508: How Hexclad Hooked Gordon Ramsay as a Partner | Daniel Winer

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0:39Just head to omnisend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. You're taking a risk on yourself. There is no promise of riches at the end of the rainbow, so to speak. You could just as easily shit the bed as you could hit a home run. The performance of stainless steel, the durability of cast iron, and the convenience of nonstick. Welcome to Hexclad. Hexclad. Hexclad. Hexclad. Co-founder and CEO of Hexclad, Danny Weiner. You're not looking at anything but the end goal, which is I know the product is good. Shame on me if I can't tell the story with it.

1:19So you see that the product is good.

1:24before we dive in i want to extend a warm invitation to join our thriving founder community it's the perfect place to discover more insightful interviews aimed at helping you build grow and scale your business so don't forget to hit subscribe your support means the absolute world to us thank you so much for subscribing let's get stuck in today's discussion hear the stories, learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan.

1:59Warning, I can try to behave, but I do swear some. I'm not a sailor, but I'm just barely stepped above with the language. Yeah, that's fine. Just fine. That's fine. Just be yourself, man. If I go overboard, go like, hey, my mom listens to this. No, no, it's all good. It's all good. All right. So the first question that I ask everyone that comes on, Danny, is how did you get your job, aka how did you find yourself doing the work you're doing today? Probably the simplest question. Very often, I guess, with a really complicated answer, you know, the journey would go on. I, you know, I moved to Los Angeles really to be in the entertainment business.

2:42So I was one of those, you know, came from New York where the actor slash writer slash director slash bartender, which is what I really want to be. And I always, though, had a background in in loving food. My entire family was in the restaurant business in a smaller city in the U.S., Buffalo, New York. and my grandmother became the first female head chef she had opened a restaurant to do it because women just did not get those opportunities in the 1950s and um so she was a very um very strong woman a great presence in my life but she you know not only instilled a work ethic because she was forced to quit school by her father in the third grade to sell vegetables to help support the family because boys got education as well that she told me a love for food and for cooking so when my what I thought was my initial dream wasn't really working out it was a very easy transition for me to try to somehow get into that business and to be honest I'm a pretty good cook if I had you over for dinner you'd be you'd be like that's good but I'm not a great chef um I'm a good home cook uh so i knew i wasn't going to go that that route and you know i accidentally i had a university friend and he was trying to be in entertainment and he said to me real quickly he said um listen i need some help this weekend i go why what do you need he goes i'm going to sell cookware at the los angeles county fair and i need somebody to write up the orders for me he's like I'll give you 500 bucks.

4:26And I'm like, 500 bucks. Sweet. You know, I'm there. And, um, I watched him sell this product. And I was like, this is kind of fascinating. This is a great product. I wound up doing it with them. I got good at it. He's like, Hey, whenever you want to work, come on out. He's like, I got, I got work for you. And I got good. I started doing it myself on the weekends, still trying to pursue the dream during the week. Cut to, I get offered to come in to be the national sales manager. Then I get offered to be the VP of sales. And, you know, and you have those couple of pivotal moments in your life where you go like, fuck, thank God I went left instead of right.

5:08And I remember the day I went to the owner of the company and I had Facebook up and I said, look, our model is antiquated. This is where we need to live on Facebook. We got to create a community. And he did the hand to the face and He goes, trust me, kid, this Facebook thing is never going to last. And I said, okay. And I walked out and I said, I got to start my own company. And that got me to make that leap, the terrifying leap into being a founder. Yeah, there you go. And then tell us, how did you start HexCloud? What did the first 60 days of like, so you left? What did that next 60 days look like starting the business?

5:53What did the first 60 days look like? Talk us through that.

5:59So, you know, it's hard to put in a, say, a 60-day term because I would say this. Like, one, I was leaving something, but I'm not quite sure what I want to do. I just know I have to do something on my own. So there's this leap of faith you're taking. And there's a level of openness you have to have. um like i always felt i had a gift for for knowing what a consumer wanted but also finding a way to to tell a story to make a compelling value prop to that person that would make them want to buy it so what i started doing was when i still had my old job i would get on a 5 p.m friday night flight to Hong Kong to go looking for products and inventors.

6:44And I'd show up there at 5 p.m. on Saturday and I'd go to the Hong Kong electronics fair for two hours. And then I'd go all day Sunday. And then at 6 a.m. on Monday, I'm on that flight back to LAX. And I'm in my office at noon telling everybody I had a dentist appointment that morning. And, you know, I just did what I had to do, just try to find that inspiration. And by the way, HexCloud was my second product. I failed on the first one. My co-founder and I misread the market. It's the best thing that ever happened to me. That day I took what I learned from the failure and was able to really laser focus it into HexCloud.

7:23Can you tell us what that product was and what happened? Sure. My co-founder and I, we were very much into the juicing craze that was happening about 10 years ago and in the u.s um you know people were starting by these fresh cold pressed juices so we're like we want to buy market a really innovative juicer um because we believed in the health benefits so we went we sourced this great juicer from korea we brought it to the u.s market and we pretty much launched in 14 and the second half of 14 and 15 it did great and nathan it was like it was like the bottom fell out overnight it was you know i got scared because i got two things happened i remember in the same week and i one i was in la at this place called beverly hills juice club and i watched this girl go in and she's like i want one juice he goes seven dollars and she goes can you put half on this card and half on this car and i go holy shit she doesn't have seven dollars on her one car but she won't make juice at home um that was like an aha moment and i flew to new york two days later and every bidet guy walked into had a juice bar in it now so i'm like we're kind of fucked but that's like the thing when you pull the hardest thing i ever had to do was pull the plug on that like i was in the juicer business on a tuesday and wednesday morning we were out of business and it's humiliating and um you know and friends who were like maybe envious that i had taken the plunge uh some rooting for you maybe some not rooting for you um but i had to let everybody know in a way that that i'd fail on that the only silver lining there was i'd already started working on hexplad because one thing cole my co-founder and i were smart we wanted to have a suite of products we knew that going in so we were never going to stop looking for the next best thing yeah got you so can you tell us like how much money did you lose in the first venture man um it wasn't as bad as it could have been they were lucky we we i would say this like one thing you want to call yourself a founder or an entrepreneur um i've said this forever and i heard somebody say it the other day and i'm like i look at their office like you still go into my office right now we did 400 million of revenue the couch is a hand-me-down couch in my office the desk i bought at a used desk store i'm like i can't throw money into that shit you know i have to spend everything prudently and judiciously to grow the business That's the only thing.

10:09I got paid last. Everybody got paid first. And if money's tight, I didn't get paid. And that's okay. I was in it for the long haul. So we did lose a few hundred thousand dollars when it was done. It could have been worse. If we had been frivolous, it could have been worse. and I think what the juicer though got me was was a respect for the money whether it's my money or somebody else's money and it's a good thing I got that because once I got once I I designed hex clad and we went out to raise money I was shocked that the cold the cold is the uh understatement of the year the almost hostile and comical reception I got when I went in and said like, okay, we're a new cookware company.

11:03We have the first innovative thing I've ever seen in cookware since, since the advent of nonstick cookware in the fifties, nothing new would happen. I mean, people, they're still, still selling cast iron skillets. So, so I, I, you know, I'm saying we have something new here and they said, well, how the hell are you going to get shelf space for it? Yeah. How are you going to get rid of the legacy brands? I go, aha, we don't want to get rid of the legacy brands because we're going to be the first DTC cookware company and they heard that they're like okay thanks for stopping by it's nice meeting you and and nobody would invest so cole and i looked at each other and we were like believed in it and we cashed out all our retirements 401ks um we started applying for credit cards and then we max that card out we did a new card and pay off the minimum with that card and you know it was incredibly stressful this was uh during this period the juicer was ending in in 16 we were starting hex clad november of 16 but it didn't get any traction until the end of 17 so i mean i was having those panicked nights of waking up at four in the morning like you know hot beating fast yeah yeah because i'm all in i am all in you know i don't i was gonna be back to being that bartender again if this i got screwed yeah it's interesting um but now you know like you said you guys are a massive business the speed in which the company's grown like you know from from where you are in the space of six seven eight years to being you're turning over 400 million annual revenues that's really impressive and when and when you look back on those times were they still some of the funnest times?

12:48You know, I read one time that like our bodies are designed to forget pain a little bit. That's why women will have a second child. It's so painful, but we forget that. So yes, I think of it as a simpler time. I forget about how stressed out I was. But I, you know, wouldn't change it for anything because there is something knowing you're taking a risk on yourself and there there is no promise of riches at the end of the rainbow so to speak you know you could just as easily shit the bed as you could hit a home run as we say in american baseball um it's that so i do look back though fondly when it was simple when i mean we didn't have enough money when we got the fact cookware shipped from the factory we found out it was going to cost x number of dollars to get it if it was already packaged in the box it was going to be triple that so we're like we'll send it unbox and we went in cole's backyard and we just lined it up and we started boxing it up ourselves putting in the instructions ourselves and then in the beginning well I guess we were getting our first d2c orders we would drive to the ups store and ship it ourselves because that was it it was just the two of us at that point yeah it's crazy and you said that it took like at least a year to get traction what was got like talk us through from a mindset perspective how you stayed focused when it was struggling to take off and where you found hope and how you worked through that?

14:32Because I think that trough or trough of sorrow, I don't know how you best pronounce it, but that's common in every founder's journey, right? Yes. And that's a great, great question because what happens is, one, you can do something, you hear about these companies every now and then, and then they launch, they pretty much, and somehow a few of them, they just explode immediately. The right influencer sees it too, weeks later and everybody wants it or but that's not the norm so now you what happens is a storm of self-doubt and you question do i have the right strategy do i have the right messaging do i do i understand the addressable market and their needs um and i think if you don't immediately come up with a better answer for any of those questions you got to believe in yourself that your initial objective and goal and message is right.

15:35You just haven't delivered it the right way yet. And so I stayed that we were the rebel cookware. We used to call it, we're like, in a simple phrase, somebody asked me, I'm like, we're badass cookware. We're not grandma's cookware. Grandma wants to use it too because grandma's a freaking badass. And my eight-year-old niece is a badass. We all have a badass inside of us And we're the cookware for that. We're not the dainty cookware that you can't use in metal utensils. We're not the super heavy, clumsy, clunky cast iron cookware. We're innovative, badass cookware. And we had to get that message out.

16:14And you know what? Finally, the first thing that tweaked the algorithm a little bit was we did a Facebook static image. And we had this really great photo of our pan. And we just put underneath it, who says cookware can't be sexy and then all of a sudden we had hundreds of comments and most of them were like some old lady going why do you people have to make everything about sex sex sex and but it didn't matter because all of a sudden we were getting engaged in it and then that person's yelling at the old lady and this right so and then we started selling a few pans slowly and um i will say this we've only had one retail partner in the u.s ever and it's costco um and in the u.s costco is a really strange animal because it should be uncool but it isn't it's like people like brag about their savings and you'll like in la you'll pull in just park next to a rolls royce and that guy's going there for that five dollar roast chicken that they sell and and but the good thing about Costco when we made the deal with them I what I loved was we could they they love you telling the story so they love when you set up in the booth and somebody tells you a story in the store about a new product just like they love to give out cheese samples and things like that so we were like I can tell the story one of two ways I can tell it in 30 seconds on Instagram or I can tell it in a minute and a half in Costco.

17:50And what that Costco thing did, which was really like a bit of a cheat code for us, it was like instant data collection about what is working, what people are responding to. You know, you say the same thing and 10 times people walk away. Well, the 11th time changed something new and you go, oh, aha, that resonated. So now how do we incorporate that into pay? um and that's like pretty quickly once we started the costco relationship we started having significant growth through our d2c channels because it gave us a chance to to to actually try new messaging that had some foundational background to it hmm that's really interesting you're bringing me back to a time where if you sell you know you work out how to sell a product you're selling it live and you get the messaging right you work out what the pain points are you work out the benefits you work out why people are buying and then you take that and then you you can automate it or you can use technology to scale that out and scale out that messaging but oftentimes you might have a great product but if you don't get the messaging right you can fall on deaf ears you're so you're so right nathan that's exactly it i'll see stuff sometimes i'm like that that is a great thing and i don't know what they're doing their date you know whether it's a poor website design look everybody can have navigational issues with a website that needs constantly constantly needs tweaking um but some people like it won't match their product it won't uh you know the messaging is muddied or um non-linear in a way that it makes it more difficult for the consumer to digest um but but yeah that the the messaging is key right how do you hit somebody with a value prop and making sure it's the right value prop because i will tell you this you might have a different value prop than i do right and um and so it's finding the commonality of what's going to make you open your wallet and what's going to make me open my wallet.

20:09And then we can support that decision with more nuanced value propositions that are going to resonate with different customers at a greater degree or lesser degree of success. Yeah. So I'm curious, a lot of our listeners and viewers and community members, they're working on a product right now, a physical product. Can you talk us through the process that you went through to create you know the first version hex clad prototype how did you know it was right how did you test it did you do anything in the market talk us through that were you speaking to people sharing samples with them like talk us through that and and that process so again all good questions so really it starts like you know very often And let me take that back.

21:05In our case, we kind of knew what we were looking for. We were very intrigued about getting back into the cookware space after struggling with the juicer. We knew that this cookware is kind of recession-proof. There's very few products that are because when the economy gets bad, people are home cooking. when the economy is good they go out to a nice restaurant they try something but then they want to try to replicate it at all um so so that excited me about the space and like i said we like we haven't had a dip during any of the economic uncertainties that have arisen from covet so um one you can find a product and say hey that's a great product maybe i can get a distribution deal and want to bring it to a new market.

21:58If you have an idea, like an idea that could be protected potentially by IP, that's slightly different. You could also find something, which is what we kind of did. I didn't invent the laser etching hexagon technology. I met the gentleman who did it was making korean barbecue plates and and i was like this is game changing because immediately to me in my head it was a frying pan and how do we work on it and at that point you know he was like oh yeah i think it'll work and we he and i started working on it and i he's in korea and i'm in um los angeles and we're designing the first version and then he would send it to me like handmade samples and i would test them out like i cook and you know so you want to test it and i'd be like you know what pan's too thin it got a it got a hot spot now it's too thick it takes forever to heat up um can we put the hexagon design on the outside because people hate when pans get burnt and gross looking on the bottom so it was like that's what i did during I'd say from, from, uh, April of 15 to about August of 16th.

23:16So like, we're just spending money on developing, you know, developing pants at that point. So we were not in a place to order something. So I'd say what you have to do is one, you, you got your idea. Can, can, can you, can you design that idea yourself? If you can't, you got to find a really reputable engineering firm product design firm to help you with it uh what level of ip do you have like usually the greater it is the more you're going to pay in developmental costs and then you got to find that manufacturer wherever it is in the world that does your type of product well um that you can trust and and then start you know a manufacturing process and this the weird thing is um i'd say one of the hardest challenges is is figure out your demand planning with that like how do you know what to order how much of each skew um and like our biggest challenge in like 18 19 and 20 was our factory couldn't grow as fast as we were selling product so we left a lot of money on the table we never sold out like i hate that oh the the pan that sold out 25 times i'm like well you need a better demand planner um you know and even though it's a marketing ploy you know and we have had stuff sold out you know i want to brag that you know everybody wants our stuff so we've dumped every penny into manufacturing you know so you know it's a tough road to from from idea to product development, to product manufacturing, to distribution, to marketing.

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25:41Was it when you first saw the sample, the first version, you're like, yep, we've got it? Or how did you know? What gave you the certainty to go all in?

25:53You know, this is me. As soon as you said it, I just subconsciously crossed my fingers. because there was like, there was a bit of a cross finger moment, you know, because I'd been in this space and I did cook. I'm somebody that, you know, sometimes people go into space, like, listen, my, my co-founder will be very happy to tell you the only thing he makes is eggs. That's it. He doesn't cook anything else. Um, so he had to rely on me. What I did was I took, took his Korean barbecue plate and I tried cooking some stuff on it and really I what I love was the durability and I'm like the durability is the hardest thing to figure out so I said well let's start there I can create it now if we've got the durability I can kind of subtly change the pan to really fine tune the functionality and you know what it was great looking from the beginning it was it was a sexy pad it was game-changing and and then what some things i did when i when i finally had like what what i thought was the pan figured out you know they maybe made me a hundred pieces and sent them to me and i used to go to these um i would go to these um um well we call Venice California Silicon Beach because you know all the tech companies moved so I go to these like cocktail parties with all the tech bros and I bring a frying pan and show them they'd be like bro that's amazing I don't cook but but you know what it'll look great hanging in my kitchen I'm like you're goddamn right it will you know and so they were responding to the look.

27:37There are people that didn't care about the functionality. So I knew we had the form down and I knew from personal experience, we had the functionality down. And then we quickly, we started giving it to chefs. And that was the scary thing because we didn't design it for chefs. You know, I said this to Gordon Ramsey. I said, we didn't design it for Michelin-starred chefs. We designed it for the home chef. And it's so gratifying that the greatest chefs in the world love our product. That's like, you know. Yeah. So what gave you the certainty was just getting people to try it. And then you were so close to the problem that you were solving.

28:23And you could see how people reacted when they got to see the product, feel the product. And you knew that the functionality worked. yes uh you know that we that you essentially you answer the question you asked me and i would kind of dad went around it but but uh yeah it's quite that it's it's really that simple and you know what and there is you have to have this almost myopic view on it like you're not looking at anything but the end goal which is i know the product is good shame on me if i can't tell the story with it so you see that the product is good um so when you have that kind of laser focus with it you know you're getting the you know i knew it was good so i'm like you know screw it i'm i'm cashing out one more retirement plan and i'm gonna pay the tax penalties for early withdrawal yeah that's so cool what a great story thank you for sharing you now you have to tell us you mentioned before the Gordon Ramsay partnership right like that's been huge for your business I'd love to hear one the story how it came about and then also for founders that are listening what advice would you give to them when it comes to working with thought leaders working with creators or influencers or celebrities to be somewhat ambassadors or partners and really helping drive the growth as a product and i hate you know so there's a lot there with it that you just said and and i would say say this um one in that before you can get to the time you have a gordon ramsey or anyone else that you know is supporting you from an ambassador's standpoint I would say this to everyone, ask a lot of questions and ask for tough love.

30:23You know, it's amazing how once TextSlag got successful, it's amazing how many people I trusted were like, yeah, I kind of never was too excited about the juicer. And I'm like, why didn't you tell me that? You know, maybe your opinion was the one that would have made me go, let me step back for a moment and see, is this a viable business or is this a fad? and I didn't ask those questions I've learned since and asked for tough love you know people need to tell you that's a stupid idea or that they love the idea and that's the thing like more and more people were like the cookware is a fucking hit you know no matter what you have to do make it happen so when you get to that point then you start on a lower scale like out with us hitting up some chefs and we get a couple like local LA Michelin starred chefs and they love the pants.

31:21Um, I think for people, when you get the pros, it doesn't matter what, you know, when they get behind it, I think most, most people that are the best in their craft take their reputation incredibly serious and they're not going to associate with something they don't believe in. There might be a time that people sell out. You know, there are chefs out there that I know are selling products that they don't really believe in that show up on television because they're getting a very handsome payday. And I can't begrudge them. Everybody's got to make their money, right? So, but I think we are, you know, I think people tend to compromise their personal ethos maybe a little more as we get older than we do in our youths right the most passionate music is created by young artists you know the most passionate writings are by these young you know groundbreaking writers um so so i think that um you know when you get those people on board, then you kind of move up.

32:34And like in art, we were very lucky with Gordon. I mean, he is an amazing partner and he's a partner in the company. I mean, it's really strange. Like, you know, one thing we couldn't raise money. So Cole and I totally self-funded the company, which meant we kept the entire company. I never had to kowtow to any VC money. I could do whatever the hell I wanted and I did some crazy things and knock on wood they I was right and they worked out a few things didn't but almost always it did and so when I'm when I found out I got a phone call from the guy who was managing our social and he's like he goes hey Danny it's Sean he goes do you know Gordon Ramsey's following us on Insta?

33:27I'm like, no, I don't know that. He goes, should I reach out? I'm like, yeah, why not? So he DMs Gordon, we're hex clad, love to send you some pants. And whoever was managing it at the time reached out and said, oh, Gordon has one of your pants and he loves it. But yeah, if you want to send some more, great we'll give you an address and then my sean goes uh oh by the way does gordon have a cookware deal and gordon's got person goes um i don't know i don't think so but you know i'll let you know cut to like three days later i'm on the phone with uh with gordon's business manager and you know he's calling me from london i was like i had to pull into some parking lot on sunset on the sunset strip and i'm there in my car doing the call and you know he's like gordon likes your pants somebody sent him one during the pandemic right now and he's been home cooking with his family he's been he's been locked up in cornwall with his family for the better part of a year and uh this was about this was probably like late summer of uh of 20 and and he goes well listen you know gordon you know gordon likes the pan so if you want to just if you want to pay him a lot of money to do a commercial he'll probably do it because he likes it but he really likes the product he'd be open to doing something more robust and i go i like the sounds of that talk to me what is what is more robust me and he's like well gordon likes to get very involved if he likes something he is very involved he goes uh and the thing about gordon is uh you know he's time poor i go well i can tell the guy's everywhere you know he goes but when gordon's involved you will more than you, you, more than you paid for or more than you bargained for is what he said.

35:36And I said, more than I bargained for. I'm like, I go, is that a promise or a threat? And he goes, both. I'm like, sounds perfect. You know, and a couple of conversations. And then during the pandemic doing it, we did a zoom call one morning. So it was like eight 30 in the morning in LA and it was like 5 30 for Gordon in um in Cornwall and and I had 20 minutes scheduled for it we spent an hour and a half just like spitballing about what we would do and how we would market it and where we would place it and um um about he's like I love it and it's holding up so well I want to put it in the restaurants and and it was like amazing and it was like we hit it off there and i'm like i'm like this guy fucking rocks you know he and i will tell you since then he is a great partner you know he he owns the third biggest chunk of the company and he like he'll call me with like design ideas product ideas you know he'll incorporate us i mean last week he's you know he called me he's like fly with me to miami for the opening of my restaurant and I'm like, you know, is that a real invitation?

36:49Because he owns Gordon Ramsay. And I'm like, well, I do have some meetings. I go, well, I think I can cancel him. And he goes, you know what? It would mean a lot to me. And I'm like, I'm there. You know, and I kind of go like, are you fucking kidding me? This is the Michael Jordan cooking. And, you know, and for us, it couldn't be better. And because not only is Gordon the hardest working person I've ever met, and he's a TV host a lot now. Somehow he has kept his street cred. Every chef acts like the Pope walked in. They could have three Michelin stars and Gordon is still the most respected chef.

37:30And that's pretty awesome. Yeah, wow. What a crazy story. So thank you so much for sharing, man. So what I'm hearing just in summary is build a great product and really if you see see kind of the opportunity kind of just keep exploring it and see where things land but just build that up like don't don't go out when you're first launching your business and expect that you're going to get all these crazy influences like to to promote you it's just it's just do the work well you know and that's the case and we have a ton of influencers and i'll tell you so many of them like didn't get paid in the beginning they like the product some get paid now actually not that many get paid some might just give them product because they like it but they they post in and also when you do have a good product like we've had like a lot of celebrities who post um camera diaz hailey berry we didn't pay them i most of them i didn't even send them cookware like somebody gave it to them and that's where it comes down to the product people people with integrity will support a product they believe in And then obviously everybody needs to make a living.

38:43So if it makes sense for a founder to to start these monetized relationships with influencers, celebrities, ambassadors, I think you definitely approach it. But I would always say never get out of your comfort zone with it because they always start here. And sometimes they start really high and they stay really high and that's just it. I would not risk your company finances for that. I wouldn't risk mortgaging your, say, marketing future. You have to pull money from any type of other top-of-funnel initiatives that gets more qualified customers. I would say create your budget and stick to it. And then I would also say to anybody, even if they get VC money, treat the money like it's your money.

39:44that I think is the most irresponsible thing. It's really easy to try to spend your way into a significant amount of market share, but you can't spend forever. The bill comes due at Sunday.

40:00Yeah, look, this has been a really, really awesome conversation. I'm learning a ton. I know our audience would be in community. We have to work towards the hot seat round, so kind of rapid fire questions and answers you good i was hoping we weren't going to do this part i guess it's called the hot seat for a reason right yeah yeah you're prepared man you're prepared all right so what's your favorite thing to cook on a hex clad pan uh my my favorite you know what i'm a salmon fan and there's a way to get the skin perfectly crispy and I can't do it on a traditional nonstick salmon skin in this hex plat pan comes out fantastic.

40:49If there was one thing that you wanted to share with our community that want to start their e-commerce store and that you wish you knew when you first started, what would that be?

41:07i would ask them to seek out the advice that are people of people that are smarter than you and by smarter i just mean that they maybe have experience that you don't have because sometimes i'm too proud to ask for help ask for help it gets you from a to b much faster what's the biggest challenge you're facing right now biggest challenge for us right now is we're having significant uh multinational growth and figuring out or accepting the fact that certain american sensibilities don't translate to every geographic reason region and being able to pivot to embrace the sensibility of that particular region.