Steve Szaronos - Co-Founder at Bespoke Post

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Hello, my friends. Today we are talking to Steve, the co-founder of Bespoke Post, and we discuss their journey from startup accelerator to a successful subscription service, overcoming technological challenges as an organization scales, and how to process feedback and advice while moving the business forward. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO Podcast. Here we go. This is the Modern CTO Podcast.

(Steve at 00:00:38) It's Steve. Hello.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:40) Dude, I'm so excited. You brought me gifts, Steve.

(Steve at 00:00:45) I know, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:46) This has got to be the coolest thing ever. I don't think this has ever happened before. This is amazing.

(Steve at 00:00:52) Good, good. We sent you Switchback, which is some outdoor stuff, and Weekender, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:57) I don't know. We're supposed to unbox them on the show. Oh, we are? Oh, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:02) Yeah, yeah. But first, I figured we'll save that for a few minutes then. First, I want to know about you and how did you get on this crazy journey to start this company and to be a part of it? How did you get this idea? How did you get started with this?

(Steve at 00:01:16) Yeah, so it's funny because I feel like it's not the sexiest story in the world, but it's the truth. So what happened was my co-founder Rishi and I, we were in business school at Kellogg Northwestern, and we're going through the standard recruiting process. A lot of people get job offers very early in the cycle, way before you graduate. And we thought, oh, let's join a startup. Maybe I'll join a smaller company. And I didn't even really know much about startups or what they were, but I thought it'd just be a cool thing to try. And so we started pursuing that avenue, thinking about different companies at the time that were well known. And around spring break or so, we thought, why don't we just try a business on our own instead of joining a startup? And so we started kicking around a few ideas. And at the time, accelerator programs were just starting to come on the scene. And so we applied to a bunch of different accelerator programs with this business idea, and we got into one in New York. And so we left—we hadn't even graduated yet. We moved to New York, stayed in a friend's place for a little bit, and we just went through this accelerator program. But the idea that we got in with wasn't Bespoke Post at all. It was a completely different business idea.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:31) What was it?

(Steve at 00:02:32) It's almost embarrassing to talk about. It was a QR code advertising play, and it really didn't make very much sense for a lot of different reasons. Part of it's just because our background wasn't in advertising at all. But another big one is we were walking around the streets of New York, and we'd see all—at the time, there were all these QR codes. Our office was in Times Square, and there were these big billboards with QR codes. And we kind of—we'd go around looking at these QR codes and scanning them and things like that. And at one point towards the end of the summer, we looked at each other and said, is anybody else—have you ever seen anybody scan a QR code other than the two of us? And the answer was no. And so we came to this realization that this business was not very viable. But the accelerator program we were in, it was their first year as well. So they were a startup. And we came to them right before the end of the program. And at the end of the program, they had these demo days where you unveil your class to these investors, and it's this big thing. And so two or three weeks before demo day, we went to them and said, hey, we just don't believe in this business anymore. We don't think it's viable. And they looked at us and said, well, okay, but you better come up with something. And so basically the concept for Bespoke Post we came up with—I mean, it was basically more like a school PowerPoint presentation. There was really no business. We kind of concepted it in about a week, and we presented it to a bunch of people. And we thought, well, we'll see what kind of reaction we got, and people seemed to think it was interesting. But it was kind of—it was nice because it felt a little bit free, because we were working on this other business that just wasn't working. And so we thought, what are we actually good at? What are our skill sets, and what are we interested in? And so it did sort of organically come, although it came under this pressure of you need to present something to these investors next week so that you don't make this accelerator program look bad. And so we thought about what we were interested in. I have a supply chain background. My co-founder Rishi is kind of—he would laugh, but he's kind of more of the tastemaker at the company than I am. And at the time, there wasn't really much out there within the e-commerce space for men. We're not focused exclusively on men anymore, but at the beginning we were. And so that's how the basic ideas came together. And we thought, well, what if each month we introduce guys to something interesting that we think they should know about? And that was basically the concept. And so we launched thirty days after we presented at demo day, and then we've kind of been at it ever since.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:59) That is amazing. And you guys are crushing it too, because when we did the prep for this call, my producer and associate producer were like, alright, we get ads from these people all the time. Their marketing game is on point. And I said, okay, here we go. We'll compliment their marketing and advertising teams.

(Steve at 00:05:17) That's good to hear. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:18) Alright. Well, I want to open one of these. So I've got this bigger long—I pre-opened the tape, but I did not peek yet.

(Steve at 00:05:26) But you haven't seen it yet. Alright.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:27) No, no, no, no. So this is a longer one. And I open it up, and it says Weekender. It's got a little letter on the back there.

(Steve at 00:05:36) A little description.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:38) Yeah. So this is a manly storage bag for camping? I mean, that's what I'm going to use it for.

(Steve at 00:05:45) You could take it—I mean, a lot of people take it for maybe a two-night trip or if they're just going for a day trip somewhere. It's not for a long vacation. It's for a few nights' worth of clothes, but it's one of our most popular products. We've been doing it for a while. It's actually from—I mean, originally these were tool bags. We actually bought the first set from a tool company and repurposed it, called it Weekender. And then obviously, as you can see, we've kind of put our own touches on it, done different colors and things like that ever since.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:17) It feels solid, though. It feels rugged. Nice. This is great. Thank you. Thank you. Alright. And then so what is this? Blowfish for Hangovers.

(Steve at 00:06:26) Yeah. So those are hangover pills. It's basically caffeine and aspirin. Okay. Maybe you want a trip, might need some hangover pills. And you just pop it in some water, fizzes up. And that's kind of, you know, those are—so we throw a few little extras. I mean, the centerpiece is obviously the bag. That's what you're really—that's the prime item. And then we kind of throw some nice things that we think will complement a weekend trip.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:52) So I know you talked with Mackenzie and the team over here to get me some general boxes. But what makes you guys special is you have an algorithm that gets to know us and then will send me stuff that I would like. Correct?

(Steve at 00:07:07) Yeah, yeah. And there's a few—I mean, I think there's a few things that make our business unique. One of them is just the sheer product variety that we offer. And so when you sign up, you take a quick profile quiz, answer a few questions about what type of—so for example, travel is one of the categories that we'll ask you about. And so if you said you were very interested in travel, you'd be more likely to get something like the Weekender bag. But we span quite a few different categories, and so it's all about people signing up for discovery. So we do travel, but then we also do camping and outdoor gear. We do kitchen, which is a very popular category. Barware. We do a little bit of clothing and apparel as well. So there's home decor. So there's all these different categories that you could potentially receive things around. So we're not sending you the same types of products every single month. And so you tell us what you like and what you don't like. You kind of set those guardrails for us. So if you're like, hey, I don't really drink, I'm not interested in the barware, we're just not going to send you any of that. But I'm really into camping, I'm really into travel. Okay. Then we're going to send you more of those types of things. And that's sort of our baseline—those initial guardrail questions that we'll build a profile on to send you things. And then obviously, the longer you're with us, the more we're going to learn about you, and the better we'll get at making recommendations for you each month.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:23) But what about my brother? He's really into different whiskeys and stuff. And so he's big into that, and then he's into photography. Is there a feature for me to be able to click those categories and send a box as a present to my brother?

(Steve at 00:08:39) So there's a few things—yeah. There's a few different ways you could do that. You could literally just say I like this product and send it to your brother.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:45) Okay.

(Steve at 00:08:45) And by the way, if you were a subscriber, you would know exactly what you're getting beforehand. So the way it would work for you is you said, hey, I'm interested in travel. We would show you the Weekender bag before we even shipped it to you, and you'd have the opportunity to skip it if you didn't want it. So there's no surprises or anything. You know exactly what you're getting beforehand. And so let's say we showed you the Weekender bag, and you said, hey, this is cool, I'll send it to my brother, and you could do that. You could also get a gift subscription. And in that case, they fill out their own profile and kind of go through their own process of saying, okay, these are the things that I like. And then we would basically do the same thing, send things over to their way.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:21) That is really cool. And you got some food here. You can see you got some energy bars. Alright. I get it. It's the theme. You've got the weekend bag. You've got the energy bars. You've got the hangover cure. I love it. By the way, that bag—I'm legitimate. I don't have to return this, do I? I can keep this?

(Steve at 00:09:38) No, no. Of course.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:39) I am legitimately going to use this because you'd be surprised. We just got for Christmas—we got a camper, you know, for the family so we could go around. It's just a pull-behind.

(Steve at 00:09:52) Oh, yeah. Okay.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:53) Yeah. And so I've never had one before. I never towed anything before, so it's an entire learning experience. But, you know, we want to pack everything up for the weekend and go, and we were just figuring out our storage stuff. And actually, my daughter and my son and my wife all have these duffel bags, and I did not. And so I was like, oh, I need to buy a duffel bag or something. And then this arrives, and I'm like, yes. Now I'm completely set in that arena. So this worked out super, super well, man. Thank you.

(Steve at 00:10:22) Good, good. Yeah. And it can get a little rough, you know. You're going camping, and it's okay if it gets a little dirty. That's part of it—it'll hold up.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:28) Yeah. So this would be the Weekender. And then over here, we've got something else. People are going to be like, talk about technology leadership. Alright. Give me one challenge you overcame as a technology leader growing in this business.

(Steve at 00:10:42) Well, I think—I mean, one of them—this is not maybe—this is very common, right? But part of it's just been scaling as our user base has grown. And so the solutions that we come up with very early on are basically just to get the job done, and they're good enough. And then as you grow, what we're kind of finding is that some of the problems we run into scale exponentially. Meaning if we grow our subscriber base by 50%, the problem's not—it's not taking 50% longer to accomplish the previous task. It's taking 300% longer, because everything's just getting much more complex, and you're sort of building things on top of things on top of things. And so one of the things we've been working on, and actually, I mean, we just kind of had a bit of a come-to-Jesus moment this month because when we flip the switch—when we sort of launch all of our product, what we're doing is we're really saying, okay, here's what each individual subscriber is going to be getting this month. And so we're building all of those orders in the background. We're using all of their preferences to sort of determine what it is that they're going to get or their basic profile. And then there's sort of a moment where we flip the switch and say, okay, it's live. And people are waiting on-site. They're clicking refresh trying to see what it is that they're going to be getting. That whole process is something that even just recently, as we grow the number of users we have and as there's more complexity to the business, is getting difficult to scale. And so we're sort of reconfiguring the guts of how everything is built and making sure that we also have room to grow. Because we can't just—it's not just a matter of—it used to take to deploy all of our emails an hour or so, and we found last month it took five or six hours, which is just way too long. So people—so how do we sort of speed up that whole process where we're flipping the switch and getting things out to our customers more quickly?

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:31) So just the sheer volume of emails because of the amount of customers has gone through.

(Steve at 00:12:35) Just emails, but, yeah, it's kind of the whole thing. Yep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:37) Yeah, exactly. The whole process just is taking way longer, so you have to look at—so you're looking at both technological innovation, things that you can do to speed up that, but also just business process changes?

(Steve at 00:12:50) It is a bit of both. Yeah. I mean, because we're sort of looking at the different teams. Our marketing team is sort of the ones that are deploying the emails, for example. So what's the cadence that they go through to deploy those? But then also, we just need to increase the throughput, right? How quickly we can process all of these orders and how quickly we can process all of these emails. And so it's kind of a combination. So how do we sort of put our minds together and figure out how to make this happen a little bit more quickly?

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:17) Well, it seems like you're well suited. I saw that you did some work for Deloitte, which—I've got to talk to their CTO. It seems like a really great company. Did you learn a lot of great problem-solving skills through consulting?

(Steve at 00:13:28) I mean, a lot of that was more on the supply chain side of things. And to be clear, I'm one of the co-founders and effectively kind of more of a co-CEO. So I'm not a developer myself, but I manage that team. And so a lot of what I learned there was more on the inventory planning side, which is also kind of a very interesting and complex problem we have because we're showing all of our customers exactly what they're going to get beforehand, which is a great customer benefit, but it also introduces unpredictability into the business model because we don't know for certain how many people are going to purchase the Weekender bag, for example, if that's their selection in a given month. And so we need a lot of processes in place to make sure that we don't have too much inventory, but also that we have just enough.

(Steve at 00:14:12) And I think that was sort of where my background there came into play.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:16) Okay. So if I'm a customer, you flip the system, right? It runs. You make it live.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:22) It shows me I might get this Weekender bag that I have right here, and I can say, yes, I want it, or I can skip it. But you're trying to guesstimate how many people are going to want that and reference that back to your inventory.

(Steve at 00:14:33) That's right. And to complicate it even more, you could pick one of our other 20-some options if you don't want the Weekender bag.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:39) So what, do you just have giant warehouses? How do you manage all of this?

(Steve at 00:14:42) We do, yeah. But then we also use data to sort of inform what we think is going to move and who's going to move into, you know, what we think basically the sell-through rate's going to be.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:54) Oh, you guys have some pretty crazy prediction algorithms. Are you noticing that they're highly accurate? Or what's the accuracy of your algorithms of, are people going to click?

(Steve at 00:15:05) You know, it's funny because the team thinks it's very—the team's often like, oh no, we sold out of this. How could we let this happen? But I always tell them, you know, you are inevitably going to sell out of some things. You can't be perfect.

(Steve at 00:15:18) The only way to not sell out of anything is to be so conservative that you have a lot of inventory on hand. And so it's really a very difficult balance to reach, but what we sort of do is we'll look at the performance of a product previously if we've run it before. If we haven't run it before—so if it's a brand new, like, Weekender, we've run many times before. We launched that many, many years ago. So we have a lot of data on how something like that's going to perform.

(Steve at 00:15:42) So we can reasonably make predictions that say, okay, how many people are going to skip, and then how many people are going to switch into a given product.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:52) That sounds like so much fun.

(Steve at 00:15:54) That's a little bit easier, but if we've never run it before, there's a lot more uncertainty if it's a brand new product that we're launching. Because we're also launching new product every month that we've never run before. And so on something like that, again, because we're showing people exactly what they're going to get and they have the opportunity to just skip it, we don't know if it's going to be really successful or less successful until we actually run it. And so we'll sort of put—what we'll sort of do is put confidence intervals around and say, okay, this is a new launch. This is the category it falls into. We know certain categories tend to perform better than others, and so we'll start to put confidence intervals around new product launches. And then we'll launch it. And then the next time we run it, we'll be better at predicting how well that's going to do.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:38) I like that. That word sounds cool too, confidence intervals. So have you found that a specific type of person, developer, is really good to recruit? For example, I was talking to one individual who was doing some data science stuff, and they said people that come from marketing analytics, we tend to recruit from that industry because they have these skills that are transferable over to what we're doing. But if we just advertise jobs for what we were doing, people would be like, what? So we know that we can translate these skills over. For all the things you have going on, on the teams that you manage, have you found any trends of, like, if people are listening and they're like, oh, I'm in this industry and maybe I want to go work for Bespoke Post?

(Steve at 00:17:21) Yeah. I mean, for our teams—and we sort of look at the data analytics a little bit differently than the engineering, although they obviously work together on some of these big problems. But for both roles, a real innate understanding of the business is really important because you cannot—it's very hard because we have so many different product runs to look at—just data elements and sort of make predictions in terms of what's going to be successful. You kind of have to understand what the products are and have a really an understanding of the merchandise itself to be successful.

(Steve at 00:18:00) And so we found that's the case on the data analytics side. And what can happen is if you get too analytical with some of these algorithms and things like that, it kind of just doesn't work for us. And I think it's because we're just—we're not running a lot of frequent data points on very similar items, right? Like, if all we did was sold shirts, you could sort of say, like, okay, let's see how the red shirts do. Let's see Button Downs versus Henleys. There's a lot of very discrete data elements that you could start to look at and kind of objectively make predictions on. Our challenge is that the products are so different. So, like, if we're successful, why is it that it's successful?

(Steve at 00:18:44) Is it because it's a bag? Is it because it's blue? If you're comparing that to a pasta maker, right, how do you sort of distinguish between those two and get a really good understanding of why one was successful and one wasn't? The products are so different that they're almost kind of one and the same. And so a lot of the people that we work with, they really need to kind of understand these different products and how they come together and be able to use sort of intuition to supplement with data to build systems that are good at sort of allocating all of this inventory and also the selections that we make for people each month.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:22) So have you guys ever experimented with any features, like, if I let you into all my social networks or something and gave you a bunch of my data, you could tell me what I would like? Have you ever gone there?

(Steve at 00:19:34) We have not done anything with external social networks. What we have introduced is we're starting to ask more and more questions on-site, and what we found is just asking specific questions about specific products can be really helpful. And we're making that part of our—so our merchandising team, which they are not technology people per se, right? They're the ones who are responsible for picking new products and putting them together and negotiating with our brand partners to bring them to life.

(Steve at 00:20:02) But they're now using a lot of the tools that our engineering team is building to help inform the decisions that they make. And so as a subscriber, you can come on board and you can start answering questions. So we might literally just say, hey, we're working on this concept for a new winter blanket for the fall. Are you interested in it? Which type of patterns do you like? Do you like tassels on the end, or do you want it to be straight edge? We can start asking more and more questions, and those results will actually drive the development and design of the product itself. And so that's what we found. That is actually really helpful to introduce new product, right?

(Steve at 00:20:42) To help us identify what's going to be successful and what's not. Because their goal as a merchandising team is, hey, I want to keep building product that is going to be successful, that's going to have a high sell-through rate. And so by using kind of the collective wisdom of our member base, they can get things that are just closer on target that people are going to like more.

(Steve at 00:21:04) And then it's obviously helpful for the members too because they are literally saying, I'm interested in this blanket that's this color. And then a few months later, boom. That's what you get.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:14) That's pretty cool. Have you ever gotten into issues with shipping stuff to different states? Like, I know some states you can ship alcohol to, pocket knives are different in different states. Have you ever had to deal with that?

(Steve at 00:21:27) We don't—well, we don't ship alcohol itself. So any of the barware stuff we do is more, you know, bar-enabled. There's a few things that are restricted. So, yeah, we'll have to watch that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:39) That's an extra premium membership, if you want that one.

(Steve at 00:21:44) Alcohol is tough to ship. There's a lot of extra steps you need to go through. But, yeah, I mean, there's some things where certain items are restricted in certain areas. And so we have the capability to basically just kind of black that out for people that live in those areas.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:00) It's funny. We were talking in our team meeting about you guys, and we said, okay, we went right from a privacy, like, it's my data, don't touch it conversation, to Bespoke Post, why don't they just know what I want? And it's weird because I feel like we're always having these conversations. We're like, we want our privacy, but we also want our convenience, right?

(Steve at 00:22:23) That's right. I mean, it's a difficult balance. I mean, we obviously take that pretty seriously too. And so we're always working on different ways to figure out how to handle all of the information that we have because it's a privilege to have that information, and obviously we're using it to make the experience better. At the same time, you don't want to take advantage of that.

(Steve at 00:22:43) And so that's kind of—it's something we do think about quite a bit too.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:47) Yeah. Speaking of customer experience, I was talking with the CTO of this company called Impulse Mobile. They do chat, conversational AI, but in the health care space, right? They're pretty cool. But I was curious, do you guys do any of that type of stuff? Do you have this AI chat stuff? Do you have humans behind it? Have you used robots to help customer service?

(Steve at 00:23:09) It's a bit of both. It's mostly humans, but we have features that sort of help them. So our customer experience team, they have tools that sort of aid them. So it's like, hey, this person is probably looking for this type of thing. So it'll sort of nudge or push those types of responses or issues up to the forefront so that it improves their workflow. At the same time for us, I mean, it is really important to have that human touch when somebody's going to reach out to us. I mean, people are paying us money, and if there's a problem, we want to make sure we get to the bottom of it. And I don't know if AI is quite there for those types of problems for us. Because a lot of times, I mean, even, you know, I'll just read some messages, and sometimes it's hard to really tell what is this person actually asking?

(Steve at 00:23:56) And so our team has to have really high EQ, you know, kind of empathize. A lot of times if there's a problem, you're not happy, right? You're reaching out because you're not happy. And so our goal is to have you walk away from an interaction with our customer experience team happier than you were before the problem even occurred. You just get such great service that you're impressed. I think that's hard to do completely automated, but we found that AI is very helpful in helping our agents and our team do their job better by kind of helping them identify how you can better help them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:31) Yeah. I was blown away when I was having this conversation with him because, you know, when you get to talk to someone who's really knowledgeable, very deeply in one area—he was like, all the context stuff that you're mentioning, when stuff's very nuanced and what's going on and how the machines are responding and how they structure their profiles. I think you would geek out over that episode as far as what's happening in the conversational AI space because for me, I was blown away by how far—

(Steve at 00:24:59) I think we're going to get there, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:00) Yeah. Oh, yeah.

(Steve at 00:25:00) And maybe we are, yeah. It's coming. But it's a hard challenge. You want to feel like you're actually talking to somebody.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:07) I know. And you want it to—we also always play a dual role. We're creators, right? Or we lead companies that create this technology, but we're also consumers. And so we know what it's like when we go have a bad experience with it or it's like, oh, there's someone there. And then it's just this horrible robot that gives you two options and puts you in—

(Steve at 00:25:27) An infinite loop. Agent. Agent. Yep. Agent. It's—

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:31) It's the 2020 equivalent of pressing 00000 on the phones.

(Steve at 00:25:37) Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And so you're right. I mean, it's a tough balance, and I think it's definitely getting better. We started to dabble, like I said, in using some of those tools to help our team. But for now, we're looking at every single inbound ticket that comes in.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:56) And how's your growth? I mean, I think these products are great. Is your company growing fast? Where are you guys at?

(Steve at 00:26:03) Yeah. Yeah. We've—I mean, we've seen tremendous growth in the last year. Obviously, you know, ecommerce in general has seen a shift with the pandemic and things like that. So I mean, it's sad to say, right? But that's kind of just what we've seen on a macro level. I think our product is particularly conducive to sort of a stay-at-home environment. There's just a lot of products we offer that create interesting things to do while you're at home. And so I think that that's obviously something that we've just seen over the last year. We've seen a little bit of shift in terms of our product mix. You know, I think apparel was not up as much as some of the other product categories because people were just not going out and wearing new clothes. But, yeah, so we've seen some success with, you know, kind of that shift to ecommerce.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:57) What's the—you said something, you have interesting at-home activities. What category is that, or how do I check that out?

(Steve at 00:27:03) There's a lot of kitchen boxes we do. So just kind of cooking at home, you know, a bread-making kit, right? Or right now, we have—although I think it might have just sold out, but we have a wok and some things to make Asian food at home. And so there's things in the kitchen space, but also outdoors. I mean, outdoors has actually been really successful for us over the past year because I think people still want to get outside in a responsible and socially distant way. And so, yeah, having fun to do like that. So, I mean, make-your-own-beer kits, things like that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:37) That's pretty cool. I like that. Yeah. I recently got an air fryer. This is completely—

(Steve at 00:27:44) Oh, yeah. We did too. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:46) Have you done an air fryer yet?

(Steve at 00:27:48) Not—no. We have not at Bespoke, but I just got one in my house. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:52) I just got one for Christmas. My wife got it for us, and I was kind of against it because I'm typically against spending money on stuff. But I will tell you this. It has become my favorite kitchen thing because we'll put the chicken—have you used it much to cook?

(Steve at 00:28:11) We just had some chicken. I mean, it tasted really good. And it was quick?

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:15) Yes. It was like magic. I was like you—

(Steve at 00:28:18) wanted, but it's still relatively healthier. At least that's what they say. Yeah. I don't know how it works. Now I kinda wanna Google and figure out how this thing works.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:26) It's crazy because I wanna figure it out too. But it's like a little oven thing. It can go to three sixty and cook something in, like, five minutes.

(Steve at 00:28:34) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:35) Yeah. It's pretty unbelievable. But I'm super pumped about the air fryer. You guys should do one of those as, like, as your box. They're not even that expensive. Like, they range obviously in cost, but yeah. Air fryer. When new products happen, the people at the company, they'll say, okay. I got this new thing. We're talking about the air fryer. What do they pitch that to you? Like, how would an employee that falls in love with some product get that on the radar of the company?

(Steve at 00:29:01) Yeah. I mean, we've got a team that's basically their job. It is just to stay on top of trends and what's going on. And, I mean, when we first started, it was just a few of us. So we were kinda just looking for anything that we thought was cool. Now we have a little bit more specialization, so we have somebody who's focused on outdoors and somebody who's more focused on kitchen. But that's really what they spend all day doing. What's kinda cool too is, I mean, now this wasn't the case when we first started. Now we get a lot of inbounds from brands that wanna work with us. And so that's a great source as well because we'll start getting people. And we've, I mean, we work with a lot of smaller brands. That's kinda part of what we've always done. And so we'll get a lot of people just reaching out saying, hey, I'd love to work with you. Check out my product. Can I send you some samples? And we'll start to, the team will start to put together a concept and say, hey, I think this would really fit into this new air fryer box that I'm trying to make with this new seasoning that somebody sent me, and so how does it all come together? And we, yeah. They basically pitch them, and then the team gives a go, no go, or sometimes we'll rework stuff.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:08) So let's say I'm out. I'm camping. Right? And somebody, because I go to the campgrounds, so there's always, like, great people and everything. Someone sees this weekender bag and they're like, Joel, I wanna buy this weekender bag. And I was like, oh, you know, you gotta go talk to Steve. Like, can people just go on, like, do you get product referrals that way? People just wanna buy the product? Do you support that?

(Steve at 00:30:29) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can buy anything one off as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:31) Okay. Cool.

(Steve at 00:30:31) Yeah. So a lot of people go the route where they fill out the profile, and they kinda like checking something out each month, but you could just come and buy that weekender bag right off the site.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:42) Oh, that's awesome. Alright. Let's see what else we got over here. We got another box. This is a separate box. This would be, like, month two. Right?

(Steve at 00:30:49) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:50) This says, so it's got this little, it says cone, log cabin, and pyramid. They've got these nice little, like, graphically designed inserts. And when you open up the box, it's a nice experience. What do we have here? A stove? Yes. A firestarter?

(Steve at 00:31:07) That's actually something that I think is, you're asking about restrictions. That's something, like, we can't ship it in the air, so we can't get that to Hawaii, for example.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:14) Really? Yeah. Yeah. They're pretty hard to, like, I'm like, have you ever used one before?

(Steve at 00:31:20) Firestarter?

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:21) Yeah.

(Steve at 00:31:21) Uh huh. Like, like, one of these that you have to strike?

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:22) Like, you have to really try. This thing is not gonna just, like, ask for spontaneously combust, but for whatever it's worth.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:31) This is great. I actually started, and I just bought, like, a random one off of Amazon and it was like, it was okay. So I will definitely use this. I'm excited about it. But I used it to actually start a fire. Like, I feel so, I felt so, yeah. Like, campfire last weekend. I felt so manly, by the way.

(Steve at 00:31:50) It's very gratifying.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:52) Yeah. It is. It is. And then I, I mean, I felt less manly when I couldn't get it to work, and I watched a YouTube video on how to use a fire starter.

(Steve at 00:32:02) Well, I think the back of what you were showing is the different ways you can build the logs too. The card.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:07) Oh, is it?

(Steve at 00:32:08) Yep. So different ways to stack them.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:10) Ah, the cone, the log cabin, and the pyramid.

(Steve at 00:32:13) Different strategies for your log stacking endeavors.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:17) I have done the cone and the log cabin, but next weekend, I'm going to see my very first space shuttle launch. So I'm like, a Falcon 9 is gonna take up some satellites.

(Steve at 00:32:28) Oh, really?

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:28) Yeah. Yeah. Have you seen one before?

(Steve at 00:32:30) Not in person. No.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:32) Me either. I've live streamed, we've live streamed them as, like, a company, like, because we're all nerds over here. Yeah. It happens two and a half hours from where I live.

(Steve at 00:32:39) So you're gonna see it land too?

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:41) Oh, yeah. We're gonna see the engine boosters come back down.

(Steve at 00:32:44) Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. I think the landing is just as cool as the takeoff.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:49) I fully agree, especially because when they do the landing, they do, like, the double shot so you get, and they land in sync too. They, like, land at the same time. That is so cool. Okay. So we got a firestarter for that. We've got, let's see. Solar Helix. What is this thing?

(Steve at 00:33:05) Oh, that's a solar light.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:07) It's a solar light. This is pretty cool. So it's like a LED light and it looks like waterproof.

(Steve at 00:33:13) You can pull it up so you can pull it apart.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:16) You can pull it apart. Oh, it like twist.

(Steve at 00:33:19) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:19) It's a little cube. It's like a light up cube. This is cool. Let's see. What else? Alright. So this is a straight up military compass.

(Steve at 00:33:29) Yep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:30) Alright. It's really solid. Yeah. Alright. We got a compass. I got a little coupon here too. 15% off my next order. Let's see. Oh, and a knife. Yes. Dude, you are the, this is awesome.

(Steve at 00:33:45) Yeah. It's interesting. Knives just always perform well for us.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:50) Who doesn't like a good knife?

(Steve at 00:33:52) I know. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:53) Right? This is cool too. Alright. Let's see. There's more stuff. You get a lot of stuff in these boxes.

(Steve at 00:34:00) Yeah. I mean, it sounds good. Like, the weekender is just a few items. This one obviously has a lot more, and it's interesting to kinda see.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:06) But these are, like, normal boxes. Like, they're not, you guys didn't, like, overfill them for me or anything.

(Steve at 00:34:11) No. No. No. Yeah. That was, that's just one of our standard boxes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:15) A trifold camp shovel.

(Steve at 00:34:17) You can throw it in your camper.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:19) I will throw it in the camper. You know what this is gonna be now? My fire poker.

(Steve at 00:34:24) Right? Exactly. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:26) Yeah. Because I tried to use a marshmallow stick as a fire poker.

(Steve at 00:34:31) Oh, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:32) They tend to be a little bit on the weak side.

(Steve at 00:34:37) What do you like to do when you go camping?

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:38) Well, so far, just get the kids space to run around, you know, chase them. We camped. We've done it twice. So both times, we went to a place that was, like, fifteen minutes from our house because we wanted to get used to it and run into all the issues of, like, forgetting stuff. Yep. And that place happens to be a farm too. So there was, like, a petting zoo on it. Yeah. So the kids got to do all of that. And basically, it's the name of the game is, let's not sit at home and let them climb all over us. Let's take them out and let them climb all over the world.

(Steve at 00:35:14) How old are your kids?

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:15) Aria, my daughter, she's almost four now. So she's, like, three and change, maybe, like, 3.5. And my son, Lachlan, is turning two, I think next month. So.

(Steve at 00:35:26) Okay. Cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:27) Yeah. Do you have kids? You have little ones?

(Steve at 00:35:29) Yeah. I have two year old twins.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:31) What? Twins? A boy and a girl?

(Steve at 00:35:33) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:34) What? That's awesome. I just had a guest on, like, two weeks ago that have twins, a boy and a girl.

(Steve at 00:35:40) It's interesting, you know, because we, it's for us, it's all we know. We don't have any other kids. So we're always like, is it hard or what? I'm like, I don't know. I don't know what it's like compared to one.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:50) It's hard. It is. I had one and then I had two, and it's a lot harder. And then it's even, it's even like a third level of hard. You got maximum hard, by the way. I mean, with the exception of, like, Jon and Kate Plus 8, like, you got maximum hard. Two ones is difficult.

(Steve at 00:36:06) You know what though? I mean, I don't know because I always say, at least when they're the same age, there's, like, economies of scale. Right? You guys are doing the same things. Like, they're in the diaper changing. Like, you just, it doesn't take as long to change, it doesn't take twice as long to change two diapers as it does one.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:24) I'm gonna agree with that. Put my mind into a pretzel.

(Steve at 00:36:26) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. See? So I just kinda, like, throw them together, do one thing and then, like, move on to the next activity.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:32) Are they conjoined? Did you have, like, special double diapers for your kids?

(Steve at 00:36:35) They are not. That's a good idea. We could probably come up with something for that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:41) And has it been, you know, pretty, like, how have you looked at it as far as, like, influencing your products at all? Has it, have you done, like, new parent boxes or anything like that?

(Steve at 00:36:51) Yeah. I mean, we did a Christmas collection or holiday collection around, you know, kind of a kid shop. It was the first time we've done that. So we've got a decent number of parents on the team, which has been amazing because it's almost been kind of a support group as you're going through figuring out how to handle work with kids, and then you're in this remote world. It's been nice to have other people on the team that also have kids, and we've kind of been, like, sharing strategies. And I think there's also just a level of understanding when you have somebody yelling in the background, and you have to go do something real quick. But in terms of the business itself, yeah. I mean, we've started introducing some products for parents, and I think it also just sort of change, you know, when you're, it just sort of even changes the types of things that you appreciate maybe when you're a parent. And so it's nice to have different perspectives. You know, we have a lot of younger people on the team that are in different places in their life. And then we have people that, you know, have children. And so it's kind of, I think it does help in terms of the actual product mix that we bring to market.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:53) Yeah. You've got a lot of diverse types of consumers that also happen to work for you, which allows you to have a nice array of products. Right?

(Steve at 00:37:59) Right. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:00) So on the, I've got some leadership questions for you, if that's cool. So on the leadership side of things, I'm really curious, like, what's the best leadership advice that you've ever received?

(Steve at 00:38:13) Early on, somebody told us to never let one opinion sway you too much, but to take every piece of advice you get as sort of like a small nudge. And so if you start getting a lot of nudges that push you in a particular direction, then that's really meaningful. But you also shouldn't over index to any one piece of advice. And I found that helpful. And maybe part of the context was when we started, we were in an accelerator program that was engineered to provide advice to you. So we were kind of drinking from the fire hose in terms of, you know, hey. Like, you should do it this way or no. You should do it that way. And it can be hard to really know what works for you. And I think that's part of it is, you know, it's important to take, to listen to that advice and to let that influence you, but not to over index on any one piece of advice. And that sort of helped us find our footing on what worked for us and what was authentic to who we are as we build the company.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:08) I like that. That's really, that's really, I fully agree with that because especially early on when you'll get a piece of advice and you almost feel like you need to go do something with it, but then you get enough. But if you go and you go run in a piece of, like, a single direction, like you said, over index on a specific piece of advice, it never really works. But by sitting there and just picking up on the tone of what you keep hearing and all those little nudges, that is definitely in my experience, what we say, like, when I get people that'll message me, like, team members or something, or we'll be on a one on one and they're down about, like, a specific piece of feedback. I was like, alright. What's the overall theme? Like, if you look back the last three months, what have you been hearing? Like, okay. And we take a look at that and that kinda brings them out of that perspective of I just got a really harsh piece of feedback. It's like, okay. Contextualize it. Yeah. But let's contextualize it because we tend to do that as humans. Right? If we have 10 and we lose one, we focus on the one. And so it's really important, like, bring that focus back to, like, we have nine, you know?

(Steve at 00:40:11) That's right. Yeah. I mean, I tend to do that myself. Right? It's like you focus on the one bad thing that just happened, and that can kinda set you astray.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:18) Do you find yourself, like, acting as, like, a coach for your teams? Or how do you keep them, you know, focused? Or how do you help them and mentor them? Do you assign them into groups? Do you read books? Like, what's your style?

(Steve at 00:40:31) Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because as somebody who, you know, was there when we were two people and then six people, and then now, I think the honest answer is probably, like, I'm kind of learning some of that. Because when you start and you're really small, you're sort of, it's easy to stay on the same page with everybody. You're just sitting around the same table. You know what everybody's working on, so communication is not particularly important. And you're kinda just focused on, like, surviving and doing. And that is not necessarily the right way. I mean, we're 60 people. So we're not huge, but we're 60. That's not the right way to run a 60 person company. And so, you know, we have to be more thoughtful in terms of how we communicate. We can't assume that everybody just sort of knows what's going on. And we also need to be more thoughtful about how we help people with their careers. Because, again, like, our first few hires were sort of more like peers. Right? Where we were just sort of like, we gotta, we got, like, we gotta build this business, was sort of, like, the only thing that we were thinking about.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:34) I know what you're talking about, man. Yes.

(Steve at 00:41:35) Right? And so now, you know, that's not the number one tracking concern, but we do want to build—we do want people to be able to build a career, whether it's here or whether they grow and do something else. I mean, I'm sure you would agree, I love seeing people go and do something else that's really interesting outside of what it is that we do here.

(Steve at 00:41:57) And so how do we sort of cultivate people to be successful in whatever it is that they do? And that's just a little bit of a change in mentality. And I think we're getting better at it and still learning.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:09) It's an important culture thing. When you have somebody and they're aligned with what they want out of life is aligned with what their role is at the company and what we can do together—when that alignment's there, it's great. But when it's not there, you want to make sure that you help them transition because you have to put them first. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:32) When you put them first—and it's the hardest thing to do with your best people too.

(Steve at 00:42:36) It is.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:37) It's so hard because you're like, this is amazing. But at the same time, you can rationalize it with, if it's not aligned, I'd rather have a mediocre person who is completely aligned and accomplishing their dreams here than a rock star person whose mind is elsewhere. Right?

(Steve at 00:42:55) I think that's true. And part of it is, how can we help you accomplish what you want out of your career in a way that also is beneficial to the company? And I think usually, if you really sit down and think about it, there's a way to get there. And somebody, you know, somebody can kind of be participatory in how they want to grow and what it is that they want to learn. And as you talk through it, you can start to find opportunities to do that, again, in a way that also is still helping the company.

(Steve at 00:43:20) Because if it's not helping the company, it's hard—it's hard to, especially as a smaller company, it's hard to justify it. And so aligning those two—we brought our first director of people on right as, right—I think it was in March. So right as the pandemic was starting. I mean, I think right after that, we went on a hiring freeze because we just didn't know what was going to happen. So we said—

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:41) Good timing.

(Steve at 00:43:43) Right? So it's like we brought her on, and then a week later we're like, oh, we should probably hold off on any additional hiring. We just need to see what's going to happen. But I'm so glad that we brought her on when we did because I think it would have—I mean, having somebody with that expertise that I can also learn from and rely on has been super beneficial because she's been through it. And she's really helped as people have been remote and trying to figure out how to work in a different way. It's really helped the organization quite a bit. So I think part of it's maybe just realizing where other people can help you out.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:16) Yes, 100%. And speaking of other people helping you out, you do this business with your co-founder. Right? How do you both create a strong relationship while also having to work through difficult problems? Like, what have you learned there?

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:31) Like, what have you learned there?

(Steve at 00:44:32) Like, with my co-founder specifically?

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:34) Yeah. Like, how do you—let's like, co-founder talk. Right? Because it's a difficult thing to do a business by yourself. It's a difficult thing to do a business with another person. And you have that sort of social credibility where you have to build the relationship outside of the tough problems that you're facing, but then you also have to face the tough problems. Like, how do you stay connected and close with your co-founder?

(Steve at 00:44:58) Well, we started as friends, so that definitely helped. Although it can hurt sometimes, but in our case, that was good. So we already had a relationship beforehand. Oh my gosh. I mean, we talk every day in the morning. Like, that's the first thing I do is we'll have a phone call and just kind of—and sometimes we'll just sort of talk about what's going on in our lives if there's not something pressing. But often there is something to discuss. So we stay in pretty close communication. I don't know. I mean, we just really, I think, understand each—I think we're just—I think we've been lucky in that we really understand each other very well. And I think we have a knack for what the other one is thinking. Even if I'm not going to agree with him on something, I can almost predict exactly how he's going to react to something and vice versa for him. So I don't know why that is. I think part of it's just learning from each other over time, and part of it's just natural chemistry, but I think we've been lucky in that sense that we're just—and we're generally pretty well aligned more times than not. There really hasn't been very much that's been terribly consequential that we haven't been aligned on, and I don't think that's always the case either.

(Steve at 00:46:02) So I don't know if I have a good answer for you in terms of how that's happened, other than the fact that just it has for us.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:09) No, you described it perfectly. Right? You were friends before. You understood. You guys have the same principles. You understand the direction. And then when you have core principles that you agree to, the details can work themselves out in conversation. Right? Because it's not like you're going into completely different directions. You have the same core direction. And then you talking every day seems super important too, because I think a lot of people, they have co-founders and they were going into the office. It's hard not to because you walk into the office, you know, you walk up and you start talking to your co-founder and it's there. But to be intentional about picking up the phone every morning and having that call and connecting even if there's not a pressing—just to have it as a habit. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:52) That keeps you close. Because what I've noticed is in a relationship, regardless of the style of relationship, the more distance there is from the previous communication, the harder that relationship becomes to maintain, even if it's on a scale of a day or a week or a month or a year. Right?

(Steve at 00:47:06) No, that's totally right. And, you know, we didn't have a scheduled standing meeting like that until we went remote. Because we were just sort of naturally running into one another. And we sat—I mean, we sat next to each other. So we talk all the time. Right? But it was more like, hey, what do you think about this? Right? That type of thing. And so now we have that standing meeting. We're trying to figure out, you know, how—I think our team has executed really well, and we just had a lot of challenges this past year. There's been a lot of supply chain issues and getting—because, you know, again, we're a physical product company. So if we don't have physical product, then we can't sell anything. And there's been all types of supply chain issues and, you know, shipping carriers and things like that. So there's been a lot of challenges that we as a team have faced, and we've done an excellent job of kind of getting through that. I think that one thing being remote that you kind of lose—those sort of those side conversations that you were talking about. And so we've been talking a lot about how do we replicate that. If we're working on a new feature for our website, in the past, you know, you might be sitting at your desk and you walk by and just say, hey, what's going on right there? And there's sort of an organic three-minute conversation that turns into a ten-minute conversation that yields something really interesting. And you kind of lose that when you have to jump on a Zoom call to initiate a conversation. And so we've been thinking a lot about how to replicate that type of environment to still encourage the innovation because we've been great on the execution. And I think we've done good on the innovation, but I think it's harder to innovate in a remote environment.

(Steve at 00:48:42) Versus if I'm like, hey, we've got to do this—we've got to figure out how to get this container delivered—somebody can just go do that on their own. But if it's more like, hey, how do we improve the customer journey and things like that where there's not a clear solution? I do think you lose something relative to that in-person environment.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:59) Yeah. Creativity with collaboration in person is so beneficial. Right? And then we're all trying to figure out the tools and everything.

(Steve at 00:49:07) Right. What are the tools?

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:08) Yeah. It's hard. Have you found anything good?

(Steve at 00:49:11) Oh, gosh. We used something just recently that wasn't bad.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:18) That's better than what I have been hearing. Everyone I've been asking says no, no, no.

(Steve at 00:49:23) Yeah. But it is hard. It took us a little bit of time. I think I want to do it a couple—we've only done it once, but it wasn't bad. I kind of had a whiteboard with post-its, and people were throwing ideas out there. I want to see how it works a few more times, but you're right. It's like, what's the right tool to do this type of thing? And yeah, I agree. I haven't heard anybody that's just found it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:44) And so how did it—you guys have these warehouses, I think we were talking about earlier. And then these boxes, they come from—is it a partner that you hire or these your team members that are packing these boxes? Like, how does that work?

(Steve at 00:49:58) Yeah. So we use what's called a third-party logistics provider. So it's a big warehouse. They have multiple clients, and then they sort of act on our behalf to put them together. So—

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:11) All right. Cool.

(Steve at 00:50:11) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:12) So you didn't have the issues of all the human stuff with—I mean, well, you definitely had issues as a business. Did they close down for a little bit when the pandemic happened?

(Steve at 00:50:21) No. We were lucky in that they didn't—I mean, I see what you're getting at. It's still relevant to us. Right? Because the safety of those workers, while they're not W-2 employees, they're still people that are working on our behalf. And so that was something that we spent a lot of time talking about. It's like, okay, how do you maintain safety? And the real answer is you have to decrease throughput. Like, you space people further apart, which means you can't have as many people in the warehouse, which means you just can't ship as much, you know, per hour or per day that you normally could in the same physical footprint.

(Steve at 00:51:00) And so that was definitely a challenge.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:02) You do scuba tanks. You could do scuba air regulators.

(Steve at 00:51:07) Yeah. It's really easy to work with a scuba tank.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:13) Right? I saw this funny meme of this guy in a grocery store checkout line wearing a rebreather. I used to scuba dive a lot. And, yeah, I used to get this rebreather air thing on, and I was like, that is hilarious because he was completely head to toe body suit protected. Yeah. I was like, I'll tell you what, when somebody goes to that extreme, it's admirable. It's like, look at the work you put into that. It's like you're a piece of art.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:47) Yes. Well, I'm super grateful for these gifts. This is the first time I've ever gotten anything. I'm so grateful, man. This is all usable stuff. McKenzie and your team did a fantastic job on this, man.

(Steve at 00:52:05) Good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:06) Was there anything that we wanted to get out there? If people want these boxes, if they want to sign up for them, if they want to start getting them monthly or just go buy it one-off? What do they do? How do they do that?

(Steve at 00:52:16) Just go to bespokepost.com.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:19) Just go there and sign up?

(Steve at 00:52:20) Sign up. You can buy one-off. I mean, we also have a shop where we sell thousands of products that are not sort of these curated boxes. So it's great. I mean, a lot of people get gifts, but most of our customers are actually buying for themselves. I mean, people are saying, oh, these are great gifts, but 80% plus of our business is actually people signing up and self-consuming. And, yeah, just go to the website.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:45) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you would like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email, [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.