#070: How Brett Harrison Scaled Roomie to 175K+ Users With No Paid Ads

4 levels of motivation. The first level is fear. Like, I am working on this startup because I've raised $2 million and I don't want to let my investors down. That is the, the most base level of motivation. The second is lust. I want this thing, I want to make this much money, and so I'm doing this. The third level is like really being values-driven. You really feel a calling to solve this problem. You see the broader social, personal, spiritual, whatever impact. And then the fourth is a little abstract, but it's like love, which is really kind of between like a value-driven passion and just like this need to be doing this.

Welcome back to Season 3, Episode 13 of the Turning Pro Podcast. Today we have Brett Harrison, who's the co-founder and CEO of Roomie and Epi. Thanks for joining us today.

Sup, guys. Good to be here with you.

So Adrian doesn't actually know the story of how we even met. Brett played a big part in my entrepreneurial journey from like early college.

Whoa.

Yeah. I forget how we originally got introduced. I did. You, you cold emailed me, I think, or cold reached out to me.

Sounds like Ben.

Or did you get one of our emails to Colgate?

I don't remember if it was directly through us or the Colgate Entrepreneur Program. I actually don't remember.

I think it was through the Colgate Entrepreneur Program.

Yeah.

I think, like, I think I emailed them and then they, like, you heard about it or something. Or one, or the guy that was running it was like, oh, I got an entrepreneur for you. Cause what were you doing at the time?

Just like fucking around being a college kid.

Yeah. I don't think I was, you weren't doing, I was like, you were doing something.

I was like, I built a billion things at Colgate just like messing around. I was doing like a campus coat check. I don't remember if that was before or after.

It was a campus coat check. Yeah. Yeah. That was it. Yeah.

Just like getting, getting, uh, getting in the weeds of trying to build things and trying to figure it all out. But anyways, the story of it is that Uh, Brett had reached out to the Colgate Entrepreneur Program, whatever. I got connected to him and they were looking to have a student at Colgate help stand up the Colgate, like, branch of their broader business to sell mattresses to call it larger mattresses to college kids.

Yeah. So at the time we would take the twin extra long bed frame that the school provided you and we invented a way to convert the frame into a bigger bed by by putting like slats down on the bed frame and then Velcroing them to it. So very secure, very safe. And then we would put the existing mattress under the bed and bring in a full-size mattress, a full extra-long mattress, and put it on. And now since like around that time, we invented a full kit that converts the twin-size bed into a full. So the slats still go down between the existing mattress and the bed frame. They're attached by Velcro. And then this topper goes on top that kind of engulfs the existing mattress.

Got it.

And converts it to a full.

Very cool.

Yeah. And so we do like thousands of these at about 50 campuses nationwide. We just started doing D2C as well. So you can order it, it all arrives in a box, you can set it up yourself. And so it's, uh, there are a few knockoffs out there as well, which I guess is a, in this weird niche industry is a sign of success. So, um, and we're, we'll have a patent issued probably sometime in the next 12 months.

So when I heard about this, I was like, all right, well, first of all, I need a bigger bed. It's like sleeping in these twin mattresses that colleges give you, like, it just does not cut it.

Yeah.

I think one of the pieces that was interesting to me was just as being an athlete, you think about like all the pieces of the puzzle that matter. And I mean, he can tell you more than I can about just why sleep is so important. And so I'd heard about this and then we set up the Colgate branch, which was called Raider Rentals, uh, which was kind of like my first endeavor into entrepreneurship. I think we did pretty well.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like it, It's still going at Colgate. It's going strong. And at the time we would set up, like we'd find really entrepreneurial people like Ben. We'd be like, we're gonna call it Raider Rentals, whatever local branding makes sense. And we're really gonna put you front and center on the website, on everything. You're not really going to be able to attach it to a larger business. So when you go for your investment banking or consulting interviews, you get to put, I'm the co-founder of Raider Rentals on your resume, a business that's doing $75,000 of revenue at Colgate. And that usually helps differentiate students in interviews. And unsurprisingly, people that have worked for us have gone on to get great internships and jobs out of college.

Did you do this at Brown?

We— yeah. What year did you graduate at Brown?

2018.

Yeah.

Buddy John Berlin.

Yeah. Yeah. I worked with John and Matt.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I remember seeing that. Yeah, he's always been— he's now in—

they started it though.

And then did he?

Yeah. And then they came to us and we started working together and it was crushing it. Brown was our biggest school. Wow.

I got to text him after this.

Like Brown's administration during the time had a lot of issues and around COVID they were like, this is just one thing we can't deal with. And so we're talking to them about Roomie right now to get that implemented.

Very cool. I remember seeing on his— like before I knew him, I saw he was doing something and I think it was Bruno Rentals or something like that.

Bruno.

I was like, oh, I guess he's an entrepreneurial guy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And he is to this day.

Yeah. We touch— we touch all of the schools.

I think one of the coolest parts, honestly, for me was seeing that the person that I've One of the hardest parts that Brett had to lean on me for in all the schools is like, you need to find someone to take it over for you, right? Because once I leave Colgate, like, I'm not going to stay involved in like selling beds to students.

Yeah.

What I was going to say was I think one of the most proud moments was the fact that the person that I found for you ended up having a much bigger role in like your broader business.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So he still works for us.

Isn't that crazy?

Yeah.

The kid that I found younger than me at Colgate was like, I think he's a good candidate to take this over when I leave. Graduated Colgate and is now working with him on the broader business.

Yeah, he, he joined. So this business is now called Epi, which does micro fridge rentals, bed rentals, moving and storage, and wholesale twin mattress sales to colleges. And Hunter, who Ben found to take over the Colgate branch, joined our other business, which grew out of this bed rental business called Roomie. That— imagine it to be The Sims for your college dorm or apartment or a multifamily apartment nationwide. Where you can see a to-scale 3D model of your interior before you move in. Drag and drop furniture, drag and drop furnishings from a variety of retailers, buy them, and they're waiting for you when you get there. So we've scanned and modeled about 60 universities and a few dozen multifamily properties. We're in thousands of units.

Wow.

Yeah.

Can you walk— just for people listening to this, walk us through like the scale of this? In terms of like both businesses?

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, both companies are working with dozens of schools. Roomie just crossed, I think, 175,000 users.

Wow.

And so that's all through this summer. We do not pay for customer acquisition for Roomie. And so we do zero digital advertising. It is all through— you get your housing assignment at Brown, you're living in Grad Center 202. In the past, that was it. And you're like, okay, great, super helpful. And now it's, you're living in Grad Center 202, here's your unique roomie link, click this, create an account, and then you can see your room. You invite your parents, you invite your friends, you can all plan your room out.

Very cool.

Yeah.

And so I wanna, I wanna actually, cause I don't even know if I know this story, but like, how did you start this business?

Yeah, well, I, you graduated from Colgate in 2020. 2020. Yeah. So when we were renting beds at Colgate and all of these other schools, COVID hits. And we would— even prior to that, we would always get calls from students and parents being like, will my bigger bed fit in the room? And it's like, well, we don't know. Call, call the school. They would call the school and the school would say, we don't know anything about our rooms. We have these floor plans that were made in the 1960s. They're hand-drawn. They're not helpful. And so they would tell that to the parents and the parents would say, okay, well, I'm paying $75,000 a year to send my kid here. Go walk across campus and measure the window in, you know, West Hall 101 for me. And then the poor administrator would have to go do that and come back. And by the time they get back, they have a ton of new questions. I just got off with Penn State and they're like, we are getting 500 unique questions per day about specific questions about specific rooms. So that is a huge hassle and pain for administrators. And then for students and parents, not knowing what the space looks like during a very stressful life inflection point causes a lot of issues and unnecessary stress. And so then with COVID many of our partner campuses didn't go back to school and in person. So we had an existential threat to the business. Like if, if there aren't students in the rooms, they're not going to be renting furniture. Um, and so I think we originally talked to Colgate about it and we pitched them. We were like, hey, let's make lemonade out of some pretty sour lemons. Let's come in with these fancy new cameras. Because right at the time, LiDAR cameras were becoming way more popular. And so like Matterport tours, virtual tours of apartments were just becoming a thing. So I saw these Matterport tours where you could take dimensions from a camera, from a photo. And thought, well, if you can take dimensions, why can't an artist come in and take the, the dimensions of this room, make a to-scale 3D model that would actually be interactive? So we started talking to some of our schools about it because they had these empty rooms and they had highly standardized buildings where in many buildings you can capture 15 floor plans and satisfy 200 kids. And so And over the course of the summer of 2020, some campuses were like, well, we got nothing better going on. Sure, you can come in and run around with your cameras for a day. And so we started doing that. And now fast forward a couple years, we've scanned, uh, tens of thousands of unique rooms and are working with 60 of the nation's best schools. Of the top 2— of the top 50 on our wishlist, we're working with 25 of them.

How do you get in front of new schools?

So like every business is going to be different on the business development side. What we found that worked really well for us was the most niche, weird conferences you could possibly find. So there are big academic conferences for student affairs, deans that go to these large conferences. That would be probably what you're imagining when you think of a conference. There are also regional conferences for undergraduate housing officers. UOI, as they call it. So there's, there's MACUHO, which is the Mid-Atlantic Conference for Undergraduate Housing Officers. There could be 500 people at this thing, like tiny. One of the ones that my team went to, it was in a hotel in Fargo, North Dakota, and the conference was in the pool area. Which is just hilarious.

You can't make this up.

You can't make it up. And there are so few people there, but there are a lot of decision makers and like, there's not that much going on. So there's not that much distracting them from coming to the exhibit hall. And exhibiting at one of these is very inexpensive. Sponsoring is very inexpensive. And the people that are running it are also the people that work in housing. And so it's just this very small world. And like, we go to all of them. And I— now that we're pivoting more into subscription, we previously— the business model was that we partner with retailers like Dormify, Dormco, Ruggable, like dorm-focused retailers. And you would drag and drop a Dormify cart into your room, buy it, and we would get an affiliate plus fee. And there are a lot of challenges associated with that, particularly on furnishings. The margin structure is pretty challenging. And we found that the campuses and our incentives weren't aligned, where they— the campuses love sending out our models when students got their housing assignments, because that's when all those questions came in. But they often didn't have the ability and didn't have the willingness to send out the extent of the communications we needed at the time that they needed to send them out. So like the second you get admitted to Brown, we want you to know what Roomie is. We want you to see our campus checklist where you can buy all of these things. And that's not really how admissions or campus want to roll out your introduction to Brown. And so we've pivoted more into just selling it directly to the schools and helping them monetize their students through selling things from the bookstore or other vendors that they work with. And so now that's, that's kind of where we're at, where I'm going to start going back to all of these conferences where we typically like a few times. There was one time my guys had a, the conference was outside of Vegas because oftentimes these aren't big conferences, so they're not going to be at like the big center downtown conference centers. They're going to be like in a suburb next door. So there was one that they, they pitched it as Vegas, but it was in Henderson. And so my team, we got—

I don't even know where that is.

It's just right outside of—

Team trip to Vegas.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. That's how you sell it to everyone until they get to the airport. It's like, just kidding, you're going to Henderson.

Yeah. And so instead of renting out like a bar, which can be expensive even if you're in a suburb town, like it can add up pretty quickly. We thought, well, why don't we just get the penthouse of the hotel? And they say you can hold events there. There's only going to be 100 to 200 people because this conference isn't that big. And let's just have a party and it will probably be way more inexpensive. And like, you'll be the bartenders. And so you really get to pitch people while you're serving drinks. And little things like that have really worked. And so just going to these places and building relationships with housing officers who aren't business people. And so it changes the dynamic a lot and how you have to approach them to be successful. And so that's really our entire business development plan. And then since then, now we've gotten a lot more inbounds. Like Penn State was an inbound. That's probably the most on-campus students in the country at Penn State. They have like 20,000 kids living on campus.

Just undergrad?

Yeah, just undergrad. And like University of Kansas similarly was an inbound. And so now that we are working with so many campuses and they're very happy with what they're getting, we are getting the word of mouth thing really does take off, especially in a small niche industry like campus.

So what is— can you just like walk me through the specific business model that you're selling to the campuses? Because I know before it was like direct to students to buy the beds.

Yeah. And that— so there are two separate businesses now. Epi is still the furniture rental business. Where you go to epi.com, you select your school, Colgate, you rent the bed depending on if the extent of our relationship with the school, it might be waiting for you when you arrive. Very, very straightforward business. But, you know, at some campuses, 15% of students are renting. It's a very super popular product. And so for Roomie, we approach a campus, we say, hey, we will come. And over the course of a day or two, it used to take us like a week to capture a campus, but we've gotten very good at it and we can capture an entire campus in a day or two. And so over a course of a day or two, you're gonna let us into every unique room on your campus. We've identified them, here they are, 'cause you've shared your floor plans with us to the highest degree of accuracy. We're then gonna come in with these fancy cameras, we're going to scan every unique room, and then we're going to bring them back to our team, we're going to model them, and you'll get a unique link for every bed space on campus. So at the time those housing assignments go out, You just include this link in the email or in your housing portal, and the students can then see their room. That is the most basic thing that we offer, and the schools love it because once they send those links out, questions from students and parents slow to a virtual crawl, or they stop, because now students and parents can go in and answer all of these questions themselves. And they're, they're all pretty basic questions. What is the width of the window? How high is the bed at the least high possible setting? How is it at the highest possible setting? So it's— but to an administrator, when they have a million other things on their plate, it's just super draining. And that's also taken us into multifamily and, and other aspects of places where you have a lot of replicable floor plan, where people are going to have questions, and it just enhances the tenant experience, tenant broadly defined.

Is there anything on top of it that you're selling to the school? Or is it just like a subscription to get access to this digitized version of their floor plans?

So So that's where it started. And because we're now just really pivoting into the SaaS model, we're expanding that quite a bit. So we're helping them. I don't know if you've ever been on like Ross— I'm sure you have with the roster websites for the Raiders or whoever. It's just a few. There are two companies that really do it where they just sell pretty much a content management system where you upload your roster, you upload your ticket information, and then it gives you a nice looking skin for the rosters, for the game schedule, for everything like that. And apart from athletics, I would guess that the housing sites are the most visited sites or most visited pages on a.edu. And so we're working with them to kind of revamp how information is presented because we know more about their buildings than they do, and we can take that information and create content out of it. And we can say, like, I was talking to a very prestigious campus a couple of days ago and they were like, we don't even really know or we don't have it centralized. Is this building what the flooring is made of? And so kids will call us and be like, is there carpet? Because I have bad allergies and I need hypoallergenic. And they'd be like, it would be so great for us to be able to present that information. It's like, this is table stakes. Like, come on. And like, we don't know. We don't have a good way of presenting for people that have gender issues do they have private bathrooms in this building? And so what we've done is created an interactive map of campus where we make a 3D model of all of campus and overlay it kind of on top of Apple Maps. And so it is really dynamic, it's really aesthetically pleasing. And then you can see all of the residential buildings in relation to administrative buildings, other points of interest. On or off campus and just get a sense of what, where the buildings are. And then when you click into them, see like a tip card of the building. Is it mixed gender? Is it, where are the bathrooms? What's the flooring made of? What kind of furniture is there? And so then from there, once you're in the tip card, you can actually delve into the specific rooms. So whether campuses want to show every room on campus, which virtually none of them do, or just a few standard rooms, it really helps with marketing. Their residential spaces, which as a 16, 17-year-old, kids do care about. And so then from there, the other big element from a product perspective that we're trying to help out with is housing selection. Right now there is one company called StarRes that has done a roll-up of all housing softwares in the, in the industry. Vista Equity bought StarRes a couple of years ago and they've been doing the roll-up. They've been facilitating the roll-up. And so StarRez, um, when you are going through self-selection, if that's how your college does it, whether you're a returning student or an incoming student, you will just go onto their platform and it will just show you gray boxes like image missing for each room, and you just kind of choose one. And it's not a very good user experience because you don't really know what you're signing up for. We have the ability to give you effectively an airline seat selector interface for housing selection. Where you can see what's available. You can then click into it and see exactly what the room looks like down to, you know, having the, the background here modeled, and then you can apply directly from there. And so it just makes it way easier, takes a lot of those questions off the administration's plate and just makes the whole process more seamless.

Have you guys built— and now we're doing a brainstorm, but I imagine you've thought of this— but have you built like an agent that can be hyper-specific to a school where kids can just ask that questions?

Yeah, I mean, we, we're starting to do some like, and some campuses have expressed interest in an AI chatbot, but right now the flow is such that, and the volume is such that we can actually have real people help students out and answer questions. And because it's such a, you need a lot of people for a very, very tight window of time because all of the questions are coming in at a very, very tight window. But, you know, using a chatbot to then filter that out and, get rid of the easiest questions to make sure that a live person can very quickly help someone they need. It is something we're talking to schools about.

Do you read, follow Nick Huber? The Sweaty Startup?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You've seen his stuff on— very controversial.

Yeah, I feel like he gets canceled once a week.

Yeah, agreed. But I do love his framing of there. You can either go compete with like the smartest 50 grads from McKinsey and Bain who all went to Ivies before that and are all raising $20 million to go. Oh yeah, the exact same thing. Some voice AI chatbot.

Yeah.

Or there's like existing problems with fairly straightforward solutions. It's going to be— it's still hard to build companies. Yeah, like there's a clear problem. It's going to be here for a long time. Yeah, we'll pay for it. And you're probably not competing against that many people. Even if you are, they're not like about to go raise $20 million from all these folks.

Yeah.

Walk me through like competing in those ecosystems. Again, still challenging to build companies in versus you thinking about going to raise money, go to Silicon Valley, build a new thing.

Well, we did raise $5 million for Roomie, but the taking a step back, like I started my career at Polaris Venture Partners. It's a VC in Boston. Yeah. And we were technically growth equity, but like kind of earlier side on the growth equity. And the thing that surprised me the most was that the, the founders that I spoke to that we as a company got the most excited about had a very similar background. Often it was like, I went to University of Indiana. I got a job in the procurement division of Volkswagen. I was working in the procurement division of Volkswagen. I could— I kept seeing that we were doing this process with paper invoices. So I went to my friend who was in the software side. I said, hey, do you think we could start building something to digitize this process? And then they built something that worked for Volkswagen and it also worked for Toyota. And so then they slowly built this into a business. And because of the nature of how they built the product over and how they knew the problem, they were able to bootstrap it. And so then we find— we come across them. They've been doing it for 15 years and they're doing 5 in top line and 2 in EBITDA. And that is like the diamond in the rough that every growth equity firm looks for. And so like, I always think that there, there are like— the moniker is true, like riches in niches. And it is the problems that you're trying to solve there aren't that many sophisticated people trying to solve them because a lot of times it's not sexy and it's really difficult. And like, working with schools is really, really challenging. Sales cycles are slow. As we pointed out, you're not working with business people, you're working with administrators. They don't get sold to in the same way. They don't react to things in the same way. Turnover is extremely high, like probably 7 or 8 points of contact at campuses this year have left to go to other places or left housing, student housing in general. And so turnover's like crazy. I can't think of another founder that I know who's doing SaaS that's like, yeah, like 20% of the people I sold to left their job this year.

You have to resell it into it.

We don't have to resell it to them, but like 5-year contracts. But the new person can come in and be like, what is this? And it's like, okay, we have to educate you. And again, you're not a business person, you're an administrator.

Yeah.

And so it's just like, it's a very, very challenging industry. But if you can, with all of these other stat— like, I don't— stagnant might not be the right word, but, um, old school kind of industries, if you can get in it, you're quite protected. Schools, the, the flip side is that, is that they don't really like to change things. And if you can get integrated in the system, it's extremely difficult to pull you out.

What would be your advice to your younger self? Like having jumped into, for lack of a better term, like an unsexy business, knowing that there's all these kids out there that are just chasing the like hottest object that's present, whether it's crypto and AI and whatever, like longevity. You've been in this industry for so long and you've— you haven't wavered, which to be honest is very commendable first and foremost. But I'm curious what your talk track has been over the last couple of years, knowing that it's like a very unsexy thing. And you're seeing people around you with shiny object syndrome all the time.

Yeah, I mean, it's a double-edged sword. Like, on the one hand, I would say to a young entrepreneur, like, choose your industry wisely. I actually think that founders, in my experience, fall into one of two camps. There are some that love building a business, and I have many friends who just want to build a business and they'll do it in any industry and they love the process so much they can get into it. And then I have some other friends who started down the path of being a founder and realized like, oh, this is a multi-year journey. And to be successful in regardless of the industry you're in, you have to be in the industry. And so you are going to have to do things like going to Fargo, North Dakota, and sitting at a pool and talking to housing administrators for 2 days like that is regardless of what you're doing or like going to Omaha to meet with a Fortune 500 insurance company, but you still have to do it. And so if you're of the— like, really having a hard look at yourself and being like, this is going to be years and I am going to have to entrench myself in this thing, is that something that I want to do? And so for— I think I kind of fall in the middle where I love building businesses and that has been enough. To wade through a very challenging industry, which the pros of that is that you get to meet a lot of people that I don't come across in a day-to-day life in New York City. But it is really challenging. And the personality type of a founder, I couldn't think of something more diametrically opposed than a college administrator or a bureaucrat. It's just the way you see the world is extremely different and the way you participate in the world is extremely different. And so it's just really asking that question. And I don't even think it necessarily has to do with young founders. I have friends who are in consulting or banking or business school that approach me all the time. I'm sure you do too with business ideas. And it's like, do you really want to do this business? Like, is this where you really want to be? Marinating in for the next 6 to 10 years. 'Cause that's how long it really takes unless you get hit by like, unless lightning strikes.

I'm just like sitting here laughing that that's got such a virality potential on LinkedIn. Oh, here are the 3 things I learned spending 3 days by a pool with a bunch of school administrators in Fargo, North Dakota.

Well, I mean, what's your experience been like?

I would say the younger version of me was definitely wanting to like chase the sexy thing. But I think that's 'cause of the self, like that's just the conversations that you see with a lot of like other young entrepreneurs. Like, I don't think looking back at like the 21-year-old version of me, I don't think I knew a lot of founders who had the humility and the maturity and the foresight into like fundamental business principles around like, here's a problem, here's a solution, it's unsexy, but for these 3 reasons I'm gonna do it because it's a big business.

Yeah.

Versus like you hear your friend who spun up this new AI tool that everyone's raving about, but you don't actually understand like why And then you think about like, what are the reasons you're actually doing this? Is it something that you really are passionate about?

Yeah.

Or you're just looking for like a fast cash grab where, you know, you could make a million dollars slinging NFTs for 3 days if you played your cards right.

Yeah.

But that just like taints your perception of what real world business is like. And so I think as I've gotten older, I've gotten less like distracted by the shiny object and more in tune with just like building a fundamental business.

Yeah.

Where like I would say I was, in one of the first cohorts of like building a business that generated revenue and building software like in the first 2 years of the business. Yeah, because pre like 2022, I looked like an asshole.

Yeah, right.

It's like, why hadn't you raised $10 million? Like, why aren't you already a $70 million valuation business? Like, no one's interested in investing in a business that has service revenue that does 50% of it in the first 2 years.

Yeah. Oh, and by the way, have to plug Platter. We use Platter. We use Platter for EP. You guys crushed it. Could not recommend you enough. Somebody actually hit me up on LinkedIn and I told them to call me today to be a reference. But anyone, if anyone's listening to this that is an e-commerce builder and has a store, like, definitely talk to Platter and check it out. I couldn't believe the reference calls that I did when, when I was vetting you guys and really, really sophisticated, credible e-commerce founders being like, I can't believe what they've done. And like, add me to that list. Like, that really, really fair pricing and a great, great product. And like, as I said at the beginning, we, we've certainly seen a bump in our conversion rate, which was already insanely high by working with you guys. And so it's been, it's been awesome.

I appreciate that.

And just to touch on what you were saying about motivation, I've been working with this executive coach since the beginning of the year. They're all really cool guys. They, Two of them used to be Krishna monks and then started this executive coaching practice. So their philosophy comes from the Bhagavad Gita, which is like this Hindu sacred text. And one of the really fascinating aspects that they've drawn from that is these four levels of motivation. The first level is fear. Like, I am working on this startup because I've raised $2 million and I don't want to let my investors down. That is the most base level of motivation. The second is lust. I want this thing, I wanna make this much money, and so I'm doing this. The third level is like really being values-driven. You really feel a calling to solve this problem, and you see the broader social, personal, spiritual, whatever impact. And then the fourth is a little abstract, but it's like love, which is really kind of between like a value-driven passion and just like this need to be doing this. And it's sometimes, I think, especially we started out solving a problem which was wealthy students would pay for a more comfortable experience in the dorms. It's a very, very small problem. But by doing that around 2020, we started doing all these surveys. I think you helped us with one at Colgate. We got a— we launched a survey and we surveyed 75,000 college kids. And we were generally just being like, how do you sleep? What's up? To be able to use that to pressure administrations into working with us, to show the benefits of working with us. We found something pretty interesting that was unexpected and was not the intention of doing the survey, which was we asked people at the end if they would tell us if they were low income or not, and students generally would tell us if they were low income or not. And we found that every single campus we surveyed, every single one, that low-income students slept less, worse, and woke up with more pain. Statistically significant at every single campus. And so we found, oh wow, this is a real problem because for— as like a marketing— as like putting on your marketing hat, it's like campuses care about a few buzzwords. Equity and sustainability are two of the biggest ones for campuses, and equity is probably the biggest one. And then we thought, well, this is actually a real problem that you know, for the socioeconomic barriers that are put up for low-income students make performing difficult throughout college entirely. And so to also have this additional barrier, which is that you have to sleep on this terrible mattress because you can't afford a $300 Tempur-Pedic mattress topper, like one of our beds, is like— just adds to the systemic injustice going on at this campus. And so we started working with campuses and figuring out how we could start chipping away at this. And I'm actually really stoked that right now I'm heading up to New Haven after this because we are working with Yale to use part of our revenue, a pretty significant chunk of the revenue, to give every single high-need, low-income student a twin XL mattress topper that would retail for like $250 for free for the year. And trying to like chip away at this inequity. And then also we started selling mattresses to the campus. And this is the best pitch I've ever had in my life, which is during COVID we saw that like, you remember Casper and Nectar and all these D2C mattress companies, they all advertised 100-night trials, year trials and free returns. Yeah, none of those mattresses got returned. You can't return a mattress. And so they knew that. They knew that.

Do they get donated somewhere?

A small percentage of them, but the vast, vast majority— so you've bought a mattress, uh, the customer acquisition cost is about $400 for the mattress companies. The COGS are about $300, $400. So then you decide to return it. They have to pay 1-800-GOT-JUNK, typically, or another mattress hauler about $200 to come pick it up and throw it away, and they refund you. So now they've lost that revenue and they're $1,000 in the hole. And so if you have 10% of people returning mattresses, which were roughly the numbers, it's going to— like, you will never be a profitable business. And so, um, but there was a huge volume of mattresses being returned. So I called up 1-800-GOT-JUNK? and said, hey, we got a crazy idea. You probably have to pay the dump to dump these. Why don't we just put a trailer on your lot and then we'll collect them, we'll cut them down to twin size, and we are going to sell them to schools. And as we were pitching some campuses, this Yale was like, we're really interested. And so during then COVID hit and manufacturing these 2,000 mattresses that Yale needed became the bane of my existence for like a year. It was the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life, but a very different story. And, but through that process, I came across a guy in Chicago who's doing this at scale for years. Was he— he says he's the, the armpit of the mattress industry because nobody took him seriously because he was an upcycler. But in 2024, where sustainability is really important, especially to campuses, we started taking these upcycled mattresses that are way higher quality. Like something you would actually be okay sleeping on, that are then given a brand new cover because the kids are sleeping on used mattresses either way. And so then we started selling them to schools. And so we've— we do all of Yale's new mattresses, we do all of Pitt's new mattresses, and we're starting contracts with Mississippi State, Ole Miss. And so these kids can actually get a good night's sleep, which, as we all know, the science is unambiguous. Sleep is so important for mental health, academic performance, athletic performance. And it is actually an afterthought for the schools. They spend like $8 per year on an individual student's sleep, which is just laughable.

How old are some of those mattresses?

They're usually— they usually replace them between 7 to 10.

I was going to say, at what point is someone like, all right, it's time to throw this out? Like, who's the person at the school? It's like, we probably should replace these. Just the volume of complaints.

There is a very famous school that will go unnamed that you would think they have a process process. And like, Yale is amazing.

It's got to be Harvard.

Yeah, I will say Yale, Yale is amazing. Every 7 years they replace the mattresses and they do it by building. This school, they're like, yeah, we kind of just go through and we look at it, and if it's really bad, we take it out and replace it kind of ad hoc.

Yeah.

And this is, again, won't say the name of the school, but multi, multi, multi-billion dollar endowment. And to be spending less than maybe $100,000 on the place that the students are going to spend the most amount of time of anywhere on campus. It's hilarious.

So I wanna, I wanna go into the topic of sleep in a second, but I wanna share an anecdote. I've probably talked about this before on the podcast. You know who Bryan Johnson is? He's the longevity guy who's like anti-aging himself.

Yeah.

That's a whole nother conversation. But there's one thing that he said on a podcast that I heard that I really resonated with. He was on, uh, Stephen Bartlett's Diary of a CEO, and he was talking about how sleep is the one thing that everyone knows is the most important thing for your body and for your mind and for literally everything. Yet it's the one thing that we let get dictated by everything else in our life, right? So like, I'll reach out to you, be like, do you want to go to dinner tonight? Do you want to go out to the club tonight? And you'll say yes, and then you'll go to sleep at 2 AM instead of 10 PM because you decide to go do this activity. And so when he said that, and he went on this journey of trying to like anti-age, he goes, the way that I make my schedule is sleep is between these hours. I think he goes to sleep at like 8 PM, whatever, that's not the point. It's like sleep are between these hours and everything else that I do in my life is filled in around sleep.

Yeah.

Whereas everyone does the opposite where they always know that sleep's born, but yet it's the last thing that gets prioritized.

Yeah.

I want to do a little masterclass with you very quickly because I'm sure you've done lots of research on sleep. Like, number one, what are the impacts of having bad sleep? And then number two, what would you say are like the, the things that you should be thinking about if you're someone who's struggling with sleep, is like low-touch ways to try to get incremental improvements?

Yeah, I mean, well, sleep is a really tough one because like Why We Sleep, that book that was—

Matt Walker?

Yeah, Matt Walker. Really popular for years, like seemingly extremely well-researched, very thoughtful. And he's like extremely credible. I also saw a Twitter thread from another neuroscientist that dissected everything that was wrong with the book. Sleep is just— it's really tricky and there is no definitive way to do it. But generally you should get sleep. Like everybody agrees on that. And the science is pretty unambiguous for college students specifically. A large student at— or a a large study at the University of Arizona of like 120,000 kids found that for each night of insufficient sleep you get, your given mental health symptoms the next day rise by 20%. Um, and so like that can be very impactful. So whatever mental health conditions you're going through, it could be up to 20% worse the next day, whether that's suicidal thoughts, depression, like the big ones, or just your general stress and anxiety that everyone experiences. And then we all know that it's important for academic performance. The studies by the NCAA and professional athletics on performance based on sleep is crazy. Like, what you see if you're sleep deprived in any sport— hand-eye coordination, mental acuity, anything— is so important. And so as I've gotten older, I've definitely prioritized sleep way more. And the most important thing I think is getting enough hours, but It's hard to get enough hours if your circadian rhythm's thrown off by going to sleep at different times each night, where if you are out until 1:00 AM on Tuesday and then you try to go to sleep at 9:00 PM on Wednesday, your body's just thrown out of whack. So as a, like, consistent sleep schedule and getting 8 hours, I think like the— it's one of those common sense things. Like those are generally best practices that many doctors and neuroscientists will agree on. Consistent 8 hours. Like, it's not something that you really need to or can hack, but like, it's not prioritized enough. I think especially around like their— I think this culture is changing a little bit. Curious to get your take, your guys' takes on it. But there used to be a thing like, oh no, I don't sleep. And now it's a little bit like, no, I sleep.

Oh, I sleep.

I'm—

I talk about it all the time. Yeah. Because I have friends who are like, coffee, nicotine, Adderall, 2 hours of sleep a night.

Yeah.

Like if I'm not working, then someone else is getting ahead of me, so I can't sleep. And I'm like, sure, that's one way to go about, uh, solving your problems. I sleep 7 to 8 hours every single night. I'll go so far as to like push the start of my day back if I have to go to sleep later for some reason.

Yeah.

Because I know that I don't operate at the same level cognitively if I don't sleep. And I'll tell you the other thing, I stopped drinking about 2 years ago.

Yeah.

Which I mean, it's not a secret, but like that impact that has had on my sleep is crazy.

Oh, it's huge. Yeah, it's huge. Anyone that wears any sort of fitness tracker knows. Yeah. Knows exactly what drinking is doing for your sleep. But, you know, everybody makes their tradeoffs. And so I'm curious for in within your company, like if, if I know somebody's been up late in one of my employees, I'm like, don't just sleep. Just don't— we can move the meetings, we can do whatever we need to do. Like, I don't want you here as a zombie. And I like, how do you deal with that?

We actually had— we had a very scary situation that happened with one of our employees who basically like overnight went to the hospital, has been out for 3 months, had a pacemaker put in, was in the ICU for 2 months. Yeah, really scary shit. He's actually coming back.

Is he?

He's coming back on September 9th. We actually haven't told the rest of the company yet, which is super exciting. Um, a lot of this was driven by like a lot of his bad habits, but he used to send me messages at 3 o'clock in the morning and I was like, dude, what the fuck are you doing? Like, I'm not telling you to do this. I'm, I'm like yelling at you to get off your computer and go to sleep because I know this is not healthy.

Yeah.

And so I would say that I, we're very much a culture of like no micromanagement.

Yeah.

It's very much results driven. I don't really give a shit when you're working.

Yeah.

So long as you're doing what you need to be doing.

Yeah.

Uh, I think everyone knows that I'm very wellness-centric. Like, I don't expect everyone to be at the same degree that I am. But by no means do I reward someone or does someone optically get looked at as a harder worker because they're sending me messages at 1 o'clock in the morning. To be honest, it actually like turns me off. I'm like, this isn't like, this isn't cool because we're all hustling. We're all working hard. I know we're all working around the clock, whether you're physically doing it or you're thinking about it. But we all know that sleep is important. Like I had one employee last week who I'm like, dude, you're on the verge of burnout because you're just pushing yourself so hard on your own. I literally put a 3-hour block in his calendar that said, close your laptop and go sit in the park. Yeah, because I'm a huge proponent of mental health, physical health.

Yeah.

And I do believe that you can work less hours at a higher productivity.

Oh, for sure.

Because there's this— I think there's a huge misconception in the startup ecosystem that just quantifies output and success based on number of hours, not based on how critical are you actually working within like the window of hours you should be working.

How do you screen for people that can opt? Because it's not for everybody, a hands-off management style. And I've definitely struggled with— I have an extremely unorthodox management style that is very, very hands-off. And how do you, how do you screen for that?

So I think the first piece I'll tell you, because we actually started working with an executive coach as well.

Yeah.

And through therapy, I kind of figured this out, that the first piece of it is actually a lack of trust with yourself. So the reason that a lot of people micromanage is because they don't trust themselves to let go of things. And so they always feel like they need to have their hands in everything.

Yeah.

So there is an element of like leap of faith. It sounds crazy to say that, but if you're hiring someone to do something, you need to trust yourself that you went through the proper process of diligence to make the decision as to who the person is.

Yeah.

And for me to get to this point, it's taken me a really long time, but I've realized that you're not actually scaling your time or your business if you're bringing someone on just to micromanage them because it ends up just being more taxing for us. I think there's the differing philosophy between if you believe that trust is earned or given. I think trust is given on day one and you have to gimme a reason to not trust you anymore.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Not everyone believes that though. Um, and so I would say for me going through that man, the interview process of just screening for like characteristics around autonomy.

Yeah.

Being solution oriented. I think those are like the two biggest ones. And I think the third one is, does this person take pride in what they're doing?

Yeah.

Like if you're just someone who's gonna show up, clock in, clock out, you're probably not gonna be a high performer. But if you actually give a shit about yourself and the work that you're doing and you're talented, you're probably going to go above and beyond to get the job done and get it done at a high level. And it's on me to like find those people in the process.

Yeah. And how big is your team now?

We're 25.

That's awesome. And like split between states and—

Yeah, yeah, we're, we're global.

What's your split right now onshore versus offshore?

Uh, I would say we're probably around 50%.

Wow.

Yeah. I want to hear about your unorthodox management style.

I got me excited.

It's just very— it's very hands-off and it's like, give— try to find people that can be extremely autonomous. And but then if I start seeing that somebody isn't performing, then like they get me as a micromanager, which is a real problem for somebody that is not a natural micromanager and just like coming into that micromanage.

I had one of my— I had one of my direct reports reach out to me and he's like, hey, could we schedule a call this week? Would just love some feedback. And I was like, yeah. Absolutely. And we got on a call. He's like, I just would love some feedback on like what I'm doing well, what I could work on, whatever. Which is like a very commendable thing to see, like an employee looking to get better. And I, I looked at him and I was like, we're small enough and so much is happening, you'll know if you're doing well or not. Like, I don't think I actually will need to tell you at a micro level. I can give you like actionable feedback and ways to do incrementally better, but because I've given you such a big responsibility you'll know very quickly if the business is not progressing in this aspect because you're handling so much. And he's like, honestly, it's a really good point. I think as you get larger, it actually becomes harder because when you're larger, people can hide in the back. But when you have departments within the business where it's like 1 or 2 people that are responsible for marketing or for product or whatever it is, there's not really any sort of silver lining. It's very much you're either doing what needs to happen or you're not.

Yeah, because an organization needs people that do manage and don't have extremely hands— like you need people that are hands-on managers. Because not like as you go down the organization, as you scale, the people at the bottom do need to be managed because they need to learn, they need to get experience because they're going to be more junior usually.

So yeah, they're independent contributors.

Exactly.

I'm curious to get both of your takes here. This is like a real-time personal question on our business. For context, we're like 80% onshore, 20% offshore. We're like 24, 25 people, kind of similar scale. And something that I'm realizing now as we're growing is that the first like 8 people, everyone was not only good at their job, but also very jazzed about like the future of the company and real kind of like stewards of that, both publicly and privately. And now that we're growing, it's probably like 70, 80%. And I'm kind of dealing with this question of like, do I need every single person to like even our more junior copy editors and writers to be like jazzed about the direction of the company every single day? Or is it okay to have some people that are happy with what we do, aren't bringing down the culture, but are just getting their work done and then have other people at the company that are like really pushing like the rah-rah like flag of the company?

I think the latter for sure. I think there's certain roles in certain personality types. Like, I'll give you an example. Some of my engineers are like, some of them, they're not like super extroverted, like rah-rah people. They don't mind the fact that it's like, this is my job. I work very hard when I'm doing it. And when I'm away from the job, like, no one's bothering me. And I respect that. But at like the management level and the leadership level, yeah, everyone needs to be like super jazzed about it. But I can't expect like my number 10 engineer who does really good work to be like going crazy at 10, like, you know, 2 o'clock in the morning, like, oh, here's this new idea that I had. I just think that you're, and maybe I'm wrong, cause I'm curious to hear your perspective, but I think you're kind of lying to yourself if you're gonna get every single employee in your business to be equally as motivated and happy and excited as you are. Cause there's also the unspoken piece, which like the incentives are a little bit different, right? Like for like, for like a, a, like a low, not low level, but like a low level, like person on the team who maybe has a salary with like a little bit of a bonus opportunity, might have equity, might not. Like if the company gets sold one day and you as a founder having like this big outcome, they would have like a little bit like a little payday or whatever, but they're probably going to go find a new job after and like, that's okay. And there's nothing wrong with that. So I think being honest with yourself about what you want or what you see as needed to be successful is very important because I'm sure there's a lot of founders who would tell you the complete opposite of what I think.

I think management team or anyone, anyone in a leadership position, that is like a very important quality.

Yeah, they need to be, they need to be bought into the business.

But the culture will— the culture stops at the top. The culture starts at the top and will permeate through the entire organization. So it's going to be a function of your enthusiasm and the other people's enthusiasm at the top. But for like more junior people, incentives matter. And especially when, you know, compensation isn't going to be that much of a draw to a startup, to like a scaling startup. You really need to figure out what incentivizes the person and treat them as a person to just kind of suss out the unique motivation that they have as individuals. Yeah, well, there's professional development, whether they do just need compensation to pay their rent and pay off their student debt. Everybody's going to be different and is going to be case by case. And sometimes I think companies do too much of a one-size-fits-all incentive structure for employees because everybody is different.

I will tell you one big difference actually is onshore versus offshore.

Completely.

Oh yes.

And that, that like, like I'll tell you, like we, uh, we gave equity to one of our offshore employees. Like he was like one of our first people, like a long, long time ago. And he was like, okay, like what, what do I do with this? Kind of just like, I want, like, I'd rather take like a little bit more cash every month. And I was like, okay.

Yeah.

Like, I want you to know we appreciate you, but like, if that's how you feel, fine. And that was the first moment I was like, all right, Ben, like don't do what you just said, which is like one size fits all. Everyone's motivated by the same thing. And then when I learned there's actually a lot of people who really value their quality of life. Like I think the quality of life—

Surprise, surprise.

Yeah, no, I, I was like, as a founder, like, wow, that's crazy to think someone cares about their quality of life.

Yeah.

Um, we have a lot of employees off, uh, overseas who really value the quality of life they have while working at our business where it's like we're not bothering them at 2 o'clock in the morning. They really can have a life away from work. But again, when you get to the management and the leadership and you have a full team and you have really big KPIs, it's a little bit different for you. but it's on me as a founder to figure out like what's important to each individual. And obviously it's hard to scale that when you get to like 50 employees, 100 employees, because as your, to your point, a lot of it just permeates down. But in the early days, it's definitely about trying to figure out on a one-to-one level, like what's really important to people.

I think the best like quote management or like leadership exercise I went through, I like, this is on the advice of an exec coach that I used to work with. I wrote down everyone at the company. I think once we hit like 15 or 20 people. And next to their name I just tried to write down not the incentive, but like the main thing that they cared about.

Yeah.

And I realized that for some of them, even I'd been working with for like a year, I actually didn't know, like I had an educated guess. So it's something I started doing in like new interviews when I bring on people, not, not to just like figure out what motivated them, but it was kind of like a fun co-discovery exercise of just like keep asking someone what they actually want in their current season of life because this can change. Yeah. And so sometimes we'll be final round, like team has, you know, given the green light, all the recommendations. I'm there. Kind of just do like a vibe check. And it's a, it's a fun exercise of like actually figuring out what motivates them right now. Like someone just, they bought a new house, they're paying off their mortgage, and it's like tiered in specific tranches. And they're like, this is over the next 3 years.

Yeah.

And it was just very clear. It's like, okay, they just had their second kid and they're paying off this. So next to it, I was like, okay, it's finances plus like work-life balance and being able to log off at like 5:30 or 6. And I think it's Maybe it's not fun, but I think it's fulfilling for the person going through that because very few people will just ask you directly, like, what do you want out of the next 2 years?

During the interview process, do you think you got an out-of-the-box answer that then changed after they started working with you more and more?

I think that's something I need to ask more about, like, what will surprise me if we start working together? Um, maybe not out-of-the-box answer, definitely some out-of-the-box actions. Yeah, it's like, oh, I didn't expect that. But we start everyone on like a 2 or 3 month 1099. So it's like easier to like, hey, if this is not a good fit, go do your thing. We'll recommend you, but like, it's not a fit for us.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think the trial to hire is a really interesting philosophy that I have a lot of founder friends who that's like their— they won't do anything other than that.

Yeah.

Which I think is tough because not— there's a lot of like very talented people who aren't down for that because they're like, they have enough interest in the job market. That they're like, I don't need to like work here for a month as like a 1099 to prove it to you. But I also respect founders who use that as like their guiding principle.

I've just gotten burned by like paying out severance and healthcare for too long. Like if that happens enough times, it's like, yeah, like when you know within, you're going to know within the first 2 months if someone's good. There's been people who were like unsure on, and then 6 months in we're like, okay, we got to let them go. And then you're paying an extra 2 months of payroll. It's like, that was just a poor decision.

Yeah, totally. So the podcast is called Turning Pro. It's basically double-clicking into the turning pro moments in your life as an entrepreneur. Think about getting up from one poker table, going to a more high-stakes table. Curious, looking back on your journey thus far, what was the number one turning pro moment in your journey?

It's a good, it's a good question.

Surfing in Costa Rica. Yes.

Like I hit this one wave and all of a sudden everything changed.

Honestly, tons of really, really good life lessons Quick aside. So do you listen to Guy Raz's— what's it?

Used to a lot. Yeah.

Yeah. The— his—

How I Built This.

Yeah. How I Built This. So my favorite one is James Dyson's. And James Dyson is a legend, but he had— he's a long-distance runner and he has this great quote at the end of the podcast where he's like, I was a long-distance runner. And during a race, as you come up a hill, your entire body is telling you to like, now's the time to give up. Now's the time to stop. Because we all know that most startups fail because the founders give up.

Stop.

That is precisely the moment he says that you should actually speed up because success is right around the corner. Kind of, because usually at the top of the hill, it's kind of— it might be flat, there might be another hill coming, there might be a downhill. Surfing though, anyone who's ever really tried surfing knows that experience of getting caught in what's called the impact zone, which is where you have the whitewater and then you have where all the waves are crashing, all the bigger waves, and then you have the outside where all the surfers are sitting. And sometimes, especially when the waves are big, you can feel like you're in Normandy. Like, it's just insane the amount of, like, the intensity. And you're just— you're getting hit by waves and you're taking them on the head and you're trying to get under. And then if you can just push through and get that 20 paddles where you're going all out, by the way, you've just been suffocated for 30 seconds. Now you have to sprint. Once you break through that final one, it's just glass on the other side. And so much of building a business has been like that, especially a bootstrapped one, because you are constantly battling cash flow issues. It's mainly cash flow issues and like growth issues. And then right when you get on the other side of it, it's like, whoa, we are here. And it is like calm and glassy. But to answer your question about turning pro, I don't think it would be the ones that are kind of like the badges of honor for founders. It certainly wasn't raising money. And it was, I don't know, I don't know. What was yours? As I, as I just quickly think about this. Deflect.

I think, I think for me it was giving up drinking. Like, I feel like, I feel like everything changed in my life when I did that. Like my everything improved, like relationships, personal, professional, my business started to improve. And I think I, the momentum that I started to get in my life, it like, when I look back at it, I'm like, that was definitely like a, a turning pro moment for me.

Oh yeah. I mean, that's a great— I mean, it's such a huge unlock. Like, I've had periods of like being sober and like really focusing on wellness and work and it's like it's a huge unlock for productivity. I would say like in a similar vein, I went through this exercise this year where it's like looking at your life as like work, play, health, and love and like thinking about your kind of all 4 of those quadrants as a gas gauge and like, how full are you in each? And so as I started prioritizing, particularly like play of like, what are the things that I do that I'm just excited to get up and do that I'm doing for the sake of enjoying them, not to necessarily get better at them, because all, all of us founders are so like a certain type where everything has to be about self-improvement or getting better at something and to just do something for the sake of enjoying it. Has been a— and prior, trying to create a balanced life that actually makes my work life way more productive and more fulfilling, way more engaged with my employees. And so actually, in many ways, like, learning to surf has been a turning pro moment because it was like, I can find a meditative activity that allows me to be a way better boss and founder and coworker.

Something that you can go into and kind of use that time to recharge, not like the light focus on work time. And then you come out.

Yeah, because I think it's many activities are just, they captivate your entire mental energy. And like finding, I think finding an activity like that for a founder, whatever it is, painting, surfing, running, whatever it may be, where you just like, you can't think about work because your entire brain is consumed in activity, which is almost by definition meditation.

You're literally going to drown.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I love that answer. Brett, this has been awesome. I appreciate you coming on the pod today.

Yeah, man.

Just look at the camera on the left. Let everyone know where they can find you, what you're working on.

Yeah. So you can find us at roomie.com or eepy.com. That's eepy. And my name is Brett Harrison. And thank you guys so much for having me. This is awesome.

Thanks for coming on, man. That's a wrap.

Sweet.