#006: Matt Mullenax - 3 AM Wake Up Calls and Unlocking Growth Through Discipline

And people can talk about, we use this retention provider, or we do this on the backend with SMS, and it's cool, and it's gimmicky, and it's converting great. If you have good product, people will buy from you again. And like, that is the number one retention engine, is product quality. Regardless of what you sell. If you sell shorts, a workout shirt, a face wash, shoes, like, if the product is good, people will find their way back to you.

I think if I was a consumer, I would be like, I don't know, I don't know. Matt Mullenax is the co-founder and CEO of Huron, New York-based consumer brand built on the premise of making great men's personal care products.

The startup aims to help guys help themselves by providing grooming essentials that actually get the job done.

In this episode, we cover Matt's daily fitness regimen and early morning routine, his turning pro moment of launching Huron to the public, and outsized value of investing in the right relationships with other founders.

Welcome back to episode 6 of the Turning Pro Podcast. We have Matt Mullenax on with us today from Huron. Thanks for joining us, Matt.

Thanks for having me, guys.

So, Agen, I have to start with my story of where Matt and I met. Uh, we've actually only met for like 30 seconds, but it was the day before the New York City Marathon. I was running on the West Side Highway with, uh, Matt Choi, who's like just a friend of mine, is a runner that he also knows. And he stopped and they were just talking and I was like, oh hey, I'm Ben, what's up? And we were just casually talking. He's like, yeah, I'm just like running a marathon today because I can't run in the New York City Marathon tomorrow. And I was like, Wait, what? Like, you just casually decided he's going to run it by himself the day before the actual marathon? That to me just says so much about someone that, like, I feel like I have to unpack that a little bit.

I would love to start there.

Yeah, no, fair enough. So New York has a 9+1 training program, which basically through the New York Road Runners, if you run 9 sanctioned races and then volunteer for 1, then you get auto entry into the following year's marathon. I decided to do that like June 1st, and there were 10 races left, one of which was the marathon, which I could do virtually. So I basically needed to run and register through Strava a virtual marathon to have checked all the boxes to be eligible to run this year's marathon. And I just, like the week before, I was like, I'm just gonna do it the Saturday of. And I think I ran into these guys at like mile 26.08. and I needed like literally like 30 seconds more. I kind of did double take. I was like, oh, I think that's Matt, but I have like 50 yards left, so I'm just gonna finish and then circle back. So yeah, that's met on the West Side Highway shortly thereafter.

Oh yeah. And both of you have run marathons, right?

I can now, I have run a marathon. Yes.

What'd you think?

So I was a hockey player previously, uh, which the big takeaway from that is an interval athlete. So everything was on, off, on, off, 30 seconds hard. Never once in my life had I been doing anything of long distance. I never ran more than 5 miles in one, uh, one, like, I guess one workout up until 12 weeks before the marathon. And when I stopped playing hockey, I kind of had like this midlife crisis of like, I miss competitive fitness. And so I woke up one day, I was like, I'm gonna do the New York City Marathon. Just kind of started training and never looked back.

It's awesome.

It's an experience.

Um, did you wear headphones?

I did wear headphones. Uh, my body was definitely destroyed because I'm not a good runner, and I know I'm not. Like, I just more— I feel like I kind of willed my way through it at some point, uh, because I'm not like an efficient runner. But I think it really is an interesting challenge on the mind. That was like the part that I took away from it, is like, if you can run 13 miles, like, you can run 26 miles, my take. But can your mind, like with your own thoughts in your head, can you overcome that? And like the actual day of the marathon was a really interesting experience. I found it a lot harder in training than I did the day of.

Mm-hmm.

And I don't know if that's because like when you prepare for something, it's you sh— you're either ready or you're not. And so that's the day you go out and enjoy it.

Yeah.

Um, but there were some races during training, like 17 miles on the Westside in like heavy rain. I'm like, what the fuck am I doing right now? Like I, I signed up to do this voluntarily.

I'm actually paying to do this.

Yeah, exactly. Really cool experience. I'm not eager to, like, sign up for another marathon right now, but I definitely go on runs more casually and I never did that before.

Interesting. I think what's, what's really telling about the marathon is it's a recalibration exercise of what is a long run, right? Like if you're not a distance runner and 5 miles was kind of your ceiling previously, probably running 3 or 4 would be like, a decent run, but now you're like, I ran 3 miles, so now it's 6 or 8 or 12. So I think it's interesting to kind of get into that routine. You get the bug a little bit. So I've done 5, I guess. But similar to you, like I was a football player, a sprinter growing up, was not a big distance guy, but I got into running because I was not good at it and it like irked me. So, you know, with every marathon I try and adopt a new training program or whatnot with the hope of like getting better and progressing with each one. But Uh, there are definitely longer training runs that are not enjoyable.

But the thing I'll say, and I can clearly tell this is important for you, I mean, just fitness as a category, it's a huge part of my life. Like health and wellness is a huge priority for me in everything that I do. And I find that when that part of my life isn't in line, like nothing else is either.

I think it becomes more mental than physical at times. And being able to check that box with like, I'm a morning workout person, so my day is not started until I do something.

What time are you working out?

What time do you wake up? I mean, how about walk us through a typical day?

Uh, it's changed a little bit in fatherhood.

Um, congrats, by the way.

Thank you. But about 3 months ago, I just came to the realization that very early in the mornings were my sacred hours. Like the only time I wouldn't be interrupted by a screaming baby or having to make dinner or whatnot. Which I love those things, but those were like 2 hours in the day that were my time essentially. So I get up at 3. So I'm up at 3, I'm usually outside by like 4:15 or 4:30.

It's blackout, right?

Oh yeah.

Completely dark.

You and Mark Wahlberg are like the only 2 people awake at that hour.

But at 9 PM, like I'm toast. Yeah. So 3.

I gotta say you're the first person I've ever talked to who's been before the 4 o'clock mark.

Yeah, it was a little bit of a rough transition, but I mean, I was always—

was it gradual?

I was always like an early riser. Like even before we had my son, like I was probably a 4:30, 4:45 guy. So it just got progressively earlier.

So walk us through. So you're up at 3?

Up at 3. I'll do work for an hour to an hour and a half. I'll either go to the gym or run or both, and then I'll make breakfast for, for Mac, who's our son. I'll take him to daycare and then usually in office by like 8.

Got it. And then working until you're just exhausted, I assume.

Yeah, I mean, usually we pack up around 5:30 or 6, and then because I've just shifted hours up so much, like, I don't feel the need to then log back on at night. Like, I used to feel like this compelling urge earlier in my career, like, oh my God, like, I have to like bang out emails until midnight. And like, I just— I don't care anymore because I know I can get so much done in that, that first hour or two in the beginning of the day.

Do you feel like a lot of— I mean, I mean, even offline, like We've talked about fitness, we've talked about working out, we've talked about building the business. For context, Matt and I met, what, 3, 4 years ago? At least. I think I saw the deck for Huron way back. And since the moment we talked, it was clear that you were, it was like you were almost any outlet to channel your competitive drive. You were like, I'm gonna go all in and it may take 10 years, may take 20, but I'm gonna fucking do this. My mind's on it. That was so rare. This is why Ben and I get along too and why we get along. And so like, like, yeah, walk me through when, like, has that drive, has that competitive spirit, maybe ambition been with you since day one? Or is that something that like gets cultivated over time?

Probably a hybrid of both. I mean, I think for me and Ben, I'm sure you can empathize, like being a, being an athlete, being a college athlete, like you go through the recruiting phase, you get told no a bunch, similar to fundraising and like you just build that chip on your shoulder, right? So Someone told me one time, it's like, man, it's like you don't have a chip on your shoulder, you have like a Costco-sized bag of Doritos. And I'm like, yeah, maybe. Um, but those things just compound, and like, you want to be super competitive at every stage, every level, everything that you do. And for most of my life growing up, that outlet was sports. And now that takes the form of either working out or fitness, or carrying over some of it to the workplace within reason. I mean, you can't be a super competitive Type A tyrant all day long, but you can still bring competitive spirit to the, to the workplace. So it's finding like the right outlet and the right time to kind of scratch that itch.

How have you found working with a team, hiring a team? Obviously you want to filter and only hire people that are just as competitive or ambitious as you are. But sometimes I feel this, I'm sure you do too, of like the how hard you push yourself. Sometimes you just can't do that to like people you work with or partners you work with. Because you can't expect that, right? Tell me more about that.

Yeah, I mean, for me, it's a little bit of the opposite, which I think if you surround yourself with too many competitive, hyper-driven people, then you can just combust as a team. So, you know, we, we solve for people first, like, are you just a fundamentally good person? But then our recruiting process is pretty extensive and pretty long because I think for us that we're at— so we're 5 people today, so we're still very, very small. So when we hire one person, we're not hiring one person, we're adding 20% to the team, right? Like, that's a huge number. So when you think about things that way, you know, we're obviously doing like tons of rounds of reference checks and like case studies and da da da da, but I think a misnomer for much of our kind of like trajectory as a brand, call it 2019 to even last year, success was gauged around how much venture have you raised and how big is your team? And I think over the past 6 to 12 months now, it's how efficient are you with the capital and how lean are you? And I think we've always kind of hunkered down in the latter of those two camps. So when we think about just building the team in general, it's not how do we fill, you know, butts in seats as fast as humanly possible, but like, who are the right people to sit in those chairs? How do we make sure that they're equipped with the tools and resources that they need? And then how do I work for them? Because at the end of the day, like, that's, that's what it is. Like, I have to trust and delegate that the team is doing what they should be doing day in and day out to continue to move the ball forward.

I think for me, part of the hiring also is relative to the position you're hiring for in terms of like the personality traits, right? Like, if I'm hiring a salesperson, I want someone who's as like crazy as one of my co-founders who leads our sales, who's just like, he's got to get the deal all the time no matter what. Like he's closing. But like my technical co-founder, more introverted, more analytical, like with our engineers and our product people, like I have pretty minimal communication with them because his management style is so like elegant with them. Doesn't stress them out, doesn't overwork them because he's such a believer that like technical debt is a real thing, that if you're stressing them out, totally. They need to be in a good mindset to want to work. And when things aren't going right, they need to be able to like separate from it. And so naturally, like our engineering team, they're relatively more introverted. They're, they're like hustlers and they're hungry, but it's like, it's a different kind of hungry. Like for them, the hungry is like getting into a flow state until 2 in the morning, writing code and not realizing it's 2 AM. But like hungry on the sales side of it is like closing deals and like being out there just like grounding and pounding and like exhausting yourself. And so I think to your point, it's striking that balance with how to build the team is what ultimately wins because you need to be efficient, but you need to make sure that you understand that like the whole is greater. Like what is it? The sum of the parts is greater than the whole.

Yeah, it's exactly right. It's kind of like shared vision, but different paths. Right. So it's, you know, people are going to be in certain responsibilities or trajectories that will all bubble up to the same thing, the vision of success, but the path from A to B might be a little bit different.

Yeah, one question I had for you, and you, you mentioned that like you, first thing you do in the morning is you work, uh, and then you exercise. That's something that I just started doing a few weeks ago. It was actually Hormozy was the one who mentioned that, that I, uh, look, I'm not actually one to like try all these things that a lot of these people are saying, but that was one that I tried. Cuz usually I was, I would wake up, put my workout clothes on first thing in the morning, go to the gym, get it over with. But now it's like I wake up, I make a coffee, and I do deep work right away for an hour or 2 hours, and then I use that gym time as like my break. Is that something that you've always done or did you used to start with the workout?

No, that's exactly right. I mean, I was always an early riser and focused on getting the workout done in the morning, but I needed like that transition time between popping out of bed and just like getting into whatever workout I was doing. Like I was not one of those, one of those people who could easily do that. So for me, that like a sliver of an hour work, let's call it, was a really important time for me to not only like wake the body up, you know, get some caffeine, get some food, etc. But I was also like, wow, like, I'm super efficient right now. I'm like pretty sharp. So like, why not get ahead, you know, 45 minutes to an hour of work just banged out while like I'm getting primed to go do whatever I'm gonna do?

So this man is cranking workout at 3:30 in the morning. Just let that—

I think I'm working hard.

It's all relative.

Let that sink in.

It is crazy how, how sharp you are in first hour of the morning, um, even if you flood yourself with social media and everything, you're just operating at such a different level. We were talking about this literally a couple hours ago after, after an episode we filmed, and I was saying like, I still open my computer— I go to bed at like 11:00 and I still open my laptop from like 9:00 to 10:00 just to check on stuff. I get like one email done, but I lose an hour of being present with my friends, being present with my girlfriend or my family, whoever I'm around. Or I could use that hour to just hang out by myself and read something. But instead I literally get one email done and I'm on Twitter or something like that.

Yeah, no. And I was guilty of that for years, quite honestly. And I think that was probably PTSD from being in finance, which is just like you always feel like laptop lid has to be open. You're answering an email or two here or there where you're like watching a game, but like it's not meaningful work. And what I realized a few months ago was just like, I would rather consolidate that work to like a few hours on a Saturday morning and then just be done. And then Sunday morning, get up, do the exact same, and then be done rather than have like these dribs and drabs of work kind of sprinkle throughout the day. Because I didn't want to be doing the work. It wasn't good work. And it was just, you know, spilling over into your point, like your own time or family time or time with your partner or what have you. And just wasn't efficient. So That's been a big thing for me, was just realizing that the only consistency of balance is imbalance and like nothing is ever exactly how you want it and being comfortable with that. But if you can use the time to just get stuff done that's like meaningfully important and then be like laptop closed, I think that's really good mentally and physically. Yeah.

How do you think about your weekends? I mean, like, I follow you on Instagram and so I see Mac a lot. I see you eating a lot of cookies. I see workouts from time to time. How are you using those? Because I have some friends that are early 20s and are like grindset, some are partying all weekend.

Dude, that was me. That was me on both fronts. I mean, I would work really, really hard and then go out until 3 in the morning and then do it again. And like, that was fine in my early 20s. It just wasn't sustainable. I think for me, like weekends are now largely dedicated towards family time. So I'm not waking up at 3:30 on Saturday mornings. Maybe it's a little later.

5:30.

Yeah, something like that. Uh, but I still try and steal 2 hours in the morning to get meaningful work done. And then again, like, just be done. And what's nice about a little bit of weekend work is it's, it's one-way email flow. Like, no one is responding, so you can just get to inbox zero, whatever efficiency metric you want. Like, I think inbox zero is such a myth. Uh, and then just be done with it. So I think for me, like, that's it. It's a similar pattern. And I think for me, what's really brought a ton of mental equanimity is not deviating too much between weekdays and weekends. So, you know, again, in my early 20s, it was like grind really hard Monday through Friday, stay out super late Friday night, wake up late Saturday, stay out super late Saturday night, wake up late, and then try and get back into the weekday routine. Whereas now, like, those schedules look very, very similar. And I think that makes the workload much easier. And then, you the life load is easy.

Yeah.

What about in terms of like relationships in your life as you've continued to adapt that like newer behavior on the weekends where it's not like going out and partying and now you have a kid? Like, do you, do you still find, um, the ability to segment like your personal life and your professional life outside of your immediate family with just like friends?

Yeah, have to. I, I mean, I think that's such an important, you know, we say recalibration metric, however you want to describe it, but I think, A, separating work and friends is really important, whether it be kind of like my— the time that I had in grad school or startup sphere kind of before grad school, even the blowups that I've seen between like friends, really close friends who've gone into business together, definitely outweighs the success stories. So kind of keeping separate camps, I think for me was always really, really important. But yeah, like finding the outlets, like go watch games or like have a few beers. Like, I think that's important just from a balance perspective. But try and do those on Saturdays and keep school nights to, to a minimum.

Yeah.

Business school is something I want to talk about.

Yeah.

So if you could go back again, would you do the same thing?

I would. I mean, now I'm biased for a few reasons. One, I met my wife at— in San Francisco, so I wouldn't have been out there. If we're not for business school. Before business school, I was living in Chicago, so I had never spent time on the West Coast. And I looked at going to Stanford as kind of like a 2-year trial on the West Coast to see if I'd even like it. But if not, there's a natural rapport to be like, well, you know, I didn't move out here for a job or anything, so I can easily come back to the Midwest or to the East Coast. But for me, the network— I mean, some of my best friends I met through school. We had a— we had a house of 8 of us our second year. It was just an amazing experience. And I think like, just like undergrad, it's like the content you learn in the classroom is like not it. It's the relationships that you make and the people that you meet that you'll carry kind of throughout your life. So I think for me it was, it was absolutely worth it.

Was it a shift in network from the network you built up before business school, which maybe prompted you to want to go that route? Because you said you were in finance previously.

Yep.

And obviously at large, the finance network is very different than like the entrepreneur, like consumer network. Was that a piece of it of like you wanted to recalibrate the network that you had?

A little bit. I mean, I, I've always kind of been in and around the consumer sphere. So after graduation from undergrad, I worked in consumer retail investment banking. Then I worked at Bonobos as an early employee. Then I worked for a consumer private equity firm. So really the consistency, whether it was operating or investing, was all in the consumer retail sphere. So I looked at business school from a network or career perspective as a way to kind of like deepen those relationships in and around consumer, but was unsure whether or not I wanted to go into the operating sphere or back into the investing realm. Even though I wrote all my business school essays about becoming a consumer entrepreneur, I didn't actually think that was going to happen. Maybe manifested it, I guess, but I knew that I wanted to kind of explore not only geographically, kind of a new notch on the belt from a network perspective, but also how could I deepen those relationships within that, within the consumer world?

How do you— how have you thought about maintaining or outgrowing relationships through different phases? Right. You got your childhood friends, you got your friends from Brown, you got friends from finance, you got friends from B-school. Now people you meet in the startup world. That's how we met, right? How do you view those relationships as like, I love you, but I have no time to hang out with you? Versus some that you may need to outgrow because you don't want to party till 3 AM or something?

Totally. I mean, just like people, like relationships evolve, right? And I think it's definitely an analysis of depth versus breadth. So it's, you know, you start to find people where you share a lot of commonalities with, whether it's fitness, whether it's running, whether it's work, what have you, and you invest more in those relationships. But you also have to take kind of your own temperature around realistically, what is the time that I have outside of the time that's really important to me, which is mornings for me, spending time with my family, and then work stuff. Like, yeah, exactly. I mean, there's few hours to kind of fill that delta. So you wanna spend it with people who, for better or for worse, are like deserving of that time. And I think for me, there is a little bit of recency or proximity bias where, as we all kind of navigate through our careers, we're all kind of picking lanes in terms of like how and when we want to spend our time. And you share, you know, you share common experiences with people that make a lot of sense to, to kind of share those experiences with or fill the void with. So a lot of the more recent and stronger friendships I would say are folks, uh, who I went to business school with.

Has it, have you had any instances where it's been tough with friends that you love and spend time with, but you notice yourself growing apart. Um, how do you navigate those? Is it kind of like letting those just not fall out, but kind of like outgrow gracefully? And like, hey, I have a lot of love for you, but like, I just don't have a lot of time for you in my life.

Yeah, I mean, I think there comes an inflection point where it's kind of like the unwritten or unspoken word, right? It's like if you're texting me at 4 AM to come to the Mirage and I'm texting you at 7 AM like, hey, you want to go for a run? Like, inherently there's just going to be like a misalignment in what your weekend looks like. And if that happens with enough consistency, you're going to be like, all right, we're just on different pages. Like, how about a beer on a Saturday? I'm like, great, we can do that. So I think you end up finding middle ground, but you just have to be realistic of kind of like where you're at in life.

Yeah, that's a great New York analogy too.

Were there any like light bulb moments for you? I mean, the name of the podcast is Turning Pro. For us, like, what that means is when you get up from one table and move to the next, cuz you're just leveling up in some element of your life. Like, do you recall any moments in your life where you're like, it's time to become a professional? Whatever that could be, personal, professional, professional. Um, and like kind of take that next step.

Yeah, that's a really good question. I mean, I think probably going back to grad school because then I was kind of like reentering the pool of candidates, right? And prior to, prior to business school had done the finance track. I had done a little bit within startups, but. By and large followed like a pretty vanilla professional track. But now I was kind of holding the pen a little bit and like no one was saying like, well, most people like go into this and then you go back to business school and then you go back to private equity. Like, of course, that's certainly a track. But I didn't think at the end of the day that that was necessarily for me. But there is no guidebook, blueprint, whatever you want to call it, in terms of like what you can and should be doing. You kind of have to figure that out on your own. So a lot of my grad school experience was around formulating hypotheses for like what I thought I would want to or would not want to do after graduation. So like, case in point, I spent the summer between my first and second year, my summer internship at Nike, with this thesis that I will hate corporate America. So it's like, well, why would you do that for 10 weeks? I was like, well, it's better to do it for 10 weeks than like 7 years and come to that realization, right? And about 2 weeks onto campus, I was like, this is awful. I do not want to be at this job anymore.

I can't help but to not every time, like, bring up the fact that I didn't even make it to my first day. I quit. I gave— I quit 12 hours before my first day.

Really?

I was supposed to do M&A consulting at EY Parthenon, and 12 hours before my first day, I told them I wasn't coming. Never heard from someone. Got a return label for my laptop, and that was it.

Wow.

So like, I think most of the time they'll tell you, and I think it's easier to figure out what you don't like to do than what you do, which is why like going— and arguably more important, 100% more important. I agree with you because I think the breadth of things, like you, you're going to be able to figure out what you don't like, but you don't know if you like something or not. Um, but for me, I went down, look, I went to a school that was very much competitive in terms of get the best banking job or the best consulting job. Pretty sure Colgate is like one of the highest per capita, like on Wall Street of like number of people based on the size of the school, something ridiculous. And everyone at the school is like, you know, where are you going to try to go, blah, blah. I'm an athlete.

It's like, fuck you guys.

I'm going to go.

I'm going to go get the job. I got the job and I was like, wait a minute, I don't want to do that.

I don't want the job.

That sounds horrible. And like I was joking with like the career services guy at the school. His nephew was on my hockey team, so we had a good relationship. And he's like, you know, Ben, it's pretty funny because you worked your ass off. I went to his office 4 days a week for like an hour and a half and did case study prep with him. Like, I really grinded to get this job. And then at the end when I got it and then didn't do it, he's like, it's kind of funny, but it's also sad because like there's another kid at the school who would have loved to have that job and you just like gave it back to the ethos and like it went to the next grade or whatever because I literally pulled the plug. Not the point of the story, but it's like it took me up until 12 hours before to face the reality that it's not the path for me.

Um, which is such an important realization, I think. And like a little segue from that is just like entrepreneurship in general, like how we're thinking about building Huron and how we involve our customer base is my thought process around so many people would love to have their own startup or company at some point in their life and they'll never do it. So my thought is like, if we can overshare with them around upcoming products, how we're building the brand, problems that we're facing, challenges that we're trying to solve. That's going to like scratch this, this itch that they will probably perpetually have. And they'll create this like weird inherent loyalty that might serve us well down the road. But to your point, like people will always like pursue something because they think that's what they should be doing versus like whether or not they want to be doing that or envision seeing themselves doing that longer term.

I think the, like, some might say it's cliché, but the quote that resonated with me around this was that regret hurts a lot more than failure. Yep. Right. I think I found myself even before we started this, you find, I always said that I found myself consuming content. And my theory is that 99% of content consumers are people who have thought about being content creators at one point or another, but it's hard. It's uncomfortable. It's weird. Like when you look at yourself in a video for the first time, you're like, dude, You, it's cringe, but you watch someone else do it and it's like, this isn't that bad. And so it's getting your own mind out of that rut. I think it's the same with like starting a company. It's scary. Like you have to go through this abyss of like the unknown for some period of time to be able to get over the hump to do it. And some people are too scared and they'll die and they never did it.

Yep. It's like the toughest decision is the first one, which is just getting started. And then from there, it's like, you could argue that every subsequent decision you make is like a little bit easier because you have some more wounds and learnings along the way, but it's oftentimes just saying yes and getting started. That's the toughest part.

And I think getting like, one of the things I realize is when you actually get into it and you guys can probably relate with your own companies, I didn't ever do a good job of like taking a step back after a period of time and reflecting on what I was able to accomplish. Cause I'm very hard on myself and it's never good enough, which is what drives me to always do more and more. But like what you learn as an entrepreneur, it's like, you can't teach that in a corporate environment. You're forced to like learn how to learn. In a way that nothing else gives to you. And if you just have the confidence to recognize that, even if it fails, you're a much better person because of it the next go around.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, even in some of the fundraising conversations that we've been having recently, I've just come to the realization that I would be such a better investor now having been an operator versus sitting in an investor seat like throughout my career.

It's empathy.

Because you're in the arena. Like this is what it's like to organize, you know, cargo freight shipments on WeChat with your Chinese supplier. Like this is what it's like to negotiate distribution and warehouse contracts or negotiate with the contract manufacturer or what I call day trade Facebook, which is run Facebook Ads Manager. Like all these things like you hear about on the periphery if you're an investor, but you don't spend time in the arena. And I think having that perspective coupled with that empathy becomes really, really interesting as you kind of think about going back into the investor sphere.

Yeah, I think VC is very well branded. I mean, I think when we first talked, I must have been 6 months into my first VC gig analyst right out of college. You've no idea what you're doing. No fucking clue. It's a joke. And you talk to these like sometimes I'll catch up with like analysts or associates and even they can be 3, 4, or 5 years in. And I'm like, with love and with empathy, you have no fucking clue what you're talking about. No, it's not their fault because they haven't started a company and they're doing their best, right, with what they know. But it's fucking hard and you only have so many resources. To switch topics a bit, I'm curious because I just started seeing video sales letters from Huron appear on my Instagram feed. And so speaking of like us getting comfortable in front of camera, I know I didn't see those before. So is that something you're testing out? You're like, you're maybe not totally comfortable with, but you're trying to get—

Oh, horribly uncomfortable with it. But I think one thing that's very important about just the general DNA of Huron is it's about the humanization of brand. And I think people now more than any time want to see kind of the face and the who behind the brand. I am not a content creator. I'm not an influencer. I would argue that for some brands who partner with influencers, or maybe there's an influencer face of the brand, if that person is not genuine and authentic to the brand, it can actually be worse than having them there in the first place. Like there's almost like a backlash of sorts to it. But what we're trying to do with Huron is just like shine the light on like, hey, as a kid growing up, I had terrible skin. I went through the gauntlet trying to figure out stuff that would work for my skin. Finally found something. It was ridiculously overpriced. So I made this stuff. So we made this stuff to like address those issues. And I think it was just like being very real and talking about things like no one wants to talk about acne. Like it's not a fun topic, like, but kind of falling on the sword to say like, this is why this brand exists and we're here to help you along the way. I think like extending that hand, being a human, um, has really served us well in our first few years in business. And I think just like adopting and embracing that notion of just being a human touchpoint in an otherwise like very digital AI-powered world. Like there's nothing like a handwritten thank you note. There's nothing like, uh, I mean, we send video messages to customers and they go like ape shit. Like it's awesome. But like, it's just about doing things, things that are seemingly hard, but personable. Because that's where you get, you can kind of win on the margin. And we operate in a category that's full of commodities. Like body wash is a commodity category. But if for some reason, like you love Huron and on the margin, you're going to keep buying from us, like that's a huge win. And if we can stack up as many of those wins as possible, we're gonna have something pretty awesome.

I have a question on that point though. How do you think AI can potentially have an impact on that concept of like personalization, right? Like there's a very real world where 12 months from now everyone is getting that video of Matt with bespoke messaging, but you never sat in front of the camera and made that message, which is scary. But do you think it runs the risk of it losing its touch and just like diluting the effort in general? Yeah, because it's like at a certain point people realize it's actually not as genuine as— there's still brands like, I'm not saying you would do that, but it's like, I don't think when you think about efficiency, it's like, okay, if I can personalize messages to every customer without actually having to sit in there and do it, is there a moment in time where they're like, oh, another one of those? Because every single company has like a deepfake and an AI version of Matt sending me a video. Like, how do you think that might affect customer relationships as like consumer brands?

Could severely impact them. I mean, I think what we don't know is like what we don't know. Um, so it's obviously it's hard to project that, but The rate of change right now is equal parts exciting and terrifying, I would say. So who knows what the next 6 to 12 months look like? But I mean, you can stand up entire websites right now on ChatGPT in like 20 minutes, half hour. Or you could say, you know, you could build a robust blog library just by typing in a few queries and all of a sudden you're like crushing SEO. Like there's so many use cases like right now to build some sort of substance or presence for yourself or for your brand that didn't exist as few as what, 6 months ago, 9 months ago. So to think about like that rate of change is like mind-blowing. So I have no idea what the answer is, Ben. I mean, I— it's really scary to think through, but hopefully at least in the near-ish term that those efforts that we're making on our end will be, will be difficult to, to replicate.

Totally. I think On the AI piece, I don't know if this is just me. I'm way more interested in the threats against like how bad actors can leverage this than I am in like the beneficial use cases. Because I just, I don't know if our society has thought enough about all the negative breakthroughs so much as like, you can make a website, you can do a blog post, but what about the fact that you can just like recreate people and do smear campaigns? And like, I think the one that scares me the most is like politics and also like just terrorism. Like, like agenda pushing, like false agendas around. I just feel like we're not ready for what's about to happen, especially with like elections. The fact that presidents now are going to need to have like, or people who are running for president are going to have to have like an AI advisor, like to me is the craziest thing in the world.

Yeah.

I think it's not just like the e-commerce bubble that we're in, but like early stage startup ecosystem too. Like sometimes I'll get on calls with people and they're like, oh, you run a content shop. How is AI going to transform it? I'm like, why would, why does anyone care about that? Who, like, this doesn't actually matter. I mean, same with, I'm sure you get, I'm sure you get, Huron gets pitched by like every new AI Shopify app or every Shopify app that has some AI component. And you're like, yeah, that doesn't really matter. Like if you focus on the customer and build a good product and have XYZ campaigns, then we'll do good. Right. And like, I don't know. Do you see those as competitive advantages or do you see these as like nice to haves?

I mean, right now, probably like nice-to-haves. I mean, I think like where I sit, my job is to say no 99% of the time to like literally everything. Where I feel a lot of AI is where you're talking about, Adrian, is kind of in like the similar, like I own 12 Airbnbs and like, like it's a lot of like gimmicky, like behind here's how we can get rich quick. And it's just like that's who seems to be capitalizing on it first to some extent and pitching it in our world. But to your point, Ben, like, I do. I agree. I was listening to a podcast this weekend and I won't reference it or reference the examples, but this guy listed like 15 examples of like how a bad actor could hijack ChatGPT and like really do some serious damage. I'm like, maybe we shouldn't be creating these examples for people. But we're only talking about the upside for things, right? Like what happens when things go awry? And I think that's, that's a stone that's yet to be turned over.

but a little scary. I want to shift gears here. Bear with me. We need to like nerd out a little bit here because we've brought up Shopify a couple of times. I mean, I operate in that system on the, on the software side. You're obviously on the brand side. I want to get your take on like the challenges you faced within the ecosystem, uh, just broadly and how you think you see that shifting over the next year or so. Like, what are your biggest blockers today as operating as a brand within the Shopify ecosystem, would you say?

I mean, I think for us, like, at times Shopify feels like a flea market of apps. Like, who's to say that this app is better than this app? Or why are you using Vendor X versus Vendor Y? It's like, I don't know, like, I met this guy 3 months before I met that person. So like, that's why we're using Vendor X. And it's really hard to like determine the nuances from a lot of different players at scale because we're constantly making decisions throughout the day. And if we wanted to say, great, we're really going to look at who we're using for popups, like let's look at all the popup providers within the Shopify ecosystem. I mean, you could spend probably a month doing that. Like now imagine all of the features or touchpoints that you could evaluate that the consumer experiences. Daily with your site. I mean, that in itself would take a year only so that the first few decisions you made that year would be outdated already. So it's like you have to draw a line in the sand and be like, this is 80% of the way there. Like we gotta move on. We have a really small team, we're 5 people. So a lot of the apps that we're currently using, we've been using since we launched. And is that, are we ripe for disruption in some of those cases? Probably. Is it gonna be a massive needle mover for us? Arguably not. And it's just a constant allocation of time, energy, resources. And for me, like my job is to try and direct people to be as efficient, as efficient as possible while making the most impact. And for a lot of those things, like I just don't see the upside or the value to spending an insane amount of time trying to eke out every little bit of value, if that makes sense.

No, I mean, it makes perfect sense. I think it's, I don't even, I don't think we've even talked about at length, like what my company does. We don't have to go down a rabbit hole right now, but it's, I was asking that because you are essentially confirming the thesis that we've had, like almost to a T around the concept of analysis paralysis. And the other piece of it is that a lot of the apps are features, not products. Um, which makes it even harder to sift through the noise. And so like for us, it's really an operational piece of like, how do you make their life easier? I think the other issue that we've seen with the merchants we work with is them having a source of truth to distill all the information into like what really matters. Like most of the brand owners, they're brand operators. They're not e-commerce experts. Like learning e-commerce is a byproduct of just effectively managing a brand and you need to be proficient in it. But it's like, stick to what you're good at and what you're best at. And like find someone who can continue to tell you like what to do next to stay ahead of the curve. And that's where we've ultimately tried to insert ourselves. I think the next couple of months will be very exciting for us. Um, but the reason that I asked that is because you guys have a fa— you have a fantastic website. Like I've, I've looked at it. I, I've looked at thousands, thousands of— this is what I do every fucking day. Like you guys have a very good website. So I was just curious to see if even though it like looks good on the front, like, do you still feel the same, the same pain points that we're seeing across the board?

I mean, you're always going to be the most critical of like your own work, right? So there's a million things on our site right now to be like, oh my God, Oh my God, this is terrible. Like, I can't wait to get rid of this. But how we've thought about our website in general is A, thinking about who the end consumer is. B, think about, well, first who the customer is and then who the consumer is. And then secondly is this concept of laziness catering, which is like, we sell to guys. Guys don't want to be spending a lot of time reading up on face wash or body wash. It's like, oh, body wash. Read the scent profile. Looks like it smells good. A lot of 5-star reviews.

Buy.

So it's like, how quickly can we get this person across the finish line? So we don't need this beautiful homepage hero video. We don't need that. It's like, can we be quick? Can we be responsive? Are we showing just the right amount of information and copy that you need to feel a high degree of confidence in the purchase? And then how quickly can we get you across the finish line?

What about, how do you think about like gamifying the shopping experience? Is that something that you find to resonate with your customers or not as much? They're more like high intent. And what I mean by that is is, you know, upsells, incentive bars, you know, add $5 to the cart, get free shipping, things of that nature. We'd just be curious to hear how you think about that on your site.

We do. Yeah. So at checkout, we, we really lean into upsell capabilities because again, guys like, oh, I need shampoo, like hair shampoo. Yeah. So it's like you may not even know that we just launched an EDP or you might not even know that we have bar soap or deodorant. So We want to make sure that that customer isn't missing out on some of those products. And then we spend a ton of time thinking about what products are actually being shown in cart and why. And then secondly, about last year, I guess last July, we built a feature called BYOB, build your own bundle. And we basically pulled inspo from like 2 or 3 brands that we didn't— we liked certain elements of each, but didn't think the collective experience was that particularly great. We launched our own.

Um, you custom— but you custom built the custom built.

It got a lot, it got a lot of press, got a lot of pub.

Your internal team did that?

We did. Yeah. Well, we, we had, we had one developer that we had on retainer for a bit who did an excellent job in constructing that, that feature. Uh, but for us, like, we might sell you a kit, but you don't want to buy that kit because you don't use one-third of the number of products in that kit, right? Like, maybe you just don't use conditioner, so why would you want to buy a body wash, shampoo, and conditioner? So if we push enough people to that card, it's like choose your own destiny, more or less. And then we use kind of like upsell marks by leaning into products. So spend $50, get free shipping, spend $60, get a free Dopp kit. But like, that is kind of our version of gamification. When I think gamification, I think like the terrible spin wheel.

It's like, oh my God, no, no, I'm on the same, I'm on the same page.

Like, that, that makes me nauseous. Um, but actually like not leaning into discount as much, like actually leaning into product to get people to expand their product palette with us versus just giving people an additional 5%, an additional 5 bucks.

Because that's a trained behavior that you can't get out of. It's a dangerous, it's a dangerous behavior with customers when you get them in the mood of discounts, because then when you finally sell something at cost, they're like, no, like I want the 5% back where I, where I was last time.

Exactly.

That's like the endless options. I'm sure you have an endless to-do list of you're like, oh, I heard this is working. Let me add that. I need to try this. And I feel like every, like, you know this, I run a services business and there are always things to do, but there are really only a few core levers of the business. It's like sign new customers, make them happy, retain them, do really good work and get results. Like there's not that many levers. For you guys, like, can you distill it to those handful of things or is there just like this endless to-do list of little improvements here and there.

I mean, I think there's like those, those larger like flagship moments, of course, right? It's like, can we get people to the site? Can we get them to convert? And can we get them to come back? And like with those three concepts then become, what do our prospecting campaigns look like? What are the, you know, the CTAs look like? Like what's the DR copy? So I do most of our Facebook. I also run our SMS. And then like our VP of marketing, like we split up some of those and then he's doing a lot of the content marketing. So email, messaging, web. We have a social manager who's done a lot of influencer and partnerships. So I mean like pretty, 5 people, like it's small. So we're all kind of tinkering, but at the end of the day, like that's how our business is gonna work. It's can we get enough people to the site? Can we get them to buy and convert? And can the product do its job in bringing people back? If your product sucks, no one's going to buy from you again. And people can talk about, we use this retention provider, or we do this on the backend with SMS, and it's cool, and it's gimmicky, and it's converting great. If you have good product, people will buy from you again. And like, that is the number one retention engine, is product quality, regardless of what you sell. If you sell shorts, a workout shirt, a face wash, shoes, like if the product is good, people will find their way back.

I think if I was a consumer investor, like my first, after hearing you say that, my first question to a founder would be like, what is your number one retention strategy? And if they say anything other than a good product, I'd be like, pass.

You're done.

I'm out.

It's the tool. I think, uh, I mean, I'm curious, especially selling to guys, like I've been using, not just because we're friends, but like I've been using your face wash. Literally since you've launched, just because I don't know if I'm lazy, but it works. And I'm like, okay, cool. I'm sure if I tried 200 others, one may work a little better.

Let's hope not.

But yeah, hope not. But you get it. It's just like, it's easy.

There's a lot of optionality out there. How are—

how are— walk me through like guys purchasing behavior that you've learned. It could be funny things, could be like interesting things.

So irrational.

So irrational.

Like, for instance, there's There's a guy in Lubbock, Texas.

Okay.

Every quarter he orders 12 Jumbo body washes.

12.

We're like, what kind of army do you have down there? And how many showers are they taking? He's like, no, like, I have 5 boys and like, they love the smell and like, they're all playing games and coming back from practice and they smell terrible and like, this works for them. So we just stock up. I'm like, that's sick. But like, I called him. I was like, I got to find out. He's like, he's like, hello? I was like, hey man, it's Matt from Huron. Kind of weird. But this is like the fourth time you've done this and I just have to like figure out why. But like, again, I hope a chatbot can't do that in the next 6 to 12 months. But it was a really cool interaction. We had like a 10-minute call and he still buys from us every quarter.

But I like to think you'll never lose him as a customer. Like, that's, that's someone that's like a lifer. Like those little things to go out of your way to to make those calls, you're right that there's this personal element where it's a real human where he'll remember that forever now.

Well, and like after he got all the weirdness of me calling him, he's like, this is actually kind of funny why you called. He's like, and I would probably call too because I realized I order a ton of these. Um, so he felt like seen obviously. Uh, and we had a really funny conversation. So it was, it was well worth it. Yeah.

It's so funny because whenever, like if I'm at my girlfriend's apartment, switching moisturizers daily. There's always a new one weekly that she's trying. And I just look in the corner of my shower and there's like a big jumbo Huron. It's literally been there for months.

I love that.

And it just stays there. She's like, why don't you try this moisturizer, this face wash? I'm like, I don't know, it works. I think it works. Is selling to guys just something that like— did you have any assumptions before starting Huron versus now?

Good question. I mean, I think assumptions are the most dangerous game in our world. Because you just have no idea until you put things into practice. And I think for me, like, I thought that it would be easy to kind of like get guys to level up their routines, right? I mean, I'm switching from Malt Spice, I'm switching from Dove, which is probably the vast majority of our base. But I think an assumption for me was like that would be 90 to 95% of our base. And it's not. We get a lot of guys who are like very well-versed in the category and who are calling out ingredients and like, oh my God, this is just as good as the stuff that I use. And it's a fourth of the price. And I think that becomes also like a very interesting selling point. And, you know, we've leaned into that for ads and whatnot. So you just really have to have an open mind with this stuff. Another thing that I think is very interesting and more special for our category is the customer and the consumer aren't always the same person. In this category, it's typically a female buyer who's buying for brother, partner, coworker, whomever, like 85% of the time.

That's interesting.

So we've tried to do a few things where we're kind of like pumping the brakes a little bit on like men's, men's, men's, men's, men's. So that we, a little bit. I mean, if you were to land on our website, you'd be like, okay, it's not rocket science to figure out who they're marketing to. But like, are there unnecessary places we're showcasing that versus just talking about the quality of the product?

Well, I think that goes back to the point you made earlier in terms of like, You made a comment about like what you don't need. I don't remember exactly what the wording was, but you didn't need a big video on a hero banner on the homepage because you're, you're marketing to a bunch of dudes who are like, I just need another body wash because I'm out.

Yeah.

Uh, but where is that line when you're like, but I know that like the, the dudes using it, it's actually 85% females who are buying it for you. So at the end of the day, like a conversion funnel doesn't discriminate. Like it's whoever the person is, you need them to just get through the funnel.

Totally. No, that's exactly right. And I think, look, again, like once you land on our site, it's pretty easy to tell like what the angle is and what the play is. But we receive a ton of inbounds around, hey, I bought this for my husband and it smells amazing. And now, now we get the jumbo because we both use the body wash, like an insane number of inbounds around that. So we just felt that like, hey, if, if we were to go into retail one day, like, could we be more marketable if we didn't have some of like these gender callouts, for instance. So it's just like some, you know, some strategic decisions. But yes, to the funnel question, I mean, now we have funnels specifically for the female buyer, right? And now we're leading with content that's around, again, I bought this for my husband, I bought this for my boyfriend, but I love the way it smells. It's like, you know, cheaper than what I currently buy and like a little bit goes a long way, blah, blah, blah, all the points we wanna talk about. And those convert really, really well. So it's been fun to kind of, see what resonates with, you know, with various audiences.

Yeah. I want to switch topics a bit. I want to hear more about your self-talk throughout the kind of like seasons of Huron. Because especially I feel like this is more so brands than agencies, but you, you quite literally see the score every day with Shopify sales coming in. And so on not only days that it may not be perfect, but like weeks where trend is not going your way, especially with like meta issues recently. Like, how are you talking to yourself? How are you talking to your team? Is it just calm down, keep like staying the course? Is it making immediate changes?

It's less of immediate changes because I think we're just built to play the long game. Like we were never going to be the SPAC in 3 years company.

All right. So any company, especially for brands right now, there's good seasons, bad seasons, good days, bad days. How do you manage your mindset when things aren't going your way necessarily?

I think I learned pretty early on you almost have to operate at like a 6.5 to 7 out of 10 every day and avoid like the big emotional swings. Swings when you're having a great day and you want to be a 10 out of 10. Lows when you want to be a 3 out of 10. A, it's, it's good for your own psyche. And B, I think the team really feeds off that as well. Like you, you want to be up and to the right. With modesty. I think it's important to celebrate the wins for sure, and it's important to acknowledge areas that you can and should be improving upon. But if you live this world on a like a day-to-day thread, like it will eat you up in my mind. Like I think it could, it could really do some mental damage. So it's, you have to be a little bit more stable Look, dude, in like the first few weeks of Huron, like I remember there would be like Sundays where I would have to go in and like place an order. It'd be like, is our site broken? Cause like, I don't think we've had an order in like 5 hours. Like what is happening? Like, oh, my order went through. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Um, so like I, it's easy to like get bogged down and like, oh, like we're not beating where we were yesterday. But then look back 3 years ago and be like, if you told me 3 years ago that one day we would be doing these numbers on a daily basis, I'd be like, Holy cow. So it's, it's important to kind of like take a look in the rearview mirror every once in a while, because I feel like we're always so, you know, blinders on, sprinting full steam ahead, not ever reflecting on like where we've come from or what we've learned along the way. And I think arguably that's, that's a really important exercise to go through on a pretty regular basis.

How do you keep up the momentum? Like, I see my job as a leader. Of at least for my company, of keeping the momentum and the pace where we were just talking about of I can be in one-on-one sometimes and I realize like my energy is slipping and I'm like, get it together. This is your job. This is what you're paid to do. How do you, how do you keep up that momentum when things, when you know that things aren't exactly where they should be?

Yeah, I mean, that's a really tough question. Look, everyone's going to look to you to kind of set the tone, establish like the baseline for how things are going. The team's smart, right? Like, they know when you're fundraising, like they can tell body language, like all of those things. And you have to just be kind of a, a pretty steady eddy around, feel great about where we're at, feel great about the mission that we're on, and kind of full steam ahead. One of the coolest things is a little bit of a non sequitur, but one of the coolest things that we've done as a team, maybe ever, is in January of this year, we established our team values.

All right. Tell me more about team managing mindset with them.

Yeah. So in January of this year, we went through a values exercise and this all started because we do this thing called Huron Office Hours where we basically bring in either investors or operators that I've kind of gotten to know or that my co-founder Matt's gotten to know just to talk to the team about their own professional development and their own kind of career trajectory. And the first one that we had was with one of my really good buddies who's also an investor in Huron. His name's Jared Smith. He was a co-founder of RxBar. So it was like, talk us through the early days when you were sub-10 people, like what was great, what was maybe not so great. He's like, look, like we had a total like cultural implosion and we basically had to have like a level setting at 10 people. And we went through this entire exercise around defining company Values, mission, and vision, I think. That's probably right. Um, but kind of walked us through the process and like immediately the team gravitated towards that concept. It was like, great. Like, I think having a set of core company values that we can adhere to, celebrate, champion, follow would be really, really important. So basically what we did is we gave everyone— I spent about a week and compiled all of like the best-in-class kind of like exercises that I could find, Uber, Airbnb. Uh, Apple, um, we used the RXBAR deck, like just like a bunch of decks to kind of outline like what the process looked like for these individual companies. And then we presented that to the team and then gave them all a week to kind of reflect on like what would make sense for the Huron shortlist of values. And then we interviewed each person individually so that there wasn't like a groupthink, like, oh, I'm like nervous to say this. So we interviewed everyone. I recorded everything. There was like 15 pages of notes. And then I sat with those for like 2 weeks and we basically formed the 6 values. Um, and then we, I mean, we have an entire—

which are what?

I can't tell you.

Secret values.

Is that one of the most important things you've done?

It was one of the cool— it was one of the coolest things. And we put together a big deck, like we have a Slack channel that's just values in the wild. Um, that probably 2 or 3 times a week, like that channel will get hit up and it's like, you know, at so-and-so, like, Really appreciated you like doing this and like it was really, really cool. So like the rest of the team knows, so like there's total team buy-in, which has been awesome to see. I forget how we got on this, but I think like going through that exercise was incredibly important for us just so that we could weather the storm on days that aren't so great, but it gives us a reason to champion like those days where we're really clicking to be like, this is why things are happening because we have these core values in place that kind of provide foundational piece, uh, that kind of stands you on, on its own.

How do you, how do you find that the values you establish with the team you have guide like what the team looks like when it's twice as big, right? So is it like you let the early employees define the values and now you're gonna fit the net new people into the values you have, or do you see yourself potentially doing that exercise again, let's say 2 years from now, assuming that your team grows from what it is today?

Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I would argue probably the former. I mean, selfishly, I wanted to make sure that the values aligned really closely how I wanted the values to be so that there wasn't kind of a wavering that in 2 to 3 years that when we're 3Xs the size we are today, that all of a sudden, like, value 3 and 4 no longer fit. Like, I think the values we've set today are broad enough such that they will always be applicable regardless of team size. But I do think that they provide an interesting set of metrics almost to hire people against, or at least to like reference check against. Like, hey, value one for us is people first. Can you give me a really good example of instances where like Adrian put people first? That could be customers, that could be teammates. Um, and it just provides like a lot of substance behind the scenes to who we are as a, as a team as well. So that when a candidate's interviewing us, it's like, hey, you know, what are the things that you're on stand for? And be like, here's this 20-page deck that outlines exactly what we stand for. So it was a cool exercise.

Very cool. How have you, how have you improved as a leader since? I don't know what the first leadership role you held was like captain of the football team in college, right? Like, how have you over time, how has Huron improved it over the past decade? How have you gotten better?

I'll be patient and empathy.

Tell me more.

I was the most impatient person and my wife would probably argue I still am. But it was just always like, hey, I have this very regimented, structured way of how I think you should be doing things because that's the way that I've done it. And like, it's gotten me to here and like, it ain't broke. So like, we should just keep, keep on keeping on.

So wake up at 3 o'clock.

Yeah.

No sleeping in.

Everyone up.

Everyone up. Roll call. All hands meeting is 3 AM every Tuesday.

So I think being a little bit more like pragmatic around my personal experiences and like, that might not be the same for everyone and that's totally fine. And that goes kind of hand in hand with empathy, which is just, you know, meeting, whether it's our team, customers, stakeholders, like meeting them where they're at, like understanding where people are struggling, why they're struggling, how we can help them, understanding that if I'm frustrated, for instance, around someone's output, like, what's the root cause? Like, maybe there's something on the other end that I have no clue about. So it's wrong for me to just like completely, you know, go crazy or, you know, outlash at them, whatever, without knowing like potentially the root cause of something else is happening behind the scenes. So even like the phraseology of questioning, right? Like, hey, I saw this was like happening, like, don't think it really went our way. Like, would you agree? Like, any thoughts on why? Versus like, why the fuck did this not go this way? And I think like you're getting at the same point, but the first is you're sitting on the same side of the table. The second is you're sitting on the opposite sides of the table. So I think like that level of like digging in and understanding like there's something else that might be at play becomes really, really important when you're managing others.

And then how do you think about continuing to develop yourself as a leader? Like to stay, stay ahead of the curve?

On paper, I always wanted to be like a voracious reader, like read a ton of books.

Me too.

And like in practice, I'm terrible. And I forget, someone put this out in the wild a few years ago, but it was like, I finished maybe 10% of the books I start because once I realized they're no longer a fit, I ditch them. But I always had this like notion of like, I have to finish this book because I started it. And that would always be like a blocker to like actually reading more. And now I read a ton and I get to a point like I'll skip this chapter, like, I don't know, or skim or whatnot. And I always have a pen with me, so I underline shit all the time. And then I've just started logging things. So I have like an entire like Google Sheet of like, here's the book, here's like the top 5 things that I underlined. Here's like a way that I could put it in practice. And then I'll review the sheet once a month. The first of every month, I just go, I spend a half hour and just review everything that I've read in like the past 6 months. Because otherwise, like you underline it, you make a note of it and then put on a bookshelf and you never visit it. So I think for me, like trying to learn from other leaders who've been very successful because this whole journey is about like curating your own strategy, right? And if you can take a little bit from here and a little bit from here and maybe a lot from there, you're going to find a leadership style that works really, really well for you and your team. Um, and I just don't think there's necessarily a playbook or guidebook for that.

Yeah, I think it's not just leadership style, but it's just like operating procedures and best practices too. Like sometimes when I'm dealing with a problem, I'm like, oh, how would I uniquely solve this? I'm like, it's an agency. You can't like, someone has figured this out before. Same with running a brand. I mean, there are unique things that only Huron is doing, but like, if you have a problem, someone's probably doing it well right now.

That still holds true for most things unless you're like trying to use AI to go to space with like a Web3 token of some sort.

I'm so glad we don't do that. Speak to the camera and just tell them where they can find you and what Huron is.

Sweet. Uh, Twitter @MattMolinax. Um, Huron is a men's personal care brand helping guys help themselves.

Love it. Seriously, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.