# Scaling Niche Brands: Storytelling and AI-Driven Growth

**Podcast:** How I Built This with Guy Raz
**Published:** 2026-03-05

## Transcript

Hello and welcome to the advice line on how I built this lab.
I'm Guy Roz.
This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges.
Each week I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show, who will help me try to help you.
And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show.
Our number is 1800-433-1298.
Leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with.
All right, let's get to it.
Joining me this week is WeWork co-founder Miguel McKelvey.
Miguel, uh, welcome back to the show.
Thank you.
Happy to be here.
It's great to have you back on.
You've been on the show twice, first in 2017, and then again in 2022.
And uh for anyone who hasn't listened to either of those shows, I would really encourage you to go back and listen.
We'll put a link to it in the show notes.
Um, but basically, the stories about how Miguel came to entrepreneurship uh with a background in architecture.
In 2007, uh, he met a guy named Adam Newman.
They shared an office based in Brooklyn, and then from there, so much more detailed story.
WeWork was born uh by 2019, the valuation reached 47 billion dollars.
Now, a lot of people listening know what outlines of what happened from there.
Adam Newman faced some accusations of mismanagement.
Uh, he was forced to resign.
The company withdrew a long anticipated IPO filing, and then Miguel left in 2020.
WeWork, by the way, still exists today.
There are about 330 locations around the world.
Um, but you know, obviously down from its peak.
Miguel, you know, it's been over six years since you moved on from WeWork, and we've talked since then.
Um, but now that you've had even more distance, how does it feel?
And I should point out you were never accused of mismanagement.
You come out great in a lot of these documentaries and in the um dramatization that was that was uh put out there, we crashed.
Um how do you how does it feel when when you look back on your experience there?
You know, I still look back a lot.
It obviously played such a huge role in my life, and I get the opportunity to talk about it um not publicly that much, but like last night I spoke to a group of entrepreneurs at an accelerator, and of course they're very curious about the experience.
And I love to share the stories of both the good times and the hard times.
And um, you know, entrepreneurship is a roller coaster no matter what scale you're at.
You know, there's so many emotional layers to everything that happens.
And I think my perspective is that every one of those experiences is an opportunity to grow from and learn something about myself, um, about how to treat other people, about how to, you know, do business in the way that I think is the right way to do it.
And I still get lessons from it because people, you know, I'll run, I literally will run into someone on the street, a former WeWork employee, who will share something with me about how We work changed their life, something I may have known and forgotten, or something I, you know, never even knew about.
And, you know, I get this incredible feeling of like, wow, we did something really powerful, and it touched a lot of people.
And um that is just endlessly fulfilling.
And so uh I I don't shy away from it at all.
I I'm happy to go back into it, um, even though there's a lot of pain there.
I think going into that pain is productive.
Yeah.
Um, it's interesting because right now, right, we're looking at this this moment where, and I wonder, I'm just curious to get your take on it, where there seems to be, at least people are talking about a kind of a bubble with AI businesses, right?
Companies.
I mean, there's just the valuations are unbelievable, right?
You you experienced this with a company that you were at and and companies around you where you just saw, you know, valuations go through the roof.
Um, and I wonder whether you think there are any parallels between, you know, some of the crazy valuations you saw even at WeWork and what could possibly happen with some of these emerging AI companies.
One of the biggest differences I see is that WeWork was a very real-world problem.
It was very tangible, right?
And similar to Uber or Lyft, um, you know, Airbnb, some of these companies that of my era that achieved great valuations, you could really see like the value in them in a tangible way.
Like, does do people need to ride in a car?
For sure they do.
Do they need a workspace?
For sure they do.
The AI applications are so incredibly powerful and amazing, but because they can do so much and it's not yet clear exactly how how to monetize them, it is a bit confusing to understand how will they be evaluated.
You know, I kind of go back to like even the earlier days of like the dot-com boom, where it was like everyone's super excited about what this technology is going to do, but no one's exactly sure if the business models are sound, you know, and um who knows I mean I know I'm diving into every AI tool I can find and loving it.
Yeah.
I'm barely paying anything for it.
I don't even know if I pay at all.
Like I I you know it might be a part of my Google bill, but I'm I'm getting the benefit of incredible technology and not paying.
So that always feels a little bit scary of like what's going to happen.
And of course when you have big players who are competing, you know, it can be a race to the bottom and that's scary too because if Google wants to give their AI tools for free, what happens to chat GPT?
You know, these kind of things they get dicey you know yeah for sure.
For sure.
Well a lot of um a lot of interesting things that you're you're part of and you are I mean you've done some mentoring and I know you you you still you know go to incubators and talk to founders about their experiences.
So it I mean sounds like a big part of what you've been doing and what you will continue to do is is just you know kind of be an advisor and mentor.
For me, that's super fulfilling.
Um, I like engaging with people.
I'm super curious and ask a ton of questions.
Regardless of I know anything, I think I can be helpful in just getting people to you know think about things from different directions, different perspectives.
So I really enjoy it.
It's what kind of lights me up the most.
Yeah, all right.
Well, let's let's let's put it to the test, Miguel and and bring in our first caller.
You ready?
Yep, I'm ready.
All right, all right, let's bring our first caller.
Hello, caller.
Um, welcome to the advice line you're on with Miguel McKelve.
Tell us your name, uh, where you're calling from, and just uh briefly about your business.
Hi, hi guy, hi Miguel.
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm a huge fan, so this is such a treat.
My name is Jane Barthel.
I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I am the founder and owner of Copa Threads, a women's pants brand that features small batch, fun, comfy, beautifully constructed pants.
Awesome.
Well, thanks for calling Jay.
So, what kind of pants are they like?
At leisure or leisure or dress or what?
Tell me a little bit about what they look like.
Um, I consider them a colorful and fun trouser.
They are intended to have the comfort of athletic pants, but definitely have more sophistication.
Um, like a pant that you could wear out to dinner, you could wear traveling.
Um, they're made of primarily 100% cotton canvas.
So they actually have some structure.
So they have like a nice silhouette.
They're not like flowy pants.
And the main fabric is all printed.
So they have colorful designs, floral, geometric, birds.
They're just fun.
Cool.
And and this is this your uh main business right now.
Um, I mean, it's a side hustle.
I have a full-time job in another industry.
What tell me what what's your full-time job?
Um, my full-time job is I am a neonatologist.
So I take care of newborns in the newborn intensive care unit.
Cool.
Well, I'm looking at your website, and I wonder whether there's a, I mean, they're they're obviously more elegant than scrubs, but is there they are they seem like kind of easy to wear?
Is there a connection there?
Yes.
Um I found coming home from work when people put on their more comfortable clothing that I it was a conundrum because I wear scrubs every day, and they're just the most comfortable pants you can wear.
So um one day I deconstructed a pair of scrubs and started making pants just for fun, not to wear to work, but out of really fun, colorful, funky fabrics, and that's how this whole thing was kind of born because I would wear them around town.
I wore them to a concert, and I would have friends, family, even strangers saying, Oh my god, I love your pants.
So that's kind of how it all started.
Are you selling the pants in stores or is it mainly through through website?
Almost all my website.
I have um just a few pairs at a local boutique in the suburb of Minneapolis where I live.
Yeah.
And and where are they being manufactured?
The pants?
In Northeast Minneapolis at a woman-owned factory.
Wow.
And the material comes, the main canvas comes from a manufacturer in Florida.
And that's um, I get that via a fabric sourcer I met who's out of Chicago.
Got it.
And and before we get to your question, one one last question for you.
Give me a sense of how you you're doing.
I mean, overall sales, let's say for the last year or so.
So I just started last summer at the end of last June of 25.
And um I've done about $15,000 in sales.
Great.
That's a good start.
Yeah.
All right.
All right.
Uh before I bring in Miguel, uh, what is your question?
So my question um is about scale.
I've built my business around local manufacturing with very high quality standards, leading to high costs and price point.
So, how do I build demand and scale when my values limit how fast and how cheaply I can grow?
Got it.
Okay, Miguel McKelvey, I want to bring you in.
Um, thoughts for Jane or questions that you might have for?
Yeah.
First thing, the pants are great.
I'm sad you don't have them in men's size for six foot, six foot eight, six foot six.
I I love the patterns.
Um, very cool.
Thank you.
I am curious, just one question.
I know you're getting attention for these beautiful patterns, but do people want them in black or gray or yes, you know, more neutral colors?
Yes.
Yes.
I've definitely heard that request, which is which could be another whole conversation, you know, because um I hear both that I should be following my customers' demands, but then also kind of staying true to my brand, which is meant to be colorful, exciting pants.
And what is your exact bottleneck?
Is it that the factory can't produce as many pants as you need to sell, or is it also that you need enough customers who can spend $300 on a pair of pants?
Yeah, it's really more the latter.
It's finding the customer base um of people who value high quality local manufacturing.
And really, I think of the pants as like wearable art.
I mean, I when people say to me, when are you gonna make black pants?
I say, well, go to Banana Republic.
I'm not making black pants.
Like the whole idea is that these are like an art form you're wearing.
Got it.
And one more question on that.
Where have you gotten the customers who have spent $15,000 so far?
Um, I mean, of course, a huge part of my customer base is my friends and family and people who are graciously want to support me.
Um, but then also the boutique uh where I sell things locally, is all local designers, it's all high-end, it's all kind of in that price range.
So right now, uh the price point is high, about two $295 dollars for a pair of uh pants.
And you know this, and it part is because part of it is because it's made in a small factory in in Minneapolis and you're sourcing the the material fabric from the US.
Um, so that makes sense.
But before I address it, what do you want this to be?
Do you want this to be a bigger brand?
Do you are do you want it to be a bigger side hustle?
What what is your ambition here?
I I would love for it to be a successful side hustle that could kind of slowly grow and eventually become potentially something bigger when I'm kind of more toward the end of my career in medicine.
Right now, I'm 54.
I'll probably work in medicine for another, I don't know, six, eight, ten years.
And it would be nice for this to be something kind of on the side that would evolve.
I I've actually thought um I I'm working with my manufacturer on a new design for spring, and I was thinking maybe it could evolve into a business that has like drops quarterly.
So I I maintain the small batch, high quality standards.
Yeah, I this I'm curious Miguel, I'm curious to get your take on what I'm about to say, because I mean there I there are two obvious paths, right?
There's there's manufacture this more cheaply, right?
Which is maybe outsource it, go overseas.
Or the other, the other uh option is keep keep it where your price point is at, but you gotta do a better job at explaining why.
Like so, so Miguel is an owner, uh part owner of uh brand called American Giant.
We featured on the show.
It's a great brand.
Made in the US, fabrics are sourced in the US, a cotton is even picked in the US.
And you from the moment you go to the website, you understand that.
It's a little bit, it's a little bit more expensive than what you might pay for, you know, a Haynes t-shirt, but you understand why.
Go to your website.
Nothing that you've told us is here.
You don't know it's what's made in a factory in Minneapolis by a group of women, it's handmade, these are hand sourced, it's all I mean, because now I need to know why I'm paying 295.
And then it, but that story starts to make sense.
Miguel, do you do you think that moves the needle that that you know when people know those things, it moves the needle?
100%.
It moves the needle, but I think you have to tell that story over and over and over.
It's not just a one-time thing.
Like you need to be on Instagram telling your personal story and why you care about the product and the way it's made, and then also have the story of the people making it and the story of where the fabric comes from.
All those things are really meaningful, and giving your why will be what really translates to people.
So I I would say doing that would be really powerful.
And then the other thing is um the products look great.
The UGC, like the reviews, I'm looking at, like the women wearing the pants when they've taken their own photo, yeah, those are amazing.
If you could get some of those ambassadors who would do the same thing, who would go onto social media and share their story of why they love the pants um to their networks, that would be great.
Because it really translates, you know, it the fact that these bright, um, funky patterns um are so beautiful in a photo.
And there's one where actually a woman is standing with three other women and her pants compared to theirs, it's like you're like, those are some great pants.
Oh, yeah.
I'm looking at that with the one that she's at like a music festival.
Yeah.
I mean, the that sells the product itself, but you gotta get that out there as much as you can and and and and then put the why behind it.
Right.
Another thing I would suggest would be going to a local restaurant and gifting the pants to some of the servers and asking them to wear them or a coffee shop where people can see them behind the counter because they they really jump off the page.
I'm sure the more they're in public, people will say, Hey, where are those pants from?
Yeah.
Just brainstorm everywhere someone could see these pants.
Because they don't need to work that hard.
They just showing up uh does a lot for these pants.
Um, but you need to get them out there.
I've said like a big marker of success for me would be if I saw a strange or someone I don't know wearing my pants at our local grocery store.
It's like that's sort of my goals.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I mean it's awesome.
I think you need to really double down on on the story here.
Yeah.
And and not just on the website, but at anywhere you can.
So people understand what they're buying.
I mean, they're buying something that's that's artisanal, right?
That's a real craft-made product.
Right.
Right.
That isn't just a made in a giant factory and put on a huge container ship.
So I that that to me is is critical.
I think I think and and as Miguel said you want to use any channel you can to tell that story and to and and for people to understand where it's coming from and how it's made.
Right for sure.
Yeah that makes a lot of sense.
The brand is called Copa Threads.
Uh Jane Partell, thank you so much for calling in.
Good luck.
Thank you.
All right we're gonna take a very short break back in just a few minutes.
I'm Guy Roz and you're listening to the advice line on how I built this lab.
Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab.
I'm Guy Roz and my guest today is Miguel McKelvey co-founder of WeWork and we are taking your calls and let's bring in our next caller.
Hi guy Miguel my name's Melissa Jensky I'm in Santa Fe New Mexico I'm the co-founder of Good Grief.
We're an online gifting company that specializes in care packages for life's twists and turns.
So anything from loss of a loved one, loss of a pet, infertility, miscarriage, cancer and illness, mental health and wellness, breakup, job loss, and more.
Wow.
Okay, well, welcome to the show.
So, all right, so good grief.
Um, um these are care packages that you send to somebody who's going through a rough time.
Yeah, so we've intentionally chosen products that are practical and support healing and self-care.
So we have a ton of books and journals focused on specific type of losses, consumables like teas, um cookies, chocolate for all the emotional eating, uh, cozy things like socks and candles, sleep masks, hot cold packs, and then some beauty and wellness, so bath soaks, aromatherapy type products, lots of eye gels for all the puffy crying eyes.
And then um, we also have some services that you can add to your care package to book things like one-on-one grief coaching and things like that.
That's cool.
How did this idea come about?
Yeah, so we are a family-run business.
My sister is my co-founder, Kristen.
She's in the UK.
And it was really born out of personal experience.
I always like to joke that I got the the short straws in the family.
Um, when I was 29, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition called rheumatoid arthritis.
And then in my 30s, I experienced um infertility and a miscarriage.
And around that same time, we had a family member whose spouse died by suicide.
And it really just hit me that I think as a society, we're not super great.
You know, we are super great at celebrating all the good stuff, the weddings, anniversaries, the new babies.
But when it comes to the tough stuff, I think we can really fall short.
We don't know what to do with it.
We don't know what to say, yeah.
Exactly.
We don't know what to say, we don't know what to do.
Sometimes we say the wrong thing, sometimes we don't say anything at all.
Um, so I really wanted to fix that.
And during the pandemic, um, we were home working like everyone else, and my sister and I just started talking more.
And I think we were both pretty frustrated with our jobs.
And I was like, hey, I have this business idea.
What do you think?
And she was like, Yeah, let's do it.
I don't, I think I was crazy because I was working full-time.
I had a two and a half-year-old at home.
I don't even know how I pulled it off.
But we we launched in six months.
Um, so we launched in April of 2021.
And, you know, I think, you know, we I know that a box of stuff isn't gonna fix anything, it's not gonna take away grieving, but we really just hope it provides an icebreaker or a bridge for people to connect and really show up with genuine care and empathy.
And Melissa, these are you're selling on entirely through your website.
Yes, all direct to consumer online.
And tell me a little bit about how the business uh is doing.
Yeah, so for the past three years, we've been um right around 200,000 in revenue and just can't seem to break past that.
Um, this past year was pretty challenging for us.
Um, and so we were down like seven percent from the year before.
And and how are you marketing mainly?
Yeah, so previously we were doing all Google ads, that's where we saw the best row ads.
I think one of the challenges I think with us is the intent to buy isn't always there when people discover us, right?
So when we first launched, we tried some social, um, but we ended up we had such a limited budget that we ended up just going to Google ads, we were getting great returns, and for whatever reason it completely collapsed last summer.
And so now we're really in a place where we're having to diversify our marketing efforts.
And I think it's also challenging because we have so many scenarios and we touch upon so many different types of grief and loss.
It's great because we have lots of opportunities but it's also like sometimes overwhelming because it's like where do you go with it and what do you do?
So sounds like that's kind of your challenge or the question that you brought right yeah like what um growth channels should we prioritize and especially I think AI has really changed how um paid media works and how customers are discovering brands.
So yeah we're trying to just find yeah where do we put our effort you know limited time and resources and what will move the needle.
Nice.
All right uh Miguel Kelvey I want you to jump in here, meet Melissa and thoughts about uh the business, the dilemma questions.
Yeah I mean the first thing that came up for me when I was looking at your website was the content side of things because I I would be so confused in one of these moments of what to do.
So even before I was going to buy a gift, I was thinking, could I have a guide of just how to think about it or how to feel about it.
And especially now with AI, I imagine I would go ask, you know, uh Gemini or or someone like, hey, this just happened in my life, what do I do?
And so it seems like tuning your the content side both for SEO and also for AI is essential.
And I don't know how much you have this, but um having a web page for literally every single web search you can imagine that someone might make in one of these scenarios would be really smart because you know if someone goes in and they say X just happened, what do I do?
You want to come up first in that uh in that search and and then if you optimize that page for AI crawling, you know, it's possible that when the person goes to AI to ask that question, they're gonna find you as well.
I would look at the same thing across everything like can you make TikTok videos that answer these questions?
Can you make YouTube videos that answer these questions?
Like everywhere you could have content to answer this question, uh you you want to be there to help uh people deal with it.
Yeah that makes sense.
Melissa I wonder um aside from from marketing through influencers or or you know doing social media ads, have you done any work with with partners at all?
You know not not sort of paid media but with like uh hospices organizations or or you know oncology centers or I mean even funeral homes or or um I don't know have you tried any of that?
Yeah, so we've definitely have done like lots of cold outreach for like funeral homes and things like that.
Um we did work with um Erica Sinner to launch um a pets pets are she wrote a book called Pets are Family.
So we worked with her to launch a custom parent care package this past year.
Um we also have we we launched a um employee gifting program as well.
We get a lot of repeat customers.
We were seeing lots of orders come in from places like Chewy, Nike, Microsoft Gates Foundation.
And but it's just so hard to get a foot in the door.
I I basically begged the Gates Foundation customer to put me in touch with HR, and she was like, no, I can't do that.
And so there's just so much potential, but yeah, it's just hard to get a foot in, I think.
And I think maybe part of it's like starting, maybe starting more locally.
Yeah, I mean, for sure.
Uh, we'd start locally in Santa Fe.
You know, I mean, you've got uh obviously smaller, probably smaller businesses there, but but it would seem to me that, and it sounds like you're you're trying that channel, that second channel, right?
That B2B gifting channel, working with HR teams, could really uh be game changer.
Yeah, definitely, yeah, right on.
I mean, unmanaged grief in the workplace costs employers, you know, 75 billion dollars a year and up.
So like it's a huge, huge opportunity.
I was wondering, um, have you tried any direct mail?
Uh have you ever, you know, have you made any printed cards that you sent out to people or anything like that?
We haven't, no.
Besides just like some flyers like in cot local coffee shops, but no direct to direct mailers, no.
Yeah, I I mean to me, it seems like this is like a back of mind thing that, you know, it's it's almost like that thing you want to have on the refrigerator for when that time comes.
That's a the way I would imagine it is that if I just saw the brand out of context, I would probably forget about it.
But if I had it in the back of my mind when that time came up, I would go, oh, that's where I go.
But that recall is difficult.
So I don't know.
I kind of imagine if you've got this thing and you sort of remembered, you put it on the refrigerator, you put it in a drawer somewhere, and then that time comes and you go, Oh, let me go find that card that I saw a couple of months ago.
You know, that's the kind of thing you need is for the person to have, you know, recall of this option when they are searching for something that again is a very difficult problem, problem to solve.
So that could be really interesting.
The more times you know, someone touches a brand, the more likely they are to recall it.
And you might need to touch them three, four, or five times, and that card could potentially win.
I would I would say canvas your neighborhood with some cards through the mail slot and just see, you know, does that result in anything?
Maybe maybe it would.
Yeah, I love that idea.
I also, you know, Miguel, you mentioned the socials and and the messaging.
And, you know, increasingly the the AI scrapers are gonna be what matters, right?
That's that's the new SEO, right?
And and so when people ask, hey, what where do I go for X, Y, and Z?
You know, these AI assistants are gonna be making decisions based on what what they're seeing out there in the language they're seeing.
I mean, are you when you do put a little bit of money into socials?
Are you direct in the way you are um connecting, trying to connect with people?
Like what to send someone after a miscarriage?
Like when you don't know what to say or something?
Like, do you do you have language that's really clear like that?
Um, not really.
I mean, most of our Google paid ads were Google Shopping and stuff like that.
We tried some, we had to bring on an ad agency last summer to try to fix things and get us back on track and it didn't work.
But we did try Meta and did some more kind of out there messaging and just didn't really see much happen.
Um we are focusing a lot on SEO and blog writing to try to get those you know, AI crawlers.
We have seen a handful of orders come from AI.
So I think this idea of just a clear message that Miguel was alluding to, like, people want to help, right?
When something happens to somebody, our instinct is to help, and often we don't know how to help.
And so maybe it's like um literally a message is like, how do you help somebody who just got a horrible diagnosis?
Here's how you comfort somebody who had a miscarriage and they they click, you know, or um, or here's how you show support to somebody uh, you know, who's struggling with infertility.
Yeah.
What you want to telegraph is your problem is you don't know how to help, and we're your solution.
Yeah.
You can solve the problem.
Yeah, I would just as a point on that, um, I was talk speaking to someone who worked on SEO for a payments company.
I won't say which one.
They said they have literally thousands of SEO pages for every single thing that someone might need a payment for.
And that's I was overwhelmed by that, but I was also like, it's so smart.
You want to be the answer in that moment when someone uh needs you.
And a lot of that is just you've got to be at kind of the top of the list.
Cranking out, yeah, all of that.
And also are you doing any email follow-up?
Like do you send out a a weekly or a monthly newsletter to the people who have purchased?
Yes, we do have an email that goes out a couple twice a month.
Got it.
So you are staying in front of mind with the people who have purchased before and what's your repeat business?
Like are people typically coming back um after they buy the first time?
Yeah I return customer rates around 20% and I do, you know, once in a while to field some customer service calls.
I just had one the other day and I asked her how she found out about us about us and it was she had been gifted something.
So I think that happens a lot.
Someone's gifted been gifted a care package and then they come back to buy it for someone else.
Got it.
Yeah I mean again it seems like because this is so situational you need people to think of you in that exact right moment.
So the more often you touch them, and this is I think a big debate amongst email, and I'm not an email expert, but um email when it's there, you find it.
When it's pushed down 200 emails in your inbox, the chance that you find it is low.
So maybe experimenting with you know one of these AI products that can help you with some email automation to just test some different things would be helpful because you know you want to stay front of mind uh for your customers.
So whenever that moment comes, you know, they think of you first.
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, absolutely.
Uh the brand is called Good Grief.
Melissa Jensky, thanks for calling in.
Good luck.
Thank you so much.
All right, we're gonna take another quick break here.
I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to the advice line right here on how I built this lab.
And today I'm taking calls with a WeWork co-founder, Miguel McKelvey.
Miguel, ready for our next caller?
Let's do it.
All right, cool.
Welcome to the advice line.
You're on with Miguel McKelvey.
Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business.
I'm Lee Wright.
I'm a near uh Boston and Marlboro, and I'm the founder of the History List Store.
We provide things for people who are passionate about history.
Uh nearly everything we offer is designed by us.
Nearly everything we offer is made in America.
Awesome.
Welcome to the show, Lee.
So the history list is a it's a help me understand a little bit more.
I'm I'm looking at the website, but help me understand what you sell.
So I started out as a as a content site, uh, the history list uh for um information about events and so on and so forth.
And this is really an outgrowth of that.
I was looking for a way to cover some of those costs, and so designed a history nerd t-shirt.
And uh that was back in 2016.
We now have hundreds of SKUs covering a wide range of historical topics, a wide range of product types and so forth.
Like t-shirts, hats, pins.
Exactly, exactly.
And uh, like our you know, we do some fun things, uh the the Thomas Jefferson breakup letter uh t-shirt for Valentine's Day.
Uh we do also offer uh very selected antiques and rare finds, things that could be uh a ship's passport uh signed by John Tyler, uh a World War I or World War II Oh wow yeah, yeah, that sort of thing.
So, all right, so it's a combination of like products like t-shirts and and prints and caps, even jewelry, but then you also have some antiques that you sell.
And and I guess the thing that jumps out at me is the t-shirt that says huzzah, which is cool, which is the right, which is what they would chant during the Revolutionary War.
Like that was sort of a right um It is, it is.
And then you see in the dot in the exclamation mark it says 1776.
Right, all right.
And tell me how the business is doing.
Uh so we did about $750,000 last year, and it's really been driven by my passion for helping connect people to history.
And we have you know, customers that come in, they're they're gonna buy something for a relative, perhaps.
And we have other customers who place 50 different orders, 60, 75, and so forth.
Um, and we get great feedback, great reviews.
People really love the things.
Okay.
And uh and mainly you sell through the website or entirely through the website?
Um the vast majority through the website.
We sell through some selected uh historic sites.
We have some partners that go, for example, to um reenactments and so forth, right?
They'll set up a tent and offer our things.
Awesome.
Okay, uh before we dive in further, what's your question for us?
So this is the 250th anniversary of the founding of the country.
Yes, indeed.
How do we increase uh our customer base and uh drive down the cost of customer acquisition?
All right, Miguel McKelvey, I want to bring you in.
Uh cool, really cool stuff on this site, and here we are.
Year 250 of America's founding.
Um thoughts, uh ideas, answers.
Well, first, you said you wanted to bring down the cost of customer acquisition.
What is it costing you now?
Uh blended CAC for around 20, 20 bucks.
20 bucks.
Is that not very low?
That sounds I would love to acquire customers for 20 bucks.
That sounds great.
It's it's not bad.
Um, a lot of the things we do are uh through you know Facebook and so forth.
Um we have tried a number of kind of the obvious things in terms of either reaching out partnerships to publishers, uh trying to do more with historic sites, uh, but the thing that we just keep coming back to is is social.
Right.
So what's your average order value?
Uh $80.
Okay, so you're spending $20 to get an $80 customer.
And then how what's your margin?
You know, if someone spends $80 on that, what's your gross margin?
Yeah, so overall the margin is around 50%.
Um, you know, not bad.
Uh we one of the challenges, of course, is making things in the United States.
Uh but our customer base, I think, values that.
I certainly value that, and it reinforces our our made by America message.
Yeah.
I mean, I I'm thinking this all sounds pretty good.
You got $750,000 on a 50% margin.
You're only spending $20 per customer.
Like all that sounds sounds great.
If I was going just on that, I would be saying just spend more money on more advertising at $20 per customer.
It it sounds like you have great stories to tell, and you just may need to go directly to the public with these stories.
You know, you I don't know if you have a TikTok, for example, but people love to learn through TikTok.
You might need to go post a TikTok a day with a cool historical narrative, and and people will will start gravitating directly to you.
So so TikTok is interesting.
We've talked a lot about it.
We have about 60,000 followers on Facebook, um, about what, 14,000 or whatever on Insta.
Uh we've debated whether or not our our our target market is on TikTok, but I think it's worth giving it a try.
Generally, our target market skews older.
Um and it's only a matter of time, you know.
We always say like the older people are on these other platforms, but you know, age is always elevating, and you know, the platforms people are on are always chang changing.
And again, I think what you find in the difference between TikTok and Instagram is you know, narrative like rough storytelling, real people in front of a camera, that's really on TikTok these days.
Uh, and it's it's less so on on some of these other platforms.
So it's worth experimentation at least.
That's a great idea.
I I let me throw something out there because you you mentioned that your audience is older, and I think that's probably true, and that's still a very valuable audience.
I mean, you you definitely won't want to um ignore those those folks.
Uh, I wonder a couple things here.
First of all, Facebook is where I would I would really focus because that's where there's an older crowd, but forget about social media for sake.
I think that there are two opportunities here.
One is um if you've got some cash and you don't need a whole lot, I would seed little advertisements on history podcasts and or try and collaborate.
See if you can contact some of these history podcasts.
They're huge, by the way, and see if you can make bespoke things for them that would drive their audience to your site.
Like some of them probably don't have merch.
Maybe you can be a uh merch you know person for them.
Absolutely.
So that's that's a that's a a great idea.
We tried that early on, um, and uh it didn't it didn't pay off.
I uh some time ago talked directly to the fellow who puts together just a great podcast series.
It's one I think you guys are probably familiar with.
And and that was the pitch, right?
Like, hey, you don't have merch.
Uh I can I can help you there.
And and the answer was uh well, we're gonna do our own merch.
Well, but maybe you can buy advertising, right?
I mean, that's what I'm saying.
Well, it exactly.
And that was my next question.
And and uh they are a podcast that's carried by one of the large uh podcast networks, and you know, they're handling the advertising, and it's it's going to advertisers with with large budgets, more brand budgets than look for smaller shows.
I mean, I I'm yes, you can ask the big one, but go go to a smaller show that doesn't isn't doing that, that has an audience of 10,000, not a hundred thousand.
What I'm saying is there's always a way, especially if you're trying to reach a very specific audience.
The other thing I I would consider doing is make your own.
I mean, if you have your own, even if you are uh reaching just a fraction of your followers on TikTok and your customers, uh, maybe you've got a newsletter.
You know, you've got now you've got a podcast that you can uh once a week where maybe you're highlighting some cool thing in history and you're also talking about how it inspired something that you guys make or sell.
That's a that's a good idea.
And our newsletter is very successful.
Uh we have more than 50% open rate.
We mail to folks uh every every Saturday with the new merchandise every Thursday night with our rare finds.
One other thing would be you know finding those really niche interesting facts.
I don't know how much you're doing this on social media already but you know sharing things that are surprising that are oh wow I didn't know that you know in small bits people a lot of people this is a a niche for right it is you you know your niche right then there's a whole other group of people who don't put themselves in that niche but could be attracted to it with something you know a little less obscure or maybe something obscure that's really accessible and fun.
So sure um I would start to continue to expand the edges of of your appeal um and just experiment you know try whether it's podcast whether it's w one of these other platforms just try to get more experiments out there to see what what catches on.
Well we're very fortunate we have one of the one of the most successful uh history uh folks on social uh history dame doing our social and and she just does a fabulous job doing exactly what you're talking about, putting out some of these things, whether or not that's uh something obscure or something that is just very timely, like the 250th.
Awesome.
Well, it sounds like you've got some momentum there.
And listen, I mean, it sounds like you got some some some ideas in place.
And I think you should try a podcast, Lee.
You should try it.
Well, thanks, thanks.
And yeah, and guy, I think you had a master's degree in history, isn't that right?
I do.
Well, I I hope we we see you someday.
And I really wanted to thank you both for for the the great podcast.
I think this is one of the really indispensable resources for the first time.
Oh, thank you so much.
That's that's our that's our goal here.
Lee Wright, the brand is called the History List.
Uh good luck.
Thanks so much for calling in.
All right.
Uh Miguel, what one of the questions I ask every founder who comes back on the show is when you, if you could go back to when you were starting out, you know, building your business, uh, your you know, certainly we work in and and others, and you could go back and give yourself advice about something you know now that you've learned that would have been helpful for you to know back then.
What what could you have what could have been helpful back then for you to know?
I think what would be helpful for me to know is uh to be more critical about the things that I was bad at, to think more critically about things that I avoided, you know, because I think I knew, for example, that I really didn't care about money.
It wasn't a motivator for me.
So as soon as I had an opportunity to hire a CFO and never think about money again, you know, I I did it.
But that sort of um out of sight, out of mind, it's not a great model for entrepreneurship.
You know, I think you have to be responsible for everything when you're a founder.
And so that's what I would say is like really go back and like go through all the things and say, okay, you love this, you don't like this, but if you let that go, what's gonna happen?
And I would encourage people, uh, you know, myself and others to do that to kind of go into the things that you don't like as much as you do the things that you love.
I love that.
That's Miguel McKelvey, co-founder of WeWork.
Miguel, thanks so much for joining the show.
Thank you.
Uh, and by the way, if you haven't heard Miguel's original How I Built This Episode, uh, you've got to go back and check it out, uh, both of them.
Uh, we will put uh links to them in the podcast description.
And here's one of my favorite moments from those interviews.
So they showed it to us.
I'm like, wow, like for me, as coming from a design background, I'm like, this is sick.
This is as good as it gets.
And um, and they're basically like, okay, here's the building.
What would you do with it?
So basically, I go home and I start thinking of a concept of a name.
I buy the domain, I build a website, I design some floor plans, really simple.
Do like a quick like business model.
I stayed up all night.
Basically, you did this in one night?
Yeah, basically, because we had been challenged with like what are you gonna do?
And we have no credibility, right?
So my thought was if I do all this stuff and come back tomorrow, it'll seem like we were planning it for weeks in advance, right?
Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week.
And by the way, please make sure to check out my newsletter.
You can sign up for it for free at guyRoz.com or on Substack.
And of course, if you are working on a business and you'd like to be on this show, send us a one-minute message that tells us a little bit about your business and the questions or issues that you're currently facing, because we would love to try and help you solve them.
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Leave a message there and make sure to tell us how to reach you, and we'll put all of this information in the podcast description as well.
This episode was produced by Sam Paulson with music composed by Ramteen Arablui.
It was edited by John Isabella, and our audio engineer was Quasi Lee.
Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Elaine Coates, Nor Gill, Neva Grant, Casey Herman, Chris Massini, Catherine Seifer, Carrie Thompson, and Ramel Wood.
I'm Guy Roz, and you've been listening to the advice line on how I built this label.