$100 Million E-Commerce Brand Builder with Josh Snow

 Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast! I'm Ryan
 all for your host. We say if it's radical, we cover it. This is one of the most radical people
 I know and one of them I just met in the last year and I was like, holy shit. This guy's got a
 lot going on. He is the founder CEO of Snow. He's a serial entrepreneur investor in a badass e-commerce.
 I just call it good all around dude. What's up Josh? Hey, what's going on Ryan? Thanks for having me on man.
 Hey man, my pleasure. Josh Snow, you know you live in the brand when you take on the full name. That's
 right. That's just embracing it. 100 million. 100 million. Can we 100 million CBG oral care?
 Are you kidding me? Dude, people don't even know like how few. That's in the 0.001 percent.
 It's been a journey man. It's been a journey. We're going into our seventh year and probably ninth
 year of working on snow. It's definitely that kind of 10 year overnight success story that a lot
 of people joke about. It is without, but I owe so much to snow as well. That's why it's my last name
 and that's even though I've taken zero dollars off the table financially from the business today,
 it's given me so much in terms of being able to share that business on an open playing field so
 that millions of people have access to watch me build this David and Kaliath story together.
 I did that because I always wanted that. I wish that entrepreneurs that I followed and
 followed today are some that have passed. I go, wow, what if Instagram and TikTok and YouTube
 vlogging was it being 35 years ago? How much documentation will we have on entrepreneurs that
 are building brands when things are really tough? So they're jumping on and saying, hey guys,
 this is in a good week. Sales are really tanked and I'm really, it's really affecting me. Imagine if
 there were those logs, you have the biographies and the autobiographies. So that's where I said,
 wow, there's really got to be more of that. And that's one of the reasons why I chose to
 join as an investor and be a part of the show of going public at goingpublic.com.
 And we were going into our season two now with Wall Street Journal and that was that same
 similarity and kind of same interest. But snow has been a life change for me and it completely
 gave me a whole new lease on life in my entrepreneurial journey because I needed something that
 all that I felt that most of the odds are stacked against me in terms of us acquiring market share
 that it would be extremely difficult. And that's really was the focus really to invest, reinvest
 every single dollar until we have enough market share where we are serving our customers the best
 way possible and as many millions of them as possible. And that's our impact meter. So until we
 are in at least 10 million homes or 20 million homes, that's our focus. But we've already changed
 the lives of millions of smiles and millions of whitening treatments. And we have tens of thousands
 of before and after photos and reviews. And so it's very extraordinary. It's been a phenomenal
 journey, but certainly at one of those 10 year overnight success stories. Just 10. The everybody
 thinks that happens truly overnight. They have no fucking clue. And I don't even mean that in a
 bad way. They just don't understand the whiplash and the journey and all that. And we'll talk a
 little bit about that. But let me ask you this question. I want to I want to go back further. But
 before we go back further, why oral care? Like that's so hard to get into as you mentioned,
 CPG's terribly difficult competitive, but why oral care? A lot of people have teeth. So it starts
 there, right? So there's seven pointy billion people on earth today. So it's a
 market that grows with population growth. Colgate was started about 150 years ago. The
 electric toothbrush was invented or introduced in 1987. The manual toothbrush was invented
 and introduced in 1949. So when we think about some of the man, woman and child do two times
 a day, brushing their teeth, if you're a mouth washing, flossing, if you're using a liners,
 all sorts of stuff. So it's super important. And when you have a toothache or you have tooth
 problems, nothing else matters. Your back pain almost doesn't matter anymore compared to your
 tooth pain. Everyone becomes a big baby at the dentist. So there's this whole dynamic around
 oral care. It's the number one most sold retail product on shelf in North America. Number two is
 the order and number six is soap. And so it's a volume business because everybody uses toothpaste.
 But it's not necessarily something where like toothpaste is overpriced. There's always been
 an option for a dollar or two dollar toothpaste that people can access. It was really about
 the ingredients, the packaging, the education, the actual usage of the product, which we're
 known for whitening and we're famous for our whitening solutions and formulas. So can we sell
 them what they want, given what they need, which in the beginning of toothpaste started as
 anti-cavity. I want to clean my teeth. I don't want to get cavities. Then it moved to,
 then it moved to whitening. And then it moved to sensitivity from the overuse. A lot of times
 of whitening, the diet or the moderate diet, a lot of things. Staining habits are more accessible
 than ever before. Everything's got a color in it or a diet in it, wine, coffee, etc. And then
 ultimately I was getting my jaw surgery. So I was voluntary. I had a misaligned jaw that was
 causing a lot of job pain. So I was going through jaw surgery and could I help myself? I'm an
 entrepreneur. So I'm researching nine years ago, the oral care market, the size of the market,
 where is it going? And at a deeper level, I started at 13 years old. So I had become jaded
 around this pursuit of happiness that I had sold a couple of companies and didn't find this
 utopian or euphoric feeling of just floating that I have no worries in the world. I wanted more.
 And that made me very frustrated because it wasn't about the money. And I thought that maybe it was.
 I think it would have been more simple if it was just about the money. So once I realized that
 it was more than that, I needed something that would keep me focused and drive the most competitive
 version of myself out of me. And to be able to prove to my imposter syndrome inside of myself
 that I could create something from the ground up from scratch, we formulate all our own products,
 we design all of our own products, we sell all of our own products, but being able to do that
 end-to-end, which is probably the hardest job or one of the hardest jobs in entrepreneurship
 is to do end-to-end creation and fulfillment and distribution and all of that. I needed that
 level of complexity in order for me. There's some people that play Super Mario and if you beat all
 the levels, sometimes it's fun. The people go back and play on extreme level or they'll play
 blindfolded or they'll try to get all the big coins or try to do it without losing one single
 life. There's an intensity. I don't like to skydive. I don't like to do crazy things anymore in
 terms of physical, like I'm not going to skydive or jump nose dive off a cliff into a pole or something.
 For me, I seek that intensity in my own sport, which is business. I liken that in a very
 admirable way to some of the grades and athletics in terms of the mindset, at least, of what's required
 there. It's a race, but it's more importantly a marathon. The older I've become and more
 experienced I've become because you don't know what you don't know, I've realized that it's important
 for me to have a brand or something I'm doing that I can speak from the mountain tops about and
 because I've taken zero dollars off the table, I can truly speak authentically to the mission and
 purpose of how wide we want to reach and of our impact to be with snow. Yeah. So you just
 a lot to unpack right there, but let me start by saying, I think all we, I think a lot of people
 listen to our show and a lot of people in general always want to mimic success or build the playbook
 for success, but I'm hearing that I'm hearing you like a world-class athlete. You're that for
 business, you're proving that in business, you prove that with snow, you've proved that with
 other ventures, but nature and nurture like for Josh Snow, was it that bread in you was that
 born in you or did you unpack that yourself from learning and observing? I'm always curious,
 I think people are fascinated by that. I think that my, I changes like every year, I feel like
 it adapts a little bit, my response adapts a little bit. I think that there are certain
 exceptional both nature and urge, I do think that it requires both and I do think that
 it heavily skews, especially the older you get. I'm actually across the board on nurturing,
 I would say it's 80-20, but in order to be the LeBron, Michael Jordan, Kobe, Jay-Z, whatever,
 like to be that level in your industry, I do believe the Elon, I do believe that it requires
 in anordinate amount of either EQ or IQ or both, and I think that a lot of that is genetic,
 it could even be through an autistic scale derivative that causes that hyperintelligence,
 that takes that step, why? Because I've competed with some of those people, and when I compete
 with those people, I'm like, they're built different, and it's just like when I played football,
 and people started hitting me harder, and I was like, I gotta get out of this, they're
 gonna, I'm gonna die, because there are certain people that have the nature built in that if what,
 a well nurtured, and ego doesn't get the way, addiction, all the things that usually harm the
 modern man and woman, if that doesn't get them, then they have the chance to be the ultimate
 athlete in whatever business they choose, whatever skill they choose, entrepreneurship. So,
 what I would say is that naturally, I perhaps had a level of intellectual curiosity,
 I was from a baby or from a young age wanting to mix my mom's and sister's hair products together
 to make my own products to give them to them and try it out, so about four years old I was doing
 that, so there's some nature of curiosity there, but then the nurturing of growing up in an environment
 where resources weren't particularly in abundance, that means that you have to become resourceful.
 So, and there's not a lot of resources, you have to become resourceful. So, I think the nurturing
 of becoming a resourceful intellectually curious person allows me to ideate, ideate, but then
 become resourceful to convince others to join me on a journey to bring that to life, or have the
 grits, which is another nature nurture scenario, and why I say there's requires both is that there's
 environmental changes, you could be born in a billionaire's family and you're a billionaire, but let's
 say that's your dad's money, that's your family's money, and you get nothing, and your trust fund
 doesn't happen till 45 if you do everything right. So, the same type of environment and challenges
 and the adversities that someone might face in that scenario might actually mirror someone that
 makes has zero dollars in their family and is challenged with that same survival threat inside
 of them to create their own identity, create their own purpose, create their own path, financial
 dependence, et cetera. Whatever we lack or have insecurity of is generally what we project the most
 of or we seek the most of. So, it's I think that there's a nature nurture, I think it's more important
 to nurture, we have a non-profit that I've been fortunate to be a part of and be a trustee of now
 for years at multiple universities, but here in Arizona State University, we take dozens of
 underserved high school juniors for a week long program, they get to go to the university,
 stay in a dorm for the first time, learn about college, learn about financial aid, learn
 about entrepreneurship, business, they get to come up with a pitch, and so a lot of those kids weren't
 necessarily born entrepreneurs, but you can see the grit that they've attained and the ability to
 withstand pain, the pain tolerance is higher in kids that perhaps face adversity and some of
 that's already wired nature wise. Not for me, so for me, I think nature wise, my environment is
 what drives the nature side. So, every 10 years, five years, your environment could change, you go
 through a bloody divorce and you lose everything, your business partner screws you over for five years,
 that environment could bring out naturally highlights something to overcompensate, so you might
 become an extraordinary natural entrepreneur as a result of that environment, but if you don't
 nurture it the right way, then you have a lot of people with, for example, some of the smartest
 people in the world, highest IQs in the world, they don't make more than a million dollars a year,
 and you go, why would this smartest person in the world like, should they make a billion a year,
 and even once missing, and so that's where I would say the nurture is if not more important, at
 least equally important to the nature, so anyway listening, everyone's got the ability to create
 inside of them, everybody's got the ability to inspire, everybody's got the ability to teach,
 everybody's got the ability to generate enough income for themselves and their family,
 everyone's got that ability naturally, some you may be born in a country like America that is
 more forward on entrepreneurship and capitalism, so add that as a big bonus star, so there's
 some natural stuff there, but nurture is where it's at, and the great news about that is that nature
 gone un-nurtured is wasted talent. You take a little bit of nature and you nurture it, the grass
 is greener or you water it, so you fertilize that patch and it becomes a whole field and you can
 grow whatever you want, and so I think it's more important to nurture what you have than to wish you
 had something you don't, because that's something I spent a couple years in too, I wish I wasn't
 this, I wish I was older, I wish I could do this, and so you got to take what you got nature-wise,
 sharpen that puppy up and go out into the fields and carve your own way, and then you will find
 more nature throughout that nurturing, and go I didn't know I was so good at sales, because
 you find those natures as you nurture. I can tell you this Josh, I've asked that question,
 we've had 335 episodes, that's one of my favorite questions because people are so curious about it,
 whether it's EQ or IQ, that is easily the best response I've ever gotten in the thoughtfulness
 with which it was answered, so I appreciate that, and I think our audience will as well, a lot there.
 Josh, let's talk about how we built snow, and a lot of grit, I love the word grit, I knew I like
 you before, and now I know I like you, because you used to my favorite words,
 response, resourcefulness and grit, and those are great words. Those are grits, everything man,
 that's an un, it is, it's a hard attribute to find these days, I don't know why, I think a lot of
 our conveniences reduce grit that we take advantage of, and we take for granted a lot of things,
 it reduces that grit in you, but I love it, because it's one of the biggest
 determinators of success, I think today, but let's talk about snow, we're going to get to the big
 bad boys, crest white strips, I'm sure, you know, the big daddies, but here comes snow,
 $100 million plot, how do we get there, brother?
 The first 100 million in sales that we generated were entirely bootstrapped, so the first
 the first trance of our lifetime sales came from, came from a big chunk of those Facebook
 advertising, so 2016, 2017, 2018, even 2019, when it worked. Yeah, it even before
 there, right, but if still it started even earlier, there were Moise Ali from native, he talks
 about generating $1.50 subscription signups for $12 a month, the order and just like infinite
 demand, and he sold that business for $100 billion cash in two years from started, very successful,
 it's still very around everywhere, and in the beginning, it was, I need to create a product that
 is different enough that would capture the attention to create a Shopify, to Shopify, and you Shopify
 was going to be the platform we were going to build on, I started developing the product by talking
 to my dentist, my orthodontist, my oral surgeon, what do you sell in office, what products, I went and
 bought as many products as I could, I analyzed all of the Amazon reviews, negative reviews, focusing
 on that area so that you can find some pockets, then I saw that sensitivity is important,
 the whitening formula had some opportunity to be improved upon the delivery method of being able
 to plug it into their phone, which we invented that ability to power it by the phone, because the
 first, very first vision version of snow was 95 bucks, and it was a battery powered light, and did
 not like it very much, but we needed some delivery system for the serum to be able to test it out
 on the customers, so I started running ads, and it was pretty quickly a success. I set up the
 first version of the website and I had an agency come in and publish it, so we got it up on Shopify
 very quickly, and then those after about six to nine months of talking to my dentist, reaching out
 to suppliers, searching who makes toothpaste, who makes this, who makes gel, and then getting samples,
 and then tweaking those formulas, and then getting some testing, so that took six to nine months,
 at least, going back and forth, maybe 50 to 100,000 bucks, to buy the first order of the system
 that I had created for snow 1.0, I guess, that was 95 bucks, so we started running ads on there,
 gave free shipping, and the focus was professional level whitening at home, without the sensitivity
 of other systems, really designing around the sensitive tooth customer, but also the one who wants
 to max out whitening, so it's like, you want to cake and you want to eat it too, you want to
 preserve your enamel, but you also have a wedding next week, and it's like, boom, boom, so we just kept
 tweaking that formula, percentages, whitening agents, what can we do to help with sensitivity,
 and so continuing to tweak that then, it became a device business as well, with our LED technology,
 which we now have multiple versions that have a wireless version, colors, lilac, special
 edition, we have a black one, limited at best buys, all kinds of colors and types, and so the very
 beginning, it was one product, which was really a couple products in one, and that's what we now
 have sold nearly two million times of that system, which is evolved now to wireless, our current
 wired system today, which is the number one made in America teeth whitening system in the world,
 so that's still our most known product, was that original teeth whitening kit, all in one,
 at home, we invented the verbiage teeth whitening wands, the teeth whitening system, just a lot of
 these verbiages that were a little more seen and professional, but that people could buy a
 free shipping, two days, three days, it's in your hands, so that was a very start, and the goal was
 if that works out, then if you walked down the oral care aisle, couldn't snow have a version of
 everything in there, flossers, toothpaste, mouthwash, a toothbrush, a water flosser, aligners,
 all kinds of these products, mints, gums, breath sprays, all those products couldn't snow,
 have a version of that if this is successful, and now today our product portfolio represents
 an oral care and personal care portfolio of 30 plus individual skews, multiple award winnings,
 award winners, with multiple of them winning multiple awards across the board, we have the best
 best whitening strips, best toothbrush, all of these awards that are decorated on the site,
 and so now that has expanded, but that's about seven years later, in the very beginning,
 it was Facebook ads, $95 system that we put together, or that I put together with help,
 and then push that out, once that sold, upgraded every single time that we reordered,
 the goal was how do we upgrade the formula, take the feedback, I was calling customers myself,
 and now I had built and sold many companies beforehand, I was independently wealthy, I could have
 poured a lot more money into the business, but I was still ruminating on, is this something that
 has legs, is this something that I think it is, am I crazy? And once I started to see that,
 then it became hiring more products, different versions of the products, more channels to acquire
 customers, now we're in CVS, Walgreens, Best Buy, Neiman Marcus, SACs, Macy's, so now we're in about
 a dozen premiere top retail partners today, when the very beginning, it's Facebook ads, Shopify,
 one system, one person or two to help on customer support and shipping it out, and I shipped it from
 my spare bedroom of the house, because the inventory, I didn't want to get an office yet, I wasn't sure,
 I was investing at the time, I had just sold a couple of companies, so I said, I want to see if
 this could be my next thing, and sure enough, it certainly did. As you expanded past Facebook
 and started to get the broader, Facebook has, people I don't think realized how many billion
 people were on Facebook and how broad the awareness is, but what was the percentage like US
 first, non-US, we're talking pretty much 95, not majorly US based, and what were the channels that
 what were the awareness channels that kind of flowed after Facebook, other than just distribution
 itself? Yeah, so it was Google, YouTube, so the whole Google suite, the whole meta suite, Amazon,
 advertising, that whole suite, actually retail media networks, also Spotify, audio, right,
 so retail media is, if we're in Best Buy, we want to buy web banner ads, and we want to be
 the sponsored on Best Buy for anything teeth-related, and so we're spending inside of the
 trade marketing to push those things, but they drive awareness top of funnels while on those
 platforms, and then we're doing everything from YouTube, we're doing a relaunch of TikTok,
 we've been hiring, we're still are hiring like crazy for TikTok on the snowside, so TikTok is
 top of funnel, we're really excited about relaunching that, Instagram, Facebook are still very heavy
 on the front end, we do a lot of affiliate marketing as well, I actually acquired the
 affiliatemarketing.com domain name about a year ago to build more reach in that space because it's
 a big portion across all of our brand, all the brands of my portfolio and all the brands that I've
 invested in affiliate marketing is a very profitable channel across the board, so affiliate marketing is
 another area because a lot of these bloggers, bloggers, Amazon editorial affiliates,
 they're putting us in front of an audience for the very first time, listicles, things like that,
 about maybe 15% of our sales online come from our online affiliates, and that's 100% non-facebook
 and Instagram because we don't allow it in the program since we run that internally, so it diversifies
 if forces the diversification of that traffic, so that's the stack from the top level and in that,
 of course, as you mentioned, distribution, funnels to marketplace, first right marketplace,
 then to retail, actual locations, then we also sell to professional dermatology, dentist,
 local, clinic, kind of style stuff, so that whittles all the way down and it repeats from the top.
 What's the, but let's say before you went into retail, what was your mix? Like everybody
 hears Amazon, they get scared like margins and all that stuff. How did you tackle? You obviously
 started a D to C, which is the smartest place, best margins, all that. What was your balance with
 taking on Amazon and what's your perspective there with just overall mix and things? A lot of
 you would get scared of that, but it's such a bit humid, it's hard to ignore. I was the same way,
 man, I like 10 years ago told two of my best friends on a tough denial of the mattress company,
 they have the number one most loved and most popular on Amazon mattress and they had a very
 successful exit and huge success, they bootstrap it, but they leaned into Amazon back then,
 I was anti-Amazon. You don't know the data, you got to pay them 15, 20%, everyone gets refunds,
 you've got to lean into Amazon over 50% of retail searches online start on Amazon and they end
 there because people go straight there to search for shoes, white sneakers, like they're going
 directly to search, they're buying there, the conversion rates always going to be higher than
 your website. It is what it is, they've invested tens of billions of dollars into infrastructure
 because Justin genius and they know that if they can outsmart logistics and get the customers hooked
 on two hour delivery, that that's going to put a lot of pressure on merchants, but I know that
 Amazon's a public company and because they're a public company in the US, there are antitrust laws
 which means that Amazon cannot get more than 51% of its revenue or 50% of its revenue from
 its own products. So all the private label they do, all the kind of things that they're doing,
 they cannot, I think it's like 47%, 46% you can google it, it's like someone on 47%
 can't get out much higher. And they just keep it go and they got to keep that 51%
 marketplace revenue which allows people like us to take advantage of what Amazon built. If
 they weren't frantic trust, they'd kick us all off. So not be my guest, right? If you go
 Amazon, why would they just make all the products and copy everybody and maybe they'd be a lot
 of a bad trademark lawsuits, but they'd manage those with all the lawyers, but they'd get it done.
 And I think it's, look at it, it goes, last year was our biggest year at Amazon, every
 year is a great year at Amazon, but last year was a significantly good year for Amazon.
 So we go, wow, we need to really hire in that direction. We need to really double down our
 partnerships in that direction. We need to really tweak our affiliate marketing efforts net
 direction. So we went through it and said we want to double down on Amazon and utilize
 our strengths and utilize our thousands of reviews, utilize our millions on our email and SMS
 list, utilize our assets and our retail placements that are very unique to us in our industry,
 to be able to show off on Amazon and build that business. So we have a goal for Amazon on its own
 to be a nine-figure business for us in the next three years from an Amazon very focused
 scale plan, hiring plan, partnership plan that allows us to take advantage of the Amazon
 platform and marketplaces, Walmart.com, etc. Because what happens in a recession and this is
 a fact proven, I read this, they said, during COVID people went back to what they felt most
 comfortable and safe and secure with. So they went back to Walmart or Walmart. They went back to
 Target. They stopped venturing out so much onto all these D to see websites and all these unknown
 things, all these unknown subscriptions, recession hits or money gets tight inflation. People are
 more likely to just, I'm just going to go to targeting and everything. I'm going to go to Walmart
 and get everything. I'm going to go to this website, Amazon. Let me just, it's convenient, it's cheaper,
 I'm just going to do an Amazon. So you got to now play in that direction five, 10 years ago, you could
 get away without having to lead into it. Although I wish I could go back five and 10 years and I
 would have built an army of team members and partners on our Amazon channel and we would have been
 totally dominating that channel. So I love it. You do get access to email your customers now,
 they've got some new things. There's all kinds of stuff, but it's the only platform that's driven
 by sales. So you can become the number one in your category, even above the big companies
 by sales volume. So you can drive you direct your sales. If snow directed all of our sales to
 Amazon today, which is maybe 15 to 20% of our US digital revenues, let's say we put all of our
 US digital revenue into Amazon. We would be the number one in every single category above all of
 the incumbent brands, just because of velocity. But we would give up 15% at least margin based off
 versus our own. You give up some data. When I got to tell you, there are days where I go,
 that's not the worst idea. There's a better way to go about it, build up the Amazon Presidents and
 build up the traffic and build up the list. So a lot sort of sure, anyone listening, I would like
 triple down and look up a company called Hero Cosmetics. Look up a company called Zesty Paws
 by one of my good friends and they're a half a billion dollar pet supplement brand. The 100%
 of their sales pretty much were from Amazon. Look up Hero Cosmetics. They have a Miracle Patch for
 Acne and 20 bucks. They sold for 630 million. I think the beginning of this year in January,
 40 million in profit just to Amazon. It was an Amazon driven business. So these Amazon businesses
 are getting very strong multiples. They're raising money. They're TikTok friendly. So I would say
 lean into Amazon harder than you ever have and really figure out how to dominate that platform
 in your category because it's the only place you can see sales as well. You can literally see
 an estimate of what everyone's selling. You can go look at snow stuff and make, oh, they're
 selling an estimate of this much from this skew. It's a great platform to build on.
 There you have it. Everyone talks about the devil and but sometimes you got to dance with the
 devil because it's just necessary. I do want to talk, talk with Josh Snow. CEO of Snow,
 whiteners, toothbrush, the best in the business, tackling CPG. Do we talk about going public?
 It's found the fascinating. I know you're always on the cutting edge of these things related to
 entrepreneurism and investing and all that. Talk to me and the audience a bit about going public,
 what it isn't and where it's going. Going public, the founders Darren and Todd are two of my closest
 friends and I'm very grateful for them to invite me first to be a, I was going to be a participant
 on season one through snow. The timing wasn't right for snow and I didn't want to take that spot
 from somebody else and so I said, hey, guys, I can't do it. I just can't, my conscience, do it.
 I did that with Shark Tank two times or probably a mistake. Law term PR and their stuff's amazing
 but I just, stuff's a Shark Tank fan and I was like, hey, snow's already profitable. I don't want
 to go on there and ask for millions of dollars for one percent of the company or something. I don't
 want to do that. Safety happened with going public and these guys Darren and Todd, we met up, we had
 lunch and right away we hit it off like just long lost brothers man and they told me about the
 concept of the show and I had done a TV show prior with the same production company actually that
 they were working with and so they told me the concept which is we want to take a sense to like
 American Idol where you can text into vote. We want to bring that to a Shark Tank-esque style
 approach where we're documenting multiple businesses that are already in business generating
 revenues and they're raising capital and the goal is that as many as all of them can go public with
 the partnership we have with Nasdaq on the show on the last episode and what's revolutionary
 about it and what I applaud both Darren and Todd extremely highly on is they're work directly
 with the SEC on compliance to bring this type of modernism to investing which allows anyone
 watching which anyone can watch from anywhere in the country and stream it through a VPN. I'm
 sure outside the country on entrepreneur.com and season two on WSJ Wall Street Journal.com
 or going public.com and so you can watch it you can swipe up or whatever and you can scan
 your output and you can invest 500 bucks, thousand bucks, few thousand bucks and now episode two
 you're already a shareholder in that business so you get to watch and the families hey we want to
 preach that business and let's see if they go public and let's see what they're up to and now
 its reality meets investing and it's engaging and it's telling the story of these American businesses
 and what's going on and then it opens it up for people like how many Shark Tank episodes have I
 listened to where I'm like gosh I'll buy the product because I want to support it and I want the
 freaking product but I would love to and I would throw in five grand staff business or something
 they're obliterized at and then I came on as an investor and now we're working on season two
 so that's a TV show it's free it's accessible we're looking to expand the accessibility and the
 viewership of that with our partnership with Wall Street Journal and the ideas to continue to
 challenge the status quo on democratizing access to higher grade investment opportunities for the
 everyday American versus just a savings account where you make no money on it or just being able to
 open that up and my favorite is the education piece and you know there's got to be someone out
 there listening there's some other there's some kids the kids out there listening and that's what
 really gets me going about the show is we get to educate about this these high level concepts but
 they're now simple and you can swipe up and play with us along the way and that's what we're
 looking to bring across the board so it's been a revolutionary concept it's been a very successful
 season one and now we're renewed for season two with an incredible partner with Wall Street Journal so
 excited for all that stay tuned but we're also always accepting and looking for entries into the show
 and so anyone listening that's got a growing fast growing great business great industry you're
 proud of it go to the going public Instagram page or go to go on public.com and you can actually
 apply and that's actually what I did I applied myself a snow they highlighted me we ended up chatting
 and now I'm an investor and I'm on the show and all that stuff so this season two will be taking
 several companies through that same process and we'll continue to do that for as long as we can
 continue to grow the reach and access because there's just not enough business television available
 where is that where can people watch the show if
 it has season one on there it's ad free it's just super easy but it's also streamed on
 altruppeter.com youtube as well as the upcoming season on Wall Street Journal perfect go to going
 public.com so as we wind down here Josh talk to me about you know what you're looking for in
 investments and I know you're doing investing and you know you always got your eyes and yours open
 what's catching your attention is there big plays going on what are you seeing CPG I know you
 got your hands in a lot of things but what's getting you excited these days.
 So good question I have been so focused on my own personal finance journey since I was 17
 and I've hired so many financial advisors and money managers and I've met some great ones I've
 met some not so great ones and it's just been a freaking journey and while I've found the last
 few years I've been fortunate to access some businesses and take that cash to invest in kind of
 some long term stuff short term stuff mid term stuff and what I've been really focused on is
 democratizing my own access with our affordable housing investments where we're rehabilitating
 the communities the housing and opening access for what is a very big issue in America with access
 to affordable housing raising funds from investors and strangers honestly credit investors that
 are strangers upfront that are interested in investing in affordable living so from an investment
 side of things I've been I've been looking at real estate obviously is always interesting commercial
 real estate over the next year or so they said about 40% of those loans are unvariable so that there
 is going to be a huge opportunity there so I'm looking at raising a fund potentially in that
 direction on the commercial real estate side for the stress opportunities and perhaps for some
 repurposing a building so you've got an office building a skyrise whereas all zones for office
 you turn that into a condo building or apartment building or some condo residences or something that's
 a lot more useful for that area or if it's in the right area you take an office park or office
 building and you expand that out to perhaps even affordable housing units in that area to open
 accessibility so there's a lot of opportunity there that's outside of brands and e-commerce inside
 of brands and e-commerce I've been fortunate to invest in a handful of subscription focused e-commerce
 businesses personal care is always something I'm interested in everybody's got to
 toilet paper toothpaste things like that are always interesting we've been actually
 and interested in investing and we have been acquiring we acquired two companies last year
 through snow in the oral care and similar space so at home beauty oral care so been investing
 in that space through the business and then also on the working capital side of things so businesses
 need access to cash banks have tightened up I've used working capital millions of dollars of working
 capital loans to fund my businesses throughout the last 15 plus years to move to that next trot
 you know I need 250 grand for the next six months it's getting harder and harder for business owners
 even great businesses to get access to this even more so for taboo niches like cannabis and CBD
 and all those areas I've been really focused on the lending side as an investor and so we have an
 upcoming financial product for invested credit investors where you can simply apple pay your
 investment in and now you can start producing the returns that we're producing through the working
 capital funding so we're funding those loans you take out say a hundred thousand of my dollars
 you put a thousand in a hundred different loans so now one of them ends up not doing well you
 still have insurance on the others so that's another area that I'm particularly interested the
 debt markets lending working capital affordable housing always interested in multi-family housing
 as well self I'm invested in aggregator fund one that's acquiring agencies it's called agency
 venture aggregator they're buying profitable agencies rolling them up building shared services
 building up their teams and their profits and then selling them to the larger guys and so I'm
 an investor there so I've got probably 25 investments across the board but I would say they skewed
 toward offline or they skewed toward online infrastructure or subscription so it's sass tools I'm
 in an investor a shareholder in trynow.io which is a trynow bilater software for Shopify
 merchants they raise I think 20 million plus at this point in venture capital and so there are
 software provided for you commerce which is you know what I have a lot of experience in in terms
 of investing in the brands that are doing it they'll save seven million a year in profit those
 are a little bit more attuned to get access to our powerhouse brands content on instagram 99% of
 it's for free on youtube to our powerhouse brands youtube channel and then most of my podcasting
 on the percent of our completely free so that's where we try to and I try to educate for the
 million and under from that side of things instead of investing cash into those businesses
 I can no longer necessarily do those deals as much instead I either refer those to our working
 capital partners so they can get access to ordained capital or to go and check out our mastermind
 go check out the free content love it man get your head and get your hands and everything
 you did say one buzzword that call my interest because I'm a lead investor in company with
 mutual contact Chris Hanson in vk yeah so going down that whole CBD cannabis route that whole
 world's about that's already open about to go explode like the infrastructure all like the
 infrastructure layer so kind of packaging and retesting the testing side of things right so
 testing labs packaging payment processing lamp the lights LED lamp providers soil these
 companies have trouble getting access to bank traditional bank loans traditional working capital
 factoring a lot of people don't want to work with them because of the nature of the business
 but the way we look at it is one it's opening it up to your point it's going to continue to open up
 and so we want to help the businesses that are doing it we want to get them access to working capital
 bank accounts actual institutional investors as we as it opens up more and becomes less taboo
 but in the meantime there are a lot of people that want to invest in this rise of CBD weed
 psilocybin from even from a even if you're not a consumer the company that I'm invested in the
 testing site they are not consumers they will never use that they're get high on their own supply
 and that was a big hole in the ass of investing with them but anyway they're the cleanest people
 the industry that I found and so I gave them as much cash they humanly could because I believe in
 that infrastructure layer same view of CBD there's forming there's the dispensaries there's a lot of
 layers to that supply chain and so we try to look at I try to look at the front a market like CBD
 or market cannabis that's traditionally or stereotypically taboo which means they don't have access
 to the traditional financial products so it's a lot harder to scale it's a lot harder to hire it's
 a lot harder to do those things so we look at investing in recruiting so cannabis and CBD
 recruiting we look at the ancillary services that help that business actually grow payroll things
 that traditionally are hard for them to get we invest in the companies giving them access to that
 and then we invest in the lending for the actual cash to those companies and it's just it's one
 of those things that it is it makes things more difficult you already can't advertise so that
 makes it difficult so then you can't really even advertise or sorry you can't even you can't
 work in anywhere and then it's difficult to payment process it's difficult to get the bank account
 it's difficult to get all these things so we're investing in that infrastructure through that
 side of things and that's more of a family office endeavor kind of a mini family office endeavor
 of mine and I've got partners and that takes five minutes a week of work because I'm not running
 the business that's I'm an investor but I wanted to I saw what was going on and I wanted to
 have a piece in the pie and I also wanted to bring help to the industry for the business owners
 that are actually creating some pretty cool stuff in that space that just don't have access to
 funding they don't have access to typical resources I love it man what's taught more about that
 don't absolutely know that we need the funding but the infrastructure and other things right to
 be some fascinating discussions we can have I do as we last question Josh we've talked about a
 lot of things your hands are a lot of things and it probably relates to most to snow directly
 it's in your damn name now I go straight at it how much do you go to the brand versus operational
 excellence we talked about all this functional stuff we talked we got really heavily because
 you know I'm an old school add guy can you hear me now yeah like all this and the branding all
 that but obviously operational excellence is imported and where it runs and all those things
 but where does the brand and the essence of it well how much do you owe to that versus the
 operational side I think yeah obviously you can't won without the other yeah I would say that
 the brand is no we've invested over a hundred million dollars in advertising the brand now
 to get in front of our customers who are number one investors and and we have an industry low return
 refund rate which means our products work and that's what we drive off of and so I would say that
 the brand has only become stronger over seven years so year one you have one customer support rep
 so then if you're overloaded people got to wait two days to get a response and now they can get
 it instant with live chat and so I would say the brand through operational efficiency the brand
 was built in a lot of ways so the fact that we have a one a hundred number that you can call
 where a lot of other D to C companies are pushing you to a form or email them we're saying let's
 talk on the phone and we're calling our customers that became a part of our brand ethos of being
 transparent with our customer because they are a number one investor and making sure that we're
 building products that they actually want to have in their household and use so I think it worked
 together to sharpen what be what is now the brand of snow which is a platform that I'm very grateful
 for and and I would say that the operational efficiency that is without that the brand would not
 be words at today by any means the brand would be positioned in a great way the timing was right when
 it was launched there's a lot of things that like luck and timing and so brand played a lot in that
 but without the operational efficiency even today as we're in a dozen premiere retailers every single
 one of those accounts requires an operational efficiency and productivity in order for it to make
 sense to the business and businesses die for two reasons one the no more reason and all these
 back to this is liquidity in the biggest brands in the world the most successful most profitable
 once you run out of liquidity you're gone and then relevance a lot of businesses lose liquidity
 the liquidity basis chasing relevance that's usually what happens so blockbuster chasing it
 trying to buy Netflix too late they're trying to figure it out so you end up dying a little faster
 sometimes chasing relevance if you can't catch it a lot of a lot of really good brands can catch it
 a few times but most brands are dead within a hundred years maybe 150 so on the stock market most
 of those brands have not been around more than a hundred years etc so when you look at it that way
 you go it's operational efficiency so it's brand market product founder fit and there's that alignment
 that has to be chosen and hammered in for in this case seven plus years that you have to hammer in
 that loop with potentially zero dollars to account for that that becomes an essence of that
 operational efficiency which allows you to create a brand of excellence and that's really what
 we're looking to create is a powerhouse brand the brand of excellence in order to do that we must
 have operational efficiency so I think that I'd rather take operational efficiency because I can
 build a brand around what we're most efficient with then take a brand and try to sell something
 that we can't fulfill operationally you did make it pretty damn sexy though it's a start let's
 be honest you made it snow every one of their teeth whitening but the brand sizzled from the get-go
 they laughed that I say they laughed at us it's not like I heard a laugh that feels brilliant
 that myself you've been in the beginning to think but do people care enough about their oil care
 that they're gonna spend they spend it in the dental chair they spend it on their makeup they
 spend it on their hair care like everything else so I'm like they spend a couple more bucks for
 something made in the USA with better ingredients or something that we can how do we tackle that
 that's really the was the hypothesis and it's a big space man it's like we're not going to convert
 everybody I'm very fortunate for Chris I'm very fortunate for Colgate I love I love them being
 in the space I love what they have paved without the white strips category and being able to teach
 especially Americans you could why entertain that home it would have been much more difficult
 on the education side and that's just with everything right it's everybody owes it to the person
 from before it's like scientists and so that's the way I see it I think with with snow there's
 only one snow because I started snow for another reason I didn't start snow to buy another lambo
 or buy house or buy lots or just evo trip or no it was very clear the intention of what I'm building
 this for and as long as I'm alive I'm going to continue to push for market share to deliver what
 I believe are better products for our customers for alternatives some better products in the sense
 that some of our even knew like they're they're just completely innovative we have sprinkle powder
 on a toothpaste we've got drops that you put your snow water flosser to white in while you're
 blasting the water and the innovation in the world first and that those things are very important
 to the snow brand and they give me a lot of energy they give me a lot of life so that's why it's
 going to be difficult for someone to buy even a big chunk of this business from us would have
 to be the right partner for sure because we're open to we're always open to discussions but right
 now we're building but one day if that partner emerges that sees what we see then we can tackle
 that that greater scale together but just in the US close to a billion tubes of toothpaste
 or sold every year and snow today is a couple bucks more so we can't assume that every customer is
 going to switch to us but we're here to provide another option for that growing and evolving
 customer base I love it man you got but I'll just summarize by saying you got to start with the
 sizzle but then you ultimately you got to have you got to have the steak yeah cool man Josh
 working to make keep up with you all things you got going on three jobs when they
 on Instagram man at Josh snow on Instagram is my personal that's where you can keep up with
 most things I post as much as I can stories wise at least and then at snow echo in public at Anola
 all the brands are in my bio and I post about them and then feel free to reach out to me on
 there as well it's either me or someone on my team it gets to me and my goal is to go through
 every single DM then I receive because you never know when there's an opportunity in there that's
 not just for money sake an opportunity to say something cool and then some of those
 are feel so bad about themselves throughout the day I found an opportunity for us to do our best
 to respond to every single one of those messages so Josh knows probably the best place on Instagram
 great brother I really appreciate you going on coming on and I look forward to collaborating
 and talking more in the future I appreciate thank you for having me all Ryan I really appreciate it
 hey guys you don't find us the radcast dot com searching that search for a bar for Josh snow
 all the highlight clips all the links and the full episode audio video short version youtube
 Instagram you know to find me I'm at Ryan offer verified before you can buy it we'll see you
 next time on the radcast to listen and watch full episodes visit us on the web at the radcast
 dot com or follow us on social media at our Instagram account v dot rad dot pass or at Ryan
 Alfred stay radical
 this is the story of the one as a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing facility
 he knows keeping the line up and running is a top priority that's why he chooses Granger
 because when a drive belt gets damaged Granger makes it easy to find the exact specs with
 the replacement product he needs and next day delivery helps ensure he'll have everything in place
 and running like clockwork go 1 800 Granger click ranger dot com or just stop by Granger for the ones
 who get it done