#088: What It’s Really Like to Build a Brand With a Hollywood Star

Everyone's gonna hate me for this one. We don't have Slack. I won't allow us to have Slack.

You don't have Slack?

Nope.

No way.

Dude, like, you can't. I'm sorry. Slack is designed to make you work 24 hours. It is like you never put it away. You never put it away.

That is so cool.

But everybody hates it about us. Your teammates at Radhaus, they're like, we'd like to add you to a Slack channel. And I'm like, no.

I'm going to tweet that I just interviewed a founder and they don't use Slack. Like the world, there's, there's hope here. Wait, we need to unpack that. Welcome back to season 4, episode 11 of the Turning Pro Podcast. Today we have Katie Hunt, who's the co-founder and CEO of O'Norman joining us. Thanks for joining today, Katie.

Thanks for having me.

Katie's a special person in my life. I had to accommodate the scheduling to her schedule because when you find like a boss female founder, you just got to make it happen.

I mean, come on, I deserve it at this point. I've worked for something, right?

You got it. I actually want to start by telling the story about how we met because I think it's pretty funny. Yeah. Katie didn't believe me when I told her what we did with Platter. I want you to tell it through your lens, actually.

Oh, I really would like to. I'd like to see how, because I really— you were connected with me through one of my board members, and he, he said, he was like, you can get a website for an astronomically low amount of money. And I was like, okay, what charlatan am I going to now have to talk to? Because, you know, if your board member asks you to do something, you've got to do it. You have no choice. So I get on the phone thinking I'm maybe just wasting my time. I mean, we built our entire website using Platter, so clearly I was not wasting my time. We've been a Platter member now for almost 2 years. That's crazy.

Yeah. And it's also crazy to think about how much learning and growing up we've done since we met for the first time, which is like—

You guys are a much more professional team now, I'll say that.

Which is the nature of startups, right? It's like you kind of fuck around and find out for better or for worse.

Yeah, but you know what? When you're like early with a group that's doing cool shit, I will say that you earn a lot of their time and attention. They want your success. And so sometimes it really pays off to go early with somebody.

I want you to lean into that a little bit more because I know you've done that a couple of times in your career.

Yeah, I have. It has been the best way to learn. I was the third employee of Warby Parker and I was the low man on the totem pole. I was answering the customer service emails and the phone calls. I mean, the first 1-800 number for Warby Parker was my cell phone, and we didn't know how to put like hour restrictions on it. So people could call me 24 hours a day, and it was just my personal cell phone ringing, and I'd be like, hello, Warby Parker. And, you know, everyone would always be like, oh, it's so funny. I always get you when I call. And I was like, yeah, I'm the only person. I mean, even now, if you like, if my phone rings in the middle of the night, I have this urge to pick up and be like, hello, Warby Parker. But yeah, it was an incredible 3 years there. I mean, I learned so much from an incredible team. And I sometimes think that that fundamentally changed my outcome, right? Not just because I was there early with a great team, but because I had no business school background, no ambition of ever starting anything. I wanted to be an actor at the time. I think that I had no, preconceived notion of what a business should look like, and I still don't. And I think sometimes that works in my favor.

What is your philosophy on that in general, uh, for how people are approaching businesses? Because, you know, some are like, I need to go get my MBA in order to start a company, and others are like, I'm just gonna go make something up, get my first— my foot in the door, and like find a way to add value to someone. I think the beautiful part about entrepreneurship is there's no right or wrong way to do it. It's kind of like you carve your own path.

There's no right or wrong. It's, it's all about who you are and what you need. And I think entrepreneurship is really figuring out what makes your engine work. And if that's education, if education is the building block that you like to build on top of, or if you're someone like me where it's being around other people that are doing smart things and learning with your hands dirty, like they're two different styles of learning, but they're both very valid. There are days, believe me, especially when I'm like deep in a model where I'm like, oh, if I'd only gone to business school, it would be so much easier. But there are other days I'm like, those, those 2 years where I was out learning in, you know, 2010 in New York City when direct-to-consumer was just starting, I wouldn't trade them for the world.

I want to talk about the acting piece for a second. Did you know I was a theater minor in college?

No. Are we both? Secret theater nerd.

Yeah. So I, I've talked about this a lot actually, that I think the most valuable thing that I took away from my 4 years of undergrad was the theater, the theater minor that I got at school. And most people who hear me say that are like, what are you talking about? The ability to, number 1, storytell.

Yeah.

To number, number 2, to put yourself in uncomfortable situations and find comfort in the discomfort.

Yes.

And I would say the third piece of it is that I didn't understand or appreciate the value till way after it happened. I think the way that it started, for your context, was when I got to Colgate, I played hockey there, and obviously the first thing we do is talk to the older players on the team and they give you like the lay of the land, what classes to take, what professors to avoid, so on and so forth. Every single hockey guy took acting, so it was kind of just this thing like, oh, take basic acting, like it's going to be a really good way.

Easy class.

Easy class.

Yeah.

And what I mean, I know for sure that theater programs at Schools are vastly different because I have other friends who tried it who couldn't make it through. Uh, but at our school it was like, if you're willing to show up and be vulnerable, but that's, that's it, that's all you need to do. And I did basic acting first, first year.

Yeah.

And then took every single acting class available at the school. The only reason that I couldn't double major was because you needed to be in a performance and I couldn't do it because of hockey.

Oh my gosh, look at you, theater major! I still think that counts as like a full major. You just didn't do the show, but you're doing the show now.

Yeah, but I like really, really resonate with your— like your desires to have gone into acting. I still believe one day that I'm going to pursue it. I think about my life in decades. I think this is my decade of like build a company, build something people care about and like flex your muscle.

Yeah.

Doing some things. And then one day I really feel like I have to just like try it.

Do it. Why not? I mean, for me, my job scratches the itch because I get to be so creative every day. We're only a 5-person team, and I get to build things, and I get to do speaking engagements, and I get to do those things that used to be something I was really excited about. But I also think that for me, acting was always about learning how to really listen and respond to other people. People. And I think that I spent all of that time and my degree at Brown really honing that skill of like, oh, I can figure out what someone else in the room wants or needs. And I was taught to stay in that pose and be in that space. And with investors or with my team, it's a really meaningful skill to be able to figure out what's important to the other person in the room. Not in a manipulative way, but in a way that's like, I know what's important to someone on my team, I can help have them have more exposure to that thing. Or if I know what's really important to an investor, I can keep checking in with them on that one thing. And I think that fundamentally really helps with relationships. And at the end of the day, it really is just a bunch of people in a room trying to make a company happen, so.

What was the moment when you gave up on your acting career to go into the world of business building?

So sad. So my brother is one of the founders of Warby, and, uh, he hated that I was an actor. He hated it. I was an extra on All My Children. I was a waitress. Um, and so like, I was—

was this post-graduation?

This is post-graduation. Oh, so you were like living it for a period of time here in New York for a couple of years as an extra. I was paying my rent. Wow. As an extra on Gossip Girl, Ugly Betty, and All My Children. But I think All My Children was probably the most embarrassing one for my older brother. And I had graduated near the top of my class at Brown, and, you know, I had, you know, had this— I was a really intellectual person, and my brother couldn't understand that every day I would get up and go to set and wear tiny amounts of clothes and walk around and not even say anything. He was like, this is not a career path. Like, you are a glorified piece of furniture in these shows.

And sounds like something I would say to my sister.

Exactly. Very sister, brother. And so when he was starting Warby, he kept being like, I think you should help me with this thing. And I was like, not going to help you with your homework because at the time Warby Parker was a class project. That they were working on at Wharton. And he kept being like, I really think you'd like this. And this is the only time I'll ever say this about my brother. He was right. He was 100% right. The minute that he convinced me to just come try it out, he was like, just come try it out for a little while. See if you like it. I never went back. I loved it. I fell so head over heels in love with building companies.

We're gonna have to clip that and send it to him. Whatever you're like, the one time I'm gonna tell him he's right.

He needs to know.

He needs to know.

I never said it. It was all— it was all fake. Deepfake.

So you spent a couple of years at Warby, and then from there you went on to Hinge.

Yeah. So I left Warby and due to, you know, wanting to prove myself, everybody has an inferiority complex. I think if you're working at a company where your brother is the founder, you're going to eventually look around and be like, am I really good at my job or is no one here going to tell me if I suck? And so I left and I worked across 36 direct-to-consumer companies over the next 3 years. Yeah, 4 at a time. 36? Yeah, 4 at a time. I was coming in as a consultant. You have to remember it was 2013 in New York. Every single person had a job description looking for people that had experience in direct-to-consumer. There were like 5 of us.

Yeah.

And so my whole pitch was like, do you wanna know what we did at Warby? I can literally show you the systems we use, the type of team we had, like how we structured our Facebook ads, our Instagram, just the things that I had picked up by being in the room. And those things were invaluable in a world where there weren't 1,000 podcasts, there weren't books, there weren't, you knew what you had been told by other people doing it. And so if you could find someone who had done it, or had been in the room where other people were doing it beautifully, that was really helpful. So I monetized that then.

I mean, as you should. That is to your— that you made one comment that resonates, which is like there were 5 of us, right? Like Warby is one of the OG, like, wait, what is direct-to-consumer? Oh, like, look at these couple of companies.

Yeah.

Was it like Warby Allbirds? I feel like was in that, like Allbirds part of that.

And they're all still friends, by the way. It's like they all still hang out with each other. My brother's wedding was last summer and I'm like, look, Literally, these were all the people that built direct-to-consumer, and they all helped each other. They would meet for dinner, they would talk about things, they would talk about the systems they were using, and it was such a competitive advantage. And when I started Everywhere Ventures with Jenny Fielding and Scott Hartley and Matt Breimer, that was the thesis. Like, what if we could all pool our capital, right? We were all having exits for the first time in New York. It was 2018, and so we were about 8 years into the ecosystem in New York. Work really taking off. What if we all pooled our capital but also pooled our knowledge? And so the entire fund, which is called now called Everywhere Ventures, is run on a Slack channel. And we have over 300 founders that we've invested in that are in the Slack channel. We have 700 LPs that have invested in the fund, and we call it one-second mentoring. You can throw a question like, Who should I use for my website? Into the channel. And there's 1,000 people in there that could vote and help you figure out the best path forward for yourself. And it takes them 1 second. They don't have to have a coffee with you. They don't have to tell you about how to build your entire company. They can just help with that one thing. And those things are so meaningful for speed.

Prioritizing efficiency at scale.

Yeah, I love that.

Why not? Okay, so you worked with 36 different companies and then eventually you were like, I need to maybe focus on something?

No, I mean, I got introduced to Justin at Hinge, and at the time Hinge was buggy and having problems, and Justin wanted something new. And I had never even done anything in tech, but I was just thinking about the world in a slightly different way. And he was like, all right, you're a single girl in New York. Like, what, what do you want? What would you want to see? And I ended up going in-house as their chief brand officer. And with Justin and Sam and a bunch of the team, we completely deleted the codebase and created an entirely new product over the course of the next 10 months, which is absolutely insane. We had a product that was working. It just wasn't working beautifully. It wasn't doing what we had set out to do. And, you know, Justin really wanted something that he could be proud of. And we really rallied around this idea of what if you create an app that's actually the KPI of it is love, is getting people out on dates, getting people in real life versus getting them to spend more time on an app. And I mean, it's one of the things I'm most proud of in the world. It's now the third biggest dating property. The app that we created is still that app. And now Justin is gonna do incredible things, I'm sure, with AI. But it's been in the market since 2016, which is nuts.

I'm pretty sure he's a Colgate grad, actually.

Yes, he is.

Yeah. I feel like I've heard his name come up as one of the, like, oh, you want to be an entrepreneur?

Yeah, school. Yeah, exactly.

I mean, what is the talk track or the conviction you have to build up for yourself in a situation like that to be like, we're going to delete this entire thing and essentially start it from zero?

I think naivete is one of the most intoxicating things in the entire world. I'm sure if you knew everything you knew now about building websites, you would be intimidated to start the process that is now Platter. I knew nothing. I came in and I was like, I just want better dating. Like, I just want it for myself. I want God mode so I can match with a bunch of people. Like, let me figure this out because I think that it's a problem I want to solve for myself. And I think sometimes, like, just wanting to solve a problem for yourself is enough. Like, you can just go and, and, and go into it and go headfirst and try and fix it. As long as you have, as long as you don't lose that confidence halfway through. I've seen a lot of people like get down the road and then be like, oh, I'm second-guessing myself. Don't. Like if you've jumped in, you kind of have to complete.

I also feel like the authenticity of solving a problem for yourself, like that becomes very apparent.

Oh yeah.

Right? Like this concept of founder market fit. To be honest with you, I don't know if it's something that I really thought about ever before starting my own company.

Yeah.

Because I think, and I've talked about this before, but I think the first company that a lot of people start is opportunistic.

Oh yeah.

Where it's either like someone asks you to partner with them on something, you found someone who's willing to pay you to solve a problem. Not necessarily are you thinking about like all the inputs that you probably would the second time around. No, you just like roll your sleeves up and 6 months go by and you're like, wait, I'm like building a company.

Like, what?

Yeah, what's going on here? But I think having zoomed out now after being in the game for a couple of years with Platter, I've realized like this concept of founder market fit is definitely something that I pay attention to. And I look at like other founders around me.

Yeah.

Where I'm like, why are you building this? Or like, you were meant to do this for the next like 3 decades of your life.

Oh yeah. And that's how I feel about O'Norman. I mean, what a, what a dream job. I literally have the dream job. I love dogs. I love the fact that there is a literal dog sitting at my feet right now, and that makes my life. And so getting to just think about dogs all day, that, what a joy. Also, after building, you know, complex systems like Showfields and Hinge, it's also very like straightforward. Like you can build really meaningful wellness products for pets and just put them in the market. It's, there's nothing that crazy about it, which is, actually really nice relief.

I want to talk about your experience from going from show fields to then like moving home and thinking about like, what's your next move? And then landing on what you would describe as your dream job. I know that like, I think it's probably amazing and exciting for you to be able to sit here with a big smile on your face talking about like, I love my job, I love what I'm doing. We both know it wasn't that.

Oh no, it's never that easy.

So I want to talk about the not so fun parts that led to you getting here.

Nothing pisses me off more than when I listen to a podcast, especially of someone I know, and I've like sat through dinners with them where they're like weeping and being like, I don't know how we're gonna make payroll next week. And they're like, oh, it's so easy on the podcast. They're like, oh, it's just, it's so, fuck them. That's not real. It's not real. It's never like that. I promise you, even the like crazy unicorn wins, are not like that under the hood. There were days at Warby Parker that were incredibly beyond stressful. There were days like that at Hinge. And then, you know, I co-founded Showfields with Tal and Amir, and they had this big, beautiful vision to have a direct-to-consumer department store. I mean, we had a fucking 4-story building with a slide on Bond Street. Like, it was happening. We were working with a 1,000 direct-to-consumer brands. It was working. We had put our blood, sweat, and tears into it. And I'll be the first to admit that Tal and Amir had put in even more than I had. It was their whole life. They were really just battling to make this work. And COVID hit. And we were physical retail. And we literally had to close our doors. We stopped taking salaries so that we could keep as much of the team as possible. And I had that fun 36-year-old moment of waking up and realizing I could no longer afford my rent in New York. There was a pandemic. My store was closed. My job was done. I was still single even though I had built Hinge and I had to move home with my mom and dad to Rhode Island. It was bad. It was such a dark moment. And I remember driving out of the city and being like, everything I own is in a pod that's gonna be in my parents' driveway. And that's all I have to show for all of this work I did. And I thought I was gonna be at the lowest in my life. And a couple of days into being home, while I'm still trying to save Showfields, I had never been happier. And I was like, "Why am I so happy?" And I realized that, like, turning down my nervous system, getting a little bit of time, it, it was what I actually needed. I was so burnt out and I wasn't aware of it. And so, as the writing became very clear on the wall that Showfields wasn't going to make it, and we could no longer afford to keep 3 founders, I left and I went forward to try and figure out what was next for myself. And now we fast forward to the beautiful part of the story, which is I finally got to build the company that I wanted. From the ground up. I had always been that person who had joined a team or had been brought in to change something or was the low man on the totem pole, so I couldn't do it in the way that I wanted to. I always was in awe of the people that were doing it, but I never got to do it my way. We are an all-female team, two-thirds of which are working moms, including me. We're completely remote. I literally hate meetings. I keep them at like nothing if possible. I have empowered my team. They are running a million miles a minute and they are outperforming any team I've ever built previously. We are 15 months in, we are on 5 channels doing millions of dollars in revenue and it's 5 of us. It's 5 women who are doing all this. And I don't think I could have built this if I hadn't done the things before. And I also don't think I would have built it in this way if I hadn't fallen so clearly on my face and been like, what do I want to do differently? How can you have a life and be a founder at the same time? I mean, I found out I was pregnant with my daughter the day after we announced the company on Instagram, and my co-founder, is actress Kaley Cuoco. So it wasn't like this was announced in the corner of the internet. Like, this was announced very widely, and I was like, "Holy shit, I now have to build a human and a baby. Like, how am I gonna do this?" Somehow it all works out. Like, somehow it was built to sustain that and sustain the lives of the rest of my team members, which— If I told you all the horror stories of my early direct-to-consumer days of not sleeping and, you know, just burning myself out, that was never the case for me previously.

What are the biggest, like, lessons that you brought with you? And like, when you finally had a moment to reflect and think about, like, here are the non-negotiables or here are the things that I care about when starting this, both for how you live your own life and then like the culture that you instill in others, like what are those key pillars that you think about?

I think previously I never trusted anybody else as much as I trusted myself to do things. What a egotistical approach to the world. I have taken a step back from that and realized that you hire great people and then you trust them to do their job. And you also acknowledge that they know more about their job than you do.

Or they're a bad hire.

Yeah. Or you've made a bad hire. Made a shit hire, right? Like, it's one or the other. And so for me, it's been about learning to trust my team, learning to take a step back, learning to have personal boundaries. I mean, everyone's going to hate me for this one— we don't have Slack. I won't allow us to have Slack.

You don't have Slack?

Nope.

No way, dude.

Like, if you can't— I'm sorry, Slack is designed to make you work 24 hours. It is like you never put it away. You never put it away.

That is so cool.

But everybody hates it about us. Your team hates it about us. They're like, we'd like to add you to a Slack channel. And I'm like, no.

I'm going to tweet that I just interviewed a founder and they don't use Slack. Like the world— there's, there's hope here. Wait, we need to unpack that. Explain.

We email each other and you can turn away from your email. You can stop looking at your email at 6:00 at night. And if something is really urgent, my COO will text me. I will text my COO. Like everybody still hears from each other.

Did they come from a Slack culture to join O'Norman?

Not yet, but I feel like I've just put like the—

No, no, the people on your team from their previous careers, whatever they were doing in their old jobs.

The majority, yes. I have one artist who I hired as my head of social media and creative, and she, you know, was never part of a company before this.

She probably forgets to look at her phone for like days. And she's crushing it.

She has a quarter of a million Instagram followers for us. Yeah, she's one of the best hires I've ever made. But do you think that she would be happy if I put her on Slack? No, she'd quit. You don't have to be on fire 24 hours a day. If you are Maybe something's not right.

I think the other piece of it is you're creating urgency or creating fires out of situations that are not—

100%, they're not fires.

And I think the other piece is this is— I think this is probably the most interesting insight processing this in real time, is that I think there's a lot of things that you resort to Slack for because it's so accessible. But if you knew that you weren't going to get a response for X amount of hours, even overnight, you would force yourself to think differently about how you would solve the problem or how urgent or important that thing is.

Right. Wow. And we're also all on Platter. So like if there is an issue with the website or if there is something that I need to fix or if I need to put something on sold out, everyone on the team knows how to use Platter. It's not like there's something on fire on the website and not every, every single member of our team can fix it.

Yeah.

So there's never anything crazy.

Okay, that's number one. What are, what are the others? I'm so intrigued. That might be one of the coolest things out— you're, I think you're the 81st founder, some— I don't know exact number, but something in that realm that have come on this podcast. No one has said anything to that effect where I'm like, holy shit, really?

I think you can be really effective.

So here's my question actually, do you think that that's relevant agnostic of the business? You think it's very much particular depending on the type of business?

I think it's completely agnostic. I think that we create cultures of panic. We create cultures where importance is—

I'm guilty of it.

Things that's not real. It's not real. Like it's completely made up.

Okay. What else do you have for me in terms of other— Well, I'm assuming part of that, to your point, was like reflections on the fact that you had no boundaries. Your life was on fire all the time and you realize that it didn't need to be.

No.

What were other examples or like cultural things that you're like, when I'm doing this my way, the right way, like we're also going to implement this? Anything else besides that one?

People can work the hours that they are most productive other than all team meetings. So you can work anywhere in the world, um, as long as you can keep the hours of the team meetings and be responsive to things that are important during normal work hours. But I think there are certain people that are really great from like 1:00 AM to 4:00 AM. And that was one of my big learnings at Hinge. We used to make the entire team be in the office for standup at 9:30 every morning, 'cause it was a, you know, mostly coding team. And it was part of that culture. I had coders on that team that if I had let them code all night and not have to be in the office, they would have been 10x more productive. Not everybody is made the same way. So I really believe in having flexibility for everybody. And guess what? You wanna raise a kid and you are the primary parent. You gotta drop 'em off at school. You gotta pick 'em up. Like the way that work is structured currently, it just doesn't accommodate women. This accommodates women. And by the way, you want something done in the most efficient way possible, hire a mom. They will get all of their work done between 9:30 and 3:30. All of it. Not an email left in their inbox. They're not chatting to each other. They are getting it all done and then they're going to get their kid. And I also think that breeds loyalty between all of us. We've created this kind of perfect little universe where we can still have our lives, hiring somebody new or somebody leaving with all of the knowledge that they have about their role in your team puts a ton of stress and strain. We've had no one leave and we have not fired anybody. And I plan on exiting this company with the team that I have today by my side.

Wow.

So it's powerful. Very different.

I mean, I think that the second point you made, I fully subscribe to. I think especially if you're an in-office culture, you have a little bit more control over it. But if you're a remote culture and you try to institute these rules, you're just lying to yourself. Like we're across multiple time zones and I tell people, I'm like, how am I going to be able to monitor if you're online from, call it 9 to 5 with the million things that I have going on? You're across the world. You think that I like have any way of doing that. Like, one of my best friends, his wife works at like a— it's a corporate job, but she literally has like a gadget that just like moves, moves her mouse, that moves the mouse because she wants to like go get a coffee or something.

And like, if she finds productivity points—

oh yeah, if they find out she's not working, that is—

it's not real. No one is productive every single effing day from 9 to 5. It's not It's just not real. It's not how you get the best work out of people. Also, there are days where like you sit down at your computer and it is going to be the fight of your life to do the things that normally take you 2 seconds. Take the morning off. Stand up and leave. If there is not a fire, cancel a meeting, go outside. I bet when you sit down the next morning, those things are back to 2 seconds again. But if you keep going, if you keep pushing through that, they just get longer and longer and harder and harder.

I love that. Can you, can you walk me through the story of how you and Kaylee ended up together building a pet brand?

How I ended up with, like, the coolest co-founder. She's awesome. She has a rescue farm with over 200 rescue animals. Like, that's just who she is as a person.

Talk about founder market fit.

I know, right? I— this is her dream company. I mean, it's named after her first dog, Norman, who passed away. And she— this is— she is one of the highest-paid actors of all time. She made $150 million for The Big Bang Theory. So she could have just— and she's still getting residuals, right? Like, that was just the lump sum before the show went into syndication. You'd think that this person would just be like, I'm done. I can go hang out with my animals on my farm and be finished. Kaylee wanted to start a company. She always wanted to do it. She thought it was so fascinating. She thought there were products that she wanted for her pets that were not in the market. She was looking for things that she couldn't find on the shelves. And again, I think that's where every good company starts, where it's like, oh, I'm looking for an all-natural supplement. I'm looking for a treat that has no additives. Like, these are things that become actual big companies. And she wanted to do this. And so she began to ask around and she got put in touch with a group called Joby Ventures that had done Home Court by Courteney Cox. And she was like, okay, can you help me like put my company together? Like, I really wanna do this. And I got a phone call and no, it started out as a LinkedIn message.

Kaley Link— or from Joby. I was gonna say, you told me Kaley Cuoco just LinkedIn DM'd you.

No, but it was Joby, and they said, you know, would you be interested in co-founding a celebrity brand? And I thought it, you know, LinkedIn, I thought I was getting like pranked because like 99.9% of the messages there, uh, you know, aren't real. But you have to remember, I'm, you know, have just at this point just moved back out of my parents' house, and I'm holding my head in shame. And so I'll take any opportunity, especially that one. So I took the call and they were like, yeah, it's Kaley Cuoco. She wants to start a pet company. And I was like, this is, this is the dream job. And so I met Kaley. She was exactly who you would hope that this amazing person would be. And we started this company together and she's actually involved in everything. We don't pay her. She's not the face. She just has equity. She's literally my co-founder. And she's involved in absolutely everything. You can definitely tell that by the names, you know, Stop Effing Itching, Calm the Eff Down. She has an incredibly fun mouth on her. I tried to convince her not to use those names and she effing won the argument. But, you know, she's just— she's a real, a real joy to work with because she flips the script of what an influencer is like. Influencer in its actual basic form should be someone talking about the things that they know the most about and that they're passionate about. She's that person. She really loves animals that much. She really knows that much about animal care. And she has put this incredible team around her from vets to, you know, we've made some ridiculous hires from other brands. And it's just, she really is doing it right.

What is that like? What's the talk track in terms of like expectation setting when you're working alongside someone like that? I think I want to go a little bit deeper. I think there's a lot of misconceptions around celebrity-led brands. You know, I think there's some where the celebrity does nothing and it's just a pretty face. There's others where they're like very hands-on and a lot you'll just never know about. Yeah, but I'm curious what that was like for you guys building your relationship with each other and like the level of trust, knowing that she obviously has other obligations in her life. Not that you don't also, but it's like you're—

this— oh, Norman's my obligation.

Yeah, yeah. No, but like, you obviously, you have— being a mother is an obligation and whatever, but like, for her, she's across the world right now, like, filming.

Yeah, she's in France right now. Our lives are very different, um, and I think that they both— both things work for the things that we are good at. And it took us a second to figure out our Venn diagram. Every co-founder pair has a Venn diagram. They cross over on a couple things that they're both really good at, and then they have if they're good co-founders, have set skills that are very different from each other. It took us a second to pick our territory. Kaley is epic on product feedback. She is like, I don't even get involved now in product. She and Kate, who runs our product, they are off to the races together. They're sending samples back and forth to each other. They're down to like the wipe is not pulling out fast enough from the wipe compartment. They— Kaylee is epic on product. And what a skill. I am very good at organizing and running our company and running our team. She has an incredible creative product-led brain. And yes, in most celebrity, if you're ever going to go into business with a celebrity and it is not from the genesis that you guys are working together. You're gonna have a contract that says like, they're gonna post this number of times, they're gonna do it in their story, they're gonna do it in their feed. Every time they get content, you know, you're gonna pay for a makeup artist, you're gonna pay for, you know, a videographer to be there. We don't have that because Kayley literally will send us content in the middle of the night in her pajamas where she's like, hey, like I was with the dogs and like was doing this. She has never once asked for makeup, hair, anything. She films absolutely everything on her cell phone. We had original, like, when her and I got together, I was like, well, we should probably put something in writing that, like, you're gonna post X number of times. She posts multiple times a week. I mean, it's not like— and that's not her role in the business. It's very helpful to us, but, like, she's the actual co-founder in the company. Very different than most celebrity brands.

What do you think that is? I'll tell you what my assumptions are before you tell me your answer. I think there's a couple things. I think the first one is achieving some amount of like wealth before actually starting the company, right? It's like really giving her $50K for an Instagram post or whatever her number is like, what's she gonna do? She's gonna go buy another dog. Like, what is that gonna do for her?

She rescues all—

yeah, rescues, so she's not even paying for them. Uh, so like first one I think is revenue threshold. I think second one is the founder market fit piece where like this is a passion she had.

Yeah.

Um, and I think— I don't know, I'm sure there's probably other inputs, but if you ask me, like, okay, Ben, you're gonna start an influencer or celebrity-led brand with a celebrity tomorrow, like, what are the two things you would look for? Yeah, I think one is like, have they actually made it financially? And is this a problem they give a shit about? If you went to her in 5 years and you're like, hey, there might not be a big payday at the end of this, we're all hoping there is, but if not, is this still something you want to do? And it sounds like she actually wants to make an impact in the world in this segment, so like, the answer is an obvious fuck yes.

Yeah, like, she doesn't She wants to run this company until the day she dies. I have a very different, like, I want an exit for us because I want this to be a household brand. And I think that we can actually get there faster with an acquisition. And because a percentage of every purchase goes back to Rescue Dog and these products are so effing good for your pets. And when you're really under the hood of pet and you see how terrible most things are, you'll understand why I say how important it is to make this a household brand. Kaylee would run this company without an exit indefinitely for the rest of her life because she loves it. And that's always my advice to other founders too. Don't ever do this job for money. Do it for the love of the game. You have to love being a founder. You have to love working in a startup. You have to love startup culture. And I think for Kaylee, like, She just really loves animals. She loves them wholeheartedly. And to think about them on a daily basis and make things in the world that are good for them is a joy. And that's not a job.

Were there any misconceptions that you had to debunk for yourself along this journey, or reservations you maybe had?

Oh, I had so many reservations. I mean, because you and I both know, you've worked with people along the way where you hire somebody just for an Instagram post or you hire somebody for X, Y, and Z, and it's such a letdown. Like working with them is like pulling teeth and they have so many requirements and it's all about them. And I think my fear going in was that it was too good to be true. Like that it was going to be, like that she was gonna turn out to not be this wonderful person or like I was going to have to work under a lot of supervision from her extended team. It's been great.

And how involved is her team in the actual, like your—

The first year, very. They didn't know me, they needed to get to know me. Now they check in. I love though that we have Emma who was originally her assistant. Is, um, now the liaison between Kaylee's team and our team and got promoted into this role because the company took off. And Emma—

is Emma full-time on Norman now?

She's full-time still with Kaylee, but she goes between the two teams. Like part of her role at Kaylee's, you know, the company that is Kaylee, is to get in touch and talk multiple times a day on things to clarify things. If Kaylee has questions after meetings, you know, to really be in the weeds so that Kaley can stay informed on absolutely everything, even when she's traveling. Emma travels with her. So like today we need to name a product, right? We have a new product coming out. We need a name for it. And I need Kaley to name it by the end of the day. No way. Kaley's on set. She's literally can't talk to me. We can't get on the phone. Emma's running up to her in between takes and being like, how about this name?

No way.

That's how we're getting a product name today.

Wow.

Which is really fun.

When is this product coming out?

3 weeks.

Oh, well, you can talk about it because this episode will be— this episode won't be live until after that.

We have a shampoo coming out. I think that we're gonna— so our currently, our waterless shampoo is called Fresh and Foamy AF. So we're thinking maybe for our shampoo, Fresh and Soapy AF dog shampoo for when they need an effing bath. But to be determined, sometimes Kaylee will come back and just be like, I wanna call it You Need an Effing Bath and that will be the name of it. So we'll see. But that is happening currently on set in France.

That's so cool.

Right? Isn't that fun?

How do you think about product expansion? A couple questions, but the first one is how do you think about product expansion within the brand? I think, sorry, as you know, you have the one strategy of like build one hero product, scale it to the moon, and the other one is kind of like what's speaking to Kaylee. Let's just make new products to solve the problems that she sees in the market. And it's like blending the balance between the two.

I think it's blending the balance between what we call our pack. So we have a quarter of a million Instagram followers and Kaylee and her, you know, the things that she wants to see in the world and finding a happy medium between those two things. We have broken the fourth wall, and I think that that is a post-COVID revolution for most brands. Most brands previous to like the direct-to-consumer push used to come out with a product that they had been making for multiple years and they'd used outside consumer research but had not brought the consumer into the process. And they would release the product with a lot of fanfare and be like, this is the new thing. This is the thing that you will now use in your home or with your dog, and we have done all the research and we have all the science. Trust us. And I think the future of product is, it's messy over here. Do you want to be part of it? Would you like to give your input as we're building? By the time I release this product, you will feel like you built it with me and you will feel like you have market share in it and it will be exactly what you want. What we want. So we release questions every week on our stories, down to the color of the packaging that people want to see. Uh, we have people vote on the names, we have people vote on the ingredients, we have people give insights on themselves. We are building a company where we have 5 employees, but we have 250,000 people that really feel like they work with us. And when we release a product I already know on day 2 or 3 what sales are gonna be like before we ever make an order. Because everybody's like, I'll buy that, I won't buy that, that's shit, I don't want that. And they're right. And why aren't we doing that? Why aren't we building directly for our consumer? I mean, we have a competitive advantage because Kaylee has 8 million Instagram followers and can get an audience to answer these questions. But if you have that competitive advantage, wouldn't you use it?

And it's actually, to your point, it's shocking how many brands I know exist in the influencer world per se that do not.

They don't go to their audience.

I think it's so crazy. The extent of it is just like posting when they have a new product to be like, oh, you like this, go buy this. So the first one I think is that. And the second one, which I'm sure you've heard these stories, is the number of influencers who launch brands in categories that have— that make no sense for them. So I'll give you one example that I heard because it blew my mind. Offset, I'll tell you, but A-list female Instagram influencer, like, like top, top tier, launched a swimwear line and they're like, she would— they launched it, post about it on social media and like, like, why are we moving no product? It's like, well, you're following is a bunch of dudes who like looking at you.

I know exactly who this is.

Bathing suits. It's like, why did no one say that before? Like, I— that's the part I can't wrap my head around. It's like, how is that point missed?

Oh yeah, Joby and Kaylee did a year of actual research before they ever spoke to me. We have a year of research on like cat or just pet in general. Well, they knew that's what she was gonna go into. I mean, there was no question. This was not like a try and find something for Kaylee. This was Kaylee wants to build a pet company. Now try and figure out what the best market opportunity is for her to maximize the things that she's passionate about. But I literally was given the job, Kaylee, and a year of research, like thousands of pages of research. I was like, this is a dream.

Yeah, that's amazing.

Dream.

How do you—

down to like exactly who Kaylee's demographic is, how they split up, how they thought about product. I mean, we were building for Kaylee's community from day one.

How do you think about like blending a balance between for profit and like giving back?

Mm-hmm.

Because obviously the goal is like, to your point, you want to have an exit or you want it to be a household name in some capacity, but at what expense to like do good? Like, how does—

it's table stakes now. You literally, you can build a company that does good in this world and still make money. And like, it is the worst, like, kept secret that, you know, that now exists. I mean, PET has really great margins, so I think that we are very lucky. But I come out of Warby Parker where we built it from day one. We were a B Corporation. For every pair purchase, we gave a pair back and it was structured into the business. We have structured it into our DNA from day one and entwined it so deeply that even if we were to be acquired, it would have to remain in the DNA because we can show that it's part of the reason that consumers want to interact with us. It is our marketing. It is part of our marketing message, which is really exciting.

What do you want this brand to be remembered for if you fast forward 10 years?

I think we're going to rescue a ton of dogs. We are already doing it. You know, with every purchase, a percentage goes back. We donate thousands of products back to rescue dogs in need right now. There are dogs all over this country right now that need homes, that need food, that need medical care. And I might not get to pet and meet all of those dogs. I would love to, but I'm not going to get to do that, but I am going to fundamentally impact their lives. By doing my job. And that seems like a very good use of my time.

You're on the Turning Pro podcast. We— your journey is, I think, inspiring because I feel like you've endured more in your career than most people do in a lifetime, especially in the context of like business. I think it's a combination of opportunity, creating your own luck, executing, being in the right place at the right time. What would you say was the biggest turning pro moment in your career so far?

I think I am oddly still waiting for it in a good way. I think the moment that you stop wanting to go further and to do more, and, and the minute you think you're an expert, it's usually the minute you fall on your face. I love all my failures because it has taken away the sting and fear of failing, and I now feel like, eff it, let's do it.

What would you say to someone listening who maybe is experiencing a failure right now or is struggling to let go of something that they feel like they should be?

I think at the end of the day, it's all how you think about it. You're either losing or you're learning. And if you really think about the best founders out there, they're, they're learning every day. There's something small that doesn't work. They have to put their finger on it and they have to either change it or understand it. And that is what being a great founder is. This is just practice. Every time you fail, even if it's a big one, it is just practice of how you're going to deal with that and how you're gonna move forward and how you're gonna learn from it.

Katie, I appreciate you coming on the podcast today.

Anytime, Ben. You know I'm your biggest fan.

Can you look at that camera and let everyone know where they could find you and where they can buy all your product?

Check us out at onorman.com. We're also on Amazon, Chewy, PetMeds, and TikTok Shop.

Amazing.

Thank you, Ben Sharf. You got it.