My First Million: #51 - Coronavirus, Being on Shark Tank & At-Home Testing Kits with Julia Cheek

All right.

Quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now, HubSpot

just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite.

Every week, the hosts relive the latest and greatest pitches from Shark Tank, from Squatty

Potty to the Mench on a Bench to Ring Doorbell, and they break down why these pitches were

winners or losers, and each company's go-to-market strategy, branding, pricing, valuation, everything.

Basically all the things you want to know about how to survive the tank and scale your

company on your own.

If you want to give it a listen, you can find another bite on whatever podcast app you listen

to, like Apple or Spotify or whatever you're using right now.

All right.

Back to the show.

Let me make one quick announcement before we get into it.

What I want to do is I've heard about these people say, subscribe, unsubscribe, subscribe

again.

All right.

I want to test it.

Here are our viewers for more reviews, and we now have 550 maybe.

We've got 400 reviews in just a couple of days.

You guys are really active.

They all sent me messages.

I tried to reply to everyone.

Did you?

I did now.

Yeah, I went and cleaned it up.

You haven't got a reply.

I thought you did get a reply.

Here's what I want people to do, and the reason I want to do this is because I think people

like seeing us succeed, and they like seeing the journey.

You're going to help us succeed.

Here's what you do.

Here's an iPhone, you're going to go to the menu where you can turn your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

off and all that.

There's a button on the bottom right where you hit record.

Record that.

That's going to record your screen.

Then go to the podcast app.

Go to My First Million, click subscribe, and then unsubscribe, and then subscribe again.

Send us a video of that happening, and if you do, also send us a question that you want,

and we'll answer your question.

Yeah.

We'll bake a Q&A.

This will tell us the truth, because we need to run the experiment.

We need to know, does this actually work, or is this just like a myth?

If you send us your question, ideally send it via Twitter so everyone can see and can

comment, and that way it's easy.

Just record yourself.

What is it?

Subscribing?

Unsubscribing?

Resubscribing?

Do it a bunch of times.

Record yourself.

Post that on Twitter.

Tag one of us, or both of us, and then on that same thread, ask your question.

If you don't have a question, that's fine too.

We're going to look at the chart, so we're going to see what this does to the chart movement.

I think it's going to actually boost the chart movement.

If the theory is correct, I believe this is why podcasters ask people to do this, is because

this should actually work.

Here's what we'll do.

If this does work, if people keep doing this, what we'll do is, with only the people who

do that, we'll take a screenshot of our analytics and send it to them.

Yeah, yeah.

We'll share the data.

Yeah, no problem.

How was the big stage?

You went to New York?

Yeah.

The thing was, I went to New York, and I originally went to meet with some advertisers of ours,

and to be…

Wine and indignant, or what?

Yeah.

Yeah, kind of.

I'll tell you about it.

Then I went to be on the Gary Vaynerchuk podcast, and then I went to be on, is his name

Pomp?

Yeah.

Everyone knows him as Pomp.

Pomp.

Yeah.

Anthony Papilano or something.

I did his podcast.

It was cool.

Did Gary Vaynerchuk's podcast, first thing in the morning at 8 or 9 or 10 a.m. when

I got there?

I was a little groggy from my flight because I took some medicine when I flew.

It went okay.

We'll see what happens.

Gary.

Hold on.

So you walked in.

What happened?

Yeah, so walked in.

So he has two offices in New York, one Hudson Yards, which I've been to before.

It's buzzing.

This one was the studio.

It's a little quieter, but still pretty badass.

It was awesome, man.

And you guys know each other?

You don't know each other?

So this is like your first time?

First time we had met, but we had…

He knew who I was, and obviously I definitely know who he is, and he knew who our company

was.

He was totally nice, and he was really low-key at first.

He wasn't like cocaine Gary.

He was like…

You guys do a little chitchat, small talk beforehand, or you just got into it?

Barely.

So here's what happened.

We sat down, and there was like an audience.

There was like an audience of like 10, maybe 5 or 10 people.

It was me and Adam on our side, and then he had an entourage, and we sit down, and he

goes, all right, go.

And he looks at me, and I was like, I looked at Adam, I go, Gary, I think you're interviewing

me.

He goes, oh, I am?

I was like, right, Adam?

Was that right?

And Adam looked at me, and he goes, yeah, that's what we set up.

Adam the safety blanket?

Yeah, and Gary was like, oh, okay, so tell me about who you are, and it was good.

It was great.

All right, so he's a nice guy.

That's good to know.

Yeah, you know, he's an easy target because he's so loud.

I believe that he is totally legitimate and a really good business person.

I think his company, Vayner, is really, really hard to run, and he said that he was currently

the COO and CEO, good business, and he's totally legitimate.

He's like, because you can like...

What makes you say that?

So like...

Well, you could put him in the Donald Trump category of a guy who talks a lot, and you're

like, I don't know.

This guy's a real deal.

Right.

He's totally the real deal.

He just talks a lot.

But what were the little tidbits that gave you that impression, right?

Because I believe that.

I'm not saying you're lying.

So whenever I go to these offices, I ask them, I go, so how do you like working here?

I always ask employees, I ask the front desk, I go, what's...

You know, and you can kind of tell if they actually like it.

Yeah.

And he has 800 employees, and the office space, it was really expensive real estate.

There was really nice furniture.

Everything was set up professionally.

It's a real business.

Right.

So you could tell what's legitimate and what isn't once you go in there.

In this Hudson Yards office, they had Vayner media water, bottled water.

The office was buzzing.

Everyone had nice computers.

It wasn't...

It's not a startup.

Right.

Felt like a legit operation.

Totally.

For sure.

It's true.

Kudos to him, man.

He's talented.

And you did the podcast, you know, rate your performance.

I gave myself a C plus.

Okay.

One.

And then because I was...

It was a...

I hadn't done any reps that day.

Like, I did a podcast later that day, and I had a rep.

You were firing.

Yeah.

And I was like, all right, I'm on it.

It just fell a little flat, but Adam and his people said it was one of their favorite

ones they've ever done.

And do you have a little prep routine you would do?

Let's say before you get on stage, before you do an interview, how do you switch the

light on?

Yeah.

Well, I typically will...

You know how it is.

When we're doing this thing, I was in a shitty mood a minute ago, and then these lights turned

on, and you're like, all right, I gotta like snap out of it.

And what I do is I talk to the receptionist, or I'll talk to the Uber driver just to start

getting my words...

Get out of your head.

Yeah.

Get my words going and getting a better, happier mood.

Yeah.

And that's usually what I do.

Is that what you do?

No.

Like everything.

I try to like study and come up with like a framework for how to do it and like a technique.

And so I picked up two things.

So I picked up one from Conor McGregor that he...

I was watching this documentary with him.

You talk with a pencil in your mouth.

Pen in your mouth.

Yeah.

So this...

I tried it and it actually works fantastic.

So basically you take a pencil or a pen, you hold it sort of horizontal sideways.

You bite on it.

So it's in your mouth, you know, sort of going out past your cheeks.

And then you just talk for one minute and what happens is because the pencil's there

in your mouth's in this awkward position, your tongue has to really work to like flick

over and under this thing to get to the spots it usually goes to.

So you end up enunciating way better.

I don't know if it's placebo.

I don't know if it really is like an actual warmup for your tongue, but this shit works.

I've recorded myself before and after and I can tell the difference.

And other...

I had other people listen to it.

I said, tell me which one of these sounds better.

And I don't know whether it's placebo or not.

That one works for me.

The other thing is like a quick physical change.

So...

Like push ups or something?

Push ups, a wind sprint, a jumping jack, a scream, music, whatever.

I am a big believer that the fastest way to change the way you feel is through changing

your body rapidly.

But Tony works.

That's like a Tony Robbinsism.

Tony Robbinsism is a great YouTube video if you just YouTube young Tony Robbins.

And it's, you know, the same guy minus 25 years.

He's in a tank top and he's given the speech and when he talks about it, he goes, before

I get on stage, you know, people always ask me, okay, you're, you're a public speaker.

You do, you do a really great job.

How do you do a great job of this?

And he goes, because I don't make the mistakes.

Most people do.

He goes, most people are sitting in a low energy shell, their body, body posture sucks.

And then they just get up on stage and they don't warm up like an athlete would never

do that.

And he's like, I treat myself like an athlete.

I get myself in a mental state, a physical state.

And he goes, the second thing I do, I don't try to memorize what I'm supposed to say.

Is when you try to memorize what you say, you're trying to prepare, but what ends up

happening is your mind is then editing.

It's comparing what you're saying versus what you kind of remember you were supposed

to say.

And so you have this other whole thing going on in your head that takes you away from the

moment.

Third thing.

And this is the last one.

He goes, before I go up there, I convinced myself that the audience has to hear this.

Like their lives depend on this information.

Like they need, I'm here to help.

And if I can get this across, like even with this podcast, for example, it's like, you

know, somebody is out there, they're commuting, they're, you know, they have this idea that

they haven't taken action on.

They're kind of beating themselves up about it.

Or you know, they look around at the five people that they hang out with the most and

they're just like, these people are not like me.

And we're in their ear balls and they're like, oh, there are people like me out there.

And yes, I should take some action.

And yes, I should have some fucking energy today.

And so he's like, I just convinced myself that they have to hear this.

And then I'm here to serve them.

And I was like, okay, I do that.

Just hearing that has me feel better.

There you go.

Another thing that I did while I was out there is on Sunday night, I tweeted out, so when

I fly, I take a lot of Xanax.

It's the only drug I do.

I don't do any alcohol.

And sometimes the night before I'll take it a little bit as well, because I really hate

flying.

And so on Sunday night, I tweeted that I rented this Airbnb, which I did, and I'm gonna host

a meetup.

And I got 200 replies saying, let's meet up.

And I couldn't do that.

So I only let 20 trend subscribers come.

And so the trend subscribers are also not 100% of listeners are subscribers, but all

subscribers are listeners.

And so I met, I think at 30 ended up coming and it was fucking awesome.

It was so cool.

This one kid flew up from South Carolina or something.

And I treated this on, the meetup was Monday night.

I tweeted this on Sunday night.

Like there was no preparation, like we all, we did me and Adam landed on a Monday morning.

We went to the Mexican place next door and said, Hey, can you bring over enough tacos

for 20 people?

Here's two or 300 bucks and go buy us some beer.

We'll pay you more money.

And that's all we did.

And it was awesome.

Yeah.

These people are fucking fanatical.

It is crazy.

It's nuts.

It's really odd.

Who was the most interesting person?

So many interesting people.

One guy, there was this one guy, I figured his name, maybe he's listening.

He was an older, the eldest guy there, which is not old, but then his fifties or forties

and he built, it builds custom electric cars, cars and through the trends group sold 50

cars.

Just another custom electric car.

Yeah.

Like he was making, like they took a, they took a Prius or a Ford.

Yeah.

They took like a, some type of pickup truck and made it an electric delivery van for

a cannabis company in LA.

Cause who else did I meet?

I mean, I met all types of people.

One guy who sells fake boobs for a living.

So he sells his, tell me more fair child.

Did this guy ever talk to you on Twitter?

No, his name is fair child Hunter.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

I see this guy on my Twitter all the time.

Yeah.

He, his boss sells fake boobs.

Yeah.

His, his boss invented like a better dude.

What's in his bio?

Cause I've looked at this guy's bio and he's not advertising this.

So let's, let's see what he was, me and this girl, Aditi would just sit down and Hunter

came in and we were just shooting the shit and we were like, Hunter, what do you do?

And this woman, Aditi, she's nice.

I met her before we were just sitting there and she, he's like, well, I sell breast implants

and we were like, what?

And we just started talking.

I was like, so do you have like a woman who comes with you and like shows you, like shows

the buyers?

Like you need like sales brochures.

Like how do you have, like how do you show that your boobs are the best?

And he was just like walking through this whole process.

It was crazy.

I had never heard of such a thing.

Yeah, me neither.

But of course he came up from Virginia for this.

That's great.

All right.

Cool.

So you and I need to do more.

So what we can do is New York that we could get easily.

We could have gotten 200 people.

So we can do one in New York.

I think a cast or whatever we use tells us where people are.

Right.

We got to go to Canada.

We got to go to Utah.

When we shouted out Utah.

I know I still get more.

Dude, the number of these friendly ass Utah, you know, citizens, whatever they're called

Utahans reach out all the time like, Hey, when you guys are here, I got you.

So maybe like, and it feels good to be taken care of like that.

It does.

Right.

Maybe.

Great hospitality.

What month is it?

February?

Yeah.

And a February.

We should do a thing where we could try to hit up like three cities in five days.

Right.

Or maybe maybe a little longer.

I got into this thing.

I don't know if I told you about this.

This thing called reality.

Have you heard of this?

No.

So basically, you know how Jewish people have birthright?

Yeah.

And I don't know exactly how the mechanics of birthright work, but from what I understand,

if you're Jewish, you get to go.

It's paid by the sort of wealthy Jewish people around the world.

Healthy Christians, fundamental Christian Christians who believe that Israel is the

land for Jews.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

Didn't know that.

So basically, that's a cool thing for Jewish people.

You're shaking your head.

Are you Jewish, Henry?

But you know all about it.

You just stunned.

Yeah, I've never been more jealous than when my friends go on birthright and then come

back.

It's like this mini study abroad.

Yes.

Great.

And so then I was like, all right.

What is this?

You know, how do I get more of this?

So they have this program called reality, reality 2020, if you want to look it up.

And it's basically, you can be in these different groups, you can be in entertainment, you can

be in technology, you can be in whatever social impact you apply to get in.

If you get in, I've applied before, I got rejected a few years ago.

This time I applied, I got in and it's like a group, small group.

I don't know, 30 people, 40 people that get accepted and get to go.

It's not all expenses paid, but it's like most expenses paid.

And so, yeah, anyways, if I'm going on this trip late May now, and I'm going to see what

this is all about to Israel.

And I've heard of this, see if it does.

Is it a Jewish thing?

I don't think you don't have to be Jewish.

This one's not like.

It's like a.

But it's for like, you know, Israel's right, you know, sort of start up and kind of thought

leadership and young people, that sort of thing, like future leaders.

I mean, it's like a not in a bad way.

It's a propaganda thing.

It's like to get you into the Israel.

Yeah, it's like a program.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I'm doing that.

But my question to you, it's late May.

So first, scared of coronavirus may not go.

I was supposed to go to Germany in May.

So we should talk about coronavirus for a second.

But secondly, why do Jews have all the good things?

Why don't other people do this?

This seems like a great birthright seems great.

Jews and Mormons.

Yeah.

Mormons.

They're like the same thing, but Mormons might be better now because they don't drink.

Do Mormons have these perks like that, like birthright or something?

Yeah, they all have all types of shit, dude, and they're all real good at basketball and

Jews love basketball too.

I mean, dude, they're all like real similar, very similar group of people.

The thing I like is the sort of pay it forward thing.

I think Silicon Valley has this a lot where a lot of people who move here, they hesitate

to reach out to people because they're like, well, why would this person want to help me?

I have nothing to offer.

But like that is the culture of Silicon Valley is to pay it forward is to help the like next

person who doesn't know anything.

And I feel like Jews have this in their culture and I feel like Mormons have this in their

culture.

You know, I'm Indian.

I don't feel like there's this same, it's not as strong for Indian people to sort of

try to help out the next.

And I think part of it is because there's such a big population, you can't afford to

do it.

There's like, I don't know, six million Jewish people on earth or something crazy and they

run the world.

So I think, you know, with a small number of people, you can offer this like much more

high touch, help each other model.

I agree.

Okay.

You want to get into some stuff?

You want to talk about coronavirus or you want to?

Yeah, coronavirus.

Okay.

So I'm terrified of coronavirus.

And, you know, generically, I'm terrified with, you know, I was terrified without information

and then I started looking into a little bit more.

So I don't even know about it.

Can you explain what the coronavirus is?

Yeah.

So basically there's a couple of these viruses.

They're influenza strains.

And so...

The flu?

The flu, yeah.

So basically a few years ago, you probably heard, you know, SARS or swine flu.

And so, you know, the very first time I think SARS happened, there was, you know, a kid

got this flu, goes to the doctor's office, they're like, okay, this is the flu.

And kid dies within like a very short amount of time.

They're like, well, that was odd.

That doesn't usually happen.

So they took a sample and sent it to like the CDC or whoever, right?

Like they sent it to some lab to say, you know, what do you see here?

This was a very unusual case.

The health deteriorated so quick, that's not typical to the flu.

And what they realized was, hey, this is a new strain called, I think it was like H1

and 5 at the time.

And it was like, this is only ever found in animals.

This is the first time it's crossed over from animal to human.

And so that was bird flu when that happened.

And then so there's been these different sort of very, very deadly viruses, SARS, which

was very, very popular, MERS, which happened in the Middle East, respiratory syndrome.

So it's kind of what these Middle East, respiratory, I think, syndrome is what MERS stands for.

And SARS is sort of the same thing.

And so the thing with these was that, you know, although there's a lot of hoopla around

SARS and bird flu, like SARS killed less than a thousand people, less than a thousand

total fatalities, not a big drop in the bucket as far as the death bucket goes on Earth.

Coronavirus already killed like 3000 plus people.

So already much bigger than that.

The reason it's scary though is actually, and for a while people were like, oh, don't

worry, the fatality rate is low.

Fatality rates like, I don't know, 3% for this, whereas for SARS, it was like super

high.

I don't know.

I don't think it's that number.

But it's like majority of people who have it die.

Whereas with this, 3% means you get it, but you have a good chance of living.

But the big problem with that, and the article that I read was called why you're probably,

why we probably can't contain coronavirus, why you probably are going to end up getting

coronavirus is because this virus is extremely contagious, but has these symptoms, has these

trademarks that are very problematic.

So it takes a while for your symptoms to show up.

So you have it and you carry it for like, you know, 14 days without showing symptoms.

So you'll be spreading this around and not even realizing you have it.

Then once you have it, you don't just like deteriorate and like your health doesn't go

to shit where they, you know, you're in the hospital, they quarantine you.

It's like, you know, it starts innocent and it gets worse over time.

So the infectious period is so much longer that there's basically no way to quarantine

this thing.

There's no way for us to contain this.

And so what the article was saying was like, ironically, because it is not as fatal and

is not as bad for you right away, this thing is going to be unstoppable, most likely case.

Second thing with that was, I guess there's four, like, you know, typical strains of the

flu, which is why you can get your flu shot and still catch the flu every year.

So guys, there's these four different strains and the vaccine doesn't cover sort of all

the different variations.

And and so this guy's case was that most likely this is now just a fifth annual, you

know, strain that we're going to have to live with and it's just going to suck.

So very, very, you know, kind of a downer also, I'm sure, you know, sort of the bio nerds

out there are going to be like, no, there's 15 million strains.

That's right.

But like, that's the summary that I took away.

And if you want to just get the point, that's the point.

And so what you have up here is D to C stuff.

So like my, I looked at my portfolio yesterday, I was like, fuck.

So lost money yesterday off the stock market.

So crazy shit's happening all around.

So generically stock market, you know, people get paranoid bonds, you know, people flee

to bonds, stock goes down, that sort of thing.

Other funny stuff happening, you know, zoom, the conferencing software.

So the stock ticker zoom goes up 50% today, which it's up 50% today.

But wait, there's more.

It's the stock ticker Z O O M zoom, but that's not zoom's actual handle.

Zoom's actual handle is ZM.

So people are buying the wrong stock because they think people are going to be working

from home and teleconferencing in.

And so they're buying zoom, which does something else all together.

It's a very small cap stock.

I don't know, Henry, check what the stock for Z O M actually does.

And it's a tiny stock.

So it jumped 50% today and like, you know, but you can actually predict this because

this happened also at the IPO.

Whoever bought zoom, the other thing got his huge pop at zoom's IPO because of this.

And so we could have predicted this one.

I love when that happens, but all kinds of fucked up things, some other things.

My smart friends are basically saying, Hey, if you need, my smart friends, you know, people

who actually read the real information and like understand how the world works.

They were like, Hey, if you need prescription drugs, you should start stockpiling because

most of it's coming from China and the supply chain globally is fucked.

And like the world doesn't have that, like friend, friend of a friend, basically, how

the fuck do you stockpile prescription meds?

Basically buy up by your refills and, um, and so there's no global plan B for what happens

if China gets sick or slowed down.

We don't have another like supply chain and so all kinds of things are suffering.

And I have friends that have D to C companies that buy their shit.

They're backed up and they're saying shit.

Yeah.

Months months backed up.

I was talking to a supplier yesterday and he was like, even if we come back to work, there's

you know, all the other factories that we depend on the printing factory, the packaging

guys and they're not coming, like the workers are just not coming back because in most factories

in China, the workers don't actually live in that city permanently.

So for Chinese New Year, which is when this happened.

So Chinese New Year is a month long holiday.

Yeah.

Well, we have a Chinese intern.

He tells us all about it.

He goes, he goes, it's the largest travel day in the world because every Chinese person

goes home.

Everybody goes home and when they go home, they go back to very rural areas and already

there's this problem where they don't come, you know, often they don't come back because

you know, they don't want to be living in some other city working in a factory.

But with this, people are just not coming back.

And so there's no replacements.

It's like a very dire situation.

And like obviously at a human level, also incredibly dire situation.

So to turn shit into gold, where's the opportunity here?

I mean, what's going to happen?

Do you think that this is going to impact, have long term impact with China making shit

and you have to go elsewhere?

I don't know.

So there's a question of like, so two theories.

One is for stuff like this, the people who are going to do really well, they didn't start

now.

They started something two years ago, a blog on being a prepper or whatever.

And today's your day, you know, like this is your month.

And so I don't think the, I don't know how much I am interested in the sort of like today

opportunity also feels kind of fucked up.

We talked about Judy the other day.

Right.

The Judy sort of survival.

My friend Joe Spicer bought something from like survivor kit.com and he got an email from

them saying we have a hundred times our normal volume, we apologize, but we're going to make

it happen.

Right.

So those, the Judy thing that which the respiratory masks, those are not in the Judy bag, but

the respiratory masks are just like out of stock.

You can't get them.

And that's like the thing you need is like to protect your nose and mouth.

That's long gone.

No one can pounce on that, but we covered this guy who launched a company called Judy.

Judy.

Yeah.

Judy.

It's a emergency kit.

Yep.

Ready to go.

My wife texted me today and said, let's go and buy a bunch of stuff.

I feel the same way.

More people are doing this.

Have you ever been in an emergency situation by the way?

Have you ever like been in a city when like a flood happens or anything like that?

It's really bizarre how it feels.

No.

I was in Hawaii, our honeymoon.

There was a hurricane in Hawaii.

Oh, I left when I was there.

And so we went to the grocery store and first we go to the hotel and they're like, Hey,

we have early checking available.

And we're like, well, that's cool.

Thanks.

Cause we're a honeymoon.

And they're like, no, we just have like a lot of open rooms.

I was there.

I was like, what's going on?

They're like, well, have you seen the weather report?

Like there's our hurricane this week.

And of course I don't check the weather.

So I booked my honeymoon on a hurricane week.

And so we go to the grocery store and it's like the zombie attack has happened.

Like all the water bottles are gone.

Like the shelves are empty.

People are just checking out like four carts worth.

It's really like, it's a odd, eerie, eerie feeling when that happens.

Yeah.

This thing, my issue, here's an opportunity if someone wants to go for it.

Cause you know how pull, uh, is it, uh, there's a politico check.

That was called politico, politico fact.

You mean like the fact checking thing?

Yeah.

I don't know what it's called, but yeah.

So what you do is like, did Bloomberg really say this?

Right.

And it goes, that's what I want for a Corona virus right now.

I don't know what's true.

And what is it?

So there's a blog called, I believe it's called theprepared.com.

It is exactly what you want.

It is plain English.

It's like, here's the facts, not the overreaction.

And by the way, we'll tell you about the overreaction and why it's an overreaction.

But here's the facts.

What's it called?

It's presented in a calm, calm way.

The site is beautiful.

It works great on your phone.

I tweeted at the guy who started, I was like, this is a, like, thank you for making this.

Yeah.

I was like, thank you for making this site.

Cause this is exactly what I need in this situation.

It auto filled nicely.

A bunch of people must be going, I feel like it's, ah, he's selling kits.

He's selling kits.

Oh God.

This guy's awesome.

Cool.

I'm into this.

So scary situation.

Um, yeah.

Scary all around.

Um, best of luck to everybody.

Yes.

Okay.

You want to move on or yeah, let's move on.

Okay.

Um, I'll, I have a few interesting things that happened.

Uh, cool companies that we can talk about.

The first thing is something that has made a huge impact on me and I think more people

need to take advantage of it, which is transparent numbers.

So basically there's a group of people out there who believe that transparency is good.

Um, and they share all of their revenue.

They chair, they share their every metric about their business as deep as everyone's

salary, their bank balance, churn, how much it costs to, um, acquire a customer, how much

a customer stays on for everything.

Some are a little bit less.

Well, they'll share how many customers they have, how much revenue they have, what the

bank balance is, um, more people should follow, uh, these businesses.

I for one, totally against that.

I don't think you should ever reveal that, but I'm happy they do.

And I, and yeah.

Um, so some examples.

So throw them out.

Okay.

So, uh, first of all, my friend on core.

That's on course.

Last name.

He runs teachable.

Uh, I don't remember his last name.

Um, if you go Google on, can you tell me on course, last name, uh, founder of teachable.

Okay.

So he reveals, uh, on Twitter, the valuation of every round.

What is it?

Not Paul.

Yes.

Not say it.

Not Paul.

Not Paul.

Uh, he reveals the evaluation of every, every time they just raised like 20 million

bucks at a 200 something really good.

And he reveals how much revenue they have, how many customers they have.

That's awesome.

Yes.

Love that.

The other guy is Sahil Sahil, uh, from gum road shitty business.

Seems like an awesome guy.

He reveals every single month all the, you could Google gum road founder Sahil.

It's on his Twitter.

If you, he just, he doesn't have a tweet lancer, you don't even have to dive into

the books.

It's like, here's 140 characters, um, Joel from buffer.

He does this.

They actually just switched.

So if you go to bear metrics.com or Google bear metrics, they have like 18 different companies

that do this.

And it's pretty cool.

The buffer used to be on there, they're a $22 million a year company.

So pretty valuable.

And they were, were, were revealed everything, employees, salaries, like name, salary, equity,

you know, level, everything.

And you know what?

They're changing.

They're showing less and less.

Have you talked to them?

Do you know why it becomes problematic when you add more people?

Um, yeah.

Duh.

It's like, you know, guy, you know, creates, you know, turns his kitchen into a man cave

instead, gets a girlfriend and is like, Oh, she doesn't like it.

It's like, yeah, no shit, man.

Like I could have told you this, like when you bought the plasma and put it on the fridge.

People don't like their salary being public.

What?

So they still do salary.

They still do equity.

People get upset when they see their coworker who slacks off and works from home two days

a week and they see his salary because people don't understand that like different people

have different situations.

It's not like, so, so they did it, I think in a smart way, which is they basically were

like, they use it as customer acquisition.

Yeah.

It's part of their story because they got their ass kicked by HubSpot.

And so they like who sweet, you know, this has become a bit of a playbook for small business

to business SaaS companies, which is look, you know, acquisition of customers is hard.

If my customer is a small business owner, what is small business?

What would bring a small business owner to me?

What content could I put out there that would make a small business owner come?

So instead of saying seven tips to have more effective meetings, they were like, here's

our, here's our P and L for this month and sure enough, a lot of people wanted to see

that.

So a lot of people discovered their product through this and so, you know, maybe this

lines up totally with their values and that's why they did it, but definitely it was a great

way for people to discover their business.

I didn't use buffer, but I read all their shit.

And if anybody ever needed a solution like buffer, I was like, Oh, buffer, you should

use buffer.

Why?

Because otherwise I wouldn't have even known about them.

And so this was a pretty counterintuitive thing that they did and they were the only

ones doing it.

So you always get paid when you're the only one doing it.

If it's juicy.

Yeah.

And so one more person who's doing it and his business is way better than Buffer.

I love this guy's business.

So it's my friend, Nathan Barry.

I've met Nathan a while ago and Nathan has this company called ConvertKit.

They do close to two million and monthly recurring revenue.

So 24 million, he owns 100% of it.

It's probably a hundred to $200 million company.

Like it's really valuable because once customers are locked in, it's basically a MailChimp competitor.

It's an email server.

That seems high.

Two million a month, you said?

Oh, that's for sure.

That's how much they do.

So they're doing two million.

No, no, no.

That part.

So 24 million a year.

So 24 million, you think they're worth what?

Ten times.

Ten times that.

Okay.

It's grown like a weed.

Maybe.

People don't switch from their email platform.

Yeah.

It'll all depend on their retention.

So can you pull up actually, can you open up their metrics?

So just Google like bearmetrics dashboard or something.

I forgot what the URL is, but it's like something.bearmetrics.com.

And it's like their whole company, it's like, here's so many new customers we got.

Here's how many people churn this month.

It's like all their graphs and you can use it for your company.

He even showed how much profit they make.

I think it's like convert kit.

It's like, yeah, here it is.

You got to zoom in.

There you go.

So this, I don't know if this is their business or this is like the example thing, but it's

like monthly recurring revenue, net revenue, fees.

Yeah, that's how it is.

This is somebody else's business.

That's an example.

You got to do convert kit.

Yeah.

Do convert kit bearmetrics.

Type in convert kit revenue.

Maybe if you can't spell.

I also use convert kit.

I actually pay for subscription because I'm like, this product is so fucking powerful.

I don't actually have many sequences set up.

I have a sequence of one email right now, which is not a sequence, it's just an email.

But I think it's a great product.

I love convert kit.

I love Nathan.

Nathan's a great guy.

Nathan's only 26 or seven years old.

We talked about the idea of doing a drip sequence to build a newsletter for women going

through pregnancy and like week by week.

And I had a friend, sorry, I had a random listener reach out on Twitter was like, I'm

doing this.

Here's my kind of unique asset I have to go about this.

And how should I set this up?

And I sent them to convert kit.

I was like, dude, your problem is going to be solved in like, you know, the next 90

minutes.

Are people leaving bearmetrics or something?

Why can't you find it?

Here you go.

1.7 million.

Oh, is that it?

What's the URL?

Yes.

1.7 million monthly recurring revenue.

And you could just look at the.

It'll say churn.

So annual run rate doing 20 million a year, which is up 1.7%.

That's got to be how much this month revenue churn 5.1% per month.

That's not bad.

It's not great either.

Well, it's because it's a small to medium business.

Like if you're churning 5% a month, that's like, what's, what's the net growth?

So 5% a month is the churn.

What's the new business every month?

One and a half percent.

It's one and a half percent.

Yeah.

So he's net negative then per month.

No, I think that that churn, that, that growth month, that growth number takes into account

churn.

I see.

Okay.

Gotcha.

Oh, okay.

That's the net.

So they make on average $60, is it $60 a month per user?

Right.

The thing on the right.

So small to medium business is going to have a higher churn compared to other SaaS.

But dude, if you're, if you're a real sicko, you can just look at the live stream on the

right and see every minute when somebody pays them.

It'll say like right now it says $29 paid by, you know, you know, anonymous company.

Dude, he's got a lot of failed payments here.

Get on that, Nathan.

What's going on?

You can't be failing.

It's three out of the 12 payments here are failed for.

He has a chart that says which one's failed.

So these, these companies are, are badass.

I, so you wouldn't do it.

No, I think what about a part of what you do, the email list size, the revenue, I don't

want to share anything publicly.

Um, well, I'll say like eight figures or something.

No, I just don't think it brings a lot of good either.

You know, when a company's trying to raise or sell their business because like two months

before all these articles will come out just like handing over handing over information.

Yeah.

I'm like, why is that happening?

Cause they want to raise the round or they want to sell their company within the next

six months.

I don't, can you go to the next, go back to the Google doc.

No, I'm not a fan of it.

Uh, at one time when I, when I did my first conference when I was younger, it made like

60 grand in profit and I told everyone in the blog post and I hated the attention.

So I'm never going to do that again.

Um, okay.

So let's talk about pipe.com.

You know, pipe.com.

I saw this and I was like, dude, this is awesome.

I was, I came to the, I came to our little scratch pad to write it down and you already

had it written down.

Okay.

So here's what, here's, here's, let me set the stage here.

So when you have a subscription business, uh, I'm talking about software subscription,

but maybe it could work for all types of stuff.

Um, what happens is you do one of two things.

The first is you say, all right, you sign this deal and you owe us $200 a month.

And so that is a $2,400 a year subscription service.

And the company that is your customer will pay you $200 a month.

Um, what a lot of companies prefer to do, but this is actually a lot harder is they say,

all right, you signed one year contract.

Let's get all of your payment up front.

Right.

Now the, here's the balance here is do you want, or this is what people think they can

either get more customers and allow them to pay monthly, right?

Or they can get less customers, but allow them to pay annually and get all of that cash

flow up front.

And what, what's it called pipe?

What they do is if you have a business like convert kit and they have a history of three

years and it says, look, every month our turn rate historically is 5%, uh, pipe can go,

okay.

So you have all these customers paying you each month.

Let's just, I don't know how they discount it, but they probably, they'd probably discount

it a lot.

So they de-risk it.

And this will say, well, let's just assume that you're going to have, uh, 20% monthly

churn.

Right.

We're just going to, we'll give you all that money up front and you owe us as the money

comes in with a little bit of interest.

Right.

Awesome.

Awesome business.

So I have so many thoughts.

All right.

So a couple of things.

First, the financial infrastructure, what's, what's really going on here?

The financial infrastructure for software companies and tech businesses is being rebuilt.

So we already had investors, right?

Angel investors, seed investors, uh, series A investors, blah, blah, blah.

But then you have a bank for startups, Mercury started by, you know, some successful founders

from Hayes app.

They started at Mercury.

It's supposed to be a bank designed for startups.

And then you have things like Brex or ramp, which we talked about, which is like business

credit card designed for startups because the legacy institutions don't understand how

to value these companies, how to assess risk or how to like fund and finance these companies.

Then you have things that are, um, you know, like marketplaces where you've been buying

sell to buy and sell online businesses, like quite like brokerage or wherever you have due

diligence firms that pop up, that specialize in software businesses like centurica.

Then you have, um, you know, guys like pipe, which basically say, great, you know, you

have a cash flow problem, but you have steady, we know you have a predictable book of business.

We will give you the cash up front and we'll take a big off the top of that.

And so I think these are all really smart businesses, um, each one at a different part

of the, the financial stack or software and technology come fast pay.

We use it.

It's, it's pipe, but for media and publishers and pipe has raised 70 million in funding.

They're kind of stupid because we use them and we have a million, millions of dollars

in credit from them and we won't leave them because it's a wonderful service.

But the reason why they're kind of stupid is because the market's a lot smaller than

software and the numbers are a lot smaller.

I think pipe will be a multi-billion dollar company.

Yeah.

Or the one problem with these is, is there's a lot of, there's a lot of competition.

Yeah.

I think the aggregate will be.

So for example, this is also happening on the customer side, right?

So, um, companies like Affirm or Cecil or Afterpay, yeah, that's on the consumer side,

but same, same idea, which is like they're trying to provide different financial instrument

that like the traditional, um, financial company, like the, the current sort of incumbents aren't

really figuring out how do we help e-commerce companies sort of, how do we help merchants,

um, you know, turn their, their products into monthly payments for their customers.

But Affirm came out and did it and, you know, fast pay, sorry, not fast pay, Afterpay.

I think Afterpay is like a eight billion dollar company or something like that in Australia.

Uh, Affirm is a multi-billion dollar company here doing the exact same thing and they're

all fighting over these merchants.

I love this shit, man.

I say fuck the big banks.

I fucking hate them.

Yeah.

I hate them so much.

I hate having to talk to our rep.

They don't understand me.

Right.

They don't understand what we're doing.

So Ishan are the producer and editor for the podcast.

He had an idea.

So I asked him one day because I, you know, I have him on a sort of my right hand man.

So sometimes I just ping him with just random questions.

I said, what's the biggest idea in your head right now?

I was like, you know, what's the biggest startup idea you got?

And uh, you know, he's 20, 21 years old.

I don't know exactly how old he is, but he's a young guy.

And so he goes, well, I've been a, you know, freelancer, contractor for you and many other

people for, for last few years.

And um, he's like, why doesn't a sort of fast pay or pipe exist for contractors?

Like I have my invoice, um, just give me the money now and then you wait to like when the

company pays, you take it and you take 5% off the thing.

And I've actually heard this idea a few times before of like, you know, my wife was a, you

know, a consultant, you know, and so she always got paid like this on a 30 or 60 day cycle.

And she's, she would have, you know, 20 grand sitting and outstanding payments.

If she could just get the 20 grand, you know, headache free, she would take 1950, you know,

she would take 19,000 out of that just to get the money now and not have to keep following

up via email to be like, Hey, have you paid it yet?

And like all that stuff.

And so the problem seems real.

And this is more of a question to the audience of like, what am I wrong about?

What don't I get about this idea?

Seems like a great idea on the surface.

Um, what's the problem with this idea?

Cause I've heard it bandied around a few times over the years.

It's not a, it's not a like super niche idea.

I think a lot of people could have this idea.

So what's wrong with it?

And I think that you can learn just as much from common ideas that don't work as you can

from great ideas that do work.

If you start to identify, why does this seemingly good idea not work?

Why have people tried and failed over and over again?

There's a lot to learn as an entrepreneur.

Yeah, I'm digging that.

Um, so pipe.com's out.

I'm loving those things.

Yeah.

One thing.

Hey, Henry, there's a guest downstairs.

Would you mind letting her in and she's going to join us for like the next segment.

Um, Julia, what's up?

Hi.

How are you?

Doing well.

Thanks for having me.

You're already in my good books cause you actually listened to the podcast.

Not all the guests do.

I do my homework.

Yeah.

There you go.

I do my homework.

Yeah.

I have a, there's a bunch of employee fans.

Great.

Um, they found out and it was the, I mean, like they've been really gunning for me to

have a chance to do that.

Shout out to them.

Do you have like that like corny name for your employees?

Like everly welly and so literally, oh my God.

Okay.

Is that really it?

Well, but then I was like, Hey, did you just like come up with that?

Cause that is not that great.

And so I think like, you know, someone better with words is like, how about just everly?

Right.

That sounds much better.

We've shifted it to that.

Do you guys have this for the hustle?

Do you have like, plus the lonians or some shit?

No.

Say no.

Yeah.

No.

You're fired actually.

If you say something like that.

At the hustle.

No, we just people.

Yeah.

Exactly.

You know, with Bebo, somebody tried to like do that and I was like, thank God there's

not a nice one.

Cause I don't want this as like a thing.

Yeah.

Bebers that would have been it.

By the way, I'm followed by Justin Bieber on Twitter.

No big deal.

For real?

Yeah.

So cross 10,000 followers and Justin Bieber follows me.

I DMed him.

He did not reply.

How many people does he follow?

It's got to be one of those bots that just follows people.

Follow.

I don't know.

Henry, Justin Bieber, a number of followers we'll find out.

The only way this can go is down for me where he follows millions of people.

It's not alone ever my friend.

It's not alone ever.

Yeah.

Okay.

300,000.

That's a lot of friends of Justin Bieber.

So let's just leave it at that.

That's better than I would have thought.

I thought the number was going to be like 10 million.

Okay.

So speaking of, so you have, so you're Julia Everlywell is your company name, but your

name is Julia Cheek.

Yes.

That's a cool name.

Thank you.

I hate my last name.

And so I'm always thinking like, you know, just totally rebranding it to something cool.

But then I know people will be like, did you just change your last name to try to sound

cool?

Which is probably the least cool thing you can do.

Right.

And I'm not the opportunity to do that because I decided I had a choice to do Julia Taylor

maiden name or if I wanted to when I got married, take on Cheek, and it was just sort of, I

did it.

You did it.

Okay.

Great.

And so for people listening who are like, okay, great.

Who's this person?

Why are they joining the show?

Give us the like 30 seconds about what's interesting about you.

Yes.

So I'm Julia Cheek.

I'm the founder and CEO of Everlywell.

We are based in Austin.

We are about to celebrate our five-year anniversary, which is hard to believe.

Probably the most interesting thing about me starting this company is I started a company

in the blood testing space in the direct to consumer space coming with no entrepreneurial

background or healthcare background whatsoever and had every kind of X in the box of why

you wouldn't.

Right.

You were a consultant, right?

I was a management consultant.

Yeah.

And I went at Deloitte, went, got my MBA, had a really traditional Harvard, had a really

traditional corporate.

Sam's all about the pedigrees.

I hate it.

The hair sounds like Harvard.

Okay.

I'm in.

Yeah.

There's definitely some interesting ties I think that turned me on to being an entrepreneur

when I was there.

But certainly like I was really on the corporate path and then had this idea when I was working

at MoneyGram and left my job to do it.

And I can confidently say a hundred percent of people who know me was like, I'm definitely

going to fail.

There's no way it's going to work.

So what's the company do?

Yeah.

So when I was five years ago, when I was working at MoneyGram, I had a bunch of all these unexplained

health symptoms.

It was super common, which you hear from women in their late 20s and their 30s as they have

chronic fatigue, aches and pains, they're not taken seriously at doctors.

And so I went to five or six different doctors on good health insurance and each of them

ran different blood tests.

I never got my results.

I paid over $2,500 out of pocket.

Nothing material showed up or was communicated to me.

What do you mean you never got your results?

Like you personally didn't receive it?

Like I personally didn't receive it.

Right.

The doctor looks at it.

Or even if they called me, like I missed the call, nobody ever called, they said, we'll

call you if anything's abnormal.

Well, like what does that mean you tested 100 different things like just because something's

not totally out of whack doesn't mean there's not interesting or useful information there.

So I sat down and I looked at the health insurance landscape and I thought, man, people are going

to have to start paying for all this in a more meaningful way than we are today.

And I'm at least confident that my cohort of women between like 25 and 45 can't get

the testing that they need.

And I think I can solve that.

And so really started out honestly, not that it wasn't a big vision, but it was a little

bit like if you if you think about the first group you're solving a problem for, that's

what we launched for.

So today we have 35 different tests on I Really Well.com on Amazon, Target, CBS, Kroger.

We work with Humana and we offer consumer initiated testing for everything from STI

testing, heart health, food sensitivity, et cetera.

Basically is it every test?

It's like 90% of common test coverage.

Did you raise money?

I've raised over $50 million from West and East Coast VCs.

That was after obviously having like three rounds of clawing my way through funding and

then suddenly things did get easier and we actually grew from zero to see we did 40 million

in sales last year.

Wow.

Our third year in operation.

Is that okay?

No coronavirus, but 5 pounds for the 40 million.

Especially for the healthcare entrepreneur and we have to learn not to do that.

We're talking about coronavirus.

Do you guys sell coronavirus tests?

Yeah.

You know, if we did, I think I wouldn't be here right now, but I'm hopeful there's progress

as we learned today from Gilead and a couple other companies, I'm hopeful someone's close

on it.

Unfortunately.

Are those one-time purchases?

The 40 million?

No.

I mean, it's a combination of new customer acquisition and repeat.

We have a really healthy repeat business because a lot of our tests are things like cholesterol.

But it's not recurring.

It's what I mean.

It's not recurring.

It's enterprise contracts that are recurring for Medicare, but it's a mix of what I would

call one-time repeat and then actual recurring contracts, which is there's challenges.

There's good and bad.

I think when you have a one-time heavy business upfront, you have to build a good set of unit

economics from the get-go so that you're not just optimizing on this like promise of

playback.

Right.

Right.

So that's been good for us.

On the other hand, we've had to be super, super disciplined in a way that I think some

have been.

Yeah.

And so you're based out of Austin.

Yeah.

You do this D2C at home test that then gets sent to a lab, a partner lab.

They analyze it.

You get the full report.

It's like, here's everything.

Here's what's interesting about this.

You can share it.

It's like the way that it should be.

Like if you didn't even, you didn't have to like invent this.

If you just asked a layperson, you're like, how should this work?

That's the description.

And then you just made that like happen in real life.

The other thing that's interesting is you were on Shark Tank.

I was.

So as a fan of reality TV, me and Sam both watched the challenge, probably the trashiest

reality show that there is.

Well, tonight's the season finale of the Netflix one.

Which one?

No, the one where they get married after they live it in a room.

Love is blind?

Yeah.

Didn't it all come out already?

Didn't they just release it?

Today.

Today.

No.

I'm at episode three of that one.

Good show.

It's pretty awesome.

Pretty good show.

Have you seen it?

I haven't seen it yet.

Do you know the premise?

I do know the premise.

They put people in rooms and they don't see each other.

Yes.

So it's actually pretty cool.

Yeah, they have to get married.

Or you get caught off the show like literally, you don't even get like eliminated survivor

style.

They just edit you out.

Like you just not shown ever again if you didn't propose.

And so what ends up happening is it's 10 days behind a wall.

You talk to this person and you're speed dating basically behind a wall.

So you're kind of like deciding who you like.

And then someone proposes through the wall.

So they're like, can you come close to the wall, please?

I'm on a knee now and I want to, you know, ask you to marry me.

And then, but the thing is that I thought that's where the show would end.

But then they like put them in the real world together and they're like, all right, you're

going to get married in 30 days and see what happens.

And it's pretty interesting stuff.

So good job, Netflix.

Shout out to you.

What are you asking her about?

I was asking about Shark Tank because tell me about how it came about.

You applied many times one time.

How'd you get on?

Yeah.

So Shark Tank was an, honestly, I am a huge fan of the show.

I also am a huge fan of my own experience and that's not, I think, what everyone has

to say, but I always tell people, I think it can be a really game-changing thing for

entrepreneurs if you do it the right way.

It is a lot of freaking work, ton of work.

Really?

Once you're on or before you're on?

Before you're on.

Okay.

So I would say like, so I, we aired in November of 2017.

Go to the beginning.

How'd you even audition?

I know.

It was like a nine-month process of, I would say the year of 2017, 80% of my year was

just Shark Tank really the thing.

So we applied and by we-me, it's like a 50-page written application.

Online or?

You know, it is printed and written out and I tried to like, use a PDF editor.

It takes forever.

Yeah.

It was like a decade ago.

So you write this whole thing out?

I write this whole thing out.

I will be honest.

I was, I was a finalist at TechCrunch Battlefield in 2016.

The producers scout from Battlefield.com and they reached out.

Oh, that's cool.

So it's kind of like if you're thinking about American Idol, maybe, which I would

ever be, but you're, you either can get contacted and sort of put in the front of the audition

or you kind of-

You wait in line.

Yeah.

And I had necessarily a better chance, but I did get shortcut into the application process.

So filled that out, the application probably takes 40 hours and then you have to sign

all their contracts and basically sign your identity and image away to ABC for in perpetuity.

And then from there, you do a voice interview with producers.

You do a video interview as well with the application, then another video interview

of your pitch.

And then from there, the producers work with you for about four months.

To get it right.

Like what is your story?

What is your brand?

What is your script?

That's crazy.

And it's ultimately your, what I think people don't realize-

It's a human interest story.

It's a human interest story.

You are there to make good reality TV, but it is your decision.

The producers will help you and advise you, but this is your gig and it's up to you to

decide how you want to display yourself on TV.

But-

So do you still remember your-

Do you still remember your opening?

Because you probably drilled it like a thousand times.

I did.

And I will tell you, I thought I was like really good and comfortable at public speaking.

And then I did this and I was like, okay, I was really bad.

And now I feel comfortable.

Now I'm good.

Did you raise money from them?

I did.

So I signed or I shook on the largest deal ever for female entrepreneur valuation.

Wow.

So yeah, Lori Grineer.

She is on board.

She's been tremendous.

Because of QVC or what?

For me, it was really at the time, we had no brick and mortar retail presence.

And I knew that that was a priority for us to create a product that was like actually

accessible and ubiquitous.

And that's actually, I think I've been a really good move for us.

But I felt that she would be invaluable in helping us to get-

Does she help?

Those stores.

Yeah.

She really helped with packaging and branding and making something that's accessible when

you're trying to like sell a testing kit where either people think it's a DNA kit.

Right.

Or they have no idea what it is.

Right.

Being able to differentiate that when you have like 10 seconds to grab something.

How much of a check did she write?

So the deal we shook on was-

Why do you keep saying shook?

Because there's the shake on it.

Shake and then there's the actual deal.

What's the actual deal?

I can't disclose that.

Oh, come on.

However, it was different.

Yes.

Better or worse?

Better.

For the company.

And it's probably better for Lori.

And better because-

Honestly.

Why does the deal change?

So normally there's like, they do diligence and they might change it probably for their

favor.

You're saying it went better for you guys.

It went better for us.

How does it improve?

After you shake on the deal on the show, a fair number of those deals, I think it's

something like over half never come to fruition at all.

And then another quarter or so actually change and then another quarter get done at the terms

that-

I've had a bunch of friends say they screw them.

Yeah.

The sharks screw these-

Each shark has a different approach.

So like, they're totally, you then go into their management company, right?

So you're going into Mark Cuban companies or Lori Grineer's companies and so it's not

a, I don't know what each shark's process is.

I can say Lori's was super fair.

They go through very detailed diligence on everything, but you know what, the show actually

does diligence on you, they have a venture analyst on board.

So they run diligence on you before you ever pitch.

What was your valuation that you guys agreed on?

I pitched, my valuation was 20 million post money.

And how much did she invest?

So that would say-

Or how much did they agree on?

It was a line of credit deal at an 8% interest rate for 5% of the company.

And was it like, you know, hey, deal offer on the spot or do you have this like long pause

where you're like, can I think and write this down?

Well, in my case, every shark was out and I actually knew I wanted either Lori or Mark

Grineer, sorry, Lori or Mark Cuban.

And so I was really excited about it.

And so I really did want to work with her and it was a good deal.

So I actually sat on the show because you're supposed to negotiate.

I said, because it makes good TV.

Yes.

And so I said, I know I'm supposed to negotiate, but I want to take this deal.

So I didn't.

You do have, it is really what you see.

Like you can exit, you can talk about it with your partner, you can call a lifeline

or a friend.

They may edit that out or whatever else, but you can take a minute to think about it.

What's something people don't see or don't realize that is different from having actually

gone through it versus watching it?

What's one difference?

I think people know it's edited.

I don't think people realize how long the actual time filming can be from when you walk

in and walk out to like what they edit down to five minutes.

So it varies.

But mine was probably an hour and they edit it to seven minutes.

Some people have gone on up to two to three hours, some are 15 minutes, right?

And so I think you know it's edited to a degree, but I don't think you realize how much discussion

actually happens.

Was Lori investing her own money?

She is investing her own money.

So then does she have a fun or is it literally just hers?

It is in a fun structure, but it's her capital.

How much do you think she's worth?

You know, I don't know.

I would say she is a prolific salesperson in the sense that like the top three or four

companies from Shark Tank, and I mean companies that have done like a quarter of a billion

in sales.

Each total.

Yeah.

She has a relationship with each of those companies and is invested in each of those

companies.

So I suspect quite a bit, not to mention her own patent portfolio and the success she's

had with products.

She's a great team.

But do those pay cash flow, I mean, who cares if you, I mean, it's important, but if you

own equity in that business.

And there's not an exit.

Yeah.

So I don't know.

Where is her cash coming from?

I don't know.

I don't know.

I'd be very curious.

Sam's going to get to the bottom of this.

Look at that also.

It's just a very green, fat checks.

Well, and I also don't know.

She takes that Saudi money.

I don't know.

Each deal is different, right?

So like she does it just like an NEVC deal is different, right?

She's negotiating a deal with me and it's different.

I don't know what terms are, you know, with the rest of her companies.

I do know she has put all of these companies on the map from scrub daddy to squatty potty.

These companies have incredible consumer.

She delivers.

She delivers.

Yeah.

I've got a squatty puppy.

So he do.

I'm telling you, I think it seems to me actually, I don't have one, but it does seem, I mean,

it does seem very popular apparently.

So how much traffic did your site get?

Oh yeah.

So we got this back three years ago.

It was November, which would be even better than now because there's no more people watch

TV more than right.

And it aired the night before Cyber Monday.

It was Thanksgiving weekend.

It couldn't have been a better day, although my poor team, they were wonderful.

They canceled all their thanksgivings was, you know, a lot of work.

But what we got about 30 times our normal traffic, but we had an interesting experience.

We didn't have this tremendous like huge spike the night of in terms of purchases, but we

ended up doing about a million dollars in sales, which at the time was a tremendously

large number for us in like the four day period after.

Yeah.

The show.

So there's been a little bit of this interesting thing for us that I haven't heard many other

companies have, which is we doubled like we doubled in that week on a run rate standpoint.

And then we continue doubling the next month and we never had that decline.

Right.

But we didn't have this spike in like the three hour period that we aired.

Yeah.

Do you know how much traffic it was?

A million.

A million uniques to 24 hours.

Yeah.

So and we did, I mean, we had to, I mean, at the time we were not set up for that scale.

Now we don't have to think about it.

What were you using Shopify?

No, we've always been on on WooCommerce, not WooCommerce, not Shopify.

Big commerce.

We've built on it now and like totally customized it.

Something else.

I know, but it's one of the big ones that actually, I think we should have gone to Shopify, but

we didn't.

Gotcha.

So now I shouldn't name them because it's going to sound bad.

Right.

Shout out to Toby from Shopify.

Yes, exactly.

I like to think he's listening.

Yeah.

So.

Might be.

We're trying to get him on.

I was going to say that valuation, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's the streams on Twitch.

Great guy.

Yeah.

So yeah.

So we saw a really good traffic increase, but it was, it was a very different pattern

and Lori warned us about that.

She said some companies, it's like they sell out immediately and some companies, it's just

a slow, slow burn.

Right.

So that was what it was with us, but we did not crash, which was essential.

Do you, do you, I have a bunch of questions.

Do you have some?

I have some, not about Shark Tank though.

I mean, me neither.

All right.

Close the chapter on Shark Tank.

I'm, I know enough about Shark Tank.

Yeah, there may be a, there may be an upcoming, an upcoming thing there.

So.

You're become back as one of the glory children potentially, potentially, we are actually

in two years with a number, I think we're number 10 on the all time best selling list.

Right.

What's number one?

Squatty potty.

And then squatty potty.

What's the socks?

Bomb us.

Oh, they were on there too.

Yeah.

Number one.

I didn't realize that.

God damn.

250 million in sales.

Yeah.

Shit.

Yes.

I'm wearing Bobbles right now.

I think.

I love it.

I'm going to buy unlimited of the best sock.

Yeah.

That was the thing I'd always told myself.

That's cool.

When I become a millionaire, unlimited best socks and bomb us was like what everybody

said.

Do you love them?

Yeah.

I love them, but I need more.

That's all.

Like I ran out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I bought the, whatever the like 60 pair or whatever, but like, I think I need like

500 pairs of socks, like laundry.

You know, that's like when the best hacks you could do is what I did was I bought, I only

have one pair of underwear, but I own like 30 of them and one pair of socks and I own 50

of them.

Yeah.

They were match socks.

Yeah.

It's the greatest hack ever.

Yes.

I've been doing since I was 18.

Should we?

A plot.

Okay.

So I got a question for you.

Yes.

Let's say I buy the product.

What do I actually do at home when I take the test like physically?

What is this?

What do I have to do?

So this, people are often surprised how many people we get to take their blood at home,

but that's often what it requires.

So like most of our testing is pricking your finger to draw a small sample of blood.

Some are saliva, some are urine, but obviously there's a reason why they normally take your

blood at a lab.

It's because you can analyze the most number of markers and the broadest assortment of

markers using blood.

So it's a dried blood spot testing.

It's like a very frankly old school model.

Your method?

Yes.

Quest, LabCorp, all of the labs have dried blood spot testing.

What does that mean?

It just means you're pricking a finger and you're dropping blood onto a treated paper

or a treated device that is then, the blood is then drying.

But you guys aren't doing the test?

We're not.

You're a middle person.

We're a middle person, which if you were a VC responding to me back in 2016, I was

a marketing company.

Right.

That's what I was going to say, but I didn't want you to take offense to me.

No, I don't take offense to it.

They own the customer relationship.

So like that's the most important part.

Right.

And I think, you know, it's interesting when you're like, oh, you're just a middle man

or you're just marketing, but I really view us more as, okay, the labs are our manufacturing

partners.

So you don't buy things directly from manufacturers typically, right?

You buy them from a brand.

Right.

Who's your provider?

So we have seven different partner labs we work with.

Probably the one that runs the majority of our business is Perkin Elmer, which is a publicly

traded life sciences company.

They're huge.

They're global.

And they've been really a good partner to scale in.

They have a lot of credibility.

They're the worldwide leader in dried blood spot testing.

Right.

Of the 50 million.

Because what everyone grows up wanting to be, the worldwide leader in dried blood spot

testing.

So you know what, like for us in our space and we're in the medical space, it's really

important to have that stamp, especially with all the failures that are happening.

So I really want you to hear Sam's thoughts on food allergy testing, Sam.

Yeah.

Take it away.

I'm excited.

Let's go.

I think that a lot of them are bullshit.

Yeah.

Am I right or wrong?

Or what do you think?

I think it depends.

We talked about this earlier.

No, it's important.

But they do every test though.

They do every test.

It's okay.

If I don't buy one of them.

You know, it's interesting.

Well, first of all, so to correct you, there's a major difference between a food allergy

and celiac disease and then a food intolerance or a food.

That's what I'm referring to is intolerance.

Okay.

So, but just for, you know, listeners, I think it is important because even doctors

just say allergy and sensitivity is the same thing.

I compared the intolerance test to chiropractic.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Okay.

I was like, I think that it sounds good, but it doesn't work.

You know, it's interesting.

We have become associated, this food sensitivity testing in general has become associated with

Everly Well, which I suppose is like I'm proud of from a brand standpoint.

But on the other hand, it's been going on for over 30 years and there's thousands of

doctors that do both IgG, IgA testing around the US.

And most people that you talk to, if you've talked to them about food intolerance, they

say, oh yeah, I had that done at my allergist or I had it done a nutritionist or at my general

practitioner.

It has to be used in a specific context to be valuable.

And so I do think that is why it's really important that you educate people on how it

should be used.

It should be used with an elimination diet.

It is not a be all end all, it's a guidance.

It is something, it is our test where we have more people quantitatively say it's changed

their lives than any other test.

But and there's good research around it for that use.

But there's not good research around is saying like it's, it diagnoses you with an allergy.

It can just be used as kind of a black and white guidance of what you should and shouldn't

eat.

That's absolutely not true.

So I think there's a lot of misinformation.

I think there's a lot of different types of testing and the nomenclature gets mixed up

for things it shouldn't be used for.

And I think it's great that Everly Well has been known as the brand for that.

But honestly, we're offering a test that has been around for decades and needs to be used

in the right way.

And if we can take the lead in educating people on what that should be, then we'll do that.

What category of tests do you think is the biggest opportunity for you?

Well, we call it sexual health, STIs.

And there's several reasons for that.

One, right now our tests are too highly priced because the lab itself is expensive for us

to run the test.

What's the price roughly?

Right now our single marker STDs are a really good price between $39 and $49.

It's also HSA and FSA covered, so for some people that's a great solution.

But many people, for obvious reasons, want a comprehensive test, and that test is, I

think, $200.

Who's the leading company in this space for STIs?

STIs.

STIs.

I keep saying STDs.

STIs is the clinical rate.

That's our old school, high school thing they told us.

Yeah, essentially transmitted infections is the nomenclature.

We call it sexual health testing because we think that this is something people should

just be proactive about.

So who's the biggest in the space for digital?

For at home.

Yeah.

I would say it's probably us, just from branding standpoint.

There's a couple companies that specialize.

Sorry, I mean in revenue.

You guys in revenue?

Yeah.

Which, to be clear, should tell you how under resource and served this opportunity as a

business.

Because shouldn't that be like a multi-billion-dollar revenue business?

Yes.

Yes, this is a multi-billion-dollar opportunity.

I mean, again, if we're going to rip lots of other people, it can come into the space.

There's a specific company that only does STI testing, but they haven't been well funded.

They've struggled.

And we really believe that this is not only how you can best close public health gaps.

You also can get people on board to then use testing from home over their lifetime for

any other health issue as well.

People don't want to go into a clinic.

You don't want to go, period.

Right.

And our solution, you actually can not only get your results, but then you can diagnose

and treat through an independent physician if you have a positive, if it's a relevant

STI that can be treated.

So it's a full service solution, and what you're looking at right now is we have a really

good business, but if you look at the price sensitivity, there's a certain age group that's

going to be willing to pay $250 to go get a test versus going to a clinic.

Are you acquiring customers profitably on first touch, or do you hope to lose money

on them on their first touch and then hopefully come back?

Profitably on first touch.

That's great.

That is for me.

We're in Austin.

I'm a first-time founder.

We're building a sustainable business.

We didn't go out and raise money on this premise of just negative contribution margin

and then hoping to stop a little bit around that.

Facebook's the main channel?

No way.

Search.

Well, it depends.

Search for different categories.

But search has a ceiling.

It does have a ceiling, even with STI testing.

But if you search STD tests online, you need that shit right now.

Right.

Or food allergy.

So for that category, certainly search is great for us, but Facebook slash Instagram

was for a long time our largest acquisition channel, both by force and by proactively

moving away.

Right.

We've really diversified, which has been a good move for our business.

And what, TV now or no?

Some TV, we've had mixed success with, again, because we are on this profitable unit economics

from the beginning play, when we can't fully measure attribution and ROI on first purchase,

sometimes it's hard for us to want to invest.

So we've had mixed success with TV, but we do believe it's important for brand building

and category education.

Is all that 50 million going into marketing spend?

No.

No.

Engineering, products, clinical.

A lot of it goes into clinical and medical affairs.

But you're not doing the clinical.

So what's the, is it the kit, making sure the kit is as robust as it should be or what?

Well, we have a regulatory and compliance team that ensures that either the lab partners

we're working with or new lab partners that we're making sure that they're meeting highest

quality standards.

We're starting our own research studies to prove outcome data, which will take time,

but we thought it was really important.

We do have, obviously, a healthy paid marketing budget, but we're trying to hire more in-house

around content SEO, organic, and those pieces as we start to actually build out a healthy

marketing engine and not just be dependent on this paid social thing that we were the

last few years.

Could you have bootstrapped this?

No.

And that, I think, is a really...

I feel like you would have if you could have.

I would have if I could have.

Well, because if you...

It's a really important question, though.

I said, you're a marketing company, I'm like, oh, okay, so just white-label this thing,

do you see it, and put this cute millennial pink on it, and then just start buying traffic.

Where is the...

I mean, that's how simple it sounds.

What were some of the challenges beyond the like, send traffic to a landing page and

order this white-labeled product?

Right.

So we don't white-label.

We actually fully end-to-end construct and brand our kits.

And really what the lab does is run the sample.

That's the goal of the lab.

But there's also a really complex product from an engineering standpoint.

So not only creating, obviously, what is somewhat basic, an e-commerce site, but then

a results platform that is able to speak with a third-party physician network, translate

lab results that were often really messy, and then be able to say that in a meaningful

way to consumers.

And five years ago, that was not as easy from a like, a UX standpoint as it is today.

So a doctor interprets all of the results as an independent physician?

Why couldn't they do something where they just like, say like the normal ranges and

if you are in range or out of range?

So like I use WellnessFX and they do a blood test and they just say like you...

They also use a doctor.

No shit?

Really?

It's for regulatory reasons.

It's to make sure that you basically have a doctor in the process of saying, okay, I've

made sure that this test is appropriate for you.

I've made sure that if there are critical values, so for example, if you took our STI test and

you had an abnormal, you would have a physician call you and talk you through next steps and

offer you a telemedicine consult.

Yeah.

That wouldn't be...

Right.

And so there are checks and balances in place.

You don't always have to interact with the doctor if it's just a normal result.

But there's certain like levels of escalation.

And so when you're at the beginning...

It is similar to WellnessFX.

It's up to Tom Kitts and WellnessFX really kind of stayed on the quantified cell for

brand and never was able to scale.

That business totally fizzled.

Yeah.

WellnessFX.

I thought it was gonna be awesome.

It's all right though.

I use it, but it's not like that successful.

But it's interesting.

I mean, there have been a lot of companies, many, especially after Shark Tank.

I would put it in the two dozen range that launch an Instagram, create a pretty logo,

have a kit, and then about six months to 12 months later, you never hear from them again.

Right.

And it does speak to the power of brand marketing and experience.

I mean, our NPS is a 60.

We have a world-class customer base.

I think in this case, first mover advantage really helped us in the category.

It doesn't cause us to keep winning, but it mattered a lot here.

Right.

I'm not a NPS.

I'm not super savvy at NPS, but is 60 good?

I thought 60 would be sort of like middle of the road.

It's what you compare it to.

You have to compare it to others that are similar to you.

Yeah, for your industry.

If you're a bank and you have a 60 NPS, you're the best bank on earth.

If you're a 60, but you're like a movie, then it's like, yeah.

Exactly.

World-class would be like eight year above, right?

So certainly it's below that.

But I think how we view it as we look at other healthcare services and most are around a zero

to a negative.

Don't measure.

Right.

And so we feel good about our product rating is four and a half out of five stars on average.

And so we do look at that and say, okay, this has to be qualified.

It's a very favorable VC metric, one that I think has sometimes limited action ability

or limited kind of data driven decision making or what do you do with it?

But we like it in terms of saying, okay, just benchmark.

Yeah, it's a good benchmark.

So when you were starting this and because I'm thinking, my sister is managing consultant,

my wife is managing consultant and you have this idea, you're sitting at Deloitte and

you have this personal experience where you do this test and you're like, this is crappy.

That's what I'll call like every entrepreneur has the stated story, which is like, you know,

I was trying to get a test and I just, you know, was so frustrated and therefore I decided

to create a solution and behind the state of story is like, you know, more of the real

story and our audience is very entrepreneurial and they feel this on a day-to-day basis.

They have these ideas.

They also have doubts.

They want to vet the idea.

So tell me like that from the moment you had the idea that first couple of weeks, you know,

what was going through your mind?

What were you doing?

And what got you over the point where you're like, okay, I'm actually going to do this?

Yeah, I think this is important because I, it is the real story, right?

So I'm like, oh, I just had this idea and I moved Austin in a U-Haul.

All those things are true.

But there's a few things my husband and I, there's a few things that I think are important.

It's not like I woke up one day and was like, oh, I'm going to go do this crazy thing.

So I did go to Harvard and I was in this weird time, it was during the recession in 2009

when everybody in my class in the class above me were becoming entrepreneurs.

And so you had run the runway, you had birch box, you had guilt appears before, stitch

fix, Oscar, I had two unicorn founders in my section alone.

And at the time, grab taxi out of Korea and then grab huge who was, oh, coupé, both in

my section, right?

So at the time it didn't feel that unique, but I was being exposed to this day in and

day out.

And so I had this kind of roadmap for how to go about it once I started thinking about

becoming an entrepreneur.

And so I, the reality is I probably spent two years on the weekends in my spare time,

not making any money, but going through different industries, different business models, advising

different companies on their business plans and seeing like what would really stick.

Do you have all that research saved?

I do, but it's really like, I love that.

Yeah, it's kind of boring to me.

I will, I will send it, but it's, it's like, I would be very literal in how I would go

about evaluating all these ideas.

And honestly, Everlywell was probably the craziest and the worst of the ideas for me

to go and actually do, given my background.

What were the other ones?

No, I mean, it was like travel, luxury resale, something like what the real, real is doing.

I mean, house decorating, curation online, like all kinds of different spaces where there's

probably opportunity in any of those ways.

Hey, you just described how, so you're, you're a two for two company ideas.

To be clear, I don't know if I took an idea from them or if I actually came up with it.

But you know, the match with Everlywell was not necessarily one where you'd be like, oh,

it wasn't obvious.

Right.

It was not obvious, but it was the one where like, I realized really early on, this is

a decade long thing.

So if it actually works, you're in it for a long time.

So you did it right away after you did this exercise?

You sort of started it?

No, it was a couple of years.

I mean, until I had this health experience in 2015, and then I kind of matched the two

together.

So this was early 2015.

I ended up incorporating the company June 18th, 2015, and then I left my job in August.

And did you think of yourself as an entrepreneur?

You said you were on the corporate path, but sounds like you had dabbled in the idea of

being an entrepreneur.

Did you think of yourself that way?

I didn't.

Both my parents are lawyers.

I didn't realize, one, that being an entrepreneur was actually a career choice and a path that

you could like become good at.

That didn't necessarily mean financial success, but you could be a serial entrepreneur and

actually make that a career.

And I also, frankly, didn't have a lot of confidence.

So it was interesting at Harvard because I kind of looked around and thought, I think

I'm just as smart as all these people who are like really founding successful companies.

Right.

And I can do it too.

And I honestly did it just to see if I could do it.

I truly couldn't even imagine having made a million dollars in sales.

And so I'm not sure I necessarily thought about what it would look like today.

I just thought it was a really big opportunity and something that I wanted to see if I could

go do.

And that was how I made the decision is I thought I'm passionate.

I think it's a major thing.

I was in the FinTech space and I thought that was already really oversaturated by 2015.

There's tons of apps, et cetera, and so I knew that this was an area that I didn't

care about.

Turns out it wasn't.

I know.

Turns out I was a little wrong about that.

And I do think wellness effects is an example where I think they were just ahead of their

time.

They were too early on the curve.

Right?

Well, I think the folks who started are like scientists or something like that, or they're

in the industry.

Right.

And I actually think that's a weakness.

You have to kind of be a marketer first, or you don't have to be, but you have to have

that part of you.

You got to be aggressive.

Right.

So, as you were an outsider, right, to this industry, what opportunities have you uncovered

where you tell people, man, just so you know, there's this huge problem in this industry,

I think it can be solved.

What other adjacent things have you observed?

Because I'm a total outsider, but when I hear about these types of businesses, I'm like,

if you can solve a handful of problems, it's so easy to crush it.

Price transparency, which may seem obvious, and I think there's a lot of companies that

talk about in healthcare doing price transparency, but they don't actually do it, and even the

digital startups trying to do it, they can't actually tell you what something will cost

in healthcare.

So, we just go outside of insurance so that we can actually tell people what something

will cost.

But if you were able to do this in a really big way and say, hey, we can accurately tell

you your cost commitment for the service, I think you would crush it.

Within the insurance system.

Within insurance, but I think there is a much, much larger growing acceptance of consumers

who are happy to pay for something in healthcare as long as they know what they're going to

get and what it costs.

Right.

And so, I don't know that it has to be within insurance.

Gotcha.

You also have this HSA and FSA space that's exploding in terms of people on FSA and HSA

plans, and then what they're using those dollars for.

I think there's an interesting play there.

So, what does that look like?

What's an example?

Like, have you started it?

Of a company?

Yeah.

Oh.

That's okay.

That's what we do.

Man, if you could be a, so if you had physicians and you said, okay, I'm going to have you

pay $50 anytime you see the physician, we're going to own a pharmacy, and any of your drugs

are going to be transparently priced, and you can't use a coupon, everything is the

same price, and it's all generic, and then if you say, okay, and then I want to be able

to get, you know, testing done, and then they can tell you the pricing on that, but here's

the problem with it, you have to actually own the supply chain and the services chain.

You have to be vertically integrated.

You have to be vertically integrated to do this, because otherwise, I know, but my point

is you almost build a system external to the system, and you can do this at affordable

pricing, the reason healthcare is so expensive is because you're adding cost to the system

through the insurance, and those contracts, and when you get the bills, you're getting

the bill for whatever they didn't want to cover, but the provider billed the insurance

company what they hoped the insurance company would pay, not at all what it cost.

What else?

It doesn't have to be healthcare, it could be whatever, it could be in personal life.

You've discovered along the way, for example, when we started our company, we realized that

paying freelancers, I was like, wow, I didn't realize how hard that was.

So along the way, where you're an entrepreneur, are you the type that do people with notes

and stuff that's like- Some of them get solved, so for example, like three years ago, two

years ago on Black Friday, we hit a bunch of compliance limits with our banking system

on spend in Facebook, so I was like, gosh, I wish there was a product where you could

actually get like a- Cash advance.

Cash advance for social media.

What are you using for that?

Now we're big enough to where we don't have to use a product like a Brexit.

We just started talking about that.

Or like Clear Bank would do this.

But at that time, if those solutions had been around, we absolutely would have been able

to take advantage of them.

And then, of course, they came out and I was like, oh, that would have been a really good

idea.

But we really hit a bunch of challenges with that, and it really can bring down businesses.

And I think other places are, how do you make, as you think about doing a startup, the amount

of time we spend on contracts and HR and legal and templatizing, I mean, there's so much

cost in the system that I would love to take out of it in healthcare and in highly regulated

industries.

It's really hard to do things quick, dirty, and cheap, and it's unwise.

So what do you guys use for your company's health, or your company's HR system?

For our system?

Music, pay-law, I mean, we used to use gusto, but these really kind of heavy, clunky systems

that look like they're, you know, for Fortune 500 companies, and there's nothing great between

like a gusto and then the next step up that you need for all of your administration payroll.

And why do you use that?

Why?

Yeah.

Versus Augusto?

Yeah.

Because the services started, they couldn't get all the functionality.

It's like more sophisticated, more enterprise-y.

Yeah, it's more enterprise-y.

But the jump between like, hey, you're less than 50 people, to like, hey, we need something

much more sophisticated and scalable is meaningful.

And that's because you're paying all these physicians.

That's an independent network, but we are paying all of our people, and we have about

that.

And the physicians, are they doing this on the side of their normal practice?

Are these freelancers?

Typically not.

They work for another company.

They're typically summer 1099, but typically in these structures, and there's a lot of

these structures, be it a normal telemedicine company or these kind of separate entities.

And they typically are either full-time employees, like, doctor on demand entirely employees all

their doctors.

Right.

Or some of them are-

So, like, HIMS is using one of these third parties to employ doctors?

I don't know if they're using a third party or if they have their own.

Like, those third parties exist?

Those third parties exist.

That's a-

Are you in or out on the HIMS row?

In.

You're in.

I'm in.

Oh, I'm heavily in.

Oh, nice.

And, you know, I think they've done a specially row, has done a nice job of publishing their

decision-making criteria around prescribing, and how they weigh risk, and how they have,

I think, responded to a lot of the criticism in this space.

Because companies are good for us, because people still don't realize that you can get

a medical product, whether it's a prescription or a test, consumer initiated online and have

it at home.

And so it helps just, I think-

Yeah.

Yeah, I did my eye test at home, you know, because why would I want to go to the eye doctor

if I could put my phone 10 feet away?

Simple contacts.

And so the first time you do that, you're like, okay, cool, yeah, I'm not going to leave

home if I don't have to.

So next time I have a problem, great food sensitivity, let me use another at home

product.

I do think-

It's a lifestyle.

Yeah.

And for me, like, I'm on one of the HRS face or retinal prescription for skincare and

for wrinkles, and that just saves me time from having to go to the dermatologist, where

they're trying to get a mail order pharmacy to get me to re-order anyway.

Right.

Be clear, it's not like HIMS and HRS created some model, that's how physicians-

Well, they're a marketing company too.

Yeah, for sure.

I just, we were talking about, have you heard of Legacy, it's for a sperm company?

You like that or not?

This is a controversial one because of the marketing practices that imply that there's

more of an issue than there is.

What's that mean?

That's like, we diagnose you with the problem and then you buy our solution.

Well, they just store your sperm too though.

I think that the concern in the healthcare space around this particular problem has been

that percent of men that actually need this is so minuscule, but their advertising practices

make claims that make it sound.

But why wouldn't you want to store your sperm if it costs so-

Well, so this is where, so here's what we believe is out really well.

So for example, we get a lot of questions around, well, like, how dangerous is it for

people to be over testing their cholesterol?

Well, my opinion is you can buy as much Coca-Cola as you want on the shelf.

If you're over 18, you can buy as many cigarettes as you want, and those things actually do you

harm, and you still have independent thought and agency of making those decisions.

And so, cholesterol testing or sperm freezing, if that's what you want to do and you're going

to pay for it, then that's your right to do it.

And so I'm with you, but I think you have to then still have a fine line, like we have

to be as everly well as Hems and Roe and Legacy and all these companies, you have to be super

careful about the claims you're making and how, how kind of what scare tactics you're

taking for people who want to buy it, because there is going to be some backlash eventually

from the FTC, and there will be some regulatory kind of engagement on this.

It's just lagging right now, because that's what happens with regulations.

It catches up later.

Right.

I love those businesses, because I can't imagine having to go to the doctor and do that.

Yeah.

Like, it just sucks.

Yeah.

It's pretty bad.

No, it's good.

I mean, and that's exactly what the model is there for.

That's exactly why when I talk about the opportunity with SDI testing, I think it's real.

Same with that.

It's huge.

It's because people don't, you actually, whatever it was doing in general, we're getting people

to comply with something they don't want to do otherwise.

So like 40% of the time.

Because you want to get tested, but you don't want to be like, hey, I'm doing, yeah.

Not just SDI.

People just don't get it done.

Right.

The requisition from their doctor.

Particularly men.

Exactly.

So the assumption, the data shows about 40% of tests that doctors issue never get completed.

So.

Yeah.

I treated it like a suggestion.

It's like, oh, I should do what this says.

You have to take business away from lab for a quest.

You just have to help people actually get done what they need to.

Right.

And on top of that, you know, that'll obviously, I think make the pie bigger as well.

What's the most common SDI, Chlamydia?

Oh gosh.

I actually don't know from a statistics, but I think it's Chlamydia.

Are you guys?

We couple those together.

And that's our, that's our top selling skeeling.

It's Chlamydia.

So everybody who's listening, we want you to get yourself tested for Chlamydia.

Go to everlywell.com.

Yes.

And order your test today.

Julia Cheek.

Thank you for coming.

Do you want to give people a way to follow you, find, you know, hang out with you more?

How should people get more of these thoughts?

Yes.

Julia T. Cheek on Twitter and private on Instagram.

Thank you for that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Feel free.

All right.

Thank you for coming by.

Appreciate it.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.