#058: How Colm Mackin and Helen Reavey Raised $2.5M and Grew a Scalp-Care Brand

for the first year of that product's life, it was like 2% of our revenue, nothing. And then we started hearing all of these stories about my hair, my hair is growing back, my hair loss stopped, my hair stopped shedding because of this product. And then I kind of had this thesis around we should bring this into the middle of the brand and build everything else around it. It's an $85 product, it's phenomenal. And we know how effective it is. And we did that and the business sort of, that was a big step change. And obviously all of the, all of the menu person coming in, he loved that, and he was like, this is, yeah, this is what you should do. Even if we launch them, they do really, really well, after like 18 months they're still at best going to be where ActionEcker is right now. So what are we doing? Like, just get this one thing to work, put everything into this. Once this works, Once we exit, amazing, we can do whatever, but just that singularity of purpose.

Colm Macken, co-founder of Act and Acre, has redefined the hair wellness space by focusing on the often overlooked importance of scalp health. Originally from Ireland, Colm and his wife Helen Reavy launched Act and Acre in 2019, pioneering a new approach to hair care that prioritizes nourishing and balancing the scalp. In this episode of Turning Pro, Colum shares how their innovative brand has grown from its inception to being featured in over 300 Sephora stores across the US. He also reflects on his journey from a 14-year career in law and corporate finance to becoming an entrepreneur in the beauty and wellness industry. Welcome back to Turning Pro. Today is season 3, episode 1. We have Colum Mackin, the co-founder of Act and Acre. Thanks for joining us today.

Thanks for having me, guys.

Can't believe we made it to season 3. That's pretty cool.

Season 3 and you're the official first guest.

Yeah, when he found out how many episodes we've done so far, he's like, I feel less special. I'm like, no, you should feel more special. Special.

It's not—

you're the, you're the star guest of season 3.

Well, usually you're, you're, when you're trying, you're always trying to put the, the headliner up the front of the season. In the middle of the season, you don't really care.

You were the absolute headline. We've been planning this for months.

Yeah, yeah.

When I pinged you, I was like, you're gonna be the first.

All right, so here's, here's the first question for you. We see a billboard in Times Square about you. What's the headline?

The one last year, or the—

oh, there's a flex. No, I didn't even know you had one last year. Yeah, no, you were just saying everyone cares about the headline from the first episode, so I'm like, what's your headline? Oh yeah, uh, let's see, what's What's the eye-catching headline of your career or your business in a nutshell that someone's going to look at and be like, wow, that's cool, I want to learn more? Because we need that headline for the episode.

He doesn't know what to say. That could be it.

Actions speak louder than words.

Yeah, yeah. And if he did know what to say, you wouldn't understand because of his accent.

It's not that heavy.

I'm majorly kind of making it simpler right now.

You're actively working hard.

Oh, very much so. Really? Yeah. This is not my normal speaking voice.

Can you— what is your normal speaking voice?

I could probably put on a Belfast accent.

Okay, do a Belfast accent.

I've been to Belfast.

Really?

Have you really?

Yeah, I played in a hockey tournament there.

You played a hockey tournament there?

Yeah, the Friendship Four tournament in college.

You go higher and then you—

I'm going to flex for a second. I won player of the tournament.

In Belfast?

Really?

Yeah, in Belfast. I swear to God, I was like a little celebrity in Belfast. I bet you I could dig it up in the Twitter archives. I was like interviewed on news stations there and kids were like, Some kid, like, people in Belfast were tweeting like, what? Like, pay attention to this guy's name. He's going to like be in the NHL one day.

What year was this?

We played there 2019, 2020.

Okay, fantastic.

I'll find something for you from the archives after.

Please. I'll tell the boys at home and they'll be like, no way, that guy. Yeah, I know that guy.

It's really funny.

I am a huge football fan. I'm a big Arsenal fan.

Yeah.

And the amount of times I'm moving to London next year in like a month and a half and Every single time, there are a handful of lines that just make me yearn for something about English culture.

Sure.

And I've heard that line, "Back for the boys at home." "We're gonna win it for the boys at home." I was like, "There's something about it. I wanna go. I need to be part of the pub culture." To be clear, I'm Irish.

Fair.

The British Empire of old.

Well, again, I'm Irish.

Is that also out of the British Empire?

Uh, I would definitely classify myself as Irish, not British. Yeah.

Very fair. Wait, so can you give us the accent if you're describing where you're from?

Oh, it'll go higher and go faster. So it'll be like, "How's it going there, lads?" It'll really quicken up.

Got it. And what's the—

It's efficiency.

The Scouse accent?

That's Scottish, right? Scouse is in Liverpool, so it's in England. Got it.

I'm a Jamie Carragher fan.

Yeah, Jamie's great.

Sometimes I can't understand what he's saying when he puts on that accent.

No, I know. It's when you're with your people as well. Yeah, uh, you, you go a lot faster.

How often do you go back there?

Um, probably 2-3 times a year. It's been less since we started the brand, um, but it's usually like definitely in the summer, definitely at Christmas, and then one other time.

Got it.

Is your wife from there as well?

Yeah, yeah, we met 23 years ago, first day of college.

Yeah, fantastic story.

And you, how long have you been together?

23 years.

Oh, you like It was like week 2.

Yeah, we dated other people for the first week and then we got together. We literally met on the Sunday night of college and we've been together.

Did you go to school in the US?

No, in Ireland. University of Ulster in Ireland. And yeah, we've been together ever since.

When did you guys move here?

We moved here, so after college was 2005. Then in 2011, we went traveling for a year and moved permanently to New York in 2013. Ellen got an opportunity to work at Fashion Week, and we were like, fuck it, take all of our savings and move there and try to make it. And yeah, she kind of had this really crazy opportunity. She met an agent through another person. She met an agent, and then at the time, she had never worked with celebrities. She was a really talented, award-winning hairstylist, but worked in a salon. But she didn't want to do that. She wanted to transition into kind of more editorial, like red carpet celebrity. And with that conversation, he was like, "Look, Alicia Keys is kind of looking for new people now, but this will be good experience. But you're way too junior, like you're only starting and she's looking for the best of the best." And Helen went out to her house in Jersey and like 30 seconds in, Alicia was like, "I want you to come on tour with me." Wait, she went on tour with Alicia? Yeah.

So I'm really good friends with her brother.

Really?

With Alicia Keys' brother?

Yeah.

From college?

No, we worked at GoPuff together. No way. Yeah.

I had no idea.

I just haven't heard that name in a while. That's crazy.

Yeah.

So she went on tour with Alicia?

She was with Alicia for like 2 years. Wow. And then Alicia's manager moved to Harry Styles and then kind of brought Helen with. So then Helen's been working with Harry now for a long time.

Wow. So I know you, you've talked about origin story of Acton Acre, I'm sure, time and time again. So we don't have to run through that. But I am curious, kind of the different phases of a business.

Sure.

I started my agency a few years ago.

Well, maybe a quick 2 seconds on the background of the brand. We don't have to do the full deep dive.

The brand, and I don't want to do the whole origin story.

No, we don't need the full thing, but we can give a quick spark notes.

Well, after college, I joined PricewaterhouseCoopers in Dublin and worked in corporate finance for 14 years as a tax lawyer, pretty much.

How was that?

You worked with really smart people on big problems, but it was pretty boring. You don't know what's boring at the time.

It's just your reality.

Yeah, it's just your reality. And then actually, Helen had this opportunity to go to Paris Fashion Week in 2017. She was leading a show. So she hired 20 of the Herschelers, and it was a really big deal, the first woman to ever do this. And I flew in, and I was like, this is the life I want. "this is fucking amazing." And part of that was she had this realization around scalp and she said, "All the models' hair is totally fucked up and we need to fix their scalps and we don't have time." And I was like, "Really? Why does scalp matter?" And it was like the night before the show. And then I went back to New York and I was like, "That could be a thing. That's definitely a thing." And yeah, 5 days later, I was with one company for 14 years. And I just handed in my notice.

I bet you weren't wearing this outfit when you showed up to work every day.

Chinos and a polo, 100%.

Were you wearing a suit and tie?

No, I was wearing chinos and a polo. Oh, like I had my— it's funny, so I had my Monday to Thursday outfit, which I hated, Friday, which I hated more, uh, and then so I, yeah, I just kind of let go of all of it.

But yeah, no, A handful of episodes from last season, we were talking about kind of the rose-colored glasses that you have in the early days of starting a company.

Sure.

Sometimes when both of us look back to the early days, it's like, oh, it was so nostalgic, it was so fun. But when you're in it, it's a grind. Yeah, it's so difficult. You probably don't want to go back there in hindsight because now everything's— you have momentum and things are moving now. And so does that— does that happen for you, or did you really love and kind of like have a soft spot for those early days?

Yeah, I really enjoyed the early days, honestly. Kind of dumb and useful and like, wow, everything. It was like the early days of Facebook as well, earlier days of Facebook. So everything was working so much better. Like post iOS 14, it was way harder. Our CAC went from $14 to like $200 overnight. And then you had to actually create a business within a business, you had to fundamentally change everything. And everything that got you to the Super Bowl, you now had to change because we had raised money and everything, which was really challenging. But the early days were great, man. And also, it's also a little skewed because, okay, so we launched in 2019. The start of 2020, it started to get a little more challenging. But before COVID happened, 3 days before, we went to Mexico for the weekend and ended up living there for 2 years. So we lived on like on the beach in Tulum.

I remember we talked about this because I was going for New Year's.

Yeah.

And you were like, I have a bike down there, you can use it.

Really? I was like, yeah, tent with me.

Wait, A, we don't know each other that well. That's very generous. And B, what have you been doing down here?

Yeah.

So you just went for a couple of years?

Yeah. No, I— well, like, it was never like that. It was always like, we'll just stay another month. We'll just stay another week. We went down to do a photo shoot. And then they were like closing borders and we're like, maybe we just stay here for the next— because it was always a week away. Everything was going to get solved in a week. At no point was anyone ever going like, it's good. Everything was— so it was like, okay, April, and then everything closed. And it was amazing because at the same time our life got significantly better because we were living in Tulum and there was nobody there. Like there was nobody on the beach. I visited there at that time in the middle of the pandemic. Really? Yeah.

Oh yeah, it was epic.

What did you go for?

Uh, to party.

Like, did you— New Year's?

Well, so the— because to what you just said, it was in— it was basically in one week everything will be okay, in one week everything will be okay. And most people just lock themselves inside. I joined an early-stage COVID testing startup in 2020.

Wow.

And so I was one of the few people that was actually traveling more.

Sure.

When the pandemic started versus before, because I was going city to city, opening up new locations, building a team, and then moving on to the next city and doing it. Yeah, and I started traveling for that, and then I kind of just didn't stop traveling for like 2 years. I did like 18 cities, uh, but the only cities I did outside of the US were Tulum and Toronto because I didn't want to get stuck in some random place. Because like, while we knew we were in the middle of a pandemic, like, you just never know with like regulations and whatever. I was like, I don't want to get stuck in like the middle of Europe and I just don't know what to deal with. But long story short, I was at home working one day. It was a Friday night. Like 7 PM and one of my buddies, Noah Friedman, who I might have introduced you to, calls me and he goes, do you want to come to Tulum? And I was like, what? He's like, yeah, like we have this really cool jungle party tomorrow night. Like you should totally come. I was like, dude, it's 7 PM on a Friday. I'm in Buffalo, New York in my parents' basement. Like, what are you talking about? He talked me into doing it. I booked a flight that night for 6 AM the next morning. It was like 6 AM. I flew from Buffalo to Chicago, Chicago to Cancún. From Cancún took like a ferry ride over and then took a taxi, and it was like 14 hours later. Got there, took a nap, ended up going to like the craziest jungle party of my life. And then I remember eating a taco at like 9:30 AM the next morning, like on the, like on the street corner. I was like, holy shit, that was probably like the craziest 24 hours of my life.

Love it. What month was that?

Oh God, I'd have to look back in the archives.

Were you on the beach or were you in the Aldea Zama?

We were in Aldea Zama for sure, but then we would go down every weekend because at that point you could stay in a hotel for like $100 a night. That was like $1,000 and you get smuggled in by the workers because we knew a lot of them. And yeah, it was wild.

You were getting smuggled in by the workers?

Yeah, you go in the back of the car and like, I don't know, sheet over you.

Yeah, dude, there were so many crazy things. The party that I went to got shut down by like the Mexican police.

Yeah.

And it's like this whole inside ring where like they'll shut it down and then they'll put out like PR making them sound like heroes. But it was just like actually to get everyone to go home. Like crazy. That place, you need to like know people. I feel like if you live there for a while, you need to like know the inner workings and have some relationships. I was fortunate that I had a couple of friends who'd spent months there, so they were like very intertwined in the community. But yeah, I don't know. It was a fun time though.

During that, so I'd never been to Tulum and then I went for New Year's, I guess when I texted you like 4 years ago maybe. And I think I got, I think I got to Tulum at the tail end of it being Tulum. And I remember going for New Year's and there was just so much traffic. Everything was so expensive. Yeah, it was impossible to get reservations.

Yeah.

And I had fun. Like we booked the right restaurants in advance. I think you probably sent over recommendations and it was fun, but I wasn't like, oh my God, that was the craziest thing ever. And then last year, a couple New Year's ago, we went to Santa Teresa, which I know a lot of people go to now. And I think it's— I think we caught it maybe not early early, but it's like still not crazy packed.

Sure.

And then we did a— we lived there for like 5 weeks, Karina and I, a few months ago in Santa Teresa. And in Santa Teresa, and in off-season, it's so quiet and it's so cheap and everything's beautiful and everyone's so friendly. It's not the kind of like, uh, folks that live there versus tourists. Sure. In the heavy seasons.

Yeah.

And so I'm curious, do you guys still have your place down in Tulum or did you sell it?

We don't actually. Yeah, no, we don't. And we've been trying out different places. We've been trying out Puerto Escondido and I don't know if there's enough there.

I don't know it too well.

I've heard friends mention it. It's in the province of Oaxaca. Okay. We've been twice now, but we're actually going to try Santa Teresa in January, February next year. Hell yeah. But we definitely need another place other than New York, um, for the weather. Like, it's, it's, you know, everybody knows it's really tough here.

Have you been down to Brazil or like Argentina?

Yeah, we've been, yeah, we've been, we've been, we spent a year kind of backpacking around South America.

I had no idea. Wait, when was this in the stretch of years?

In 2011. Irish people tend to do stuff like that a lot, to be like, yeah, let's just put down everything and do something else, and let's just take a year off. We're good at that. I don't know why.

It's just an Irish person thing.

I think so, yeah.

It's like, I think that's just someone who's curious. I think it's a curiosity thing.

Yeah, like most of our ancestors had to go away, right? So, you know, the potato famine was a real thing. Like, everybody left and come back. And so leaving and coming back just is very natural. Like, growing up, there was always people in your village that was going to, going to America and then coming back and going to play football here, or going to England. So there's a lot of kind of displacement within Ireland in our own history and still today. So, yeah, us leaving is like, no, it wasn't.

What drives you?

What drives me now? I think it just comes from that drive to be the best or to be the best version of yourself is very present within me and Helen. And I think the best version of ourselves is kind of different to what it looked like before Acton Acre, right? I think the purpose of life is to evolve your consciousness, and to evolve at anything, you need a lot of struggle. So we're constantly kind of opening the door to rooms that are full of struggle. Like, we've been living away from home pretty much our whole lives. We went to Dublin, then we came over here. But I think that kind of strive to— and that's also the biggest blessing about running your own business, is that it makes you figure out all your own shit. Like, I'm actually very happy to say that I'm going to be a father later this year.

Congratulations.

Thank you. Yeah. And I'm so blessed to have all of these things that to go through the fundraising journey and to do board meeting and do all of this. Because yeah, PwC, my previous job, was really challenging. I worked with really smart people on hard stuff, but it wasn't the level of pressure anywhere close to what it's like running a 20-person, 25-person team and having real things and things go wrong every day. And that pressure makes you look inward and actually, yeah, everybody does kind of breathwork beforehand, but really finding an intention behind it all And if you don't, you'll just crumble.

You know what's crazy off of hearing you say that? So, I mean, I've said this multiple times in the podcast, but I gave up my corporate job 12 hours before my first day. Uh, I never actually went there. Can you imagine if I like walked into an EY office today and just like sat down for a week as like an analyst?

You went to EY before?

I didn't go. I was 12 hours before— I got, I got a job there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And 12 hours before my first day, I told them I wasn't coming.

Right.

I was supposed to do M&A consulting at EY Parthenon.

Right.

But I'm just thinking about, like, to the point you just made, when you start your own company— because I have my own software company, uh, it's a huge forcing function to, like, grow up both personally and professionally. When you're managing people, when you're solving problems, it's not just like clocking in, clocking out. But you saying that, I'm, like, laughing to myself imagining the hypothetical where I, like, walked into, like, a consulting firm today and, like, sat down at a desk. I would I think I'd get fired within like an hour.

Yeah.

I think counterintuitively you're an incredibly like competitive person. I think you would, you would last a little while and do incredibly well. It may not be what you should be doing in your life. You probably have that gut instinct like I should be doing something different, but I think, I think you would have crushed it.

My only issue is that I can't, I can't focus on something if I'm not genuinely curious in it. Like I can't fake it.

Mm.

Right. So I think the issue with that is you can get into an environment where like, because I'm competitive, do I think I could be the best?

Yes.

But I know for sure that like it won't be the most pressing problem. That's like the itch that I want to scratch. When you think about just me as a curious person, that like I think I'd sit there just like looking around thinking about all the other things I could be doing. And it's like, why am I doing this one?

Yeah, right.

Like, I think the beauty of entrepreneurship and starting a company is you were solving a problem that you came across that you're passionate about, not like you were given a problem to solve by someone else.

Yeah, yeah, that's a real thing for sure.

When you stumbled on kind of the scalp care problem, has your passion grown over the years as you guys have grown up as well and served more customers? Because early days, like when you stumble on a problem, you may not be incredibly passionate about it right away, but then you get customers, you talk to this, I've dealt with this.

I'm passionate about the business, it's definitely grown. But in terms of the fundamental, like we want to the fundamental kind of business operations, the parts of the business that I care about and that I think I can impact change on, I've definitely grown into those. But Helen, to be clear, is the person who is really passionate about scalp. And I have to support that with all of the other operations around that. So she truly will sit here and ask you about your scalp. What's going on there? Okay, let me help you fix that. Because she knows that that impacts her, which impacts your, your self-esteem, which impacts really everything about your life. She'll want to ask and uncover that because she's done that in her entire life through before when she was a hairstylist in a salon. And then I'm not going to try to pretend that I care about deeply about like really every possible aspect of the scalp journey because Helen looks after that. And I absolutely I think it's incredibly important, but I'm kind of bigger picture than the fundamentals of the product. The product needs to be world-class and we need to have customers that love it and understand it. But I worry more about the storytelling around that.

How much of your business is grounded in education of like, you don't know what you don't know? Oh, so much. Because I'm sitting here listening to you and I was like, I don't know if I have whatever is deemed to be a healthy scalp. Sure, I think it's probably okay, but like, it's not something I've ever— I'm gonna guess that your audience probably skews more female than male, just at large. Yeah, is that accurate? Yeah, it's, it's probably like 85% because I don't think I've ever taken 2 seconds in my life to actually think about like, oh, I wonder if my scalp is healthy or not. Yeah, can you give me like the— you're talking to a 6-year-old in class, like, what, what, what do I need to know?

Totally. Um, well, you know, typically scalp clinicians Rarely, you're not born with them. They'll develop over time. And that's usually a function of, okay, you're not using good products, you're using kind of Head Shoulders, or you're using like the stuff that's really stripping, the shampoos that are really stripping, and then the conditioners that are just kind of full of all of those chemicals. And that's fine. Similar to like having a Red Bull in the morning is fine if you've had a tough weekend. But if you start having a Red Bull every morning of the week, for years, it ends up really building up. You start experiencing onset, early set hair loss, and then you're like, what's going on here? And you're still quite young, but our consumer really starts paying attention to it once they have the problem. And we're trying to— so there's dealing with the problem and then there's also kind of let's get ahead of it. So we kind of think about our customer in two different buckets of Sarah, who has a scalp issue that is— we can just solve for that. She understands her— what the issue is, and we just have to kind of get her through the quiz and help her understand.

What are popular scalp issues? This is very new territory for me.

Dry scalp, oily scalp, psoriasis, seborrheic dermatitis.

Okay.

Those are kind of like the big four.

What's seborrheic dermatitis?

It's similar to like— it's similar to What does it do?

Dry skin or something?

It's very much dry skin. Yeah, it's a rash that kind of appears in the scalp.

Like flakes?

And bacteria. Yeah, it's very similar to— it's a technical term for dandruff, really.

Oh, okay.

Got it. So dandruff is a scalp issue. So if you think about one of the biggest-selling kind of consumer products in the world is Head Shoulders. That's a scalp product. Got it. It's there to solve scalp issue. And then, so that's kind of Sarah. And then, There's Teresa that just thinks about thicker, fuller hair. And we know that the only way to get that really is to have the best possible environment for your hair to grow. It's all about that because like all of the kind of styling products are full of petroleum and chemicals and everything. They don't really— they'll do something short term. But if you really want thick, full, kind of like full of body hair, you need to have a healthy scalp. You're not getting it without it. So those are the two kind of—

And my other question for you is, what is your recommendation in terms of how many times a week you should be applying shampoo in your hair?

The more the better. It'll depend.

The more the better?

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah, well, like 3, 4 times a week. If you're working out, like it's kind of like the way Helen always says, would you let your face go a week without actually kind of washing it with something? Or like your scalp, it's made up of the same stuff as your face. Like, it's still skin and it's actually more sensitive. So it's much better to kind of wash it when you're—

I think there's definitely a false narrative floating around about the opposite. Yeah, I wash my— I wash my hair, I would say max 2 to 3 times a week. Yeah, I was told I shower like multiple times a day, but I will get my hair wet, but I won't apply shampoo.

I think it's more clicks, someone telling you to wash it. Once a month or someone telling you to watch it like a normal person every day?

Or like, well, wait, sorry, what was the question?

What gets more clicks?

Oh, what gets more clicks? Yeah, probably once a month. Once a month. Because you're like, why?

Because I want that. I want to only have to watch it once.

Yeah.

And also like it's a— it feels like a debunking thing, but it's not at all true. And we have all of these kind of Harvard studies that show that this spike in kind of scalp issues, hair loss, all of this here goes up. The less you wash your hair.

Yeah, I can't lose this. This is the moneymaker right here.

Yeah, but I feel like I've heard multiple people say there's especially like young guys. I think it's partially related to like primal living. They're like, you stop washing your hair for 2 weeks and then it's going to get really oily and then it'll get back to normal.

Yeah, it's nonsense.

That's nonsense.

That's total nonsense. Okay.

I haven't— my— I have— I'm Italian. My hair is naturally really oily.

Sure.

And I can't go a few days without it. But I will say the one thing that Karina forced me to use that you should start using. It's a, it's a like a scalp brush.

Okay. It's that little— the gua sha?

No, the gua sha is a face stone thing.

No, we, we have one for the scalp.

Oh really?

Yeah.

I, I don't know. She gave me one of the— it's like spiky.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it It's like you actually want to like— like when you— I remember this as a kid when I go to get to get my haircut and they would like wash you before in the chair. And it's like, it's like the amount of deep— the amount of like pressure and like depth that they apply when they're washing your hair before you get your haircut compared to what I do it by myself. I'm like, this is way different.

But the one thing I will say about like washing it, the frequency of washing your hair, if you're using like laundry detergent or if you're using like hand wash stuff you bought in Target, then yeah, you shouldn't really be using it at all. So use less of that.

I use— we're just going to put brands on blast and see what he thinks. I use Huron. Do you know Huron?

Oh yeah, I love it. Yeah, I love—

is that okay for my hair?

Yeah, yeah, I love that guy. Yeah, yeah, it's actually really good.

No, I didn't ask if you love the guy, I asked if you love the product.

I've never used the product, but I really trust Matt, so I'm sure he's making—

what's that app called, um, where you can scan labels? I forget the name of it. Is it Ryker or something? Yeah, you do it in like the grocery store, like you can scan the label and it will tell you out of like a score of 0 to 100 how good the product is for you.

Yeah, great.

Um, and the Huron shampoo is like a 93 out of 100.

Awesome.

Which is like deodorant It's the only one.

You know what? I think I've actually might have just downloaded the app.

Yeah, he's a good one to bring because he gifted me product once.

We've had him on here. Yuka.

Sorry, it's called Yuka. Yeah, it's an app where you can scan labels on products.

Sure. Okay, let me have a look at that.

I'm curious on the note of Huron and other kind of brands in New York, e-commerce in New York is like a great place to build, probably New York and LA, maybe London. Yeah. And so I'm curious, are there some— it can be brands in beauty, CPG. Are there any founders and brands that have come up maybe more recently over the past few years that you're a really big fan of, whether it's their approach, their product?

Yeah, absolutely. Actually, we have a standing kind of conversation with Matt from Huron and Gabby from Magic Spoon. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I love Akash from Fable and Mane.

What do they do?

Fable and Mane is probably one of our competitors. They're a haircare brand in Sephora. They're actually a shelf below us. but we talk to him all the time and we just have a WhatsApp group to be like, does this work? Does this work? We share salespeople. It's awesome. Ava from Mod, love Ava. Obviously huge in the consumer space here. I'm actually doing, so every 3 months I just reach out and send a blast to be like, let's catch up, let's catch up and do an open laptop session as I call it to be like, what's working in influencer? What's working in paid? What's working? I'd say Kate, the CEO over there, I'd say is, Scarlett Johansson's. Oh cool, I didn't know she had a brand.

Oh, she has a beauty brand?

Yeah, yeah, it's great. Um, and then Susie over at, um, she was at, um, Gin Leon, and then she has that kind of whole co— I know you had her co-founder.

We just had Emmett here, oh, Pattern.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's really smart.

Yeah, I really like, um, I forget her name, they're doing— it's the filter, Filter Baby. For the Lynn. Lynn? Yes.

She's a killer. She's a really good operator.

Not only good operator.

I have one in my bathroom.

Great.

You do? Yeah. Do you think it works? Have you noticed?

Yeah, 100%.

Do you wash your face with, like, water from the sink or.

Yeah, well, if I don't— if I, like, don't shower right before I go to bed.

Yeah.

Like if I shower after I worked out a few hours earlier or whatever, I'll wash my face with water in the sink.

Who's the founder that stood out for you? Season 3. So we've got—

was this— you're saying brand founder?

Yeah.

It's a group of founders from the podcast, from the guys that we just had. Mike from Canopy Endorse Dev. They're just really good people. Yeah, I used to share an office. I met them through Gabby at Magic Spoon. Really good people, but just really entrepreneurial.

Yeah, I mean, Aaron Lucas.

Aaron is cool. Aaron is my answer.

Yeah, he sold the blanket company Hush Blankets, the black weighted blanket. He was on here, sold it for 50 mil at 25 years old.

Yeah, then good for him.

Uh, yeah, I feel like he's— we were talking about this before we actually started this episode where like I would say I'm like 3 years into my real entrepreneurship journey, like not like the fake entrepreneurship where you're always trying things, and he's on year 11 and he's 29 years old.

Wow.

Because he didn't go to college, like he started the business when he was 17, 18. So it's really cool to see founders like that who, from like a battle-scarred perspective, are just like light years ahead of you even though you're like similar in age.

What's he doing now?

Uh, so he just finished his earnout a few months ago, um, and now he's working on a couple different things. But, uh, the biggest focus is a company called Founders Club. You might have heard about it. It's 150 D2C brand founders.

Nice.

Okay, they built like this founders community where they do like weekly masterminds and workshops. So they'll bring in guest speakers, they'll host dinners and events in different major cities, and then they'll get like software companies to like fund these events. They're doing like a retreat in Miami next week with the founder of, um, Solidcore.

Okay.

Uh, they're doing like a thing in Tulum actually with, uh, 50 founders, like a private hotel. Yeah, but it's all brand founders.

Brilliant.

But that like community is kind of his big thing right now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I know you mentioned earlier that You say, especially in CPG, that you show up to the business and every day, something's broken and something changes. And then there's big changes, like iOS changes. Aside from those massive changes where you literally are rebuilding parts of the business, have you gotten more accustomed, or maybe it's adding layers of new hires to deal with those things that break every day? Or over time, does it still faze you in the same way, but you just have more experience?

I don't think, Yeah, I remember meeting one of the founders of Aware, like, right, like, it actually was in our first week, and I asked them that question, and she was like, right now, they was asking about going from a 1 to 10 and 10 to 1 on a daily basis, like, and how that feels and how tough that is on your kind of your system. And she was like, yeah, it would take a lot to move me out of like a 7.2. Like, even if like everything fell apart, I'd be like a 7. And then if something went amazing, be like a 7.4.

You think that's just like a battle scar thing? Yeah, you just definitely—

yeah. And I, I wouldn't be exactly that, but pretty close. I've been working with a coach from like day one, pretty much. And then after like the first 2 years My coach became Helen's coach, my wife, my co-founder. And then about a year after that, I was like, "Hey, would you talk to other people within our business?" So now all of my leadership talks to my coach. Wow. Yeah, every single person. And he helps them manage up, manage down, communication around the thing. And he knows me intimately. He knows Helen intimately. And he gets to know them and then they'll come to him monthly with kind of, these are the things that are going on. And he'll be like, well, look, and he also knows all of, like say, this is not a real scenario, but if my, let's say if my CFO had an issue with my kind of my head of paid marketing, he would know both characters and he would be able to say, well, this is how they'll receive that information better, and this is kind of what they're going through, or this is maybe what they're going through. And he'll also know if there's something going on personally with that, but he'll never reveal that. So that's been a real game changer of putting that person in place and then giving him the trust and then being vulnerable around him. And then he's been able to kind of really play a really integral role in communication because communication is a superpower. It's the biggest thing we do. That's been amazing for us.

That's so interesting. So we just started— I think I told you this, but we just started with an executive coach like 2 weeks ago, um, with my co-founders and I. And I've never heard of someone actually having their executive coach then become the coach for a lot of people in the organization because they have the connective tissue to be able to help people solve problems knowing the different personalities.

Yeah, it's incredible.

That's such a hack.

Such a hack.

I've never heard of that before.

No, me neither.

He can also do the coaching when I'm not doing the coaching. If I'm off doing fundraising or if I'm off thing and I'm like, shit, these people aren't getting the love that they need because they need someone to talk to about their stuff. And it's been a game changer.

What are the things that are still on your plate as you've hired more folks, built more system and process under you, delegated more work? What is still directly in your court?

We're actually changing that right now, but we just hired an incredible person for kind of our chief commercial officer. So I still look after all kind of paid channels, paid acquisition, kind of anything related to revenue I'll be looking at, but we've just hired them. And I don't want to get too ahead of myself because usually when you talk to founders and you're like, that person, that agency is amazing, that person's amazing. And you're like, how long have you been working with them? Well, we start next week. And then you're like, okay, well, but this person, I'm not going to say his name. This person is a bit of a celebrity within consumer and the brand. We probably all own the brand and use the brand. But about 3 and a half years ago—

Can you tell us off camera?

Yeah.

Okay, great.

Uh, 3 and a half years ago, I DM'd him and—

Wait, actually, when is he starting?

He's starting, uh, in August 11th.

This, this episode won't be live for like 3 months, so you can share it.

Yeah, we can do it after.

Yeah, we'll do it after. But anyway, but as you know, as I came on, I love— think of like edgy one, like that type of like— I love everything. That's not edgy one.

Oh, because their CMO just like announced that he was leaving that I'm friends with. I was like, wait a minute, funny.

Um, but it's like, I love everything you're doing. I would love to grab 'Can I have 20 minutes of your time just to ask you questions? And I promise I'm not annoying.' And I sat with him for like, he gave me 30 minutes. I was living in Tulum and I was like, 'That's crazy helpful.' And I was like, 'Can I pay you like $900 an hour?' Or I think it's like for 30 minutes of his time. I can't remember the exact number, just once a month. And then I'm like, 'What is the time of day? What is most convenient to you?' I'm just going to come with 3 questions every month. And he's like, sure, if you want, whatever. I can't find this fun because I was showing him how much value he was bringing to the company. And I've been doing that for 3 years.

And then meeting with him once a month.

Yeah.

So he's become a friend.

Yeah, he's become a friend, a mentor. Big swings that we have done within the business, his hands have been all over them. Yeah. And he's gotten to know. And anytime anyone's like, I don't know what to do about this. And I'm like, let me bring someone in who knows us intimately. And, uh, so he knows us inside out, and we— every time we go to LA, we hang out with him and everything. And then, yeah, he, uh, he came to me not so long ago and was like, I think I'm getting ready to make a move. And we were like, no way. And we actually kind of—

so he approached you?

Yeah.

And he wanted to join the business full-time because he saw the vision?

Saw the vision, saw like the momentum that we have now. Didn't think we were ready before. He wasn't ready before. Now he thinks it's the perfect time. And yeah, we're beyond excited about that.

Can you give us 30 seconds into the momentum you guys have now? You don't have to talk revenue numbers.

Sure. Well, obviously we just got into Sephora.

Congrats.

Thank you. Huge. That was obviously a pivotal moment for us. Sephora's doing really well. We're in 256 doors, but in total there's 1,400 doors, Sephora doors in the US. And we're having those conversations about expanding the Sephora business. We just launched in Mecca in Australia, which is a huge business in and of itself. Helen spent a month there. We just caught up with the team yesterday and they're way over budget, so we're going to have to figure out that inventory thing, but that's great. And then D2C, one unlock for us um, with Dave was, um, you know, how strong is our subscription? And we have an 83% retention on subscriptions.

What do you use for subscription?

Recharge. Um, like, our subscribers, we have an 83% retention.

Over how long?

Over 12 months, but it's really 6 months.

Wow.

And the products— he was like, the products better than you think. I think you're—

who said that?

The new guy is coming in.

Yeah.

And he thinks— he's like, the product's almost better and stickier than you think. And he's like, you need to switch the business. You need to really focus on subscription within the business. This is perfect. And we've done that in February. And it's fun. The business is so different to what it was in February. Like really, we used— this time last year, we were probably 15% subscription on D2C. 15% of our business was subscription. Now it's closer to like 60.

15 to 60 in a year or so.

In a year, yeah. Like all paid marketing, all influencer, all everything went to subscription and it really, really changed everything for us, like upside down.

Wow.

All this kind of every month you kind of, because that was always a thing talking to, kind of talking to investors and everything is like starting the month with nothing in Shopify, you got to go out and win everything. So after a while it grinds. It does grind on you and you're like, you don't, you don't seem to get what we do every day.

Like, oh, I got Ben going. Yeah, I live and breathe Shopify all day, every day.

Yeah.

Can you give them the 30 seconds on Platter?

Yeah, we, um, the thesis of our business is that there's a misalignment between development agencies and brands because dev agencies get paid for their time, so they're incentivized to make things expensive and complicated, and that a lot of the apps in the ecosystem are features, not products. So as brands scale, they get stuck with too many apps, too many support slower website, worse conversion. So we built a lot of the most popular app functionality into one solution, which is a theme and app bundle. So we can unify your app stack and then layer in best practices on how to increase your average order value and conversion.

Yeah.

So we can quantify making you money and saving you money at the same time.

Love that.

It's basically like productizing parts of the process of building a high-converting storefront so you can do it cheaper and faster without compromising quality.

Love it. Yeah, that was a big thing for us as well because our product, like our number one selling product, the stem cell product, which is it? The stem cell, apple stem cell.

I put that on my scalp, I think.

You put it on your scalp, put it on your face. Crazy results. Clinicals are insane. We just got more clinicals that prove out everything. Like that was originally, that product itself used to be for the first like year of that product's life, it was like 2% of our revenue. Nothing. And then we started hearing all of these stories about my hair, my hair is growing back. Like my hair loss stopped, my hair stopped shedding because of this product. And then I kind of had this thesis around we should bring this into the middle of the brand and build everything else around it. It's an $85 product. It's phenomenal. And we know how effective it is. And we did that and the business sort of, that was a big step change. And obviously all of the, all of the, my new person coming in, he loved that. And he was like, this is, yeah, this is what you should do. And it also needs to be used for 90 days. Like we don't want you buying our product. The problem that scalp as a category has always had is that it's like a once a week thing. Like if I was to give you a scalp product and I'd like, use this once a week, you want to use it 2 weeks max and then put it in the back of the shelf.

Yeah, because there's going to be no feedback loop.

I don't give a shit. Like, it's fine. So like the thing that's the biggest unlock is behavioral change of like, and we've got this product coming out this summer called the Daily Hydro, and we know that it needs to be used in the morning, brush your teeth, apply moisturizer, apply your daily hydro. It's a once-a-day product. And that behavioral change that we have done with stem cell is now, as we think about kind of NPD, it's all about behavioral change because the feedback loop was never there before.

When you first started the company, what was the first couple of products?

It was a scalp detox.

Is that a shampoo?

It's, it's, it's an— it's a kind of It's an oil-based treatment and you put it on, leave it for 20 minutes, and it's the little baby of the bunch, like, and everybody loved it. The problem with the scalp detox is we're like, use so little of it and use it once a week. And after like 3 years, and like once iOS 14 figured us to sort out our shit, we were like, okay, LTV is not very good on this here because it's a $45 product and you only use it like you could have it for 6 months. If I give you one back in the day, you would be like, oh yeah, I still have it, it's great. And you're like, perfect. Like, that's not— it's great and I love that for our consumer, but you can't build a business around that.

Yeah, that insight— I'm stuck on the, the comment you just made about like the behavioral change. Yeah, I feel like that is the thing for like successful consumer brands. It's like, are you building like a nice-to-have or a need-to-have? And is it something that I can disrupt your daily habits and like insert myself in there? Like the one example I'm thinking of that we talked about yesterday is floss.

Mm-hmm.

So, and you know the brand Floss?

No, but she, she's—

it's like an electrical flosser.

Yeah.

I never flossed prior to this product because I hated the idea of like ripping a string and like wrapping it around your fingers and like very manual. This is like, it's the size of a toothbrush. It's, it's electrical. You can replace the heads. I do it every day now. Yeah, but it's because it's like easy and now it's habitual. And now you had me thinking about all the consumer products that I use, like the only ones that I actually stick to Is it like it's the subconscious daily habits that are in my life?

Yeah, absolutely.

I hope some brand founder listening to this—

all the content that we have shot is all— it's putting it— the new product, putting it with a toothbrush, with a tooth scraper.

Smart.

Like, all of it, it is to try to make, make sure you know that this has to be used everywhere, every day.

When you're shooting creative, we've talked to a bunch of brand founders on here where I feel like every week the amount of creative you need to produce on a weekly basis is going up and up and up. When you're shooting creative, how much is based on like very strict analytical data of like, this is performing, we're looking at this competitor ads and we want to test this versus some gut creative instinct of like this idea of like behavioral, you know, kind of next to other habits.

You know, for a while there, obviously I work with my wife and my wife's kind of our, along with our marketing director, they lead all creative for a while. And you just reminded me of something. Helen used to go viral on TikTok all the time. Used to happen like, and she'd be like sitting here, be watching like fucking Chopped or something, and she'd be like, good idea, and she go off and shoot it and it would go viral. And it used to happen all the time. So that, but I think she's turned that part off since, since we got pregnant. We haven't gone viral at all, so I don't know what it says about the baby. But, um, just off the cuff, it's just off the cuff, and I used to be like, awesome.

Less is more.

Like, that works for me.

Yeah, like it used to happen the moment you would leave the room, I'd be like, okay, Shopify is going to be amazing tomorrow.

It's amazing. There's something to be said about like, it's the content ideas where you spend the least amount of time that end up having the biggest impact versus the things where you spend so much time trying to like engineer and perfect—

perfectly engineer the post.

It's like you listen to Chris yesterday from Crossnet. We had a founder on yesterday. They've put over $5 million into ad advertising against one video.

Whoa.

That like went extremely, extremely viral like years ago at this point.

It was just like an off the cuff.

It was like an off the cuff video that is like the most viral piece of content they've ever had by like orders of magnitude. And they've just pumped it over the years.

It's very rare that that video will also encourage purchase behavior. Because most of our viral stuff is like nonsense. It's like, hello, thanks, this is funny.

I think it's probably category related because they made the first like four-way volleyball, beach volleyball in that game.

Completely.

It's like a beach volleyball game. Yeah, uh, it's like a new category creation. So I think that video is probably— I don't even know, I've never actually paid attention to see what the video is, but I imagine it's something that's like very specific to like how the game is played. And so it's people like, oh, this is cool, I want to go buy this with my friends kind of thing.

I think the— I always look to like, in terms of my lifetime, the best advertiser was an Irish bookmaker called Paddy Power. Like, you guys aren't going to know this, But I think, and then one of my friends Noah, I don't know if you know Noah from Ruby Habit.

Yeah, of course.

Me and Noah talk about this as well, is the best advertisers have the most stable businesses. Like storage, like the most stable business possible. Or betting is like, okay, there's a bunch of analytical, but you kind of know, like people are going to, people are addicts, they're going to be, you pretty much know you have a couple hundred million coming in every year. And then you can be playful around The best advertisers have the most stable businesses. Storage is a really good example of like, why are they so good at advertising? This is kind of wild. Well, it's also because you got to be good at it to survive.

Auto shops. Yeah. Geico Insurance.

Yeah. They get really creative.

Really stable businesses. Yeah, but when your business is big and works, you also have different budgets than like Scrappy's startup. It's like we're sitting here like, oh, Geico's so amazing at advertising. It's like, yeah, they're not working with like a $50K budget.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's the other thing about like, wow, Nike, they're— I think because they haven't had to sell product in like 40 years.

Yeah, they're selling a dream and a brand.

When you're coming out and people are like, you gotta like sell brand, and you're like— and then you go like, you see founders do this all the time, then build the— sell— they try to sell a brand, and then, you know, it doesn't really work because you— they don't have the luxury of people already know what the product does and, and that people like you don't have to sell it. Yeah, it's a luxury. It's a very privileged position that a lot of these— our favorite brands are in a very privileged position.

As an e-com founder in New York, I feel like there are a lot of asks on your time, I'm sure, as Acton Acre has grown over the years. Not just asks on your time, but, hey, do you want to come be an advisor? Do you want to angel invest in this? Do you want to come be a venture partner at our fund? Do you want to start a new side business? And I've only been doing this 2 and a half years or so. And I feel like every— we're starting to get that little momentum uptick now.

Sure.

And now there's all these— a friend will want to start another business, a friend will want to do this. Hey, do you want to be an advisor here? And it's still early days and I can't even imagine. You've been doing this, what, 8, 10 years or something?

No, 5 years.

5 years. Okay.

Yeah.

How have you—

I'm so impressed by you because you're— you've just stayed committed to the main thing and maybe you've done angel investing or advising or stuff, but So many founders I know, a few years in, all of a sudden have like 4 different businesses.

I know, yeah.

So how have you managed to just be like, this is working or I'm going to make it work and this is going to be the main thing?

You know, it's so funny you say that as well. And coming back to our story of Tulum, I remember when we were living there and everything was fizzing and Facebook was— I had this idea for 2 other businesses and I was like, these are amazing. This is definitely going to work. This is definitely going to work. And I was walking on the beach one night. There was a gym on the beach, walking home. And I came home and I was like— and I had done quite a lot of work. And I was like, you know what? No. Because even if we launch them, they do really, really well, after like 18 months, they're still at best going to be where Action Yaker is right now. So what am I doing? Like, just get this one thing to work. Put everything into this. Once this works, once we exit, amazing, we can do whatever. But just that singularity of purpose, like, just keep it focused.

I think the problem is that, uh, a lot of founders get bored by monotony, and that the most, the most exciting time of a business is the beginning of it, because it's the Wild West and every day truly is different. And then when you start to build the team and you start, you can actually delegate things, and it's like you maybe worked a little bit less today but the business did better than it did yesterday, and it feels Like when you're a founder, we're like scratching, wanting to do like the hardest things and solve all the problems. And then something's working and you're like, okay, what else is out there? Right? So I think oftentimes from what I've seen is when people get distracted is when something actually starts working because they get bored by it, right? So like you and Tulum ideating on these other two concepts that you had, you're— the juices are probably flowing, you're having all the fun in the world, and then you finally catch yourself. You're like, wait a minute, if I'm doing this because it's like an addiction and it's fun, okay, but like if I actually look at the unit economics, this is a really bad use of my time.

Completely. That's exactly what we— And it was pretty abrupt, actually, when the stop of these other ideas was like, yeah, we're doing this, we're doing this. We had prototypes, we had everything.

Oh, you got to that stage?

Yeah, I had hired someone. Yeah, we got to that. And then I was like, what am I doing? No, no, this is a terrible use of focus. And a lot of people done it for sure, for sure. And I'm really blessed that I didn't.

I mean, what's your general philosophy on that? Because I think I've heard entrepreneurs on both ends of the spectrum. I think like Gary Vee is on one end of the spectrum where he's like, you should be involved in as many things as you can. Like, and there's other people who are like, if you're not focusing on the main thing and only that and nothing else, like you're not going to be the best.

Yeah. And look, I think, I think if you're— it's also it comes down to what's making you look elsewhere, right? And it can— it's kind of like being in a relationship. I've been in a relationship for 23 years. Like, I think I really— I think it's really important. I've been in my last job for 14 years. You kind of always have to look inward and be like, what can I fix about myself here? What are these things that— and life is a mirror, and like, your relationships are a mirror. And if you're looking, like, asking the real question of what, what am I trying solve for here. People make really bad decisions all the time about kind of how they want to spend their time on their journey and professionally and personally. And typically, if you kind of try to solve for what the big issues, like really kind of do the inner work, and that's something me and Helen are very kind of passionate about, working with coaches, doing all the kind of plant medicines, all of that. We're very passionate about doing the inner work. And we also really kind of want to be around other people that are interested in doing their inner work. Um, if you've done, if you've done all of that and you're still like, and you feel like you've got enough juice to start and there's something special, then yeah, do it. But we're kind of—

I love that. Yeah, I think that's very profound. Like, no, seriously, like, it's, it's really, it's, it's, uh, not running away from the hard questions.

Yeah, like, it's, it's like I'm starting a third business and like, are you okay with being sad as a child? Have you dealt with that yet?

Because that's probably more important than starting business number 3, or like your relationship with your parents, or, you know, therapy has been far and away the most impactful thing, I think, on my business as a byproduct of how I've changed as a person because of it.

Awesome, love to hear it.

I think it's not just the personal impact or the personal things that you need to work through, but a lot of the time when I want to, you, you know, you have an idea in the shower and you text a friend and they're like, that's a great idea, and then you start to go down the rabbit hole Every time I go down that, it's not only something personal maybe I'm avoiding, but something probably in the current business that I don't know how to solve.

It's exactly right.

Or it's been frustrating me.

You're running away.

Has that happened?

Yeah, 100%. That's what it is. And also asking the question of, is this driven by ego? Like, work on the ego is so important. Is this driven by me thinking that I'm better at this than other people? Is And why do I want to do this? I want to be seen to be doing this. I want to be seen to be a serial entrepreneur. Or is this driven by an actual opportunity that's there to be addressed? But absolutely right. It's running away from the real problem. You see it happen all the time. People are in a bad relationship, so they have kids and they hit their business, so they divorce their spouse. Spice, and like, people make bad decisions all the time. So it's asking the right questions.

Does that happen with Platter or anytime? Because, yeah, has there any been ever been like a problem so big that you keep just like putting it off and like think about doing other stuff?

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think it was actually pre-Platter. So like our business, uh, went through multiple evolutions in terms of the brand name, what we were doing. It was our first company, so like starting, it was, you know, myself and my two co-founders in the basement. We're now 25 people. So like, we've, we've come a long way in that regard. But I think, I think there's maybe been like fundamental disagreements that my co-founders and I have had like way back in the beginning of like where we want to take the business, what our aspirations are on an individual level. And when the rubber meets the road there, you're kind of like, all right, well, I don't know if this is like the right thing, like the right situation to be in, because getting into a co-founder relationship is as much as time in some instances with your co-founders than you do with your significant other. Unless you of course build a business with your significant other.

Exactly.

Um, but I think for us, or for me, it was maybe prevalent when we were answering hard questions where we didn't really know what the future looked like. But I think as things have become more clear, it's become a lot easier to just like stay focused.

Yeah. I'm curious with you guys, so it was the two of you, and then over time as you've welcomed people to, or promoted people to the executive team, how big is like the exec team?

Uh, 5 people.

Okay, so choosing those 3 people, were those internal promotions? Were those external coaches?

Internal promotions, yeah.

So how long did it take you to see someone's work product, develop trust, like them as a friend?

Usually like 6 to 12 months.

So pretty quickly you could tell this person can become kind of like a leadership team?

Yeah, for sure. You know, unfortunately, and I don't know if it's a, it's a lack of I haven't been able to identify the right talent. I haven't been able to coach them in the right way. Because I'm open to both of those as answers here, or just it's not right for us. Unfortunately, we've never been able to hire very, very senior people from big organizations and make them work within the Action Acres shop.

Have you tried?

Yeah, we have tried. Like someone from L'Oréal that's kind of had a team of 40 people with them, you're not going to like it at Acton Acre. And that's kind of— it's unfortunate to be the case. And it makes a pool of where you're trying to hire from pretty small, that you kind of had to— if you have, you need to have worked at a business that's doing under $50 million in revenue if you're going to like it.

What's your hiring process? So what I guess for this person that you're alluding to, like what were the steps from the second you met this person to the second you extended them a formal offer?

Oh, it's like any other hiring process. Like, um, were the new guy or—

no, the one, someone you said who hasn't worked out in the past.

Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Um, you know, it's, it's a standard hiring process, and— but I think we could have been clearer upfront about— people all say they want to move it, move to a smaller brand, they want to move to a smaller team, and they like the smaller dynamics and everything, and then they come in and they're like Oh, because gratitude is a real thing. Like, I'm sure you guys kind of journal and write it, but people rarely actually really are grateful for the stuff they have around them at the moment. And then they also underappreciate what— like, working at L'Oréal, yeah, you might say that, but there's a bunch of good things that working at L'Oréal gives you that you're probably not appreciating, and then you really will appreciate it when you move to a smaller—

Real time.

But we— I guess the reason I was asking that question is something we do in our hiring process is we have a very rigorous technical challenge for every role.

Okay.

And whereby like 99% of people fail the technical challenge, which is intentional. But the idea behind it is to give you a task that's very specific to what your day-to-day will literally look like. Mm-hmm. We have a lot of people who drop out of the interview process at that point where they just— one guy's like, I won't do a technical challenge. I'm like, great. Like, you also won't have a role at this company. Like, that's—

yeah.

So I think having like a very, very strong filter Something that I read that basically forced me to do this was you need to be able to explain the worst parts of the job in a very authentic way. And if the person is still excited about it, then they're probably the good person. Because it's really easy to go find someone and sell them the dream about like why everything's great, but we all know that's not actually what reality is. So it's fine to like open up what's great to someone, but you have to be very clear about what's not great about it. And if they're still excited about what you want to do, then they're probably a good fit.

It's so funny you say that. I had a session with my coach this morning that he was sick, so he couldn't. On that very topic, on that, how do I make it abundantly clear to our next hire about these are the problems, or these are the challenges that we need to come together and overcome?

I'll show you the technical challenge. We had someone who started Monday. It was a 4-part challenge.

No, it's around the worst parts of the job. Are the worst parts that I think that you might find challenging here, and how do we have that dialogue? This is his job, is to find a way for me to— a collection of words for them to understand.

Yeah, yeah.

But it's so funny, and that's a really— you put it very eloquently there. It's explaining the worst parts of the job in a way that still gets him excited.

Something I started to do a couple of weeks ago Agencies, as you know, and as you definitely know, are kind of chaotic at times. And sometimes you gotta work late, sometimes you gotta work early in startups too, but especially agencies. Sometimes like client deliverable, you just gotta work till midnight. Rarely the case, but sometimes you do. And so recently for, we've been, you know, we're hiring more writers and editors to build our content team. And for a couple folks that are nearing the end of the pipeline, I'll just ping them and say like, hey, day's a bit crazy, but are you free at like 7:30 tonight? And if they have like a clear, like, I only do 9 to 5, then unfortunately that will like weed them out.

Really?

Even if they have a full-time job right now, just being able to be like, yeah, of course. And then the ones that we have hired in the past have immediately hopped on a call. 7:30. Yeah, cool. Move my calendar around.

Wow.

I don't do that with a lot of people, but especially final round.

Softies.

But the other— but the other example— but the other example to do what you just did, like, you can also do that in a more direct way. Or like, I'll straight up look someone in the like this is not the role for you. I was like, we don't, we don't work you into the ground until your fingers are bleeding. But I don't want to set the expectation that it is just 9 to 5.

Sure.

Because a lot of people on the team get inspired by seeing everyone else around them working a little bit harder. And so they do the same. And the guy that came in, he was really smart. He's like, yeah, my next role, I'm really looking for working every night. And I was like, honestly, I appreciate that and respect that, but I'm not going to lie to you. Like, that's not this. So let's just like cut it here.

Yeah.

And it was like a respectful end of the conversation. But that goes back to the point I'm saying around like, don't hide from the realities or the shitty parts of the job. I think that's an example where you can just be blunt with someone. It's also fine if you want to just like infer it, if they like push, they don't want to do a call at 7 PM. But I think you just attack something like that head on.

I think it's less about that there's, you're going to be working until like 10 PM every night. It's more about being reachable. Like we also try to do like 9 to 6, 6:30 or so. Yeah. But I want to know that like on a Friday at 7:30, if there's fire and like, I need you.

Sure.

That you're just at least going to respond and you can hop on for like 10 minutes.

It's so funny you say that. It's really making me reflect on something. Like we have kind of been as a leadership team agreed that 9 to 6 is really important to everybody. Like this is how we maximize kind of staff retention, work-life balance, like happiness within the job. But the most fun and the most engaged everyone has been in recent memory was in January, February, March, April when we were like, we got to grow 20%, 25% month on month. And everybody was into it and everybody's loving it. And we did, we smashed through it and everybody was working more in those times. And so funny as well that I wonder, can both be true?

Yeah, you see the people who like— we were something similar. We were 10 people at the beginning of Q2, we're 25 now, and it was a function of growth. And like, everyone was just so excited by what we were doing. Like, I'd get messages at 11 o'clock at night and my response was, close your computer. I was like, I'm not— don't stop doing this. Like, we can talk about this tomorrow. I appreciate that you're almost as obsessed with this business as like our— the founders are, sure, but I don't want to set this expectation that like, this is what I want from you. Yeah, but there are— when like business is going well and people see momentum, like, they just get excited by it and they do it without you telling them like, hey, you have to be on at 11 o'clock at night.

Yeah, I think growth and momentum solve a lot of problems. And like, if there's problems, anytime people have been like, oh, you know, working, I'm a little burnt out. Like, we're working a few extra hours here and there. If we're growing like crazy and everyone can see the new clients in the Slack channel, the new companies that we're working with, like the feedback that we're getting from clients, it usually doesn't matter. That even solves like cultural or long hours.

I read this the other day. It's not the 100 miles that kills you. It's the pebble in your shoe. Damn.

Where's that from? I've definitely read that before.

I've never read that, but that is so real.

Yeah, man.

I fucking love that. I know we're— I think we're—

Yeah, we're over.

We're over?

Okay.

That's usually a sign of a good episode.

Okay, good.

I know we talked a bit about, um, kind of like specific moments where things started to take off, but the whole reason we're called Turning Pro Podcast is, um, about those moments in your life where maybe that didn't happen to you, but that you proactively said, okay, I'm going to take this to a different level. It could be professionally, could also be personally. It could be 2 years ago getting a coach and kind of leveling up that way.

There was a question, what was the moment in your life where you feel like it was a turning pro moment?

Turning pro was certainly coming back from Paris Fashion Week and putting together this kind of 50-page document that I'd never done before to be like, why shouldn't I do this? Like, what, why does this not make sense? And in terms of the business my profession, my career, like honing it all in to start a consumer business, which I've never worked in, and putting— and doing the work as well, and just being obsessive. So that phone call to Helen— and I actually didn't even know that phone call happened until very recently. We were in an interview together and Helen's like, "Oh yeah, Colin went back to Fashion Week and called me and said, 'We're going to launch this business and it's going to be one of the biggest beauty brands in the world.'" And I turned around and I was like, I called you? And she was like, yeah, you remember that? And she was like, yeah, I remember very vividly. And I was like, holy shit, I don't even remember that phone call. Because she went on, because the way fashion weeks work, like it's New York, London, Paris, Milan. So she had went on to Milan and she was in Milan at the time and I was back in New York and 5 days later and I was like, I don't even remember. It's a bit of a blur, honestly. It honestly is the moment, like, I literally got up the next morning after her show and it's like, this is happening. And I went from never, I didn't even know what consumer goods were. Like, I had never looked at startups at all. Like, I was reading tax legislation and designing tax structures for people, like, nothing to do with this. And everything went so quickly from there.

You just trusted your gut.

Yeah, I thought I could do it. That's kind of like, we didn't, we didn't have any money. We didn't have any savings. We didn't have any experience. Didn't have anything really. But I thought I could do it. I believed I could do it. Yeah. And I also really believe in Helen as well.

It's a great place to wrap. That was so good. Can you talk to the camera on the left? Just tell them where they can find Acton Acre and find you.

Acton Acre is available on actonacre.com or sephora.com. And I'm available on LinkedIn or email column@actinacre.com.

Colm, thanks for coming on, man. This was great.

Great.

Thanks for coming. That's a pod.