Episode 247: How They Used Mistakes to their Advantage to Maximize Success with Multi-Million Dol...

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weddell. And before we get started, if you want to know exactly how to win again and again, go to Wydell on winning.com webinar now to watch something I've put together for you. Now let's get going into this episode of Million Dollar Mastermind.

All right. I am back with Lou Childs and Katie Mallory of the slumber pod empire, fast growing out of Atlanta, Georgia, and coming up with new products. And they have really compressed time frames in launching this new product. And they were smart enough, inadvertently, it kind of turned out that way. They were smart enough to take a problem that they had and realize lots of, you know, with their sleeping with their children away from home and realize if they could solve that, they might have something a lot of families would be interested in. And they found that the baby market, baby care market, was already a $67 billion business. And so that's a great business to come up with some new products in. And so things are just starting. They've gone from 100,018 when they launched the business, to 2 million in 2019, and then last year, 4 million. And so great. You know, they just got into the compounding track and where it's gonna be fun because, you know, we got millions of people in this, you know, North America's what closing in on 400 million and how many families in there and how many babies and they all need this product. So that's got to be music to the ears of Lou and Katie. So thank you. Welcome back, Lou.

Thank you. Great to be here.

And Katie, welcome back.

Thank you.

Katie, I'm going to ask you to lead off here. I'm curious. Please let us know. You know, we don't do planning for these calls because we're just talking about things that ideas and information that are so familiar with us because we use it every day. And when I wrote my book serial winner, I was just writing down the things that how we approach starting a project, you know, during the middle part of a project, when you're making things happen and dealing with the issues that you go through on the way to the finish line and then finishing, you know, rolling through and finishing that project and rolling onto something bigger and better. I just use the things that we had talked about, you know, I talked about with people for 40 years off the top. You know, it's just things we use all the time. So it wasn't hard, didn't need notes. And so right now I'm going to do that with you and ask you, like, when it comes in, I'll try to ask the question in a way that will help trigger the obvious for you. And that is when you've started this thing, you did not know. You try to solve a problem for yourself and, you know, you knew it wasn't going to go away. And like all problems, they limited you, they handicapped you, they caused you to change your plans and kept you in a box from what you wanted to do. You wanted to be able to travel with the babies, you wanted to be able to do this. But if you can't sleep away from home, all that's off the table. And so you want to solve the problem to get more freedom in there and have more enjoyment in life and have more options. And so you came up with a great solution, but you didn't know this would turn into something big. How long did it take before you got the idea that this could be a marketable product?

So, let's see, we. We got serious about inventing the product and in May, June 2016, and it was probably in September, October of that same year that we loaned my sister, who had a, I believe, like 6 month or 9 month old at the time, a prototype. And she was able to fold laundry and quietly wash dishes in her hotel room while her daughter was sleeping because of our product. And that's when we really knew that we were onto something. And. And then it wasn't. You know, it took some time for us to get the right manufacturer and do all the safety testing and everything. But the Kickstarter campaign that you mentioned, when we talked before that met more than nine times, its goal was additional indication that we were really onto something. And then after that, it really just went like wildfire on social media where a mom would want to talk about how well it worked and she'd share it with her network, and then somebody else would buy it and then share it with their network. And so that snowball effect started pretty quickly after our Kickstarter campaign in 2018.

Yeah, but when we started getting influencers dming us on Instagram saying, would you collaborate with me just for sending me a slumber pod? We knew that there was something because we weren't reaching out to people yet, they started reaching out to us. But I did want to mention one of the very first sales we made on Kickstarter was to this fun mom who started talking about slumber pod to all her fans, and she has a lot of them. And the hurricane came through her town and she put her baby in the middle of their house in a hallway in slumber pod and is doing a live thing about how they're, you know, the electricity's out and. But her baby's safe inside slumber pod. She kept talking about us. She's an adult gymnast. She would take it to the gym and set it up for her baby to take a nap in while she was doing routines. And she is the model that we chose to meet us for Shark Tank filming. We had never met her face to face. When she flew out to LA to be our model and Oscar was on Shark Tank with us. So we had these passionate people and now they're like family. So the cult that we talked about on earlier episodes with you, it's really a family. We love building relationships. We love getting close to our customers and our affiliates. We treat them differently than just a big company that has a product. We love to call them by their first name when they post about us and make them feel important.

Well, the thing is, though, you know, there's a thing like people say, how do you build confidence? You know, I don't have confidence. Well, get out there and do something. The only way you're going to get confidence is to do something and have a positive response. That's the confidence that doesn't go away. Until that happens, you're just posing, you're acting like you're confident. But if you go out there and you do something, you create something and show it to people, you know, it takes courage to show a new idea to people. And you take it out there and you show your deal not knowing how they're going to respond and then they respond in a positive way. Now you got confidence. That's how you build your confidence, step by step. But was there ever a moment. Did you guys know that this is something that parents would. Did you ever have the. Because you guys have got babies everywhere in this family. Congrats. Congratulations. I mean, you're going to have a legacy. That's unbelievable. You could be like the Walmart family, you know, Sam Walton. But what did you have a hesitancy to kind of show this to other people and to get them to try it and to see what they would think.

Not after we got safety testing. So we wanted to make sure before any baby spent the night in.

Now, how did you know. How did. How did you know to do safety test?

All baby products have to go through safety testing.

Oh, so that's just something you had to do.

Yeah, networking taught us a lot about that, too.

Okay.

We Went beyond what was required and we got CO2 rebreathing test with a major international safety test product safety testing company called Intertech. And what they did was set up the environment. They put up a play yard or a pack and play inside slumber pod with the mannequin that would depict a, I think it was a 24 pound toddler. And they did CO2 rebreathing. Now this test, like I said, was not mandatory. In fact it was never mentioned. But Katie and I just felt like we needed to go beyond what was expected because this is a brand new product. I mean nobody had before us somebody launched one in the UK that is, it solves the same problem but it is completely different design. It's like a skin that wraps around the play yard. Even still, we wanted to make sure that it was as safe as we could find out. So we got the highest rating on the CO2 rebreathing test that they give and it's low hazard. So we felt really good after that that we start giving it out to friends and family to test and get their feedback. And that's when we knew we had something special. Is all of all the people that used it kept wanting to borrow it or can I have one? And we knew we were onto something really special.

Yeah, when you have a powerful product, everything does seem to go easier. But what you guys did that winners do and I just, I, I describe it in my book is you don't just start, you start with a bang. And you. To me the worst advice anybody can get is just do it. Because that implies, well, I'll just do it. Just, just do it. No, you do it with everything you've got every. Because, because people who fail usually fail after going 98 or 99% of the way and they almost get there, but then they fail. And in our company we have five month contests and we'll take them to Hawaii. You know, take a thousand people or 2000 to Hawaii or you know, wherever and great places, great vacations, unbelievable. But you know, they'll always be five month sales contests. They'll always be thousands of people who miss it by one sale. And you know, you don't want to just do you want to. If you miss the contest, you want to make sure that you go tell your husband or wife, we missed and I gave it, I was working, you know, I had no more to give, you know, and you don't want to miss it by one sale and have that regret because once it's over, it's over. And so most people who fail, even if they knew they were going to fail, they would have worked more. And so that's why winners go in and they overdo. They don't do. They overdo. They don't just do it. They give it everything they've got so that they stack the odds as fast as they can in their favor of success, in favor of them succeeding because they're humble enough to realize, you know, the odds are always against you starting something new. And so you went overboard on this thing right from the beginning, and knowing you had that rating had to give you a greater confidence and strength after that point going forward.

Hey, listen, there's a lot of information online, but there aren't a lot of people who have actually done something. In my case, I've actually built a successful business, has accrued over $5 billion in assets under management, and has done well even during trying times. Now, if you want to know exactly how I've done this, go to Whiteellumwinning.com webinar Now, I've compressed a decade of learning into five short weeks. Just for those of you who want to give yourself an incredible advantage and are tired of waiting and watching others move.

Well, we're just not a company that's out to make a bunch of money. What drives us is helping people and building relationships and making people's lives easier. And we couldn't do that confidently. We couldn't launch a product with all of that emotion without knowing it's as safe as we can prove possibly. So, you know, safety testing is hugely important to us. We have a blog about our commitment to it, and we love sharing it because we want people to feel confident, and we feel confident because we went those extra steps.

Well, let me ask you this. It sounds like this has just been a gravy train for you guys. It has just been easy. Has this just been one serendipitous day right after another? You just follow the. The rose petals to greatness. Because it sounds like you came up with this great idea and everything kind of fell in place. Is that how it went? Or were there moments where you said, I don't know if we're on the right track here or. I mean, has it been all sunny days?

I would say that it hasn't been rose petals all the time because we are accomplishing so much during our day. So when Katie went back to work after her maternity leave, we would have conference calls with people in our network or consultants that we were talking to while she was on her commute, and I could Hear her breast pump going in the background. She didn't wait to have complete alone time and not doing anything or it would have never gotten done. So she made it a priority. And you know, if people figured out what the noise was, so what? So it can't be perfect. You can't wait for perfect. We are both really good at time management, I think, and we both have a lot of energy and we're, we're determined and that's what it takes.

There are long days, I mean, that, that certainly, you know, some days we're tired because, because we're doing a lot. But we're also trying to think about, you know, building a successful business that's going to take good care of us financially in the future.

Well, success is a whale of a lot of work. But when you're having good feedback and you know it's going to pay off and it's just, you just don't resent it, you know, you wish, you know, it's like people will wind up saying to you, you guys were just geniuses on this. And if you're like me, I always say if I was a genius, I wish I told myself years ago I could have saved myself a whole lot of grief, you know, and geniuses don't do the dumb things I've done in my life, you know, but somehow until you just, you got to keep making decisions and moving forward and there's a lot of work involved to get where you want to go. Even if you're on a staircase to, you know, super success and record sales because you go through stretch periods of where, you know, your volume increases and you're trying to figure now, how are we going to deal with this, you know, and what have you, what are things that you say to yourself to keep yourself on track going through those times because, you know, we all have to be. Life is too complex to always have a little life coach at your side, advising you and giving you pump up thoughts. How do you coach yourself to stay on track? What do you think about when you get exhausted? When you, you're at that point? What do you say? How do you look at things that you would say gives you an edge over most people that you look around and you can tell most people don't look at it this way. And one of the things you've already talked about, like if you see the ship coming in, go out to meet it. You know, it's like in basketball, they say they'll pass the ball. One player will pass the ball to the other player and then it'll get intercepted and the coach will go to the guy who was supposed to get the ball and scream at him saying, go get the ball. Don't just stand there, wait for the ball to come to reach out, you know, close that gap, make it harder for someone to intercept that pass, you know, get. Go to the pass, you know. And so that's kind of true in every area of life. Either you're going to be passive and just let it come to you, or you're going to go meet it. You've already talked about that. Can you think of other things that makes you, you feel like, gives you an edge? Because like you say, people in, you know, people are going to be copying this. They always copy success. And like you figured out a great thing, they're going to see if they can do it better. And so what do you think is going to give you. I'll tell you both, I'll tell you both this because I coach million dollar earners, okay. What's going to ultimately make you different instead is your drive and your continue to improve. And like you said, a new product, it's going to be you. Not the fact that you lucked up on a idea here that just happens to be in the sweet spot for parents. It's going to be what you do because of who you are going forward. That's just me talking to you. Okay? But because you're going to have all. Everybody likes to copy, but they're not going to be able to copy who you are. And so that's your strength. So I just wanted to say that to you. Okay.

Oh, thank you for that. And Larry, this seems like the perfect place. Oh, go ahead.

I can't help myself, so you have to forgive me. Katie.

No, you're totally fine. This seems like the perfect place to talk about how we've dealt with mistakes or with frustrations because turning mistakes into opportunities is another thing that we feel like sets us apart and that makes successful entrepreneurs successful. So two examples, and I'm sure my mom might have others, are that when we were early in to shipping out products, we accidentally shipped out double. So if somebody was supposed to get one slumber pod that day, we printed two shipping labels and they got two. If they ordered two, then they got four. And we had to have a good sense of humor about the mistake and send out an email to the people who may have been getting duplicates to try and retrieve that product, because we're talking about a product which at the time was about $150 a pop. So we could have lost a significant amount of inventory had we not acted quickly and admitted our own mistakes. And we were able to recover most of it. But that also gave us a lot of reason to revisit our shipping procedures and the software we used and to put some new checks and balances in place so that wouldn't happen again. So we turned that into opportunity. And another example is that we recently launched a couple months ago a pet version of Slumber Pod, thinking that it would be a home run like a product that would go over a pet crate or a pet bed to keep that pet sleeping space dark and private if they have anxiety or need darkness for traveling. And we've realized that that market, that product probably isn't going to be successful, that the pet crates that are pet crate covers that are already on the market must be solving for most of the customers needs. So we're going to scale back on that business. But it's a great, another great example of how we need to look at ourselves and think about how to turn this into opportunity. And what it's taught us is that we're going to stick to baby sleep as our category and to build out more products there instead of trying to expand into other tangential markets. So one of the lessons, they are not just about turning mistakes or failures into learning opportunities is to know when enough is enough. And not everything you're going to do is going to be successful. And you have to pivot.

Yeah. And it is going to be successful if you get the lesson. It's like, you know, like Nick Saban says, don't. If you have a loss, don't lose the lesson, you know, and let the loss, let the loss teach you something. And that's what you did there. And it turned out to be a win because you learned like, okay, here's where we need to focus. You know, we tried that and we got our answer. And so unbelievable. And really, you know, what I've always told people is like, you don't have to become perfect, but you have to improve. Because every, no matter how good it is, it can always be better. And it doesn't have to be perfect. But if you want to do more, it's got to be better. If you want a bigger and better organization, you got to get better, you know, because the leaders got to improve if you want the team to improve and your product's got to get better. But what you find, life teaches you what needs to get better next by what goes wrong. Like you said, that you had that double ship on that thing. Well, that told you what needed to be fixed next. And that's really the evolution of businesses. You don't have to fix it all tomorrow, but we got to fix that thing now. You know, that one needs to be fixed next. So, Lou, what comes to you on that subject?

It's a great question. I have always had the attitude of bloom, where you're planted. So growing up, my dad died when I was three. My mother had five children to raise. I was the youngest. We didn't get a lot of attention and we didn't have a lot of extra money and times were hard, but I made the best of it. Wonderful childhood, I learned. I went to work at 16, you know, summers and Christmas holidays. But it was great. And my advice to young people is embrace whatever role you're in. Learn everything you can about it, because you are going to take that knowledge and you are going to build on the next role.

And.

And you're going to build on the next role. Because everything I have done, from customer service to waitressing to hostessing at a restaurant to marketing to being in journalism, all the things and being a mom and managing my time have made me what I am today. It all culminated and here I am able to run this business pretty much with very little help on the side. And it's all because of those things. And also another thing is keep learning. I'll be 64 in September and I'm just as techy as almost all my children.

So is that right?

Absolutely. No. I am techier than Katie and she will admit it. I just love learning. I cannot stand for something to get the best of me. So I dive in and I figure it out. Maybe technology isn't your thing, but whatever is your thing, dive in. Don't be afraid to ask questions and try and figure it out on your own. And don't ever stop learning.

Unbelievable. Thanks so much, Lou. It's been fantastic. And I'm going to look forward to seeing your business just grow and grow and grow and look forward to talking to you down the road and have some fun seeing what all new you've accomplished and what you've. What you've learned. Okay, so thanks so much, Larry.

If you enjoyed what you've heard and are dead serious about finding out for yourself exactly how this works in the real world, I've taken the most valuable business lessons I've learned over 40 years and put them into something for you to watch. Go to whiteellawinning.com forward/webinar now in order to move up as far as fast as possible. I'm Larry Weidell, and I run the Million Dollar Mastermind. Go, go.