Advice Line with Dave Weiner of Priority Bicycles

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30:27Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz and my guest today is Priority Bicycle's founder and CEO, Dave Wiener. Dave, you ready for the next caller? Let's do it. All right. Let's bring our next caller. Welcome to the advice line. You're on with Dave Wiener from Priority Bicycles. Welcome to the show. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business. Hi. My name is Alex Plant. I'm calling from Buffalo, New York. I own Kinloch Farmstead, which is an organic lavender farm, barn, wedding venue, and small batch winery. Awesome. Thanks for calling in.

31:02So, Alex, first of all, where is Cambria, New York? So we are way upstate New York. We're north of Buffalo. So right on the Canadian border. Wow. And you grow lavender there. Yes, we do. Which is obviously growing right now. We're talking in the middle of the summer. Yeah, it's the season. Harvest season right now. It's the season. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about the business. You grow lavender. And what else do you do there on the farm? So we have a 30-acre farm. We grow lavender on part of it. We just started growing grapes and making wine as well. Nice. And most of the business is focused on hosting weddings.

31:38So we have a beautiful barn on the property where we host weddings and private events. And how long have you been running this business? We bought the farm in, well, the farmland in 2017, and we opened to the public in 2019. So seven years. And what were you doing before? So I came up with this business idea when I was living in Brooklyn. I was on maternity leave for my first child. I was working in advertising sales, and I just couldn't foresee my life raising kids in Brooklyn, working long hours, commuting. So on maternity leave, I made this business plan to have a farm, which at that point wasn't feasible at all.

32:18I guess I just manifested it. And it's kind of a marriage of, I grew up in the restaurant industry. My grandfather owned Scottish restaurants. So I grew up around weddings and catering. But also as a hobby, I would make a lot of like, I had an Etsy shop. I made candles and lotions and stuff like that. So it was kind of a marriage of the two things. And then cut to, we ended up moving to Buffalo. My husband was transferred for work and I was like, I'm buying a farm. I'm doing it. Wow. And here I am. And here you are. Okay. So you've got the farm and I'm assuming most of the revenue comes from events and weddings and things like that?

32:57Correct. Yeah. Yeah. And tell me a little bit about how the business operates, Because there's a lot of snow in the winter. So is it year-round or what? Yeah, we are seasonal. So we're only open from May to October. And that was kind of a big part of the reason I wanted to do this business was to be around my kids more. So I thought at the time, oh, I'll have the winters off. I'll be with my family more. I'll make my own hours. It'll be flexible. So it was sort of a way to run my own business but also be with my family more. And did that happen? Has that happened? At first, it did. But now as I've grown and luckily become more successful and we're fully booked and making wine and selling out of products, I'm working all the time.

33:40And that's my big issue. Year round. Yeah, because I'm so busy in the summer that I don't have time to get to some of the back end stuff like paperwork, employee stuff, like there's so much back end that I have to do in the winter. And give me a sense of where you guys are. I mean, are you doing over half a million a year, for example? Yeah, we're about half a million a year. And what is the biggest sort of time suck for you? Because, I mean, the answer often is, well, bring a couple more people on to help you out and things like that. Yeah. So I have nine employees. And I keep delegating things out.

34:21But somehow I'm still sucked in. So right now, my biggest time suck is the weddings because, you know, brides and decorating and, you know, we provide the bar. And unfortunately, in my situation, I really enjoy the farming aspect, which was shocking for even me. So I would rather be out in the fields, but I'm really sucked into the wedding piece the most. And so even though you've got nine people, it sounds like a lot of your time is spent managing those people and or products. Exactly. Having nine employees is its own job. Right. So it's a lot. Okay. So before we dive in, what's your question for us?

35:00My question is, as a small business owner, when do you decide to stay small versus going the next step and really going bigger? Because right now there's so many opportunities for me to grow. Like our lavender products sell out all the time. We're fully booked with weddings. So it's so easy for me to scale, but I'm at a burnout point at this point and I never see my kids, you know. So how do you kind of decide as a small business owner to just stay small or to go the next step and, you know, go all in? All right. Lots to think about here. Dave Wiener, I want to bring you in. Great idea. Let's leave Brooklyn.

35:40Let's see the high stress of Brooklyn. And then we'll have a more manageable, sustainable life. But actually, it sounds like Alex has recreated that same stress on the farm. Exactly. I'm looking at the website and what a beautiful property you have. And I love how multifaceted your business is. You've got so many aspects to it. And so no wonder you're stressed. There's a lot going on. Yeah. Yeah. You could certainly if you wanted to, and I don't think you want to, you could just focus on the events and that would be fine. But it sounds like, you know, that you want to do more and that's exciting.

36:25And I think that there's no escaping the fact that when you operate a small business, it's hard and it's stressful. You need a big tolerance for stress, but you also need the vision of a pathway to grow, to lessen the stress that you're currently experiencing. It sounds like most of your business today is in the event space. Is that correct? Yes. And you have nine people, which is something. That's a lot. Is there a way to remove yourself from the event space so that you can focus on the products and start to grow that the way that you've grown events? Yeah, that's, I mean, I've considering hiring a manager to manage all the events.

37:11My hesitation with that is I have hired nine people and I'm at least trying to delegate to them. And I still feel like I'm sucked in a lot. So I'm eager to grow and I'm excited about growth and expanding and scaling and selling our products online and stuff like that. But I feel worried that I'm just continuing to add more to my plate, you know? Yeah. I mean, management is one of the hardest things about running a strong business. Very, very hard, right? And part of the challenge for founders is when you are a perfectionist and you listen, you've got weddings. This is the most important day of someone's life.

37:56And I imagine you take on a lot of stress around those weddings. You want it to be perfect because those families are expecting it to be perfect. And so there's a lot of pressure. I would do a couple of exercises and you've probably done versions of this. And what I would do is I would just run a test, right? Like list all of your revenue streams just on paper, lavender, wedding, wine, soap, Whatever you have, right? And then for each one of those things, right, what is the percentage of the total revenue? And then the percentage of time or energy it takes you, the gross margin, and then how much joy each one of those things brings you.

38:39And it's not a perfect science, right, because, you know, time, energy and revenue can figure out gross margins. But the joy and stress is important, right? If something is bringing you a lot of stress, but it's only bringing in, you know, 5 % of revenue, maybe it's not worth doing. It sounds like, you know, I'm mainly hearing I kind of don't really want this to continue to take over my life. Right. That's correct. I really like that idea of an exercise because that's something I definitely struggle with is I created this business to be happy and be with my kids more. And I find I'm spending so much time with the weddings when I really enjoy making the products and I enjoy making the wine and the lavender.

39:32But that's where I get to spend the least amount of my time. So I like that exercise of kind of figuring out. And you're also right about being a perfectionist. So part of the reason I bottleneck every single wedding decision is because I'm a perfectionist and I'm too afraid to let go. So I guess I just have to kind of just swallow that pill. Yeah, I mean, I think, Dave, and I think you can speak to this for sure, which is because I know I've spent time with you and your kids. And I mean, not every business should be scaled. And in fact, many, many businesses that I know of are far more successful than massively scaled businesses.

40:14They're profitable. They're sustainable. And they enable the founders, the owners to have a sustainable lifestyle, right? I mean is turning this into a million-dollar-a-year business or a$2 million-a-year business going to qualitatively improve your life? Probably not. I mean I don't know. Only you can answer that question. Is it – if you're doing$300 ,000 a year but you have 30 percent of your time back, is that more worth it? And I think a lot of people might say yes in that case if you can afford to do that, right? I mean that – to me, lifestyle is definitely an important consideration when you're thinking about what to do with your business, right?

41:01I mean, Dave, you – I think you have figured out how to manage that in a way that enables you to also be a parent and a dad and be present. Yeah, that's a great point, Guy. When we started Priority, I was working every night, every weekend. And to Alex, to what you're doing, making sure everything was perfect. It took until we got to a larger size that I could start to really hire the people that could take things off my plate and that I could say, I'm not going to micromanage this. I'm going to let them run with this. I hired the right people. They know what to do. and I'm going to monitor the data the way that the guy is saying you need to set up the data and make sure it works and then monitor the data and hire the right people to do it.

41:47It sounds like you have a really successful event planning business. You need to, if you want to grow the other side of the product business, you got to find a way financially to hire the right person or people or promote the right person or people to do that work so that you can focus on the next version of the business and at the same time finding the important time to be a parent. Yeah. And also I would add to that, Dave, that deciding to sort of pull back a little bit and slow things down doesn't mean you can't ramp it up again in the future, right? You can still set out a goal to grow the business in a smart way, you know, with different kinds of help, with better pricing, with a, you know, certain plan for hiring and outsourcing.

42:36But you may not want to do that for two or three. How old are your kids now? Nine and seven. Yeah. So you may not want to do that for a couple of years. You know, look, I'm soon I'm going to have kids at a house, right? My teenagers are going to be gone. I'm going to have a lot more time on my hands. Right. So, you know, your priorities change and your time horizons change. And so it doesn't mean that you can't scale this up again. You can ramp it up. I'm sure there aren't a whole lot of places around you that are doing what you're doing. But it's probably worthwhile thinking, how do you keep it sustainable, manageable, and allow you to be a sane person?

43:17And like any parent, you probably want to spend time with your kids. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate that. And I think just thinking about, I've just got excited over the last seven years and it's growing, and it's growing and I've just kept going with it. And yeah, now here I am working seven days a week. So growth doesn't always necessarily mean more profit or more happiness. So I can just think about my priorities. Yeah. But focus, I would focus on what is sort of bringing in the revenue and how much time it takes, the margins on that, and then how much stress it brings you. you know? Yeah.

43:57And if you're looking at that and you're saying, okay, this just doesn't make, it's going to be clear what doesn't make sense. Yeah. All right. I appreciate it. Cool. The business is called Kinloch Farmstead. Alex Plant, thanks for calling in. Thank you. Good luck. This is such a hard question. You know, as parents, our most meaningful investment is raising kind and capable children. And at the same time, as an entrepreneur, all you want to do is grow your business. And there's so much enjoyment in that. And it's a It's a hard struggle. It's a hard struggle. And look, I think when you're running a business that doesn't depend entirely on earning a certain amount, if you have the luxury and the ability to scale it back, to have more time with your family, to me, it's a no-brainer.

44:43Agreed. All right. We're going to take another quick break, but we'll be right back with one more 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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45:39Welcome back to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. And today I'm taking your calls with Priority Bicycles founder and CEO Dave Wiener. Dave, let's get back to it and take another call. Put them on. All right, let's bring in our final caller. Welcome to The Advice Line. You're on with Dave Wiener. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business. Hi, Guy. Hi, Dave. I'm Sabrina Garcia, the founder of Idaho Barkery and calling from Boise, Idaho. We make plant-based hypoallergenic dog treats inspired by my own dog, Rocky, who has food allergies.

46:10Alongside our wholesale and online business, we also offer a customizable branding opportunity by stamping any logo or design onto a clean ingredient dog treat. Okay. Welcome to the show. Thank you for calling in, Sabrina. What kind of dog do you have? I have a lab mix. I adopted him in 2019, and he's over 100 pounds. Wow. 100 pounds? Yes. That's a big dog, man. My dog's 55 pounds. One of my dogs. My other one's 10 pounds. Kiki's little, but our big dog is 55. Wow. And she's a powerful dog. So, okay, so these are dog treats that you make in Boise, Idaho. And tell me a little bit about that. You stamp them into shapes of a logo or you stamp the logo onto just like a round bone shape of the dog, of the treat?

47:01Yeah, exactly. So we use an in-house 3D printer to make custom dog stamps like you would imagine a cookie cutter, but it has a stamp on it as well, which allows us to make literally anything you can dream of. So any logo, any design. And what's the shape of the dog trees? Is it round? Is it square? It can be anything. Yeah. Oh, I see. It can be anything. You can stamp out from, I'm thinking like sugar cookies. You can just create a stamp. Exactly. Custom made stamps. So it could say like Tesla or Coca-Cola, like you could just have dog treats in the shape of those logos. So that's cool. And tell me how you start, like tell me how this business started.

47:45So I started this business in 2020 as a side hustle, again, really for my own dog who has significant food allergies. I found a recipe that really worked for him. very minimal ingredient, very clean, didn't have any meat product in it. And my friends started to love it so much that I started to offer it at farmer's markets and kind of grew from there, now offering it in wholesale businesses in Idaho. And what was your main hustle at the time? I'm a pharmacist. Nice. Okay. I'm looking at the website. So you've got peanut butter flavor, You've got pumpkin flavor. Is that right? Those two flavors?

48:26Yep, just those two flavors. So we really try to capitalize on the customizable ability of making dog treats and keep our recipes really simple. Yeah. These are vegan dog treats. Yes. Wow. I've heard that pumpkin is good for dogs. It is. I didn't know about peanut butter. Yeah, it's a great protein source as well, the peanut butter. I see. Okay. Okay. So tell me, before we dive in further, tell me what your question is for us. Yeah. So we've actually seen a big demand locally from some dog-friendly hotels and resorts for custom dog treats. And we'd really love to lean into this side of the business because it seems to be what our customers are asking for.

49:06So my question is, what strategies do you recommend to help us identify and connect with larger corporate brands or hospitality groups that might want custom branded dog treats? Got it. And just to be clear, you're selling this only direct-to-consumer to your website right now? So we actually sell wholesale. So through, we have about 65 stores in Idaho that we sell through. We also sell online and then we have a bunch of partners who are like local resorts that are dog friendly in Sun Valley that want just something that's unique for their dogs that visit the hotels. Nice. Okay, cool. Dave Wiener, I want to bring you in here.

49:45um it's as i don't think you don't have you're in new york city you don't have any dogs it's hard to have dogs in new york city unless they're tiny yeah i wish we did but no no yard means no dog for us yeah um but you know i i really sabrina what a i'm looking at the website what a great product in in terms of the health of the dog and and the customizable aspect i mean i love what you're doing. The first thing that comes to my mind when I'm looking at this is the journey we went on when we started selling to consumers and then hotels became very interested. Now between hotels and corporate campuses, we have over a thousand locations using our bikes, which is amazing.

50:29It's an amazing revenue stream. And in addition to an amazing way for consumers to learn about our product in these hotels or corporate campuses. The first step for us, it took us a while to figure this out, was we had a website sort of like yours where we sold to consumers and we sold to corporate campuses and hotels. And at some point we realized that our website was very consumer focused and that a hotel buyer, for example, or a corporate campus buyer was going to Google or or whatever search engine and they were looking for a different they were looking for different keywords they were looking for fleet bicycles not low maintenance commuter bicycles and so where our website was doing very well in the giant algorithms of seo out there for consumer bikes we were not doing really well for fleet bicycles and and so the answer that really helped our our fleet business was to create a whole new website.

51:38We have a, it's priority fleetbicycles.com. That's amazing. And that website talks to fleet buyers, whereas our core website talks to consumers. There's a little link in there that says, Hey, interested in fleet click here, but they're two totally different landing places. And, and the expense to do that is, is not significant. And now you start to get into the algorithm so much differently and and you can speak to the different buyers i think that's a such an issue so she so basically she's got idaho barkery for consumers who want to buy the product and and i have some feedback for your website but then she has a separate one that's really for corporate clients who want to do like custom branded you know dog treats for their employees or their clients or something like that that's it that's amazing i love that feedback.

52:29Yeah, it's such a good point, Dave, because you have, I mean, one of the secrets of your success has been putting priority bikes everywhere. I mean, I go to hotels and it's just like amazing how they're, you know, when hotels have bikes to lend out to their guests, I'm almost always seeing priority bikes. And that's just an amazing sort of promotional opportunity. That's it. It's great for the brand and it is great for sales. So you just got to figure out how to talk to those two different buyers differently. Sabrina, one thing, a couple thoughts for you. I'm looking at your website here. And then if you click, and again, I agree with Dave.

53:13If you can separate those two things, it would make a lot of sense. Just a completely different way. Maybe call it Idaho Barkery, Custom Treats. I don't know. Something. Or maybe even on this website, have a big button that says, are you a company that wants, is looking for, you know, a cool, cool opportunity, logo, I don't know, something like that. Obviously, you want to go, if you're looking to work with bigger brands, you want to think of aligned brands. Like, are there pet friendly hotel chains? I think there are. There must be out there. Are there pet friendly co-working spaces out there?

53:50What are some brands that are big brands that are notable for being pet friendly? Like are there any airlines known for being more pet friendly? Maybe they're interested in working with you. Subscription box companies like Bark. Wouldn't Bark love to sell Bark branded or maybe give away Bark branded dog treats to customers as a gift? I would target 10 to 15 brands that you really want to be in business with. right, that are really just are going to have some kind of alignment with dogs, right? And you find out who is the buyer, or who's the brand manager, who are who is the partnerships manager there, not hard to find by doing some searches on LinkedIn.

54:36And you make a custom box of them, you make Raising Cane's logos, you punch them out, and you send them a box with pre made. I mean, I mean, I'm not saying I want you to do this, but people will send me stuff with how I built this logos on their things, and it always catches my attention, right? And so you mail it to them with a note, and you follow up a week or two later. I mean, that is going to catch someone's eye. And if it's not going to cost you that much to 3D print one of these logos, I would just go for it. I would just try it and see, you know, start with 10 companies you want to target and see what happens.

55:17I love that idea. And I can think of so many brands right now that are dog friendly that we could send custom treats to. So thank you for that advice. And Sabrina, you can even start with an email. You know, for us, we often start with an email that is a mock-up, a photo realistic of what their custom bike would look like with their colors and their logo. and and that's effective now if you can send a heavy mailer that's always the best but you know the cost of producing the the mold and producing the product can get there if you can start with the bag what the bag would look like and what the treat would look like and just email that out i think it would catch a lot of eyes and especially these hotels that are dog friendly and say this would be, you know, the treat in your, in each room.

56:06Yeah. Right. Giving them a visual. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's such an interesting idea. I don't think anyone's doing, doing something like this. It seems like a really interesting opportunity. So I would, I would start there and, and let us know how it goes. I appreciate the advice. Sabrina Garcia of Idaho Barkery. Thanks for calling in. Thank you, Dave. I, um, by the way, Do you guys have, like, are some of the hotels you work with, like Nomad or some of these hotels, do they ever kind of want their logos or their branding on the bikes as well or, like, certain colors? Every single hotel wants, at minimum, their logos.

56:46But we also do custom paint almost every day. And we can do blends of paint and multiple colors and switch out tires and grips. And we really try to specialize the bike, customize the bike into whatever the hotel's identity is. Yeah. So it can make their guests feel special. And then, of course, be a low-maintenance bicycle ride so the bike is very reliable while the guest is on their experience. Yeah, it's cool. I know your guys are at, like, La Meridian Hotels. I've seen that one. I stayed with that one in Santa Monica a couple years ago. You're there, and I think you're in a bunch of hotels in Santa Monica, understandably, because people can ride right to the beach.

57:24and that it just makes sense right that they're going to have their kind of branding on your bikes and it makes sense for both both parties it's a great it's just a great collaboration total win both sides yeah um dave before i let you go um quick question for you that i ask every guest who comes on which is now that you have all this experience under your belt not just with bicycles but your previous experience as a ceo of a small tech company and you know all the challenges there if you go back when you were starting priority right when you were about to started a Kickstarter and it was just stressful and you could give yourself some insight or some advice or some wisdom, what would have been helpful for you to know that you now know?

58:02Guy, I think that earlier in my career, I felt a strong need to be right. Yeah. To have the best ideas, the sharpest insights, get the final word, especially with coming out with an underdog company. I believe that being right was the way you showed your value. Over time I learned in business and being an entrepreneur that being right isn't always the best. And it's sometimes the most knowledgeable and the most confident leaders are the first to admit that they don't know the right answer or that they're even wrong. I think effective leaders know when to slow down, when to listen deeply and understand all the perspectives before acting.

58:48And I think that shift for me from needing to be right to instead striving to get it right has made me a better teammate, a better leader, and a better entrepreneur. Yeah, it's awesome. It's really, really, it's good advice. That's Priority Bicycle's founder and CEO, Dave Weiner. Dave, thanks so much. It's a pleasure to be on with you, Guy. It's great having you. And by the way, if you haven't heard Dave's original How I Built This Episode, please go back and check it out. It's a really great story. Starts with Kickstarter. I mean, a Kickstarter brand. It's awesome. You can find a link to it in the podcast description.

59:26And here is one of my favorite moments from that interview. Now you're a full year end, the business, right? August of 2015. And you had that really successful initial Kickstarter, But a year later, not much, not much action. Yeah. The classic bike was still doing well. So I knew that we had a win that could carry the company, though it couldn't carry me. Yeah. And now I'm pretty deep. I have one successful product. I have one unsuccessful product. I know that the way I can grow this business is simple in theory and hard in reality. I need to have a bike that changes everything.

1:00:36You can send us a voice memo at hibt at id.wondery.com or call us at 1-800-433-1298. You can leave a message there and make sure to tell us how to reach you. And by the way, we'll put all of this in the podcast description as well. This episode was produced by Carla Estevez with music composed by Ramtina Ablui. It was edited by Andrea Bruce. Our engineers were Maggie Luthar and James Willits. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Elaine Coates, Neva Grant, Casey Herman, Chris Massini, Sam Paulson, Catherine Seifer, Carrie Thompson, and Ramel Wood. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.

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