How Hudson Leogrande Is Building Comfrt Into a $1B Brand

Summary

OPERATORS Podcast – Episode Summary
“How Hudson Leogrande Is Building Comfrt Into a $1B Brand”
Release Date: March 12, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode features Hudson Leogrande, founder of Comfrt, the explosively successful loungewear brand on trajectory from $0 to a projected $1 billion in yearly revenue in just four years—bootstrapped, no outside capital. The OPERATORS hosts dive deep into Hudson’s journey from failed ventures and early hustle to building a new playbook for modern eCommerce, the “Hudson Method.” Hudson shares the mental resilience, operational strategies, and radical transparency that fueled Comfrt’s meteoric rise, covering topics from viral UGC marketing to grounding the business in a mission of mental health and authenticity.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Hudson’s Origin Story and Early Failures

• Purely White Deluxe: Hudson’s first big venture was an oral care company built from the ground up, which plateaued after an initial viral bump. He started by hand-assembling products in his mom’s basement.

  "I literally was probably the worst [ecomm founder]. And yeah, I did not have any understanding of how to properly market a business, how to make a website, how to do anything." (02:19)

• He describes years of stasis and hardship—including homelessness and mental health struggles—which laid the foundation for his later success at Comfrt.

  “I was the most anxious person ever. I was depressed out of my mind. I was suicidal...everything, like, the cards were stacked against me." (09:16)

• Early “Breakthroughs”: Learned to leverage unorthodox creator partnerships—especially on Snapchat—for viral growth, though this model later broke as platform economics shifted.

2. The Transition: Why Build Comfrt?

• Market Shift + Internal Motivation: Platform algorithm changes tanked Purely White Deluxe's revenue by 80%. Hudson needed a more defensible, mission-driven brand.

  “Every lawyer in the world told me, you'll never get that trademark [for Comfort]... I just did what I wanted to do." (09:16)

• “Failing Forward” became the driving philosophy, learning from and then outgrowing previous ventures.

3. Comfrt’s Growth Playbook and “Hudson Method”

• Bootstrapped Blitz:
  • “We went from $16 million to $170 million and I had to create pre-orders and very back end with the team to like even be able to fund. We went broke seven times.” (00:18, 14:58)
  • Zero employees during the first $16 million in revenue, using contractor and lean team solutions. (22:33)
• UGC and Affiliate Content Engine:
  • Hudson pioneered a massive, scalable UGC affiliate model: 500+ core creators generate 20+ pieces of content each, daily. Content is repurposed across TikTok, Meta, Snapchat, and drives both organic and paid sales.

    “I have 500 core creators that every day they wake up...‘I have to make content for Comfort.’" (18:21)

  • Creators are given ownership mentality, robust incentives, and transparency, incentivizing quality and loyalty.
  • Notably, TikTok Shop is only their 5th largest revenue channel despite external perception; the strategy is platform-agnostic syndication. (46:56, 48:40)
• Dynamic Pricing & Product Innovation:
  • They continuously A/B test pricing for affordability and scale, aiming to outperform competitors' price/quality ratios. (26:02)
  • Relentless attention to customer feedback, rapidly iterating product and even launching category-bending utilities (heated/lavender-scented blankets, insulated hoodie pockets).

    “We are like bringing utility to product like has never [been done].” (59:24)

4. Building and Leading the Team

• Super-Lean Structure:
  • Marketing team of 5; whole org at 60, aiming for 90 by EOY—extraordinary $10M+/employee revenue.
  • "We have no headquarters, we have nothing. Everybody works from their computer at their house." (64:50)
• Culture:
  • Unbreakable trust and mission-driven ethos; zero churn among hires in 3.5 years.

    “We've never had anybody leave. We've built. The culture is what kept us afloat.” (31:02)

  • Hudson personally responds to customer DMs daily, reinforcing customer obsession. (37:06)

5. Mission and Mental Health Focus

• Core Value:
  • The brand’s purpose is mental health—a real, continuous commitment via product design and charity partnerships (donating tens of thousands monthly to ADAA, raising $185k at a recent mastermind).

    "The sole purpose of the business has remained the same. It's mental health." (59:24)

6. Mindset & Resilience

• Fearless, Delusional Drive:
  • Hudson credits bulletproof self-belief, daily visualization, and a refusal to internalize doubt for his achievements.

    "I've completely eliminated self doubt from my mind. It doesn't exist anymore. I'm the best in the world at ecom. That's it." (17:50)

  • Brutal transparency about hardship and fortitude—“Fail forward. Take risk. Pivot. Adapt.”

    “You need to close your eyes and envision the life that you want. You need to look in the mirror and believe that you are who you say you are." (01:11, 43:18)

7. Handling Scale, Threats, and Competition

• Pressure and Lawsuits:
  • Hudson regularly fields copycats, legal threats, and operational crises (warehouse theft, supply chain breaks, lawsuits).

    “Yeah, dude, I get sued all the time…It's part of the game.” (38:10)

• Relentless Customer Focus and Iteration:
  • “If we doubled the business tomorrow, what would break? ...I'm always thinking about that.” (62:28)
• Philosophy on Competition:
  • "If it's going to happen anyway, why be scared of it? What are you going to do to me?" (38:43)
• Giving Back:
  • Hudson’s deeply committed to freely sharing his methods, motivated by the absence of mentors in his youth.

8. Product, Mission, and Content—A “Perfect Storm”

• Affordable Quality as non-negotiable
• Product-Market Fit: fast, relentless iteration based on customer feedback.
• Mission: Directly tied to mental health—a movement, not just a business.
• Content Engine: The most advanced and scalable UGC/creator model in the market; content repurposed everywhere, not just TikTok.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "If you told 16 year old Hudson that it would clear a billion this year, I would say I told you so." (00:18)
• “You need to close your eyes and envision the life that you want. You need to look in the mirror and believe that you are who you say you are.” (01:11)
• "I'm the best in the world at E Comm...That's it." (01:02, 17:50)
• “Anybody could do it. Because I literally was probably the worst.” (02:19)
• “Fail Forward—I'm always going to take the risk.” (14:58)
• “We've completely eliminated self doubt from my mind. It doesn't exist anymore.” (17:50)
• “We have 500 core creators that every day they wake up...‘I have to make content for Comfort.’” (18:21)
• “Mission, affordability, and content flywheel—it's a perfect storm.” (28:01)
• "I'm a $5 billion a year company in the next 24 months ... We're going to a level of like, I want to go beat Nike.” (34:51)
• "If it's going to happen anyway, why would I fear it?" (38:10)
• "Every part of your business—they all trust you. They believe what I believe." (64:50)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Hudson’s Ecom Origins & Purely White Deluxe: 00:00–07:28
• Comfrt’s Founding & Philosophy Shift: 09:01–14:58
• Explosive Growth, UGC Model, and Early Scaling: 14:58–31:02
• Year Two Crisis: Cashflow, Pre-Orders, and Culture: 31:02–37:06
• Leadership, No Self Doubt, and Company Philosophy: 17:50–21:23
• Brand Pillars: Affordability, Content, and Mission: 27:01–31:02
• Handling Platform Risk (TikTok Shop): 46:42–48:40
• Team Structure, Remote Culture, Efficiency: 61:58–68:00
• Rapid Fire – Titan 10: 68:40–75:42
• Closing Reflections: 75:49–76:30

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Summary Table: “Hudson’s Key Levers”

| Lever | Details | |------------------------------------|---------| | Content Engine | Affiliate UGC, 500+ creators, cross-syndicated | | Radical Affordability | Outpricing legacy and DTC competition by 30%+ | | Mission and Cause | Mental health focus & charitable giving | | Team Structure | Super-lean, remote, ownership-mentality, no churn | | Mindset | Bulletproof, “fail forward,” relentless |

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Final Thoughts

This episode is an energetic masterclass in scrappy, values-driven brand building at hypergrowth. Hudson’s playbook is radically transparent, centered in humility, calculated risk-taking, technological agility, and unwavering focus on both customer experience and internal culture. Listeners come away with both practical tactics for explosive eCommerce growth and a motivational blueprint for resilience and leadership.

“You are the four-minute mile of ecom...Everyone thought you couldn’t do what you’ve done until they see you do it.” – Sean (68:00)

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Transcript

[Hudson]

You know, people look at Comfort and they think like, wow, this guy built this fastest brand. Whatever, dude. I had like five real solid years of no growth with my oral care brand. Shirley White Deluxe.

[Sean]

You went from $0 to $1 billion in revenue this year. Bootstrap. No one's ever done that before. That's the journey I want to unpack.

[Hudson]

If you told me, 25 year old Hudson that Comfort would clear a billion in revenue this year, I would think you're crazy. If you told 16 year old Hudson that it would clear a billion this year, I would say I told you so. Shirley white does like 30 to 35 million a year. No employees. It just prints money. Comfort realistically could have went out of business in its second year. We went from 16 million to 170 million and I had to create pre orders and very back end with the team to like even be able to fund. We went broke seven times. I'm a $5 billion a year company in the next 24 months. I'm bigger than Abercrombie in 2028. Like we're going to a level of like, I want to go beat Nike. I've completely eliminated self doubt from my mind. It doesn't exist anymore.

[Matt]

He's just energy.

[Hudson]

I'm the best in the world at E Comm.

[Matt]

People are gonna love that.

[Hudson]

That's it.

[Matt]

And it's all clips.

[Hudson]

I'm the best.

[Matt]

Clips, clips, clips, clips.

[Hudson]

In my mind.

[Sean]

Hudson, you are the four minute mile of ecom.

[Hudson]

You need to close your eyes and envision the life that you want. You need to look in the mirror and believe that you are who you say you are. You have to trust yourself.

[Sean]

Everyone thought you couldn't do what you've done until they see you do it.

[Matt]

He's an animal. Total animal. Okay, I'm just gonna say it. This episode is going to blow your freaking hair back. The energy and the knowledge bombs dropped by this operator is next level. We have not had a single guest on any of our shows like him. His company has gone from zero to on its way to a billion dollars in just four years. He is doing it his own way with a playbook he has actually become known for inventing and he's doing it in a category that nobody saw coming. Oh, and he's not even 30 years old yet. This is Operators Titans brought to you by Applovin. And yes, I am talking about Hudson from Comfort. Let's go.

[Sean]

If people have been on the Internet the past three months, it feels like you've came out of nowhere. And like you've dominated the whole E Commerce brand space, right? But the brand is three years old. You've been building it for a long time and you had a brand before that. So it looks like you're the hottest thing ever and an overnight success. But maybe we go back to that first night. In your own words, how do you E Commerce and why are you on top of the world right now?

[Hudson]

Dude, it's a crazy story. Like you know, people look at comfort and they think like wow, this guy built this fastest brand. Whatever dude. I had like five real solid years of no growth with my oral care brand surely White Deluxe. So that I still have that company today. Probably would have renamed it something different. Probably wouldn't have put Lux at the end of it like, but I did. I did. So we, you know, and I mean we. I have. She's with me today. She's my director of influencers. Her name is Kimberly. She was the one that was like believing in the vision. In the early days. Purely White Deluxe started thousand bucks in my mom's basement. I used to actually buy food grade charcoal powder and jars and like labels. I did not know you could private label an entire product. I just actually thought you had to get all the pieces and put them together. What I mean like literally like the most brain dead E commerce entrepreneur like did not know a lick of anything. And that's why it's so crazy when people bring it up. I'm like dude, anybody could do it. Because I literally was probably the worst. And yeah, I did not have any understanding of how to properly market a business, how to make a website, how to do anything. So everything was being made by me. I made my website on a Shopify free theme and I took photos with my iPhone in my mom's house. We would like put the product by an orchid plant and my mom's like that looks great. Take that shot. Put that shot as the product image. This is the that we were doing. It was so baseline. I knew nobody. I had no friends at E Comm. You guys know like. And most people that know me know I was homeless for a little bit. When I was 16, I dropped outta high school. I started working as a telemarketer for a chimney cleaning company and I would walk three miles there, three miles back and I started like an MLM and I was learning about the law of attraction and I kind of like that was like why I got into E Com. I did not know how I was going to become a millionaire because I barely made it out of school, I went back and I finished at night school, which, if anybody knows night school is like, it's the worst of the worst. People go to night school. Or if you're me and you just dropped out of school, like, you cut. It's like either or. I finished high school. I faked, went to college so that I could appease my parents. And then I was building Purely White Deluxe at Starbucks. I got involved in the car business. I was number one in car sales at 19 for Hyundai on Long Island, New York. And I was still building my oral care business throughout all of that time that I was there. So, like from 19 to, I would say, like, really 24, I did not know how to actually generate money with e commerce. Purely White Deluxe was transitioning from powders to the very viral teeth whitening kit with the LED light that, you know, a lot of these big brands were becoming successful off of. And. And I, I kind of discovered with a Hail Mary, a kid. His name is Aiden. He was a guy that I knew on Instagram that had a verified Snapchat gold star. And he's like, dude, I'm getting a million views a post. What if I just threw Purely White up and said, I use this to whiten my teeth? That hit, I made like four grand from like 10 to 20 to 30 bucks a day to like 4,000 a day. And then I thought that like something broke and shopped if I thought someone else's sales were coming into my company. And I like, called Shopify and I was like, guys, I don't want to like deposit this money because I don't know how this is happening. It's like, are you guys like transferring other sales? And they're like, no, like, your website visitors are up like 10,000%. So I again, very beta didn't really understand E comic. We figured out that this could work. One of the things that I have, you know, that I'm very fortunate is like, I can speak to any. I could speak to a wall for a half hour if I had to. So I would just get on calls every day. I would go to the verified page on Snapchat and I would just start recruiting people on phone calls to go post Purely White Deluxe. So I, at my peak, I had like hundreds of millions of website visitors. We would get, well, views wise, we get like 400 million views a month. Website visitors. It wasn't that. It wasn't obviously that amount, but so many people were seeing the product and then they were coming back. But I never ran Meta ads. I never. TikTok wasn't even around, like nothing was there yet. So that was kind of how I started my influencer journey, which everyone kind of knows now is like my UGC model that we'll get into. That was how I started purely white and that was how I figured out how to work with creators and influencers in very early stages, just in a different capacity. Right? Snapchat was not like it is with TikTok. There was no commission sales. I paid stupid flat rates because everyone else had rates on Instagram, but no one had rates on Snapchat because no one had ever done it. So we were the first people to do it. So they were like, well my rate on Instagram is 3,000 for a post. I was like, I'll give you 300 bucks and I'll do it every day. And it's a 20 post, it keeps expiring. So we had hundreds of people posting every day. And then the business went from zero to 10 million in a year.

[Sean]

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[Matt]

What was the impetus then? Why did you switch? So like you've gotten from 0 to 10 million in the teeth whitening business and then you had, at some point you had this like idea for comfort. Why make the switch when you've got something that's finally working?

[Hudson]

Great, great question. The next year we went to 2 million. Because, because, because they, because they changed their algorithm and they started paying influencers on ad revenue. And I spoke to Evan, I was on, the founder of Snapchat. We were on a call the other day and we were talking about this back in the day, like anybody that posted these do clickbaity posts. So a girl would be in a bikini or a guy would be shirtless in the gym and everybody would click it because the last post is the thumbnail. When the ad spend started coming in and they would pay people based off of the viewership. The viewership dropped like 70%. But I was still paying everybody the same rates. So I have less revenue coming in. I'm paying the same rates because these people remind you now TikTok is starting to ramp up. It's, it's the monetization's working. People are getting millions of views. The brands are starting to come in. Dunkin Donuts, you know, Gillette, Chevy. They're paying these creators, you know, 20 grand for a post. I can't compete, so I can't drop my prices. And I was very upset that, you know, partially my fault, right? I was underdeveloped as an entrepreneur, but no one was posting about my product. Like nobody was posting using Purely White in their house. You know, we have over, we've done over a million customers with Purely White. And I could probably name like, there's probably like 500 total people out of that million that I've ever posted utilizing it. Meanwhile, comfort, we've made it a trend to post comfort and we repost about three to five hundred people a day on our Instagram stories of people who just tag us wearing it day to day life. So we every, all of my learnings for Purely White at my ups. Like that was how comfort got developed. And the switch was also because, dude, I was the most anxious person ever. I was depressed out of my mind. I was suicidal. I had nothing. I had no idea how I was going to make it. I wanted to be a millionaire. I wanted to have this incredible life. I had no idea how I was going to get there. I can't pay attention for more than 30 seconds. I'm like a squirrel. I have the worst ADHD on the planet. Like, dude, everything. Like, the cards were stacked against me. I promise you, like, I'm not making that up. I was like, I'm a little crazy. I'm super delusional. I believe in myself more than anybody and I trust myself. There was three other companies that none of you have ever heard of that I started that never made it to light. I started a skincare brand for cbd. And then Shopify is like, well, you can't use our checkout. And I was like, it, you know, like, we just didn't do it. So I've had a lot of these mess ups. And then Comfort came along based off of me messing up my name with Purely White Deluxe. Me making a really cool name that can stick. Every lawyer in the world told me, you'll never get that trademark. Lo and behold, two and a half years in, baby, we got the trademark. So it's like, I didn't listen to anybody. I just did what I wanted to do. And I was like, if you're passionate and you just know what to do and you learn as you go, you'll make it work. So that was kind of all of the fluff into how Comfort got initiated.

[Sean]

So what year were you the number one salesman for Hyundai and Long Island?

[Hudson]

20. You don't want to see those pictures, bro. Too, I look like a fat car salesman, dude. I gained 40 pounds on the job. I stopped going to the gym. I went from like, in the gym to like, that mother needs the gym. Like, I needed it. I think it was, what? So I was 19. I'm 29. So 26, 2015, 2016.

[Sean]

Okay. It's such a great journey. So you're doing that and then you're messing around with Pearly White Deluxe for four years, five years, right? Until you're 24, 25. When's that first year you have that $10 million a year?

[Hudson]

It was in my fifth year in business.

[Sean]

Okay, so you're 24 years old. You probably feel like you just won the lottery. You're on top of.

[Hudson]

I. It was, yeah, that emotion, you know, I don't remember a lot. Like, unfortunately, my body and my mind, like, from things that I endured, I don't remember much. Like, I think I, like, just have blocked out my childhood In a way. But there are some things that I remember of starting the game at 16 and starting the oral care brand and figuring out how you finally crack something. That is one of the emotions that I will never forget. When I started actually making money, my belief system of like, wow, I gotta go learn everything else now because I'm getting, like, almost lucky. Like, I'm, I'm, I'm doing one thing. If that one thing goes away, I have back to zero. So that was also why we started Comfort, because Meta would not work for. For my oral care brand never worked. So I didn't have success on the most major platform that you have to run ads on. And all I had was Snapchat and it wasn't even paid. So, you know, TikTok shop takes care of Purely White now. Purely white does like 30 to 35 million a year. We have no employees. It just prints money and we just use it as like a piggy bank. Like, that's actually what it is now. It's like the brand's on autopilot. But that's only because of Tick Tock. If Tick Tock Shot got banned, that company be out of business.

[Sean]

So, you know, you're 24, you just did $10 million. And I bet when you're 19, you're the number one car salesman. You're probably making 150 grand a year or whatever, which, like, literally.

[Hudson]

Literally that. Yes.

[Sean]

Yeah, yeah, you're killing it, but it's also killing you, right? You gain 40 pounds and then you're 25 and you do $2 million and you're like, okay, Snapchat changed, right? And I remember that change. I remember when David Dobrik stopped posting on YouTube. This must have been 2017 or 2018, because he started making $1 million a month posting on Snapchat. Like, they went all. In this ad revenue model. How do you dig out of that hole? You've tried a bunch of brands in the past. Do you just see TikTok and you're like, oh, I'm going to recreate Snapchat over here? Or how do you get out of this 80% revenue decline?

[Hudson]

You just continue to fail Forward, right? I knew I would never work for anybody else again. I made a promise to myself that I would never do it. Comfort may have not worked. Comfort realistically could have went out of business in its second year. We went from 16 million to 170 million. And I had to create pre orders and like, very, like, back end with the team to like, even be able to like fund. We went broke seven times. I'm always going to take the risk and I feel like that was one of those things, right? Like I had this idea for Comfort. I thought about, you know, the anxiety and depression realm of business where like people weren't really speaking rare beauty wasn't around, you know, with Selena, like none of these companies were like thriving in that space yet. And I really had like a soft spot for people that have anxiety because I know how crippling it could be. So I just said to myself, only, what if I created something with so much meaning that people couldn't help but to watch and participate? And that was why Comfort started. And I started on Snapchat. I didn't even start on TikTok. The first few months I was running the same exact model that worked for me with Purely White on Snapchat for Comfort. And I was just saying like if I could get this to 10 grand a day, then I have another business that's making me X amount of money a year that will hedge against what's going now a Purely White. I'll get a cheaper rate because people are posting for both brands. And I kind of like thought about that. You know this is pre shops, you know, and, and this is like when we were doing like one off paid ads. I worked with huge creators on TikTok. So we did transition Purely White and Comforted a point to TikTok without shops and we started doing like the ends of a video. We would talk about the product so that people would get the watch time and then at the end like they were already there. So like the algorithm is not going to penalize them for running an ad. So we kind of like makeshift things to make it work. But yeah, that was why I did it. Like dude, I didn't know. If you told me, 25 year old Hudson that Comfort would clear a billion in revenue this year, I would think you're crazy. If you told 16 year old Hudson that it would clear a billion this year, I would say I told you so. So it's very, very, very like different emotion and journey that I have been through because I'd experienced so much life nine years from 16 to 25. But at 16 I was so delusional that like you couldn't have told me that this wouldn't have happened.

[Matt]

You made a comment that you part of the like switch from Purely White to Comfort was like this. I, I need more than one thing. Like what if this thing fails? I gotta go to this other thing. Does that like sort of muscle or that thought still haunt you at all? With all the success of Comfort, do you still have this in the back of your head that like this could go away? Like I gotta figure out something else too?

[Hudson]

No.

[Matt]

Or do you have no problem with focus now?

[Hudson]

Oh, no, no. I've completely eliminated self doubt from my mind. It doesn't exist anymore. I'm the best in the world at ecom. That's it. Like I'm the best in my mind. Sean has to believe Sean's the best. It doesn't matter if Sean thinks Hudson's the best. Like it's true. It's the truth. It's the truth. Like it is the truth. Like you gotta believe that you are meant for this. I feel like you're gonna say something, Sean.

[Sean]

Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say no. Sean thinks Hudson's the best. It.

[Hudson]

I. You guys know me and like the one thing I have is like I, I am a humble guy. I'm not like some like cocky egotistical prick. I'm just not. I, I care a lot about life of people. That's why I don't doubt that Comfort will ever go anywhere. Because my team is so unbelievable and my support system and the people that are a part of this business, I mean I have 500 core creators that every day they wake up in the place first. First thing that comes to their mind is I have to make content for Comfort. So I have 500 1099s that make 2010-20 pieces of content a day for me. We have the meaning. We're the biggest contributor in the world to the adaa. Like we're going to do this crazy news feed with, we're going to this crazy thing with them and that, that's our main charity. All this stuff to me is like it's bigger than Hudson. I haven't been public about this, but I will be public about this right now. I had a 25% acquisition of my business that part of my life of. And I didn't have the doubt that Comfort would go anywhere. But I wanted to protect my future family and my, and my, in my, my family right now that if China bombed us tomorrow and something happened and E Com died, like I would have enough money to support my family. That was what mattered to me. I'm playing with house money now. Like I'm just playing the game now and that is all I want to do. Like if I told you my goals for the, that I'm going to accomplish with this brand and the Products we have coming out and the things that we have pending. Everything you've seen up until this point was a joke. Everything that you've seen me do with comfort is like laughable compared to what we have coming out. So the self doubt to me is like I have to be better than I was the day before. I have to, I have to continue to grow and learn. I have to listen to my team, I have to know how they do things, how do they operate, everything right? So all of that comes into it. And I have so many people that rely on me but I have so many people that trust me, me and have ownership mentality in my business that there's no way this thing fails. And I don't believe in the jinxing bull like try me. Does not matter. I work too hard for this man. I've worked my whole life for this. I haven't had a day off since I've been 19 years old. Like this is what I live, breathe and eat. I actually am in the game, you know, So I just feel like we've, we've cracked the code on something. We've recreated modern day marketing as you know it. I've heard people call it the Hudson method, which is hilarious to me. But we know the future, right? We can see where this is going. Sean's one of the best people in the world to do it. You can see the trends of where things are leading to and we know what's going to happen. That celebrity, it's done. Like it's done and it's hard for a bootstrap brand that has no money. You do one wrong post and it doesn't convert and your bank accounts blown. People have to learn to evoke emotion through content and evoke emotion through creative. And if you can't do that with your brand and the meaning and the purpose and the content, you don't have have a business. So everyone that's starting out, I mean the success stories I hear like now from people who are doing what I'm doing, it's unreal. It's unreal. So again, all of that coming into play like no, zero doubt Hudson, here's

[Sean]

why I think you're the best ever do it. And it's, it's just mathematical. People can debate, you know, Jordan versus LeBron, but Jordan has more rings. Comfort was started in 2017, 2018, something like that. Right? And you went from $0 to a billion dollars in revenue this year. Bootstrapped. No one's ever done that before. It's like it's just. And that's the journey I want to unpack because we'll talk about the Hudson method at the end of this. Because what I love about you is you're so transparent in sharing exactly how you built this. I think it just comes down that, you know that people won't do it. It's so difficult to be. To be as special as comfort is that you're like, yeah, here's all the pieces to the puzzle. Please put it together. And one in a thousand people end up doing it. I want to go back to those early days. Comfort starts the exact same strategy as Pearly White Deluxe. When a post on Snapchat, when I go to TikTok, what was that first year like? I know you guys did like, a couple million dollars, right?

[Hudson]

16. 16 million. Yeah. And we were.

[Sean]

And we were out.

[Hudson]

And we were out of stock for six months.

[Sean]

That's just crazy. The product market fit to do $16 million in the first calendar year. I thought. I thought that for some reason that was the second year. But no, you're saying you hit the ground running and it just found a market immediately?

[Hudson]

Yeah, we. We jumped on the. The product quality and the affordability and how it was making people feel, which I've moved away from that verbiage. But like, we used to talk about, like, how customers said that it helped with their stress and their anxiety because people who have sensory issues, like, we've developed comfort for people that have sensory issues. Like, they want to come home and they want to wear something that, like, really makes them feel calm. So we, you know, I started by sending, like, my favorite hoodies to a manufacturer on Alibaba. And I said, make me the comfiest hoodie you could ever create. And they sent me the comfort hoodie today. And we stuck with that manufacturer for a very long. We even still do some business with them today. That was the early days. Like, we did the Snapchat game, we did the TikTok game, we started Meta ads. Meta ads were hitting. They were doing really well for us from a ROAS CPA perspective. You know, I was funding it out of Purely White's account. And yeah, the early days were just very, like, we were testing, but we were hitting because our marketing and the way that we marketed had. Had never really been done before. So it was desensitized. Like, people who were desensitized to seeing these normal ad creatives. Like, they saw us and they stayed to watch because of the way that the video was built. And we focused a lot of Our energy and efforts on hook middle of content call to action. Now we have data scientists that can measure things and get on calls with our creators and explain to them why they're busy. Why video to do it well, right? Get to the real, like, understanding of a granular. But for us, I was just eyeing it. I was like, well, I'm eyeing the business. These are the common denominators of the success of the business. From an ad wise perspective, this is what we need to continue to do. I was every role, right? Like, I was every single. I had no employees when we did 16 million. So no one knows us either. Well, some people know this, but I had me, Kimberly, my one friend that ran ads for me, like on the side. And then I had upwork and fiverr. That was it. So comfort went from 0 to 16. That was my lineup. No CFO. Like, I used Turbo Tax. Like bro. Really? Like, like, it's sickening to even talk about, but that was what we did, right? So it was very beta. And then, yeah, we kept going out of stock. I would order stock based off of what I believed would be a good amount of inventory. By the way, we still have this problem and we have amazing employees because we can't determine the demand. We have a. We have to place POS every week now. But I was placing like a PO a month. I would ship IC to save the money on, you know, by not airing it. And I would wait and we would go out of stock all the time. The only thing that I had was I learned that I could stop shipping out of my mom's house and that I could get a 3PL. So as soon as I started comfort, I got a 3PL. Thank the Lord. That was. That was like my big break. So again, that was. That was year one. Year one was no stock. Knew I had a product market fit, knew this thing could take off projected 50 million the next year, had some hardships. In the second year, we had some issues. And I could get into that whenever you guys are ready. I don't want to ramble.

[Matt]

Hudson, can you just hit the price thing again? So you, like Sean said you hit product market fit, right? Which is obvious. You get 60 million bucks in the first year. Did you nail the price of the product on day one or did you have to like, figure that out?

[Hudson]

We're still working on it. So we're different than most businesses. We do dynamic price testing. We test pricing all the time, depending upon stock availability. So if our product is lower in stock, the price goes up. If the product has more stock, the price goes down. We're very transparent with our customers, but we do this to stay profitable or maximize profitability while giving customers the best apps to the price. So we do this to be able to keep everything level set so that they can continue to get good deals. So we did do a lot of testing in the beginning. It's still a test. Yeah. I like impulse buy and I like things where, you know, and this is the truth, is this right? I want the mom who lives in Kansas with three kids that works two jobs to go home and be able to buy my hoodie and not feel like she's breaking the bank or spending her paycheck on our products. That's it. You can buy my hoodies and my sweats combined in a bundle and still be 30% less than my competitors selling a hoodie. Yeah.

[Sean]

So that's it. You said the word affordability and I know that's important to you, right? You want it to be, to be, you know, available to everybody. Right. And you know, comfort is a couple key pillars if looking outside in at your business. It's like, you know, you guys are mission driven, right. When I talk to you and like you have missionaries working for your business. Like, they want to spread the word. The reason why you have five people showing up every day to post these videos is like, they believe in the mission, they want to spread the good word of comfort as far as possible. And then you have this affordability piece and then the third piece is you're so, so ahead when it comes to content. Like in 2018, 2019, when you're doing this, you know, you're making these videos that like, you're thinking about thumbstrap, you're thinking about retention, you're thinking about like, you know, the modern day UGC system, but you're five years ahead of it. What was the actual product market fit? Obviously the product's fantastic. Obviously it's really affordable. Obviously it's mission driven. And then on top of that, you're really good at content. Was it just like a perfect mixture of all these things coming together or if you had to stack rank them, what's the most important?

[Hudson]

It's a statistic. Like for people who are buying, comfortability in clothing is number one. Number two is price. To me, I think it's flipped. Like, I believe that like price determines sales like Shein and Temu are, but people still buy them because they're the cheapest thing in the world. And we've seen, you know, you Know Fashion Nova has better quality, but you've seen Fashion Nova be able to do, you know, their scale is tremendous and it's because they make so many net new styles and they're very affordable for people. Right. We believed in like for affordability with very high quality. So I think, yeah, I really do think it's a perfect storm. I really do. Like, I, I believe that. And now it's different. Like we sold more blankets per day than hoodies in the last two weeks. Really? Yeah. My hero product that has all of the scale to hit these numbers is now being beat out by my blankets. So because I listen to my customers and I, and I listen to what they say and I don't have these dumbass board meetings with a bunch of people that don't know anything and they're like, we should come out with this. Like, no, listen to the customer. Send the product to your creators, have them sample it, let them give you their feedback and then you drop the product. And it's like people want to overcomplicate everything. So yes, blankets are outselling. We launched Ember Blanket, which is a heated blanket. That thing's number three on my store right now. And we barely have any good marketing going into it. And the one thing is like we don't even have like full campaigns anymore because we launch as we get inventory and my team has to scramble to do like this whole campaign. Like we could take more time but the market is demanding this from us. So yeah, I would say like it's a perfect storm. And listening to the customer, Hudson, the hood is not shaped the way I want. Hudson, the fit is not loose enough on the bottom. You know, I'm, I'm a, I'm a short girl. I need an XXS and you need to look at. And then my product, he will go and develop those and we'll get polls done and we have post purchase surveys and we'll be able to read through like what do you really want? How can I be the best version of myself for you guys? And then that's all that we focus on. Everything the business is dropping is coming from the customers.

[Sean]

Everything you know, on the affordability piece. True Classic is another like crazy fast growth brand. You know, a couple hundred million doll year, you know, five years into it and they share the same principle. It's like, look, we want to make it so our product could be in as many hands as possible. And I think that is a huge lesson we should all take away is that like there is a network effect in Physical goods there is a throughput. It's like you should try to serve as many customers as possible. And that's why you know, Walmart's a trillion dollar brand and why you guys are worth $10 billion. Let's talk about the year two struggles. Okay. Comfort went from 16 million to 160 million or something crazy like that. You, you 10x at a very large scale. But you said that, that, that wasn't easy and you had a lot of challenges coming into it too.

[Hudson]

We started hiring. Thank God the hired employees. Sorry, that's the sigh out of you

[Matt]

was like I don't know if you could get bigger.

[Hudson]

I just, I that year, dude, that year could have killed me. Like we experience bot traffic to the website, manufacturing issues, people trying to take us out. Like, like there was a lot of things of like now we're a real business in the market. People were now realizing and then on top of that the, the team was not able to keep up with the demand and we had no money left. So we're very profitable. We are very healthy as a business. I did not take money from comfort until my third year. Okay, even when we did 170 million, I never took a dollar out of that bank account. I use Purely White Deluxe to fund my life. I didn't really buy anything. I just kind of stayed with what I was doing. I worked on the business. That was it. Year two we go broke on product. We're buying more. We, we, we physically cannot get enough product to keep up with demand. Our customer support breaks. We a huge influx in order volume. Towards the end of the year we doubled our business in like the revenue. So we did our whole year in three months. In that second year we were cracking $40 million months and our customer support completely collapsed. I had a couple friends that helped me bring agencies on but Reddit went crazy. Customers were hating on us. I thought it could have been the end of my business. People are rating on my meta ads are bad because they're saying that they had a bad experience. So all this is adding up on top of back in the beginning, no money. So we developed with one of our agencies a back pre order option where you could wait two months. We would act as the bank, we'd take cash up front, we would defer the sale out the two months and we would realize that sale when the product ships. At a point we were doing 50 to 55% pre order on the website. We would run, we would continue to run ads at a very profitable rate and people would Be buying out of stock products on pre order. That was what kept our business afloat. If we did not have the hype, if we did not have the excitement, if people were like, eh, it's not that important to me. I'm just gonna wait. I'm out of business. Year two, a hundred percent, I'm broke. I have no money. That was another huge hardship. So the stressful conversations every week about no inventory and about my customer support and about the money and about, do I get a loan? Do I sell some of the company off? We were gonna sell to a strategic advantage, a point. Thank God we didn't. But those were the conversations that I was having because I knew I had something. I knew I had hockey, you know, hockey stick growth. And I was like, do I just cash out of this business, protect my family, and then go into something else? Can we actually do what we want to do the way we have it structured right now? And the answer was no. I hired 30 people in six months, and they all stayed. I have not had one person ever quit my business in three and a half years. We've never had anybody leave. We've built. The culture is what kept us afloat. We would be out of business if we. If I was not a good leader for my business, we would have went out of business because the high churn in year two would have caused issues where people didn't know what was going on in the ownership, and we would have also failed.

[Sean]

Yeah, so Hudson, you know, in that year two, everything's imploding around you. You're. You're out of stock, Customers are mad, but your revenue is so high. Yeah, I'm sure there was a line of people with bags of money trying to give you either loans or equity positions that, like, would have made your life a lot easier. How'd you have the discipline to say no? Or were you just too busy to even hear the conversations?

[Hudson]

I knew what this was becoming, and I'll say it right here. I'm a $5 billion a year company in the next 24 months. Like, I'm bigger than Abercrombie in 2028. We're going to a level of like, I want to go beat Nike. That was my mindset back then. Like when I was getting those conversations of, yo, we're going to give you money, yo. Well, I'll buy a piece of your company for this, because I know you guys are in a. You know, and people knew the scalability. And behind closed doors, I would have some conversations with my closest friends. That would say, hey, I know a guy. I didn't like any of those guys. You know, I, I, I know what they see. They see green and they see an opportunity to try to implement themselves in a business that's skyrocketing but also is having problems. And I had never experienced that before because I had never been there. And I did not have the friendships of people in my circle yet, like you and Jeremy and Jared and Ben and all my friends. Now that I have, like, I didn't have the advice and that. By the way, I know this is off topic, but that's why I do this stuff for free, because I, I wish I had a Hudson when I was 19 because no one gave a about me. I paid for mentorship, and I had two people tell me, why would you ever compete with Josh Snow? You should shut down oral care business. These are guys I'm paying money to saying that.

[Matt]

I'm like, are you so busted?

[Hudson]

I mean, we saw what happened with that. So my point is like, dude, no one gives a. Everybody wants to take, take, take, take, take. And that was why I stayed away, because I knew if I could make it out of this and I could grow from this and my stress levels can. My, My capacity for stress can increase and we can actually get through this year. Next year is going to be insane. And then last year was unreal. It was an unreal year. Sean.

[Matt]

It's the. We're getting a growing theme now. Everybody's coming on here telling us the give back, give back.

[Sean]

We've.

[Matt]

Hudson, we've been saying this. Like, this is part of the reason we do the pod. It's a big part of it is, like, we just got to help people. There's so much collective knowledge in the community. It's like, why not just, like, create a platform to distribute it, right? This second year is interesting. Is this where the obsession about the customer came from? Because, like, all of a sudden, customer problems show up. You're like, oh, I need to actually, like, really focus here.

[Hudson]

Yeah. In the first year was more get the business afloat and actually, like, have a business. And the second year was like, everything, dude. I respond to every customer that DMs. I get like a thousand DMs a day. And I literally will respond to customers that tell me about their stories or if they're having a problem with their order, I will answer them, screenshot it, send it to my team, and say, handle this, figure out why to have it, and fix it. Like, I am so obsessed with the customer experience. Now that we've. We've hired the best in the world to, like, maintain this. So, yes, year two was like, customer, customer, customer, customer. And then last year was even more customer.

[Matt]

Okay, so then my second question is, you said you're like, I'm going after Abercrombie. I want. I want to, like, Nike is where you're aiming. Do you think about or consider any threats to the business? Like, do you. You're such a. Like, dude, dude, you've got, like, offensive lineman vibes. Like, I'm just gonna charge through like, you're a rhinoceros. That is, like, so clear. Do you ever check your flank? Are you ever thinking, like, where can threats come from?

[Sean]

Yeah.

[Hudson]

Yeah, dude. I get sued all the time. Like, brother, I. Brother, I got my first lawsuit. I wanted to. I went to jump off my Falcon. I was like, is this. It's a lot of time, dude. You learn again. Thank God I have friends like, that have been through it. But, like, yeah, dude, it's part of the game. No, you know what? It is, Matt? Like, if it's gonna happen anyways, why would I fear it? Like, I'll just work through it. What are you gonna do to me? What are you gonna do to me?

[Sean]

Like, what.

[Hudson]

What are you gonna do? No one's gonna beat me. So if you can't beat me, something catastrophic has to happen to our economy. Consumer sentiment is down the highest has ever been since 2014. Yep. There's businesses that are growing. It's not just comfort. So, like, it is, like, you gotta go through, like, it could be the best year ever. It could be the worst year ever. It could be this. Like, you just gotta adapt. You gotta pivot. We've pivoted so many times on the fly because we just knew that that was the only way. And we gotta test it. We gotta take risk. But I always say, like, it's. Again, it's not a cockiness thing. It's like, if it's gonna happen anyways, I have a team. I have a group of lawyers that are on payroll. I got a whole team that is very defense focused. Like, they're all there looking at, you know, how do we do this? How do we trademark? How do we patent? How do we make sure? Like, you know, but my whole thing is, like, I'm going to move the business forward, launch great product, continue to connect with customers. We're going into retail this year. We've already gone international. That's doing very well for us. You know, like, we have roadmaps in Place to be. You know, we're not just like the wild west and that's how it was in the beginning. It was the wild west. Like the whole team would just shoot and hope that like we would hit a couple things. It is more calculated now and that's how the business goes here at Pela.

[Matt]

Applovin is the most incremental in the new channel we tested in 2025 itself. Serve as manager. Axon is now open and they're offering you $5,000 in credits when you spend $5,000. Every single one of us is looking for that next best place to put our ad dollars. It is just one of the laws of D2C. There are now brands spending six figures a day on Applovin. That kind of blows my mind. But it is true, true. And there are brands that are running it as their number two and number three channel after Meta and Google. That is super impressive. You would be foolish to at least not try it out in 2026. Go to 9operators.com applovin to give it a shot. Oh, and you'll also get access to the live operators Mastermind. We ran with over 25e commerce heavyweights plus our step by step playbook two channel expansion. 9 operators.com applovin let's get back to the show.

[Sean]

One of the most impressive things about you as an entrepreneur is your ability to reinvent traditional systems. Like, oh, I can't get paid to work. I'm going to be really early in Snapchat. Then I'm going to be really early into TikTok and I'm going to really care about you. Like I'm going to ignore celebrities and I'm going to go really into UGC and even the pre order aspect of your business. Like nobody, nobody does that. And everyone would tell you it was a conversion killer. Everyone tell you it was a bad customer experience. But like your ability to be like, no, we're going to do this and it's going to work. That is, that is one of the most innovative things I think about you as an entrepreneur is like your ability to, to, to reinvent social norms to, to work this stuff out. Where does that come from?

[Hudson]

I think people give up too quickly on things. I think that they hear a friend of a friend that had a bad experience trying something and then they never want to try it. It's like the demand's there. What's the alternative? What's the worst that can happen? People don't convert and they don't buy. Okay, cool, now we gotta Go. What's plan B? C, D, E, F, G? Like what? You know, there is no end to how many plans we're gonna have in place to solve the problem. There's always a solution. There's always a way out. So I always look at it as like, if I don't try, then I'll never know, so I might as well try. And if life wants to smack me in the face and tell me wasn't a good idea, I'll be like, all right, we'll try the next thing, you know, And. And you got to do that as a, as an entrepreneur. You have to. And your team has to, you know, they got to believe in your craziness a little bit. You know, my day to day has changed tremendously in the business. But, like, they all trust me for the finalization of decisions, even if I'm not as educated as they are on what it is. It's just at, you know, we have founders intuition. We understand our business more than anybody, anybody. So we know, you know, this is the best way to go about this. Let's go try this thing and let's see what happens. But yeah, I think it comes from just like, I've risked everything in my life, I've sacrificed everything, I've parted ways with everything to be where I am today. Why would I stop now? Why would I get cold feet now? I'm gonna find a way out of it anyways, you know, And I think that's how a lot of people should be.

[Matt]

I don't get like, ego or cockiness vibes at all from this. To me, Hudson, it's somehow given your background and your whole history, somehow you just have an incredible mindset when it comes to this. And it's. It's almost like a. Like whatever's gonna happen is gonna happen anyway. So I may as well just have a lot of fun and do all the cool stuff.

[Hudson]

I will tell you, bro. Like, I, I don't. Dude, I was like PB and J's every day. Bugs crawling on my clothes. No money broke. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. Think about that. Nothing. Think about nothing. Okay? Literally zero. Zip. Nothing. And then you make it work. And then you, you, you wuss out on that. Can't work. If you see what I've seen and you've been through what I've been through, and you've watched this game over and over and over again. Bulletproof. It's. It has to be. It has to be. Like you need to close your eyes and envision the life that you Want. You need to look in the mirror and believe that you are who you say you are. You have to trust yourself and you have to say like, this is the biggest thing. If you ever look in the mirror and you feel insecure or anxious with yourself, you need to sit the down and dig deep and figure out where that is coming from. From. Because everybody has that little self doubt. In the beginning. I did, I used to have thoughts when I was in the shower. I paid for an apartment in Miami that was definitely above my means. Comfort was making a little bit of money. We were doing like 10 grand a day at the time. I got this apartment in Miami. I still have it today. I have this view outside of the bathroom and I'm looking out and I'm seeing South beach, the Venetian Islands, everything. And I remember like that little like devil on your shoulder, dude, what if you lost it all? What if, what if this fails? What if, what if all this goes away and I just start laughing out loud in my shower and I'm like, try that with someone else because that is it, right? Like, and I, dude, I've had people that are founders tell me, well, you know the hype and like, dude, shut the up, shut the up. Focus on your. And that's what you have to do as a founder, because there's people who are going to disguise themselves as your friends or people that are going to give you advice, but they're just projecting insecurity secretly. They're better at it than most. So for all the founders that are a part of like building, you can't listen to anybody, even your own family. You literally cannot listen to anybody that is doubting your vision because you have the vision. If, if they had it, they would have created it. But they don't. That's why you're the one doing it. That's the bulletproof mindset you have to have as you grow, you know, just nothing else matters. So yeah, that, that's why. But thank you, brother. I do appreciate that.

[Sean]

You have to, you have, you have so much clarity on everything you do. I think, I think the clarity has gotten you to where you are. So maybe let's talk about, you know, last year and the future, right, you guys, the triple digit growth has continued, right? This year you guys are going to do $1 billion in sales. I mean, I really believe you guys are going to get to $5 billion. There's nothing stopping you. You've passed all filters. Faster and more profitable than anybody else. And I do think the product expansion is going to be a huge part of that. You brought up a black swan, like in the economy. If the economy goes down, dude, you guys are so well positioned in that world because you guys are affordable. You know what I mean? It's like everyone can trade into comfort. It's great products at great prices. So I'm not worried about that at all. I definitely believe the $5 billion is coming. I was going to talk to you about the TikTok shop nature of your. Of your brand.

[Matt]

Sean, can you start at the like. Like last year there was a threat that it was even going to be banned. Hudson, you're, you're legendary on TikTok shops. So, like, what the hell did you think?

[Hudson]

Then Rev didn't even drop when they had the outage. Rev went up.

[Sean]

Oh, I was just gonna say this is a misconception about comfort. Everyone I talk to is like, oh, you guys are a TikTok shop brand. But I've talked to you. Yeah, they don't understand the inner workings. It's like TikTok Shop is your fifth biggest channel. Like, it's not, it's not even a major part of your revenue now. You guys are the, the, as of today, the number five TikTok shop. Sometimes you guys get to number three, sometimes you guys are number 10. But I check today you're number five. It's a meaningful channel. Tens of millions of dollars a month. But I understand how your business works. And the actual Shop portions not that big. Like, so I'll explain what I think or how you've explained it to me, and then you, you correct me everywhere I'm wrong. You guys have a team of affiliates. You know, 500 to 50,000 people have posted about you guys and, and they post content and they get some organic exposure. Right? That has gone down over time as TikTok shop and TikTok has changed. But you're getting 10 to 20, 30% of your sales from organic affiliate posts. But then you're taking those best posts and you're running them as ads on TikTok GMV Max. So you can, you know, promote them into through Shop, but you're also taking that content and you're bringing it to Snapchat and to Meta and to everywhere. And you're still paying these people affiliate commission. On top of that, you're paying them percentage of speed spend. So really it's just a content engine where you're getting the world's greatest content that already goes viral and you're amplifying on every single platform. And then it drives your website to do a hundred million dollars a month. So it's like people pigeonhole you as, oh, that's just TikTok shop. But I think it's just one very small part of this very elegant strategy being mission first, right? Having people that believe in your brand being affordable, that you can be for everybody, right? And then also now a crazy product development. When I talk to you, it's like, look, yeah, we're going to do blankets, but you've said you're going to do X, Y and Z that are coming. That is going to make you guys 10 times bigger. So am I right about how I'm saying that or am I wrong?

[Hudson]

Yeah, no, you're right. It's, it's all. The easiest way to put it is we have content being made, it gets uploaded on TikTok, it gets repurposed on all channels. That's what it is. And the girls are all like mini CMOs, right? Or the guys are like mini CMOs. They are the, they're the, they're the, they're the marketing officers. They're the ones that are driving their own styles of content. Content. Now I no longer train them how to make content. So like they do it all themselves, right? So if you think about it like I don't have, my marketing team is very underdeveloped. I don't have anybody in market. I have a head of growth, I have my media buyers, I have my director of influencers and I have my affiliate manager. That's it. I have five people. That's my marketing team. We don't need anybody because nobody is as good as the people that are creating the content. So like for us, it's like we, we know that this style is what is going to be working for years to come. And who knows, maybe Something changes in 10 years from now. I don't know. Right? Maybe AI replaces everything. You never know. And at that point we pivot to everything. But the point is like, yes, it's all repurposed content across all channels. TikTok shop. Thank God, because I was closing a deal with a strategic that pulled out because they said they were nervous that if TikTok got banned that my business could go to 00. And I was like, you actually are out of your mind. But no problem. Let me show you the stats of what happened to our store when we had the 14 hour outage. My store is up 4% in revenue on the day of yesterday. It was a Tuesday to a Wednesday or something like that. Like it wasn't like a Saturday to a Sunday or a Sunday to a Monday. I was like it doesn't affect our store because where do all those users go back to meta. So it's not like we're going to lose out on any of that. That and yeah, it's a very small, you know it. We could be the number one TikTok shop brand today. I just have to draw my ROI targets which are around a five. They're very high. I have to make money. I am not a subscription brand. I am not a brand that has funding. Every dollar has to make me more dollars back and I don't really care. We, we teeter but I could just turn it. I could lower my pers, I could lower it by one point. I'll be number one tomorrow morning. It's just about like, like how do we continue to drive the revenue, get the creators excited and then continue to pay them in other ways too. Right. Just build the community in. So that's kind of something that we've done differently than, than most brands and I think that's al also the future. Right. Like you know, I could have been the guy to say hey, I'm going to pay you a hundred bucks a video, 200 bucks a video. These are creators that have never made money before. Yet I'll have someone that stops working with me but says hey Hudson, I still want you to continue running my ads. I pay people a year later on videos they made me a year ago because that's the type of business that we run. We don't do bad business. So like we, you know, yeah, it's more of an expense to me but it's like if I'm making money off the video I'm paying. You know, like that's just what, that's, that's the deal we made.

[Sean]

I don't doubt you guys could be number one. But what I'm trying to say is you guys are not a tick tock shop brand and meta cube or whatever. Like those brands live and die if they TikTok gets banned or not. But like I think when people look at you like they don't understand the content is, is being repurposed with a very large paid budget everywhere else. And it is just, it is your content flywheel that there is affiliate exposure, there is organic reach you're getting but really you're treating these affiliates like production studios and not like a transactional. I'm just going to pay for posts or whatever. Right. And that's, that's where people die. So anyway, I love that about you. I think it is a very complex strategy that people don't wrap their heads around because they just think, oh it's a TikTok shop brand or whatever.

[Matt]

But like a lot of moving parts. Like that's why, like it's just a lot of moving parts. Hudson, you, you said earlier that you've sort of moved. The message has shifted a little bit as the brand has gotten bigger. Right. So and I think maybe you were hitting on the mission oriented, like anxiety focused messaging. How are you getting creators excited and keeping them like really engaged and sort of like on mission today you're still recruiting more. There's more people coming in. Like how has that evolved?

[Hudson]

Because I make them believe that they can do things that they never believe themselves. That's the truth. I show them that there's another way. The person that works a 9 to 5 that hates their job, I show them there's another way. And I do challenges sometimes I pay creators more money than they actually made in commission because I believe in them and I think they're going to do well. So I give them every week a little bit more money so it looks like they're going up and then once they finally crack the code, they're good again. It's founders intuition, right? No one's going to tell you. No CEO is going to go in that you hired and go start looking at payments and how they're going to. I do it all off of emotion when it comes to giving people more money or putting out a bonus. I spent about $385,000 in bonuses in the month of November. I did an October challenge where if you made me a thousand videos for the month, you would make five grand. I had had over 50 people that did that challenge and made a guaranteed minimum, a guaranteed of $5,000. Guess what? Some of those videos are running in the month of February. So all of the idea behind that is like I know what it's going to become. I just got to incentivize you and make you believe in yourself until you crack the code. And the code can be cracked because it's just the process of duplication. Everybody knows that, like if it works, just do it again. If it works, don't do something different. So, so pretty much like we incentivize a lot in the beginning. And I believe that like once they finally make a good amount of money, they no longer need the motivation because they're now self motivated because they finally have that little light bulb that says you could do it. You actually could do this. And that's probably one of the most beautiful things for us too. We could hire people for a flat rate, but you won't feel the emotion behind the content the way that you do when people are, are really in, in, you know, they have to have ownership mentality.

[Sean]

Dude. Yeah. And you, you've done a great job. I mean, I think people have leveled MLM against comfort as like a, you know, like a, a slur against you guys. But like the, the difference is between you guys in mlm. Like, people aren't making money recruiting other people. They're, they're, they're, they're making money.

[Hudson]

Yeah.

[Matt]

There's no levels.

[Sean]

Yeah, totally.

[Hudson]

They're missing the L. Yeah. Doesn't know what an MLM is.

[Matt]

No, exactly. That makes no sense to me.

[Hudson]

Modern day mlm. No, it's not a mlm. That's what I love when people do that. Do you know what an MLM is? I was a part of it. Clearly not on accident. Like, I didn't know. I was 16. Commission. Commission floats to the top percentage, percentage, percentage. Top guy makes all the money. My creator Jordan has no incentive or no money being earned on Megan. They make no money off each other. My creators have zero interest in any, in anybody else's money. The only thing I've done that is paying my creators money outside of commission is if they get on phone calls with other content creators that are thinking about starting with us and they talk to them around. This person's skeptical. I used to be skeptical. Let me talk to them and let them know. And then from there that skepticism dies out very quickly. You're not talking to the founder. That's very biased. Right. That's the only thing that we will do. We will bring our creators in more and give them more jobs inside of the business, which keeps them here, but gives them more purpose and allows them to also see how a business is ran. Because I've also had people ask me like, well, don't your creators want to go start a new company? I don't. They think like, they could go do it. And I'm like, if they said that tomorrow, I'd be like, dude, go do it. And I literally hope that you become bigger than comfort. But they know when I'm being sued, when I'm having a bad day, what has happened in my life. If I took Gas X and had a allergic reaction, they know all. So, like, they know the business. They know. And that also allows them to have clarity of the business. It's not siloed where they only see one thing and they believe everything is rainbows of butterflies and it's not right. They know when tariffs are hitting, they know when TikTok shop is going through problems. Like they've been the last two weeks a little bit wonky since the shift, you know, so they are aware and we are very vocal with them about those things.

[Sean]

We also, I mean, I've. You've shared what some of these creators are making, and if you could make $2 million a year posting TikToks versus running a business and blowing your brains out, it's a pretty good life.

[Hudson]

Exactly. I'd say, you know how much money you have to actually make in a business to pull 2 million out of it? Like, you know, much money you have to make. No, again, it's just like, it's like people saying mlm. It's like you just don't know, but you wish you knew, so you just do it.

[Sean]

Comfort as a business, I think is very complex and it takes like, it breaks just a lot of laws of physics for a lot of brands. But, like, when I talk to you, you see all the pieces coming together.

[Hudson]

Together.

[Sean]

You're, you're willing to do things that the people aren't. You're willing to break traditional norms and you have a product people believe in at a very high quality and affordable price. It's like, yeah, of course it's going to be successful. Now let's talk about the, the mental health aspect, because when I met you, it's something you're incredibly passionate about. It's something that, like, you, you, you raised tens of thousands of dollars as a hobby, basically, for, for all of these charities. Is it still a core part of the brand mission and ethos or how

[Hudson]

do you feel about, about it bigger than ever. We raised the mastermind in Florida, 185,000. We raised like, I think over 50,000 when we did the one in LA. You know, we, we donate tens of thousands of dollars a month to the adaa. Like, we donate a lot of money to them. You know, we're, we're doing more partnerships. You know, this isn't public yet, but Sephora wants to do a collaboration with Comfort. They work very closely with Rare Beauty. Saluna Gomez is a, is a huge advocate in mental health. We do collaborations with, we're not really strangers, which is, you probably know, drama. Like, you know, his brand and what they're doing and their mission, you know, so we, we've gone more away from like, what's gonna make us money and more like what is gonna make people come together. And I think that the money follows when you have the pure intent of like actually helping people and changing lives. The sole purpose of the business has remained the same. It's mental health.

[Matt]

Forward.

[Hudson]

We have, I'll tell you guys, this product I have coming out because this is going to be so cool. So I'm just excited to talk about it. It's a heated Dreamer blanket in a king size. So it's a king size heated blanket and on the coils is going to be lavender scented beads that will heat up when you turn it on and it will allow you to imitate a relaxation lavender scent that we are getting, like pure lavender, like highest grade lavender. And we're melting it down into like a grain. And then we're having that be on top of the blanket where you can replace it, take it out, keep it, it's machine washable. And our price points are still going to be stupid low to the point that people are like, how could I not have this experience? It's never been done in blankets ever. Like, this is the, that like some of the stuff that we have coming out is like, how do we, how do we reel it back into, like, yeah, I'm having a bad day. It's cold out. You know, I, I, I'm, I'm going to get on, I'm going to get in bed and watch my favorite show. Let me plug in my king blanket comforter. It's going to smell like lavender. Very light scents. It's going to make me feel relaxed and I'm going to have the best sleep of my life. No brand is thinking in that way in apparel or in bedding. Like, it's not, it's just not something people want to try because it's hard. But this is the things that we, we have a, we have a nurture hoodie coming out for women to breastfeed in public if it's cold out. We have a, an insulated pocket in a hoodie where if you want to keep something cold, you actually have a pocket that's insulated to keep items cold. We are like bringing utility to product. Like has never. And you know, Sean, again, you're one of the best at utility. Like, what you've done with Ridge is unreal. So that's kind of like, again, like I would say, I'd be lying if I didn't say we get inspiration from what you've built. So for us, it's like we want to think about how do we differentiate ourselves with everything that we come out with to a point that you've never seen anything in the market like this. So I'm taking someone that was not in the market and I'm bringing them into the market. I'm not running meta ads to target the person that's in the market for a blanket. I'm running an ad towards everybody that has never seen this blanket that now is in the market for a blanket because they love the marketing so much. You know, that's where we're going. But again, it has to reel back into the core value which is mental health.

[Sean]

Dude. I love the innovation. I mean like it's very obvious you guys are going to get that, keep growing and hit your guys goals because yeah, in the hoodie space nobody's thinking about how to do new hoodies. You know what I mean? Like it's, it's all, it's all, you know, prints and patterns, right. Nobody's thinking about how to bring you utility to these stuff.

[Matt]

I want to talk team a bit. Hudson, you have commented that your marketing team is quite small. Right? Team of killers. Can you describe the rest of the company then? Because product innovation, that's work, right? Customer service at your scale, that's work. You know, supply chain. Yeah, you got, you can use 3 PLs all day long but like man, you're managing a lot of inventory and a lot of turns weekly POS is no joke. Talk about the organization as it is today and maybe how you see it shifting.

[Hudson]

You know, my, my job now is to put out fires and to look at underdeveloped and underdeveloped parts of the business. CXCS was underdeveloped. We, we actually talk about ops. We just raided a warehouse in LA that stole a shipment from Comfort. We just got like over half a million dollars worth of, of product back. The best part about this is the guy did it. The police weren't in uniform so the owner of the warehouse that robbed us called the cops on the cops and then came to the warehouse and got arrested. It was the greatest thing. Yeah. And I was very upset to the point that like I was going to hire a team of mercenaries to just raid this guy's warehouse. Like I was willing to do anything. I was so upset. But again that was a break in our system. Right. Our ops team has to be better at certain things and we have to tighten things up with our shipping supply chain. So you like learn things as they happen and you just continuously try to build on, you know, what's working. But also where are we? If we doubled the business tomorrow, what would break? And I'm always thinking about that because we very well could double our business tomorrow and what will break? So CX broke. We fixed it. We have, we're working with an. A very good agency now that's managing our CXCs. We are, you know, our product team has been way more developed than ever. I used to do all the ideation and now we have an unbelievable team from very big companies that have come over that are again, ownership mentality and they build very, very amazing products. They trial and test a prototype. That's very important. Right. I would just launch if I liked it. I wouldn't know what to look for. They know what to look for. You know, I have, what, 60 employees minus customer support. We're still extremely limited clean. We're a very small team. I'm hoping to get around 90 people by the end of the year. We have to do it with extreme strategy. I know, but like. And you know what it is, dude? For, like, for you guys, again, you've seen it. I haven't. So, like, I know businesses that are, I don't know, a fraction of my size that have 150 employees and I'm like, that's a lot of people.

[Sean]

So, yeah, dude, I'm trying to get to $5 million per person. And you're going to be over $10 million for per person. I mean, wild. You're like at Nvidia level revenue per person, dude, it's. It's crazy. What you guys are capable of doing,

[Hudson]

dude, is like, it is those initial conversations of like, hey, guys, this is not going to be a 9 to 5. You're, you can. We're all remote. We have no headquarters, we have nothing. Everybody works from their computer at their house. Go pick up your kids from school, go cook dinner for your family, go go to the gym. But like, I expect everything to be done. And if it's not that, we just, we just have a problem. We're just going to have to let you go. And we've only had to fire two people. So, you know, no one's riding the coattails of our success because we actually don't have enough people to actually be able to ride the coattails. If they're not doing, if they're not doing like the job, we're going to know they're not doing the job. And we've done a. I have Jillian, who's my chief of revenue and growth. She's like my Yang Gang, right? She's like the organized mother of the group that schedules the meetings. And, you know, and we have a people operations person, and we, you know, we have these roles at the company to be able to really look through and see what's happening. But, you know, it's all emotion. I have a Monday morning meeting. Every Monday. I come on like a. I'm like, yelling and screaming, and it's like most of my teams in LA, so it's like 7am they're like, like, just like, opening their eyes and then they see me, like, screaming, and they're like, ready to go. And they look forward to Monday and they look forward to the team, the camaraderie and the community. Like, you know, every part of your business. And. And I brought my mom to my most recent mastermind, which was a little bit. That was interesting for me. She knows what I do for a living, but she has no idea what we know. And she'll never know. But she met. Met my team and she watched me speak and she saw people who were like, dude, you've changed my company. And my mom is starting to, like, now understand what this thing is. And she came up to me at dinner and she goes, you know, the one thing I really love that I'm watching is every part of your business, they all trust you. And it's not just the creators. It's not just the employees. It's not just. It's everything collectively as a whole, where they believe what I believe and they don't laugh at my projections. They used to, a little bit. Yeah, Hudson, we'll go do a hundred million. Okay, We've never seen that happen. $170 million later, they're like, how did this happen? And then last year, we're like, we're going to do half a billion. We smoked half a billion. So, like, that was like. Like, that is like, at a point you have to just let go of, like, like the paradigm walls that you have up and you just have to shift. Like, you have a block and you have to move forward through it. So I think it's like, yeah, dude, the. The team's dialed, everyone's excited. We're doing everything we can. We're, we're. We're working really hard. We take no days off, even on the pto, which I didn't even know paid time off was a thing until someone told me. So people take pto and, And I can still see them working on their PT ato, because they're like, it's like dog years at comfort, a week is really like four months. So like for us it's like you, you can't take your finger off the pulse for that long.

[Sean]

Hudson, you are the four minute mile of ecom. Right? That's what I've been telling people. It's like everyone thought you couldn't do what you've done until they see you do it. And that's why I think you get some hesitation. People are like well it must be an MLM or it must be a TikTok shopper, it must be whatever. Like no dude, he's the best at product. He's making super cheap. He's bringing innovation to it. He has a team of killers around him and he has, he's unlocked this. Like that content mattered way before anybody else. If you went to 20, like 2022 people were still trying to run TV ads on social and like you were, you've, you've totally blew the whole thing up, dude. The four minute mile of ecom. I love what you're doing. Hudson, Matt has some follow up questions for you. Matt, rapid fire hit him.

[Matt]

We did this end of segment. Segment this. At the end of every thing we

[Hudson]

were like, we like to do this

[Matt]

thing called the Titan 10. They're like just rapid fire questions. We want to hear kind of like gut feel what you think.

[Hudson]

Right.

[Matt]

I'm so curious about yours now because like everybody's are always different. I feel like yours are going to

[Hudson]

be off the wall.

[Matt]

So I'm just going to hit you with questions. I want you to answer them like gut feel like pretty much how you've been doing everything. So desert island. I throw you on a desert island. You get three numbers and only three numbers to know how your business is doing. What are the three numbers?

[Hudson]

Numbers? Oh man, no, this is nitty gritty. I would say it has to be Roas. It has. And it has to be this new thing that my team built which is like Shopify revenue minus shipping and all that crap. So I'd look at that right? Like that, whatever that is called. I'm looking at that contribution. Yeah. And yeah, I'm looking at CPA roas and I'm. And I'm looking at that. The, the contribution.

[Matt]

Second one, same island. You get to bring a book. Any kind of resource, any kind of book, anything that you can read. But it can't be about business. What is something that you would read?

[Hudson]

It is the book. I might have it. Here it is. It's all in your head. Get out of your own way by Russ. That's my book. That's my book. He's a rapper and his outlook and mindset on life is extremely similar to mine. And the way that he thinks about the world would keep me sane on that island. I would feel like when I get off this thing, it's game over.

[Matt]

Do you have a, like a belief that about business that you think is contrarian, that you think like other people might think you're a little nuts for.

[Hudson]

Yeah, I gotta be. I'm iconic. PR trend. I would say most people are not as smart as you think they are. And if you work just a little bit harder than everybody else, you're going to make it. It's not completely. That's the nicest way.

[Matt]

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

[Hudson]

Trust.

[Matt]

Single most important word in business? Vision. Best meal of the day.

[Hudson]

I want to say breakfast, but I have to say not breakfast. Right. When you wake up, like you hit the gym and then you have a sick breakfast. That's how you gotta do it. You don't just wake up and start eating. You gotta instrument fast and then you track that thing with a breakfast after you go to the gym.

[Matt]

What do you think the most overrated tactic in consumer is right now?

[Hudson]

Procrastination. Because you're trying to make everything perfect. It's never going to be perfect. You are never going to know until you get the feedback from the customer and your Uncle Joe and your mom and your friend. They're not going to be able to give you the consumer feedback.

[Matt]

Okay, so then what's the most underrated thing? What do you think that everybody should be doing? But for some reason we just don't.

[Hudson]

Failing. You have to fail, man. Like, you got to feel it. You got to know what that emotion feels like over and over and over again. Because guess what? You're going to keep failing. As you get more successful, you're going to keep failing. You don't just like become successful and like you become like immune to failure. So I would, I would say from the early stages, people are so afraid of failing, they think if they fail, they're defeated. It's not true.

[Matt]

I can't believe Sean's right. Your team is like wildly efficient. This small marketing team. I, I have a. I am curious to know how you guys decide on what to try next.

[Sean]

Right.

[Matt]

So like you're clearly very deep in a bunch of things and we've talked about this flywheel that you've built. But like how do you know or how do you decide to like go try a new channel. Our main sponsor for this is Applovin. Like Sean was super early to that and a bunch of our friends were. And I've always curious to know like why, like why did Sean jump on that? Like why was he so fast to get in there? And I'm just curious how your team thinks about this, like adding to the machine. Who decides that?

[Hudson]

I'll speak for Sean. He's extremely calculated and he can see the vision of where things are going and he understands where there's low hanging fruit. And I believe that as a founder if you see something with what's the opportunity cost and you know that you could be early to something. And from what I know Sean was early to a lot of things. It's just having that intuition of like, well first of all, what's the worst that could happen? Second of all, usually there's incentive from the platform to get people on early, especially the bigger businesses. So you kind of have a mitigated risk on that, on that front. And yeah, for us, like you know, we're on Applovin, we're the biggest spender in the world on Snapchat in E Comm, we just believe that like there's these channels that are just, they're not being touched correctly. I mean Sean's doing it with YouTube. Like, you know, there's just some people that are not really utilizing it to their fullest potential. And, and if that's the case and most people are not trying it, that's where I want to try it. The whole ideation around business is to go against the grain. It's very easy to mimic what people are doing. But normally the first movers are going to get the major benefit. Yes, there's going to be people that follow suit if they have a better business that they could actually exceed and excel past the people that started it. Like we did with TikTok shops. We saw Guru Nanda and My Smile. They're nowhere to be found now. They're not even attempting top 50. But they were the first movers, they had early success. The content wasn't great, it was just mass marketed and we knew that there was an opportunity if we put in great marketing, you know, so you have to look at what has been done before you and think about how to move forward. So yeah, we'll test everything. I mean not everything, like within reason. Like we're going to go into TV and we believe we should. And like I saw Ridge the other day on a commercial and in my head I'M like, bingo. You know, like we, we know there's things that we have not even got involved in yet that I'm like, this could be great. And my team, they work on those things. They love to try new. My media buyers actually are a very big reason for that because they're entrepreneurs. They're not nine to. They actually own their own company. They owned an agency. They got so obsessed with comfort that I just brought them in. I still let them work with a couple brands on the side because I know they need that for their own own brain to work. But they work on my business all day and they're the ones that are hearing it from other people and they're like, we got to go, we got to go. And I trust them, right? Businesses trust, and that is why we go and we do those things. So it's always collective. The ideation around dictatorship and business is why people will leave you. I am not the boss. I work for my company. I help and assist my company. And maybe I make a decision on pay paper. But if my team is telling me we're going left, I'm going left. I'm not going to say you we're going right. I'll go left. And if we up left and we go right, I'm going to make all of you feel it on why we went left, but I'm going to stick with you and go left first. That's the way that we do it.

[Matt]

Dude, I love it. This is great, man.

[Hudson]

This is so good.

[Matt]

Sean, anything else you want to cover today? I'm. I'm so good. Hudson, this was fire.

[Sean]

Yeah. I just want to say thank you for being open, being honest, sharing what you do. You're going to inspire the next generation of great econ brands. Right? People are going to watch you do a billion in sales, then 5 billion, then 10 billion. They're going to watch you go public. And it's just going to inspire what's capable. It's going to make my business better, it'll make Matt's business better, and then everyone listening. So thank you for doing it. I appreciate that you do it for free. I appreciate you do it for charity. And this guy is going to the moon. I appreciate everything you do, Hudson.

[Hudson]

I love.

[Matt]

This is great, man.

[Hudson]

I love this. And yeah, I appreciate you guys a ton and I hope this gets good feedback.

[Matt]

That will for sure be the best episode we ever released.