← School of Hard Knocks Podcast
School of Hard Knocks Podcast
Josh "Snow" Elizetxe | Founder & CEO of Snow - On Selling a Company at 17, Building a 9-Figure Brand, and the Skills Needed to Be Successful
01:27:55
Josh Snow is the founder and CEO of one of the fastest growing teeth whitening and oral care brands, Snow. They do over 9 figures a year in revenue and are in multiple retail chains such as Nordstrom Rack and CVS. Josh has an inspirational story of com...
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- [00:00]
A
What's going on, everybody? And welcome back to the School of Hard Knocks podcast. I'm James and I'm here with Jack and Josh. And we got another very special guest today. We are out in Scottsdale, Arizona with nine figure entrepreneur, e commerce and retail mogul, and the founder of one of the largest oral care product companies in the entire world, Mr. Josh Snow. Thank you so much for being with us today.
- [00:20]
B
What's going on, James? It's a pleasure.
- [00:22]
A
And you know, before we get into this episode with a bunch of questions to really tell your story and all the great success you've had, if you could kind of give everybody out there a brief introduction to yourself, just tell your story about kind of like how you got to this point that you're at today and just let everybody know a little bit about you.
- [00:36]
B
Absolutely. I see here. I grew up in West Phoenix, so born and raised in Arizona, didn't have much money to our name, Very humble beginnings. And I learned how to create websites out of the Phoenix Public Library. Actually, we didn't have a computer at home. And I always had these big ideas and I didn't know that it would be website design. I just felt like I had to create something. And at 13, 14 years old, I started building my first websites. And then shortly after that, I figured out how to build websites for other people and then started getting paid to learn. Then I needed to figure out how to drive traffic to those websites and I didn't have any money, so I learned search engine optimization, you know, how to rank those sites on Google, get more traffic, charge for those services. So getting paid to learn. Very fortunate and blessed to have been able to do that. And that was where I started as a teenager. And by 17, I was generating millions in sales for other people's products through affiliate marketing, through those websites that I was making, ranking on Google. And instead of just doing it for clients, I was still doing it for clients. I would build my own website so I'd have my own side projects. And those side projects ended up being so successful that I sold my agency. And for the last 10 years, I've been building, scaling, and selling brands in all sorts of spaces. And now I spend a lot of time on the investor side as well. And I'm most known for Snow, which I started while I was undergoing jaw surgery and researching. Obviously the market's big. I was looking for something where all the odds were stacked against me, looking for a real big challenge because I had, you know, I had graduated university, I was building different businesses first in my family, just a lot of, a lot of exciting things. But I was looking for a really big challenge. So my whole life I've been an entrepreneur. I don't know anything else, but I didn't know that I was going to do this. Growing up, I wanted to be a doctor.
- [02:38]
A
Wow. So I want to kind of go back to like when you're like 13, 14 years old, getting ready to start those businesses though, like, was it ingrained in you from a relative or a person, a mentor that you found? Like, how did you know that you, you were gonna start building businesses? Did you just wanna seek problems and solutions? Like, really, what was that turning point like for you?
- [02:54]
B
I mean, there was always something a little different. Like I would watch my friends, we'd all be playing games and stuff, like on a computer or whatever, and even at the library. And I wanted to, it'd be cool if the game did this. Like, you know, how do we edit it to do this? And like, I didn't, I didn't know exactly. And I think for me, adversity was a huge inspiration and, and for me it was being broke. And being broke was a huge motivator to say, how do I change this? But nobody wanted to hire a 13 year old. So I'm very, very blessed and thankful to the Internet, really being able to kind of start to make money at that early of an age while I was in school. And it kind of just, it kind of just made sense. I didn't know it at the time, but anything that I could do to create, have control over that creativity and outlet for my creation. And then I found that I could get paid doing it. So it just clicked. And I remember sitting in freshman algebra class and I would write down how many visits the blog is getting, how many clicks we're getting on our ads. On my ads, AdSense, I figured out AdSense. And that was insane to me because I made like 13 cents on the first click and I was asleep. So like making money in my sleep. And I would send algebra and I'd be like, all right, if I get, if I get to a million page views per month, that means that, you know, I can help my family out, I can buy a car when I turn 15, 16, like, I was just sitting there figuring that out. And so I think once I got a taste for it and I said, I'm, I'm decently good at it and I can get better at it and I'm going to get paid to do this type of stuff that's where it really. I sat there and said, I want to do whatever this is. And again, I didn't know anything about entrepreneurship. It wasn't like something that was like, I want to be an entrepreneur when I get older. I was like, whatever this is, I want to do this for the rest of my life.
- [04:52]
C
Yeah. So you went to Arizona State University. I have to ask. You're in a position when you're younger that you technically don't have to go to college. You know, the three of us, we have a couple different backgrounds when it comes to college, but we all kind of have the same view. I think, you know, going into entrepreneurship, at least, especially outside of the college age, we don't necessarily look at college as like something that's necessarily necessary. I graduated from college, Josh dropped out of college, and James is currently finishing up at college. So why did you, in a point where you were so successful at a young age, felt that college was necessary, was a choice that you wanted to go to, and how did you manage that balance between college and business?
- [05:28]
B
That's a great question. Well, for me, you know, being a minority, being Hispanic, being first in my family, coming from extremely, extremely humble beginnings, and entrepreneurship in the beginning was a huge risk. You know, it wasn't like this. I felt like I wanted to do this for the rest of my life and. But I wasn't sure. Like, I just wasn't sure all the way there. And it was always. There was always this, like, background voice of, you know, have a backup plan was part of it. Then when I found out college, you could study something that you're more interested in, I think if, if, if I had still gone down, I'm extremely interested in medicine, but if I would have gone down the medical route, which was my original plan, versus computer information systems, where I could build websites and I could do things that I enjoyed and that I felt like would be useful in the future. So I think being first in my family, I was able to score enough scholarships that that helped the burden in terms of, like, the financial side of things. And, and honestly, with. With. With Arizona State, very entrepreneurial at their business school. I was also in the honors college, and then I was able to, you know, scholarships. So that helped the financial area. A major in the business school that I felt like was interesting that I could, you know, know, stay focused on long enough and really do that. And one of my mentors, Mr. Mort Fleischer, he talked about the purpose of. Of, of. Of higher education in a different way, about learning how to learn Becoming a master adaptive learner, which is a, a keyword COIN through Arizona State. But it's like there are different aspects and yeah, you learn communication, you. I'm still friends with a lot of my professors and advisors and they always treated me as an individual and as an adult. And I think it would have been a lot harder if I didn't have that environment, to be honest with you. This is at least my scenario. And I also think that because I was able to time collapse, so I graduated in 24 months. I couldn't do that in high school necessarily. I guess I could have, but knowing that I could control that a little bit more, I took my major MAP and starts at four years or whatever for the program. I was able to just move things around and drop down to three. Then I did two and a half and then I figured out and I ended up graduating in two. So that was important too because by the time I had turned 20, I had my degree, I was running a multimillion dollar business. I enjoyed living on campus. It was an extraordinary experience. So in my scenario I couldn't see it any other way. And ultimately I'm very grateful for the experience. And yeah, I wouldn't change the thing, but I think it's case by case scenario for sure. I just think that you got to think longer term. And I even thought as a future father, I want my kids to see that you can do anything. It's not just about doing everything. It's more like you could do anything. And like this was my path, this is what I was able to do. And I don't expect you to do the same thing or at that level, but if you want to play three instruments instead of one, why not? Or if you. So I wanted to be a testament to my community, to a community of young entrepreneurs, to a community of Hispanic entrepreneurs, especially Hispanic students, and just showcase that. Because there is still a very tangible value in American society to getting, you know, getting a university education. It does have a value to it substantially still. And so especially some trades or not trades, some professions that you simply cannot do without that type of training and certification. And so I think there's a very real aspect to that that gets overlooked a little bit nowadays because yes, prices have gone up substantially. Democratization of access to information. So you can get a YouTube degree, you can got a podcast degree essentially by listening to a podcast every day. There's so much information accessible to us that it's kind of challenging the historical value of a university degree. I think that's Just going to transform. And I'm still a huge, huge believer in that. And we have a nonprofit called the Fleischer Scholars Program, and we help underserved students during their junior to senior year in high school learn about scholarships and learn about the university, which, which major or discipline might be interesting to them. And there's really a strong value to that. I still think that the majority of people are going to benefit substantially from that education. Even if you end up doing something completely opposite of what you studied in school, you still learn a lot of those principles. And having to read books that are this thick and they're, you know, I'm running my business and I'm like, I can do this or I can read Shakespeare Volume 10 and write an essay on it. Right. It's kind of tough. It's kind of tough. But honestly, it was a challenge too. I wanted to, I didn't want to back down. I was once, I'm all in. Like, I'm all in or I'm out. And I was already in it. And it was a challenge to be like, could I do, could I take 22 credits a semester, which is what I did. Could I get straight A's? Could I, could I run a multimillion dollar business? Could I be involved on campus? Could I do it all? And I think at that age too, you've got tons of energy, so if it makes sense for you, why not knock it out? And if it doesn't, I think the financial implications are important, you know, debt and things like that. But I still think that there's a ton of value in a university education.
- [11:08]
D
Absolutely. And I want you to actually, like, bring us back to like the early stages of snow. How did you kind of come up about, like finding the idea coming about, like the product? And what did snow look like back then compared to what it looks like today?
- [11:23]
B
Well, actually, this is one of. This is where it started. I mean, it didn't look like this, but it was essentially the very same thing, which is close enough. And now we have sold well over a million units of this system, this teeth whitening kit. And it started from my own journey. I mean, I've been whitening my teeth since I was like 13 when I started in business. And I'd go on ebay and buy these, like, black market strips and all kinds of stuff on there. But then I got really, I ended up with really sensitive teeth as a result of it, because I was just experimenting all the time on my smile for whitening. And I tried everything. Dentist, whitening which, boom, fast results. But I just had trouble with the sensitivity. So I kind of started to give up on whitening my teeth. But then going through jaw surgery, I wanted to take my branding experience, my marketing experience, and take it to the Olympics. I think building a brand in many ways is the Olympics of entrepreneurship. Inventing the product. I'm a patented inventor now. We have multiple awards across every product, entire line. But in the very beginning, it's me, my laptop, I'm figuring out. I know oral care is big. I know it's nearly impossible to break into, which at that time was a big part of the allure. Like, what's the. Like can I play the game on extreme difficulty blindfolded with my left hand? And it was just like, that is interesting to me. And I was seeking an intensity and a level of difficulty that would keep me focused and get me up in the morning. Because even at that age, I was what, 22. I was two years out of college. I had sold a couple of the companies that I was running at the time. And you know, I was, I was doing what every 22 year old boy wants to do. And you know, I bought a Lamborghini, bought a Ferrari, and this is a kid with 10 cents and the city bus, right? So for me, I'm just like, mind blown. But then, sadly, I didn't know. I used to hear this all the time. Money doesn't buy happiness. I'm like, yeah, give it to me. You know, like, it was just. That was my response. You're like, I'd rather cry in my Ferrari. You don't want to cry in your Ferrari. It's much worse. It's much, much worse. Because if you're at a level that you can afford that, where you should be able to feel comfortable, at least your shelter is covered, your food is covered, and you're crying in that Ferrari, there's something else going on. And that. So I just didn't know that. You don't know it until you get there. And I think at 22, I started to. I actually was going through a bout of like depression. I didn't know what it was at the time. Burnout, which is really a form of depression. And that was my first real hit because I went from sharing my entrepreneurship. I started 13, 14. So for seven years until I graduated, I was splitting school, which I was taking 22 credits a semester with business and meeting clients and doing all this stuff. So it was the first time I could just go all in on business. And of course that's what I did. So I went so hard for those years and then I said, well, you got to sell a company. When you build something, you sell it. And so I sold the company and now I'm like, okay, what do I do? Like join a country Club at 22? Like, do I just learn golf? Like, I don't know what to do. So I became pretty depressed and I realized that's when I started do a lot of the inner work and now I'm all about it. But back then I started a little bit. I said, all right, there's not a. The pursuit of happiness is generally imply that there's some point that you get to this euphoric point where you're just like, okay, I made it, you know, I beat the final boss. It kind of sucks though, because once you beat the game, if you really love the game or like you really love a series and you just rush through the episodes and there's only one season, but it's the best show you ever watched. It kind of sucks when you get to the end. And so you got to enjoy the middle. And that's where I say I got to pick a journey that's going to be very challenging and all that. And so that first thing was building the teeth whitening kit. I wanted to bundle together the products where someone could get professional level results at home for a fraction of the cost with taking sensitivity into mind. And the first people I knew were my oral surgeon doing my jaw surgery, my orthodontist and my dentist. And I went to them and kind of told them what I wanted to work on. And they were extraordinary and very helpful and very fortunate because they said, I'll test it, I'll share some stuff with you. And obviously on Google you can find everything. But that was the very first system was a teeth whitening kit. And then we invented the ability to plug it into the phone and that's where things took off. And now that's one of our top selling units, you know, millions of units sold.
- [16:13]
A
So, you know, you ended up building snow though into a multi hundred million dollar business. And in our first interview back in March, one of the things I asked you is what, what's the biggest difference? And what takes a business from seven to eight and then nine figures? And seven figures you said you got to find a skill that you're disproportionately better at than everybody else. Eight figures as a team and nine figures as multiple sales channels. And Entrepreneur magazine actually posted this. We got about half a million views on it could you break that down? Like really, what is the difference between a seven and eight and a nine figure business? And really those things that you implemented to continue to gradually grow and scale.
- [16:43]
C
Your business, definitely would love to hear how you applied it to Snow as well.
- [16:47]
B
Yeah, yeah, for sure. We'll just know as an example. So disproportionate skill set. I had already acquired that through, you know, web design. I can build a website, I can run the ads, I can media buy, I can SEO, I can edit photos, I can edit videos. So I self taught 99% of my stuff at this point. And so I knew that I had disproportionately stronger skill set. I started with nothing. I mean everywhere starts literally with nothing. So but I had sharpened it so well that I knew that piece. So the seven figure, I had a pretty good feeling that Snow would be a seven figure business otherwise I wasn't going to do it at that point. So it had to be a seven figure business at least. And then eight figures team. And so by this point I had started to build a little bit of a name for myself and started to tap the network and be like, who is, who's better than me at SEO? And then how do I support that person, convince them to join the team and then do it again and do it again and do it again. And so a figures is really around other people. And that was something that I still sharpen today. And I don't think I'll ever totally master it, but it's so, so important being able to recruit really, really strong team. It's actually that if you think about, you know, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, they have the exact same 24 hours as us, but when you have 50,000 employees times 8 hours shifts a day, you have a lot more leverage than the average human. So you've just cloned yourself essentially, right? And I think that's super important. You go, how can someone be worth 280 billion and is only 10 years older than me and had the same 24 hours? And they started from nothing at some point of leverage, intellectual capital leverage, human capital leverage. And so you learn very quickly. I think for me I was kind of a whiz kid, right? They kind of labeled me as a whiz kid and that put a lot of pressure on me. So every business I was trying to start was like I used to Google, you know, what was Mark Zuckerberg doing at 21? What was Bill Gates net worth at 28? You know, I was kind of that Comparison culture was huge, and I had to break up with that image and say, if I'm the smartest person in the room, and you hear this all the time, like, this is the wrong room to be in. You don't want to be the smartest person in the room. You want to listen two times more than you talk, especially earlier on. And there's this form that Naval Ravikant talks about that I really love is there's two phases of your life and you can dip between the two, and sometimes you can do both of them simultaneously, which is exploration and exploitation. Exploitation sounds a little bad, but that's the word that's used. Exploration is, I'll meet you for coffee. And back in the day, you want to meet me for coffee, I'd do five coffee meetings in a row. Five lunch meetings in a row. I'd just do it all because I was exploring. Exploitation is like Marco Polo. They find silk and then you build a business importing that silk. So exploration as far as China, and then exploitation of what you've learned. And if you want to build something big. I've used this on podcasts before, and some people don't like it because it's an animal. But I said hunting elephants versus hunting rabbits, and you can take the analogy and do 500 variations of it. But, you know, if you want to hunt a rabbit, you can do it yourself and you're going to feed yourself for a day. But if you want to hunt an elephant, right, you need a team. You need people to do that. Right? I love that. So that's. But that was team, right? So that was eight figures. Nine figures is still team. Still team, right? You. You got it. That's got to be your biggest thing. I mean, I still spend today a disproportionate amount of time that people would expect on LinkedIn. And I'm poaching, I'm. I'm reaching out to people for paid consultations. So if we know that TikTok Organic is going to be a really big deal for our business, like Snow, which brands are crushing it? So I download a spy tool, I look at brands that are crushing it. I search the brand name on LinkedIn, I click on their employees, I use tools like Rocket, Reach, Contact Out, Signalhire. It gives me their cell phone from their LinkedIn and I shoot them a text and I say, hey, James, I'm a huge fan. Let's say you're the director of social media at Soap Brand. It doesn't have to be in our industry. Soap Brand But I know you're crushing it on TikTok because I can see through the spy tool, I can see how long you've been there, two and a half years. And I can see on similar web or I can see where the traffic spiked. I go, you're probably, you know something, you might not be the guy or girl, but you probably know it was there because you've been there for that time period. So I reach out to them and I offer them some cash if they'll take it for some paid consulting. It's like, hey, I'm in a non competitive space, would love to chat with you for 30 minutes. I'm actually building my organic TikTok team right now for snow or for Anala or one of my brands and hop on the phone with them. And I'm very successful with it. And it's very simple messages, just like what I said. But I'll send that Same message to 5 to 15 to 20 people depending on how urgent it is. And that strategy helps me on the eight figure side, which is team, very big focus on team. How do you find these people? That's why communication is so important, is I remember watching the very first Steve Jobs presentation of the iPhone. 2007, June announces the iPhone. And I watched that thing like five times. I was like, I know one thing for sure, I'm buying an iPhone. I didn't like just at that age. And at that time that was like.
- [22:34]
A
The Marketing 101 seminar right there, man.
- [22:37]
B
He gets up there for 26 minutes or whatever and just, just the way the intonations, the tonality, just genius, man. The simplicity, the imagery, visuals, you know, just a big iPhone and 32 gigabytes or whatever it was back then, right? And he could have been talking about anything and I would have bought it. And that was a moment where I said, wow, I've got to learn how to do that. And so you read books like how to Win Friends, Influence People, Charisma on command, you know, you start to understand how can I convey my messaging in as effective as a way as possible. And then because my life has been spent in sales, I mean it's what I do. How do I sell my vision to someone and convince them to leave an otherwise comfortable position. So when I do these calls, a lot of times I don't mean to necessarily. I'm not looking to hire sometimes, most of the times I'm not looking to hire the person I'm talking to. I'm looking to get insight, fast track. Oh well, we're using this software, we use the five others. I go, thank you. You just saved me 12 months and 100 grand of random software costs in 30 minutes. Right. Then I'll ask them for referrals at the end of that. So do you know anyone that might be interested in this position? Well, why don't you send me the job description. I actually have a girl in mind. I think she'd be perfect and I don't think she's happy where she's at right now. And, and I taught her how to do this and she's crushing it. She's better than me. So now I've got a referral, I've got the insight, now I've made a relationship. I can go back to this person. If we've exchanged a little cash for her time, she knows that she can trust that. I'm gonna pay you for your time. I respect your time. And most of these people have never been reached out to before. The director of social media made by recruiters, but not like, hey, I see what you built and I respect the heck out of it and I will pay you for your time. No one does that, right? Like, you know, maybe the CEO, but everyone else on the team that's actually doing the work doesn't necessarily get recognized that way. And this is one of the number one reasons why people leave an organization. They're underpaid or under recognized, you know, and so that, that's, that's eight, nine is sales channels. Snow now is in cvs, Neiman Marcus, Sachs, Nordstrom, Best Buy, Target, et cetera. From a retail perspective, we're still heavy on obviously on direct to consumer. We've had over 50 million people shop the website, but that was the area there is. Okay, let's say you figure out retail or you figure out TikTok, or you figure out YouTube or SEO or one of the 50 Ways Door to door, you figure out one of those channels and it's working. Some of them, if they're scalable enough, I mean you can build a billion dollar brand on TikTok for sure. But generally you're going to start looking for other sources of that traffic and those customers coming in, right? So at that point we said, okay, let's add Google, let's add being the digital side first, which is what we're really good at. So let's add TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest. So you look at these channels, test, budget, you kind of figure that out. And so you start adding these channels. Then it was, well, in my space, in Oral care, most of the action happens still. People forget that they ran out of toothpaste when they're buying toilet paper at the store or they're buying milk. So it's an in real life situation. And so we wanted to meet the customers where they're at and kind of build a brand that way. And so that's where we started our retail push about three and a half, four years ago. And we've been adding some incredible partners like we just launched in Nordstrom nationwide. And so we continue to add to that retail stack, but then there's wholesale. Then we started selling to dermatologists, spas, dentists. And you kind of figure out you don't need them all necessarily, but you figure out which ones are worth it. And then you become super competitive. You hire in there, you do my LinkedIn trick. That's when you really kind of, all right, we're moving into TikTok. And so you line up everything to go into that. And I look at if is it profitable and is it scalable? If it's not profitable, probably not worth doing right, you got to change that. If it's not scalable, how far can you really go? And some things you might have to do, like PR is relatively scalable. But you know, at the time I remember when I was even still running some of the media, buying for snow. I could go in and I could edit the budget and I'll say, all right, let's spend 50 grand today and see at a three times return on ad spend or whatever and all right, let's spend 100k. Oh, we broke it and then go back down. And so some channels have the ability to scale massively. But eventually for a nine figure business and beyond that, you're going to have to have. It's about distribution. It comes down to how do you get more distribution even if you're a B2B space, how do you get more of that, of what's working? And if you're really lucky, you find one or two that just really take the pie and you can build long term there. But if it's digital, usually those things change, right? Like Instagram. At one point you could go viral on Instagram. Very difficult to do today. TikTok has taken that as bait to get people addicted to the platform. And it works because now Instagram's on its monetization path. A social network makes money or grows in two ways. Two main ways in my opinion. One, adding more users. Everybody has a Facebook account, so you're not going to add More users necessarily. The second one is you charge more for the rent. Right. That's really the only way to do it. If you think about attention as a digital real estate currency, rent referring to.
- [28:18]
D
As like ad costs and stuff like that.
- [28:20]
B
Yeah, yeah, why not? Right? You've got, you know, let's say you own, in the physical world, you own a plaza and you can't build more buildings. Let's say you're tied up well, let's double the rent and see who moves out. Hmm. No one's moved out or if they did, we replaced them, double it again. So that's what's happening. And now they're looking at WhatsApp ads. They bought Instagram, which is genius. They bought more plazas. Right. But at some point, if you can't add more users, you got to make more money per user that's on there. And if you're a free advertising based platform, the ads have to go up in price. So now you're competing at someone selling a Bugatti and you're selling a toothbrush. They can afford 100 grand to acquire that customer. They're gonna figure it out until that point. But that's, but there's TikTok and there's YouTube and there's Google and there's all these other channels and it just depends on what you're selling your brand. B2B is gonna have LinkedIn, right? So it just depends on the platform. But these, these few platforms have network effects. And the people that create network effects are worth usually tens of billions. I'm not smart enough to do that. That's not my play. My play is to utilize those network effects to build a $1 billion business.
- [29:35]
D
I feel like when someone's a new entrepreneur, they wear many hats. They're trying to figure out marketing, improve the product. They're doing a wearing a bunch of hats. And now you're at a scale where you're at the nine figure plus mark. What is your kind of day to day and what is kind of your role now as the CEO of a company?
- [29:52]
B
Very busy, very busy. But I wouldn't have it any other way. I absolutely love, I love what I do, even on the great days. The hard days are all the same to me at this point. But like we talked about, team, team's important. So I no longer am media buying, all right? I'm no longer editing the website and designing the website. I'm heavily involved in product development, product innovation. I'm heavily involved in distribution and sales, branding, things like that. But I've been fortunate to hire some incredible team members and partners that do a lot of that day to day now. Right. So on the snow side, which allows me my, my biggest principle about management with especially high performing individuals is move to higher value work. So if you can elevate your people, I like to triple train. Something that I learned watching John Paul DeJoria triple train your people so that in case of a contraction or recession or something, they know how to do three things. You know, you get someone who you know can. I can kind of design a website. Well, let's work on that too. Let me take an hour every day. Cause I want you to sharpen that just in case you do a little bit of everything. Dibble and dabble, but it drives value. And then the second piece of that, which is my most important one, is move to higher value work. So if I can elevate my people to instead be doing manual data entry, let's say, and they can outsource that on upwork and now we can utilize their brain in a different facet and it's higher value to the organization. And how do you quantify higher value? In my businesses, especially the branded businesses, it's brand equity and profitable sales, profitable growth, customer growth, whatever. So if it does one of the two, it's worth discussing. If it does both, it's worth moving on very quickly and we should discuss it now. If it hits neither, let's keep thinking about, chew on it. And so I give my people a ton of autonomy. Hire really great people and do your best to get out of their way. Don't get your eyes off the ball, but really create an arena where there's a healthy level of competitiveness. Not too overwhelming. But you gotta figure out if you're only gonna have 50 people, you're not hiring 5,000. So you need 50 really good people. And you need to be willing to move people out of that organization or into different roles if it's hurting the organization. So I think that that's for my day to day. I'm on a lot of calls, right? A lot of conference meetings, conference calls with my executive team, with, with the whole team with partners, retailers. I'm jumping on a pitch. Like I said, we just launched Nordstrom. In the old days, I would have had to do all of that, right? But because I've got a solid team there and I've got a really good partner and our VP of sales, I can rely on someone like Amber to carry that ball forward. And then I try my best to Teach my team on how to best use me. And so it's that way they know when to bring me in. They know, you know, they get better and better. You coach them through that. And so my day's mostly on calls. Like I said, I'm, I'm hunting on LinkedIn all the time. I love it. I stay up at night sometimes just doing that. It's fascinating. It's, it's. Everyone put their resume online. It's genius. And it allows me to go and find everybody like people. It's amazing. So I do a lot of that. So recruiting is huge, Product development, product innovation, sales and distribution, expansion. So those type of meetings, distributors, et cetera, critical meetings. So if we're doing a price change or something that's going to impact the business materially, we're talking through that. And then I save a little bit of time for, you know, extra projects and things like that. And snow is what I'm most known for. But I'm the founder and CEO of a couple other companies, particularly founder and then I've got about two dozen invested businesses in all kinds of industries and then we've got our couple E commerce brands. But snow still takes up say a 12 hour day. I would say it's probably six to eight hours at least. Sometimes it's the full 12. It just depends on the day. And then I get a little bit of extra time to burn the midnight oil on some of the other businesses I'm working on and then cross pollinate. You know, snow's been successful as a result of me being able to bring in additional resources. And then I do, you know, charity work, spend time, you know, with my fiance and friends. Balance is important. Try to get active. Today I had a boxing class and a workout with my trainer. So try to do those things, mix it all in. And honestly, some days, some weeks, it's about seasons. You go through so many seasons in your life and some seasons are more difficult than others. Some require a lot more commitment to work. And you're like, is this ever going to end? 12 hour days for 3 months in a row, like this is a lot. But it changes. You're in control of it. And I think right now I'm very busy because we've got some really exciting stuff. Snow is in a very, very interesting position. And it's the sport of business. It's like a game and I'm at a really good part in the game and it's kind of like chess too. And every move drastically changes the future of the game. And so I imagine myself walking around in snow like the old guy walking around in New York City and he's playing four games at once or six games at once. He's not actively. Like, if you were running four marathons at once in separate states, you couldn't do that. But because the game allows you to sit down, analyze the board, make that move, get up, move to analyze the board, move. It's like the guys do the Rubik's Cube. They look at it for a little bit and then bam. And so that's kind of what I'm doing all day is slack. I mean, it looks different. It's not that, but, you know, it's slack. It's phone calls, I'm texting, I'm always moving. People see me on a plane sometimes and they'll. It happens often. And they'll be like, what do you do? And it's not just because they want to know what I do, but they see me cranking away on. I was flying back from Italy and I was just on one and I was just ripping through so much work. Probably went through like 5,000 emails. All my slack was updated, A thousand text messages, update. I'm always behind, but, you know, you got to just prioritize. That's what it comes down to. So I spend the morning and the night before prioritizing as best as I can, what's going to move the needle. And I try to stay as focused as I can. And then I train, I hire incredible people, get out of their way, support them. We work together on alignment. And that way I don't have to babysit them because I'm truly not. I'm the worst micromanager in that aspect. I really don't like to do that. So it's better for me to spend a little more time finding someone that I'm not going to have to do that with. And I make it very clear that their job is to do what they do best. And we want to get to mastery. If you're here to just clock in, clock out, knowing that the team's going to eat you alive, like, that's just not what we do. It's a very competitive, healthy, competitive, but growth focused environment. It's a growth environment. So you got to create that as the founder, as a CEO or as the leader, you set the tone. And so if you set the tone as like, you know, learn how to utilize Josh in the best way, don't go to him and say, where's the stapler? Or like, you know, where's this email, right. If you don't, you know, train your team, they're not going to know how to utilize you and they're going to think you're useless. So you've got to train them and say, this is what I'm really good at. This is what I'm struggling with. This is what I need your help with. I need your accountability here and I'll help you here. And then I think it comes down to that communication of getting accountability and buy in from them and saying, james, do you really think this is possible? Yes. Okay. How long do you think something like this would take? So leading with questions, doing your best to do that. So that way you're not just bulldozing, which I'm guilty of, just bulldozing, like not even gonna go the other route, we're just going there. So hold on tight, strap in, give me 20 minutes and then I'll leave you alone. But you gotta train your team to do that. Otherwise you will continue to be bogged down.
- [38:27]
C
Yeah, absolutely. In our couple talks with you that our team has had with you, a big thing that we love talking to you about is influencing marketing as a creator, different things. I think the creator economy is one of the biggest industries that is happening right now and set forth for the future. I'd love to give your take, especially as someone that is, you know, the CEO on the product side. You probably work with a ton of influencers with your product night and day. I would love to hear from you, from your perspective, like, where do you see the creator economy going? And also would love to have you touch on for yourself as the CEO of a product company, how can influencers better serve the brands that they work with in regards to those that take on deals, marketing a product, like, what are some things that you've dealt with with influencers that are good and bad and. And also after that, where do you see this thing going for creators? How can they really make a lot of money going forward, especially working with brands like you?
- [39:21]
B
Yeah, no, good question. What happened is that we attention is their currency. As a currency today, it's a big one. But that was usually centralized. So if you're not Fox, cnn, cnbc, if you don't have centralized attention, those are the guys that they still make the big bucks, but those are the guys that had it. It wasn't, you know, 20 years ago, 30 years ago for sure, but like 20, even 10 years ago, very difficult to think of. You know, kids nowadays, six, seven year olds, you go, what do you Want to be. When you grow up, they say, I want to be an esports millionaire. You're like, honestly, Great idea. Like, honestly. Yeah, you could, because that was a joke back in the day, make a million dollars.
- [40:09]
C
Yeah.
- [40:10]
B
They had like, game testers, right? You could be a game tester, but not Mr. Beast. Like, what? Like, they're. That's actually. So now, like, I love hearing that. In the beginning, I was like, well, that's new. It's like, that's. That's exciting. And now I hear it so often, I go, you know what? That makes total sense. I want to be a food blogger and I want to have a line of nonstick pans. Yeah, that's actually dope. Like, that sounds great. What are you going to cook? Oh, I was thinking of doing Dutch recipes because there's a niche for. That Sounds great. Honestly, like, it really. That could work. That could work. And the more niche you are, sometimes you get, you know, you get paid a little bit more money because if you're the number one, you know, Dutch recipe nonstick pan company, you know, as an example, I don't know if that's a thing, but you can actually demand more. Because as a brand, you know, we're looking at all kinds of stuff now. And with. With. With the tools that are available, we can see which engagement's real and all this stuff. And I would say figure out your authentic niche. I mean, even if it's a character you're playing, but, like, figure out what that area is. Because those people, if you're just a general influencer, unless you're like, big, big, it's difficult to kind of put you in a box. Sorry to say that, but you know, as a brand, we're looking for all the tools make it like this. Click beauty, click cooking. Like, you have to choose who you're looking for. So think about, where do I start? You can always expand. You can always expand. I mean, Snow start with one product. We have 60 SKUs in the line. Toothbrushes, toothpaste, all kinds of stuff. Right. You gotta start somewhere. Start with one. And I didn't launch a second product for like two years. And it was a wireless version of the wired system. So it was the same thing, but wireless versus like 50 products overnight. Right. So you can always expand. You don't have to feel like you're totally boxed in. And I think on the creator side, like, you know, we spent probably at least tens of millions of dollars just on the snow brand, on influencers, celebrities, all kinds of stuff. What I found now is that we like to do a lot of micro nano influencer stuff. It's very authentic. You know, you get more of the community involved. You know, brands like Fashion, Nova Bang Energy, they go very wide with their influencer reach. And if you have a product like an energy drink or clothes or toothpaste, you can go pretty wide. So it depends on, it depends on your business. But I think on a creator side, follow through is a big deal, man. Follow through is a big deal. And it's, you know, it's interesting because now you know anybody, right? Anybody can honestly make at least a side income, a few hundred bucks a month if you stay consistent. You create content and the platforms, remember, you work for them. And so not directly, but they, like I said, they make tens of billions because they figured out how to do none of the work. And they said, what if we had a billion people and we just gave them likes and juicy algorithm a little bit, get them hooked. It's one of the deadly sins. We can't help ourselves vanity. And so let's, as soon as James posts his first video on TikTok, juice it. So they juice it. Just like when I go to a coffee shop, Dutch Bros, they gave me this card, it's you get 10 coffee, you buy 10 coffees, you get one free. They always give me four on the first coffee. And you're like, that's awesome, thank you. And stats show, I looked it up after that and it shows like it's 50% or whatever, some crazy amount higher that you're going to complete that. And that has a value attached to it. It. So when you join TikTok and you go, I got 400,000 or 4,000 likes on Instagram, I barely get 400. You said, now I'm going to produce more for this. So they exchange engagement and what it feels like to be engaged with online, to not pay you for the content, essentially, right? So you got to understand that. And so it's important to be consistent, follow through. I mean, if we get any at this point, any influencer doesn't follow through, they're out. I mean, it's just, it's not good. And word gets out after a while. So many people that, you know, it's hard to police everyone. But we certainly won't work with you again if you don't follow through. And I think that's been our biggest issue is communication because they become business people overnight, right? You have a video go viral, then you got some brand deals coming into your inbox and and then you're like asking your brother or sister, be my manager and like respond to this email on Gmail. And back in the days, 2014, 2015, it was wild west on Instagram still. And even the celebrities were managing their own Instagram. It wasn't on the menu. It was like, you gotta talk to them directly. I don't know if they're gonna do that, but that was when Instagram was, you know, their algorithm was on fire. And now it's TikTok and YouTube shorts and other stuff and Instagram's still crushing it, but that's how it works. And so I think from a creator perspective, I think it's going to, I think it's beautiful. It's decentralized and democratized the value of the currency, which is attention. And you can be an attention dealer. And what type of attention do you have? What type of ice cream do you have? Right? And you go, I have men who hunt, but not fish and they love eating cheeseburgers. Like you could really. And you're like, oh, that's actually. You got a lot of people there you can sell ads to, right? So you really. It's beautiful because instead of just going to one big TV network and just running an ad on the TV and hoping that enough people see it, like if you sold something to just older women, like, it's very difficult to reach the audience or men who are unemployed for more than six months, like, how would you really target those people? Right? So I think creators, it's only going to go up from here. It's only going to get more advanced and more and more people will be generating side incomes from it. And I think it's beautiful. I think there's some toxic aspects to it. We can talk about that for hours, but I don't know enough about it to even go there. But I just know that there is an exchange of that. But I think it's going to be, it's just gonna keep growing. I mean, 5 billion, 10 billion, 20 billion. It's just gonna keep growing.
- [46:40]
C
I just had a quick follow up before, like when you said follow through for like creators. Yeah, just like getting back the emails, like following through on like a good.
- [46:49]
B
Post, man, when there's, there's some good ones, man. Where, where. And these are people with like 10,000 followers. It's not like they're, you know, and they are so good. And some people with millions of followers say, hey, I got the package today. Love the packaging, can't wait to make the video. Here's Some examples, you don't have to necessarily over communicate, but like, just like normal communication. Thank you. I received the package, I'll be getting to it. And then actually do it. Because what happens is that the package sits there like, oh, I got to do this brand deal. And like, I want to do something else, I want something else, whatever. And you lose track of it. And then now I'm sitting there as the brand owner for seven days and I'm like, dude, like, what's going on? You know what? Cancel the contract. We're not working with you anymore. So just knock it out. It takes five minutes or however long it takes, do it. You've already committed to it. And I think that's just a principle. I mean, that's just, you know, you got to live with that and know that you told someone you were going to do something, you didn't do it because you were lazy or wanted to watch TV or had something else going on. Knock out the video, respond to the emails, give feedback if you're able to. You don't have to go crazy. Spend two minutes, got the package, can't wait to film tomorrow. That'd be huge. And our influencer team watches all that stuff. We track every single response we grade the influencers on. How well did we work with them in addition to how did their content perform. But if we work with some, some people we work with for years because they're just always on it, you know, I can rely on them to create different angles on ads tomorrow. They'll do it tomorrow morning on a weekend. It doesn't matter because I know I can trust them. And those are the people I'm going to give the budgets to. Those are people I'm going to focus on. And those are the people that get recruited by some of the early Snow influencers and stuff like that. I go on websites all the time. I was just on Lululemon and I saw one of our early influencers on there on the front page of Lululemon. They end up getting picked up. Now, it's not because of Snow necessary. It's just because they see the consistency and then because they're great people and they respond so like the money will. The cream will rise to the top. And so if you can at least teach yourself, make yourself accountable, it goes such a long way because people are very, unfortunately unprofessional in that aspect. And a brand like Snow just isn't gonna deal with that. Most brands are not even gonna touch you at that point.
- [49:11]
D
Yeah, so I actually kind of want to talk to James and Jack about this one where one of my biggest like so from a creator's point of view, right, I'd say one of my biggest gripes of like being the creator and working with brands is I feel like we both, if we have the end goal of like we want to make the best video possible. And I feel like for a lot of brands, I feel like the most successful brand deals that we do are when they give us creative freedom. Like so obviously they give us the end result, but they give us the creative freedom to actually make the best video possible for them. And whereas you work with some brands and they will very be very policing like odd. Like no, like we got, we got to have it this way. And I think there are certain frameworks that you should, you should like obviously follow like within their brand guidelines and everything. But I feel like as a creator, you know what's going to work best for your particular audience. And sometimes brands will try to put their own intentions and it's like, it's a, like it collides. What would you guys kind of say about that?
- [50:11]
C
Which I mean it's just a battle of just kind of just like, hey, you're the creator, this how you make the content, that sort of thing. But then the brand also wants to be. You guys have values, you know, like, like the owners of the brand, they have certain values and things that they want to portray and perception of the brand. They don't necessarily want their product being put in a certain light. They want that, those sorts of things. I don't know, it's kind of, it's kind of a weird dynamic when it comes to that sort of thing. I guess like us looking at from a creator perspective, we always want to just be able to try to make the best video possible and get the product as many eyeballs as possible.
- [50:47]
B
Well, keep in mind, you got, I think yes and yes. So you know, why would you hire an interior designer and be like, and if they have a style and that's why you hired them for that style. And then you go, yeah, actually no, just do gray and brown. And they're like, why am I here? Like why didn't you pay me? Like, you know, so. But not everybody is that right? You guys are, you guys are able to create that original style that works for the audience. You're very ingrained into and very in touch with that. Most brands brand guidelines, like we have brand guidelines. Of course, if we're doing an actual campaign campaign where we go, we want to have 100 of our influencers talk about our new LED toothbrush or the fact that we launch in Nordstrom, we're doing a campaign, and you have to mention Nordstrom. That makes sense, like a flight of a campaign. Only like I would say 1% of brands actually are validated in the rigidness of their guidelines. Because if you're really, really, really good at this, you really do know. And then you look at the audience and you're able to translate. No one really does that. Right. So, you know, I could sit here and do that. We could sit here and talk about it like, yes, but most brands aren't doing that. Most teams aren't doing that. Every brand has an ego. Everyone has something to say. And there's this fear of the unknown. What if they create a video that, you know, whatever, it gets 100 million views, but they were wearing a blue shirt instead of a yellow one. Remember, we love yellow. And you're like, that doesn't make any sense. You're telling me you're gonna be mad because it went viral and it has. So most brands, I would say, are invalidated in that approach. It's simply a power struggle. And it's a clash of I know better than you. And it's a little bit of elitism as well, of like, don't you dare you follow these guidelines. Unless they have like a fully scaled out program where they have to have, you know, McDonald's has to have a way to make the burger. Like, you can't you do it how you want to do it today? That's not gonna work, right? That's not gonna work. So there is a balance, right?
- [53:04]
C
Crunch on the cheeseburger?
- [53:05]
B
Yeah, 100%. You know, they're not looking for innovation necessary. Innovation comes from the top in an organization like that. So not everybody's like that. But I would say, why would you? Man, some of our most successful campaigns with 100 million views, you never would have thought that it would work internally. It wouldn't have gotten approved. You never would have thought that that would be the thing that worked. And I think that you miss out to your point on the magic of the creator and someone that's put a lot of work in creating this audience organically like you guys have. You have to know what works, because that is your business, that's what you do. And so part of hiring someone like you guys, let's say, do a brand deal, I'd be a fool not to include your guys creativity because most of these people haven't created a TikTok video in their life and they're teaching you how to make a TikTok video and you're like, no, this is what works. So I think that it's a loss, actually. It's a waste of resources. But it's only case by case people like you guys. I would be stupid to tell you this is how we're going to format. I'll say here's our brand guidelines, here's kind of what's working and stuff. And then work your magic. Like that would be silly for me to repress that, but unfortunately I don't think they're going to stop. Yeah.
- [54:25]
A
And I wanted to kind of ask you, I had a question that I'd been meaning to ask you for a bit, but you originally in the entrepreneurship journey, you started out, you were kind of like in the agency service based sponsor space, but you transitioned into E commerce. But you've been in the game a lot longer than most people and that's probably earlier than 99 of people who are in it right now. Like when you were initially starting out, did you have some doubters and people telling you that, man, this isn't going to work out? And if so, like, how did you ultimately overcome that and persevere beyond that?
- [54:52]
B
I mean, I wish I did. I didn't really. No one believed what I was doing. Like, it was just, it was 2007, 2008, you know, that was that. But yes, I think that there were certainly people that were. That's too risky. That's stupid. I don't think that would really work. I call them false concerns. So they'll be like, I just, I just want you to be successful. I think this is a really bad idea. And sometimes that's true, sometimes that's true. But then it's, then it's like it's there sometimes this is a harsh way I guess of saying it. The fact that they couldn't get more with their life gets imposed upon you as a false concern. And then there are real concerns and then there's a mix in between. But I think that there's jealousy and there's envy and there's all those other things too. You got. But I knew early on and I think sports helped me ingrain this a little further. Earlier on was like, I have to be my biggest fan. Like I have to just rewire my brain. Even if I got to pretend I'm a crazy person or something and just really build that from the inside. Because if you drive that too much from the outside, it's intoxicating and it becomes your validation source. And so as soon as people aren't applauding for you or liking your post or viewing your video, or you check your Shopify 500,000 times a day, what I've seen myself, and I'm not a doctor, psychologist or anything but my, and what I've read is that there's a meshing that happens. And so now all of a sudden your self worth is based on how much you made on Shopify or how many likes you got. And it's very difficult to unmesh that. And so you end up frustrated, irritable, depressed because you had one bad day or like a bad week, you know, but it feels like the end of the world because that's your value system at that point. You've meshed it together. So I think that yes, lots of naysayers, always, always, if you, if you don't have naysayers, not just that you're not thinking big enough, it's just natural, right? But then don't hang out with them. Like don't, you know, get rid of them, right? Like that was something that, you know, I think of it like your brain's software, a computer. And computers get viruses, malware, spyware, adware, and you gotta download an antivirus software, so you gotta clean it out. And that's just natural, you know. And if you want to be a high processing supercomputer, you can't afford to have a virus so you gotta extract it as soon as you can. And that's how I think about my community, my friendships, my closer community. But you're always going to have people, I mean that's, people love to build you up just to tear you down. And sometimes it's more fun to tear people down as a whole, right? As a population. You look at celebrities, unfortunately, I don't know how they do it with paparazzi everywhere and all this stuff, people capitalizing on them and you know, it's just that's kind of what we do as a society. So you got to know that if you're going to become the best, there will be people wanting to take that from you. There are going to be people that want to justify and find the whole, oh, James is successful because his dad's a trillionaire. No, no he's not. And like, where did you get that from? So like they're going to come up with all these scenarios, right? And you know, for me, I haven't taken a dollar off the table from snow, so I bootstrapped we bootstrapped the first hundred million dollars, no outside capital. And I've made all of my money outside of Snow. Snow is different. And so I think still to this date, to this day, calling it Snow, like, you're never gonna get the trademark. We have it. Like, you're never gonna have to use your name. We're at snow. There's just so much. And I think a big part of me loves to be the underdog. And I try to choose a game challenging enough that no matter how good I get, I still become the underdog. Cause it's what drives me, you know, playing, you know, playing the same level over and over again on Super Mario Brothers just to keep getting the coins. Like, there's a certain aspect to that. But I think for me, I think it's important that you take that negativity, use it as fuel if you must. I kind of just don't even bother with it nowadays. You know, it takes time. You know, sometimes things do bother me, right? I get tons of comments online. 99.9% of them are positive, but there's always just some person. And what I found is that because back in the day, I would respond, I was kind of, you know, snappy back in the day, and I would respond and just lay into them, right? And then back and forth, and it'd get me heated. And then like, 90% of the time, it's someone who's going through a tough spot in their life and they're projecting. And, you know, it's like someone will say something, right? They say, well, he runs a teeth biting company. He's got veneers. I just got veneers a few years ago, right? And it's something I've wanted for my whole life. They're not cheap, and. And I wanted to do that. But regardless of that, they're going to try to find the hole in your story. And so try not to live by that, but also have fun with it and say, poke a hole. Come on, try. And if you find the hole. Thank you. Now I know where to fill that. And so I think the naysayers were heavy, and they're not going to go anywhere. And I probably have very little. But compared to when no one knew me, I certainly probably have more of those. But I find that it's just people going through a tough time. Like, 99% of the time, someone's going through a tough time, and I've been there. You know, you go into depression, they're going through a divorce, they just got Cheated on their business partner, cheated on them. Something happened in their life, and they're just keyboard warring online. Right.
- [60:40]
A
And I had one follow up to that, and I think that something that's not talked enough about is that, you know, failure is. It's inevitable for entrepreneurs, especially if you're not coming from a lot of money. And you brought up earlier how adversity was actually something that fueled you. And one of the things I love about guys like Elon Musk is that they're constantly failing their way forward. But I would say a lot of entrepreneurs in today's world, you know, they'll fail. They'll take some punches, and they'll start to question if they're in the right industry, should they quit, Jump from one thing to the other. For an entrepreneur who is going through that storm right now, what would be your advice to them? Like how when you're faced with setbacks, big challenges, even at the highest level, how do you address those challenges? And what's your advice to someone going through the storm right now?
- [61:16]
B
Take a deep look. Get out a piece of paper. I like these sketchbooks and big paper. Get a nice pen or whatever and write down everything that's on your mind, what's bothering you so and so. Didn't get me the invoice? Whatever. Just write down stuff on the left side and on the right side. Do a little bit of vision boarding, a little bit. Do, like, depending on how big the storm is. If, you know, like, in a real storm, the clarity when you're driving is far, so you've got to look a little closer. So you look three months from now. What would be cool? Well, I wish I was. It'd be cool if I wasn't working 16 hours a day, eight days a week. Like, insane, right? And so, like, that would be step one, step two, I'd like to get a little more sleep. And so, like, wherever you got to find that, do a little bit of vision boarding and then get really authentic and true with yourself. Look yourself in the mirror or not, and just talk to yourself and say, what am I doing here? And be willing to give up on things. It's counterintuitive. So it's like, don't ever give up, but also know when to give up. Don't give up on your dream of being that person that you deserve and you are here to be. But the path is, it's really not up to you. It's like the chess game. If someone moves one piece, another, whatever, 50 million variations, just boom, permutations right there. That's life. That's life. But I would say if you're in a storm right now, take a look at it. What's bothering you? My business partner sucks. We're not making enough profit. This isn't enough to help pay my bills. Okay, now we know that. Write it all down. What would it look like in six months if things change? Well, then, you know, I would get rid of my business partner. I would add one more product, kind of write those things down and then get really true to yourself and say, maybe I need to sell this business. Maybe it's reached its shelf life. Maybe I'm not just looking at shiny objects and grass is greener. I really believe that I can do something else. If it's paying your bills, then you're going to have to moonlight and you're going to have to do both until you have the risk enough, you know, to jump over. But that's count. That's kind of contrary because most people will say, don't give up, etc. And I say that too. Don't give up on yourself. Don't give up on your journey. Don't give up on what is in front of you. No, no, no. But be willing to go a different route. And sometimes I meet young entrepreneurs and they go, this is gonna be my billion dollar company. It could be, but I've had like 25 companies before. I even started this one eight years ago. So it's like. And now I've got another 25. Like, it's just. It doesn't matter. You know, ultimately, it doesn't matter. So I would say have that conversation. Be willing to pivot, be willing to sell the business, be willing to move things around. Ultimately, you got to take care of yourself because you're racing a marathon. And if you're not taking care of yourself, you're going to fall to the floor in exhaustion. So be willing to have that tough conversation with yourself, your wife, your husband, your friend, your cousin, and say, hey, you know what? I'm just throwing this out there. I'm not giving up just yet. But what if I sold this thing, took 20 grand off the table, used five of that to start something that I really know is going to have longer legs. I'm going to be able to get that passion back. Otherwise. So once you have that conversation, you go, I can't do that. Well, then you've got to do what I do. In some of these businesses, when you make $0, take $0 off the table, and a brand like Snow you have to fall in love with your business, like every few weeks. And you have to find something, a challenge. In my case, like finding a new challenge to a new Rubik's Cube to unlock. That's exciting to me, right? So retail, wow. I've never done that before. What if we were in Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus and Saks, which we are today, that'd be interesting as an oral care brand. So that challenge woke me up in the morning, just like when I was a kid and I got a new video game. I'd wake up at 5am to play it. It's all I could think about, dream about and get up. Not every day is going to be like that because most things in business kind of suck in terms of what you have to go through. It's not easy at all. But you got to fall in love with the hard work. Decide if you're gonna sell this thing, stop doing it. Potentially, if you can't sell it, say, I'm just gonna. What if I just stop doing it because I only got 24 hours in a day? Opportunity cost. Maybe I could do something else or maybe make a plan. Like with me on the agency side, I didn't know that I was gonna go into brand building and now investing and all these different areas. Real estate, I didn't know that, but I could see that there was potentially a shelf life on. I wanted to take that to the next level. And so I started prepping and it took. It wasn't overnight, but I knew that I was not enjoying what I was doing as much as I was enjoying my moonlight time. And I could see my team members weren't enjoying it as much either. They wanted to work on the side projects that we were building. I said, okay, well, we've got six months, 12 months. However long it takes, we've got to replace the net profit we're making per month from the agency. We've got to not replace, but we've got to mirror that or at least show the growth. Then I could sell this thing and then we can move on over to this side of things. So sometimes you have to do that. But if you have a plan, it's a lot better. If you know, okay, six months from now, I know I'm gonna get to that place. Clarity then comes through progress. And so then you gotta get to work and just get one thing done, then the next thing done. But the problem is that people around you, if they love you, they're not going to want you to quit because they believe in you. And they don't want, they don't want that for you. And sometimes that's bad because then you end up doing something that you run a business that's never going to make more than 200,000 a year and you spend 10 years doing that, still a great success. You can make 200 grand a year, but what if you did something else? You're never going to get that time back. So you got to have that discussion with yourself. And the world's in a weird place right now. We're in a recession. We're not in a recession. I can tell you things are really expensive now and it's kind of crazy. And people have this angst inside of them. And so I think it's a beautiful time. It's the creative destruction. It's a transformative time. And that's not to play light. I mean, I grew up in those situations, so I know how difficult it is to worry about what am I going to eat next, where am I going to live next? Not downplaying that at all, but just kind of tell yourself. I wish I could go back and tell myself that everything is going to be okay. Everything that I want and I'm looking for, I'm going to get and just kind of focus. And I did spend a lot of time on businesses that I probably shouldn't have, but I wouldn't have any other way. I'm here today and I think that was part of the journey. So look at it that way, zoom out a little bit, take a little breather and be willing to part with something that maybe isn't giving you that energy and really think through it, because it's not. Shiny Object syndrome is a real thing. So something new is always going to look better than something that's difficult at the moment because our nature is to if something's uncomfortable, change it. It's risk. We naturally are that way as animals. That's what we're doing. So what happens is that we start to the smarter you are, the more you can visualize your failure just as much as your success. And once you start to visualize your failure, that sticks a little bit more. Because we are fear based reactionary mammals. So like we're gonna stick to the fear more than we are to the success. An overthinker for sure. You're gonna think of 50 ways you're gonna fail. There's 50 ways I could die right now. We can sit here and talk to them, but what use is that? You know, give yourself a little bit of a pity Party and then say, all right, 20 minutes I'm gonna cry and I'm gonna be mad and sad and. And then 20 minutes I'm going to be happy and start writing stuff down and start to move that. Because if you're in a state of depression or a state of stagnancy and you're burnt out because things haven't changed, and just know that even recessions only last one to four years. Most of them are one to two. So it's a season, and this is the season that you're in and decide, is this the championship you want to win or is just this Michael Jordan playing golf? So you got to figure out what, what aspect of that is there, there to you. And I can tell you it takes the same amount of time to build a hundred million dollar business than it does to build a $1 million business or a $10 million business. Let's say it can, right? At five years, let's say, and someone at five years will hit the 1 million mark and someone could 100 million. Timing has a lot to do with things. So if you have a business that's outdated and it's going down, figure out a way to sell it. But look at your time, your character in the game. How can I upgrade my character? Put some armor. What do I need to do for my character? What do I need to read? And then go back in and say, all right, this is my plan. And Maybe it'll change 20 times by the time six months comes up, but at least you have something.
- [70:16]
A
Yeah.
- [70:17]
D
I actually want to talk about something you just mentioned right there is that it can take the same amount of time to build in, let's just say five years to go from zero to 10 that it would to go zero to 100 million.
- [70:28]
B
Sure.
- [70:28]
D
What do you think is the biggest difference between those two businesses? Is it just the amount of problems that it's being solved or what would you say is the biggest difference there?
- [70:36]
B
I'll preface this, but there's a lot of luck. And luck equals preparedness. Preparedness meets opportunity. So it's. And then there's just dumb luck sometimes. But usually it's preparedness meets opportunity. So the person was prepared, recognized the opportunities, therefore they deserved it. Finders keepers. First move, they're the first to move on it. My buddy Howie, for example, is one of the first to move on e cigs and built a billion, billion dollar exit. Very successful, Nice guy. Love him to death and first to move. Right. And that guy creates his own luck. And so he Stays prepared. And he's constantly filtering opportunities. And when he's all in, he's all in and just goes after it. Right? So I think that timing has a lot to do with that as well. You know, if you were raising money for AI a year ago and you had something that actually was dope, you could raise a billion dollars, right? It's who you know and it's all those things, right? I think it's also so timing and then total addressable market. I mean, you don't have to have that many customers to build a hundred million dollar business if it's B2B, even for, for example. But there's a company yesterday at our awards ceremony, they do roofing supplies, and they have 4,000 roofers and roofing companies they sell supplies to. They were from 8 million to 550 million in 10 years. And it's like, who would have thought, you know, like. So it's all over the place. Every business can be a hundred million dollar business. I mean, essentially, right? If the addressable market's large enough or it's growing to be large enough. So I think the product or service you choose is important as well. So if you're doing like book, right? I'm gonna do a book writing service for vets who are 71 years old, only that live in Alabama once, but now live in Arizona. And I'm not taking any other client. Well, okay, go for it, right? Start there. You can always expand. You can always expand, fine. But you know, in general, if you're choosing something that's got a large enough addressable market, and I think addressable market is not just the size of the market, it's addressable, which means that you have a service that is that much better, you have to be substantially better usually than even if you have a cleaning service, you've got to be substantially better or however that looks service wise, communication, whatever, or you have to have some innovation that drives price down, right? So you're just. So you've vented a way to make things cost ten times less, and now you're offering that to a large market. So when we look at those success stories across the board, right? From AI to vital proteins, collagen, great timing. Kurt's phenomenal genius. But they pivoted early on. So I think you have to create your own luck by spotting the opportunities, creating those opportunities. Think two years out of who you want to be and start acting that way now. So you go, all right, two years from now, how does Josh walk two years from now? How do I talk? How do I sit? You know, what do I do? Am I wearing a hat? Am I not? Like, you figure all those things out and you go, I'm just gonna start doing it tomorrow, and I'm gonna tell people. That's what I do. And so you kind of have to manifest to a certain degree, because people will help you then. But I think the big differentiator is timing, addressable market, and then is the product or service, you know, GoPro nuts, right? Like, when that happened, there's nothing like it. It's crazy. The drone companies, everybody bought a drone at some point, but the general population, the early adopter crowd, has kind of waned out. And you don't see so many people walking around with. Or anyone walking around with an Oculus Rift on their head. So it's like, there's a balance, right? I bought the Google glass for. For $2,000 when it first came out. Everything gave me headaches. It almost exploded on my head. It was so hot, my temples. And I put it back on ebay. Like, I sold it because it was just. And that was a long time ago. But you kind of have to figure that out, right? So it's like, there are these trends, but you don't want to mistake. I learned this from Jason at 37 signals from basecamp. So identify the signals from the noise. And so that takes time. That takes wisdom, which comes from experience, yours and other people's. And so one of the best ways to learn from other people is just to listen to content like this, Reading books and consuming that rich content so that you don't have to touch the hot stove too many times, and you just kind of know where that is, then you can create your own luck better and better.
- [75:14]
A
So I wanted to ask you. So a couple months ago, I saw you on a podcast, and in a clip, you were asked, like, what would you say are some of those, like, top skills that you think entrepreneurs should learn in today's world? And the main thing that you talked about was learning how to communicate. But I feel like a lot of people hear that, and they're like, oh, it's go have conversations and all that. But actually, like, what has been the significance of learning how to master communication? And for people that may struggle with building those interpersonal skills and relationships with other people, like, what advice would you give to them? How did you master communication if you're.
- [75:43]
B
Not really good at it initially, which I wasn't. I mean, I had everything that you see today. I'm still learning like, it's right now, work in progress, right? But one, there are a ton of channels on YouTube to learn these things. I love stand up comedy. I always have. But to be able to walk into a room of strangers, I could never do it. I mean, I admire them so much. To be able to make a crowd of strangers laugh and ride that wave and control that room and just, it's incredible. It's incredible. And I'm talking about, like, when I was in Nashville, I just popped into a place and they, they had stand up comedy and it's, it's beautiful improv, right? And so even if that's like, and I get it, like, you don't have to be, you don't have to be the best at it, but then you have to find someone who's a little bit better than you at it and you partner with them, or you pay them for some coaching, or you read their book or, you know, and you study it and find your own flavor. Because there's tons of ways to communicate. I mean, you guys are mastering the communication of distilling business content in a edutainment, fun, viral way, right? That's communication. That's, it's translation and it's communication. It's distillation. It's, it's a little bit more than that. But at least if you can convey yourself in a way that's effective enough for you to personalize, perhaps find some of those people, mentors, partners, employees that are a little bit more gifted from the front at it and gifted in the sense that maybe they worked on a little bit more, maybe they enjoy it a little bit more. And if that's not your sauce, that's okay ultimately, but just, you should still get better because, you know, things don't get easier, but you can get better and they look easier and feel easier. And one of my mentors told me one day, if you stay focused and you keep improving yourself and you stay vulnerable and you ask those questions and you're going to get better and better, you're definitely going to get better. Like, you're not going to get worse. So you're definitely going to get better. But I'm not great at everything. I'm great at a few things that I'm disproportionately comparatively in my markets, better than who's out there. That's enough for me to then team up with other people and we admire simultaneously each other's skill sets and be like, dude, you're so good at writing. Ah. Like, I'm I'm like 50% at your level and you're just growing every week. But now I don't have to focus on that as much. I can support you, but now I can focus on programming. And then you're like, you're so good at programming, you're so fast. How'd you figure that out? And then you build a team, build a clubhouse. And so you're going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this. But you got to kind of dabble and see if you're good at things you don't know until you really give it a shot. But if that's not your sauce, that's okay. At least get better. Read Charisma on command. Dale Carnegie. Just kind of practice it and figure out your own flavor. If you try to do my flavor, it's not going to work. If I try to do someone else's flavor, it's not going to work. You got to kind of find your own flavor that makes sense to you. But it's the most important skill set in the world. But it just looks a lot of different ways. So you might. Most of the communication is non verbal. So maybe you get better at your posture and maybe you ask questions better. You're like, I don't want to talk, I don't want to talk for more than 10% of the conversation. Well, anybody asks some really good questions and they're going to leave and go, I really like that guy. And you're like, I literally talked for three minutes out of three hours. And that's another way to do it, right? There's also digital communication, so emails, getting better at writing emails, following up, that's part of communication. Remembering people's birthdays, remembering their kids names, remembering their wife or husband's name, their partner's names. Those are all very strategic, but they're also just nice things. You become a person that's nice to be around and I want people to leave a conversation with me and I really care and I want them to know that I care. So even if you don't say a peep, just you ask one question or something, you can get really good at that one question, get really good at remembering stuff. So there's a lot of skill sets inside there. I just think it's too valuable not to master at some point in your life and that may look different for everybody. It looked different than me, it'll look different than you. You might be really good at writing thank you cards and you send thank you Cards to everybody you meet with. And they go, oh, wow. Like, they're not even gonna care that you were quiet at dinner. Most people aren't thinking about you, thinking of themselves. And so if you can show them that you're able to kind of step outside of that and do that. And I'm spending time on this because I do. I get comments about this stuff. They go, well, Josh just. He's great at talking. And he's just like, I learned how to do this. Like, I read how to Present, like Steve Jobs. I read the book. I watched the stuff. It's like playing tape. I go to stand up comedy. I watch it online, I watch it on Netflix. It's watched on last night, the Matt Rife one. So I'm just like, you know, that's something I put effort into and I enjoy. But I also know, remember, everyone has the same 24 hours. You think Elon Musk is programming all day? No.
- [80:51]
C
No.
- [80:52]
B
What is he doing? Talking.
- [80:53]
A
He's selling himself every day.
- [80:54]
B
He's asking questions, he's listening, and he's talking. Communication. So the richest skill ever is communication. Convincing other people to do the work, convincing people to go on a journey with you. You know, motivating them, coaching them. Right. Ultimately, Right. So that's. If you go to a sporting event, you got the coaches screaming, but. And the players playing, and then the owner's in the owner's box or if he's really involved, like Mark Cuban, he's down on the floor screaming with the coaches. But it's just different. And then the. The guy that owns the arena is at his ranch or something. Right? So, like, there's levels to it and you kind of figure that out. But communication is by far the most problem profitable skill you can learn, however that looks to you.
- [81:37]
C
One question that we always love to ask the guests that we talk to is, you know, at the end of the day, when it's all said and done, everything that you've built so far and everywhere where you're headed right now, how do you want to be remembered?
- [81:48]
B
A man of his word. A man of his word, I think ultimately is important. Just, you know, leaving the conversation with the guy felt inspired or I laughed or I felt heard or, you know, whatever. Just like, just that's all I want. Like, that was. That was a great guy or a good guy. You know, I've been fortunate to have some amazing men and women in my life as mentors. And, you know, that's what I think about them. You know, I think. And Some that have passed my damn, that was a great dude. Or, like, she was awesome. Like, just want to hang out with that person and just, yeah, they're smart or, yeah, they have experience or all this stuff. But just being a good person, man, I think that's ultimately, I'm just on a mission to become a better man, a better partner, a better leader, and, you know, try to give back as much as I can and just have that balance, you know, you. You've got one life here, and I want to take advantage of it as best as I can. And I think I was put on this earth to do more than just serve myself. I love to serve others. And so I'll probably spend the latter half of my life definitely doing even more of that, because there's nothing like it. So I would say servitude, man of his word, you know, hard worker, for sure. I think that's definitely undisputed. Great father, great husband, a great friend, great leader, as I mentioned, that'd be.
- [83:28]
A
Awesome, you know, and we like to end these off just by kind of asking our guests. But, like, if you could leave the younger generation with one last message, just a couple maybe guiding principles to really create and build a successful life. Like, you became a nine figure entrepreneur at a relatively early age, and a lot of people would aspire to do that. You know, for somebody looking up to you right now and trying to. If you could give them. Just a couple guiding principles.
- [83:48]
B
Give yourself grace. Give yourself grace. You can't solve the world's problems in an afternoon. You know, it's just not going to happen. And as soon as you do, there'll be another batch of problems. So give yourself grace. Everything you want, you will manifest, and you will do it. If you're willing to work hard and stay persistent at it, and you follow some of these principles, you're going to at least be an awesome person. And. And you're gonna be able to look in the mirror and say, you know what? I followed through and I'm doing the best that I can. And some days are bad days, some seasons are more difficult and tough, and some seem like you hit the lottery and they're never gonna end. And I think that it's just important to take care of yourself. Give yourself grace. Mental health is now, thankfully, being talked about in a much broader fashion. And be willing to ask for help. You don't have to have all the answers. You don't have to do it all yourself. This isn't the last business that you're gonna run. You don't have to sell this one for a billion, sell it for a million, take that million, and then sell the next one for 6 million, and then take that one and sell it for 60 million. And, you know, and then you realize after a million dollars doesn't matter. Once you can live wherever you want to live, eat what you want to eat, and you've got any car or transportation taking from point A to point B, what it comes down to. And I've got some friends that are incredibly successful financially, everything. And they've told me directly, if you don't do the work along the way, you're going to have a lot of work to do at this destination. And so, okay, you sell a company for $100 million, but you haven't taken care of yourself along the way. The body keeps score, and you're going to have to pay for that. So I would say take care of your mental health. Build a supportive community, even if it's just digital. Like, you're like, I don't have anyone right now. Okay, Create your own, you know, Mastermind, essentially, with YouTube. These are the channels I'm subscribing to. These are the pages I'm following. Do a detox. What am I watching? Which podcasts am I listening to? Is this adding value to my life? Now, don't get me wrong, I like to have fun. So, you know, listen to a murder mystery podcast, you know, for an hour, and then mix it up. You know, it doesn't have to all be serious stuff, but take care of your mental health, because you. Your brain is a supercomputer. It's the most fascinating thing in the world. But even computers get viruses, and you've got to detox and be willing to do that and do it every three months and be like, what's adding value? Oh, I spent three hours on Snapchat every day this week. That's probably not good. No wonder why I feel depressed and down about my progress is because I'm allowing myself to be drowned in the intoxication of consumerism. And, you know, these things, they're. They're successful for a reason. They're addictive hooks. And so you want to be a producer more than a consumer. And if you can focus in production. What does that mean? Write a blog post. I don't know. Write, make a video. Produce things that other people consume. If you can keep working on that, that's all. I would say younger, just kind of. And give yourself grace. It takes. You know, I've been doing this for about 17 years now straight. And it feels like a second and it feels like 400 years at the same time. And so. And I feel like I'm just getting started, you know, and I hope, God willing, I've got a long life, another 50, 60 years ahead of me. I don't know what to do with myself at this point. Right. So everything's going to come to you. Give yourself grace, ask for help, and surround yourself with the community, which includes the content that you consume.
- [87:21]
A
Great advice, and that's a beautiful episode. But that's a wrap on today's podcast. Josh, thank you so much for joining us today. For everybody watching, be sure to leave a like and subscribe for amazing content on the way. And for those tuned in right now, Josh, where can everybody find you at?
- [87:33]
B
I'm OshSnow pretty much everywhere. Instagram is where I'm usually most active. So Josh Snow. And yeah, honestly, that's the easiest. I don't want to give too many to. Once you search that, everything else will come up.
- [87:45]
A
And for everybody with crusty smiles out there, you know how to get right right here. Come on now, you guys, let's go.
- [87:52]
C
Thanks, John.
- [87:52]
B
Thank you.
- [87:53]
C
Thank you.