577: The Genius Referral Model Behind Burst’s Multi-Million Dollar Brand (Best of Foundr)

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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. Hey guys, welcome back to the Founder Podcast. In this episode, I'm joined by Brittany Stewart, co-founder and president of Burst Oral Care. Brittany's built one of the fastest growing e-commerce brands in the US, turning an industry as boring as toothbrushes into a massive business. From grassroots launches at dental conventions to working with influencers like Khloe Kardashian and Kim Kardashian, she's done it all without falling into the usual startup traps. So in this conversation, we break down how Britney cracked product market fit, scaled with minimal funding, and built a customer base that's fiercely loyal.

1:25We get into the realities of managing explosive of growth what it really takes to build a lasting brand in today's market and why caring about your customer experience beats any marketing hack. So if you want an unfiltered look at what it takes to build a brand that lasts, then this one's for you. Hear the stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan.

1:54Brittany, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. The first question that we ask everyone that comes on is, how did you get your job, aka how did you find yourself doing the work you're doing today? How did I find myself? I mean, the acute answer is my dear friend, who is a venture capitalist and a surfer, surfed every day with uh hamish who is my business partner and introduced us and thought we would be like the business partner of the century and i think maybe he was right yeah so can you tell me uh when did you start burst oral uh and like how how how long ago was that so we launched in august of 2017 and we launched at a dental convention in chicago illinois was this your first business No.

2:42So I had been, you know, kind of like a founding member partner of a business proceeding this. So we, we had created finditparts.com, which was the largest distributor of heavy duty tractor trailer parts online. So built that up from about 2012 to 2017 and really grew that business nicely. So, you know, the kind of the arc of my career has been web-based businesses doing commerce. So selling things to people online. And that's pretty much whether I started as a consultant and then I moved on to, you know, kind of do my first real go at a startup. and then Burst is sort of the next step in that iteration for me.

3:28But really understanding specific industry niches, selling things online and why people wouldn't do that is, I guess, would be the thread of me. Yeah, I see. And what was the inspiration for Burst Oral Care? Like how did you come to this idea? You know, it's really interesting. So Hayman, she's my partner, has only ever worked in oral care his whole life, right? Since he was like 19 years old. And he kept seeing the opportunities in the marketplace, like, why hasn't that changed for so long? And it seems like people might want this, this, or this. So when we were introduced, we really started to talk about two things, which was what makes a great product.

4:15And And, you know, why have people forgotten about the professionals, like the dental professionals who take care of you all the time? It used to be kind of like back in the day. It was like, you know, nine out of 10 dentists recommend X, buy or Z. And so what really kind of made us know that we had something special was not only this product that we put through R &D that, you know, we took this feedback from dentists and hygienists. And they said, you know, I wish I had a softer bristle. I wish I had a bristle that could get under your gum line. And we realized that like, oh my gosh, we have this innovation engine and we also have our own marketing channel essentially.

4:53And we felt like this combination of something really amazing to sell people and a really unique way to sell it was the genesis of Burst that really carries forward through today. Can you talk me through, I guess, how did you launch? Did you raise capital? Was it, you know, yeah, talk me through that. And again, the first product. Yeah. So like if we go back to like the basement days of the business, right, we found two gentlemen to be our angel investors. They both had in their professional careers been very successful investing in public equity. So one had worked at Capital Group and one had worked at Fidelity, which between the two of them, probably almost everybody's retirement plan on earth is managed by one of these this and they covered consumer products and retailers and so we came to them and said there's this idea they were the first two to cut a check and it wasn't like a significant size you know it's like a few hundred thousand dollars which is not in the realm of i want to be really sort of aware here yes that is a lot of money but in the realm of like capital raising that's not outrageous right and they gave us a little bit of capital um and then said see what you do with it and so we used that capital and they brought in, we brought in a third angel, Michael, who's like also like our mentor.

6:16And we bought half of the booth at a dental convention in Chicago, Illinois. Like there's always like, we were really budget conscious, right? Like we were even conscious about how these dental conventions charge you like$500 to receive your goods. So instead we sent them to like my mom and dad's house and made my dad drive us to the convention. You know, We were really capital conscious at the beginning to make sure that we didn't blow it. So having your dad drop you off at school, essentially. And we had an iOS app. And our plan was we were going to sign up Dunsville hygienists to become marketers and recommenders of our product.

6:54So we had this goal of maybe we could sign up five or 10 people and this would have been worth it. We sold out a product. We crashed our app. we we for 12 hours couldn't get out of our booth like i had like sweat through my shirt there were people like you know this idea that paying attention to a dental professional um was a good one and it was like in that moment we knew it like this dental hygienist convention in chicago illinois so they go in to get their continuing education credits and then come learn about dental companies we were mobbed like i've never i can't i can't quite explain it but it's like almost like maybe like what a rock star feels like when they're like trying to leave the concert so we don't have a bathroom break food break nothing for 12 hours sell out of our uh product and signed up all of these dental hygienists who became our very sort of like foundational ambassadors and many of whom are still with us today and we replicated that model um when we started to go to every dental convention in america and i think probably for three years i went to every convention in america like every state has one and i will like if there was two in the same place at the same time or different places, same time.

8:07Um, I wasn't able to go to that, but every weekend I was at a dental convention and that is how we built this grassroots community who has guided this company. Yeah. Interesting. So, um, fast forward to now, like you guys are one of the fastest, uh, growing online e-commerce brands in the United States. I just love to get a little bit deeper on the idea and how you knew when you were onto something. Like, how did you have, like, when was the moment that you gained confidence to go, yep, we're onto something? So Hamish came to me with a prototype, right? That he had been working on. So he's very much like our, like our inventor kind of guy.

8:47Right. And so like, we always say Hamish had a product and he needed someone help to make it a business. Right. And so we were kind of dancing around each other. So he brings me a prototype and I use it. I then go see my dentist who happens to be married to like one of my best college friends and my dentist goes did you go get your teeth cleaned before you came here because I'm always like in trouble for something like a bleeding gum in the back or like a little bit of plaque and like the back molars right and he was like it looks like you ain't got your teeth cleaned before you came here so I wouldn't yell at you I was like no I'm using this new electric toothbrush that we're kind of prototyping to figure out if this is the right product for us.

9:29And like, is it really that good? And Sean was like, yeah, she's never looked this good. And I think that was like this moment that I knew, I really knew in my soul that there was something special. And then we would give prototypes to people whose opinions we wanted. And they'd call us up and be like, I feel like I just left the dentist. Like I feel like my teeth feel really clean. And I feel like excited to brush my teeth again. And I was getting this like scene back about a toothbrush that is usually reserved for like a Prada bag, right? Where people are like, oh my God, I got this. And so I think that was the moment I knew that there was something there to explore.

10:07So like that was proof point number one. And then proof point number two was going to this first dental show. I don't know if you've ever spent time with dentists or hygienists. like dungeons aren't like kind of renowned for having like this bubbly outgoing uh you know excited personality and these people were crowding us in like re whose job it is to take care of your mouth were telling us like i want to be a part of this is brilliant so i think the two those two things paired together you felt how special it was and and that's how i really knew yeah and so you went out, raised some seed funding and like this prototype, how did you bring it to life?

10:50Can you talk me through kind of those next steps with that seed funding? You worked out your go to market strategy to kind of seed fulfillment, but like talk to me about the actual manufacturing side. Was most of that seed capital for MOQ for production or? Yeah. So I feel like our early capital was was allocated in two buckets right so there was the need to actually get some inventory and i'll even be like crazy specific for you like the first po i ever signed i signed for 5 000 units and i was like oh that's a lot um we manufacture in china um and so you have about 30 days of production or 45 days of production you got 30 days on the ocean right so you're talking like, you know, a 60, 75 day cycle of like, when you put that money down and how long you're waiting for the product.

11:44And when you're new and you're young, you don't have terms, right? Like, so we were like 50 % down and 50%, like before the goods left the factory. Now we have like much better terms as a, you know, a much bigger business. So the capital went to that manufacturing. And then the second thing is that we were building this proprietary technology to build a new approach to Zeek. It's called direct recommending, right? It's not an MLM. It's not direct selling. It's every single person is sort of compensated for being someone who recommends and helps us create our products. So we developed a custom web platform and app on iOS and on Android.

12:24And then, and a little bit of marketing materials like, you know, our t-shirts and our booth design and blah blah blah so that those three things probably tapped almost all of the seed capital yeah wow and so you went to your first you would say trade show uh sold sold out what happened next so then after that we kind of like come back like come back to our three investors and we say okay we got all this data like let's take a look like and so what we monitored was so in our very first six months of business like we never had an advertisement we never had a single bit of marketing other than going to our trade shows and then empowering our ambassadors so what we started to track was okay well how like economically effective is an ambassador and you know how what's the growth rate look like this way and so what we really did was like we learned from our customers and we learned from our ambassadors so what is making someone buy what is making someone an effective ambassador.

13:27And so we really optimized our online shopping experience, our ambassador onboarding experience. And so we probably, you know, that last, you know, that initial capital in this like sort of observation and optimized period, probably five or six months, if I'm remembering correctly, before we then needed to go for like a scene two round. So, yeah. And like how quickly did it take to get traction? Like, because 2017 actually isn't that long ago. You guys have had incredible success for how long you guys have been around. So I assume like traction came pretty fast or what did that timeline look like?

14:09I would say like I can pinpoint the business like very, like almost like on a graph, right? So from August of 2017 to March 2018, you could have mapped my progress almost like a steady mountain climb, right? The numbers and the metrics were very predictable. Then in March of 2018, we thought, what if we advertised? What if we made an ad? What if we made a video of our ambassadors showing you how good this product works? And so we put this ad up on Facebook. and that slow and steady growth suddenly looked like like the facade at like half dome like we doubled the business one month and then we doubled it the next month and then we doubled it again and our definition of doubling is doubling the number of people who are subscribed to the business it was um it was extraordinary that people were responding to this profession like we sort of took this idea of the professionals are who you should listen to and then we advertised the professionals on like Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat.

15:19And people watched these videos and they were like, what? Yes. And, and then, then we, you know, hit this wall that you'll find like, you know, you need money if you're not successful, you need more money if you are successful. uh and so we started to see oh my goodness um we need working capital like going back to that 75 day lead time for products and i'm doubling and i'm doubling and i'm doubling all of a sudden i'm starting to sweat and i realized like i need like serious capital uh to support this growth because then all you need this customer service to match it and you need an inventory supply that's matching this growth curve and then some.

16:07And so then we had to go out and do like a proper like institutional capital round from there. Yep. Got you. And can you talk to me about the advertising side of things? Just because it's changed a lot these past two to three years. Yes. Sorry. I didn't mean to laugh. Yeah. No, it's all good because I think we both know those changes probably intimately well. So obviously advertising was one thing that really allowed you to put gasoline on the fire to the business, but what other things did you do to really scale out the business? Well, what was interesting is that these things were working in tandem, right?

16:49So you continue to grow this base of advocates and ambassadors who are recommending your product. And so they're acquiring, each of them, a number of customers per month. And then I'm acquiring more ambassadors every month by going to these shows. So, you know, for example, in March of 2018, I went to six dental conventions, which are trade shows. And each of these, I signed up anywhere between 100 and 400 dental hygienists and hand dentists to be our ambassadors, right? And the crew of people there. So you have this, your proprietary acquisition channel continues to grow in size and then an exponential vector because, you know, if each one of these is acquiring 10 customers a month and then you have 200 of them, 400, you get the order of magnitude.

17:37So this is growing alongside the advertising side of things. And then the third bucket is you have customers telling other people about it because they're fanatical. the cheapest form of marketing you have is customers telling other people about it because they love it so much and that we tracked a lot of business to that too yeah and can you talk to me around the infrastructure to maintain that level of scale uh and and some of the things that you know anyone watching this might be thinking what are the things that i need to be thinking about if i've got a business that's just going through a meteoric growth race growth rise yeah i think it always goes back to your customer.

18:18That is your ultimate source of truth, right? So when you think about the most important part of your infrastructure, the answer should be what best serves my customer, especially if you've got a subscription-based business like I do where you want to keep that customer. So we invested in an infrastructure that ensured that the customer was going to be serviced well. So in the early days, and actually still to this day, Customer service outnumbers any other type of employee that we have. If you've got a question for us, we have an answer for you in a timely, kind, fun, professional fashion, right?

18:53That sticks with people. We made sure that your order to deliver time was very tight. And I won't get into specific names because that would be disparaging. But we had a choice between carriers, right, of who was going to deliver your package. And there was one carrier that was significantly cheaper than another. and we did not go with them because we felt that 14 days of delivery time is not a great customer experience and so we're going to go with the more expensive delivery option to get you a better customer experience and we we consciously made that decision so i think it was about delivering the product delivering a customer experience and then you know the other things that kind of then grow in the background when you're building a business like this are your technology team how does that need to scale you need like a real finance team state sales tax is real and you got to pay it you got to make sure you're filing that like these are things that like you a lot of people skimp on their their finance team early on and very much to their detriment i'm like a purist on this front we brought in a cfo really early he is phenomenal and uh and and and then when it came time to raise big dollar venture capital, diligence was not difficult because I didn't have messy books.

20:12Like we actually started auditing our books from 2018 on. So we had auditive financials, which you don't hear like a lot from startups, but that's something that we did was that we were, we knew how big we could be and we were going to build it right from the start. And we had the support from our board to do that. Like some things, like decisions to do things like bring on a high dollar employee like a cfo early on versus later on yeah that's smart what uh what were some gotchas like what were some big hurdles uh that that have happened on the journey thus far gotchas um i would say that in the early days like we had maybe let's say loosey-goosey but we felt we were maybe loosey-goosey on our like our personnel protocols our hr protocols if you were and like nothing inappropriate but lack of clarity leads to lack of security for people and like we didn't really think about like okay what's this person's career path and income trajectory just not really got you as much as a um a wisdom learned that you i should have been more thoughtful about those things like this isn't like a swashbuckling band of people who are just getting it done like these are also people who are investing in their lives and their future so i would say that you know bringing really thinking about people planning earlier on that would be a gotcha um when people told us that dealing with like retailers and um and the like is a very different beast than running D to C.

21:53I think we underestimated what they, we underestimated the wisdom that they were giving us. And, and I, and I, and I wouldn't do that again.

22:05Um, you know, uh, the, how much of your, I guess, like, uh, your, your life and your, like, how much time you spend with Lingle, like, it just, I think that would shock you too. Um, you know when you have advertisements to consumers like at a certain scale you start everything is you know you review it for advertising claims and and uh and just you know following like your p's and q's like the the regulatory environment for just being an entrepreneur is so much crazier than i think anyone would think just feel like you do a lot of things that are administrative or regulatory to make sure you're crossing your t's dotting your i's um what else what else i mean we haven't had any knock on wood horrific moments where I'm like oh oh no that's good so uh what about team talk to me around team how do you approach hiring uh you know at the level of scale that you know you guys have uh people is so critical how did you know kind of when to bring on uh certain senior leaders mid-level managers like how how that has played out in building your senior leadership team out your exec team yeah so i think the overarching belief of the company is quality of person is more important than quality of skill that's a very important belief of ours like i will take somebody who is 75 percent of skill with 100 percent of heart integrity, loyalty, and drive over a hundred percent of skill and 75 % of that.

23:46Like we've had great success investing in people's careers, promoting from within. So that is a, that is like a foundational belief of our business that we'll take passion over experience. And that's worked out really well for us. Then in terms of how do you plan for what roles you need? I think, you You know, on the one side, you sort of you make your plan and you work your plan. And then while you're working your plan, you realize where your plan was flawed. So you thought you needed this, but really you need this. And I'll give you a good example. Like we're going through the biggest area of growth in our business right now is really on our marketing team.

24:30And what we realized, I'm not saying this is a universal truth. This is a burst truth. What we realized is that the greatest creative people feel bogged down if they're burdened with being the greatest process people. So what are we going to do to fix that? And the inclusion of creative project managers to help facilitate projects that don't take away from creative thought. But also, I'm not running a preschool. Like, we got to get stuff done. it's a for-profit business projects have deadlines campaigns have to launch etc etc etc so how do you balance between these two things where it's like this isn't an art project this is a business project that is creative and so we we always say like we have this other phrase we use you can't make an apple and orange this great creative person is never going to be my spreadsheet person and that's fine so let's figure out how to make that work so that's what I mean He's like, you kind of make your plan.

25:36You think this is how the team's going to work. And then as you're working on it, you realize, okay, here's what I didn't take into account. And now I need to modify this plan. What advice would you give to founders in the early stages around finding product market fit and really knowing that it's there? Would you say that was a challenge for you guys? We did a lot of market research before we had a product. So that's the advice. um if you think the research process is you have an idea and it's a great one and that's it that's a terrible market research plan in my opinion um because you're that's your experience and that's your viewpoint and i've never known anybody to kind of go out and do the work of gathering feedback who yes their original idea was great but here's here were the missing things is it took it from good to great or excellent.

26:32And really talking to people and doing your research matters. So if you think you've got a great idea, talk to people about it that you trust, get feedback, do some research on who does something same, similar, different. I think another great question to ask yourself is, who's tried this before and failed? And how have they failed? What didn't they get right? because not very few things that are like truly new under the sun. So there probably has been some version of this idea in some way that may not have made it. What didn't they get right? So I think we did it. I mean, Hamish and I spent six months just getting to know each other before we decided to be business partners.

27:18Like you will spend more time with your co-founder if you choose to have one than you will your spouse, your children, your family, your friends. It's a very, very personal relationship. And you have to rely on each other and be a different kind of honest and strong. And so I think it's really important to do that. So we researched each other. We researched the products. And so we felt really confident. And like I told you, I then used the product, went to a dentist, didn't tell him I'd been using it. And he was like, where have you been? I'd love to shift gears and talk about influences. so you guys have worked with some of the biggest influences on the planet like kim kardashian kylie jenner like what kind of impact does that make on on a business i think it varies so i don't know that i could answer that generally but i can answer it for my business um so the first big influence i worked with was chloe kardashian and she was tremendous for my brand and i'm thankful to her and I'm thankful for the work that she did.

28:24And I will always be because I think that she was really authentic with my product. And, and what it did was this thing that this grassroots group of people was really fanatically behind and it still is to this day. I think for them, it was like a validation moment, right? Like, listen, it's not just me. It's one of the most important business and beauty influencers in the world she's a fan of this and um and she can use anything she uses this and she's probably offered you know they know reasonably she's probably offered tons of deals every single day and she doesn't take every single one of them so i would say that there was like this legitimizing factor for them being really enjoyed and then same thing on the consumers it it it got you on the radar in a way that you hadn't been before.

29:19And people ask me all the time, like, should I hire an influencer? And I always say, if it's authentic to what you're doing, like, is that influencer influencing the customer that you think you have? And if the answer isn't, yes, then like, that's probably not a great investment. We had so many brand tenants that really matched Chloe. And so she felt so right for us at that moment where like, you know, one of our brand tenants was like, just really being open and talking with people about what's going on with you. And like, that's like kind of what she's known for, uh, being open to trying new beauty products, being loving the way that your things function and the way they look.

29:58So we just felt like there was so many great overlaps that it was right for us and it, and we have really great results. Um, so I think that influencers are very sinkerswim is I think the wisdom, like, you know, I talked to people who are like, I made this huge investment and I got nothing out of it. I hear that time and time again. So I would say really getting an ROI on it is possibly more the exception than the rule. But to get the ROI, do the work, figure out who your customer is and who influences that customer. I think that's the thing. I think that maybe people just do the thing. It's like, that's a big name.

30:37And like, there are big names, like, like what, like Cristiano Ronaldo is like the biggest Instagram influencer in the world, but like, I don't know that my customer is his follower. So that probably would be a good investment for me. I could be wrong. Maybe it could, but like, I'd have to do the work. And when it comes to kind of, you know, working with Kim or Kylie or Chloe, what's more important to you? Is it them doing a post and expecting a return or is it the content that you get from that and also I guess the association and and elevating your brand I'd say that's involved over time right so in the Chloe post which was really early for us ROI mattered because like it's just financial for us and then by the time we got to Kim which was this past Christmas I think it was more about the brand you know than the ROI and And we wanted, we thought like we had really arrived, right?

31:39Like we've been growing, growing, growing. And we had asked ourselves like who, when you think of like, okay, you really, like you're, you're the one, you're, you're the brand. Kim felt like the right person to say like, that's, that's the case. That's the truth. So far, I'd say we had evolved and grown enough that we could afford to do something that wasn't pure ROI trackable. you can't really do that early on um you got to achieve a certain amount of scale you know and at that point in time i had been i was on television television advertising we did the most beautiful so we launched a lavender edition a limited edition of the product and we did this beautiful um uh animated flower ad uh scored to classical music and it was running on hulu uh so we were doing all of these other sort of integrated marketing things but that that matched you know it fit for the time yeah okay that's really cool so love to switch gears as well around other brands when it comes to like looking at other brands what's common mistakes you see people making in 2022 to be authentic with your customer you know I like and I don't want to be just like I won't name names but when I see somebody making a false claim to a customer that's a brand for today not a forever brand so if you tell somebody they're going to get results or experience a thing and then that's not what they get like you know like that famous tiktok thing right now like what i bought versus what i got like that that's funny in the moment but also like that person's never buying from you again so trust is nothing other than people will behave in a manner consistent with what you expect, right?

33:28And a brand is built on that feeling. So if you don't get it right, you fix that or you apologize, right? Because anyone can have accidentally defects, the product happens. But if you're consistently not having that direct and honest dialogue with your customer or you're telling them things that aren't true, I think you're a today brand. You're a now brand. You're not a forever brand. And I think that's what people are getting wrong is that I think people are more conscientious about what they're using their dollars for, how good is that quality? Is this made of things that are good for me? What is it that you're doing for the environment?

34:06What are your stances on issues plaguing this world? the customers are signaling that they kind of want they don't need the answer they're looking for but they do need the honest answer to that question and so that's what i think i see brands doing wrong is they're they're tracing trend or claims and they're not chasing what makes a good product and a good customer experience i'd love to talk about giving back i know this is something that's really important to you. How do you maintain that balance versus giving back versus investing back in the business? Yeah. I think giving is an investment in the business is the short answer.