Advice Line: Tapping AI as a Resource for Your Business

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0:21hello and welcome to the advice line on how i built this lab i'm guy roz this is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges and this week we're bringing you a special mashup episode featuring three returning guests and three new callers you'll hear advice and using AI to grow your business and new ways to break through a crowded social media landscape. And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298. Send us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with.

1:02You can also send us a voice memo at hibt at id.wondery.com. and make sure to tell us how to reach you. And also, don't forget to sign up for my newsletter. It's full of insights and ideas from the world's greatest entrepreneurs. You can sign up for free at GuyRoz.com. And we'll put all this info in the podcast description. All right, let's get to it. Our first guest is Randy Hettrick. He's the founder and the guy who actually invented TRX. Randy first came on How I Built This back in 2017, and he told this wild story about being a Navy SEAL on a remote assignment, rigging an old jujitsu belt to a door, and basically creating an entirely new way to work out wherever you are.

1:45It's an awesome episode. We'll put a link to it in the show notes or just search TRX in our feed. And as you'll hear, Randy's also exactly the right person to talk about how to get a product in front of more people and actually get it noticed. All right, Randy, let's bring in our first caller to the advice line. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just one line about your business, please. Thanks. Hi, Guy and Randy. It's so great to be with you today. My name is Shereen, and I co-founded Moji Masala with my husband, JD. We are a family-owned and operated business based in Philly.

2:21We started Moji Masala to make it super easy for anyone to make authentic, delicious, homemade Indian food from scratch. It's a very intimidating process often and a little complicated, but with Moji Masala, you just take one of our 14 pre-measured spice packets. You buy a few produce items. You use our recipe to make one specific Indian dish that serves three to five people. and they are my mom's heirloom recipes that I spent two years beta testing to actually create the final product. Nice. Wow. Congrats. Well, welcome, Shireen. Thanks for calling in. So basically, these are spice packets and you mix them with like oil or clarified butter or and add them to a meat or vegetable?

3:05Yeah, it's a simple process, but it's actually you're actually cooking the dish as if you like opened up a recipe in a cookbook and they gave you like this list of 15 spices and gave you the like eight steps. Yeah. So the hardest part of Indian food is actually aggregating the spices, having a recipe for the blends, and then just like knowing what to do with it. Our product packaging is very informative. It has like a shopping list on the back and a QR code that goes to the actual recipe and a cooking video. So there's no guesswork. There's no leftover spices. You're literally just using our product to create like kind of a magical dish And experience is so seamless that I think it's almost like alarming to people to actually have this experience.

3:48By the way, when did you start the business? So we really were ready to launch right in late 2019, right before COVID. And then coming out of COVID the last couple of years is really when we've pushed hard on our online but also on retail expansion. And is this your full-time job? Is this what both of you guys, you and your husband, are working on? This is my full-time job. It's my husband's halftime job, I would say, and my full-time job. Yeah, it's a second career for me. That's awesome. So you launched in 2019. Tell me a little bit about it. Are you mainly selling online and through Amazon and retailers?

4:23Break that down for me. Yeah, we started online and naively thought we could hit the ground running online. I think it became pretty clear that unless we had like a million dollars that we really needed a retail strategy. We got into Citarella about a year ago, which is a seven-store chain throughout New York, Connecticut, and the Hamptons. We also got into Fresh Direct, and we are in a Wii, which is an Asian online retailer. Sure. We've done Wii on the show. Yeah. And tell us what your question is. What's your pain point that you're looking for help with? Yeah, so, Randy, our in-store demos have been very successful.

4:58We have a sell-through rate of over 90 % when someone samples our product and actually gets to try it. And we're attracting a wide spectrum of customers, busy families, young people wanting to try something new, vegetarians, vegans. So, Randy, just like you had to teach people not only what your product was, but how to use it, we're trying to figure out how to reach this broad array of potential customers that we can't get with a live demo. And we'd love your input on that. Well, first of all, Shireen, your description has me salivating. I I'm I'm realizing that uh Indian for lunch would be exquisite right now um how are you guys getting um your kind of how are you promoting it early like what's what are you guys doing right now to promote the brand so right now the the single biggest thing we do is because we have retailers that we want to support and we have a very hub and smoke model that we show up regularly at the stores, doing the demos, letting people try it.

6:00In terms of spending money, we're on Amazon, and then we pay to highlight our Amazon. We do Google to highlight. Our website is, it's not a flat website. It's a very interactive website. And because you need to access our recipes and our video, so paying to sort of lead people to our website is productive as far as hopefully leading to sales. So I pulled up your website as soon as you started talking, and it's it's friendly and it's inviting. And what I was hoping you were going to say is exactly what you said, which is you're out there sampling. Right. And because to me, something like, I mean, you guys are, are you guys profitable at this point on a, just on a, on a monthly operating basis?

6:44Or are you, you know, how are you financing this in other words? Yeah. So the way I, it's self-financed, you know, because I had a long career, we did have savings. That's not a bottomless sort of bit of savings. So, you know, we have to be smarter about our next steps. But one of the things I was really important to me was that the product be profitable. Like, so when I, when we sell this product, it is profitable. Now, of course, there's, I don't know how to think about, and this is also, I'd love your input, like all the other costs associated with that, you know, as far as marketing and, you know, maybe you have to go do trade shows, which are thousands and thousands of dollars.

7:19And so it's very easy to be, to have, sorry. Here's where I was going to go with this is that, you know, the reason I asked the question about profitability is because if you don't have, you know, outside investors that are, for instance, you're a ticking clock, right, that forces you to do things, you're in a great position right now. if if you have a really great product and it certainly sounds like it and and looks like it the question is how do you get that trial and i would say to you given that you don't have external pressures really on you that the that what's the rush the best way to do this right is to is to be out there on the ground letting people try your product and then and then you know, showing them that you have a website, because obviously you have to be a little bit careful about going into a, to a retailer's establishment and then trying to drive people to your website.

8:15So you got to be a little bit careful about that. But the, I think that the idea of figuring out how to scale your sampling program is to me a better and much more, um, sort of long lived way to get customers who are going to fall in love with you. because look, you can spend a lot of money putting your, your foods avatar in front of me, but if I can't smell it and I can't taste it, it's lost in the noise. Whereas if you put it in my mouth and I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is delicious. Now you've got me right. So to me, I would spend less time at the moment, given where you guys are, uh, doing paid media and more time actually having people get their, get your product in their mouth.

9:04Yes. No, I love that you have that reaction because I think instinctively we think that, and we're two people and I'm, you know, we had the opportunity, for example, to go national. We deferred that because it's just takes a lot of money. And we knew we can't have success without demos. And that would mean probably hiring a demo team. So, and then I was like, of course, who's, who's going to represent on a demo team the way I can probably nobody. And then it was like, Oh, then we have to train them. So on and so forth. So it's, it became a bigger idea, but then also more murky as to, is that the way to do it?

9:39Should I be hiring people? Should I work with outside people? Should I just go myself and do like 10 stores hard and do it all like me because I'm the one who's going to sell best? Well, I don't think you're going to be able to be the chief, the sampler in chief all the time, right? I can tell you having done that with my straps, you sort of run out of you pretty quickly. But you're going to have to make some choices on where you spend your money, right? Because you don't have a ton of it. And I don't think it would be prudent right now to go get a ton of it from someone else. And then I think that a little bit of money can probably go a fairly long way in an organic sampling program.

10:24and you'll know at the point at which you really start to have momentum. And now you're like, okay, how do we amplify this? And then you'll have the next decision to make, right? Do you do it through paid media or do you step up your sampling program, you know, another level? I think, Randy, you're exactly right. I would just add to that, that you can do some of this concurrently. Like, I'm not sure that you need to do one before you do the next. I do think that it's true. This is something you want to sample. People want to smell this. It's going to smell so delicious, right? But here's the thing, and you know this.

11:01My kids right now, as we speak, are in my house in the kitchen making steak sandwiches based on a YouTuber, right? I love it. Because they follow a YouTuber and they went to the store and got all the stuff and they're making. So many people now are making recipes based on what they're seeing on Instagram and YouTube. I'm talking about micro-influencers who might be, maybe it's somebody who's just a really interesting food, micro-influencer around food. And you work with them and you partner with them and you say, all right, we're going to put like$20 ,000 into this, which is no small amount of cash, right?

11:41But you say, let's think really strategically. Let's really kind of find out who's out there. And by the way, you can use AI to help you with this, to help you find and identify some of these sort of medium to micro. And a micro-influencer is somebody with like 10 ,000 to 50 ,000 followers, right? Yes. You do want people to smell this and try this, but you want people to see it too. And it's hard to scale an in-store demo, right? The way to do it is through the right partner. And food influencers are enormous. As far as I understand, it's still a growing sector in a lot of these social media platforms.

12:21That's a good point you make, Guy, because we have worked with influencers, but I hadn't really put the number around it the way you have. And I think as opposed to 300 here, 500 there, let's see what we get. Really sort of saying, okay, we're going to have a$20 ,000 budget for 15 months and really maybe go deep with two or three people with that. I don't know if that would go. And spend the time really following these people and looking at what they're doing and seeing how much engagement they're getting. Oftentimes people put their engagement numbers right there on their Instagram or TikTok.

12:52You can see how many views there. So I would start by doing some searches and looking at AI and having them help you and having to help you. And then looking at some of these influencers and picking a few and just saying, you know what? We got$20 ,000 to work with over the next year and we're going to start to seed this cash. Yeah, I love that idea. where I was sort of thinking more that I would shy away from is doing sort of big paid ad buys. Right. Because I think, I think, you know, spending a bunch of money on, you know, on Facebook platform or any other platform to, to take an ad and project it isn't really where you need to be right now.

13:31I totally agree with Guy that if you can find, you know, some fun, quirky, foodie influencers with followings and get them to show just how cool and easy and tasty this thing is to use. That'd be a great way to do it. And you wouldn't spend a bunch of cash. It's a great two-pronged strategy. It's great advice. Shireen Qadri, the brand is called Moji Masala. Congrats. Good luck. Thank you so much for calling in. Thanks so much. All right. Thanks. Nice. This to me is such a great product because it's not process. It's a spice blend and it gives you the step-by-step instruction. So it's really cool.

14:09It's really great. Yeah, you know who did kind of a fun job on what you're talking about without any influencers, they were trying to create the persona and they're spending a lot of money doing it was HelloFresh, right? Some of the stuff that they did with meals where you would watch their kind of their what looked to be, you know, organic user content, but showing just how easy it is to put it together. And it really made you want to really made you want to do it. And so I love the idea of using actually some micro influencers instead of paid media. Yes. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, a jigsaw puzzle brand gets social media advice from the founder of a restaurant chain worth billions of dollars.

14:54Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to a special mashup episode of Advice Line on how I built this lab.

15:23Hey, welcome back to the device line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz. So up next is Todd Graves, the founder of Raising Canes, the fried chicken tender chain. Todd first came on the show back in 2022. And we'll drop a link to that episode in the show notes. And what's always stuck with me about his business is how he built a billion dollar business without constantly changing the menu or adding a bunch of new options. And as you'll hear, Todd has a lot to say about why staying focused on your core business is often the real key to long term success. All right, let's bring in our next caller.

15:58Welcome to the advice line. You're on with Todd Graves. Tell us your name, where you're calling from and just a line or two about your business. Hi, Guy. Hi, Todd. I'm Valerie. I'm calling from Boise, Idaho. I am a co-owner, co-founder of three unique new jigsaw puzzle companies, Learn About Life, Large as Life, and Laugh with Life. Our company creates conversation-starting jigsaw puzzles that spark laughter, curiosity, and connection through play. Awesome. Valerie, thanks for calling in. All right. Large is life. These are jigsaw puzzles. Yes. Am I to assume that they are large as life? They're giant jigsaw puzzles?

16:33Yes. So that was our first line that we came up with in 2024. They are life-size animal jigsaw puzzles, 50 pieces. So they're the large pieces. And there is a trivia question about the animal on the back of every piece. What animals do you guys make puzzles out of? So we just have three out to start out with. We have a red panda, we have a king penguin, and we have a koala. And right now in production, we have a life-size bald eagle with a six-foot wingspan. That one's 100 pieces, 100 trivia questions. That should be coming out this year by the end of the year. Not doing a blue whale yet. Not yet.

17:10It might be a little cost prohibiting. So tell me how this business came about. How did this idea come about? Yeah. So my sister-in-law, Courtney, she was visiting Yellowstone and she made note in her mind, passing all of these don't get so close to the bison signs, which people unfortunately often ignore. And she was just thinking about that. And she went into the gift shop and she thought, you know what? I wish there was something that I could bring home that we could undo on our kitchen floor. we could lay down next to it and see the scale of the size. And we could have a life-size bison and then put it all back in a box and put it on a shelf.

17:49And she is a mom of four and a teacher as well. And so she's, you know, done lots of puzzles and such. She said, oh, this is the perfect idea, life-size animal puzzles. And I'm assuming these are sold on your website? Yeah. So we started out fulfilling orders through our website, realized that since nobody knew who we were, we weren't getting many sales on our website. And once we got started on Amazon, which was about June of 2024, we just moved all our sales there for simplicity and sales tax remittances and things like that. So right now we have a website and our products link all to our Amazon accounts.

18:28Yeah. And tell us a little bit about how the business is doing. Give us a sense of what your sales are right now. Sure. So 2024, since starting on Amazon in June, we made about$30 ,000 dollars in revenue. And then this year, we're projected to definitely be more than that. I don't know if it will quite hit double that. It's kind of hard to tell because some of our additional products just came out right toward the end of quarter four last year, and we're just starting puzzle season. So it's hard to get an accurate estimate of what we think we might be projected to do this year. But all right, before we dive in a little bit more, tell us your question.

19:06Yes. So my question is, our three puzzle brands all share the same heart, but they have distinct personalities. As we create a parent company to tie them together, I'm wondering what's more effective for social media strategy? Is it one unified account under the parent brand or separate accounts that let each brand speak directly to its audience? And just to be clear, you've got the animals, puzzles, and then you mentioned trivia puzzles. Yes. So we have these life-size animal trivia puzzles. Then we have a laugh with lifeline that incorporates jokes as well. And then learn about life that's just trivia on a variety of topics.

19:46And you're promoting all of these separately, separate social media channels to separate audiences. Currently, yes. Even though there's a connecting component that they all have a conversational element integrated in them and they all have the same high quality standards and everything else. I'm not sure, do I just stick with each focus of each of those brands, or do I put them all in one where it's easier to find, but maybe it looks a little bit more jumbled? All right. I want to bring Todd Graves in here. You guys have mastered social media. It's amazing with Canes. So thoughts, questions for Valerie?

20:22Yeah. So Valerie, when you said it's distinct audiences between the three brands, right? And so if you have three different social channels, I mean, literally, are they separate voices? So I mean, are you having, what's to say, for example, if you had some influencers, would they be like that? Are you marketing them very differently? Or are you just showing your product to the different audiences, but it resonates because they're into animals or into laughter or whatnot? I think it's more the latter. I mean, I've had some influencers. I've had some homeschool moms and homeschool influencers on the one channel.

20:56And then I've had some people who are big into maybe speed puzzling or thousand piece puzzle collectors who have shown our product on some of the other lines. But I can't say that overall we've had any huge push that totally pulls us away from puzzling in general. Okay, so I'll just give you some experiences. I mean, look, I think we're pretty good at social media for canes, but that's what I know. We feed the people, and our customer demographics range from old elderly couples that like to come into the restaurant because we're reasonably priced, and I like our friendly crew, and look, everybody likes fried chicken, right, and cane sauce.

21:34But then that goes down all the way to kids, right? And so there are social media. I don't do different social media, you know, handles to where you go to different different type deals. We only have it's three. One is Raising Cain's corporate account. One is mine. Right. The founder. And one is my dog, Cain Three. Right. Our mascot. But we collab constantly and we reach sports fans. We have people that love, you know, actors and actresses that are going around with people that like all forms of music. right? We have people with so many different interests. What you're uniting forces are people that like puzzles and like to have fun, right?

22:12And like to do things. I think the people that would like the trivia based or the fun side would also love to see some beautiful puzzles of bison that are life size. I think all that can go together and actually creates more content for an interesting content for your audience versus I'm just watching the one that done with the whole homeschool group. And this is educational. They're missing out on seeing the bison. They're missing out on seeing these other ones. And I think the core goes together. And I think when you can focus on that, it's kind of more of a win for everybody. And I also think expands your sales because I think they look across your products and say, hey, you know, it would be fun for us to do that tabletop puzzle.

22:47And let's buy that. That's just my opinion. Thank you. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, social media isn't necessarily about products. It's about stories, right? Right. People people are looking for like a vibe or a personality. But I think what you are selling is an emotional thing. It's an experience. You're selling families together, gathering together. It's family time. Right. That's that's what your brand is. That's what your product is. It's not puzzles. It's not even the 10 other things you might make. It's the time that a parent and a child or parents are going to take to gather around and make this stuff and be together.

23:26And that's really what your brand is, right? And that's why you want to speak about that with one voice. Does that make sense? Yes, yes. Yeah, and then you can also, you focus your, you know, like content, right? You can focus on interesting things that all puzzle people and all families like together. Like let's say, who's the fastest puzzle builder, right? Takes your thousand piece puzzle and does it and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Whatever that puzzle is, it's about that's exciting that someone did it. As a family, let's try to do it quicker, right? Valerie had so-and-so on and showed us how to do puzzles quick.

23:56And that's unified across all your audience. And that's also, too, what people start sharing. So I'd hate you to do that one idea on the 1 ,000 puzzle thing that goes to the one audience. And then the animal lovers didn't ever see that, right? Yes. You want that. And then engagement goes. And you've got more people talking about it and more people that will then start following you, right? And then when they share it and they engage it and they comment on it, that's when the algorithms really kick up. Oh, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I even noticed you've got different websites for Laugh With Life and Learn About Life.

24:25And I mean, it would just save you time and money and just brain space by just putting it all under one. I would put everything on the main site, the largest life, or pick one, whatever one has the most traffic. And you sell everything there. You make that your brand. Yeah, that makes a lot more sense in terms of ease as well as more people getting to see what we have to offer. when I focus on the common elements and common themes of puzzling and togetherness, it flows. Yeah. Yeah. It flows throughout all of them. Right. And it's like I said, you know, people should know what you stand for. Right.

25:03We're puzzle people. And we're really about family spending time together, doing something very fun that goes through that. That's our core. Right. And then your products and you can keep adding products. Right. Other puzzles might hit another group of fan base and things like that. But it's one voice that goes through. And also too is you know holiday time's coming up so i'm already thinking about how do i order your puzzles right but if i have one place to go look at it i got a nephew that's so into sports right but i also have a daughter that's so into animals so like a life-size bison on the floor that's going to be a blast but if i had to go to different places and look at that i couldn't order for the five or six people i want to do and the people that when they all come to the house they can all open the different puzzles and i got you know people that are into trivia and all that they can all we can all like do all those together yeah but we had one spot and i bought six things versus all I knew about the one.