could actually make that pretty dynamic. You could take it all the way down to cart.

[Zach Stuck]

Take it down to cart. You can take it down to your email flows, you can take it down to your popup. So now we're running pop ups that talk about the same thing based on the landing page that you're on. We about talk, talk about email flows that fire based on the funnel that you're on. So like you can take that same thing. Funnel congruency I think is the, the, the biggest piece.

[Matt]

Why do you think that's underrated? Is it just because it's hard and it's like that's just a lot of work.

[Zach Stuck]

It's hard to do, but it's getting easier. So I'd say like it's getting easier, but it was always super hard. And people always thought, people thought that you could run broad ads, bunch of stuff, push them to a lander that kind of talks about stuff and then push them to a very generic page because you want the ability to sell all these things to one one really you need to just tell the story all the way through because people are going to get confused along the way. Are you selling weight loss? Are you selling, you know, strength? Are you selling longevity? What are you selling? You know, so I think being able to tell the story A to Z, if you don't get them in each part. You can at least catch them in either the ad, the lander, or the the product page.

[Matt]

Freaking love it, man. That is awesome. All right, dude, we will let you go. This has been a ton of fun. It's just good to jam, bro.

[Sean]

Zach, you're a killer, man. I'm so happy to know you. I. You really deserve all your success. Very few people have grinded as hard for as long, come from as little to as much as you. Multiple brands, cross categories. You are one of one, brother. I appreciate everything you do. Thank you for being part of the community.

[Zach Stuck]

Thanks, guys.

[Matt]

Yeah, Zach, this was. This is a lot of fun. Come back anytime, man.