Behind the Brand®

Jeff Adamson [00:00:00] This episode of Behind the Brand is brought to you by Mary Brown's Chicken. The Frosty Feast is back at Mary Brown's! Get 10 pieces of chicken, taters, gravy, salad, and 4 NEW oven fresh biscuits for just $37.99 plus tax. Mary Brown's Chicken. Crave Delicious. Crave Canadian.

Welcome to Behind the Brand presented by Neo. We take an inside look at the leaders behind today's most influential brands. I'm your host, Jeff Adamson. As co-founder of Neo Financial and SkipTheDishes, I'm fascinated by what it takes to build great companies. On this podcast, we'll learn from leaders that are reimagining, transforming, and innovating in the financial and retail industries across Canada. Let's get going!

I am really excited to introduce Mike Gettis, Co-Founder and CEO of Kilne, a direct-to-consumer cookware company, changing the way Canadians shop and cook.

After receiving his MBA from Vlerick Business School in Belgium, Mike kicked off his career with a large brand in Europe and spent years developing expertise in business. In 2015, he launched his own entrepreneurial venture known as Endy, and he was built with a mission to improve sleep for all Canadians and was eventually acquired by Sleep Country Canada for an impressive $89 million.

But Mike didn't stop there, in 2020, he and his partner Noelle saw the opportunity to continue improving the lives of Canadians and founded Kilne. Worthy of professional chefs, Kilne works directly with the best producers to create top quality products for prices that don't break the bank.

Okay, so first question, Mike, what mattress are you sleeping on?

Mike Gettis [00:01:38] Still an Endy. Yeah, people still ask me about mattress research and [they’re] like “What mattress should I buy?” and they’re like “Wait a minute, like, what did you do when you, with this Endy thing? Is it a good mattress?” and I’m like “Yeah it’s a good mattress, I still sleep on it.” [Laughs]

Jeff [00:01:50]”Should I really get it?” [Laughs]

Mike [00:01:51] It's like, “Yeah, I spent a lot of time on this whole mattress thing and tried to make it great, so I'm not going to sleep on something else.”

Jeff [00:01:57] I feel a little star struck here because I recently bought a mattress and I couldn't bring myself to buy any other mattress than Endy. And so I went through the process on Friday and I was also partially happy because I didn't want to go through the complete rabbit hole of buying a mattress because there's a whole cottage industry there of like review sites and researchers and YouTube videos. So we bought it. The process was incredible. And then I was blown away. Like literally the next morning I get a knock on the door, the box was there and I was like, “Is there a mistake? Like, how is it possible that the mattress could be arriving that quickly?”

Mike [00:02:34] Yeah. No, it's amazing how fast it comes. Credit to the operations team. We were kind of looking at that at the time when we got going on it, like, how do we compete with Amazon-level delivery? Like one-day, two-day. A lot of that comes from multiple warehouses, lots of coordination in the background. But really, that's your, one of your key metrics in terms of customer experience is just click, ship and how long that takes. And if that's fast, people are really excited.

Jeff [00:02:58] I want to go back to the beginning though and really kind of understand your journey towards becoming a founder. Where did you grow up? Did you grow up in Canada?

Mike [00:03:06] Yeah, in Calgary, actually.

Jeff [00:03:08] Oh, right on! But you didn’t stick around to go to school like you went to the UofT. What kind of went into the decision to to leave the prairies to go to school at the UofT?

Mike [00:03:16] That was based on just loving the idea of like, I was a, I'm a nerd. So I really like space and I was into aerospace engineering and things like this. So I just was like, “Okay, UofT is the place to go.” There was another, I think they had a program at Ryerson and they had one in Ottawa as well. But the UofT one seemed to be one where it had multiple streams and I had the ability to shift streams after two years. So if I thought this idea was a little bit crazy, I could switch. So I was like, “Okay, I like this idea of optionality and deciding in two years” and then came back after graduating a few years after that.

Jeff [00:03:48] What went into your decision to go and do your MBA? And a lot of people that listen to the podcast are people who have either done their MBA, are in their careers thinking about MBAs. How did you think about that decision? And looking back on it, how important was it to your own entrepreneurial story, your own journey?

Mike [00:04:06] Yeah, so I think for me what it came down to is deciding what my goals were like, what did I want to get out of it. Midstream in with the engineering thing, I ended up not going for the aerospace idea and ended up really wanting to pursue business and I started taking more courses there after graduating. Decided with the MBA, that was kind of the goal of it. I wanted to sort of professionalize, learn a bit more about business, come out of a technical degree into something that was more business-oriented.

The one I picked in Europe ended up being one that was probably just the most cost effective because since wanting to be an entrepreneur, I couldn't afford to pay for it. So I was like, “Let's find one that's cost effective.” I wanted to live in Belgium. It was a well-rated school at the time, and so that's what motivated it. It was a little bit about lifestyle, a little bit about learning about business, and I think what I liked about the European schools is they're really on the soft skills, really good in terms of learning about different businesses, different countries, different like a lot of different things thrown at you. So I found that really interesting.

Jeff [00:05:00] Why Belgium, though? You said you said you wanted to be in Belgium. Like, I just don't hear people saying, you know, “I really want to go to school in Belgium. That's like on my five year plan.”

Mike [00:05:06] Well, it fit the metric of value for money and then as well, I really like beer in Belgium and it’s really cool with all the medieval towns there and everything. They’re really quite picturesque.

Jeff [00:05:17] I feel like if I could go back, I would actually, I'd love to go to school in Munich. I feel like that would be a good experience.

Mike [00:05:22] Yeah. Like lifestyle, right? Like, this would be a cool place to live for a year and hang out and do something fun.

Jeff [00:05:26] But you mentioned, kind of entrepreneurship a few times, and I'm curious, what were some of the experiences that guided your decision toward saying, like, “I want to start something on my own?”

Mike [00:05:37] Well, entrepreneurship was in my family a little bit. My dad is an entrepreneur and my brother is an entrepreneur. And so it's just like, I don't know. I think just seeing that lifestyle, you get a big sort of step up in that too, when you can see it and you can see it work and you can see that there's a way to go.

I do think for some people, let's say, who didn't grow up around or weren't exposed, there’s a little bit of that osmosis that occurs. Like the more entrepreneurs you spend time with, the more you’re like, “Okay, cool, this makes sense.” Because at first it’s just kind of like, well, the chicken and egg problem I think stumbles a lot of people who've never really been exposed to it and they're just like, “Well, how do I get money on an idea that doesn't make money yet?” [Laughs]

You know, and that's, there's just like these little chicken and egg problems [that] continue to happen until you get to the point where you have a business that generates EBITDA and you can coast, right. But then, you know, if everyone could do that, that's what they'd all be doing, right?

Actually, in Belgium, one of my favorite pieces of advice was someone, I said, “Well, what is it?” And it's really an action word. You have to bump into these walls by moving your feet and by doing things, and then eventually you get there. But a lot of it's having a good idea, a lot of it's having a good co-founder to work with, with lots of different factors.

Jeff [00:06:38] It's interesting, though, talking about growing up around entrepreneurship because you would have been exposed to presumably it wasn't just all a ‘up and to the right’ course for your parents and for your brother. You would have seen some of the downturns and the difficulties and the amount of work that went into it. Were you scared going into it because you were like, “Hey, this was really hard on my family?” Or at the same time where you're like, “No, I know exactly what this is going to be like.”

Mike [00:07:00] No, I don't think I was overly fearful. I think part of it, too, is it depends on what your version of risk is on things. And I do think a lot of entrepreneurial-type thinkers like what they look at as risk is maybe different than what other people might. Like for me, like for example, I looked at risk as just taking a job that I hated, right? Did I want to do that? No, I thought it was way less risky to do something fun and potentially it [would] not work out. In terms of family and all that. I get where you're saying, you need some money to get that going. We did kind of get started on building some revenue streams before I had kids.

Jeff [00:07:32] So many people though [that] I talk to think about entrepreneurship as really just about making a ton of money and getting rich. Like personally in my own family, my father was a firefighter. My mom, you know, worked part time at a hospital. We did not have any entrepreneurship at all in our family.

But that idea of just doing something fun, it seemed way more risky to me, like you said, to do a job that you hated. I feel like the world is full of people doing things that they actually don't really like all that much, and they really don't think that they have another option. What do you think is most misunderstood about people who are going and thinking about starting their own company?

Mike [00:08:06] Well, yeah. I think it is misunderstood to think that they’re risk-takers, that everyone who is starting their own company is some kind of a gambler or what have you. A lot of them are actually risk averse. Like, I meet a lot of entrepreneurs that are quite like they're finance-oriented, they're technical-oriented, especially in the digital tech space these days. And they're actually really, really buttoned up on their numbers. They spend tons of time on data, they're super risk averse.

But in other areas, maybe in terms of like the fact that they're investing their own money and all of that, yes, there's definitely risk in putting that in. But maybe they just have some faith. They're working with the right partners. They really believe in what they're doing and that's what comes, just some passion. And you need to just have faith [that] it will work out, but not necessarily your specific idea. Like being too hung up on a specific idea or plan. Letting it flow and really going where the customers are and things like that. So I think that's the biggest part to it.

Jeff [00:08:51] So presumably, Mike, you didn't aspire as a kid to become known as the founder of one of the most successful mattress brands in Canadian history? I'm assuming you weren't just like living and breathing mattresses. What was the ‘Why’ behind Endy? Like, “The mattress industry is one that I've always wanted to disrupt” or was it more of an opportunistic problem that you saw and you're like, “Why isn't anyone solving this?”

Mike [00:09:12] Yeah, exactly. Like, it's not like I woke up as a kid being like, like I told you I wanted to be an astronaut. So I was like, that was where my, I was excited there. And you can't really sleep on a mattress very well in space, so it doesn't really work. Mattresses, it came about what problem I was trying to solve and really it was an excitement about e-commerce. So I really love the idea of products and e-commerce products that change people's lifestyle, change people's lives. I mean, to go to the extent of, in terms of improving their overall lifestyle. So I mean, that started from just looking at a bunch of different products. We didn't just start with mattresses. We tested quite a few different ideas and looked at what might work. It was really about finding what was the best fit and what could make a business model that would work. And then in the digital realm, how that could, how those economics could work as well. Like when you start a business, you do have to make something that's sustainable in the long term. It starts off with a little snowball. You don't want to use investor money forever, so you're trying to find something that has those economics that are there as well.

Jeff [00:10:04] What I'm hearing is that you don't necessarily need to be super passionate about the particular product itself. It's more about [being] passionate about the problem.

Mike [00:10:11] Well, I think our passion for the product started to develop as we started to build it. And then as we got into that side of it and building the mattress and working on that side of it, that’s where the passion really got into it. I do think you really need to if you're entering into any product. But I think that’s not where we started. It wasn't saying like, let's disrupt the mattress space at day one. That was sort of looking at that passion of “What problem can we solve?”

Jeff [00:10:30] What were some of the worst product ideas that you guys had? Like, were there some early pivots early on that maybe never made the light of day?

Mike [00:10:39] Yeah, we had a magic wine holder that looked like the perfect gift idea, and it looked great [laughs]. And we tried that one, yeah, but we ended up having to sell those off to an inventory clearance. And they took them. Yeah, I think it’s a decent gift. But you know, the seasonality of it didn't quite work. It looked cool, I liked having it in my living room.

Jeff [00:10:59] What were some of the reasons behind choosing a direct to consumer business model? Like you could have taken a distribution model where you partnered up with existing retailers. Why did you want to go D2C?

Mike [00:11:09] I think that was another big part of where we were really excited, is seeing this revolution. Especially as we first saw Warby Parker and what they were doing in the U.S. with eyeglasses. That was kind of our first look at it and then seeing how you could really revolutionize the way people buy things by doing it with a D2C model. Previous to that, really all you had was sort of this like wholesale type relationship where you can sell through Amazon or you can sell through different sites, and being able to do it direct really gave you the ability to focus on building the best possible product for people and doing it at a price point that was far more reasonable than what they were used to getting in retail. So when we saw the magic of being able to do something better for people and providing value for them, that was where we saw the magic in it.

Jeff [00:11:49] What do you think about building a consumer brand that people don't really understand? I just don't see that many founders building consumer brands that reach that, or at least ones that reach scale. And so whenever I see people who are starting consumer brands, I just, I respect the heck out of them because I know how difficult it is. What do you think that's not fully understood about building a consumer brand and or maybe even why we don't do it more in Canada?

Mike [00:12:12] Yeah, I think in Canada a lot of what it comes down to is just market size in general. Mattresses is a bit of a special space in that you have one product that can kind of rule a fairly big market. In Canada, that's a billion dollar market. There's not a lot of products that fill a market that size in Canada. So what ends up happening is in the US a lot of them are building and then coming to Canada to do it. I think the opportunity we were seeing is just like when looking at mattresses specifically, there was a huge opportunity to manufacture them in Canada and seeing that there were manufacturers, the ability to build that, and then you've got Canadian consumers that have a bit of a different look at purchasing products than American customers. And price is definitely a big thing, a little more price sensitive, made in Canada product, things like that. So there is a huge opportunity there. And so I think, yeah, looking at the way people build consumer brands, it's hard to do huge scalable consumer product brands in Canada. So we were able to find the next category for it for sure.

Jeff [00:13:05] It's also a lot more capital intensive as well. It seems at least that if you're wanting to, you know, mass market directly to consumers, that it just requires a lot more capital. What was that experience like for you having to raise capital for a consumer brand, particularly in [a] fairly niche industry? Did you have struggles early on or was it kind of you had investors coming to you day one?

Mike [00:13:28] We bootstrapped it and that was the beauty of it. Memory foam pillows was where we started really going early and we were able to make money off of that. We had a little bit of money that came in from internally, from ourselves, and we were able to sustain. We're big fans of building a bootstrap business and I don't think every business is suitable for it. But this particular category worked really well. Really was just about staying lean, focusing on the customer, focusing on what channels are working and making a product that's fitting the right niche in terms of price point and in terms of value add for the customer. And then we went from there and we were able to keep going. So we didn't take in a lot of outside capital. With Kilne, the one I'm working on now, because of just all the different SKUs it does require a little bit of outside capital. It's a bit more capital intensive. So we are raising a bit, for Endy we didn't have to.

Jeff [00:14:16] So when you see like a lot of these big rounds being announced and making headlines, what do you think when you see that? Like coming from someone who bootstrapped and built a, you know, a massive consumer brand. Do you think that there's too much focus on the capital raising side of the equation or?

Mike [00:14:30] Yeah, well, I think the big rounds are great in a way. Like it also depends on the business and if it's helping to propel it forward and it’s needed. I think, a lot of times though, especially before this sort of inflationary driven downturn in tech. There are a lot of people raising evaluations that were really high. They're raising whole piles of cash. The biggest point as a founder that you have to look at is what does that start to do to your percentage over time. Let's say you are a capital intensive business, a kitchen versus mattresses. Kitchen requires a lot of SKUs, but more capital needed. So it's like we're okay with doing a little bit of it. But at a certain point you have to say, “What's our path to profitability? What's our path to getting off the investor treadmill?” I think some of them just never want to get off the investor treadmill. They just want to keep going and raising bigger and bigger rounds and then you can get caught holding the bag when you've got a market downturn of some variety, like the one that just came, right? So, that's where it can be tricky. And then how do you raise? And are you raising at the same valuation anymore? And what are you doing to your existing shareholders and your own stock, like your own shares? I think you're just looking at that as an entrepreneur. It's not to say don't raise money. I think it just means just be cognizant of it. It's not the solution for everything.

Jeff [00:15:34] And so you've gone on now, you've started up a Kilne as a second time founder. And I remember back when we had exited from Skip I was talking to my co-founder here at Neo, Andrew, and I asked him what kind of mid-thirty-something guys do after they sell their company. And he said, “Well, a lot of them just get into commercial real estate, Jeff.” And that seemed terrifying to me. No offense to any commercial real estate people out there, but at that time, I still kind of wanted to get after it. How did you feel after exiting from Endy?

Mike [00:16:04] I had the same thing where it was sort of like, “I guess I'm supposed to just invest in boring stuff and, you know, just park some money somewhere safe and see where it goes.” I tried a little bit, but I think what happened was it was just, again, just wanted to get going on something new. I enjoyed the startup phase, enjoyed working at a startup.

Jeff [00:16:20] What are those things that you look back on and you're like, “All right, I'm not going to do that again or I'm going to triple down on this other thing.”

Mike [00:16:27] Well, I think one of the things even I would say starting a second time in another consumer product business is just how important product market fit is, first. Definitely with mattresses like we spent a lot of time testing different products and we started with pillows and then we moved to mattresses. And so we did a lot of testing there. And I think part of it is seeing that in terms of getting a product that's going to perform and do well for you and something that consumers like, it's not easy to do. And I think that's the reason why a lot of consumer product businesses aren't successful.

And once you get that out there, once you get that product market fit, then the marketing becomes pretty easy to scale. So I know a lot of people with Endy, that was always a big question. People would come into the office, other entrepreneurs and people would want to ask like, “What's your marketing secret? Like, how are you scaling so fast? It must be marketing that you're doing some sort of special sauce. You have, you know, something we don't know.” I think there was a piece of that. I mean, there was a piece of the marketing piece, and we were doing things that people weren't doing and we had some competitive advantage there. Some of that is starting to erode over time. I mean, as you see, as platforms become a little bit easier, like everyone can access them, everyone can use them. They don't require all this technical knowledge to run a Facebook Ad account or Google Ad account anymore. But yeah, I think just focusing on that product and that consumer experience, I think early on is super key. So I'd say that would be for people who are getting going. You can't spend enough time there, you know, in terms of runway and getting going, once you get going you kind of just have to go for it.

Jeff [00:17:47] On the product market fit side though, this is an interesting area because it's where a lot of people get stuck or they don't get stuck and they should. Yeah, you talk to a lot of your friends and your family and you’re like “What about this idea? What about that idea?” And then unfortunately like it can be painful, bouncing your idea that you've been working on in your basement for months and then you tell people and some of them just aren't gonna want to tell you the truth because it may be a really bad idea and they want to maintain their friendship with you, or maybe they're a family member. How did you go about finding product market with Endy and now with Kilne?

Mike [00:18:20] With customers is the best way to go. I mean, that's where you've got to take a little bit of that initial testing budget. I mean, some of it you’ve got to start somewhere, right? That's where the chicken and egg comes in. Then you're going to have to start and pick a category and pick some products and start testing. One of the things we did previously to Endy was testing on other channels and things like that. You can test on Amazon, you can test that sort of thing.

I think in terms of D2C, like with Kilne, we've been testing just directly to customers by doing advertising and testing different products and seeing what performs. What we're finding is some of our products fit into sort of like a hero product range and some of them are more secondary that we can upsell or send to people after through an email or something. Or something that they add on with the item.

It’s things like that, and that's how we're doing our testing — just as we go. And I think you definitely need to test out what the premise is. Like why people are buying your product. Because if, if, if you don't really get that and you don’t fully get why customers are obsessed with your product. It's easy to go down the wrong rabbit hole with it and you can get lost in it with a product that's not quite performing.

Jeff [00:19:20] So you've glossed over a lot there, Mike. You basically are creating a prototype, finding a channel to sell it, selling it to someone, then following up, asking them the right questions, taking that feedback. Is that the process that you have? Like more detail on that would be awesome.

Mike [00:19:34] Yeah, yeah. You want to pick a channel. So I think it makes sense to pick a channel and then you want to test a few products against each other, seeing how they perform against each other, right? You have to also take into account that at scale and after you've invested in some press and invested in getting reviews and all that other stuff, it's going to perform better. And after a bunch of customers have used it, it's going to perform better.

I think it does require looking at customers and why they're buying specific products and your target customer specifically. Like let's say for us with Kilne right now, like nonstick pans, some people are going to say, “Well, cast iron is better than nonstick.” And we agree in some ways and sometimes nonstick is better. We have to figure out why and what's going on with it. It comes down to healthy cooking, like people don't want to cook with oil on a cast iron [but] they have to cook with oil.

So you go through all these different things and as we've been investigating our different product[s] and our pipeline and going through all that stuff, it’s figuring out exactly what it’s driving. And that also helps to drive your messaging and everything, right? Because it all comes from the product and what people are looking for.

Jeff [00:20:30] Curious to know, Mike, on the questions that you're asking though, because on that feedback loop, sometimes the questions that you ask are really going to determine the answers that you're you're going to get, or sometimes you just only hear what you want to hear. So what you're really looking for is the actions or the things that are driving their decisions as opposed to necessarily the words that they're saying?

Mike [00:20:49] Some of it, too, doesn't have to necessarily come from like an open ended question that you're sending in a survey to customers. It can come from your return process, from your reviews, from customer experiences. People reach out and are chatting with you. From reviewers and from a group of different people, right? And then as you're looking at that data, like, why are they buying this? What's the biggest thing that's driving them to yours over a competitor? What are all the different things that they're liking about your product? And then you can kind of build it out from there. And then as well, when you have a product, let's say that's not working how you expect. It's about figuring that out, then doing a V2.

Jeff [00:21:23] As someone who likes cooking, I almost said “loves”, but I say I like cooking. What's the genesis story for Kilne?

Mike [00:21:29] Kilne came from just loving to cook. Not being good at cooking, but loving cooking [laughs]. And so I went out, especially after selling Endy, I was like, “Okay, let's get all the best cookware out there. I mean, I'm done with all this T-fal business.” And so started buying cookware and seeing the difference it made, it was really a big difference.

And so as we started using the nicer stuff, we really started to see sort of what the esthetics are, what esthetics were really making an impact, and also in terms of performance. So combining those factors together, then we were looking at — how do we make something that that everybody can use that's good for the home chef, something that looks great, that competes with something that would be more expensive, that we can sell through Kilne?

And so as we started building out that product portfolio, we're seeing that feedback from customers that they can't find these types of products anywhere else. They're really enjoying it, they’re loving the brand. So we're getting the right feedback back on that. So that's been great.

Jeff [00:22:25] I guess where in your product market fit process are you right now? Are you still in the early stages or are you kind of ready to start scaling?

Mike [00:22:32] Well, the one thing is with kitchen, because there's more products, we're building out our products. So what we're finding is for each product, we're seeing that we're getting great performance from it and then we're building out more and more. It's been fun because we get to do it with each different category.

We have sort of our tabletop category, which is all the things that go on your table. And we're looking at kitchen accessories, which our knives fit into. And then as well, cookware, which pans and pots and things like that are fitting in too. So all those categories we're learning as we go and building out and looking at that product market fit, that's fun.

Jeff [00:23:02] And are you sticking with the ‘Made in Canada’ manufacturing or you're looking at taking that abroad?

Mike [00:23:08] We've been working on the ‘Made in Canada’ for some of the products. We're taking some abroad because not everything can be built so we've been looking a lot at European manufacturing. But I mean, the biggest thing is in terms of sustainability, people want to get products from factories that, in terms of green footprint and the way that they're building them, in terms of how the workers are being treated and all that is a big thing right now. And the challenge is how do we also do that to make sure that we do it at a price point that's competitive? We're working to do that, and doing it directly to consumers makes a big difference.

Jeff [00:23:36] Kilne started up during the pandemic, Endy did not. Was that a material difference for you or was it immaterial?

Mike [00:23:43] The pandemic was great. It was like, it pushed us forward. There were a lot of people cooking at home during the pandemic, which was really awesome.

Jeff [00:23:49] In terms of building the team though, in terms of getting the manufacturing, like did you see at all any challenges just in the kind of more internal operations of Kilne?

Mike [00:23:59] Yeah, so what we ended up doing is remote through COVID and we've built the office remotely and that's worked out quite well. I mean, what we're finding is we get a diverse group of people, like they’re across Canada working in different places. Everyone works quite well together.

Jeff [00:24:12] We had Ray Reddy on the podcast from Ritual. And Ray actually had an interesting perspective on remote work. He had said that the companies that do remote work well are the companies that have process and documentation more ingrained into the company culture. Would you agree with that statement? Or would you say that there's something else that is more important when it comes to working remotely?

Mike [00:24:35] I mean, I can't say I'm a big process guy. I have definitely brought people to help with process and that sort of thing. I think the biggest thing for me is about communication and people working together. I think people want to feel like they're part of a team, they want to feel like they're part of. And I think part of the challenge with remote working is just that people are in different places, working from different spots. How do you connect that together? I think some of that may come from building some process in terms of communication and things. I think our team isn't quite probably at the scale that a Ritual might be, so that's also a big difference.

So I think for us we're really just like we do an in-person team building twice a year or we're either doing something together and working together on some things. Lots of just communication through the week, whether it's phone calls or whether it's Zoom calls and then as well, you know, just having team meetings where everyone's engaged. And trying to keep everyone [aware of] just what's going on and what we're up to up to date. And then as well, I think between all of them, they're communicating a lot between each other, making sure that people aren't isolated and that there's a group of people that you always can bounce things off of and work together on.

Jeff [00:25:37] Going into this and doing it a second time. How did you think about building your team differently than you did the first time?

Mike [00:25:43] We started with some different like, you know, when we started we had an office with about ten people in it, early days and we were working out of Queen West, the permits building. We had some people that were helping with operations, customer experience, people on social media and that side of it. I think right away with us, one of the first things we were focused on was making sure that we had someone that was really good in terms of customer experience. Similar to with Endy, we focused on making sure we had people helping us in terms of reviews and pitching to [the] media and getting us getting the word out there. And that's helped us.

I think creative is one of those things where I don't think you can really start a company without someone, especially D2C without someone who's solid on the creative side that can help you with building out your website, making those changes really quickly. I think it's hard to do as an agency, so. So I think building those elements and having that there helped us get moving. So we kind of just started with using the elements that we thought were the critical pieces.

Jeff [00:26:37] I can't help but notice here, Mike, that you make starting successful companies sound very easy and very nonchalant [laughs]. I don't know if I'm the only one that said this about you, but you kind of just like walk through it. It seems very much [you’re] just like, “Oh, yeah, like we did this and then we did that and built a website. We got good feedback. We changed the product and we, you know, we scaled it up, we got product market fit.” [Laughs] Like I just love how nonchalant that is. But there's got to [have] been times at both companies where you're like, “I'm not sure if this thing's going to work.”

Mike [00:27:05] Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think you get to that point for sure. And I think a lot of that, like you were talking about co-founders and working with different people and all that kind of stuff. I think people are really passionate when they get a company going at the beginning, everyone's very passionate. But I think part of that is not everyone is necessarily aligned on what activities are going to be the things that get you to where you need to get to. Everyone wants to get to that place, but it's about getting that alignment. And so again, I think that does just come down to working in terms of what's, you know, principles over the personalities and making sure that you work really well in terms of communicating what you want to do, why you want to do it, how it helps the company. Sometimes it's about finding ways to do tests to make sure that people feel like they're being heard and that you’re looking at different things.

Also, just if you partner up [at] early stages too with people where you have different expertises, I think that also helps a lot too. Like just even talking about that early team. Like you don't want to have piles of crossover in your early team where everybody's going to do the same thing because otherwise you're going to get a lot of that crossover. So yeah, you don't want, you know, on six finance people to start a startup with. You might have some buddies in finance or whatever and you're like, “Yeah, let's start a company!” Like maybe find someone who's just good at something different than you and that can help because then if you do get into a debate about something, you have someone who's like, you know, they're an expert in it and you may be an expert in your field and that helps you win over arguments and move forward.

Jeff [00:28:23] What when you think about culture in the companies that you've started, Mike, how would you describe the cultures at Endy and Kilne? Are there stark differences?

Mike [00:28:31] No, not not incredibly. I think part of it is if like, let's say you've worked at a big company or something like that, a lot of that is kind of reversing a bit of that logic. I think it pays to be more transparent, it pays to be more upfront, it pays to be in some ways just like a little bit more easygoing on people. That doesn't mean you're easy going on the results, but you're easy going in terms of with people and performance and getting things done. Because I think early in a startup, you don't know all the answers. No one knows all the answers. You're, you're all learning as you go and you kind of just have to work towards finding the best path and working as a team. And a lot of that comes from that communication piece. So I think that's what I found in both is that you'll be surprised who comes up with the next brilliant idea in the company and letting that person speak forward and allowing a little bit of a level playing field for everyone to be part of that, makes a big difference.

I think part of it is, you know, sometimes people can [be like] “I'm starting a company and now I want to sort of run it my own way,” and that's not the way to do it. You know, I think it's better to get more opinions, especially from all the different people involved. In early stage, you’ve got people most likely motivated by stock and things like that. So they also feel like owners and you get a big band of people taking real accountability for what they're doing.

Jeff [00:29:42] In the early days, though, especially when you're looking for product market fit, there's just the answer can be quite slippery as well like that, you know…

Mike [00:29:48] It is, yeah.

Jeff [00:29:49] And the disagreements can be, they can be high friction. Like what's, what's your process internally or trying to figure out, solve problems, get the product market fit, scaling. There's always another problem just over the horizon.

Like do you have a framework or a model that you use internally to really get to the answers? You're going to say no to a lot of ideas. You're going to have to disagree with people a lot and that can be hard on the ego. What's your approach doing that at both Endy and at Kilne?

Mike [00:30:16] I mean, at the very beginning with Endy, it was like, okay, let's get a whole pile of mattresses in the room and there were a bunch of different opinions about which one was the best one, which one they preferred, right? And you have to start a little bit on that subjective side at the beginning, because you don't have piles of data from customers to get going. So you are using, heavily, your people in your team and people who are friends of people on the team to do the initial product research and you're looking at it. And that can be biased, right? Like you can all have friends and only like firm mattresses. And then you all put it out to the market and you realize there's a whole bunch of people out there that like softer ones.

But I think that's okay, that's not a problem. I think you have to let go of that a bit and you just have to say, like, we're not all Picasso here putting out, you know, the perfect thing at the beginning. We just have to be okay with it being a little bit imperfect. We have to be okay with it getting out there, making adjustments, making changes. You want to get your path to revenue. You want to get out there and get some revenue going within reason.

I mean, if you have a product that's a total dud and you haven't done any subjective testing and you haven't looked at it and spent enough time on it, that's not a good idea. But if you really put it through the wringer in every way you humanly can without sending it to market, I think it's fair then to send it out and test and then you have to test the market. But yeah, I think it's about just letting go a little bit and letting the data help drive and work with people on that kind of stuff. Letting the customers and their reviews help decide. And yeah, then be willing to do a V2 and be willing to adjust that as you go.

Jeff [00:31:44] I don't know if it's like a middle ground or not, but you're like, you need to be like so confident in the ideas that you're putting out but at the same time be able to let go of them when you start seeing the reality come forward and I see some people when they're putting their ideas out there, it's too harsh on them. It's too painful for them to accept that something that they put so much time into, isn't what people want.

Mike [00:32:04] Yeah, for sure.

Jeff [00:32:06] And to make those adjustments. And then other people, they don't believe in it enough to even put it out there in the first place. And so it's just like this…

Mike [00:32:09] They spend too much time, like analysis, paralysis, like, “Well, let's look at this piece, let’s look at that piece.” And you can't say, like, there's a balance between the two. Yeah, absolutely.

Jeff [00:32:16] When do you think is the right time to get a product out, though? One camp is like “It has to be perfect”, like the Steve Jobs of their product where it's like so polished. And then the other camp is just like, “Let's just put something that's crap out there. We're going to take the feedback.” Is there a right way to do it or does it just depend on which industry that you're in?

Mike [00:32:34] I think early days with your very first product, you're probably wanting to be more… you want to get it to market as soon as you can, let's put it that way. I would say you'd want to test it. You’d want to make sure that you, like for the mattresses, we were sleep testing, you know. Trying them out for as long as we humanly could. And so that's a big part of it. But I think yeah, you do need to get it to market and you're always going to be a little bit too slow.

And I've definitely seen this with software companies. I always hear this a lot where people spend so much time building this perfect product. By the time they get it to market, they realize it's not quite where they want it to be and it's not quite aligned with what the customer actually wanted. And it's not solving the problem that they actually thought because whoever the software person who is sort of the founder behind it, the product person had this vision of like how they want to solve, you know, like personal finance or budgeting and this is the problem and whatever. But everyone else has a different problem that they're trying to solve [laughs] and that can be expensive to figure that out, right?

So yeah, I do think having a core product, you know, getting it out there faster is better and then building around that core because you can always add features, right? So I think when it comes to consumer products, yeah, I think part of that is at the beginning, you definitely want to get something out there and start testing. And then I think you can learn as you go and as you get feedback. I think part of it too is people can get a little too obsessed about feedback too, like one review that says they don't like your product doesn’t mean it’s bad. It's like you've got to get quite a few bad reviews, right? [laughs].

Jeff [00:33:51] [Laughing] I used to be bad at that.

Mike [00:33:52] And you'll see people on the team be like, “Oh my goodness, we saw this one person who's just really angry about like our pillow” or something [laughs] and you’re just like “I know, but it's just one guy, like, who knows? Maybe it's just like, have you had, like, 20 different people say that there's one particular piece of the product that is an issue?” And so like some of that, is internalizing a bit of that, thinking of it that way.

Jeff [00:34:14] Some people won't listen to their customers either. Like I've seen that they're like, customers will say something and they're like, “Well, they just don't understand how good it is.” [Laughing] And it's like, “Yeah, well, I mean, it's your job so that they do understand and, and make it better.”

Mike [00:34:28] I really think as an entrepreneur, your ego is really your biggest enemy in some ways.

Jeff [00:34:35] A hundred percent.

Mike [00:34:36] I mean, having confidence and having some passion towards your idea is one thing, but having ego is going to kill you. You just can't go there. You have to be open. You have to look at what customers are saying. You have to, like you can't get to the point where you're looking at what everybody says all the time. You have to pick a direction. But I think there always is a sort of a better way by taking some feedback and getting enough people that are on board with the same thing.

Jeff [00:34:57] I would classify you as a very successful entrepreneur, Mike. Do you feel that entrepreneurship is in good shape right now? Are you optimistic about entrepreneurship at the moment, or do you feel that there is, that it's at risk?

Mike [00:35:09] Well, I think the biggest thing is in going through a bit of this recession period now or whatever you want to call this inflation driven downturn for tech. There's a little less money that's out there for entrepreneurs to get going. And I think there's a little bit of that where there needs to be capital that's flowing and there needs to be businesses that are available. But no, I think entrepreneurship’s still healthy. Recessions are great times to start businesses because you have to focus on product market fit to win. You really do. The economics aren't as great as they are and the boom time. On everything, marketing. If you're to sell your company, you're not going to get the same ratio. All of it's harder. So it forces you to build a sustainable business. And that's why recessions are great.

And if you don't, if you don't want to build a sustainable business, then you're out of business. But in boom time you can get away with a little bit more. It's sort of like the rocks in the sea, and once the water level is down or whether it's above, like you've got to be a pretty good sailor when the water is down and you got to navigate through all the rocks. When the sea's a little higher, you can afford a little bit of a looser hand on the wheel. And so I think that's kind of where it comes down to. It separates, you know, the women from the girls, the men from the boys. And that's how you, I think recessions are great because it forces you to think that way. And I think big companies go through the ones that are successful have to do the same. I don't think it puts it at risk. It just means that the stakes are a little higher.

Jeff [00:36:21] Well, we talked about this before the show, but there's always people who will say, “Well, you know, I have this idea, but the timing isn't good or we just had a kid and or I'm new in this role or I'm going to get promoted.” You started Endy right when you had your first child. What has the experience of being a father and a husband, raising kids while being an entrepreneur? What's that been like?

Mike [00:36:43] You do get that ability to have a flexible schedule. I mean, I think with young kids, you're going to have to put in a lot, a lot of hours. But I think you do have some flexibility and that helps. I think in terms of, I mean, with family and kids, it has that push too, where you really want to make things successful, you want to make things work, and you have a drive that's not just about yourself, that's a little outside of yourself. So that helps a little bit, too. I think the biggest risk, though, is for people who are starting off. Let's say you don't have a lot of cash in the bank and you're starting off a company and you're using most of your life savings< I think there is that risk and you don't want to get to that point where you're financially at risk.

I think there's something to be said about like, you know, some people do this moonlighting thing or whatever where they're kind of starting while they're sort of at a previous job or they have, you know, I've heard of one person who leaves their job and the other people kind of keep working for a little bit and they're helping out. And so there's a few different strategies that I've heard of people doing that can work. And you just want to make sure that, yeah, you're not at the point where you're going to starve if you don't make money this month. But that being said, I think if you can build it in a way where you do have a little bit of cash in the bank and you're a little bit comfortable but you don't like it's not like you have to have like $1,000,000 in the bank, like you can do it with a lot less, some people think and and you end up in a happier place if you're in a job you don't like just to pay the bills, that doesn't make sense. I mean, that sounds like a real big risk to me.

Jeff [00:38:02] How did you balance it out? Like how did you not burnout both mentally and also just from a framework perspective? Did you have a way of looking at it and kind of keeping yourself disciplined?

Mike [00:38:12] I wasn't always amazing at this. I would say a big part of it was when it was working well, the biggest thing I think you really have to, I think when you've got all these things balancing, I can say it in hindsight and at the time I didn't always do this perfectly, but you really have to have your own oxygen mask on first, as they say on the airplane. And I think sometimes it can be where — you're busy with kids, you're not sure where the next paycheck is going to come in, you've got stuff going on with your spouse, you've got stuff going on everywhere with friends, business, your business partner’s on your case about something, and then you've got all this stuff happening at once. Like maybe just tell them all “I'm going to the gym this morning. I'm going to go out for a healthy breakfast. I'll be right back.” [Laughs] And sometimes you have to do that.

And so you just have to be a little bit, you know, put your own oxygen mask on first and once you're in a good spot, you can go and tackle these other challenges way better. You can help everyone out better. I think you can be self-sacrificing sometimes with this stuff as a co-founder and whatever, and you want to put everyone else ahead and you want to help. So I think it's just making sure that you balance that.

So I definitely have had my challenges where I've said, you know, I've had to take a bit of a break and things like that where it's been busy. So I think I recommend that to everyone that you just have to put your mental health at the forefront with this stuff because it's a lot of pressure, right? When you've got staff, you've got your family, you’ve got all this stuff. And so it's yeah, it's about that own oxygen mask and I think, yeah, you want to be happy, you want to enjoy what you're doing.

Jeff [00:39:30] Mike Are there any messages that you want to get out to our audience?

Mike [00:39:34] One of the things we're pretty excited about, some of our new products. We've got our knife set and our pan, our Everything Pan that's launched recently. So we're pretty excited with Kilne. We've been getting some great feedback and through our Black Friday sales we're seeing our best sales since starting the company. So it's been exciting to see that journey start. And then as well, like sort of as we talked about product market fit, we're working on a bunch of new products coming down the pipe. Our existing customers, we get to sell out to them and test them out, so that'll be fun.

Jeff [00:40:01] What's the best way for our listeners to give feedback?

Mike [00:40:04] Well, either just through our customer experience and through our emails, that's a great place. We always get that information.

Jeff [00:40:10] We will make sure to include a link in the description to Kilne. Mike, super grateful for you coming on. This has been super helpful, at least for me personally. I think the listeners will get a lot out of it. Thank you so much for coming on.

Mike [00:40:22] Yeah. Thanks a lot.

Jeff [00:40:28] Thank you for tuning into Behind the Brand presented by Neo. If you enjoyed today's show and are interested in learning about Neo for Business or our customer products, visit us at neofinancial.com. And don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, so you never miss an episode.