← The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan
540: In Retrospect - They Made $1 BILLION Selling Toothpaste | HiSmile
01:00:05
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- [00:00]
Nathan Chan
Hey, founder fam. Today, I'm diving back into the archive to bring you our episode with the duo behind the massive, massive consumer business, Nick Mirkovich and Alex Tomic. These two Australian entrepreneurs have transformed a teeth whitening idea into a billion dollar global brand out of the sunny Gold coast here in Australia. Starting out at the ages of 19 and 20, they bootstrapped their company from scratch and are now on track to achieve billion in annual revenue. In this episode, Nick and Alex share how they've built High Smile into a category disruptor, making waves across the Internet and among influencers and celebrities alike. We'll explore how they narrowed in on teeth whitening as a problem to solve, their R D journey, and their competitive drive that continues to push highmile forward, taking on industry giants like Colgate and Crest. All right, let's dive in, hear the.
- [01:00]
Nick Mirkovich
Stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder podcast with Nathan Chan.
- [01:14]
Nathan Chan
So welcome to the Founder podcast, boys. It's been a very, very long time coming. I'd say at least a good three, four years in the making because I've always said when you guys are in town, we'll do this in person. We'll do this in person. So you're finally here in Melbourne. So thanks for coming down.
- [01:31]
Nick Mirkovich
Thank you so much for having us. We were saying as well, we've been waiting a long time to jump on. The podcast schedules didn't align, but we've made it work.
- [01:38]
Nathan Chan
We finally got there. So look, as I, as I was saying, offline, massive fan. You guys have built an incredibly large business. You said you've, you know, on track to do over half a billion dollars in annual revenue next year, doing over, you know, 300. Like, the business is growing super fast. You've been doing it for nine years. But the first question I ask everyone that comes on is, how did you get your job? Okay. How did you find yourself doing the work you do? How this thing start?
- [02:09]
Nick Mirkovich
It was crazy. Crazy. Yeah, it was a crazy story. I think really random people. Look at us, two young guys, and first it started teeth whitening. Now it's where we're an oral care company that's really competing with some of the big guys. And I think how we started was there was a big pain point in teeth whitening, particularly amongst our, our age group. We were teenagers at the time. A lot of people were getting their teeth whitened, both professionally and over the counter supermarket strips and different types of products. And there was one common theme, the results, the products Worked, but every single person had that same pain point with the pain and sensitivity and the issues that went with whitening us. Being young naive teenagers, we sort of jumped in headfirst, saw an opportunity, reached out to a bunch of chemists and pharmacists from all around the world and universities who are studying and working on lightning products. We found a formulation that we found we thought worked, wasn't being commercialized at the time. We bought a heap of formula, package the product and then yeah, fast forward to where we are now. We've had a lot of learnings over the years. We brought our R and D in house about four years ago and that took the product and the business to another level. So yeah, I think being young, naive, seeing a small opportunity and then taking heaps of learnings to get us to where we are now.
- [03:22]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, amazing. So you guys are based out of Gold coast, so for people that are watching and listening, that's not really like a place or an epicent, epicenter for talent or even where businesses like well known companies start. It's usually out of Sydney or Melbourne. So I'm interested like in the early days, what inspired you guys to want to start a business? You saw an opportunity. Like did you, did you know anybody on like they had online businesses? Did you read the four Hour Workweek? Like where did that come from?
- [03:56]
Alex Tomic
We were actually talking about this the other day and it's funny that and my. Know for myself personally, ever since I was 14, 15, 16, I would always look at brands in a different way. Well, try to say, okay, why do they perform better? Why do these, do these do really well? Or why have these sort of fell off and the likes. I feel that intuition is the thing that got the hunger for business and it was something natural. It's not necessarily didn't come from any one place but just the interest and the intrigue in the world of business and always keeping my eyes open. And that's where me and Nick sort of joined forces. And it was something that, it was inept in both of us and something that excited both of us and we saw that there was this opportunity, a common theme that I was seeing the same thing in the teeth whitening field and we just knew we could do something better. It wasn't sold. No one had this great product that everyone wanted to get behind. Everyone used multiple products that had the problems. But yes, I feel like it's us looking at it. Young, naive, hungry to sort of get ourselves to do something. And we found the oral care business and teeth Whitening to be the one to really target and solve the problem, then make something great out of it.
- [05:15]
Nathan Chan
Yeah. So you guys are how old at the time, 19 or 20?
- [05:18]
Nick Mirkovich
Yeah, I was 19. I think you were 20 when we first started and launched.
- [05:22]
Nathan Chan
And how'd you guys meet? You played soccer together, is that right?
- [05:25]
Nick Mirkovich
Yeah, our mums actually worked together, so I played. Yeah, I played football, soccer. Alex also did, but we met through. Yeah, our mum's working together at Sea World on the Golf Gold coast and then, yeah, just became family, friends, friends for probably five years before we started the business.
- [05:39]
Nathan Chan
Got you. And so you. You got obsessed with the problem. How long did it take to launch and what did that launch look like? Tell me about that first sale.
- [05:48]
Nick Mirkovich
I'd say it was a good 12, 12 months before launch of doing research, testing product and really making sure we had something that was a bit different. Talking about launch, I think, yeah, we. We basically manufactured a heap of product with this formulation that we thought was really good. And I think influencer marketing companies were doing it, but it wasn't really a thing. And out. The only reason we started and people think of hi Smell is this influencer brand because that's how we started. We didn't have the budget to market this product, so we thought this product was so unique and so different in how it worked. It was whitening that didn't cause pain sensitivity and it looked different. We could send this out to a heap of people, get them to give feedback on it and hopefully they'll share it to their Instagrams at the time. So we did that. It looked cool enough, looked unique enough, and it delivered results in a different way. And at that time, people weren't being paid to post or paid to promote, so people were just sharing it. They felt a value in that product and the value in the brand that we're trying to create, and they started sharing and it felt special and we started to gain a little bit of traction. And then, yeah, the funny thing about the first sale, we got, I think five sales in the first couple of days.
- [06:55]
Alex Tomic
Yeah.
- [06:56]
Nick Mirkovich
But us again, being young and naive and trying to do everything ourselves, we didn't connect the payment gateway correctly, so we didn't collect any of the sales. So the revenue that came through, which was 5, 600 bucks, which we were like, this is amazing. There's proof of concept. People are buying. This just went to nothing. We had to contact those people, hoping they would come back and buy. I think one of them did and they ended up buying two, two kits at the time, but we just had to start from scratch. And honestly, there's about a million stories like that where we took learnings that we paid the price at the time, but because we paid the price and we felt that pain ourselves, we won't make that mistake again.
- [07:31]
Nathan Chan
Yeah. So you guys weren't using anything like Shopify.
- [07:35]
Alex Tomic
That didn't come until like three years, two years later, really. And there was crashes. So we've been launching. We got this big person to post, and then it crashes. And it's like your whole world comes crashing down. It's like this is everything that we had, 100% of all the money I had, Nick had. All right, let's do it. Things are crashing and we're learning on the fly. We're figuring things out. And then we came across, all right, this thing Shopify, you don't have. You can't shut down the server. Like, and I remember, yeah, we're not.
- [08:01]
Nick Mirkovich
Technical people, so it can't crash. It can't. What do you mean it can't? Well, we were just used to this, hosting it on our own or with, like, one of the web development agencies on the Gold Coast, a small mob, and thinking we're a small business, they put us on a basic server, basic hosted server plan, shared server with a few other smaller clients. And if we were to send 50 people to the side, it would crash. So, yeah, we just learned the hard. The hard way, I guess. And if you look at it now, looking back, we wouldn't change a single thing. I think the fact that we took those learnings on ourselves and we felt those pain points is why the business we believe is in the place it is today.
- [08:37]
Nathan Chan
Yeah. So I'm really curious, just the whole Gold coast piece, you guys meeting, is this your first business?
- [08:45]
Alex Tomic
Yep.
- [08:46]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, first business. So the success you've had is just like, out of this world, out of coming out of Gold Coast. Like, I mean, a lot of founders, a lot of people wouldn't. Like, I've always been really impressed from afar, just like the moves that you guys are making. So I'm really curious, like, when it comes to the brand, like, a lot of people watching this, they want to start an E commerce because they want to start a business. But you have this feeling like, well, that's already done because it's so easy now to start an E commerce business. And, like, there's a lot of copycats. And I saw, like, in your industry, there were starting to be a lot of copycats. And you guys were an early Adopter. But I, I saw like there was a lot of teeth whitening companies out there and you guys really legitimized the product. I thought that was a brilliant move, which I watched from afar, where you brought R D in house. You clearly differentiated your product. You did a rebrand, which was really fucking cool. And you really kind of stood out in the marketplace and now are clearly just growing like wildfire. Can you talk to me how you came to that realization that you needed to double down on product? And because you guys are great marketers too, you did influencer marketing really well. Like, you know, there was a time where we were very, very high, high, high spenders on Facebook ads for founder and I. We used to share the same account manager from afar. Like, and you guys were in the top and we were at the top. So I'm curious, like, you guys were really strong marketing but you made that shift to product. So the first question is how did you come to that realization? And the second one is, what advice would you have to people when it comes to wanting to start a product or they have an idea or they're passionate about a problem. But there's so many other competitors.
- [10:29]
Alex Tomic
I think two parts. I'll, I'll touch on the product part and that's if you wanted to go in the marketing and the evolution of that side. But quite, I think how we looked at things. So we obviously built our business with this teeth white, it's singular product and which worked really, really well, helped us stay very lean. But I think the thing that makes us unique, we're very extreme. We go down paths and down rabbit holes and we really take as many learnings as we can. But we're never too obsessed to say, okay, we have to stay on this path, even if it proves us wrong. So we learn, we learn, we learn. We did amazing with this kit. And like you said, a lot of copycats started to come and what we had to do, we had to completely break ourselves. We had to change and remove pretty much all this content, all this cache that we built over three, four, five years and say put that in the bin. We have to transform ourselves over the next three, four years. And that's where we said, okay, let's go heavily invest in R and D. Let's get the brightest minds we can. Let's rethink what not just teeth whitening, but oral care could look like. And we wanted to expand that out instead of just being so niche. Yes. And yeah, we got the brightest mind. We take that box, we invested In a great facility that we were able to test every. Every product in house. And that speed and efficiency of from concept to a product that we could actually send to our manufacturers was happening in months as opposed to years. And the quality that we were sending was just immaculate. So if you go then back to, okay, if someone's looking and wanting to create a product, I think ignore the fact that there are a lot of competitors out there, that that to us doesn't matter. Look, people have done toothpaste for 100 years. Doesn't mean we weren't able to create a toothpaste that's more exciting and more fun. Just because there's a lot of competitors, it doesn't have to necessarily stop you from making the best new version. And it doesn't require the biggest change like what most people think. And I think not being overly obsessive with, oh, it has to do this or it has to that. Just make something fun that works with a market that people are going to love, it will work. So you look at the flavored toothpaste, for example. We really flipped that on its head. We created a great base foundation as opposed to sort of these sensitivity or gum health ones. We said, let's make one that ticks all the boxes, but make it fun and exciting and make this so tasty that everyone wants to have it. So whether you're six or 60, you're getting excited about brushing your teeth again. And it was that, that breaking of the mold, it didn't mean because there were thousands of different toothpaste options that we couldn't do it. It says you got to be the one to put it in market. It get people excited about it, show the difference through reactions of people, and yeah, it will work. So I think that sort of ties that little story together.
- [13:15]
Nathan Chan
Yeah. And I'm just curious, though, like, that strategic move has been like a stroke of genius for you guys, and it's really helped catapult the brand, I'm sure, because now you. You're not in, like, a red ocean. Like, I don't know if you guys read the book Blue Ocean, but, like, you're in this big blue ocean now. It's not. You're not fighting against everybody else. You're carving out own niche and big market. Like, where do you learn? Like, how did you guys work that out? Like, do you guys have mentors? Like, could you learn from. Are you inspired by the States? Are you part of any networking mastermind groups? Are you part of ypo? Like, talk to me about where where do you. How are you guys feeding your minds? Because you. You've. There's clearly something going on there. And I'm curious.
- [13:57]
Nick Mirkovich
Yeah, no, honestly, from a mentor or groups perspective, we've never been a part of groups. We learn from everyone and every situation that we interact with or engage with. Those few little stories we shared at the start, there's a million of those that we wouldn't have enough time if we spoke for a week to share all the learnings that we had throughout the business and our obsession to want to get better. We put our own money in. We wanted to taste every part of the business. And when we come back to how we. How did we pivot and move to caring more and investing more in the product? And why was that important? And now you talk about the blue ocean that we now swim in. That all came from us feeling enough pain early on. We'd make a move, someone would copy it, we'd make a move, something else would happen. And it was almost like we were competing. And I think back to what you said about the Gold Coast. The beauty of being on the Gold coast is you're isolated. You're not looking left or right. You're looking at your own self and you're running your own race. And I think that early on really, really helped us. And then I think as we started to do things in the business and test things and bring people in and go, okay, we're great at marketing. We need a better product or we need this or we need to bring. Our operations suck. Like, we don't understand the final cost of our delivered product, or we don't understand true profitability. We understand cash flow. We're suffering on that side. Like, our obsession to want to understand the full wheel made us really come back to, okay, when we're building this business moving forward, we need to build a moat around what we do. We can't just do a mo. Early on. The first three years, we're making moves. Those moves either getting ripped off, getting copied. Whatever's happening, people are taking what we're doing and trying to do it for themselves. And then you're swimming, like you said, in the red ocean. For us, it's like, how do we build a moat and protect every single part of what we do? Because these days, you've still got the same amount, if not way more brands that you would call copycats. However, they're copying it. Copying one move, you can't copy the full pie. You can't. We're swimming like you said in the blue ocean swimming, we believe by ourselves. We've got big competitors now, got the Colgate and the. And the big unilevers. But we're in our own race because the way we do things is so, so different to the way any other brand does it.
- [15:57]
Nathan Chan
Yeah. And I can clearly see that. Right. And I've been watching the journey from afar. So, you know, part of any networking groups, do you guys have mentors that you're learning from, people that have built large e commerce brands or exited goes back to.
- [16:11]
Alex Tomic
It's everything. Like I'm learning from the conversation we had five minutes ago about what you did with founder and how you're like, no matter who it is, there's something to learn from someone and sports team, sports managers, like, no matter who, what where, if it's a good fundamental principle, it's something you can take and bring into business. So it's like just isolating it to other business owners or people. It's like it's too limiting. There's other people, other principles that you can really grab from and if it's really, really good, bring it in. And so we're made up of thousands of different minds and the way people do things and we try to bring as many of those good habits, good principles into what we do. And I think it served us really well. And like Nick said, being on the Gold coast, we do our own thing, create, run our own race. We're not looking at what the other guys are doing, whether you're big, small, medium, left or right. We're doing our own thing and we're loving to do it, do our own thing and trying to get other people excited and encouraged to do that as well.
- [17:07]
Nathan Chan
Yeah. So talk to me about team. Right. Because at the size that you guys are at, you can to. To really grow a business and scale it to the heights that you want to scale it. It comes back to people. It's going to come back to your leadership team, the strength of your leadership team and the leaders around them. How have you guys approached talent being in the Gold Coast? We talked about it just briefly offline, but I said let's talk about it while we're shooting because I think that's an interesting challenge because a lot of people, they think, oh, you know, if I want to start a business, perhaps I need to go to Silicon Valley. Right. Or I need to be in a happening area where there's a lot of great talent or people around and you guys are starting from the Gold coast and you build a very large business. Competing on a global scale. How have you found developed talent and really built your people and culture to scale this business?
- [18:00]
Nick Mirkovich
Guess. Yeah, it's, it has been very, very tough and very, very challenging. And like the business itself, the people in the team side has had its own ups and downs and own challenges. From how we operate as leaders to how we thought the teams would best work, to how we thought a leader should be and operate with. We've brought through so many different types of people. From super experienced people from overseas.
- [18:23]
Nathan Chan
Yes.
- [18:23]
Nick Mirkovich
To a young hungry person who's fresh out of school, who just wants to pick anything and everything up and they sometimes turn into an absolute weapon across operations or whatever that might be. And we've done everything in between and there's no right way of doing things, I don't think. But for us it comes back to, like Alex said, running our own race. We, we never wanted to run a business the way other people would run a business because we're two very unique, different individuals. And high smiles are very unique, different business. So for us, it wasn't about looking at other companies and how they were structured. Anytime we did that and tried to follow another model or Apple's organizational structure or how they hire people or how they ladder up and how they have their leadership sort of sitting. Whenever we did that, we'd fail. Coming back to what we're about and who we are as people. And what we've found is the best leaders. Now best leaders roll up their sleeves and get stuck in. They don't host meetings for meeting sake. They do the most work. And if anything, when you're a leader, you're someone else's assistant. First and foremost, you're assisting your team, not the other way around. Because that's the way that we operate and we run. We're assisting our team, not getting people to assist us. I think if you earn that respect, you earn the position of a leader. The other thing is we pick leaders who are, yes, they're in specialized roles. You might be the head of creative, you're very much a generalist when it comes to that. You've got to have an open mind. You've got to have a little bit of a touch and understanding of business. You've got to have a little bit of a touch and understanding of marketing to understand that full scope, to better brief and better work with a team that is super specialized and the best at doing what they do. So for us, we're in an amazing place now. We'll, we're always aiming to get Better and better and better and develop the leaders that we have within. But we truly feel, when we look today, where we're at with the people in the company, we've just reached, I think 110, just over 100 heads.
- [20:08]
Nathan Chan
Yeah.
- [20:09]
Nick Mirkovich
In the office, we've got some amazing leaders in place who feel empowered, who feel like they, they own their role, they feel like they're not micromanaged. It's not reliant on myself and Alex to make every single decision. And the teams are thriving because of that. Because you get to a point where it's easy to manage a team of 20 with myself and Alex, but you get to over 100, you really need to have some really, really good, smart, well developed, well trained leaders who you can trust and who trust you to then develop and grow the next crop and the next crop to get us to 200, 300 and whatever that means in terms of people.
- [20:45]
Nathan Chan
So what do you guys look for when it comes to great people?
- [20:51]
Alex Tomic
I think it's if I look princely, and I'll use a couple of examples, it's the people who are hungry and willing to get to work and get stuck in. The people who are really smart and know what they're doing in their field, but are willing to pick up the dirt and work at the lowest level if required. I'll give you a great example of the R and D position at High Smile. So this is a position that we searched far and wide. We looked at the top head of R&D's from your Unilever, top, top firms. We spoke to all of them and there was always something with a preconceived notion of and a limitation that existed there from whatever exists. You have to fit within that sort of mold. Yes, our idea was we wanted to completely break it. So we needed someone who had the knowledge of the science and the chemistry required but didn't have any true understanding of what already existed. So that when they came on board, it was just an open playing field, go as far and wide as we could. So in the end, we recruited a head of science from one of our local universities on the Gold Coast. One of the brightest minds that we have at High Smile. Really open, but someone he's willing to get stuck into the little, most micro details and think as broadly as possible. And he didn't come with the limitation of we can't do this or everything. We try everything and then once we try, if it doesn't work, we're all happy to part ways and move on to the next thing, but it's that willingness to try everything to get to that new product, new concept that's the ideal that we're sort of looking at throughout. And I think it's a great example because it's so complex, complex and so technical that we've been able to break it even in that R and D side as well.
- [22:40]
Nick Mirkovich
None on what Alex said. It's like when you mentioned about Maro, our team, like if I was to say our head of product and procurement, she wanted to be a teacher and she came through our customer service team and now she's head of product and procurement, killing some of the most amazing and getting to market and manufacturing some of the most amazing products in the world. Our head of supply chain, the guy who runs our supply chain, he played football with me and he just happened to come through actually working in the warehouse and now he's running the supply chain side of the business. Justin, who you've spoken about, our general manager, he was writing copy at a marketing agency, working casually for us at the time on a trial. He's today he's our general manager. I think you look anywhere head of marketing, ahead of marketing, used to be in sales for a software business. So there's not. If you were to look at them when they started at High Smile and when they came in, I don't think any other company would have given them the chance. But like Alex said, it's character, character over everything. Because every time myself and Alex didn't know a thing about R and D, didn't know a thing about business, didn't know a thing about anything. It came down to what we believe is character and competencies and then just willing to pick up, pick up things and. And a good personality to work with other people to make things happen.
- [23:53]
Nathan Chan
So, yeah, I love that. So I got, I used to watch from afar as well this vlog that you guys used to put out a lot of friends of mine overseas as well, being the E Commerce space. I used to watch that you guys probably wouldn't know. You never used to get many views and you went down this pathway for a little bit where you guys, it looked like you were looking to build your personal brand and then you did it for a year. So I got to know and feel the team. There was the videographer. Was it Stefan or his brother?
- [24:23]
Nick Mirkovich
Dazza's the videographer?
- [24:24]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, so I used to watch that. It was so cool. You guys should have put in a lot of effort as well. And then after a year or so it was all gone. What the hell happened? Tell me about that. Like, I've got to find. Because I've always wondered, like, because it looked like you guys saw the power of building a personal brand and then you just wiped it all and you just cut it all because it looked like you're putting a lot of effort and it was cool, but you weren't getting many views either.
- [24:50]
Alex Tomic
So it's funny. And it's funny said it. There's nothing at High Smile that we haven't tried. And I'm telling you, nothing. We tried it all. And through that again, every situation, every occurrence, every little detail, we're learning from every. Every moment. It's. And it always guides us in what is the right path. It was a great example of, okay, let's test this. Let's really try to build up that personal brand and see what can we build beyond this. There's so many exciting things. And then when we took a step back and it's like, okay, what are we doing this for? For us, it's really about creating this new category, what we're calling Smoke. And it takes a lot of time to do that if we're taking 1% of time off that we're losing. And that was something that just took so much energy and time because not only we now thinking of what is our progression forward, which business always moves and it's always changing. And to then have to think about, okay, are we getting this on camera or not? It's like our North Star was, how do we create a new category? How do we make something special? And we can't have any distractions from doing this. So it was a great, great time. And something that I'm so happy that we did do it because it made us learn a lot. Okay, what's it about? What really exists there? And it gets you out of the present because you're always thinking about, okay, am I saying this the right way to appeal? Instead of is am I actually just saying it the best way or thinking in the best way as well. So it took us a bit off track more than what was necessary. And I think, yeah, I wouldn't change it for the world. But I think after we looked at it, North Star to. To do what we're doing in this space requires full 100 focus. And we can't change from that because.
- [26:29]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, I remember watching one and you were setting up an office and you wanted multiple walls. I remember you saying, Nick, you're like, oh, we want multiple walls. So then we have multiple Locations to shoot from and multiple backgrounds. And that's how I thought about when we moved to this office. Like, I remember that from that particular tip. So I got a crazy memory and I always wondered, like, why did you guys stop that? So was it literally, like, just one day you came in, what one of you guys and said, this has got to stop, or, like, what happened?
- [26:54]
Nick Mirkovich
We spoke to each other. I think, like Alex said it was the North Star thing was so true. Like Alex said, we've tested and done so many different things, sometimes it takes us in the wrong direction. I think we, we personally, we don't want to be famous. Like, like, if people know us, cool. We're, we're friendly, we're happy to say hello, speak to people. But it was, it was doing the. It wasn't where we wanted to go. Speaking opportunities, podcast. We love doing them. But when, by all means, we don't want to do a world tour and just do that. We want to build the best business and get people so interested that they want to ask us a question. We don't want to build the best personal brand because we're really interesting characters. So it's like we went back to our roots and went, let's do it with the best that. Let's build the best business. People will be intrigued. People are interested. We have plenty of opportunities for us to speak and get out of our comfort zone, because we do, we do. Like, doing things like this gets us out of our comfort zone. Shares the story inspires someone. It's amazing. But through the vlog, like Alex, it was so labor intensive, took up so much of our mind power that sometimes you feel like you're not being authentically yourself the more you get into that race. And we were conscious. We're like, we don't want to become actors. That's not what we want to do. We don't want to be on tv. It started going. All the emails were getting more down the wrong path was to be on TV and do all this other. And we're like, no, no, that's not what we are. And who we're about served its purpose. I think it helped a heap of people. But I think we can do more by doing good work and then speaking about it on platforms like this.
- [28:18]
Nathan Chan
So I remember even during the vlog, you guys were working on some other products, so it looked like you're launching. Looking to launch some other brands. That ever happened. What happened there?
- [28:26]
Nick Mirkovich
No, we, we did.
- [28:28]
Nathan Chan
We had like a secret project or.
- [28:29]
Nick Mirkovich
Something you're working on yeah, your memory is probably better than mine. We did, we did, we did flirt with the idea of other types of brands because again, when we did launch into High Smile and we saw the early success, we were like, right, we've got the recipe for success, as you've seen a lot of people do. And then again, the vlog was almost a bit of a project like that where it was a bit of a wandering eye. We started dabbling into something else. We're like 1% of growth in high smile is better than 3000% of growth in something else. And truly, we truly mean it. We're passionate about this category. A lot of people go, what's it to be passionate about? Teeth. Whatever. It's boring. It's a boring category. We're really, really excited. I think we're starting to see that come to fruition now in the products that we're bringing out. The, the battles that we're having with competitors, the retailers that we're playing with, the activations we're having, we're truly making a dent. There's a lot of skincare brands. Haircare is a big, a big market. But when you look at small care, oral care, no one's done what we've done and no one's going to do what we're about to do. And I think that's, we've got this once in a lifetime opportunity in Everyone brushes their teeth. Every single person. Not everyone uses this skincare product. Not everyone cares for their hair. Every single person that I know has to be 99% in our major markets, brush their teeth. We've got an opportunity to be the brand that, that dominates that category. For us. Being competitive people who have always played sport our whole lives, there's no bigger stage than that to compete on and to, to wake up to every single day to that massive never ending challenge.
- [30:00]
Nathan Chan
Yeah. So, so you, you really focus, like it's just so dialed in.
- [30:07]
Alex Tomic
Yeah.
- [30:09]
Nathan Chan
So switching gears as well, you guys have done a lot of cool stuff on the influencer side you've worked with, I think, is it all the Kardashians?
- [30:17]
Nick Mirkovich
Yeah, we've worked with, I'd say, yeah, all the, all the Kardashians. Maybe one or two.
- [30:22]
Nathan Chan
Now, I know you probably can't share exact details around the commercial arraignment arrangements. Can you give us like kind of a, an indicative figure around what that kind of investment is at any capacity to work with them? And why do you choose to work with like influences this big? Does it, do you get the return? I Guess that's what people would be curious about, right? Like, is it worth it?
- [30:43]
Nick Mirkovich
100%. I think that's what people ask every single day. It's like, is that worth it? Working with Kim. Kim's a massive face for the brand. We work with her a lot on a lot of our product. Look, when it comes down to what something's worth, I think it's looking at the business holistically. Work. Like when you look at Nike, for example, they'll attach themselves to certain figures not just to sell more product, but to tell a story. To tell a story to retailers and to it to sell dreams to. To potential customers as well. For us, we look at it in a similar way. Working and engaging with Kim to launch a product. Get. Does it get sales? It gets sales. Does it get attention? It gets attention, but it takes the brand forward. It positions the brand where we want the brand to be positioned. It taps into a customer that we. We want to sort of get the attention of. And it obviously helps and assists now that we're in retail. Helps and assists our retailers with driving people in store and. And making high small the beast that it is today. I think just working with big talent isn't going to make a brand, make or break a brand. I think for us influencers now is if maybe less than 5% of what we do and where we put our dollars and where we put our attention. Like you look at, we spoke on R and D. Yeah. Other marketing avenues, retail support, the team itself and what we do there, spending money on our own internal culture to get that team sort of firing and make them want to work. For high smile influences went from something that was such a huge part of our business to now probably where it should be, around 5% of what we do and where we put our team energy and focus. And I think, yeah, for sure. Working with someone like Kim elevates a brand, positions us above a lot of the competitors. Like when you talk about our space, I don't think some of the big brands are cool enough to work with a character like Kim. And I don't think some of the smaller brands are reputable enough to work with someone like him. So we're in this unique place where. Where Kim is a. Is a great influencer for our brand and a great face for the brand and. And someone who I think has a unique alignment with High Smile compared to any other brand in our category.
- [32:50]
Nathan Chan
Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Thank you for sharing. And you guys were pretty heavy on direct response paid advertising. I know you did a Lot in the Snapchat space as well. Killing it on TikTok very early on Facebook ads when CPMs were much more cheap than they are now. I'm curious for many e commerce brands or many companies in general, when the Privacy stuff changed iOS 14, a lot of brands that were heavy reliant on paid advertising, direct response type stuff, they suffered. But there was one key theme that I saw and that was the brands that had a strong retail arm behind them, they didn't really feel it, but the ones that were heavy paid only, they really, really, really felt it. What did you guys do and how did you guys overcome that challenge in particular? And talk to us, when did you start looking into retail? Because I think that's a big piece of the puzzle now for D2C brands definitely.
- [33:55]
Nick Mirkovich
I think on retail probably about three, four years ago we had the discussion and then actually properly started activating about two, three years ago. Yeah. From a D2C perspective and when you talk about the advertising iOS 14, I think it always comes down to owning what you do, building a motor around what you do. If you overly rely on influencers, overly reliant on advertising, overly reliant on retail, some you're, you're at the mercy of something. I think if you want to build a true brand, true business, you, you want to swim in that blue ocean that you spoke of before. You want to own as much as you possibly can in that wheel and you want to be in control of that success as much as you possibly can. I think that gives assurance to the people who work for the company. The company's not yo yoing up and down. You know, there's some stability in the strategy and what's going on. If retail, if there was to be Covid retail stores close, we've still got online, something happens that we've got the professional network as well. For a product perspective, we're not just in whitening, we're not just in oral care. We're covering that full, that full range of oral care from cosmetic to general care. So for us we've, we've really looked. When we, when we spoke a couple years into the business about building that moat, we took that super, super seriously. And even today, like we're nowhere near where we want to be when it comes to protecting what we do. And it doesn't just come from people think of protection as IP or, or something legal. It's like, no, no, there's much, much more depth to that make it so, so difficult for someone to literally copy exactly what you do, because what you do is so much more than what you're putting out. It's what's in those four walls in the office. It's the people that are there. It's how you operate, how you move. It's your strategy and where you want to be in the future. No one can copy, can copy that.
- [35:43]
Nathan Chan
You said that you guys got a lot of stories, a lot of badass little, lots of battle scars. Can you both share maybe from both your different perspectives? Kind of the hardest time in this journey because building a business is tough. The level that you guys are playing at with such aggressive scale and growth, fundamentally things break all the time. To my knowledge. You guys are bootstrapped. Is that correct still to this day? So you, you know, you've got to, you got to worry about cash flow, sales. Sales is one thing. Another thing is to be able to fulfill that with an E commerce business. And you can get yourself into a lot of trouble, especially when you bootstrap. So I'd love to hear from each of you like the hardest time that you've ever experienced during this journey. And it was there ever a time where you. But either of you felt like giving up?
- [36:31]
Alex Tomic
It's a good question. I feel if I go back, the toughest time was at the time that we made that decision for that transition, that transition from singular product. Business is going great, things are working, it's easy to manage and it's a team of say 10 to 20 what things were things up and breaking that. So obviously transforming to R D LED building products that cost more at the time that everything becomes more expensive. Advertising, marketing, the whole lot came this, oh my God, we have got to roll the sleeves right up. So this was three odd years ago. And yeah, it was the time that was very difficult. Bootstrapped, cash flow, all of that. We had to really say, okay, we've got to make ourselves out of this. We know what we're doing fundamentally makes sense. It will be for the longevity of high smile and we'll be able to carve our own thing. But it's going to be a tough year and a half and it was a tough year and a half and, and going back to, to us looking at things, it was the best year and a half for us that we could have ever gone through because it's the thing that taught us about so many things in this short little window from how do we look at sales, how do we look at the business as a whole, how do we look at products and create these Amazing products and how do we make something more? So how do we expand it out? How do we not limit ourselves just to one thing, whether it's advertising or the products or retail or online. And I think that those, that key moment is what has transformed the business. The toughest part which, which is what most people say it's the toughest part is what makes. Makes it shine and make it. Makes it what it is. And I feel no more is that true than what we experienced just on that one.
- [38:22]
Nathan Chan
Did you, did you guys have to go in the hole to be able to make that significant investment in the whole.
- [38:27]
Alex Tomic
As in negative? Absolutely. And we, and looking at it, it's like it was the toughest, most grueling thing because it was on our own back when the, the last result. We're never asking for anything external because we have this vision. We knew the vision never changed. It was just that transition period with everything stacked up at the same time made us that crystal clear focus of okay, this is exactly what we need to do. And that's business. That's what makes business so special is there are these tough times that you have to become even more clear and even more precise with the actions and the moves you make. And yeah, again speaking that's what has made I guess and created and curated what we are today and how we sort of operate in this very unique way where we're not overly. We never now go too crazy in that one direction. So we have these amazing people who we work with who each own their own thing. But our goal is to always take all of the moats into perspective to make the best decision. So it's a bit of a change in the perspective of how we've. We operate. And yeah, I think that that's someone I'll tie it down to.
- [39:40]
Nathan Chan
Thanks for sharing.
- [39:41]
Nick Mirkovich
Yeah, I think Alex has pretty much covered and sum that up. But I think one thing that's interesting from what Alex said and it's. I don't know if this is luck, intuition. I think you need a bit of both when it comes to running a successful business and getting to where we are now. But we've never waited for a catalyst. We've always being that catalyst for change. So we didn't decide to change as a, as a brand and from a product perspective and invest all of that into R and D and product because something happened or something triggered it. We've, we always had this gut and we still go off gut feeling. I don't know. It's just, just something that we've always had. And it's. We've got a similar gut, I think, because the intuitions tend to align. But there's something in us that goes a. We think we need to go in this direction. It's not like you said you spoke about mentors before. We don't get on the phone and speak to someone and say, should we do this? Should we not? It's the two of us jumping in. God, I've got a bit of a gut feeling we need to do a bit more of this. And then Alex go, you know what? That's weird. I agree with that. And if both guts agree, we do it. And every single thing we've done, we've pivoted when we moved. It's not been because of a catalyst. We've felt something and before something's been on fire or something, there's been an issue or there's been a drama or something's forced us to change and move. We. We have seeked to make that move. And I think it's because we're never satisfied or never. We never sort of sit there and go, what we're doing is amazing. We're always looking forward, always looking at that next step. And I think now we've got the responsibility to do that. We don't just have myself and Alex. We've got over 100 people that we're responsible for as well, for their growth and their lives and their passion and their careers. So for us, we always have to be obsessed with moving forward. Moving forward, not smelling the roses, but instead looking at what could be a potential red flag, what could be a potential harm in the. Rather than waiting for that catalyst to bite you in the ass and go, take that change.
- [41:34]
Nathan Chan
Yeah. And where does that come from? Like that hunger, where does it come from? Is it you guys born? Like, did you guys always have this your whole life?
- [41:42]
Alex Tomic
I think it's that competitive nature that our obsession with sport and the teams and the managers and the great sports stars and sports managers who have done exceptionally well, it's something they ineptly have in themselves. If you look at the top, top, top level of performance in sport, you have to be another level. You have to transform yourself. Whether it's football you're talking about, you have to treat, if you're a striker 10 years ago to what a striker is today. It's two completely different things. You have to transform yourself and become something even better. Whatever the standard is, you've got to break that as well. And I feel business is the never Ending version of that. It's every 10 years. Look, you're always in that business. You have to transform the business the way you think the way we're going to elevate in our category, how we're going to. We need to accept that over 10 years there'll be someone that creates something special in our category. How do we keep our eye on our eye on the pulse and how do we obsess so much that we're the ones constantly transitioning and everyone's looking at us as what the next move is in the category. And yeah, it's just this obsession that both of us have. And yeah, we just don't sleep on. It's not something that we practice or not something that we have this technical thing we do. It's just a never ending everyday type of thing. It's that constantly, that 1% effort goes to that every day.
- [43:00]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, you guys love to compete.
- [43:02]
Nick Mirkovich
Yeah, we love it.
- [43:03]
Alex Tomic
Yeah. So put frankly.
- [43:06]
Nathan Chan
So this is what's interesting is like to get a business to any kind of true worth significance, it has to be an obsession. Right. But there's the other side of the table where you can burn out. Have you guys experienced burnout before?
- [43:20]
Alex Tomic
I haven't experienced burnout. I think as hard as we try on the business side, and I'll speak for myself and I know Nick's the same, we try equally as hard at home to be there for our families. At the same time, I feel you. It's not something that, oh, I've worked so hard. Now I'm home, I'm. I can relax.
- [43:39]
Nick Mirkovich
You what?
- [43:39]
Alex Tomic
You have to work hard to creating a good family, creating a good home. You have to be emotionally there. Your attention has to be there. So when you get home, you're there, you're not. Oh, now I can relax and go to sleep. I feel that's the thing that makes it most. It's the thing that's the ultimate true North Star for both of us, that family. Nothing really matters more. So you're doing this amazing thing, this business that we love to do, but coming home, seeing my kid, there's nothing better. There's nothing that excites me more. So I think it almost, if anything neutralizes me really well.
- [44:12]
Nathan Chan
It keeps you grounded.
- [44:13]
Alex Tomic
Keeps me grounded.
- [44:14]
Nathan Chan
You guys on the Gold coast, you both surf too. Still got time for a surf.
- [44:18]
Nick Mirkovich
We tried. We tried. We're not too good. We're not too good at surfing.
- [44:21]
Alex Tomic
I've tried.
- [44:22]
Nick Mirkovich
I wish I picked it up as a kid. It might have been better. But we're probably the only two people born and raised living on the Gold coast that don't surf. We love the beach, though.
- [44:32]
Nathan Chan
So people would look at you guys from afar, especially younger types. Right. You know, early 20s, early 30s, and kind of look at you guys and go, wow, you guys have got it all. An interesting question I like to ask people is, from your perspective, is it ever enough?
- [44:51]
Nick Mirkovich
I think, like, it depends what you're doing and what you're trying to do. I think people usually look at that from a financial perspective, and we. I think early on is when you get carried away from success by success, and you think about, I want to do this and I want to do that, because you're young, you're immature. But now we feel so content with what we have in that respect. But our competitive side, it'll never be enough. No matter where the company gets what the company gets to, ignoring the revenue numbers, ignoring anything on that side. For us, it's like the obsession of developing the next rough diamond from high school who had no opportunity, and now they're. Now they've got the opportunity next five years to become a head of or a leader in a department or whatever that might be. That's exciting. And the challenge of taking on the biggest brands in oral care that have been there for hundreds of years and dominated every single bathroom for us to be able to have that place. So from that perspective, the challenge. I can't possibly see where. Where that stops and what the limit is, because every time we think the company's at a level where it's like, oh, this is great. It's like, there's always another level. There's always somewhere else we can take it, which is super, super exciting.
- [45:57]
Alex Tomic
The competitive nature never is about the dollar you make or the dollar you have in your account. It's a weird thing. And, yeah, it's always about how do we transform what. What we're doing, the category we're in, how, like Nick said, how do we get the team like these superstars and how do we make them more special? And the absolute last thing that you think of is how much do you have? And the competitive nature isn't around that, which I feel if it is, it's. It. It's hard to create that business that survives a lifetime.
- [46:28]
Nathan Chan
Yeah.
- [46:29]
Alex Tomic
Because you're not focused on the right thing. You can't really think of the best things because it's always an incorrect sort of path that you'll take.
- [46:36]
Nathan Chan
Well, yeah, the. It's. It's a. It's just really a scoreboard. Right? That's. That's all it really is.
- [46:41]
Alex Tomic
Yeah.
- [46:42]
Nathan Chan
So the reason I asked that question is because I think all of us as humans, we always tell each other, oh, when we get here, it'll be better. When we get here, it'll be better, or how amazing will this be? And then when. When you get there, it's like, what's next? And that's very common amongst founders, successful founders. And you guys have the same kind of makeup, right. You guys are telling yourself, how good is this going to be? We get there. And then when you're there, you don't even smell the rose. You go, what's next? What's next? What's next? What's next? What's next? What's next? So, look, I could talk to you guys all day. We don't have a. All day, unfortunately. But I have to ask, like, for people watching, if you guys were to start a brand now in 2013, like, what. What would you do? How would you approach it? Like, with everything you've seen, all the lessons, all the. The money in the bank in terms of lessons that you've had, like, incredible. Like, how would you approach it? Can you give our community kind of from a how you've built high smile, how would you do it in 2023? Just because a lot has changed and it's still very possible, right?
- [47:50]
Alex Tomic
Absolutely.
- [47:53]
Nathan Chan
And maybe you can talk from a product sign, you talk from a marketing side.
- [47:56]
Alex Tomic
Yeah. Okay, Good idea. I think first and foremost, not to get crumbled by there being too many competitors in whatever you want to do. So first and foremost, find something that you absolutely love, as in a category, an industry or something that you could really get behind and support because you figured out a way that you can do it better than what it's already being done. And I feel when you have that idea as fast as you can to create the concept that you have in mind, put it out there, don't wait, don't overthink. Just put it out there and start that process. And you're going to have to start small, effectively, be very effective with that. You don't have to start big and put crazy amount of dollars in there. Don't look for external funding, don't look at any of that. Just figure it out, get it up and running as quick as you can. Create a product in a very small batch and just get going. I think the thing people do most of the time when they're first starting out, they just get crumbled because it's not perfect or there's too many competitors, or it's going to be, just do it. Just do it. And if you truly love it, you're going to succeed. You'll make the best product. Customers will get engaged. You'll figure it out. If you don't, you never know. You'll never have the chance to do so. So I'm just a believer. Just do it. Just get it done.
- [49:15]
Nathan Chan
Thank you for sharing, Nick.
- [49:17]
Nick Mirkovich
Yeah, I think it's funny. We always talk about how hard it would be like someone's. If people say, oh, would you sell the company? And people start throwing these crazy numbers. Like, the hardest thing is, I don't know how we would start another company again. Because you have to go straight from step one. And we take all the learnings that we've had and we would immediately inject that in to that company, which means we're starting ahead of schedule, which is probably a disadvantage, I would say, weirdly, because we would naturally as. As ego less as we want to be. You're coming in with a bit of an ego. If we were to sell up shop and go, let's start this glass company, we're going to sell glasses. We're coming in with all the learnings we have from high Smile. And no matter what, we're going to treat that as High Smile, which is the. The person who comes in fresh and starts at Glass company probably has a better opportunity of doing well, I believe, and succeeding. Because they're running their own race. They're focusing on it themselves. So when I look at what we've done as a brand, what we've done as a business, I wouldn't take any of those learnings or install them in my head and have them so I don't make those mistakes. It's all those little mistakes. And to what Alex said, you've got to jump in. You've got to make that move because you want to. And you need to taste every single part of the business. I don't care if you're a finance guy, you need to figure out marketing. If you're a marketing guy, you need to figure out finance, you need to figure out legal, you need to figure out product. You're not going to go study law and get your degree and become the best lawyer. That's by all means not what it's about. But you have to be dangerous enough to have a conversation with a lawyer who's going to give you advice because you're making the decision if you truly care about that Glass company. You're going to want to touch every single aspect of that glass company throughout its journey. Not all at once, not at the start. Like Alex said, just start. But don't try to be High Smile from day one. Start that glass company, start selling it at the markets, find proof of concept, find what people like, get customers feedback, do it like the good old days. And I think just because we're in the future, just because we've got more technology, don't get crowded in thought and don't get distracted. I think people first start a company and they look online and they go on to be the next High Smile. I want to be the next this, the next Nike, the next Apple. Focus on yourself. Take inspiration for all from all of those. Test some things that they've done, but understand where you are today in your journey because tomorrow will never be the same as today and you want to really appreciate that. And while we don't smell the roses, we appreciate where we are in our journey. We could easily where we sit today, raise hundreds of millions, if not billion of billions of dollars. And the offers are there to inject straight into High Smile. But we'd still be in the same place we are today. Maybe we'd sell a bit more product, we get a bit more reach in retail, we up spec our office in our space. But we would have then skipped 10 years of learning that we would have had. And something's going to crumble because we're not ready for that yet, clearly, because we haven't achieved that yet. So for us it's about taking those steps all the way through the business and obsessing. If, like I said, if you're starting this glass company, start that glass company with yourself, your friend, whoever that is, and touch every single part of that business. Don't try and make that glass company. This is made by Ikea. Don't try bike here today. Ikea wasn't IKEA at the start. High Smile wasn't High Smile at the very start. We're very different to what we were before and it's because we touched every single part along the way.
- [52:37]
Nathan Chan
So there's something about you guys where you guys really want to just embrace that journey. You're not looking for shortcuts?
- [52:44]
Alex Tomic
No. Take shortcuts? Not at all.
- [52:48]
Nathan Chan
I have to ask and just delve a little deeper like most people, looking, listening, watching, reading. You guys could raise a lot of money from, you know, P.E. or V.C. and you haven't. Why? Because you love to compete. You could go faster and take the market even faster. Right. Hypothetically. So why.
- [53:10]
Nick Mirkovich
I think it comes back to sort of what I said. I think you take that money on. You use that money to spend on the strategy that you have today. Yeah, but the strategy you have today is ready for what you're there to do today. You will put together. We've never put together a business plan or a case study or anything because we've rolled with the punches, because we haven't had to. We've. We've worked with what we've got, so we're ready for the level that we're playing at today. But it's like you. I love playing football. You put me in the Premier League today. If I played in the A league, I'm not ready for that yet. I need to earn my dues. I need to earn my stripes. I need to be top scorer in the A League before I even consider sitting on the bench of a Premier League club and training at the Premier League club. You can't put me in a game yet. So we see funding in the exact same way. We can hypothesize and we can cross our fingers and go, I hope this works. Or we can control the outcome and go, okay, step by step, we're going to have wins, we're going to have losses, but going to play in our field, in our race, in our space. Not going to be Colgate today, not going to be Apple today, we're not going to be Nike today. But they didn't get there in one day either. I think you see a lot of companies flash bang and then crash ultimately because they maybe tried to bite off more than they could chew. They look to the left. You talk about Silicon Valley. I think if we were in Silicon Valley, we would have taken funding straight away. And I don't know if Heismole would have been the highest mile we are today. We probably would have been a tech company or an app or done something different, because that's what everyone else to the left and to the right of us was doing. But we stayed on track, we stayed on focus. Yes, it's changed a little bit throughout the journey, but it was never these crazy turns or turbulence that a lot of brands face, because we tried the whole time to be in control of that race as much as we possibly can. And I think money is the. The biggest, the biggest thing when it comes to it. I think you could only do what you can do with what you have in the bank to work with. You can't spend money and you can't we can't, we couldn't launch into all the retailers we're in today. That would have sunk our ship. If we had all these contracts on the table, wouldn't be able to fulfill them because we wouldn't need money to fund those projects. And then you fund the project, your business isn't ready. You get the product in the stores, but the product aren't selling because you're not where you need to be. So there's all. It's, I believe 90% of the time it comes undone somewhere unless you're really, really, really, really, really, really ready for it.
- [55:27]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, no, thank you for sharing. Because it's interesting, right? Like the economy has definitely changed and you look at some of these DTC brands that are on the nasdaq, hardly any of them are profitable. And I know you guys would know that, right? And, and they're so capital intensive and the culture is, let's solve the problem with more money. And you guys, like, it's interesting because, you know, founders bootstrapped as well. And I'm a big, big believer in that in early days, right. Especially like for a long time, right. And having that to be resourceful and work out how to build a business. And now that this is what the markets are looking at, they're looking at profitability, they're looking at how, how is a company actually sustainable. So it sounds like you guys maybe in the future, but when you think you're ready, like, what's the plans for the future of Heisma? What. Where would you like to see this business in the next decade?
- [56:20]
Alex Tomic
In no near future or long term, do we have intention to part ways or bring on an external partner. I think for two reasons. And to add on what Nick was saying, one, it makes your focus around making money, and two, it slows down your vision to get you to where you are. Because now instead of us moving at the pace that we do, which is insane, like what we. When we say something, when we both think about it and if it makes sense, we move and we move very quick, that process slows down. The one who's doing the newest stuff, the most exciting stuff, and doing it fast and effectively, you're going to win. Slowing that down and then focusing only on what your net outcome is every quarter or whatever that is, it's not something that would be a part of anytime soon. And I can't see it. And I think that makes it even more exciting because it shakes up that industry. And I think it alerts that if you're a Product business, this is an unpopular belief. But if you're a product business and you're asking for money because you're not yet profitable, there's something wrong with the business. And you just putting more money in it is making potentially a problem worse and harder to get out of it. So I think that's going to shift a lot and I think we're going to see a lot of that over the next year or so. Look, if you got a business model where you're a software company and you're going to transform to selling ads or whatever, that might be different story. And I'm not going to. But if you're a product business that is finding it hard, there's questions that need to be asked and I think that's going to be the big shake up over the next year or two years.
- [57:55]
Nathan Chan
All right, last question for you both. Always ask this to anybody that's a guest these days. I want to hear from each of you. If you could have dinner with any entrepreneur, dead or alive, who would it be in one?
- [58:06]
Nick Mirkovich
Why Steve Jobs?
- [58:09]
Alex Tomic
Yeah.
- [58:10]
Nick Mirkovich
We've always. When we started, we loved Apple and we still love Apple today. So it was one Steve Jobs.
- [58:17]
Nathan Chan
Oh.
- [58:17]
Alex Tomic
So the packaging, his relentlessness to create something and transform something and now he's dead and he's. If you look at what's still happening with Apple, they're untouchable.
- [58:28]
Nick Mirkovich
So the full experience. Yeah. And everything.
- [58:31]
Alex Tomic
He got that.
- [58:31]
Nick Mirkovich
Yeah.
- [58:33]
Nathan Chan
All right, we'll wrap there. Thank you so much, guys.
- [58:35]
Nick Mirkovich
Thanks for having us.
- [58:36]
Nathan Chan
Hey, guys. That's it for today's episode. So I got one quick favor from you. We put in so much effort to find the most craziest, hard to reach founders, super successful fans, the greatest founders of our generation. All I ask is can you share this with a friend? Just one friend. It really, really helps us grow this show. It's going to help your friend. Right? So group, please share this with just one person. It would mean the world to us so we can grow this show and build this community. All right, that's it from me. I'll speak to you soon.