Salt & Stone founder Nima Jalali on building a $165M/yr skincare brand as a solo founder — and why it never almost died

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We got to make it illegal. If I drop a good oneliner in a group chat, it should be illegal for people not to chime in, react, hopefully get get some laughs.

Yeah. The like button is just going to be like a circle, whatever.

Thank you for having me.

Good to meet you.

Nice to meet you.

How you doing? Introduce yourself for those who are not familiar since it is your first time.

My name is Nema Jalali. I'm the founder of Salt and Stone.

Okay.

And founder and CEO.

Yeah. take us take us back

and and I'll I'll give some context. So, I met Nema recently moved into into my area and I think we met within like a week of of you moving in and uh so I have I haven't even gotten like the full story even though we've been hanging out the last couple weeks.

Cool.

Yeah, full story. I was a Yeah, I was a pro snowboarder. Um I heard you're from Pasadena. Is that right? Yeah.

So, I'm from Lakinata.

No way.

Yeah. That's awesome. So, grew up there, was obsessed with skateboarding, and then got into snowboarding and started going to those local mountains, right?

Mountain High, Big Berry.

No, like Mount Waterman and it used to be called Kraka Ridge. Have you heard of that? Yeah.

Yeah. And so, back in the day, you know, when I was in high school, we had, you know, El Nino Winters, like a ton of snow, and they would actually operate. They don't operate anymore.

And so, I just I would just get out of school at 12 every day and go up there like 5 days a week. Yeah.

And I got good and went off and turned into a pro snowboarder.

Um,

what does that mean? Does that mean uh like speed competitions, trick competitions? What are you doing? Cuz there are there are multiple there are multiple ways to become a professional snowboarder. Correct.

More more like freestyle.

Yeah. So there there's b there's basically like two paths. There's like think like lifestyle guy just like going around making movies all the time and then there's like the competition track and then there's some crossover. Generally there's sponsors in both departments but one person is focused on winning contests going to the Olympics games

doing things like that and then there's then there's the more like

uh guys that might do back country or street or park but they're focused on producing

uh like parts basically.

Got it.

I didn't know you knew so much about it.

I know a lot.

Yeah. So I wasn't the contest guy. I was more in movies and in magazines and stuff. Yeah. Okay. Um, so I went off and did that.

How long were you doing that?

Uh, pro for about 10 years. From about from about 20 to 30ish.

10 years. That's awesome.

Yeah. Yeah, it was amazing. I mean, that was like my college really.

Yeah, that must be so much fun.

Yeah, it was fun. What is the what I feel like entrepreneurs can probably resonate with what like a pro snowboarder is doing where your job is to basically produce write like a banger part a season potentially multiple and there's like this where you're basically like

what is part

like that's like a five minute video that might be released independently or as part of an entire movie. Okay. And so your job is to do enough tricks

stomp them as Nemo would probably

It's a lot. Yeah, it's a there's a lot. I mean, there's there's like you pick out a song you you know that you want to have in your part. There's first part and then the most prestigious is being in the la the last part, you know, in the in the video. Like everyone So it's like you got this video and everyone's supposed to be on the same like kind of like team to make this best video. there's like probably like 10 snowboarders going after it and doing it, but there's a little competition within that cuz everybody wants to get last part.

You know what I mean? And so it's it's not a team sport, you know? You're really out for yourself. And like there there are a lot of lessons that you learn,

especially growing up skateboarding, you know, where it's like fail fail fail fail. Like trying to like learning how to kick flip

takes you six months of just failing and then and then you figure it out. And so

yeah, then the other the other thing is these parts come together. It might be like four or five minutes, right? It's just one trick after another,

but you're missing sometimes they'll include it, but they're missing like the blooper reel, which is like sometimes you have to fall really really hard 20 times in a row to land the one that you make it look easy

and uh that gets cut out. So, I feel like there's so many there's so many lessons out of that. uh you know a lot of successful entrepreneurs would have would have you know failed miserably for years and then they have that breakthrough kind of like product or feature whatever it is and snowboarding it's happening on like a day-to-day basis where you have like one season right to put together your part and you're kind of like racing against

uh mother nature in some sense.

Can you chase the winter into the southern hemisphere effectively?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

So you would be how many days would you actually be snowboarding over a year?

I mean 5 days a week like I I ended up I would live I lived in Tahoe Mammoth Utah and all that but I I ended up landing in Big Bear just because it was like the weather's always good for if you want to just snowboard every day and and train.

Um the weather is always, you know, sunny and nice and it's not like icy or cold. So I would just go there and snowboard every day and then fly out of LAX to wherever I needed to go. And Big Bear Big Bear is like basically one lift that you're just going around and around and there's

practice 50 50 features you can hit on one. So you like go and you might be hiking like a little bit on one feature.

Uh but but you're basically lapping it. So people that like don't like park go there and they're like this is the worst mountain ever. Like if you're used to skiing in Mammoth or Tahoe or Colorado, but if you just want to ride park, Big Bear is incredible.

Jordy, we're going to have to go, man.

I know. I know. No, I went I went through I I did I did almost like 50 days I think my junior year of college. A lot at Big Bear. I would just go up and lap lap the park.

Nice.

Um a lot of good memories.

Yeah. So it's a project. It's a project hemisphere.

What's that?

Where do you ski in the summer? The southern hemisphere.

Um

if it's if it's summer here, I imagine that even Big Bear there's no snow and so you have to go to the southern hemisphere.

The only time I snowboarded in the summer was going to Mount Hood where it was like there's a glacier.

Okay.

It's still It's still snow. I don't

There's still snow. So, it's it's in uh Mount Hood and and they have like the summer camp. Okay.

And so, all these kids go and a lot of pros go and stuff, but honestly, during the summer, I would just skate. I would skateboard.

Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah. Okay.

Okay. So, the reason you're here

is because uh you built Salt and Stone over the last eight years. Exit partially exited this week. I don't know uh I don't know which I know the numbers. I don't know what numbers you're you're disclosing. Um but uh but yeah, take us through what was what was the transition like? I'm assuming you didn't just like retire and immediately start Salt and Stone or was it effectively instantly?

Um, so I I had a couple ventures within that industry like the the surf, skate, snow world

and then you know Salt and Stone was this idea that that I had had and um

which is like

I don't know if you can give any context on that but like brutal industry because every single pro and everybody adjacent also wants to start ventures within the industry. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. And but I mean there's just such a ceiling in that in that world, you know, unless you're like end up being a Burton or a Quicksilver or something like that, right?

Yeah. And even those brands have struggled.

Totally. Um so I knew I knew I wanted to do Salt and Stone and you know, I wanted to do something on my own to be honest with you. I had, you know, just I had business partners and everything and and I wanted to just see how far I could go if I just went like all in 100% like not have to, you know, uh worry about waking up at 2 in the morning and doing, you know, emails and just just going so hard and and just I could justify that if it's just like all me and I'm just like going for it. And so, um yeah, and so transitioned over to that full-time and it's been just a rocket ship, man. It's been such a great such a great year.

Yeah. You guys did 165 million last year. Yeah.

Scaling still. What was the first product?

The first product was sunscreen actually. Yeah. So, sunscreen

which again is like a brut is I I would say like from my perspective sunscreen's like a brutal category cuz like a lot of people use it throughout the year but like much fewer people actually are using it enough to like need to even be on a subscription and then oftentimes you're buying it like just in a random hotel like you know retail store because you're on vacation. Anyways, but

yeah, how did that go?

I always wanted to do deodorant and and sunscreen was the it just it just happened faster as far as searching for the perfect, you know, chemist contract manufacturer and and all that stuff to bring it to life. And so sunscreen came out, the the brand was profitable from day one. Um and then when we launched deodorant,

how did you sell? Were you just selling it D to C or

So we had some retail uh on day one. So I had retailers lined up. We had I think about 40 to 50 of them. And so as soon as we were shipping orders, we're collecting payment. And so, you know, I funded it out of my own pocket to start,

but but was able to pay myself back pretty quickly. And and you know, uh, the

Were those 40 to 50 stores were those individual stores or chains or

they were individual stores? Individual part. Yeah. Yeah. And then it was when we launched deodorant was really when it, you know, stores started coming to us, you know.

What's the what what are the economics of like getting one sunscreen product? Sounds like one skew into one of those stores. Are they buying like a $100 box or

There was a min there's a minimum, you know, like and I from my memory I think it was like a case pack of 12 sunscreens that came out to like 300 bucks or something.

Okay. Yeah. And then you can sell it at a markup and there's MSRP.

That's right.

Okay. Uh how how quickly did you realize that like my my experience having invested in CPG over the years is the number one the number one factor that leads to success is not like operational excellence. It's not always just the team. It's just like how good is the product. And I've seen a lot of like exceptional teams that have like all the operational chops, that have all the experience, come out with a product that might be fine or pretty good, uh, but they just don't go anywhere. They can never reach escape velocity because the product fundamentally like doesn't really sell itself. Like you can sell it, might cost a lot to acquire customers. The sellrough is not that great. Retailers don't really love it. And when I first tried your deodorant after trying probably like 20 different like better for you deodorants, I was like, "Wow, this product is like incredible." And I've like retained across years even though I I don't even know that I've I maybe bought it on the website once, maybe bought it on different stores online, or I just buy it in the grocery store, but I'm like permanently retained because I tried everything else and this is just the best. It like goes on well, it smells good. Uh, and so I was just like sold off of that and you didn't need to be like the best at like email marketing to me or like have the best like retention flows because I was just like it's a good product. I've tried everything else.

And so I'm wondering like how you how how quickly you realize that from like a product development standpoint. How much of like what is your ethos around product development? When is a product ready to actually go to market versus just still in that kind of testing phase?

Yeah. That's why we launched sunscreen before deodorant because we were just trying to get everything perfect, right? And so we did something in deodorant that hadn't been done before, especially in clean deodorant, you know, whereas

deodorants before um didn't smell the way I wanted to, right? Like they they weren't they didn't have these sophisticated scents and clean deodorants didn't work or they weren't really like a pleasurable experience to use and they certainly didn't look good like

they'd be like mint.

Yeah.

Like I don't want to smell like toothpaste.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It's like, you know, why shouldn't it smell as good as your your perfume or cologne, right? And so, um, just hitting it on all cylinders and making sure it's, you know, perfect. And for me, I was really making it for myself, right? Like, what do I want? And it turns out what I wanted was what everybody else wanted. So,

yeah. Uh, did the company ever almost die?

No.

This story been it's been a it's been a dream come true right now. It's been

It's been fun. You're It's so funny because because like the the classic philosophy in nature is just like, "Yeah, we almost here's this time we almost died." And and in talking to you like like getting to know you just just recently, it just kind of seemed like it was just like permanently up into the right. And you you you told me one story that was like not like kind of annoying around on on the on the capital side, but nothing that was like it didn't feel like you experienced that much hardship. kind of just kind of just oneshotted entrepreneurship. And it's so crazy cuz I know I know so many you started the company at like the peak of the DTOC boom. Like this was the time this was 17 2017,

right? And so this was a time that like everyone was like Red Antler, Jin Lane were just pumping out brands. There was so much capital flowing competitors back.

Yeah, there was a school on the east coast. I forget I uh I forget uh the name of it but they had like an MBA program that was like every single

Harvard

not Harvard uh it was one uh

no there were a lot of there were a lot of MBAs that were like all just

every person in an MBA program would be like I'm building a DDC brand and they were just picking

good outcomes that people were tracking against like Dollar Shave Club and Harry's and there were a number of companies where it was like oh they did Warby Parker they raised money they did the VC playbook and it sort of pencled out for everyone but Then later people realize like oh those were more like oneoff exceptions to the rule where you get a unilever who gets excited and buys a Dollar Shave Club for a billion dollars and maybe doesn't wind up realizing a billion dollars of value because it's just a young company. So

yeah,

I mean honestly it's I I feel like it's just the power of uh of a founder who's just going to be relentless and go up against the big guys, right? because I interview people from the big guys all the time

and I'm shocked at like how sleepy some organizations are, right? And so if you even have a team of three people that are just relentless and you guys know from like what you guys do, it's like you can't compete with that. I don't care how much money you have or what incubator you're in or what VC, you know, starting you. It's if you have a founder who's just going to be relentless and and um

how did how did the approach to funding evolve? like because you you said you were like profitable from day one. You did raise uh at at a couple different points a little bit of money, but did you did you care about maintaining profitability or did you ever go go through periods of growth where you thought, okay, we can we can burn a little bit here to get to the next stage?

We've always been profitable. That's always been important, right? I've just want to make sure the bank balance is growing. Um the the raises were sec were secondary, right? It was me sort of taking chips off the table. the business has just been um so profitable that we didn't really need to inject it with with with money, you know, and so it's it's a healthy business, man. I'm blessed. And and

venture capital not really my cup of tea.

Oh, it's it's just so it's so crazy. I mean, it just goes back to you guys nailed so many different elements of of the product. And yet, I know I know people that started deodorant brands

during that same period that just didn't they just didn't didn't go anywhere. What was the early team like? the early team.

Yeah. Yeah. So, so you have the idea solo founder. Uh but and you mentioned co-packer. Did you work with a formulator? Would you hire a salesperson first, operations manager, somebody just to help you? Personal assistant like what was the stack?

Yeah. So, first two first three years was myself just just myself, right? And um and then for for that it was really uh working with contract manufacturers, chemists, but also you know bouncing off my internal like network on like hey I got this deodorant sample like people I trusted their taste and what you know here's the goal. This is what I'm trying to achieve here. Like let's let's test it. And

so so that myself you know my wife like constantly were smelling each other's underarms you know to

is it working in the lab?

Yeah, you know it was just relentless man. It was like we we know what we want in a product. We see what else is out there. We have all the other products on our shelf, right? Like to just see what what they're like. Let's make something better. Yeah.

Right. And so um and then 3 years in I hired um I hired somebody who really took on all the ops

um all that stuff off my plate. That's not where I excel. Ops and like finance and like all that. I'm more brand product. Anything the customer sees, that's what what I love. And so when she took all that and she really excels at that stuff and it was me and her for like three years, four years after that.

Wow. Um or like like two three years after that. Um

still just a couple people. This is 2022 and you're still two people.

Uh

no 2019.

No, it was like Yeah. Sorry. 48 years or uh Yeah.

Three years solo, three years with two people and six years.

Then we start hiring. So she came on board and and and it really I saw how how it would really excel the business and I got to focus on what I like to do. She came in and crushed it way better than I could do on the other stuff, 3PL, logistics, all that stuff. And then I saw power of team. And then from there we just started hiring people, hiring people and then and then just got the confidence to keep hiring as as you know cuz the more we hired you know we hired the right people then the business kept growing and growing and growing and then all of a sudden it's 166 and we're the bestselling deodorant on Amazon.

How big is the team now?

Uh 50 55.

It's still really tight.

It's really tight. We have a high bar for who we bring in. Like it's you know we'll interview people and I'll know within 5 minutes. Like

Yeah. Are you in the office or remote?

No. No office. All remote.

It's all remote. I'll remember.

Yeah.

This is like the most insane the most insane story.

It's like mo most most of the time you get to this moment just like the most battle scarred founders.

Telling you, man, we're blessed. It's It's been a fun ride.

Okay. So uh walk me through the product uh portfolio expansion, how that happens and then are you subdividing sales reps by region or vertical or channel?

We don't have sales reps.

You don't have sales reps.

No, no.

Sales reps. Never heard of them.

So here's here's here's the thing. Like you got to create a brand that the retailer wants. Yeah.

Right. Like you don't want to go and just like push something down a retailer's throat and have your sales guy knocking on the door and all that stuff. And that was it. Like really focusing like this wasn't all just like oh it's just happening. It's happening. It's like an obsession, right? Like I got I turned into an advertising expert for like six months. All I did was want us to have the best ads, the best digital presence, right? And like create a brand that the retailers needed to have, right? And then from there then those retailers need to have you. They knocking on the door.

What was that advertising process like? Were you looking? Were you reading Oggov? Looking at the grades,

it's just looking at all at all the competitors, seeing how they do, right? And and really it's like not looking at the other indie brands, like looking at the big brands, right? Like I'm always want to take inspiration from the brands like like the Nikes of the world that are going to be here in 100 years cuz that's what I want this brand to be, right? I don't want this isn't some like influencer brand. I'm not an influencer, right? I'm not in front of the camera. Like this is something that um I want to be a legacy brand that's here long after I'm gone. And so those are those are the brands I look at for inspiration. And then uh how are you actually instantiating your learnings? Like are you uh directing photooots? Are you casting models? Are you writing copy? No. No. Once you go through that that six-month brand exercise, you become the expert. Are you are you like, you know, taking a project, a brand project from start to finish or are you picking an agency or hiring?

It was it was start to finish. So there was a time where I was picking out models, picking out photographers, videographers, helping with the edit, like all that stuff. edits here and then go in and work. Yeah. Yeah. And if they're static, like still photos, I would go in Figma, drop text overlay, figure out what to say, like all that stuff.

And uh Yeah. I mean, I just threw everything at man. All I did I gave up all like everything, all my hobbies, like snowboarding, skateboarding, like all that stuff. Like I got into golf for a second, all of it ended. Like it was just like I'm going to go in on this. But like when you get a signal that the thing is working, right? Then you want to

the bank balance is going up.

Bank balance is going up. you're having fun. It's like really your purpose. It's just like nothing else I want. Like I want to build I want to build it. Yeah.

What do you think about international expansion?

What do I think about it?

Yeah. How has your thinking evolved? What's the strategy? Is that something that uh a lot of companies uh go through this moment where they're like maybe it's so operationally complex it'll change the business. So let's put it off. Let's maybe wait until we're at a point where we can team up with a bigger company and through a merger acquisition and let them bring their operational force so that you don't need, you know, a person in every locality because they will bring that to bear and you're set up for success.

Yeah. No, so we've already expanded internationally and and

as I uh Sephora Canada, Sephora UK, SpaceNK in the UK, Sephora Europe, we just launched uh Middle East, Southeast Asia, so on so on. That being said, there's a lot of a lot more opportunity and that's one of the reasons I chose Advent to be to be the uh the partner here.

Um is because they have a strong expertise in international and I feel really great about the I mean look my my goal

was never to just

exit out fully and just put it in somebody's hands and let it go to [ __ ] Like that's not what I want. I want the brand to I want I want my grandkids to look at this thing and be like, "Oh yeah, that's what my grandfather built." You know, I want it to be around. I wanted to be, you know, what it was always meant to be and not turn into some, you know, discount brand.

So,

yeah. What What was the how how many

did you have a bunch of opportunities to sell prior prior to this moment? I'm assuming people were just like kind of seeing public metrics and sell through and all these things andounding you at different points. What was the process of like knowing when the time was was right? We had a lot of private equity reaching out, a lot of people reaching out in general and so I I worked with Raymond James who who I love um and I would just forward it to them and they told me when it was time and it was like let's go let's go explore let's go explore the market. Yeah.

Yeah.

So this was not a story where you met your acquirer like years and years ago. We we'd been talking for about you know se for several months, six plus months, you know, and I really really like them, you know, and for me it's when I did the deal with Humble Growth um two years ago, I you know, we had like 15 private equity uh funds to choose from and I I like them because of of who they of

No, we had a lot we we had a lot of biders, you know. No, no. I just I just think this is how if you were looking for, you know, uh the the hero's journey of founder stories, this isn't it.

You can turn it off.

I mean, it is it is it is in a way. It's missing some plot points.

There's a lot more to it. Um but yeah, I mean, it's it's just I choosing good people to work with, right? people who can do it with integrity and and that I want to work with and that like are aligned vision-wise on like what the brand is going to be in the future and and let's go build that together.

Yeah. uh what uh what advice have you been giving to people that want to follow in your footsteps that this is like kind of what I feel like every CPG founder imagines is just like yeah I'm going to be building for like eight years and then I'm going to sell for you know half a billion to a billion to a strategic uh and yet you know the hit rate is obviously you know something probably like you know one 1% right um and over the last year there's I feel like there's actually been a dip in new new brand formation.

At least that's what um Frank Sean Frank was was um

was I think mentioning on a on I think at the end of last year and his point of view he's the founder uh or the CEO of Ridge and he's like okay in

two years are people going to want new brands to choose from and his point of view is like 100%. Right? like there's constantly a desire for newness and that kind of uh founder-ledd product development approach that made Salt and Stone what it is today. So yeah, what what advice are you giving?

I mean honestly like I didn't read any entrepreneurial books or really listen to any like entrepreneurial podcast or anything until recently. I just went off instinct like you got to fight. We're fighting for our life. My advice would be would be to go all in. Like you can't you can't go and be like work life balance and like I want to you know check out at 5 cuz like there's going to be someone right behind you that's going to come and take take your place and be that brand that comes in and does what you want to do if you're going to just chill. Yeah. So, it's like you gotta you got to make sure you love you love it because that's the way you're going to be able to um do it, you know, basically around the clock from the moment you go to sleep to wake up, you know? It's it's uh um something you got to love to do and it's got to be your passion, right? And so, you got to just just go relentlessly and know I would say like forget the work life balance stuff. You just got to go hard. You got to go all in and just use your instincts, you know? You just got to you got to be competitive and

go after the big guys and don't be afraid and just go you got to go for it. Go all in.

Yeah. I like to focus on on the actual incumbents. Like a lot of people will focus too much on like okay who are the other new brands in my category and just actually studying like okay what what makes the big players actually successful. It's like okay massive retail distribution like actual like IP on the product side all all these things.

Yeah. I mean for for us it feels like in beauty there was such a playbook like every brand looked the same all the content was the same. It was like pay the influencer, have the influencer talk about the product, post it on your social like over and over again, and that's the playbook. And I I didn't want to I didn't even know anything about beauty really. Like I'm not I don't come a skateboarder, you know. I don't come from beauty. I I like I like uh fashion brands. I like, you know, lifestyle brands. And so coming in and just being inspired by, you know, the Nikes of the world um the big brands um instead of looking at beauty, I think played in our favor because we came out and it was like, oh, this is different. You know,

did you do any like community marketing? Because sometimes there's a brand that I love. Let's maybe it's like uh I would say like if a deodorant brand was putting together an event, I don't think I'd be like I want to I got to be there. But did you did you do anything that like worked that broke through that like was material to the business? Because I feel like

sometimes it's very distracting for CPG brands to like do IRL marketing early on because I'm like I usually will ask a founder like okay how many units have you sold in the last month? and they're like a thousand a thousand. I'm like, "Okay, then don't spend $30,000 on like some activation like you should just like make a product that actually sells well and then you'll have opportunities to do things."

Yeah. I mean, early on that was my philosophy too. It's like why are you going to go waste money on something that you don't know is is going to move the needle. So, it's like spend it like if our ads are going well like let's just pour more money into that versus like doing some pop-up somewhere. But now we're at the point where those IRL pop-ups it's I think it's good. It's good brand building, you know, and so we we do that now. Um, we do pop-ups. I can

Yeah, but pop-ups are, I would say, different than like a lifestyle event that is just like a bunch of people hanging out. Yeah.

What about owned retail, like flagship store? Have you looked into that?

We're looking into it. So, yeah. Yeah. So, so we're looking at, we're looking right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So,

I mean, it says a lot that you didn't jump into that in year two, for example.

Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, it would be tough to do that and maintain profitability, right? And so, it's like you're fighting for your life. You want to make sure it's it's profitable.

Yeah. It's a balancing act. You need enough awareness that you're actually going to get upside, but then if you have complete awareness, it's probably like you're already stocked everywhere, so it needs to be in the sweet spot.

Yeah.

Makes sense.

Interesting.

Such an amazing story. Honestly, it's like it's like a very unique It's it's it's amazing because it's like it's exactly what people set out to do and yet it's so uncommon to just like

go up into the up to the right every month. It's very refreshing. It's like work hard

and don't get caught up in a bunch of,

you know, stuff that doesn't matter.

Do the things that matter, right? And you're going to be relieved. He's now a David Senra enjoyer.

Oh, really? Love his podcast. He's fantastic.

Yeah. Yeah. So, he's he's getting to enjoy David Senra after climbing the mountain.

That's amazing.

That's funny. I hear that. It's like I hear the hustle stuff and like you got to do this and you got to go all in and I'm like I naturally kind of do that, you know? It makes me

It works.

But but even Yeah. I mean, David talks about this a lot where like even like a lot of his audience members are not listening to it and saying, "Oh, I never considered working hard." They're saying like, it's a reminder. It's a it's a meditation on their current philosophy. And then it's a bunch of other examples and just confidence to continue being different because there's a lot of people as simple as like as like focus is there's a lot of people that feel pressure to continue their

need to have this super complicated sevenpart strategy

that and then also just like the work life balance thing like there's a lot of pressure to not be that person who's not who's who's turning down invites to the golf trip

and that's and and so the founders podcast definitely like reinvigorates you to like add more confidence that you're not crazy. You're not the only person doing this on Earth.

Yeah, I love I love his passion.

It's great.

I'm going to I'm going to introduce you guys. You guys are going to have a lot of lot of fun.

This will be great.

Great. Um, brandwise though, we are just getting started. Honestly, it feels like that, you know, and so this partnership is exciting and uh can't wait to to keep building this thing.

Yeah. Amazing, dude.

Congratulations. Thank you so

Yeah. Thank you so much for taking the time to come.

See you back at the ranch.

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