Idea to product to Shark Tank with Tammy Rant, Co-Founder of Tush Baby

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Hi, docs. Welcome to the Entre MD podcast where it is all about helping amazing physicians just like you, embrace entrepreneurship so you can have the freedom to live life and and practice medicine on your terms. I'm your host, Dr. Una.

Well, hello. Hello. Welcome back to another amazing episode of the entremd podcast where it's all about helping physician entrepreneurs learn how to build profitable businesses so they can live life and practice medicine on their own terms today. I'm super excited because I have Tammy Rand on here and she's a co founder of Tushbaby. And you are going to be blown away because she took an idea, converted it into a product and showed up on Shark Tech and got funding. Okay. So we're going to hear all about that process and we're going to talk about her brand. So get ready to have your socks knocked off. Well, welcome to the show, Tammy. I'm super excited you could come on.

Thank you so much. I'm super excited to be here and honored. I appreciate it.

My pleasure. We're super pumped you're here. So I am going to give you a moment to introduce yourself to my listeners, let them know who you are, and we'll get this show going.

All right. Hello, everybody. I am Tammy. I'm, I guess, first and foremost a mother of three little girls, all under the age of six. And my background is primarily or was primarily in software sales. So I worked for LinkedIn and salesforce.com, which are, you know, to the bigger tech companies in the world, but also in the Bay Area where I live, they have a huge presence here. So my background was selling. And then I started having babies and I realized that I was having trouble carrying my daughter. My second daughter always wanted to be held. It was up, up, up, up. And that's when I thought of this idea. Why is there nothing to help me from holding her underneath so that she's not sliding off my hip and to take some of the weight off my arms and back to. And I couldn't find anything like that. And I didn't want to be wearing like strapped in baby carriers all the time when I wanted her up and down. And she was at that age where she started to walk. And so, yeah, I created it. I could get more into that story. But yeah, I created the product fully out of just a need for myself and then realized that there was actually an appetite on the market for it. So then I actually took this into production and made something out of it. With no experience doing anything like this before.

Wow. So you kind of had a problem and you solved the problem for yourself and decided, I'll solve it for everybody else who wants it and make a business out of it. That's really cool. So what I want to know is, you know, you start off with an idea, right? And I think everybody in the universe has an idea, but there are some people who take it from, you know, it's an idea, it's a concept to the point where it's a product. So what happened in between when you had this idea and, and when you had a physical product on the market?

Well, for me personally, since I was a little kid, I always was kind of coming up with ideas and like, it was kind of like a natural salesperson. Like, I started off, you know, like, selling golf balls that I would find at the golf course back to the golfers the next morning at like 8 years old. And I was always coming. I know it's crazy. And I was coming constantly coming up with ideas of things I wanted to do and then just like, wouldn't do anything with them. And then I would hear of like, some company coming out with it. Like, man, I missed my opportunity. So with Kushbaby, I really felt like it was a win. Like, I thought that it was like, this is something that there's a real need for. I was always, I think, scared because I was never sure. Like, there's so much work and Risk getting started and, like, launching a product obviously involved that. I didn't want to do it unless I was very confident that it was going to be a hit. And so in this case, I was like, okay, this really solves a problem and I want to see if I can do something with it. And it just kind of continually escalated into, like, it was supposed to be like a little side business out of my garage while I was still working at LinkedIn. And then it kind of blew up and turned into, like, wow, now we have multiple staff and, like, we're a real company now and we're in, you know, Target and Bye Bye Baby. And so it's just, you know, gotten bigger and bigger and it just. That wasn't necessarily the road map I had anticipated, but that's where we're at now.

So what do you think was responsible for that? So you started off like, you know, this is a side gig kind of thing that I'll just do from my garage. But how did you go from that to Target? Did you market harder than you thought you did, or was it a bigger appetite for it? What was that trigger?

So it was a couple things. So once we, you know, we prototyped for a long time, we did like 12 rounds of prototypes, finally got the perfect product, did the market research, and then decided to do a Kickstarter campaign, mainly for a couple reasons. One, we needed the funding for orders and it helped, you know, to have some of the money up front from the pledges to place the orders. But then also, I knew I was. I had pitched it to Shark Tank at this point when it was so new. Like, I sent them a picture of my very first prototype and I knew that I couldn't go into Shark Tank without having any sales and proving the concept. So I launched the Kickstarter and then the Kickstarter. So at this point, I launched. I hit send on the Kickstarter, go, like, go live. I think our goal was 20,000 on there. And we did 120,000, 124,000.

I believe that's six times what you thought you were going to get.

Yeah, it was a lot, but it may. I have to look back at it. It's crazy. It's been two years. I don't. I think it was 10,000 or 20,000 that we had set as the goal. But. But so basically where I'm going with all of this is it went viral. So we hit send. Didn't know if it was going to be well received, and then all of a sudden, daily mail Posted it. And then when Daily Mail posted, they took the video off Kickstarter and made their own little synopsis of it. And then all these media outlets, someone must have seen it from Daily Mail and then they posted it. And then it just kind of went viral wherever, like, we had insider posts, it got like 20 million views. We had Cheddar post. We had fatherly motherly best products. There were just a lot of. A lot of parents.com posted. So it went viral. We got, I want to say, 70 to 80 million views total. And at this point, we were already in the audition phase of Shark Tank, where we were, like, getting to the point where it seemed like I was going to be on the show. So that's kind of how it, like, got to be big. Like, between that and Shark Tank. And then obviously, like, I. The marketing aspect. My co founder is a very, very talented brand and marketing director. So she worked with some of the biggest PR firms in the world. And so she handles that part of the business. And she just was kind of a genius at, like, how to position the brand and how to. How to market the brand. And so that really got us to the point where we were ready for Target, and we weren't ready until. Until we got in Target. We weren't quite there yet. And now we definitely are at the point where we're ready to, like, expand into retail.

Nice.

Nice.

So you said, you know, when you got your first prototype, you had already made the decision to be on Shark Tank and you sent them your pictures and all of that stuff. What was the reason behind wanting to be on Shark Tank? Was that something you had dreamt of before you had the product, or.

Yeah, yeah. So at first, when I was creating it, I thought, okay, there's a need for this. I think I need it. Like, if this works for me, like, let's see. And I start wearing it out, and people come up to me, like, what is that? So Shark Tank, for me, once I knew that, like, other people wanted it or were interested in it, I thought, okay, Shark Tank was the first thing I thought of. I've actually wanted to go on shark tank for 10 years, for 11 years now. When I. I used to watch the show with my husband when we were just, like, dating, and I was like, I'm going to be on this show one day. I know that I have my dream. And I never. I don't know that I actually really believed it. I just wanted it so badly. I just kept saying, like, I want to be on the show. I'm going to be on the show. I just need the right idea and I will be on the show. But I never, I don't know that it's like it seems so like far fetched or like so out of reach that like it wasn't actually something that could happen to me. But then when the idea came out I was like, this is the idea that could, if I can get on, this is going to be it. So I submitted it like pretty early on immediately, like hoping that they would be interested.

Wow, cool. So what was the impact of Shark Tank on your business?

It was pretty big. It was pretty significant. Especially at first there was like a huge, you know, obviously the uptick in sales like within the week of airing. And then after that it just seemed like it was kind of uplifted overall. Excuse me. Or sales when? It's hard to say too because we were growing. We launched in October, So we launched October 1st is when we got our first batch of inventory and started sending it to the Kickstarter backers. I had a baby on October 9, so like a week later. And then we aired on shark tank January 6th. Still so new. Like at the time we did air, it was such a new company that it was hard to say like specifically what was the impact and how did we, did it get us to where we are now? I definitely think it helps for sure. And it helps also with kind of credibility. I think people see like I see it on Shark Tank and they're like, oh cool. You know, like you're the brand that was on Shark Tank and I think that that helps especially when it comes to combating the knockoffs. Because when we did go viral on Kickstarter and then obviously Shark Tank, all these manufacturers overseas started, you know, like copying the product and putting it on Amazon or like targeting people in ads that had come to our site or even hadn't. But they retargeted people and they use our video and our ads like our pictures to target them. So that was one of, I would say the downsides of like getting all the publicity. Although like I'm still so grateful for it wouldn't change anything. But it is like once you have a successful product, people start coming after that and, and trying to like copy and imitate it. So that is something to, you know.

To note about it times we live in. Right. So is there any way to fight that or is just part of the business? It is what it is.

There is, but it's not really part of like we don't want to focus Our energy on that. And it's a lot of, you know, a lot of legal stuff, a lot of money. And I think that really the type of people that are buying our product aren't the same people that are buying those products because they're selling them for like 20 to $30 a unit. And they're made like, you can tell from like, you know, I don't like to say anything bad about the products, but we at Tish Baby, we focus on like really high quality materials, really safe materials for the baby. Something that's going to last. You know, it's like comparing like a pair of really nice, well made brand shoes to like a $10 pair you're gonna buy on Amazon. Like the quality is the difference. And so I think that the people that are willing to like buy something that they're gonna use with their baby, that not quality are not the people that would ever spend the money to buy the quality one. Right.

All right, so. So that's great. That's like, you know, that the copycats do their thing and we're just gonna focus on our ideal clients since they're going after a different clientele actually from what you're saying.

Exactly.

Okay, perfect. So that's great. And that also puts you in a place where you don't have to feel like they're crushing your business because they're not like they're doing what they're doing and you're focused on your people and taking care of them.

I mean, we definitely do lose sales from them because, you know, some people are tricked into thinking they're buying a tush baby and then they get something else because they're using our ads. Those ones we do definitely take action on. So we have had a lot of those removed when they're using our intellectual property. But otherwise, yeah, I think, and I do think that they mislead people and especially when it comes to like testing and what they've done for testing, just because there are like very low minimums for what test needs to be done, unfortunately in the United States. And so. And also there's not a lot of. Well, I don't want to get too much into all of that stuff, but I think that, I think that they do a good job at tricking the consumer. So it's not always necessarily like that person was never going to buy the more expensive or the higher quality one. A lot of times they're tricked into thinking that, oh, it's good enough and it's a lot cheaper. So I do think we Lose sales for them. But I don't want to focus too much on that as our time and our brand and our energy and more so just building a really good, strong, solid product and marketing it to people that it would help.

Got it, got it. So so far with your brand, what has been your proudest moment or proudest accomplishments since starting this company?

There's been a couple. There's been a few, I would say because it's just not the career path I ever thought I was going to have. And just like my personal background, like as a, I never thought I would even graduate college. There was a chance I wasn't graduating high school. So this is all very like, all of it is really big for me. But I think my proudest moment like in the business would probably be, I can't say the retailer, but we just got contracts that we're going to be going to. Like my dream, one of my like favorite retail stores. And so that was actually my goal all along. I mean there were shark tank lid I'd say was my, my biggest one. And then getting those contracts and being like from the beginning, I was like, if I can get this store, I'll feel like I made it. And we did. So that, that was a big one. And then the other one that's not so like obvious of like a one time event is just the change in my life and my ability to not have a boss over my head. Not I get to make my own schedule. I mean, I work like crazy. But if I want to take my kids to swim lessons in the middle of the day, I do. If I want to like stop early and get them out of school when they were in school and take them, I can. And so I really just like to be able to like have a better work life balance. I wouldn't say I'm working less hours, but I changed my hours where, you know, they work better for me in the sense I can be around my family more.

Well, congratulations. I'm glad you got the retailer.

Thank you.

I can picture what you mean by, you know, I didn't think this is what my life, my career path or my life would look like. So that means the whole thing is a huge accomplishment, like a big game changer. And I'm super happy to hear that because I'm a big believer that entrepreneurship fixes a lot of things. I mean, it gives you almost like a new lease on life. I believe that it's the cure for burnout because you're noticing that you're not necessarily working Less. But you're enjoying what you do. You know what I mean?

I love it. My husband says I'm possessed because I like all I want. Like, I, like, want to. Like, I love working. It doesn't. And there's that quote that, like, if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. But it's true. Like, I actually, like, really enjoy it, and it doesn't feel like work anymore. You know, it just feels like. Like, I feel like I'm free. Like, I actually would rather do this than not. I think, you know, there's people out there that, like, great for them that, like, financially are able to just, like, sit back and not work at all. But I feel like I need a little stimulation, and I need. Like, I would do this even if that were the case. Like, I really enjoy what I'm doing.

So happy. You have no idea how happy that makes me love it.

Okay, thank you.

For someone who is. Is about to start up as an entrepreneur, and, you know, they came and they're like, oh, my gosh, your story is so inspiring and all this stuff. What advice would you give them before you let them go into the big world of entrepreneurship?

Well, I mean, for anyone listening and you're in that boat, then congratulations, because that's like, the first big step is, like, realizing that you want to do this something. The advice I would have is, you know, that not to give up because there's so many opportunities where it was like, everything would go through my head, like, this is a bad idea. I'm investing, you know, my own money. What if it fails and we lose our home and children and there's just so many. And then. Then you get to the point where you start questioning things like, do people hate it? Do they hate me? Like, and you want to give up at times because it's scary, but I would just say, stick it out and don't give up if you really believe in it and it will pay out. And they say that, like, you know, if being an entrepreneur were easy, everyone would do it. Right? It's not easy. It's hard. It's a lot of work. You have to love it and, like, want to do it. But I say, don't give up. But I would also say make sure before you put in all that investment of your time and money and energy, make sure that you have something that you think, not just that you think would sell or do well, that you could do. Get some unbiased market research on it. So when I say unbiased like you can't just like take it to your friends and family and show them and they know it's yours. Because even though you think they're telling you the truth and they think they're telling you the truth, their opinion is changed based on the fact that they know who they're, you know, they're giving it to someone, the feedback to someone they care about. So unbiased feedback, having somebody else show it to people and gather feedback and not say that it's theirs or yours and do this feedback for someone else or hire a company to do it. But I think that the main thing before you put in the investment is to really make sure that you have a winner before because it would be worse to launch it and go through all of it and then have it be something that there wasn't really an.

Appetite for that is so powerful. So don't quit. But you know, before you embark on that journey, validate your idea. I love it, love it, love it, love it. Okay, now you've started but you've also scaled your business so you've done both. So to someone who's maybe been cruising, they've had a six figure business or a seven figure business and they're like, okay, you know, I have potential to do so much more and I want to do more. I'm ready to scale my business. What would you tell them?

Well, I think that that is, it's tricky because it depends on what, you know, their product and their line. For us, our goal in scaling is launching more products and making, creating a brand that's really centered around simplifying the parent's life. So it's not going to be just like a single product. It's going to be like a, you know, a brand and a suite of products. And that is how I believe that you scale is really to just like there's only so far you can go with a single product company. So for me it's growing the amount of products that we have. It's your brand making sure that customer service is always like first and foremost you have to very good customer service and really just focusing on certain milestones that you set for yourself. So like we had different phases of like we're ready for retail at this point and then we have some exciting things coming up in the future that are our goals for the end of the Q4 and Q1 next year. So as long as we're like, we're to going oriented and working towards something and it'll hopefully continually be growing and of course Like I touched on brand. That's another thing that we're really working on. And it's just like improving the brand, enhancing, elevating it. And so there's some exciting things that we're going to be doing with our brand over the next six months to take us to the next level as well.

Awesome. Hope you guys got that. And a lot of my listeners are mommies. There are a lot of daddies, but they're really good number of mommies too. So. So tell them a little bit about why they need tush baby if they're not like me. I have four babies, but my youngest is turning five in two days, so. So I hope I don't need tushbaby to hold them. I told my 5 year old, once you turn 5, mommy's not lifting you anymore. We will snuggle.

But yeah.

So for those that are new mommies are going to be new mommies. Tell them why they absolutely need to get tish baby and where they can find you.

All right, well, I don't know that I talked about at the beginning the specifics of what tushbaby is, but basically it is a seat that wraps around you. It's like a hip seat is what we call it. So if you think of like a fanny pack, but it's structured so you wrap it around your waist, it holds all your things. So your diapers, wipes, your phone, your keys, sunglasses, whatever you need. It's got five storage pockets and so it's basically a fanny pack that your baby can sit on. So no straps, you can take them on and off. So it's great for, you know, like running errands or just being around the house. So when you're on the go with your kid and you want to like, you know, they want up, they want down, or they don't like being confined into straps or it's hot. So I believe every parent needs it. I mean, a lot of people, we get the objection like, oh, I have hips or, you know, I don't want to hold my kids. But the thing is with hips is you pop your hip out. And as a pediatrician, you probably know about this. When you hold your baby naturally, put your hip out, even if you have them, which curves your spine, which isn't good for your back. And also it puts the babies, when you carry your baby without support underneath, like a seated position seat, squat position, it's not good for their hips either, their hip placement. So we really promote good hip health. The proper end position for the baby and good for your body. So that was a long version of why you should have it. But I wanted to explain what the product was in it. But it's one of those things that I think you don't really realize how much you need until you start using it. And then you can't go without it because it just carries your stuff, you know, carries your baby as well. And it's just like really simple and easy to use. It takes seconds to put on and take off.

Awesome.

So where do they find you? Where can they order their own?

Yeah, so tushbaby.comt u s h b a b y dot com and we are also available at Target and Bye Bye Baby. I believe we're actually sold out at Bye Bye Baby right now, but there are some at Target online. So yeah, that's where you can find us.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and for sharing your story as an entrepreneur. I believe it will be very helpful. There are people who have thought about products and who have had ideas, maybe have a known next steps and I'm sure this will inspire them to go like, okay, I'm not going to. I'm going to validate my idea and I'm going to not quit and maybe want to be on Shark Tank. I don't know. But thank you so much for coming on. This was great.

Thank you so much for having me. And I hope that this has helped someone in some way. And if you have any questions, obviously feel free, you can reach out to me. My email is tammyushbaby.com Happy to answer questions or, you know, offer any advice based on, you know, my experience. I know everyone's going through their own unique path and if there's any way that I can offer any insight, I would be happy to.

Awesome. Thank you so much. And that email would be in the show notes as well, so you can check it out. So if you enjoy this episode, make sure you take a screenshot of it and tag me. Hashtag ontrend and tag Tushbaby and we look forward to seeing you on the next episode.

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Until next time.