How My Two Brows Grew Into a Life-Changing Brand With 1 Million Sets Shipped

0:00Jason Berndt:If you solve a big enough problem for, let's say, a proper niche of people, then you can create a successful business. Welcome to Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and scaling a business. I'm your host, Serena Smith. Today's guest has no shortage of mental and physical strength. He holds a degree in aeronautical engineering and served for 12 years as a fighter pilot in the Canadian Armed Forces. But in the midst of his training, Jason Berndt lost all of his hair to alopecia, including his eyebrows. Disappointed with the expensive, unrealistic products on the market, he did what any engineer would do.

0:32He built something better.

0:33Jason Berndt:This company was created to help people recapture as much of their facial identity as they can. Since launching the temporary eyebrow tattoo brand My Two Brows in 2021, Jason has shipped over a million brow sets of 275 styles to customers around the world. A lot of people, they email me and they say, hey, you've changed my life, this and that. Jason joins me now to talk problem solving, resilience, and building a brand with true purpose. Welcome to the show, Jason. Thanks, Serena. I'm happy to be here. Really happy to have you. We're going to talk all about the details of MyTubeRows, but I'd be remiss not to dig into your background a little bit.

1:08I mean, years as a fighter pilot is incredibly badass. How did that come to be? And then how did you transition into entrepreneurship?

1:16Jason Berndt:I mean, ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be a fighter pilot. That was really my main goal. Although when I was a kid, my mom always makes jokes about how I was really into money, but my dad took me to an air show, I think in 1998 in Victoria, British Columbia. And I saw an F-18 fly over and I said, I want to fly that. And I said, I was going to be a fighter pilot. And I joined the air cadets when I was 12 years old. And I learned to fly gliders and little piston powered airplanes like Cessnas and things like that through the air cadet program. I joined the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, and I was interested in airplanes.

1:48Jason Berndt:And so I decided to do the aerospace engineering degree, which is very difficult and a tough four years at the military college. And then I got out, I guess, in 2012 and I went through the training and kind of once I became a fighter pilot in the military, I became interested in more than just flying. I mean, I had an interest in things like real estate when I was younger and I bought a place when I was 22. And I didn't really know much about cash flows and different things like that or anything to do with entrepreneurial stuff. And I read this book, and I'm sure you've heard of it, the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

2:21Jason Berndt:Have you heard of that book? Oh, my dad had me read that years and years ago. Yeah, I read that after it became a fighter pilot. I was 27 or 28 when I read it. And it opened my eyes to how you can make money with business. And if you solve a big enough problem for, let's say, a proper niche of people, then you can create a successful business. So that's what I did. I bought some places in Quebec, and then I created some Airbnbs with some passive income cash flows. that allowed me to fund my life. And then I got out of the military at that point, which is about five years ago. And then it's crazy because what happened is I didn't even actually have a plan of starting my two brows right when I got in the military.

2:59Jason Berndt:But then my brother and I were speaking and he does business as well in British Columbia. And we're talking about some business ideas. We're talking about problems. And then I just happened to be talking about the eyebrow problem that I had, you know, that that spawned when I was in the military. And then, you know, different things that I thought didn't work very well and what some solutions could be. And then we came up with this idea of making a product like temporary eyebrow tattoos better because I saw that a lot of things that were on the market weren't really serving people because they weren't serving me.

3:30Jason Berndt:And that's kind of how I started this company. So it kind of sucked, obviously, when I lost all my hair. People made jokes about maybe making my fighter pilot call saying Gollum, which I didn't really like very much. So I created the temporary eyebrow tattoos and it was received well. right off the bat with a lot of people, generally mostly in America, also in Canada. Those are the two biggest markets that I'm serving. And I started by sending a lot of free samples, probably tens of thousands of dollars of free shipping samples all over North America to get the word out on this product. And then it was clear that there's a fit between this product and what people needed.

4:07Let's talk about that a little bit more because you had an interesting path in the early days of developing this product in that you initially were not using a product that you had designed, right? You were sort of doing the research, seeing what was out there in the market and sending some of those things out to people to glean insights. Can you talk about that process a little?

4:30Jason Berndt:So when I lost my eyebrows, I remember I was surprised. Nobody had any real solutions, you know, eyebrow pencils. I tried those, especially as a man. It just looked weird on me. You know, they're not waterproof. So that wasn't really a viable solution at all. You know, if I was lazy, maybe I'd try to just put powder over my eyebrows. But I mean, that didn't look very realistic as well. We can think about hair loss and eyebrow loss as like a vanity issue. But I would imagine it has like a really profound impact on your sense of self and your sense of confidence in the way you walk through the world.

5:04Jason Berndt:Absolutely. And that's a big part of the branding that I created with my two brows, because it's not just a product, you know, and obviously, I'm sure that a lot of entrepreneurs can agree with creating a brand rather than just selling a product. And this brand is all about taking back your identity. I mean, we have a trademark saying take back your identity. And it's exactly that. This product isn't necessarily meant for somebody who wants to just make their brows look better to go out on a Friday night, you know, and thicken their brows or something like that. This is meant to help you restore that feeling of identity that you have with yourself that so many people feel like they lose if they lose their brows from, you know, alopecia or chemotherapy or trichotillomania, you know, even burn victims, different things like that.

5:44Jason Berndt:Because, you know, you can feel it. It's one of those things that it's hard to put your finger on. But if you're talking to somebody and you don't have brows, it's almost like you can feel them looking at your face. Like even if they don't quite know, because some people do have light colored eyebrows, you think, well, maybe they just, you know, don't notice. But something feels off even when you're talking to somebody. I used to find it harder to even look at people in the eye when I was talking with them just by the fact that I didn't have eyebrows, you know, and you can't really express yourself as well.

6:10Jason Berndt:You know, I can't do this. Like right now when I'm talking to you, my eyes go up, my eyebrows go up and down and this and that. And it shows expression. So we don't have that. You can feel it. And I think the people that you're talking to can feel it as well. And so this company was created to help people recapture as much of their facial identity as they can. It's beautiful. and so important. And I think, you know, so often we hear this, that like the eureka moment for a lot of entrepreneurs is when they're solving a problem that they personally have, because it gives you real table stakes. You know, you understand the plight of your customer.

6:48And from what I understand, like you said, you're not really trying to serve the vast market of people who just like, you know, I use a pencil to like fill in sparse areas of my brow, but you're not really going after people like me. You're really sort of siphoned off into the more like medically oriented side of things. But I would imagine that as the company has grown, it's easy for it to feel a little bit sexy to be like, oh, I could just, I could expand to that massive addressable market. Have you ever considered moving in that area? Or do you think that staying in the niche audience zone is where you're meant to be?

7:28Jason Berndt:I heard a quote once that's, I forget who said it, but it's essentially if you try to sell to everybody, you'll sell to no one. And if you try to sell to a small amount of people, you'd do much better. So I've considered that. And I have expanded the products that we sell, but I've only expanded within the niche. So like before, I was only selling the temporary eyebrow tattoos. but I did realize that there is a segment of this niche for people who have very, very thin brows, let's say people going through chemotherapy. And I think I'd be remiss not to sell to those people because there's a large segment of my audience that will come across my website and be looking for something that can fill in very, very sparse brows.

8:06Jason Berndt:So I've never taken the approach of actually trying to, like you said, sell to people who just want like a thicker brow to look better or something. But for the people who are still trying to fill in a very sparse brow, I have expanded the products with stick-on stencils with stamps, which is essentially like a powder that can help people have very thin brows because this product itself is a temporary eyebrow tattoo only works for people who have no brows whatsoever. And I'm very clear about that with my customers so that I want to make sure that people are actually getting the right product. You know, if you end up, if somebody tries to order these and then let's say they have thin brows, well, you can't really stick a temporary tattoo over top of those thin brows.

8:42Jason Berndt:So I've expanded to that part of the audience, but certainly not to a broader one. I think it's good to serve what they say, like a niche that's like an inch wide and a mile deep, as maybe you've heard that before too. Totally. You're focused. You're focused and it's working. I want to go back to your R &D process. You said, you know, you were trying all these different things on the market and especially for you as a man, like it, none of it was serving the purpose that you needed. It all looked unnatural. So where did you go from there? The concept of a temporary tattoo obviously is not a new one.

9:16Jason Berndt:The concept of a temporary eyebrow tattoo in itself isn't something that I patented. It was actually, I believe in the 90s and the patent expired 20 years later in the mid-teens or something like that. But from what I understood was that there's a product issue and there's a branding issue as far as I was concerned. The product issue was that they weren't being sold in multiple size style color options. Particularly, they weren't being sold in such a way that people could choose a size, which I think is a very big problem. Imagine selling shoes in only like size seven or something. You know, like what about everybody who has a bigger or smaller foot?

9:51Jason Berndt:It's the same thing for eyebrows. And same with colors, right? For a lot of people who are wearing wigs, let's say, or even just want to match what they had before, a lot of people are being presented with very limited color options. So color, size options, and style options. And it is difficult to print the number of designs that I do, but it is a unique selling point of the brand in that we sell five styles and 11 colors and five sizes, which is like you said, 275 different variants. And so with minimum order quantity prints on these types of things, it can lead to a large inventory that can be difficult to manage.

10:26Jason Berndt:And I think that's why a lot of people haven't done it. But I took advantage of that because it's probably a bit of a barrier to entry that a lot of people didn't want to overcome. And then in terms of branding, I didn't come across anyone that really offered a branded solution where it's like, hey, this isn't just a product, but there's a brand behind it. There's a good story. Somebody who's tried and tested. I mean, in the hair loss space and probably a lot of other kind of quasi medical spaces or even medical spaces, there can be a lot of false information or people saying things work that don't and a lot of disappointment and this and that.

10:58Jason Berndt:So I think having a developed brand, particularly with my face on it, and me saying, hey, look, I wear these myself and they work, definitely added to the trust of the brand too. And so that's what the brand is really built around me saying, I wear these and they work for me and they'll work for you if you have the same kind of problem. Yeah, your face being all over this brand is really central to its branding. did you immediately get the feedback like, okay, this is giving the audience a sense that like, I'm coming from a place where I really know what I'm talking about? Yeah, very quickly. I remember when I first started the company, I was, you know, in some Facebook groups for alopecia.

11:38I joined different ones and I talked about the product and people

11:42Jason Berndt:came. But you know, especially when you don't have a developed brand, trust still can be quite low, even if they do see that you're wearing them yourself. And the way I got over a lot of that was sending free product to people and then requesting reviews, requesting word of mouth, things like that. And that really helped, I think, to get the word out and to establish the trust in the brand and get those reviews and the user-generated content that people were taking photos and videos and sending it and saying, hey, this changed my life. And I've had a lot of people, they email me and they say, hey, you've changed my life, this and that.

12:12Jason Berndt:It's helped me with my confidence and made me feel happy with myself again. And I think that's an awesome thing. So it's amazing how transformative an impact something like this can have on someone, like you said, taking their identity back. I was reading some of the reviews on your website. I was in tears. Like, I mean, it's just like it's review after review of people saying like this changed my life or this changed my child's life. Right. Which is like a whole other segment of this is like kids who have alopecia are going through chemo or whatever, right? And how sensitive a time that is and how easily they could be bullied and whatever.

12:51Given your background in business outside of doing something that's so purpose-driven, when you're building a business where there is this like deep pull at the heartstrings emotional component, does it change the way you build it?

13:03Jason Berndt:Yeah, it does because the customer service has to be a very delicate thing for two reasons. One, it's not a faceless brand. It's like they're my friends. And so that's become a very, very important part. I don't think people want to, for example, show up to this company and be talking with, let's say, an AI chatbot or something like that. I've been very careful to, as the business scales, to making sure that we maintain that personal branding so that people feel what this business started as. And it can be tempting as the business scales to become less and less personalized as businesses do. And to an extent, it can happen.

13:38Jason Berndt:But that's something that I've been very careful to keep in this brand because it's so central to it. I mean, from a practical perspective, how do you retain that personal one-to-one feeling as the company gets bigger? I actually review almost every single email that still comes through and the way people are talking on my behalf or for me or helping people for me or making changes to their subscriptions or their orders and things like that. And I'm very particular with the way that I want my customer service to help customers. Generally, I tell them at the end of the day, you need to treat these people like a friend and do what makes the customer feel best and help them and not just try to close a support ticket.

14:18Jason Berndt:You know what I mean? I know that sometimes people can consider something like customer service versus other things to let's call it like high value activities and low value activities in business. And it could be easy for somebody to consider something like customer service to be a low value activity, but I'm quite hands on with it because it's so central to the branding. And it sounds like this is part of what keeps your customers coming back. What else is keeping your customers coming back time and again? Yeah, so the personal relationship. I mean, there are people that are extremely loyal to the brand, just in that they feel that connection with me and with what I've gone through.

14:58Jason Berndt:So I think that's the biggest thing. And then beyond that, I really do think that it's the unique selling points that we have with these products that just no other brands are really doing, which is offering those size style color options. I mean, when I started this brand, I thought, well, what sizes of eyebrows would be ideal for people? And I remember on my birthday, it was in May, and I put out a request to all my friends on Facebook. I said, listen, for my birthday, take a ruler and measure your eyebrows from tip to tail and tell me how big they are. From that, I got the data points. I mean, it was clear that people's eyebrows were roughly between 45 and 65 millimeters long.

15:36Jason Berndt:And so that was easy. 45 millimeters extra small, 65 extra large, and every five millimeter increment between with small, medium, large. And we have a lot of kids, too, that are wearing these. And they're not going to get something that's too big, let's say, from another company. And then what? Try to cut it? Trim it down? Well, it kind of defeats the purpose of how simple and easy these are to use and apply, and then it's not going to look quite right. So the uniqueness is almost like a semi-customization of the eyebrow from this company. You mentioned that you send people free product initially.

16:09Can you talk a little bit more about that and how that allows them to explore the product range? Because I would imagine that initially they might not know what style is going to work best on their face.

16:22Jason Berndt:We do have like a virtual mirror that people can try the brows on. So what I do is I encourage people to try it with the mirror and find a size, style, color option they want or they want to try. But then what I also do is I include a free sample pack on everybody's first order. And what that allows them to do is at least get going with the eyebrows. They can try every single size and style that I carry, but not every color, because otherwise I'd have to give them 275 sets of brows. would be like a huge envelope. But we decided to offer all five styles, all five sizes, and then an alternating in the best selling colors.

16:59Jason Berndt:So, you know, I think it was the six best selling colors. So we got black, you know, and then dark brown, medium brown, ash brown, light brown and dirty blonde. And so they can at least see what the color looks like on them. And then they can try all the sizes and styles. And because I think that color is the easiest one for somebody to kind of know already, that shouldn't be too much of an issue. But what What they can do for sure with the sample pack is try on each size and style and see which one fits their face best. And that's helped a lot. It also incentivizes people to make that first purchase.

17:28Jason Berndt:Hey, you get a free sample pack that's a lot of value to the customer. It's also a very good thing for the business too because it keeps people coming back. They're more pleased with the product and they know what they want. So it makes them more likely to return as a customer as well. And how much of your customer mix now is in the subscription model? It's about 50-50 right now. So about 50-50 one-time orders, 50-50 subscription. So it's definitely great. I think that's a big part of the business. I'm always trying to increase the subscription count, as probably a lot of subscription businesses are.

18:02Jason Berndt:And I think it makes sense in this company too, because, I mean, it's a consumable product. Generally, these brows last somewhere on the two to three-ish days mark, let's say. I put these ones on yesterday in the morning. So I don't know, about 26 hours, maybe 28 hours ago. So they last a couple of days and a sheet comes with 10 sets. So you're looking at maybe one to two sheets a month, something like that for somebody. And so naturally, they're going to want more. So it makes sense to subscribe, not only from a standpoint of what's beneficial for me, but also for them, because the number of tickets sometimes, you know, you'll see come through where people forgot to order their brows.

18:39Jason Berndt:And then they realize that they're running out of brows and they have a wedding or something coming up or an important event. And, you know, and they're so used to having this identity, they don't want to go out of the house without it. And they're freaking out and saying, hey, can you send it overnight FedEx? Well, we can, sure. But, you know, overnight FedEx costs 50 bucks for a sheet of browse that costs half that or, you know, maybe a third of that price. So I think the subscription model actually serves, obviously, both them and then me on the side of recurring revenue as well. So. Yeah, it makes sense.

19:08It's really smart. Like it very naturally lends itself to a subscription model because once this becomes a part of people's lives, they're not going to want to give it up.

19:15Jason Berndt:Yeah, that's right. Unless they get their brows back. And some people do. And in fact, a lot of chemo patients will get them back. Not all of them, but some people after chemo treatment, they'll get their brows back. Or some people with alopecia, they get their brows back and that's great for them too. I mean, if they come up and get a solution, then obviously then you don't need them. But for those people that don't get their brows back, which is a large percentage of people who lose their brows or over plucked or have trichotillomania or anything like that, where they pull their brows out when they're stressed, things like that.

19:43Jason Berndt:Yeah, they don't come back. And so it can be, you know, a very long time. We've had customers with my two brows ever since I started where we still have them on subscription, you know, like five years later. You've also talked about recognizing at some point, like with any business that you got to make the move into profitability. Has that happened? And if so, when did you become profitable? Oh, yeah. I guess if you consider discretionary funds and things like that, like, Like, you know, profitability probably a couple of years ago or something like that. But I haven't even distributed any money from the company yet.