601: The Couple Who Built a 9-FIGURE Brand While Working Full-Time Jobs | Natalie Holloway

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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. Welcome back to the founder podcast. What if I told you that the same year a founder scaled from 2 million to 20 million in revenue, they also came within inches of bankruptcy and had to lay off 90 % of their team just to survive. Well, today's guest, Natalie Holloway, is the co-founder of Bala, the nine-figure wellness brand that revolutionized wearable weights and became a household name. They started with just $5 ,000, shipping 75 ,000 units from their garage while working full-time advertising jobs.

1:18Natalie and her husband, Max, turned a simple yoga class frustration into one of the most recognizable fitness brands of the decade. But what most people don't know is the brutal reality behind the Instagram-worthy success story. So in this raw and honest conversation, you're going to learn how to bootstrap a physical product business from$5 ,000 to nine figures while working full-time jobs, the critical mistakes they made when scaling too fast, and the frameworks for rebuilding a profitable business after near bankruptcy. hear the stories learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship welcome to the founder podcast with nathan chan

2:04natalie welcome to the founder podcast the first question i wanted to ask you is what led you and Max to create Bala after being burnt out from your previous career. So Max and I, as you said, we were burnt out because we were working in advertising in LA at an agency called 72 and Sunny. And we were truly, it was pre-COVID, we were burning the midnight oil, you know, basically eating dinner at the office, you know, being at the office till 10, 11 at night, and then having to go back the next morning for a meeting. And this was just like months and years on end. So we got burnt out. And we had just started dating.

2:55And so we kind of romanticized this idea of the gap year. But later in life, you know, We were late 20s, not right after college. And so we said, let's quit our jobs. Let's travel and let's get jobs when we return. We kind of just didn't overthink it. We said, what's the worst thing that could happen? Worst case, we kind of go one step down in our career, but we get jobs again in advertising. So we went off on that journey and we were doing a yoga class. and at the time I was very into incorporating weights into my yoga class because I felt like it's the perfect workout it's a blend of strength training mixed with a flow and so we were doing a yoga class and it was far too easy we wanted to sweat and there was no sweat happening so it was right after that that we started brainstorming how could we have made that class harder and we landed on wrist and ankle weights, which existed, but they existed in a way in which they were from the 80s, neoprene, not cute at all.

4:06No one even used them. So we were brainstorming. We said, why did this tool totally leave the market? No one uses these, but really you should be seeing girls wearing wrist weights on their walks or at Equinox to get a little bit more of a workout in. So that was the idea behind it. And Max, who is our product designer, and he's literally, my husband and co-founder has designed every product that we have. It just kind of came to him and he drew it out right there. And we were like, huh, maybe we're onto something. Let's do this. And so what happened next? You guys famously started this company with$5 ,000.

4:47you've got we've got a lot to unpack you've been on shark tank you know uh near near failure laid off whole team like you've got some crazy stories now nine figure business um what happened next had like like five thousand dollars like what was the like what was the moq like talk me through that piece because everyone always wants to know like how do you start yeah I think, I mean, it definitely wasn't straightforward. We had no idea what we were doing. Our secret sauce, I believe everybody has an unfair advantage. Our unfair advantage was we knew, you know, marketing and branding and how to produce a shoot and tell a story.

5:28So that was our, that's what we did know. But what we didn't know was anything about product development, running a business, anything else. so we set back to the U.S. about a year later and we just started we just said let's do a side hustle like let's make a little bit of extra money while we get back into advertising got jobs again we were in New York this time got jobs in New York at advertising agencies and in the background we were just working on Bala and seeing if it could be a thing and if we could get this product to life. And so we just started every our approach was really just to like take steps every day and see what happened.

6:09And all the while we're working a nine to five, if not like a nine to eight, because I already talked about advertising and how how hard that was at the time, probably still is. So we're working advertising and just treating it as a side hustle. And we just prototyped the product for about a year. I ended up going to China right before we launched. And the MOQ was, I think it was$40 ,000. And that's the next step was like, how do we get$40 ,000? We launched a Kickstarter, and we got the money. And then we just started selling the product. And for two years, we had other jobs, we had our advertising job.

6:51So we truly boot shopped it for the first two years. and then we can talk about Shark Tank. I'm sure we will. But then we quit our jobs pretty much right before we aired on Shark Tank. And that's when really things got crazy. Yeah. Okay. So from our research, it cost you guys$5 ,000 to launch the brand. What did you spend those$5 ,000 on? so it was probably about four thousand dollars on the prototype and then the next thousand and might have been a little bit more than that um you know over the next several months but producing a shoot like my sister shot it probably for free and maybe paying a model a couple hundred dollars and max built our website so everything was really really bare bones um and we spent little to no money to get it at least live and then from there we pretty much funded the business with selling the product so sell two buy one more it just kind of went like that got you and talk me through the manufacturer like how did you find someone to produce your prototype and you know did you produce it in china to begin with like talk us through that piece because a lot of people find that as a real barrier as well.

8:13I think that's a huge barrier. And this, it's really hard because you don't know if you haven't been to the factories, like you're just sending money into online and hoping that they produce your product. Like it's, it's very, a scary thing. So we actually had a connection that at least started the conversation in China. Max's family's in the toy industry. And so his uncles knew a toy factory and that toy factory pointed us in the right direction and actually developed our first prototype. And then we moved it to another factory. But that was that was a tough even having someone we knew who produced toys.

8:55It was still like, where do we go? How do we start getting this thing made? You know, because then you have to think about the materials and where you should source those materials and then how you manufacture it and what creative they need to do so. So there were a lot of unknowns. And again, I think we figured it out by just taking steps every day and just letting the path lead us to the answer. And when it comes to the prototyping phase, it sounds like from your husband's sketching it on a napkin and like working out what that first product was to actually getting the prototype, having it ready, launching the Kickstarter.

9:40It sounds like that took you guys about a year or so, right? Yeah, I think from prototype, probably a little over a year, from prototype to launching on Shopify, a little over a year. Yeah, okay. So then you did the Kickstarter. Tell me about that. you raised$40 ,000 that was your first form of validation or did you speak to customers people in the space like how did you know you were on to something where you guys still weren't sure until you launched the kickstarter well we launched the kickstarter and we still didn't know what what we had unlocked like we still didn't I I believed it was going to be something cool but I don't think I believed how big it could be at that point yet um I think that came a lot later with a lot more validation um but we believed that people wanted it and understood it enough to like keep going from the kickstarter and I think it probably was months later when we were getting in goop or free people or I would be at a trade show and we'd hand them the product and people literally would light up.

10:57And that's when we realized how big it could get. But I think until then it was really like a slow burn. Like, do you like this? Like we just, you know, we didn't find our people yet. And I think putting anything out into the world is scary. And you second guess yourself the whole time. Like I didn't even post it on my own social media because I was like so scared of putting it out into the world. Even though the Kickstarter was live, I still was like, I'm going to kick this like to myself a little bit. Yeah, I can really resonate with that. I remember when I launched Founder, I was the exact same.

11:33Like I launched this magazine, didn't know anything about business or entrepreneurship. And I kept it quiet. Like I told a couple of my really close friends, but I didn't post about it because I was embarrassed and I was nervous and I was scared of what other people would think of me. And I really appreciate you sharing that because I think sometimes it's quite freeing to hear that because sometimes you look at super successful founders and think, oh, they're so fearless. You know, they have so much courage, but it's just these micro steps that eventually lead you to where you are right now. but it's not you know always from the start so much confidence i know this is going to work and you don't care what other people think and you're not worried about failure and you know you're struggling and there's times you're thinking about giving up like that part is all those things that people from the outside it looks like you might not face we all face it it's being human right yeah i think it's also it's just it's cool when you you know get a lot of comments or a lot of traction on something, but that's never the case when you first launch something.

12:45So it is scary to be like putting yourself out there and wondering if people will like it or hate it or judge you. And it's funny that you had that same feeling. I'm sure anyone who's put themselves out there can relate. So does that mean you didn't have a Kickstarter launch party? I kept it. Like, I was like, this is just going to go out to the public, not to my friends and then I think along the the the journey of the Kickstarter we started to need people to purchase it and then I really had to like blast it out but no we didn't we had a shark tank party but that's way more exciting yeah okay that's interesting so we've done a successful Kickstarter campaign early days founder I took all the best interviews all the most popular interviews and put it into a coffee table book now we don't sell that yeah we don't sell anymore but we sold at least, I think, 10 ,000 copies.

13:39Now for the Kickstarter, I think we sold maybe a thousand or something. So we raised a couple hundred thousand dollars. And a big part, they say, in the Kickstarter playbook is if you want to get on the trending page, you have a party with friends, family, customers. And then when you launch, you get everyone to purchase. So then it trends like that's that's part of the the go-to playbook you know what i mean that's why i asked did you have a party well that's really great to know now uh but also it was you know i mean we didn't have any money so you have to have money to have a party and at that stage we didn't so we were really more like emailing people but i think if i launched a kickstarter again now i know what to do yeah there you go okay so you had this kickstarter you raised forty thousand dollars at that stage, you still didn't know you were onto something or you kind of did, but what happened next?

14:36Cause you were, for the first two years, you hand shipped 75 ,000 units from your garage, um, which is crazy. Like I've started a physical product brand and I, I, I don't run anymore. We sold it, but I remember the early days health-ish, um, it was fun to, to hand produce the product to to hand package the product write your little note and you get orders in it's really exciting but it does get to a point where you just like oh my god i don't want to do it i'm over it but like we probably did that for the first maybe i'd say six to ten thousand tops but 75 000 in two years that's crazy we probably did yeah 10 thousand plus before we started yeah it's insane I mean I look back on that time I think it's just I didn't know and I also now I'm surrounded by you know other people building businesses and I feel like there's a phone call away to ask what the next thing to do is but at that time I really I really didn't know anybody who had their own business and so I was I was really just figuring out I thought this is what we were supposed to do but looking back it was insane we were shipping with the help of like my sister and maybe a few other people like shipping for like five hours a day from our back garage at this point in Hollywood.

16:00And it was insane because we were literally shipping to complex retailers like Bloomingdale's and Free People. And I should have called that earlier and switched to a warehouse. But I think in our mind, a warehouse was so expensive and unknown and again I didn't have any peers to look to that I could get advice about this and so we just kept doing it and then it was Shark Tank where we go this is about to blow up we can't do this any longer so we actually shipped all of the Shark Tank orders and that was our last bit before our warehouse was up and running. Yeah okay so tell me about Shark Tank what happened there shark tank was crazy um we got a call from i applied one day i was just in like let's go mode and just doing as much as i could every single day and so i did this little online application um when you start a business especially if it's a product business everyone says you should go on shark tank i'm sure people said it to you when you had your business but um so it was one of those times and I said, okay, I'm just going to apply.

17:10And I applied. The producers called me. We were in the running. We had a few calls for, I believe, season 10. And then we got dropped and we didn't know why. So we were super bummed. And they said, okay, we might call you for future season. And by the way, we can't tell you why. And it was probably four, five to six months later that they did call And they said, it's a new season of Shark Tank. We think you guys would be great. And so that's when we started getting on, you know, weekly calls with the producers and you're kind of actively pitching to get on the show. And then we, you know, had our fateful day where all five sharks wanted in and it was still the most craziest day ever.

17:57And you raised money from Mark and eventually Maria Sharapova as well. why'd you go for mark and how much did you raise and also at that time what was your revenue yeah so they got okay so our revenue going on the show it was year two so I think first year was like two to three hundred thousand dollars year two jumped to 2.1 million dollars but really like just grassroots it took off sort of thing and that's when we went on the show and all I guess all five sharks that said this is a good deal and Maria Sharapova was the guest shark and since she's an athlete and a fashionista it was I think validation for the other sharks to say oh if she likes this this must be good and so we went into it wanting mark and maria to be our dream team and somehow we walked away with them them doing it and we got nine hundred thousand dollars for 30 of the company okay and tell me about take me back to like you said it was the most craziest day ever why i think to that point at that point i you know i had not been public speaking a lot i you know we're year two of this business and it has become so important to us and we're about to pitch on live tv in front of like five billionaires and i think that was very intimidating to pitch.

19:39You know, we had this like cheesy skit that we memorized and we're just kind of waiting backstage on the lot for us for them to tell us at any moment we're up and there's no like redos. There's no editing. It's just straight up. You're in there. You're in the tank for an hour and they're going to drill you about your business, your baby. And so that was really scary because we didn't know what they were going to say. I mean, we thought they'd pick us apart and say, oh anyone could copy this or um just anything that they could say and we we didn't know what the reaction would be so we went in there and we could tell they were vibing with it and that energy I think really fueled us for that hour-long interview where you know when when you can tell somebody's into what you're saying you feel more confident and I think that really helped with our confidence during the pitch and being able to answer their sharky questions because we also never raised money to date like we the language was different to us so being peppered you know essentially by like investors with all this language that of course we prepared for but um it was new to us so it's terrifying yeah i can imagine um i've had quite a few friends that have been on Shark Tank.

20:57I had a similar story to you. When Shark Tank first come to Australia, I auditioned. The producers said they love me. I went for Founder. I went trying to get on Shark Tank for Founder, the magazine. At the time, it was just a magazine and a podcast. And yeah, I didn't get on. But one thing I will tell you, and this is just that I know, and you know this and i'm sure a lot of people do a lot of the deals don't actually go through after due diligence all of that stuff yours actually did a lot don't go through yeah yeah so so tell me what happened next how long how long between shooting to it airing and then take me back to your launch party then like what happened our launch party well max and i eloped actually uh probably pretty much a month before bala existed in the world on shopify and so it was kind of like the wedding we had we never had like all of our friends and family were there the shark tank party it was like the most exciting moment because it was just this like moment of hope and opportunity because we're our brand was being put out there to the world you know millions and millions of people tune into that and continue to so the shark tank party was really fun and i would imagine like as close to our wedding as we could get um and then i forgot the other question that you asked yeah so so take me back to that day like it aired yeah this party all your friends like what happened to sales uh were you worried about getting a bad edit because that that was one thing i was worried about like you just never know because sometimes sometimes they you they really they really uh put you in a bad light too you got to be careful yeah i think i mean i know it's reality tv i know they want to make it look you know dramatic or sad they want you to cry like so i knew that going in that they could make us look dumb or something um but i think we were happy with the edit we were excited immediately you know it airs on the east coast and then the west coast so the east coast aired and we just saw like almost sold out i think we sold out on amazon and we were like padded with inventory so like more people than we could have ever imagined on our website and we sold out on amazon and then the west coast airing happened and we had sold out on DTC at that point.

23:36So the orders were just flowing in and I think it was really crazy and exciting to see. That was February 28th of 2020, two weeks before the world shut down because of COVID. So what happened next is what we never could have expected. We aired on Shark Tank, great. Two weeks later, world shuts down. Literally all of my friends say their last public outing outing was our Shark Tank party. And then everyone was sheltering in place. And there was a scarcity of toilet paper and workout equipment. So we were on the radar. I mean, even now people have stories of trying to get Bala because we were notoriously sold out that entire year.

24:25Product would land, it would sell out. Product would land, it would sell out. And And that was like, I always say that year was the perfect storm of putting us on the map between COVID and Shark Tank, you know, because we had the media moment and then COVID hit. Yeah. I remember how hard it was to get gym equipment. You're on Facebook Marketplace, like all this kind of stuff. Like it was so rare, so scarce. It was back orders everywhere. It was crazy. It was crazy. So yeah, the timing couldn't have been better. So you guys went from 2 million to 20 million in about one year, right? Yep. In about one year.

25:05How'd you manage that? We were not prepared for that. We had to grow up quite quickly in business and we had to start hiring people and we had to start understanding how much inventory we needed. We had many years of a struggle getting the right amount of inventory in. And we grew quite quickly. And we were just, we were not prepared. And we were just taking it day by day. We were very excited and working really hard. My son was also born during that time. So it was a wild time. And we all thought it would continue forever, hey? it was a yeah like in terms of that in terms of the sales i don't know about you but a lot of my friends and everyone you know everyone just scaled up and hired and you know we all thought it was just gonna like just keep booming like i don't know why like i remember thinking you know i don't know and then it just kept going and like yeah everyone thought that i think and then then you have the post covid dip especially in fitness because everybody then started seeing a decline and when you're planning for you know 20 % growth even if you're just planning for 20 % growth and you miss that mark and you maybe have 20 % dip which is what happened to us it's detrimental to the business especially because we were bootstrapped we were not funded and we hired way too quickly and scaled to like a team of 30 and then it became a pretty dramatic situation and I think that you you kind of saw that across the fitness industry but across many industries you saw that like there were just massive layoffs i don't know why we all thought the growth would just continue like that yeah yeah so so you had the covid boom grew the business rapidly and then you had a near bankruptcy and we talked about this offline where this is something that a lot of founders don't talk about enough or aren't as candid.

27:22And there's this story out there in the marketplace where people think that if your business is growing, it's just always up and it's not necessarily linear. So what happened? So you had this big COVID boom. We all thought, me included, we found her in online education, that was another area that massively boomed, right? I had people coming to me on my Facebook that I hadn't worked with. These people I worked with in my day job like a decade ago saying hey I know what you do a founder like I'm interested in your membership one of your programs to help me start an e-com brand or something and I'm like okay wow why now and they're like well now's the perfect time there's nothing to do like no better time like people are bored right so people are bored they're either trying to learn skill up or they're wanting to work out like like you know like it was a perfect storm so I went through you know not as deep journey as you did um but talk talk me through what happened next so we as i said scaled up and i think planned for a growth year and it was a slight dip it wasn't even a crazy dip but a slight dip and we were not prepared for the business to normalize like that our everyone on our you know our inventory planner we bought against the growth so already you know we're over skis on inventory and then hired against the growth so now we have this massive team that we need to uh fund and it got it got scary quite quickly and we ended up having to do a couple rounds of layoffs and after that we went all the way down to three people on the team, myself and my husband included.

29:09So it went from 30 people, you know, operating this machine down to three people. And that just meant we were literally back to doing everything. And it was a really dark time because, I mean, Max and I, we were young leaders whenever we started. We didn't know what we were doing. We were doing the very best that we could. And there were just a lot, there was a huge learning curve. And going back to that really, you know, lean team having to do everything again, it just felt like such a fail. Like it felt like, did we just fail? We just like ruined this business. Like we are the only ones to blame.

29:49So it was a really dark, dark time. And this was in 2022. So this is about, you know, and we're three years past it, but it was tough. Yeah, wow. And so you said you did multiple rounds. So you probably started, I'd say, like mid-2021. That's when the markets started to shift a little, and then the markets really kind of turned, I'd say, early 2022 and then mid-2022. So you did multiple rounds of layoffs happened over a year period, like six months and six months is that what happens a revenue decline what did it decline probably about a year a year or less because i think there became a point where we were like we need to lay off everybody and it was like quite quick quickly so probably like yeah within a year time yep okay so you did the first round how many people what was revenue then the second round how many people oh we know how many people but the first round how many people and what was the revenue and what did it drop to?

30:52I think it went probably from, I don't have this exact, but probably 21 to 18 or something. Like it was a couple million short, but that's the team cost right there, you know? So it just became, and customer acquisition costs were going up. I mean, it was really a dire situation for us. And so we probably did about, I would say three rounds of layoffs probably about six to eight people each time and I think each round we thought okay let's let's keep the team intact and like see if we can right size this ship and it just was not working so we completely scraped the business to the almost the beginning and we rebuilt from there and we came back so much stronger having done everything the wrong way to then learn the right way it was like rebuilding a new business and what was what was like mark saying at the time or maria like that would have been scary and such a daunting thing to say like what happened there i think they were i think they were telling us to mark is uh he has great advice and he's always He's maybe like conservative with the business advice.

32:16Like he'll tell us not to take a huge retail PO or not to buy such inventory. He wants us thinking about the future and how this could impact us. And just because it sounds great to get a$1 million PO with a new retailer, it might not be the right call because you need to make sure there's a market fit. So his advice at that time was probably you're doing the right thing by cutting the team. and I think it helped that it wasn't just us it was the entire landscape you weren't the headlines were everyone was laying off and it was so it became quite clear what we needed to do because those are the I mean the cut we cut meta completely as well so we any we just looked at our P &L and we looked at it I mean probably multiple times a week every week just looking for anything that we could scrape off you know why did we spend 500 there what's this subscription like we were looking at every single line item at that point and the line items that were the most costly were the team and you know meta spend so we cut meta spend and we had to cut the team because we had looked everywhere else for the savings and it just wasn't there wow what did you what was your meta spend what'd you cut it from to two down to like you shot down to zero what was it from I mean, at that point, maybe$100 ,000 a month.

33:42It wasn't crazy. I think we still had an okay customer acquisition cost, but we needed every dollar that we made to be spent against our debt that we incurred. And so every dollar mattered. And so that meant cutting photo shoots, our ad spend, like truly going back to the beginning. Wow. That must have been so tough. Like I went through a little bit of a depression after that because we were just, it was bad. It just, you felt like you totally failed. You know, we were responsible for these people's lives and we then had to fire them. It was, it was pretty bad. Yeah. Did not feel good. And so what did revenue drop to by that stage after you cut the spend everything?

34:35Because a lot of the time we all look at, you know, everyone has the headlines like, you know, this much in revenue. And then a lot of it can be bolstered just by spending money on ads, you know, all these different things. So what did it drop to? That was that 17 or 18 figure. Probably the next year was that 17 or 18 million. So, you know, you're going from 21 to 17 or 18. But that delta, that's what hurt us. Yeah, wow. And you'd think most people looking from the outside, 17, 18 million a year, you'd think, wow, okay, the business would be doing really well still. You know what I mean? Like that's what people would think from the outside, right?

35:16I think when you've already essentially spent the money on inventory. So it was we had the inventory for the next year to be a 25, 30 million dollar business. And instead, we weren't doing that. So we had all of our cash tied up in inventory. So you literally just don't have money to run the business. And so we had an inventory issue and we had already spent on the team. So there was that as well. So, you know, we had that team for a year, year and a half or whatever the time was. And so you've already been spending that money, essentially. You've already spent the money. So now it's all catch up and trying to pay back the debt.

36:00Did you consider raising more money? Like was that on the table or the cards? Like that obviously was an option, but what made you just kind of go, you know what, we're going to rebuild from scratch and learn from all these lessons. Like talk me through that because that obviously would have went through your mind and a lot of founders do do that, right? During tough times. Yeah, we definitely did consider, we actually did try to raise money and it was the worst, again the worst possible time to raise money so we were a little late later stage for people and we just weren't in that sweet spot at the time um and no one when you raise against like a decline the valuation that we were going to be given was horrible you know 1x revenue or something or 2x revenue and it's just we I don't even think we want we just didn't we tried to raise at a certain point and then we were just like it's not the right time let's just like let's bootstrap this thing again and rebuild I think we both just felt like if we would have raised the valuation would have been horrible and we would have probably lost a ton of our equity and just wasn't the right right call and wasn't the right time nobody was getting if you were raising money you were raising it on you know on pennies on the dollar so it wasn't wasn't an option so you and max obviously um kind of went back to almost ground zero what what was the plan from there but like and yeah obviously has a great story tell tell us what happened right we the plan was at we were okay with things slipping through the cracks the plan was back to the basics since all of a sudden you have three people doing the role of what was once a 30 person team like it's not physically possible and so we did anything we could but we said it's okay if things slip through the cracks we kind of need to go back to the basics we you know we couldn't buy a ton of inventory because again, our money was like tied up in existing skews.

38:16So we kind of just said we had these mantras and it was like, give ourselves grace. And we gave ourselves grace on everything. And we said, this is going to be like a slow rise again. We really actually did not know what would happen years later. There was no telling. But what we did know is we didn't want to go out of business. So we were just, you know, holding on. And we still, it was also very confusing because the business was still loved and we really did have a good business. You mentioned it. The revenue was still there. Like people still loved the brand. We knew it's not like people stopped loving the brand and that was the issue.

38:53The issue was like we had a down year and that that's what hurt us. So we just kept rebuilding and kept the excitement up. You Consumers had no idea this was going on because we were still, you know, an exciting brand launching new products and things like that. But behind the scenes, we were kind of just playing catch up and really rebuilding. But when we rebuilt, we rebuilt with such an eye on profitability from day one. And that is part of like of who we are today. and I think it really allowed us to build a strong business uh rebuild you know so yeah and look you guys have grown pretty fast since right like it's it's not like you haven't uh slowed down obviously you had a bit of a speed hump um and or you would say a bit of a detour but you guys are you know a nine-figure-a-year brand now and you've got over 20 products across your portfolio under the brand.

40:01You've got 20 more in the next 18 months. You're also writing a book as well. You've got a lot of good stuff going on. So are you grateful now that this happened? I'm I am very grateful. I like tell I tell myself that every day. I mean, it was it was hard and it was a struggle. But now I'm like, I get to enjoy a little more. And I'm grateful it happened because I think it really just taught us. I mean, to keep an eye on every dollar always and never like, you know, lose sight of a certain category of the business, even if you have, you know, ahead of in a certain area of the business, like keep your eye on the ball.

40:46And so while I'm able to not fully be in the weeds, I just like keep my eye on every channel of the business and make sure I understand what's going on so that we never kind of make the mistakes that we already made yeah thank you for sharing and you guys have had a lot of copycats with your products as well tell me how you've worked through that because that's something that a lot of people care like a lot of people i think early stage founders i don't know personally i don't know why but it's a big thing around protecting your idea worrying about being copied maybe it's because of um the facebook movie i forget what it's called with what happened with mark zuckerberg i'm not i'm not sure but social network yeah social network but for one thing i do find is like a lot of people are really big on protecting their idea not letting anyone know worrying other people are going to copy it before they've launched totally and i think i I hear that too.

41:47And I feel like you still have to put it out there, but you also do have to protect it. For us, it's tough because we have if you if you look on Amazon, you'll see so many counterfeits. And these are these are products that like like Max drew out himself. And so it's really, really frustrating to see like in other countries, there's like replicas of the Bala brand, but they call it, you know, something else. And so it's really it's really disheartening to see that. But I think it's part of it. And you just have to remember to innovate. We always say just continue to innovate and continue to win on brand.