Advice Line with Chris Riccobono of UNTUCKit

25:26And then when she could have gotten help, she wouldn't. So that's where it started from there. We, we realized, you know what, this is something different. This is unique. We learned about how many people are living alone in the country. Now over 17 million seniors live alone. And we realized we could do something focused for them. And it's just been the little engine that could from there. Cool. All right. I imagine, Preet, that there are probably some competitors out there, some maybe slightly similar services. Tell me a little bit about how you guys are doing. I mean, where are your sales at right now?

25:59Yeah, we're in the mid six figures, right around$400 ,000 in annual revenue. growing this year should grow 70 % or more. And that's subscription revenue. Okay, that's great. And how much does subscription cost? The subscription is$20 a month. And I imagine most people who are sort of interested in this are interested for their parents or elderly relatives. It's definitely that. In a lot of cases, it's the senior themselves who chooses for it because they want to stay living independently. that they don't want to be in a position where they become burdened. It's an easy, light touch way so that way they can keep their independence.

26:42Right. Okay. Before we bring on Chris, tell us your question for us. Yeah. We're doing all right, but we really want to grow awareness of snug. There's all the time we hear about people who say, you know what, I wish I had known about this years ago because my mom could have used it. Or somebody who says, you know, I had to give up my dog because I was worried about what was going to happen to them if something happened to me. And so we just need to really grow awareness about what we do. And how do we do that with the targeted budget? Not even just customer acquisition, but just awareness of the solution.

27:16Right. All right. Chris, I want to bring you in. Please say hello to Preet and his product is called Snug. And, you know, you're dealing with an older customer base, right? You're basically targeting this to people over 65. How do you increase awareness? How do you reach these folks? How are you doing, Preet? Congratulations so far. Nice to meet you. Thank you. Do you have any marketing budget? And what is it? And what are you doing? Yeah, we do have marketing budget. We can this year easily deploy up to$50 ,000, could go more if we need to. But right now, most of our growth comes from the combination of Google and word of mouth.

27:54I would say about 70 % is just word of mouth. We are seeing some success on actually sponsoring YouTubers who are senior YouTubers, but we are constantly trying new things to try to find that channel that'll help us break out. So yeah, one thing that I like is, believe it or not, is radio. Radio reads targeting on Sirius or Spotify where you hit a massive amount of people and you can really target your demographic and you can get a nice 30-second read that tells the whole story. A notch above that is you go on like a, I'm not afraid of politics, just so you know when I market. So this is not my, I'm not going to say one way or the other who I would choose politically, but you go on these shows, like whether it's a CNN host, a Fox News host, or who have these radio shows, people listen to those, these people who follow these political commentators are obsessed with them.

28:52This is the type of app I feel like that if you get to the right person, there's no reason not to have it. I could say it if my dad was alone right now, I would sign him up. Why not? To me, it's a great product. It's not a hard sell. So now you just got to get it out there. And obviously going on paid social, which is the normal way you would go, I don't think this product works on there. I just don't think that's the best way. It's tough to create an ad, right? So I think telling the story in 30 seconds, whether I think it's start with these reads on Spotify or on Sirius where you can just hit tons of people.

29:26And the next level would be you pick one guy and I would almost do both in separate times so you can measure them. You pick one guy. Yes, a little bit more expensive, might be 700 a read, you know, do three weeks worth. If the guy's passionate about that, it will work. And if it doesn't work, then you learn something. It's important to know why isn't it working, right? It's not wasted money. Okay, the message is being told wrong. If that didn't work and that didn't bring in sales, then I got to tweak the messaging. I think it's great advice. And you probably came to the conclusion that social media really isn't where you want to deploy your cash because your product is solving an emotional problem, right?

30:07This is a trust-based product. And a trust-based product is distributed through trusted people, intermediaries, right? So I would look at terrestrial radio rather than Spotify or even Sirius, because I think a lot of seniors are listening to terrestrial radio, like the Dave Ramseys or the Mark Levins and, you know, Sean Hannity's of the world, Brian Kilmeade's, whoever it is. I mean, and by the way, that's expensive. There's no question it's not, you know, it's a bargain. But to me, that's a starting point. But the other thing, and this is this is interesting, because I, I recently was talking with a PR rep.

30:45And, you know, I was asking, like, what, what matters now, you know, and 10, 15, 20 years ago, matter was an article in New York Times, right? Or if you're trying to come up with a new product, cosmetics, you go to like Vogue or Cosmopolitan. Today, it's, of course, it's all online, right? It's all social media. In your case, it's somewhat different. Like you may actually really benefit from having an article in a local paper or a spot on local TV news and your story, the story of what you built is really compelling. Like I would think about really putting some time and energy into pitching local TV reporters and local newspaper reporters or community publications to write about this thing, how this happened.

31:33How did you start this business? What was the idea behind it? Now, you really want to also aim the message at the adult children, right? And that's where some social may be interesting, right? But I still think earned media is a really interesting thing to explore because it's like, as Chris said with the radio, it's almost like an old school way of doing things. And in your case, it may be the sweet spot. Okay, thank you. Yeah, we've definitely seen earned media have a lot of impact for us. We were in NPR a few months ago, and we're still up significantly year over year off of that. And we've also seen some success with ARP before.

32:15You made a good point. You almost want to test whether it's the 40-year-old per kid or the actual. A lot of these older people are very stubborn, and they don't actually want that type of service. So it's almost more that it's the children. So then I don't think that changes the game with radio. You might just want to check more stuff that I market for Untuckit, which is sports radio and stuff like just normal people listening in. Yes. And then, yeah, I've never been able to figure this part out, but it's like if you can find a way to get to every geriatric doctor, they're going to want to provide it to their customer.

32:48You can put those brochures in there. They'll talk about it to their patient. But that's challenging because you've got to have kind of a sales force. But it's that type of product that you have people who will want to share it, right? Because if you're in that position, a church or a doctor, it's beneficial for these elderly people. Yeah. Can I ask you all one more question related to that? Sure. Sure. So a lot of folks don't want to use something like a life alert or something that physically signals a lowering independence. And what we haven't done so far is sort of message, let's call it against life alert or as an alternative to it.

33:29I personally get fired up about it because life alert hasn't really innovated since the eighties. And when you set up with them, It's a three-year contract unless you die. Yet they still have massive brand awareness. On the other hand, though, you know, if you do it that way, you're sort of advertising for them versus taking through these trusted channels. How do you all think about that? I don't think this is necessarily a competitor to Life Alert or an alternative. I think it can be. It can be, right? But Life Alert, famously, I've fallen, I can't get up, right? I think that's what it is, right?

34:05That is unfortunately 100%. It was a classic commercial. It was parodied. I mean, it's like, I'm not surprised it's a huge brand and they probably haven't had to innovate very much. It's very simple. You push a button, I fall and I can't get up and you press a button. That is a product that probably a lot of people like and want to use. This to me could be complimentary in the sense that it is more like, this is just a daily check-in. It's different. Life Alert is something you only use in an emergency. This is just daily reassurance. And I think you really want to position it that way because the life alert, if you got a life alert, that's a, you know, the anxiety just kind of ratchets it up, right?

34:43You're like, oh my God, I got a life alert. If you had a seizure and you're out of it, you're not going to be pushing the life alert. You could be laying there alive. You know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of reason. You got to be pretty with it to press life alert. You're just failing. You can't get up. That's kind of, or you have chest pain. But I think it's more the examples that I read about with you are like post-seizure or maybe you're just out of it for whatever reason and you're not thinking about things. Recovering from surgery, whatever. Yeah. We just shared a story of somebody who had a low blood sugar attack and Snug got them paramedics.

35:13So, yeah. Okay. Thank you. I love it. It's awesome. It's a really cool idea. Congrats, Preet Anand. The brand is called Snug. Good luck. Thank you for calling in. Thank you. Good luck, Preet. All right. We're going to take another quick break, but we'll be right back with another caller. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to The Advice Line right here on How I Built This Lab.

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38:11Welcome back to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz, and today we're taking your calls with Untuckit co-founder Chris Riccobono. Chris, what do you say? Ready for the next call? Let's do it. All right, let's bring our next caller. Welcome to The Advice Line. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business, please. Hello, Guy and Chris. I'm Derek, and I'm calling in from Arlington, Virginia. My company is Hockey Ninja, and we are a hockey equipment company. We specialize in hockey visors, the half shields you see the pro players wear, and for our customers that want a little more protection, our full-face titanium hybrids.

38:48Awesome. Welcome to the show, Derek. So visors, I'm assuming, I think when I watch hockey, does anyone play with an open-faced helmet anymore? I think there are a few players that are still grandfathered in, but there was a rule passed, it's probably 10 or 15 years now, that you're no longer allowed to play without a visor. Right, because a puck hits you in the forehead. Yeah, it can be devastating. Right, yeah. And what, I mean, if the players in the NHL are already playing with a visor, tell me who are your customers? You know, my customers range from beer leaguers, you know, hockey actually is a growing sport again, to high school players, even youth players at this point.

39:27The majority of the business right now, especially in the U.S., players care a little bit more about their dental work. And so the full face shields are a bigger part of the business. We started out with visors and have kind of added. We started with three products. Now we're probably close to 30. But the full face shield is the core part of the business right now. The full face shield. And just describe what it looks like. It's not like a metal cage, right? It's a clear plastic. Yeah, and so up until recently, you've had a choice of the full metal cage, which I never loved having the bars, you know, two inches from my eyesight.

39:58It was kind of tough. Right. Or you had the kind of what we called the fishbowl. It was an all-plastic piece, not great airflow. They tended to fog. And so this is kind of a marriage of those two things. We have a titanium lower cage, and we have a replaceable really high-end plastic visor. And you can even wear that visor as a, you know, the replacement visor can be worn as a visor only. Got it. Okay. Tell me what makes your product different. I mean, this exists, it's out there. Why would somebody buy from Hockey Ninja versus, I don't know, the big brands that are out there? I think first and foremost, for us, it's safety.

40:37We import Macrolon, which is a Lexan plastic from Bayer Material Sciences in Germany. And so this is a material that's used by Audi and Bugatti for the headlamps, and it's known for impact resistance. It's known for optical clarity. And my background on the consumer electronics side of things is more so on the optics side of that. And so it's something I know a little bit about. Also, most testing bodies will test those visors, the other brands, at 65 to 75 miles an hour. We test ours at 120, which is faster than any pro slap shot that's ever been clocked. So from a safety standpoint, optical clarity, our anti-fog coatings, I think, are second to none.

41:16You know, that's a challenge with this type of shield. If you play, especially in the summertime, in an indoor rink, there's a lot of humidity. And if you don't have a good product, it's going to fog on you. And that doesn't end so well. So, and I'm looking at your site and these are not crazy expensive. I mean, some of them are 50 bucks, 79, 80 bucks. So you mentioned that you were in the industry, you focused on optics. Is this your full-time job now, what you're doing at Hockey Ninja? Right now, Hockey Ninja is a side hustle. Okay. You know, that's something I think I have in common with Chris.

41:47I know for a long time, even into the seven figures, that you were still working your job at GE. And I think that was kind of a relief to hear because sometimes I feel like, you know, I'm maybe not a true entrepreneur because I haven't gone out on a limb and just kind of thrown caution to the wind and gone down that path. But I actually still love my full-time job, but Hockey Niche is my baby and I want to grow this thing. Awesome. Okay. Before we dive in further, what's your question for us? being that it is a side hustle and my time is somewhat limited do i go down that path of leaning heavily into social media which we've talked to you guys have talked about a lot on the show already um but you know that's not my forte or because we recently received nhl clearance on several of our products do i go down that path and and go after those equipment managers and those teams and and try to grow that side of the business and maybe get a player involved Okay, interesting.

42:39Before I forget, what are you guys doing in sales, roughly? So right now we're averaging around 250K. We've gone as high as 400, and that's kind of leveled out a little bit. But I think we can easily do a 10X or more if we get the right formula. All right, Chris, I want to bring you in. Derek is trying to figure out, at this point, do social media, do they focus on social media, do they work with a player or some kind of hockey influencer? And also, like you, I mean, I still think about the story that you sit on an airplane and you're like a medical sales device guy and you're with your colleagues and they open up the airplane magazine and there you are in an ad for Untuckin'.

43:18Kentucky and they're like, dude, what are you doing in my airplane magazine? I love that story. It's so funny. So you were like burning the candle, right, at both ends for a long time. So you can probably relate to Derek in a sense on this. Oh yeah, Derek, congratulations. Nice to meet you. Let me ask you a question. Have any professional players ever worn this product? Right now, there are not any NHL players. We just got a clearance. And so I didn't want to approach equipment managers in the middle of the playoffs. They've got so much going on. Those guys never sleep. And so we were kind of waiting for the right time.

43:50There is an equipment managers conference coming up here shortly that we were going to, we've been to before, but it wasn't as fruitful as we'd hoped because we didn't have clearance yet. We had a player maybe seven or eight years ago, pre-COVID, we had a player all lined up, but we didn't have the clearance. And so that's kind of where we are right now. I think with equipment, you got to get it on guys. That's just my quick thought because if my son was 17 and you're like, Hey, give it to your son. I'd be like, who's wearing it? You know, because it's safe around safety. So it's really important.

44:21So do you have, do you have any money to, to pay, to pay someone or what's your like? Yeah, we do have a budget for that. And originally we did find a player and actually our whole thing was we were going to lease them a Range Rover. That was, that was going to be our, our payment to them. They were going to get a nice car out of it. We had a two year deal lined up and that's kind of where we were and I don't know that that wouldn't be a great idea now but you tell me well the first thing is if you do bring on a player you're going to still need a budget to market it right because that you're going to use him in your ads right he's not just going to miraculously make the product sell so you got to look at it like that I mean I do that we do this all the time we're just running a great ad with Garrett Cole right now Jacob Truba from the Rangers is also doing something.

45:08Brock Bowers from the Raiders. So I'm very familiar with it. Yeah. The other thing I want to say was that I don't know this sector, right, this category, but if there are competitors out there, it seems like your advantages are significant. You did a lot of work in optics, as you mentioned. So you've got that credibility. It sounds like you're bringing in really high quality. I mean, if it's used on Audis and Porsches, the same material, and people are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for those cars and now you're using it in the visors that to me that that means something i mean these are premium materials you know if i had to pick between uh you know social media or whatever and then on to a human i would definitely choose the human and and and not necessarily you know i mean garrett garrett cole is still an amazing pitcher even though you know he's like 30 34 35 he's probably expensive for you guys, I imagine, Chris.

46:01So I wouldn't go to NHL stars, right? I would go for maybe, you know, you mentioned equipment managers, but maybe kind of a player who's just not that well known, right? You know, there are plenty of players in the NHL who are, they're not getting the same kinds of endorsement deals, but still might get some playing time. Because you want to see it, I agree with Chris, you want to see it on the player. But of course, you want to be very strategic about how many dollars you put behind that. Sure. We do have some ins in that space. Like right now, we're the main visor sponsor for a pro three-on-three league, which this summer there's a World Cup in Europe, which we will see some former NHL players wearing our product.

46:43There's also the U.S. season that's about to kick off that will have some pretty high-end players, not NHL, but some fairly well-known players, and they'll all be wearing our brand. there's another if you're telling me that all players wear them and that yours is better than what they're wearing now if those two things are true then i might even go a totally different route and go to someone big and give them 25 of the company you're going to say no way well no i'd be open to that and that mean if you can convince them if jack hughes was sitting right here and Jack Hughes and I had him here with me and I said, you got to try this thing.

47:22It is better than what you're wearing. And he puts it on. He's like, by the way, even if it's equal, I'll throw that aside. But if it's better and he's like, this is awesome. I need it. You want 25 % of the company and I'll give you a, you know, 50 grand or whatever you can afford. And maybe we can bring his brothers in too. Yeah. Yeah. But that's my, like my buddy had a cooling spray and he was almost, almost did a deal with Venus Williams or Serena who wanted 50%. And I was like, give her 80%. Like that once you, if it's just because the products that like a shirt does, that doesn't work a product that you're using.

47:53People really believe Jack Hughes is skating in that and starts to promote it amongst his friends. And is it that, that can grow a ton. So I think Guy's point is one way you go about a bunch, you get a bunch of, of guys who are, and by the way, NHL, you're in a great place. They're not expensive anyway, right? They're just not what you have to pay them compared to these other guys. You go to guys who are maybe, you know, the third, fourth line, you can get them for nothing. That's one route. The other route is you get one guy, you give him equity, and he is now part of your brand, and he's going to promote it because he thinks this brand can grow to a$30 million business or whatever number you think can grow to.

48:30That's great advice. I really appreciate it. Yeah, I love that. And then down the road, you know, who knows? Maybe baseball will require advisors for batters at some point. You know, you never know. Well, it's true. You can transition that into anything. Ski goggle. If you're good at that thing that you do, then that's how you grow it even further. Yeah. The brand is called Hockey Ninja. Derek, thanks so much for calling in. Good luck. Thank you, guys. Take care. Yeah, thank you. Good luck, Derek. Chris, before I let you go, a question that I've been asking everybody who comes back on the show, which is if you could go back to when you started this, like knowing what you know now and all the experience you have as an operator and as a leader, what advice do you think would have been helpful?

49:13What do you wish you would have known back when you started building Untucket that might have been helpful for you? all this stuff is really hard like really really hard and listen it's still going wrong a lot of things for me um you just can't get upset about it you can't get down about it you can't get depressed about it you got to just kind of keep moving forward you're gonna have all all the advice we just gave to implement all that is really challenging i know they're gonna hang up all these people like i used to do and be like love the idea but how am i gonna do that what do I do? Where do I go?

49:46You just got to find a way and realize that it's not going to be easy. You might go spend that money on marketing and lose the seven grand you just raised. Well, you got to figure something else out. I put myself through so much pain and worry and depression because of things going wrong. And now with the new brand, I kind of just shake it off. Like, okay, I was waiting for something like that to happen. So I just wish I enjoyed the journey more. Like what all of these guys are doing. I mean, I love this. Like these are the, just to get to the point where all these guys we just talked to are at, that's admirable number one, and you're way ahead of 99 % of the rest of the world.

50:24So if you fail, even go to the next idea because you clearly have what it takes if you've gotten this far. That's Chris Riccobono, founder of Untucket. Chris, thanks so much for coming back out of the show. Thank you, Guy. I really appreciate it. And by the way, if you haven't heard Chris's original How I Built This episode. You got to go back and check it out. It's such a good episode. We'll put a link to it in the podcast description. And here's one of my favorite moments from that interview. Tell me about that first batch of inventory because, I mean, you say that the shirts were terrible, which is shocking.

50:57I mean, I don't, when it comes off the boat in New York, you open the boxes and what? You see right away that they're not good? Well, actually, when people started wearing them and saying that they now used it for a rag for their car. That's when it really, but you know, it's funny. You know, it's funny. I didn't, we thought through it and said, you know what? We will one day get them back. We'll keep a list of those people and I'm going to lose X amount of customers. I mean, you didn't have a choice. This is entrepreneurialism. You just have to survive.

51:30Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. And by the way, please make sure to check out my newsletter. You can sign up for it for free at GuyRoz.com or on Substack. And of course, if you are working on a business and you'd like to be on this show, send us a one-minute message that tells us a little bit about your business and the questions or issues that you're currently facing, because we would love to try and help you solve them. You can send us a voice memo at hibtid.wondery.com or call us at 1-800-433-1298. Leave a message there and make sure to tell us how to reach you, and we'll put all of this information in the podcast description as well.

52:10This episode was produced by Chris Messini with music composed by Ramtin Arablui. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Anli Huang. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Carla Estevez, J.C. Howard, Catherine Seifer, Casey Herman, Carrie Thompson, Sam Paulson, Neva Grant, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

52:40One more mention for our presenting sponsor, Anthropic. Claude is built for people who like to keep pulling on the thread, the research, the planning, the questions, the follow-through, until the work starts to make sense. So try Claude for the next problem worth solving.