Andrew: Hey there, freedom fighters. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy where I do interviews with real entrepreneurs for an audience of real entrepreneurs who are often building their businesses as they’re listening to this interview. Not this interview. As they’re listening to these interviews.
So I was supposed to do this interview a while back with Molly Fienning. She is the founder of Babiators, which creates durable sunglasses for babies and children. And I remember sitting here in this chair going, “Maybe my first question should be, ‘Are kids even wearing sunglasses? What babies are sunglasses?'” And for some reason the interview didn’t happen. I’m guessing Molly that you’ve heard people say that before. And this interview didn’t happen, and I remember that weekend walking through Noe Valley here in San Francisco. That’s where I live. It’s one of two places in San Francisco where there are actual kids. And I started seeing these babies with sunglasses at the farmer’s market and kids wearing sunglasses and I had no idea this was a thing.
Molly: Yeah.
Andrew: Once your attention is drawn to it, you notice it, Molly. All right. So I invited her here to figure out how big of a business this it, how she built it up, but what she did with skeptics like me who didn’t believe that kids were wearing sunglasses or ever would. And then how she built up this business. If you’re in a business of creating physical products, you’re going to want to listen to this. And if you’re creating something that’s different that you can expect a lot of skepticism about, this is the right interview for you.
Molly: That’s true.
Andrew: This interview is sponsored by two phenomenal companies. The first rents, I rent office space from them. It’s called Regus. I love them. I’ll tell you a story about what happened with them later on. And the second is the company you can turn to if you’re raising money for your business. Crowdfunding is brand new. So Regus for offices and crowdfunding, StartEngine. I’ll tell you more about those later.
Molly, welcome. I saw you smile as I told that description.
Molly: Yes. Thank you, Andrew. Happy to be here. I think it reminded me of we had, you know, my husband and I are actually two cofounders, Carolyn and Matthew Guard all went to college together and when we started the business and said we were making sunglasses for babies, so many of our friends were like, “What? That’s crazy. Why would you ever do that?” And a year or two in when we were generating, you know, at that point I think maybe $1 million, $1 million and a half in revenue and Sarah Jessica Parker’s kids are wearing them, Mariah Carey’s kids are wearing them, those same friends would say, “Of course. I always knew that would be such a good idea.” So we have firsthand experience with that versus the skepticism and the conversion.
Andrew: That’s a fast ramp-up. What’s your revenue now, 2017?
Molly: 2017, we just finished our fiscal year, which is for the budget . . .
Andrew: 2017 was last year, obviously.
Molly: Yeah. We do a fiscal year July 1, so we just wrapped up our 2017-2018 year. About $5 million in revenue. We’ve been around 8 years and have sold 2 million, probably 2.2 million pairs at this point around the world and in about 45 countries. So it’s amazing both the quick ramp-up but also just sort of continued linear growth has been wonderful and the ramp-up quickly, I remember I want to say whatever equity we each put in as a couple to start, we had recouped that in about 30 days of sales. [inaudible 00:03:30]
Andrew: Molly, why sunglasses for kids? My goal here is to understand how you built up the business, but I’ve got to answer that one question that you brought up earlier. Why do kids, why do babies need sunglasses?
Molly: Totally. I mean, so when started the business, you know, actually, the first thing we came up with was the brand name. My husband is a fighter pilot for the Marine Corps, and there’s a tradition where when the pilots go on deployments, they fly back in and the families are allowed to kind of hang out on the hanger and wait till their jets taxi over and then they park and turn off and top the hud and they get out of the plane and the kids run up to them and the fiancée and wives, and husbands run up to them and it’s just a sweet moment.
And I was there one day, one of those post-deployments trips, visits and it was a really sunny day and all the kids were squinting and looking for their dads and moms on the planes and the adults all had our shades on. So I mentioned that to Ted and he’s like, “We should totally make them and call them Babiators for baby aviator.” And he and I laughed and loved the name, but then we actually took some time to figure out if there was a need in the market.
And since then we’ve actually through that research, both from the consumer perspective and also from a safety and health perspective, we learned that children’s retinae are actually even more susceptible to UV damage than adult retina. Because a retina isn’t fully formed until 18, so any UV you receive as an adult through your eyes on a sunny day, children were getting actually far more of that same damage just through the same exact conditions because of just the way that the eye grows as you age or fully forms as you age.
So and I actually ironically, not ironically, one example to think about, you know, as we expanded, we’ve also expanded globally, and we have great distribution partners abroad in Australia was one of the first countries that approached us because that’s actually where the hole over the ozone, you know, is based there so they get incredible intense UV rays, and they are hyper mindful about protecting children’s eyes in the same way that here in the U.S. I think we do a good job thinking about skin, you know, sun protective wear, SPF, when you’re out there with your children, you’re slathering them up, but leaving their eyes, you know, susceptible. So whether it’s a hat or maybe shades or a shade over the stroller, there is something, just the importance of being mindful of kid’s eyes is something I’ve learned through this process.
Andrew: So I get the thought process behind it, and I like the story about the validation. Let’s get into how you got started. You’re someone who early in your career you had an internship at DoubleClick.
Molly: That was my first job.
Andrew: DoubleClick, why do you laugh about that? Tell me about it.
Molly: I mean, I loved it. It was insane. It was the height of the internet ad bubble when everything was about like cost per click of banner ads, you know? It was my [inaudible 00:06:36]
Andrew: So you did cost per click back then? It wasn’t like CPM, cost per impression?
Molly: It was totally cost per click if I recall and granted I was a freshman in college. It was my first job, my first internship after freshman year and I was an engineering and CS major at Harvard and wanted to do something in that sort of exciting tech boom time. The job was in like literally in that building, you know, internet. I think they call it Silicon Alley here in Manhattan right by the [inaudible 00:07:09] shaped like a triangle, and it’s at the foot where Broadway meets Fifth Avenue. It was such an exciting time and so much energy, sort of the height of the, you know, what I felt kind of even that internet ads to be and so it was a fun time and really free for all sort of, like, this how I can help. Let me see if I can be useful here in crafting my own role there because I don’t even know if they have insurance [inaudible 00:07:43]
Andrew: I remember them as being one of the few fun offices in New York City. They were a startup that was software that could justify their presence in New York because that’s where a lot of the ad buys were happening. And they did some fun things like they had an outdoor space where you could play and no one in New York ever plays. The thing is you’re describing something as exciting, and still when you talk to our producer, you said the assignments, the actual work you got, kind of mundane. Why was it so mundane that you decided soon after to get a degree in electrical engineering?
Molly: As I recall, the role was more around kind of crafting content. It was a lot of Word documents. It wasn’t sort of fun tech. I wasn’t doing anything on the tech side and I get it. I’m there for 8 weeks and, you know, I’m 19 years old but I [inaudible 00:08:39]. My second internship was a job actually at that point was the following year I lived in London and worked for NTL, which is the equivalent of AOL here. And same thing, when I arrived, it was sort of like, “Here, sit. Move, fold papers and summarize what we’re doing in text.” I quickly did what they asked, but then was like, “How about I do this?” And I actually transitioned my role from that summer into something actually working on mobile content, and actually we were writing in wireless application protocol, programming language and I learned early on that basically you need to take the initiative and make the job or role or company what you want it to be. If you let somebody else dictate that for you, it’s not going to be fulfilling, and I think both of those two experiences taught me that.
Andrew: All right. You graduated Harvard with electrical engineering and computer science degree. You ended up back at Harvard after taking a little job at IBM. Back at Harvard in a think tank and then from there, you were in D.C. studying how to mobilize groups online and you were working with the Muslim community in Western Europe to do what?
Molly: I was working at the Berkman Center, which [inaudible 00:09:57] internet security, studying the role of internet security and how Islamic extremism was mobilizing online. And moved to D.C. for a job with a think tank called CSIF, Center for Strategic and International Studies, and they were managing an open-source intelligence platform, and this was 2007, so it’s just after the Madrid bombing, just after the London bombing where one of the first signs of self-mobilized Islamic extremism in Europe. And I [inaudible 00:10:34] van Gogh assassination where he was murdered on a bicycle ride through Amsterdam. Historically prior to that, there was more of the, you know, you’d pay for [inaudible 00:10:49] were here in Europe, but that model where people are sent to a training program, returned with a mission, weapons, money, and it’s kind of learned like by a puppet master kind of, you know . . .
Andrew: Molly, what I’m getting at is it seemed like you were not sure what you wanted to do. You were working at DoubleClick. Then you got an electrical engineering degree. Then you were helping the Muslim community in Western Europe. Then you went and you did commercial real estate. Were you trying to find yourself, trying to find your path, or were you the kind of person who just liked to do all these things and if you could dedicate a lifetime to each, you would?
Molly: The latter. I am definitely a jack of all trades, master of none sort of person. I love wearing lots of hats, and I think what I have learned through this process with Babiators is I love being my own boss. I love being to take the company in new directions that excite me or interest me, learn about something and sort of really get in deep with things that, you know, you might not be able to do if you went in a traditional job with a traditional role. So, for me, entrepreneurship is the way to jump around off those interests while still kind of heading towards that common path, and we’ve been doing Babiators eight years now, and I’ve learned success actually comes from those, just preserving through lots of those decisions.
Andrew: It’s hard for someone who’s had such a mix of work experience in the past to stick with one. Do you find yourself having another idea every year and getting tempted to move away? You do?
Molly: Yeah, totally.
Andrew: What’s the latest idea that tempted you but you stuck with Babiators?
Molly: We do a couple of different things. We still do commercial real estate. For instance, my husband and I own 12 buildings in Charleston and manage those. I have a number of friends in Charleston who are visual artists, and I’m working with them on starting an art show and children’s publishing called Little Bit Lit. So I actually do lots of different stuff on the side. Babiators is the most successful and the one that sort of is my day job, pays the bills, and has the most sort of forward momentum. But I love kind of always jumping around to different new things and helping other entrepreneurs get things off the ground. I run this organization in Charleston where lots of female entrepreneurs come together and just sort of bounce ideas off each other and train each other in different roles. And so I will always be [inaudible 00:13:31]
Andrew: So you are able to still express this need to keep creating, to keep moving from project to project while working at this one business.
Molly: Yeah. Totally.
Andrew: How do you do that and not become one of those people who’s a dilettante, who doesn’t give enough attention to the main thing, the thing that’s going to allow you to experiment with everything else?
Molly: Yeah. I think what I’ve learned is partnering with the right people, partnering with or hiring people whose skill sets complement yours. For instance, the four of us, there’s four cofounders. The other husband and wife are sort of as active in the business as I am. My husband is an active duty marine or now reservist marine. So he hasn’t been able to do kind of . . . has less time for it. But Matthew, the other husband . . . the real sort of numbers projections, sensitivity analyses, you know, factory relationships, on the phone with China at 2:00 in the morning. In China right now, you know, checking on quality control for 2019, and then Carolyn is amazing. Very [inaudible 00:14:38], can sit with a 300 page Macy EDI manual and go through every single thing and not make an error in the way we handle our distribution with them.
Andrew: What’s the thing that she’s going through? A 300 page what?
Molly: Oh, EDI manual for Macy’s. EDI is the backend system for major accounts. That’s how they handle inventory now.
Andrew: That’s how Macy’s handles their inventory, and they want you to study this 300 page manual?
Molly: Oh, Macy’s, Nordstrom, Dillards, all of them use EDI.
Andrew: I had no idea.
Molly: Yeah. It basically it sort of outlines how they handle receiving their inventory, shipping it out through the distribution centers to the individual stores, restocking. They are specific about what you’re putting in the inside of the box, what you’re putting on the outside of the box, [inaudible 00:15:36] safety.
Andrew: So you got this partnership where each of you has your specialty and you’re each diving in deep into that, or at least, they are, which allows you to do things like this podcast.
Molly: Exactly.
Andrew: Got it. Okay.
Molly: They’re both introverts, so doing something like this podcast or going to tradeshows and selling Babiators on the floor [inaudible 00:15:53] is not their interest or where they get energy and so for me, I love talking about Babiators, I love sharing our story, and I’m able to do that because we both partner with the right people and also as we build our team, now we’ve got seven full-time employees and hiring the right people to take the work off of your plate that de-energizes you and allows you to do the work that energizes you.
Andrew: All right. Let me understand, Molly, something. You and your husband Ted came up with this idea as you were having a conversation about how wives and kids look at the flight and see their loved one up in the air. How did this other couple end up being a part of this?
Molly: So we had went to college with them. My husband and Matthew actually sang a cappella at Harvard together, so they were good buds in college travelling the world singing for their supper in the summers. And they married and ended up in Atlanta, and we were in Buford, South Carolina, at a base, and we would actually travel the South together. A lot of our friends at Harvard end up either sort of either West Coast, Silicon Valley, L.A., or New York, D.C., Boston historically. There’s less people from college in the South, so we kind all banded together.
Andrew: I get that you were all travelling together as a family. What made you say, “Let’s reach out to them. Let’s see if we can get Carolyn and Matthew to join in on this”?
Molly: They were both consultants at the time at McKinsey and Bain and were basically looking to do something different since they were flying to opposites sides of the country and rarely overlapping. So we knew they wanted to do something entrepreneurial. And we also knew and going back to what I was just saying about complementing skill sets, I remember my husband said me, “If I would ever go into business with my friend, it would Matthew Guard because the way his skill sets complement mine,” you know. And I remember him thinking that, and we had the list of who we would go into business with and Matthew and Carolyn were at the top and we had dinner with them and talked about this idea and they loved the brand name as well and their consulting brains said, “All right, let’s do a market analysis on this.” And we actually interviewed 1,000 moms to study what was out there, what children’s sunglasses that people liked and what they didn’t like and liked about them and how we would differentiate Babiators in the marketplace.
Andrew: Okay. You know what, let me take a moment here to talk about my first sponsor and come back in and then we’ll figure out how . . . I want to understand how you evaluated this market because I want to learn how to figure out where opportunities are and we’ll continue from there also about how you got your customers.
My first sponsor is a company that actually fits in perfectly with this, Molly. Here’s the deal. You know about crowdfunding in the sense that you say I’ve got something to sell, you go online, you sell it, and then you make it. Well, what happens if you need more than just sales. What happens if you need to actually raise money? Well, this company called StartEngine decided that what they were going to do was help entrepreneurs raise money. Same idea as crowdfunding, the same kind of thing you see on Kickstarter and Indiegogo except they say, you know, instead of selling the widget, sell a piece of your business. Instead of going hat in hand to, nobody goes hat in hand anywhere, instead of going to try to figure out the whole venture capital community, trying to have a thousand meetings, hoping that one or two of them will say yes, say, “You know what, what don’t you just sell a piece of your business online? Do it in the crowdfunding way, in the new modern way.”
And frankly, if you want to do a crypto ICO, they’ll enable you to do that too. I said this should be available. So they created it and anyone out there who’s trying to raise money, owes it to themselves to at least consider this. Here’s a URL where Mixergy listeners can go, where they’re going to get a bunch more than anyone else whose signing up as far as I can tell. I don’t want to make these sweeping generalizations unless I can actually do some research. But from what I can see, they’re offering us a lot of free things like expedited onboarding. That’s not free. Wait. Full creative services. They’re going to give us . . . What are they going to do?
You know what, I’m really reluctant to make a mistake in what we’re promising because this is about raising money, so I’m going to tell you guys if you’re looking to raise money for your business, whether it’s standard crowdfunding or even try an ICO, here’ what you want to do. Go to mixergy.startengine.com. They’re going to give you $5,000 in services for free. I’m going to let you go to the website and read the details of it because this is too important of a decision for me to just read a few lines here and sell you on. Look at it, if it makes sense for you or someone you work with, they’re going to love me for having me introduce you to it. And if not, you’re going to learn a new way that companies are raising money. Go to mixergy.startengine.com.
All right. You had this idea and you were starting to say that you interviewed how many families?
Molly: No. We created a market survey and interviewed, I want to say somewhere between 800 and 1,000 parents about the sunglasses that were on the market already, what they liked about them.
Andrew: What do you mean you interviewed them? You personally would call them up and have conversations with them?
Molly: No, excuse me. We surveyed them, not interviewed. We did an survey.
Andrew: You just find that many parents, and you’d send them a survey. I’m guessing like a Google spreadsheet type of form or something?
Molly: Like SurveyMonkey survey.
Andrew: Okay. And what kinds of questions were you asking and what did you learn?
Molly: We asked questions like, you know, what brands sunglasses do you like child? Does your child wear sunglasses? What do you like about the sunglasses out in the marketplace? What don’t you like about them? Price point you would pay for them and we actually learned a number of really interesting things that directed how we launched our business. Specifically, one of the two things that parents said they disliked most about sunglasses that were out there in the children’s space, number was that they break. A lot of the sunglasses at the time were that sort of cheapy plastic where you sort of bend and they’re hard plastic and they break apart. So we actually sought out the most durable material that we could find, which was a rubber instead of a plastic and made ours out of a PBA free, lead-free, [inaudible 00:21:57] rubber and tested them and [inaudible 00:22:00] probably going into kid’s mouths because that’s what all kids do, and I have a pair here with [inaudible 00:22:05]
Andrew: I see. Look at that, for people that are listening, she just bent it.
Molly: [inaudible 00:22:09] pressed them into a pretzel and they return to a natural shape. The other is that they get lost. So a parent would say, why would I want to spend any money — $20, $10, $100 — on a pair of shades when Johnny will lose at the playground on Saturday. So we actually listened to our consumers and said, “Wow. If this is the main thing, how can we solve this problem?” And when we launched, we created what we call our lost and found guarantee where we send a free replacement pair up to one year to every pair sold. So that, in addition to consumers actually really feeling like we cared about them and I think that really helps them connect to our brand.
The byproduct was that it was a story that people love to tell, and I feel like half of the press we’ve ever had in the past eight years we’ve done this, and we’ve had some great press including the Ellen DeGeneres Show where she said, “And they replaced this pair for free,” and it cut to commercial and everyone goes on our site and the site crashes.
What I learned from that is actually seeking the feedback from potential consumers and then actually acting on it. Don’t just ask them, actually in-fold their feedback into your business and we’ve actually continued to do those surveys throughout the business and that’s how we’ve expand to our older age side called Aces.
Andrew: Let me break down what I’ve learned. I want to actually understand a little more detail about what I learned. How do you get that many parents for one thing to fill out the survey? Where did you get that many parents?
Molly: We used a survey company. So Matthew and Carolyn being consultants knew how to run a survey with a big survey. [inaudible 00:23:57]
Andrew: So you paid to have the survey done. The survey company for the parents. They worked with you to ask questions. It seems like what you were asking is for parents who have sunglasses or had bought sunglasses, what did they like and what didn’t they. Were you also trying to validate that there was some number, big enough number of parents who never bought sunglasses but could be convinced to buy them? Or were you just saying who out there is already interested? Let’s sell to them.
Molly: You know, I think we definitely had the questions in there, “Do you wear sunglasses? Do you put sunglasses on your children?” Most of the survey at that time was focused on what’s out there and how can we differentiate ourselves? Since then we’ve learned that it is an actually education campaign teaching the importance of wearing sunglasses. I want to say one out of three parents still puts shades on their children, so it’s not the default and that’s part of our growth as a company was learning that and learning how to teach people about the importance of protecting kids’ eye as well.
Andrew: Okay. So you’re starting to see what were their biggest pet peeves about sunglasses and they told you breaking and losing them, and you said we’re going to offer the irresistible or irrational offer. That’s something that you learn in business school, right?
Molly: Irrational offer, exactly. That’s what our vision [inaudible 00:25:27] my and my partner [inaudible 00:25:28] when we came up with this, he says that’s the irrational offer. It’s like, “The what?” And he told us exactly about that, that something sounds so ridiculous actually is quite reasonable. Or it sounds like, well, in our case, something that would just bankrupt the company, right? How could you give a free pair for every pair you sell? And in reality, you know, first of all, less people take advantage of it than you think and secondly, the numbers work out that wouldn’t even necessarily happen even if more people did. In fact, we find the most of the people who do take us up on our free pair are some of our strongest brand ambassadors and out there talking about their free pair and talking about Babiators, and so we wish more people would take us up on that offer.
Andrew: You know what, so I was looking it up and I did see there are blogs and other places where people talked about it. I think on online reviews people talked about it. I got a “Hey Mama” blog post here about you and the service and it says, “One of the best customer service policies we’ve ever encountered. You lose them. They’ll replace them.” And I did some digging and it looks like what you do is you’ll send a replacement, but they have to pay the shipping charge of $5.95 and my sense if that in that shipping charge is the cost of the new product anyway. Am I right?
Molly: Roughly. We’re also, it’s not completely, you know, covered in that, but it is something if someone has a problem with the shipping charge, we cover it as well. For us, it’s about making the customers happy, and if they say, “Look, I don’t want to pay $5.95,” we make that work. Being a seven-person team, we actually have one person solely on customer service out of seven, which is a lot for a small business, and so we’ve learned that you go the extra mile for the customer to make them feel like you’re taking care of them, and they really appreciate it, and they talk positively about it and word of mouth sort of spreads the good juju onward.
Andrew: Yeah, I’m looking at Amazon, and it looks like on Amazon I can buy them for $20 including free shipping, and they also offer free returns, which always helpful with them. $36 is not going break you that you’re offering it, but it does make a big statement. The big thing you guys are worried about, we’re going to actually go out of my way to make sure that’s not going to be an issue here.
All right, what about manufacturing? How did you know where to go get manufactured and what’s the horror story from the first manufacturing process? I feel like everyone I’ve interviewed has a horror story with manufacturing.
Molly: We have a couple. [inaudible 00:28:13] and we were laughing at some horror stories. I found one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in entrepreneurship or running my own businesses is take advantage of your personal network. You know, friends are there to help and want to help, and then you in turn help them when you can. We found our factory through Matthew, one of my partners [inaudible 00:28:38] friends had a factory, you know, relationship doing another [inaudible 00:28:42] thing product with that factory. Was a Taiwanese family, owned business, and so we basically emailed a bunch of people, said does anybody have in contacts in plastic injection molding and coincidentally found somebody that did.
And I’ve had the same [inaudible 00:29:00] workers in Italy and the way she found it was just email a bunch of her friends, her mother’s friends, her father’s friends and get the word out and found a number of factories and then short conversations with them, long conversations with five, you get a sample from two or three and you pick the one.
Andrew: All right. When you were trying to figure out how to do this and turn it into a business, you turned to Dave Gilboa. What was your connection to him? He’s the cofounder of Warby Parker.
Molly: That’s another great example of just taking advantage of, you know, the people who care about you and want to help. Not taking advantage. That’s the wrong way to phrase it, but like calling on and asking questions and asking for help, admitting that you kind of don’t know everything and you need feedback. Dave Gilboa was one of my husband’s college roommates at Harvard, and he launched Warby about a year and nine months before we launched Babiators and so Ted called him up and obviously [inaudible 00:30:00] this amazing trajectory upward and growing like gangbusters.
And Ted said, “Obviously Dave this is not the same kind of business you’re doing, adult prescription eyewear and disrupting that market, and we’re making a children’s baby product and trying to create a market in baby shades there. But what have you learned that could be useful?” And basically his first answer was, you know, don’t spend any money to start on paid advertising. And this was years ago, so I don’t know if he would say the same thing today with Facebook and Instagram [inaudible 00:30:36] advertising algorithms, but back then that was not a play. And he said don’t put any of the money into paid ads. Do basically put your marketing budget into a really good PR firm and get that earned media and buzz and press all day long.
And he’s like [inaudible 30:56] Warby’s PR team about what we’re looking for and we want print and we want [inaudible 00:30:58] and that was a huge role according to Dave, was getting buzz for Warby early on is finding the right PR partner. So we launched Babiators post-recession and really started the company on a shoestring. I want to say we built the site with a designer we had never met in Bogota, Columbia website. He didn’t speak English. I sent him a PDF of the website I wanted. It was $2,000 but we spent I want to say $1,500 or $2,000 per month on PR from day one.
Andrew: That’s not much. $1,500 on PR?
Molly: When we launched, yeah. Now it’s more than that. But at launch, we basically, you know, we interviewed a number of firms and we got a whole range of and a gamut of potential monthly retainers and went back to the one we liked the most. She was the person we actually still work with today. Konnect out of L.A., they’re awesome. Sabina, like me, was a female business owner. She was growing her business at the time. She had three to five employees, and now she’s got 50 PR men and women working with her. But it was, you know, we went back to her and basically said, “We can’t afford your whatever $4,000 or $5,000 a month. How can we figure out a way to reduce this scope so we can work with you?”
So I think you might get a quote to start, you know, that if you go back to them and try to stay with them in partnership, it could be really great and we’d love to grow into something where we could pay you that. How can we start to get the ball rolling? Often vendors and [inaudible 00:32:35] and third-party partners are willing to negotiate that a little bit.
Andrew: You know, she’s the one. I’m looking at my notes. She’s the one who introduced me to you.
Molly: Oh, I love it.
Andrew: Yeah. She also apparently got you guys in “Newsweek” really fast. Am I right?
Molly: Yes. So one of our first hits was “Newsweek” back when it was still print. I think it was the last edition or one of the last two or three print “Newsweeks.” And within a month or two of launching Babiators, we launched in May and this was June or July. “Newsweek” said it was one of the 15 essential products of the summer, and a few months after that our first major celebrity hit, which really kind of a big boost for us, which is the Mariah Carey feature in “US Weekly.”
Andrew: How does someone find you in a store? You know what? Right? Let me take it slow for a second. How did you know that this was going to be the right PR agency to get you media, especially if you’re not paying more than other people? You’re actually paying less than her other clients. How do you know she’s going to get you the attention? How did you know she was going to be able to get you results?
Molly: I think part of it was gut instinct. Part of it was I had three or four phone calls with business owners of the various PR firms that we were working with, and Sabina was building her business, was hungry. You could feel her energy over the phone that she was so enthusiastic about Babiators. She got our product. I think somebody that really gets your product and now having eight years in, I often know with her based in L.A., it’s incredibly valuable with that Hollywood connections there. So do you need New York editors, or do you need sort of more of the Hollywood thing versus New York City versus L.A. PR firms? They have different contacts and different relationships. It’s wonderful to be able to do a gift, you know, Justin Timberlake down the road when he was like, “I want a pair of Babiators,” and their team was kind of able to maneuver what [inaudible 00:34:41].
Andrew: She did that for you? In addition to getting you press, she also got you celebrities to try it?
Molly: Yeah. Part of what Sabina’s team does for us is twice a year we do a gifting. In the beginning it was what’s the biggest celebrity name we can gift to, and now since I’ve seen the evolution of influence on consumers change, it’s not about the big name anymore because often those are purchased or you question the authenticity of the product, promotion or endorsement. And they actually evolved more into sort of, I see a trend of the power of micro-influencers and local bloggers and community bloggers where they’re viewed as sort of friends and real trusted voices. So we have actually evolved in gifting to the like the Jessica Biel, Timberlake example to more of the local bloggers who moms trust them and they wake up and say what are they talking, or what are they reading about or what are they writing about on a daily basis. That’s how our gifting has evolved today.
Andrew: Why weren’t you worried that Warby Parker would take your idea? They’re already in the glasses space. They might recognize that some of their clients have kids. You’re smiling as I say that because?
Molly: I’m smiling because they actually just launched children’s a month ago. It’s a different cause. It’s a different industry. I think back then I know when eight years ago they were very focused on their retail bricks and mortar rollout. So how do we first start our line and since then they’ve opened a number of stores and then they pushed to sunglasses and now they’re doing kids shades. We are known as the baby shades. We were the first in the baby space that wasn’t the baby thing that had to like racket ball headband that looked super uncomfortable on the kid’s faces. The kid can’t get it off, but it’s not stylish, and it does not look comfortable. So we were the first to play in the space with the bright, young, energetic, but still this soft rubber that’s safe. They’re not super expensive. It’s the $20 price point and more accessible to sort of the everyday American. Warby has a little bit of that sort of Brooklyn hipstery kind of tortoise shell frame.
Andrew: They’ve taken your idea. You could have done the hipster version. I’m sensing what you’re saying is you were willing to take that risk, and you thought that this was enough outside of their focus that they wouldn’t jump in right now.
Molly: Yes. I also just think I’ve learned there’s enough room for multiple players to play in the space successfully. Rising tide raises all boats. Like we’re not, we don’t look at the other people in the sunglasses space like, “Oh, they’re taking us away from potential consumers.” We actually view as how can we reach new consumers that want Babiators versus a different brand. We don’t necessarily feel threatened by consumers, by competitors.
Andrew: Okay. I saw that “Newsweek” article. It mentioned the website and that’s where the initial sales were happening. But meanwhile we haven’t talked much about her, but Carolyn was at her dining table doing something that allowed you guys to go beyond that website. Let me take a moment to talk about my second sponsor and then we’ll come back and talk about this.
My second sponsor is a company called Regus. I’ve been talking about how I rent office space from them but I’ve got to tell you, Molly, something that happened to me yesterday. I didn’t have meetings in the office. I said you know what, I’m taking my iPad, I’ve been enjoying my iPad more than my laptop or computer lately. I like being able to manipulate the screen directly instead of through a mouse. I said San Francisco is so overcast in the summer, August, September, way too overcast. Let’s go to Berkeley where the suns always out.
So I go to Berkeley. I’m enjoying my self having watermelon drink, and they do endless refills at this one place that I found. Most people are in their offices the whole day. So I get the place to myself and I’m sitting there hanging out enjoying myself and at some point I said, you know, I’m downloading 100 megabyte keynote presentation. It’s taking forever on their Wi-Fi. I realize at that point, no wonder I’m enjoying this drink. It’s full of sugar. It may not be actually literally sugar that they’re adding into it, but, you know, not many watermelon drinks are sugary. I should just go someplace where, first of all, it’s a little bit less hot. I couldn’t deal with the heat by 3:00 p.m., better Wi-Fi, and where I can stay away from these sugary drinks.
And I went on Google Maps because I’d been using that more than Yelp lately and I looked up Regus and sure enough, two blocks away there was a Regus office. I go to the Regus office I say,
Hey, I’m from the San Francisco location. I got office space there and I really do. I own an office here, got a receptionist that I share and the kitchen that I share and all that, but I got my own space.” I said, “I’m in the San Francisco office. Can I work out of here?” They go, “Absolutely.” I get this long table to work from to myself, lots of places to plug in that are comfortable. Even though the place looks like it’s got reclaimed wood table. It’s actually fake reclaimed wood so I can plug into the freakin table, which I love, and I get juice there, I get my tea that’s green tea and not sugary.
And frankly, I looked around, they even had a private bathroom with a shower in it, and I realized next time I come in here and I checked in with them, “Can I leave my stuff here and go for a run?” They go, “Absolutely,” and then come back and shower and get to work.
And one of the things I love about Regus is I have my own office. I don’t have to work from home. I have my own space. I can have meetings here. I can have scotch night here. If I have an issue like mailing a letter, which I hate to do, the receptionist will do it for me. Anyone who rents from Regus gets that. It helps you focus on your work.
But the other thing I don’t talk enough about is anywhere in the world that I want, I’ve got office space. I just go in, I say I’m with Regus, and I can get a desk for myself and be comfortable and feel like home with Wi-Fi like that will connect. My phone automatically connects, my laptop, my iPad, the works.
All right. If anyone out there is looking to professionalize their business, yes, you go rent office space, yes, there’s lots of options, but what I love about Regus is they’re fully professional. They help you get things done, and they’re all over the world. Here’s the URL you can go to or do what many people now who are listening to me have now done, contact me and my team. We’ll introduce you to our person at Regus. So here’s the URL and then here’s the my email address if you want to connect with me and my team to have an introduction. Talking way too much about this, Molly, but I can see from the smile on your face you understand this is passion coming.
Molly: I get it. I get it.
Andrew: I love Regus.
Molly: Somebody who was literally running around [inaudible 00:41:20]. As someone who was going around preparing, you know, being in New York unexpectedly for the hurricane evacuation, my sister thankfully able to share her office today but it would have been nice to have access to a New York City Regus [inaudible 00:41:38]
Andrew: I had people who needed office space like you did who didn’t have a sister in New York City. They said I need to have a quiet place to do this interview. My assistant calls up Regus and says here’s a space and there’s always space no matter where they are.
Molly: That’s amazing.
Andrew: Clear internet to talk. Anyone out there who wants this kind of experience really, first class experience like Mad Men they treat you, you know, you get to work on your business. They take care of everything else. There’s a level of detail that the people of Mad Men took care of, I forget the character names, but all the head muckety mucks. Here’s what you do.
Molly: Tim Draper.
Andrew: What was it? Oh, Tim Draper. Right.
Molly: Don Draper. Don Draper.
Andrew: Tim Draper is the investor. Right. Okay. Regus.com/mixergy. Or Regus as they say in South America where I’ve used them .com/mixergy or just email me and my team, contact@mixergy.com. You don’t have to sign up. You will not be able to sign up as far as I know. They’ll just take you for a tour. You’ll walk around, you’ll get to experience it, you’ll get to work from there, and if you want to sign up, you can work from them. Regus.com/mixergy.
Molly, I should have, I wish I could invest in them. I freakin love them.
Molly: I know. Seriously.
Andrew: They’re really good.
Molly: [inaudible 00:42:43]
Andrew: Every time I talk to Sachit, who does our ad sales, I go, “And did you sell Regus?” He goes, “Andrew, I sold a bunch of Toptal. Toptal loves us. People are signing up with them.” I go, “Great. Is Regus signing up already?” This is their second experiment with me. Part of the problem for them with me is they can’t tell me what to say. And who know what I might say. I just might say private office, you could have sex with your wife in it. They go, “No. We have a brand name. Andy’s ruined it.” And that’s the way they are. They’re too [inaudible 00:43:11]
Molly: I love it. Spontaneous.
Andrew: Yeah, all right. I told you before we did this interview, I don’t edit. And that goes for the advertisers too, much to their frustrations sometimes. Okay. Your cofounder meanwhile was at the dining room table making phone calls to whom to help expand the way that you sell?
Molly: Retail stores. So basically when we launched, we initially thought it was going to be all direct to consumer, and after the “Newsweek” hit, we had a number of children’s boutique, mom and pops, sort of high end accessory and clothing stores call us and said, “Can we carry these sunglasses? This sounds great.” And we’re like, “Oh, maybe there’s potential here too.” And so Carolyn and I started just phone calling from our respective dining rooms. She’s in Atlanta, and we were living in New York at the point with the marines, and I was pregnant with our first son and we are literally just introducing ourselves as a brand to buyers at high end children accessory and apparel stores around the country.
And within, I want to say, six or seven months, maybe nine months, we were in 75 doors, and then we also at that point had met the Nordstrom buyer at a tradeshow that fall and Nordstrom expressed interest in signing on as our first major account and so we were in Nordstrom that following spring.
Andrew: You met them at the event. What did you do to help stand out from all the other people who were trying to sell to Nordstrom’s? What was it about you?
Molly: In terms of sort of tradeshow strategy, tradeshow research, we’ve never done that before. So Ted and I actually went to a show at the Javits as a guest pass, just bought a guest day pass and like walked the floors. I don’t know if we took pictures. I don’t know if that’s legal. Maybe we did or did not, but we took notes of what we would do, what we liked most from the booths we saw that really stood out and a big sign, bright colors, something fun, in our case, a huge photo of adorable kids having fun in our shades really focused on quality, imagery and content and craft that into whatever [inaudible 00:45:24].
We bought the smallest and cheapest size tradeshow booth you could get at what was the, you know, ABC. They call it ABC. It’s the big show for the kids space and went there and got our Ikea people, Ikea furniture, and a huge poster of an adorable kid in our logo and just said hi to people that walked by and people came over and they liked our product and they saw us turn into a pretzel, and they were impressed by that, and we saw a couple press kits that we got and [inaudible 00:45:57] lenses that I was wearing at that point and took a chance on us. I think that’s really cool especially about the boutiques and a major like Nordstrom which is rare.
You know, Nordstrom is one of the majors that actually will take a chance on a new brand and loved having companies that no one else has. They even promise that no one else has them. So they’re a really cool innovator in that kind of larger department store space, I think. But in terms of starting with the local shop, local community boutiques that whether it’s adult, you know, products or kids products, they’re the ones that have the ability to play with the innovative brands and products.
Andrew: I like the pretzel. You did the demo a moment ago. I don’t know if you did it intentionally, but I saw as you were picking up the glasses, you instinctively started to bend them and flex them. It was you learning from the beginning parents are worried that the glasses are going to break, we’re going to find a way to not just reassure them that they won’t, but show them, super, that they won’t. Like we’re going to go the other way to almost make them feel unbreakable and that’s part of what you did when Nordstrom and other buyers came to see you at your little booth with the Ikea furniture.
Molly: Totally. Eight years one of our best ads on Instagram or Facebook is this adorable kid literally twisting the shades in both still and motion video, so it’s something that’s one of our differentiators and finding for any entrepreneur, how do you differentiate yourself from your competitors in your space and really kind of tell that brand story authentically and sort of continue to sort of be true to those differentiating points.
Andrew: What about when you were making phone calls? What did you do to differentiate yourself from all the other people who were calling when you couldn’t do that video demo or the visual demo?
Molly: First of all, I think when we launched, we were the only people in the baby space. So for us it was initially about the concept of babies wearing shades. So they were like, “Well, do they keep them on? Do they fit the baby?” and we actually took the initiative to send a sample pair to every buyer, especially if the buyer had a grandchild or a new baby, we would send that treat as a complimentary, “Here, check it out, try it on baby,” proof of concept. If you like it, buy more. So if there’s a way as an entrepreneur to do more, you can actually let the buyer become the consumer. The buyer, merchant buyer of a store become your consumer and buy into your product and you have an advocate to [inaudible 00:48:46]
Andrew: I get that. Even for me whenever somebody sends me a product, one of my past guest sent me coffee and now, of course, I’ve got to try and even if I’m kind of okay about it, the fact that it’s a gift makes me want to buy it more again next time.
Molly: Totally. The fact of the generosity of spirit. You’re like, “Wow. They’re nice people. I want to support them.”
Andrew: Yeah. You know what, there’s a coffee that I’ve been drinking over and over and over, Don Pablo. And it’s only because when I ran in the New York City marathon the first time and I was anxious and I wasn’t fully awake, they offer these little free cups of Don Pablo coffee. Now I like Don Pablo. Who even thought?
Molly: Don Pablo is like four blocks from where I am right now. They have a huge like wall mural on 57th and Third or Second Avenue with like a forest and cowboy hat.
Andrew: They’re like a nothing brand to me. I just know it’s an Amazon brand that happened to give me free coffee a long time ago at New York City marathon. So I get the value of that. What about follow-up? You seem like someone who would be really good at following up and not just saying thanks and I’ll check in. But really having a process for checking in. What is your process for checking in and selling.
Molly: At this point, you know, we’ve built a great team and . . .
Andrew: How about when you were starting out, when it was just you?
Molly: When it was just us, it was so much about the personal relationships for sure. We continued, we went to 10 to 12 tradeshows then a year, and we continue to go to 10 to 12 tradeshows a year as a team because we actually that in-person connection to be able to see your buyer and have a cup of coffee with them or have a cocktail with them at the end of the day and talk and laugh and keep that personal connection up is invaluable to your point around just feeling like, you know, I have that story and that narrative or relationship with them.
You know, as thinking about if I were to start today or even [inaudible 00:50:44], is there a way you can tell you story through content that’s interesting and is it a fun postcard? Is it a fun newsletter? Is it content that is, you know, somehow interesting to the consumer versus just you saying, “Buy my stuff. Buy my stuff. Buy my stuff.” What are you teaching them? What are you enlightening them about? Or use like something funny, a really beautiful video of photo.
And so, you know, when I’m working on sort of telling our brand story today, and I mainly work on the sort of the ecomm side and less on the wholesale side, it’s how are we crafting beautiful content that connects to our consumer, connects to the parent and, you know, for Babiators is usually bright, beautiful, colorful, fun, playful video and photography that the kid is obviously having fun. You know, the kid running around on a tennis court, a kid running [inaudible 00:51:40]. A mom laughing with a child, a dad laughing with a child, a family together in the shades, so those are things that you connect with.
Andrew: You personally, Molly, strike me someone who has good style, not just because you’re at that location, you just happen to be in this location and you’re [inaudible 00:51:55] on camera, but also because I happen to be peaking at your house in some article when I was researching you. Wasn’t there some magazine that showed the inside of your house?
Molly: Yes.
Andrew: Is it always [inaudible 00:52:05]?
Molly: It is. I like [inaudible 00:52:07]. This obviously a new office. But I subscribe to the Scandinavian like gray floors, white plaster wall with pop of color and keep it super clean, and Charleston actually where we live in South Carolina is a wonderful creative community. I have a lot of friends that are photographers, videographers and so making those photos and videos, which we do a couple times a year is incredibly fun just getting our friends together. And you’re using your creativity . . .
Andrew: You mean all the baby photos that I see on Instagram and on your site, that’s you saying this is a beautiful environment. Let’s go find some of these more artistic background. Are you personally shooting them?
Molly: I’m not the photographer, but I’m sort of the producer/director of the day, sort of child wrangler, snack provider.
Andrew: You know what. I’m looking at these photos. Is your house always this organized?
Molly: It is. I don’t like clutter. We also we have byproduct of being a marine family, we’ve moved 8 times in 10 years, so half of the stuff gets thrown out either by accident or on purpose every time we move, so we’re down to bare bones, you know, good Feng Shui, very normal stuff.
Andrew: I do love that about moving. My friends hate moving. I love that I move so much because it forces you to get rid of stuff you took for granted but you really didn’t need. All right. Let’s close out with this. Our producer said, “Look, this sounds like a happy go lucky story.” There’s no way that you’re so happy go lucky. Talk to us a little bit about the challenges. Here’s one thing that stood out in the conversation that she had with you. Seasonality. You actually use the word whiplash to describe your cash flow. Summer comes, people need sunglasses. Christmas comes, not so much. February, forget about it. Right? What do you deal with that?
Molly: It’s not easy. My CFO gets very stressed out every [inaudible 00:54:02] we have to loosen him up. We make 60%, 65%, 70% of our revenue in three or four months of sales. So we are cash flush let’s call it March, July, August. And then, you know, in the fall when we’re buying inventory for the following year, we’re not selling our shades, and so that’s something that in the beginning when we launched and started to see this up, down cash cycle, we were like, let’s figure out how to sell them as a back-to-school product. Let’s figure out how to sell them as a Christmas gift or, you know, Hanukah or whatever. And it doesn’t work. People don’t want to buy sunglasses when they’re buying backpacks for their kids and pencil cases or when they’re buying [inaudible 00:54:54].
It’s not, we’re trying to force something that we’ve now accepted we can’t, and so instead we think about how are we doubling down when the getting good is what we’ve learned. We can’t change retail behavior.
Andrew: So you focus on glasses when they’re going to buy sunglasses. Don’t pressure them to buy sunglasses when they’re not likely to do it. And then it seems like you expanded into other products like rocket packs, which are your backpacks, right?
Molly: Yes.
Andrew: Submariners, I saw a few other things. Where is it? Gift sets. How well have those done? How much of your revenue comes from those?
Molly: You know, rocket packs is a great example of something where we thought, okay, people come to us, they trust us as a brand that makes durable gear for the outdoor kid. And rocket pack is something that might be a back-to-school bump. So we’re like maybe this can help us with the revenue cycle where we get a nice little bump in September, August and we definitely learned that sunglasses are our bread butter, and I want to say we’re still 85% to 90% eyewear even though we have the swim goggles and the backpacks. We briefly made Rx for babies as well.
Andrew: Rx [inaudible 00:56:16] prescription glasses.
Molly: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so those are sort of examples of let’s try in order to really kind of build the business over time that sustains, it’s step by step. Let’s try this. Oh wait, that’s not working. Let’s dial it back. Oh, let’s try that. That is working. Let’s do more of that. All right let’s try it over here, throw this at the wall. That’s not working. Okay. The moment you notice and you recognize that it’s not going to work, you say, all right, you quit, done, let’s close that door, and let’s go in a new direction or a direction that we see is actually working. As opposed to getting so attached to some effort of money you put in and going down a rabbit hole that’s never going to work.
Andrew: And the best day so far has been Ellen, right? The number one . . . No?
Molly: Revenue generator?
Andrew: Yeah.
Molly: Last week Khloe Kardashian’s daughter wore our Babiators, True, and that was a really wonderful week for us.
Andrew: Really? What she [inaudible 00:57:21]
Molly: Yeah. She wore . . . Khloe put True in our elastic gray with blue mirrored lenses shades and had a beautiful black turban that John Legend and Christi Teigen bought their baby. On top of it [inaudible 00:57:39] the super stylish little girl out of the pool on vacation and . . .
Andrew: Is it on Instagram?
Molly: Instagram story, yeah.
Andrew: So an Instagram story competitive with Ellen?
Molly: Oh, without a doubt. [inaudible 00:57:43]
Andrew: [inaudible 00:57:43]
Molly: When we launched Ellen, Ellen is a great story. First of all, bringing it back to our PR firm when I was interviewing Sabina, I was like here’s my dream. And that’s a great tip for PR is every year we circle out the start of the year and I give her my dream list for the week and Ellen was on the first one and she was like, “You’re not going to get on. I can do this. I can do that. But Ellen is going to cost you crazy amount of money to get on and you’re never going to get it.”
And she calls us three quarters through the year and was like, “You’re never going to believe this, Molly.” We got Ellen and Ellen brought on Nick Cannon who was one of our first, you know, Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon was first sort of celebrities to put Babiators in “US Weekly” and so she came on talking about the product and Ellen said, you know, “This is great. They are stylish, made for kids, everybody should get a pair. We’re giving everybody a pair in the audience. Buy Babiators.” It cuts to commercial and our site crashes within five seconds. And we’re all calling each other. We’re calling our servers. Our server [inaudible 00:59:09], and they’re like no company could prepare for this kind of traffic. You didn’t know you were going to be like at the end of this commercial with Ellen saying go buy. So we got snippets of sales, but it ended up being more of a longer tail as opposed to immediate day high because the site was down three times [inaudible 00:59:30]
Andrew: Are you guys on Shopify now? My sense is Shopify would be able to handle that.
Molly: We have not had problem since. But we also learned. It was a great learning experience to over prepare for those kinds of moments and also, you know, throughout the, we hope people maybe they went to Nordstrom instead to buy it, or maybe they went to Amazon to buy it. But over the next couple of weeks, we actually got a lot of boutiques calling too. We didn’t get that day high necessarily, but we did. It was a great day. But it wasn’t necessarily as good as it could’ve been. It was a mindful touch, but we did get that longtail sale through the re-airing of it, and people seeing it for the . . .
Andrew: I see. I don’t want to get too geeky, but it looks like the first version of your site was like custom coded straight up HTML, no CMS.
Molly: Yeah.
Andrew: And that’s why it was kind of self-hosting it. That makes sense. Wow. All right. I can’t believe it.
Molly: Like I said, we were bootstrapping that. I mean, it was bare bones.
Andrew: But you know what, here’s what comes through from the very beginning. I’ve been going over your . . . every time you mention a day in the life of Babiators, I’m going into like the Internet Archive, I’m going back to look at the articles, I’m looking at Reddit from that time.
Molly: I love it. Check out Khloe and True then. Got to pull that one up.
Andrew: The what?
Molly: Khloe and baby True.
Andrew: That’s the one I couldn’t find.
Molly: Google Khloe True, T-R-U-E Babiators and you’ll get a number of . . .
Andrew: Khloe True Babiators.
Molly: Kardashian.
Andrew: Let me see. True Thompson photo.
Molly: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: Oh, okay. All right. Look, at this. I can’t believe though that photo would do more than Ellen. That that photo would be that big. Oh, I see what you mean.
Molly: It’s a Kardashian. Not necessarily as big as Ellen, but certainly just under her.
Andrew: This on True’s own personal Instagram account.
Molly: On Khloe’s personal Instagram.
Andrew: Okay. Also on True’s account then. I see. Wow wee. Yeah. You know what . . .
Molly: [inaudible 01:01:30]
Andrew: Kids with sunglasses, it is freakin cute I got to say.
Molly: Thank you.
Andrew: Wow. All right. Congratulations on all the success. Anyone who is interested can go check out your website. It’s Babiators spelled babiators.com. I don’t know why sometimes I give some people’s spelling and sometimes I don’t. If you’re listing to me in a podcast app, which you mostly aren’t, slide up on my photo and you’re going to see it. If you are not, congratulations on being one of the many new people who are signing up to listen to Mixergy on all the smart speakers that are coming out. All you have to do is say, hey, and then whatever speaker name you have, play Mixergy. It’s a real beautiful experience while you’re in the kitchen, while you’re walking around the house to listen to Mixergy on there. People are buying Echo Dots just to listen to Mixergy.
Molly: Cool. Love it.
Andrew: It is really cool.
Molly: [inaudible 01:02:19] can buy some shades there too?
Andrew: Sorry? Buy your shades while you’re listening to Mixergy.
Molly: Amazon. Echo buy Babiators.
Andrew: Buy Babiators. Go check them out babiators.com and also on Amazon and a bunch of other stores in person. And I want to thank my two sponsors for making this interview happen. The first if you’re looking to raise money for your company, really consider going to, not consider, go to StartEngine and consider raising from them. If it’s a good fit for you, you’re going to be happy that I introduce you to them. I was one of the first people, by the way, to introduce the world to Shopify. They were one of my early sponsors. I interviewed Toby. I said why do you need me as a sponsor. He said, you know what, it’s not just for your audience, it’s I want your audience because people ask them what should I do to publish my site. I want to Mixergy audience to say to their friends, go to Shopify. That was his reasoning behind sponsoring Mixergy.
Molly: I love it. That’s awesome.
Andrew: It was a Shopify thing. Same thing happened with StartEngine. People are saying what is a StartEngine. It’s backed with really smart people with a lot of experience in fundraising and building successful companies and now they’re helping anyone who’s trying to raise money, raise it using crowdfunding. It’s mixergy.startengine.com. They wanted a subdomain. Mixergy.startengine.com.
And finally go check out Regus in your city and every other city in the world pretty much. Regus.mixergy.com. I freakin love working from them. [inaudible 01:03:32]. Molly, Regus lets me do scotch nights here. That’s great. I actually asked them stuff like that. “Can I bring a treadmill into your office and put it on my desk?” He goes, “It’s your office. Why are you asking permission?” I say, “Can I do scotch night?” He goes, “It’s your office. Why are you asking permission.” The only thing the receptionist is asked is, “Please, Andrew, have your people who don’t finish their whiskey pour it down the drain because the last thing I want to do in the morning on Friday is come in and smell all the whiskey from the glasses that you guys didn’t dump out.” So I’m willing to do that. The rest they take care of. All right, Molly. Thank you so much and congratulations on the business.
Molly: Thank you, Andrew. I appreciate it.
Andrew: Same here. Bye everyone.
