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- [00:00]
A
You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by GoHighLevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet, just go to gohighlevel.com travis.
- [00:14]
B
What is going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money podcast where it's a mission to help you make more money. Today on the show, I have a new friend, Brian Keller. Brian is the CEO and co founder of a company called Rora, a brand committed to delivering innovative, easy to use water filtration products that provide clean water without the need for plumbing. For months, Brian's daughter's eczema just wouldn't heal. Doctors had no answers. Nothing worked until almost by accident, he swapped out their shower head for a filtered one. Within days, her skin cleared up immediately. So Brian found a solution to his daughter's health issue and scaled it to help companies or to help families rather, experiencing the same thing and to raise awareness for the state of America's tap water crisis. Since launching in late 2024, where has already hit eight figures in revenue, entered an endorsement from people like Dr. Andrew Huberman and more. Brian, what's up man? Welcome to the show.
- [01:05]
C
Hey, thanks so much for having us.
- [01:07]
B
So, I mean, 2024, launching late 2024, already hit eight figures in revenue. What do you attribute that rapid growth in such a short period of time to?
- [01:18]
C
You know, I think it starts with, with product, but, you know, when I think about five key drivers of what really builds a great business today, you know, I would say it's people, product timing, margins and subscript subscription revenue. And I think, you know, we really got those dialed in with this, with this business. And, you know, I think we executed pretty well, came out of the gate, raised a lot of overall awareness and continued to be able to drive the top of the funnel while delivering a really great product for people that they love.
- [01:50]
B
How much time did you spend in product development before you actually had a version of the product you took to market?
- [01:55]
C
It was about two and a half years. So quite significant amount of time that we spent really, you know, engineering, refining, testing until we had a product that, you know, we could trust for our own families and really didn't want to launch a product that, you know, wasn't a hundred percent to our standards. So, and especially in the water filtration industry, you know, there's a lot of testing. That process can take a significant amount of time and you have to go contaminant by contaminant. So you Know, we've spent. I mean, we're still testing today, but we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on testing just to ensure that our products could, you know, meet the. Meet the standard that we want to deliver.
- [02:38]
B
Did you know about a lot of this stuff before you started the company, or was this like a. Just a bath of new information?
- [02:45]
C
It was a lot of new information. You know, I think my co founder and I, Charlie, was. We have a lot of experience solving problems together, which, you know, definitely helps a lot. But when it, you know, comes down to it as well, everything's a problem and a solution. It's if can you identify where you need to get to and lay out the steps to get there, then it's just about how quickly can you, you know, can you find that solution? So I think initially when we started, you know, we knew what we were trying to build, but we were able to meet a lot of great people on the way that, you know, I'd say we stand on the shoulders of giants. When, you know, we found someone who is an advisor who used to run the water filtration testing at the NSF for 25 years. And so, you know, we'd spend every single week kind of deep diving into a different contaminant, what the makeup of that is, what you have to do to actually remove that out, what the effects, you know, to the body are, and. And then what the testing process is like. And so really had to educate ourselves quite significantly. And, you know, there's a lot of legacy players in this market who have a lot of, you know, industry knowledge. And so, you know, we took a lot of that time while we were in product development to really educate ourselves so we could come out of the gate with as much knowledge as we could.
- [03:59]
B
Let's go back in time a little bit, man, if we can. Tell me, tell me, is this, like, is. Is entrepreneurship sort of the. In your blood? Is this something that you've been doing since you were a kid? Like, where did the. Where did the itch come from?
- [04:11]
C
Yeah, I think it's always been something that has excited me. You know, very early on I'd bike around and, you know, we do bike washes in the neighborhood or lemonade stands probably is the earliest form of it. And then in college, I ran a window washing company, so went knocked on doors, you know, came back and did the windows, kept knocking on doors to get more jobs, you know, bought a $600 Astro van, bolted some ladders to the top and. And really had to, you know, figure out how a. To sell your services and then also to really deliver on those. And so that was a really great training ground, I think just learning a lot of those different lessons and realizing that if I don't go knock on the door, I'm not gonna get the job. And some of those early lessons I think were, yeah, beneficial all the way to today. But after that we were. We started a business my sophomore year in college, ran and scaled that for about 10 years and then sold that company at the tail end of 2021. Okay, so.
- [05:11]
B
And what was that company?
- [05:13]
C
It was called Love youe Melon.
- [05:15]
B
Love youe Melon?
- [05:16]
C
Yeah, it was Beanie and apparel company. Okay. That was very mission driven and we gave 50% of our profit away. And very different business model than we're running today, but a lot of the same underlying tones, trying to help people with, you know, better lives and doing what we can to solve a problem.
- [05:34]
B
What were you going to college for?
- [05:36]
C
Originally I went to college, thought I was going to be an engineer and then was sitting in calc 3 and was like, yeah, I don't think this is going to be for me. I was good at it, but it just didn't excite me. And then switched over to, you know, I thought I was going to be an entrepreneurship major. And after taking that class where we started.
- [05:56]
A
This episode of the show is brought to you by Fanview. Fanview is a creator monetization platform that enables individuals to build, grow and monetize their own digital content businesses. You guys know we talk about this all the time here on the show and so I was excited to do this partnership with Fanview because it's a great platform. They have the ability to share exclusive content with your subscribers over there. You can build direct relationships, their audience through their platform, generate recurring income through fan support. So if you are somebody who has has a creator channel or you are thinking about starting a creator channel, you're not sure exactly how to monetize it. Well, Fan View is a. A great platform to do that through. It's super accessible for beginners. You can make it feel extremely personal to you and to your audience. The connection that you can gain no matter what niche you're in. You can use Fanview as your platform so you can monetize your content. You can earn as much as you possibly can. It's super low barrier to entry to entry. So it's really easy to get started and there is no experience or audience needed in order to be able to get started making money on the Platform, not to mention it's crazy, crazy scalable. So you guys know we talk about side hustles on the show all the time. The couple of the parameters that I look for is is it really easy to start, low barrier to entry to start, and if it starts going well, is it something that's potentially scalable beyond what your full time job is capable of earning you? And Fanview definitely has those potential things there. So if you are already creator thinking about becoming creator and you're not exactly sure how to monetize the platform that you're building, then go check out fan view, visit www.fanview.com today and launch your creator career. That's Fanview. F A n v u e.com fanview.com
- [07:48]
C
part of that business. Actually, I realized that and also with running the window washing company, that if I knew more of the finances behind the business, I probably could have made lot more money and so switched over to being a finance major because I knew that's what I was the worst at in business and really forced myself to build those skills alongside running that company because I knew that that was something that, you know, I really had to master if I wanted to be, you know, successful and run my own companies later in life. So you, so you actually ended up
- [08:16]
B
finishing college even though you were running these two businesses while you were in college?
- [08:21]
C
Yeah, pretty much go to class Monday and Tuesday. And then I had an agreement with my teachers that if I got an A on all of their tests, then they couldn't dock me for participation because where I went to school, University of St. Thomas, 15% of your grade is based on participation and showing up to class. So yeah, my senior year, which when I was taking all my capstone finance classes, yeah, I'd pretty much just go to class two days a week and then be full time in the office Wednesday to Friday.
- [08:48]
B
I mean, pretty great learning experience though, right? To be able to actually have the information that you're learning in class and then to go to your actual P and L for the business and be able to make decisions based off the things that you're learning in class. It's like immediate practical application of the, of the thing that you're learning. Because I feel like sometimes there could be this like massive gap, you know what I mean? Like where you're working, you're, you're learning this new skill and then it's like four years before you actually have to apply it and then you have to go almost take like a refresher on it and and have to like, oh, I totally forgot about this basic fundamental thing that I, you know, now like, having the ability to apply it immediately while you're learning it and ask questions even to your professors about, like, hey, I'm running across this thing here. What should I do about this? I assume that had to be extremely helpful.
- [09:37]
C
Yeah, definitely. And with that business, you know, we were still in school, we didn't take it as seriously initially, but it was still a, you know, legitimate company and driving a good amount of revenue. And that was in the early days of Shopify. I think we were one of Shopify's first, first customers. Gotcha. But, you know, was on YouTube watching tutorials. How do you set up a website? And then, you know, you were able to start advertising on. On Facebook. And so that was, that was a big thing. And it was, you know, as glitchy of a platform as it is today, there's in no way it was as glitchy today as it was back then.
- [10:12]
B
Yeah.
- [10:14]
C
But, you know, learning all of those different kind of fundamental things and then being able to grow and continue to evolve with those, with those platforms, it's definitely been, yeah, I mean, a journey. Technology has come so far, but, yeah, being able to, you know, I was doing all of our accounting in an Excel spreadsheet and you know, ask my teacher, hey, like this, like you said, you know, if this doesn't work, how do we do this? How do we forecast even being able to apply a lot of those things? It was, it was helpful. And also just, you know, starting the business and we're working, you know, 70, 80, 90 hours a week, all weekend, and just getting into that regimen of constant, you know, grind. You know, I could sit there and study for 24 hours straight before a test and go ace it and then get back to. Get back to work. But I think I got the best grades I. I got my senior year and really only went to class two days a week.
- [11:06]
B
Was it your intention to continue working on the business full time when you were leaving school? Or was. Were there other options? Were there paths available and then you just ended up deciding to do this?
- [11:19]
C
Yeah, I actually had a internship at Target that I was going to take and a bunch of. Bunch of my friends were going to go work at Target. And I actually was watching the movie Jobs one night and got all inspired. I was supposed to go start work about a week later and gave him a call and was like, not going to do it.
- [11:38]
B
Really.
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C
Sorry it's so late last minute. But, you know, Gonna pursue this full time and, and really go for it. And yeah, the business wasn't that large at the time, so definitely a risk, but definitely one that paid out in the long run. Yeah, no kidding.
- [11:53]
B
And was it. You're the co founder of the, the company that you're working on right now. Is that the same partner that you worked on with that business?
- [12:00]
C
No, I had a different. Different co founder of that business. But Charlie we hired as our COO about three years in.
- [12:06]
B
Got it.
- [12:07]
C
And then him and I worked really closely side by side to, to build and scale that business. So, you know, we've been working together at this point for the better part of, you know, 10, 10, 11 years. You know, it was the best man in my wedding. We've, we've definitely gone through a lot of different things, you know, from when Covet hit, when all of the, all the things were. Were going down with the business. So, yeah, we've got a lot. Really great track record and I think a really great understanding of each other's skill sets and. Yep. How each other owns different aspects of the business, which is a game changer coming into starting something new. With that amount of experience working together, I think it definitely allowed us to hit the ground running and really execute well together.
- [12:52]
B
You've chosen a couple of industries that have no lack of competition. Right. You went apparel brand, which is everywhere. Anybody can start one. It's not difficult. You can, you know, we can start an apparel brand together today and have it launched by this evening. And then you got into the water space, which is hyper competitive as well. What's your view on competition versus opportunity versus total addressable markets? Huge. Yet there's also all these other people competing for attention in the space. Did that come into your awareness at all? Did you think about any of that at all when you started these things? Or in your mind, is it like, hey, if we just build the best thing possible, things are going to work out?
- [13:35]
C
Yeah. You know, after we'd sold the business, we were working for the parent company and I had a daughter and, you know, she had really bad eczema. We were trying to figure out what the issue was. And after trying a lot of different things and after getting a filtered shower head and her skin clearing up in a couple of days, it was like, okay, well if this is affecting her skin this much, what about the water that we're mixing with her formula? It's the only thing she's consuming. And so went online to try to find a good water filter and it was really difficult to understand what actually would work. And there's a lot of marketing claims being made, not a lot of data and science to back it up. And so I was talking to Charlie, my current co founder, and we kind of came to the realization that there's a pretty big white space here to build the Dyson of water filtration. And as we were looking at these different companies online, I was like, you know, there's. How are they selling this product? Because it doesn't seem like they're driving a lot of sales, you know, through direct to consumer and realize that the majority are selling through dealers, distributors and retail. And so that leaves a pretty big opportunity for somebody to come in and build a great product that can sell it direct to consumer, because then you have the margin to be able to go market and advertise and really build a brand. And. And so, you know, we kind of looked at the different constraints and what we were trying to build and it was like, okay, we want to build something that can sit on people's countertops. It's gotta be under 18 inches so that it can fit under a cabinet. It's gotta be, you know, have a spout height that's more than six and a half inches. You can fit any pint glass underneath. And it's gotta have, you know, better filtration technology and it's gotta be super simple and easy for people to use. And so.
- [15:15]
B
And a cool aesthetic.
- [15:17]
C
Yeah, we wanted to really build something from scratch. I think there's a lot of, you know, Nespresso machine looking exactly out there.
- [15:24]
B
And people don't want industrial grade a medical equipment that you sit on your countertop.
- [15:28]
C
Yeah. And if we can make it beautiful and, you know, look really nice, then people would be comfortable having it out on the counter. And then that creates conversation, which leads to more organic awareness and really spreading the word of what, you know, what we're doing, why they like the product. And then also, you know, we thought about, how do we make this super simple and also fun to use. And, you know, people enjoy pulling a tap handle. It's a good experience. We're like, okay, can we build that into this product? It'll also make it easier for kids to use, people with lower dexterity in their hands to use. And if we make it readily easy to use and look good, then people are going to drink more water and ultimately be healthier. And so those are some big aspects and focuses as we were building and designing that product.
- [16:14]
B
Let's talk about the financial side for a Second here, man, and feel free to, you know, tell me whatever you can tell me about this stuff. When you are developing this type of product, you said earlier it took a couple of years to two and a half years to be able to get to the first iteration of the product and this is from the time that you started even working on it. So now you have like ideation and then you have the work beginning and then you have a couple of years before you can even get a product to be able to sell and then start making some money. Are you self funded? The whole thing is something where you go like, hey, we need some outside capital for this. Based on our resume, I think we can raise that. And then in the meantime, like when you're building a company that literally can't make any money because there's no product available yet, what do you do? Personal finances and I guess like overall broad brush view on, on your financial plan during the R and D phase.
- [17:07]
C
Yeah, you know, it was tough. We had never raised money before but luckily one of our, our third, our third co founder, Jordy, who's actually one of the hosts of the TVPN podcast, a lot of experience raising capital and so he was able to teach us a lot and be a really great thought partner on just kind of how to approach it and some good first initial connections. But you know, we raised, raised a good amount of capital before we launched because we needed that in order to, you know, go out and do the testing with, you know, the NSF and NSF accredited labs, which is definitely not cheap. And you know, also designing something from scratch that's stainless steel and you know, using that, you know, it's, it's expensive product. So right. We knew we needed, you know, we forecasted the amount of capital. We were working with an engineering and design firm as we were building this as well and then just laid out, you know, how we thought the business would go and we actually hit our forecast within, you know, within like a couple percentage points from what we forecasted, you know, two or three years ago when we were initially laying out the business plan. But we knew ultimately that we were going to have to raise awareness of the overall problem and so do a good amount of marketing and advertising before we even launched. And so we worked quite a long time on building the right UX and UI experience for the water report and really making sure that we could educate and use that data to educate people and then started running some different ads and things like that just to find out what's in your water and knew that, okay, if I can get people to click and do that, enter their email for $2 a piece, then if I'm entering those people into the, the welcome flows and kind of getting them primed up, then if we can convert one out of a hundred of those, then we can hit our initial CAC goals and we can scale that. And so, you know, we slowly ramped up.
- [19:04]
B
So you're running ads before you launch the product. Is that, that's what, that's what you're. This is the list that you're talking about right now. This is like. But let's build up an audience here of people who care about this. We get the leads in, we nurture them, and then when we launch, we'll have a test group to launch to, essentially.
- [19:19]
C
Yeah, correct. So we had about 25,000 people already on our email list before we launched the product. And so, you know, day one, when we started selling, you know, we were doing 30, 40, $50,000 a day for those first couple of days, which then paid off for all of that initial, initial advertising. And they were really able to come, you know, out of the gate already spending a good amount of money and, and generating enough revenue to really keep the momentum building for the company.
- [19:49]
B
Where do you go to raise capital for this type of a product? Is this a venture capital thing or is it like. Like, I feel like a lot. I feel like most people when they think about raising money, it's usually for some sort of a technology company or something like that. Is it similar people that you go to for this? Is it different groups? Is it family offices, private investors? Who do you go to?
- [20:09]
C
Yeah, initially it was different family and friends, also different angel investors in the space. And once you get a couple of those angel investors, we were fortunate enough to get a couple initially that have been a big, made a big impact for the business, but it was really one conversation leads to the next, and they introduced some people that they think might be interested in it and, and so on. But in the, you know, like the most recent round of, of capital we raised that was pretty much from internal investors and then other different VC funds.
- [20:43]
B
Okay, okay, got it. So I imagine this was obviously this is a new area for you raising capital, but sales is sales. Right. The salesmanship is probably very similar raising money for the company as it is to door to door window washing. When you were in college, what, what point of the pitch presentation do you think was the most valuable in your ability to actually collect the wires from investors? Like we're talking about pre revenue, pre product. You know what I mean? Like, this is, it's not a low risk investment. So how do you overcome those things in the, in the investment pitch for, for raising money?
- [21:28]
C
Yeah, I think initially it was, you know, we need to be able to communicate and educate them on the problem and do they first agree that there's a problem to be solved? Right. Yeah. Because if you can't, if somebody doesn't believe that your product is solving what you're trying to pitch, that it's going to, then why would they invest? Right. And then, and then it's always, you know, like, okay, at what valuation does that make, does it make sense? And I think we went out and probably raised it at a little bit higher valuation than most thought, however, that, you know, we were able to hit the numbers once we started selling and justify it very well. But I think it's initially, yeah, getting them to understand the problem and then why, you know, why we were different in a market that has a lot of legacy players and how we were going to be able to be successful. And so I think being able to kind of walk them through how we were going to be raising overall awareness, the top of the funnel, you know, obviously also justifying our experience and where our different skill sets were between myself and Charlie and how we were going to be able to execute on those numbers. I think it's really ultimately when you're investing early stage, you know, pre product, pre revenue, it's. Do you believe the founders can actually execute? And Charlie and I have had a pretty good track record of that, I think enough for people to believe in us. And then once you get towards the end of that, we're getting closer and closer to launch. And so there's samples and things that people can kind of see. But ultimately it's really a belief in the founders. Yeah.
- [23:06]
B
Yeah, that was kind of what I was expecting was that you have a strong founding team who have already had a successful exit on a bootstrapped company, and now this is, hey, let's do this thing again. Again, I assume the question of, like, well, why wouldn't I just go buy this other filter had to come up during your, during your pitch. So what is the, the differentiator for you guys for to be able to enter a market like this and do this type of revenue so quickly?
- [23:33]
C
Yeah, I think, I think it's a, a couple of different things, but I would say that the product is truly unique in the space. It looks completely different. We didn't go just, you know, White label something that already existed. Yeah, our, our filter itself is a pretty unique design. So most carbon blocks that, you know, other products in these, in this category would use are actually bound together with melted plastic. And so that's which, I mean, you can Google it. That's very public information. And though it can filter out a decent amount of contaminants, it also has the potential to leach, you know, microplastics back into the water. And it's the same thing with like, you know, water bottles and things like that as well. It's like, okay, there's, there's so much, you know, certain things you're doing right, but you're paying more money and you're also getting those microplastics back in. And so, you know, we are going to go out and use medical grade stainless steel, which is 3 16L stainless steel. So we're building products that can really last a significant amount of time. And as we continue to develop better and better filtration technology, we can just ship that within a customer's next filter subscription and they effectively are going to get better performance without having to buy a whole nother system. And, and I think also the way that we were approaching, you know, the business with the subscription makes for very good unit economics for the business. And we were able to keep that filtration technology here in the United States. So make all our filters within the United States, our system componentry and the stainless steel is, is done overseas. But then we're able to marry those together at our, our three pl to ship to customers. Nice. But you know, I think key different differentiators is, you know, medical grade stainless steel, the electrokinetic nanofiber filtration technology. And then really just the ease of use and the design I would say is extremely unique.
- [25:32]
B
Yeah, I used to sell water filters myself door to door and then with this big distribution company and then we, and then I did a, and then we did direct sales for several years. So anytime I see new companies, new products or iterations that pop up in this, in this vertical, it's always interesting to me. And I remember seeing this, I think it was probably from Huberman or maybe it was an ad where you guys used Huberman as kind of the talking head or something like that. In the ad as the first time I think that I heard about this and immediately caught my attention because of that. Is this something that you intentionally tried to put in front of influencers like that? Was it just sort of an accident? And he found it through for Huberman specifically. Did he find it through somebody else and then reached out to you and said, I'd love to do something with you? How did those partnerships come about?
- [26:17]
C
Yeah, so we initially sent him our deck probably a year into kind of trying to start building this.
- [26:25]
B
Got it.
- [26:26]
C
And we had a connection with. With his manager and, you know, sent it to him, kind of said, okay, this looks great, but send us a product when you have it. And so, you know, about a year and a half later, once we had an actual product, we sent him one of the first production. Production units off the line and didn't hear anything back. And so about six, seven months later, they reached out and he was like, you know, love this. Use this every day. And I know you guys are very early on, but would you be open to, you know, to a partnership? Should we discuss that? And so, you know, we started kind of having that conversation and was able to. To. To get a deal done with them. And then, you know, I was like, okay, let's do the deal. But you need to give us four to five months because we need to be able to scale up our inventory to the rate that we can actually meet the demand that this may generate. Yeah, but ultimately, you know, we've really been focused on finding and working with people within the space that have a very credible voice. You know, as a new company in a space where a lot of players have been around for 30, 40, 50 years, we wanted to ensure that we were working with doctors, professional athletes, scientists, and people that people would believe, because it's one thing for us personally to go say it. And we try to be as transparent and trustworthy as we can with our customers, where we publish every raw data point on our website. You can go look at everything so we can back up every claim we're making with verified science. But also coming from those people and knowing that, you know, they're very trustworthy people that have the audiences to help us really increase the exposure, that's been key for us. So we built a lot of those different relationships with those types of people, and I think it's really helped us scale and continue to gain more exposure to the different types of Personas within the business.
- [28:23]
B
Yeah, you make up in credibility what you lack in time. You know, like the, the volume of time you've been around isn't. Isn't very long. So if you can go purchase trust with people from those who already have their trust, that tends to be a pretty good. Pretty good use of time and a great strategy. Brian, I appreciate you taking the time to come on the show. I know you're a really busy guy. Do not take that for granted. Where can people go to get more from you from Rora from what you're working on?
- [28:48]
C
Yeah, you can go to our website rora.com that's r o r-a.com. you can check out our countertop system, our filtered shower head or you can just find out what's in your water. So go there or we're on socials at Rora Water across any of your favorite social media platforms.
- [29:05]
B
Love it.
- [29:06]
C
Dude.
- [29:06]
B
Thanks so much for taking the time. Appreciate you the work you're doing in the world. Everybody else listening. Remember money only solves your money problems but it's usually easier to solve the rest of your problems when you got some money in the bank. So let's start there here on the Travis makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Catch you. Catch you guys next time.
- [29:20]
C
Peace.