Episode 5 Josh Robbins | Amazon, Qualtrics, Lucid, Rags.
5 Josh Robbins | Amazon, Qualtrics, Lucid, Rags. Josh risks tech career to become COO at Rags.
Josh Robbins is the Chief Operating Officer at Rags, and their first c-level hire. Rags, which you may know from the TV show, Shark Tank, has seen a lot of success and was even offered a deal by Robert Herjavec because of their unique, stylish, and easy-to-wear kids rompers.
Interview transcription:
Josh Robbins:
Rags had shortly before that gone on Shark Tank. And so there was some kind of interesting, compelling things going on with the company. Can't point where she was like, Hey, I am going to fill this role. So, um, we've been talking about this role for a long time for like 18 months, but she's like, Hey, I'm actually ready to pull the trigger now. So we need to decide if you're, if you're interested or not, you know, she's like, Hey, we're gonna, we're gonna offer you the COO role. And at this point, you know, I struggled with it because I liked tech. I like lucid, but you know, and so I thought about it for a long time. I actually had several discussions. Is this a bad move for my career? Am I closing the door on working in a tech space? If I do this? And there was a lot of debate going back and forth of is this, is this a good move for me? I think we ultimately concluded, Hey, there is some risks that if you do take this role, you might not be able to work in the tech space. Again,
Braydon Anderson:
This is the early years a show about influential early employees of the most successful companies and their stories that have made a lasting impact. I'm Braydon Anderson and on today's show how our guest has taken his experience from some of the world's most successful companies to help this clothing startup thrive. How important is brand? When you think about the brand of a company, you recognize the iconic ones, Nike, Apple, Google, Amazon. These companies have done amazing things year after year and decade after decade to create and build their brands. But what about your personal brand? How important is your brand for your career and how do you build your brand to have the iconic resemblance you hope for today? We're joined by Josh Robbins, the chief operating officer at Rags and their first C-level hire Rags, which many of you may know from the TV show, Shark Tank has seen a lot of success and while they were on the show was even offered a deal by Robert Herjavec because of the unique, stylish and easy toward kids. Rompers. Josh has spent the last two decades building his brand from founder of a company to graduating from Cornell Johnson's MBA program, to working at Amazon. One of the best brands in the world when Josh was about to graduate with his master's degree in accounting, from BYU, he turned down a full time, offered Ernst and young to start a clothing company that was begun out of a case competition in school.
Josh Robbins:
So I was at BYU and I was doing the, uh, my masters in accounting. And I was at my final year of school. And, um, you know, some friends and I had started this company called Chi, which is a street soccer company. And it kind of sounds a little weird, but the idea was we're this life's, you know, this lifestyle brand for soccer and, and the premise was there's the most popular sport in the world is soccer. If you can kind of build this, this momentum around this and be the lifestyle side, let Nike Adidas be the on the field stuff, but let us be the lifestyle side. But the kids were at a school that kind of stuff. Um, you know, it could be something big. So that was the idea. So we'd started that we were getting good traction and we decided to enter into the BYU business plan competition.
Josh Robbins:
And at the time there was one winner and the winner got $50,000 plus 10 grand in services for, uh, you know, with an accounting firm and 10 grand and services with a law firm. And so we did that competition ended up going all the way through, ended up winning that competition. And, uh, so, you know, once we won that competition in my mind, I was like, okay, if we can win this competition, it validates the idea enough that I can do this full time. And so I ended up doing it, uh, you know, full time.
Braydon Anderson:
No kidding. Okay. So you go, you do the competition and in the part of the, part of this is you actually had a really appealing offer at one of the big four accounting firms. Aren't still young, right? Uh, that you had turned down to do this. That's a pretty big, bold, bold move. I'd love to understand how you made that decision.
Josh Robbins:
Yeah, that's right. It is actually, I feel pretty lucky in some regards. So I had done an internship in between my first and second year of that master's degree. And I did it with Ernst and young. Uh, I did the internship, I got an offer. I had science to go back and work with Ernst and young when I graduated. And so, you know, during this whole time we're doing school doing the Chi thing, doing the business plan competition, you know, starting to get traction, and then we win the competition. And so I was kind of in this spot of like, okay, now what do I do? And then right around that same time, first young reaches out with an email to, to basically all incoming, uh, new hires. And they said, Hey, if you would like to defer your offer to study for the CPA exam, travel after graduation, take some time for yourself, whatever it is, feel free to defer your offer for up to six months.
Josh Robbins:
And I think the idea was they had a few more people scheduled to start than they needed. And so we could stagger it a little bit, then it would work out well for them. And so for me, I was like, this is amazing. I'll defer my offer for six months. And so then I've got like a six month risk-free trial run at Chi full time. So I deferred my offer and, um, you know, once we finished one that business plan competition, and then between the time when my deferral was set to expire and when we won the competition, we raised the money with the venture capital firm. And so again, it was additional layer of security to the point where I was like, okay, I can, I can, uh, you know, not actually go work for Ernst and young. Now I'll say this RC young was amazing. When I came to the conclusion I wasn't going back. I sat down with the recruiter, kind of explained the whole thing and they were awesome about it. So it's not great to, to back out on it. Um, but at the same time, I think I handled it pretty well and, and Ernst and young was really awesome about the way it went down.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. Um, I still feel like that's such a scary decision to make, right? Like you're right out of your, your master's degree now rather than an undergraduate. So it's a, it's a little bit different, but you now have this opportunity to go work for a huge company, get that on your resume. It's kind of the stamp of approval if you will, but the, you decide to go do, do this brand new startup. Um, so I'm curious what, what happened with Kia.
Josh Robbins:
Yeah. And it was scary and, you know, in the back of my mind, I thought to myself, okay, I'll go do this. And, you know, worst case scenario, if this doesn't work, you know, maybe I'll go back to school or something like that. I'll go back and get an MBA, something like that. So anyway, we go to Chi, we do, I do it for about five years, like four and a half. And, uh, you know, had a good run at it and moved down to Southern California. It was actually, you know, had a blast. I mean, I was having a really good time. I wasn't making a ton of money, but I was having a good time. And, um, you know, we, we, we grew the company every year. We're trying to grow right when there were the economy in 2007, 2008 with all the housing market stuff.
Josh Robbins:
Um, so it got a little tricky. We still grew, but a bunch of retailers we sold into and out of business and some other things, and then eventually, uh, the direction of kayak shifted and it shifted from kind of being this lifestyle, um, somewhat affordable, you know, affordable brand, I should say to, uh, this high end premier line was developed. And when I say high end, I'm talking $80, t-shirts a $500 jacket. Like, you know, denim jeans, like it did, it wasn't anything like the existing product. And so once that, once we started going down this path, which I disagreed with, um, it felt like, you know, Kai was, was kind of going down this path and I didn't want to be a part of that. And so at that point I was trying to figure out what my next gig would be. And it was tricky because on the one hand I was like, okay, I have a bachelor's and master's in accounting.
Josh Robbins:
Maybe I go do accounting. But at the same time, I actually, haven't done a ton of accounting over the last four and a half years. I've done, I was doing operations and some sales and some Mark, even a little bit of everything. And so, you know, I was trying to start to do there, but it seemed natural. Cause that was what my degree was in. And, but then if I thought about it, I was like, I don't know that I'd necessarily want to do accounting full time anyway. So I, it kind of helped me make my decision, but I didn't know what to do. And eventually a mentor of mine who was actually on the board of Calle, um, who's actually an, um, a current investor in company where I am right now, Rags, Kurt Roberts. Who's a partner at kickstart. He and I were talking. And he had mentioned that maybe business school would be a good opportunity cause I could tell a really good story. And you know, originally I, I didn't like the idea of it. Cause I'd already had a master's degree. I'd already spent all this time and money getting a master's degree. It seemed like a waste to go get another one. But eventually the more I looked into it, the more I was like, Hey, this could be a really good, really good path for me. And so I ended up going down that path.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. How big did Kia eventually get maybe from an employee count or from a revenue point, if you can, if you can answer that.
Josh Robbins:
Yeah. So we are, we are just under, we're just under a million dollars in our best year. And so still relatively small. And we had six employees and everyone kind of worked in like someone working part time, some full time at a pretty low salary. So we're grinding away. Um, I'd like to, I'd like to say that we're a little ahead of our time. This was pre Shopify pre Instagram. Facebook was just getting started. Um, and so, you know, who knows, not making excuses for the several mistakes that we made along the way, but, um, you know, like I said, it was, it was a fun ride and with some of the tools that exist today, it'd be fun to see what it could have done. Yeah. Do you ever regret not going back to Eli, uh, you know what, I don't, it would have definitely put me on a very different career path for me.
Josh Robbins:
I did realize I, I, you know, I think it's a fantastic career path. It's very stable. Um, uh, you know, highly value that side of the, uh, the business on the accounting side and the numbers side. But ultimately I think I get a little bit more satisfaction on being a little bit more of a driver in, in the growth, uh, and progress of the company then on the accounting for transactions. And so for me, I think it was a good move, but again, I think you can't go wrong with ENY, but me personally, it was a good move to continue down a different path. Yeah. So you do Chi for about four to five years. You now get this advice, Hey, maybe business school's the right decision. Um, what happens at that point? Do you just start applying to all these business schools and hopefully get in?
Josh Robbins:
Or what is that process? Yeah, there's, there's another wrinkle way. This was kind of a tech, a tough decision for me. And that is I came to the conclusion that business school would be a good option for me in October and third round applications are due January 1st, basically. And so if you miss third round, you really don't get in. I mean, there is a fourth round, but there's, there's gotta be a really, really compelling reason. And so even third round I feel like is pretty late. Third round is late. I would have loved to have been first or second if I were doing this. And so I didn't have a huge window. And so I hadn't taken the GMAT. I hadn't studied for the GMAT. So I had basically, you know, two and a half months to study for the GMAT, take the GMAT, right.
Josh Robbins:
My essays, and apply and, you know, get my letters of recommendation. I mean, there's a whole slew of things need to get done. And so once I decided it was, it was a tall order. So I started studying for the GMAT. I took it quite quickly. I got a score that I was happy with. You know, oftentimes you can take it, you know, two or maybe three times get the ideal score for me. I had a number in my head and if I could get this, then I'd go on to the application process and I hit that number spot on. So I hit, I hit the floor there. Um, it's so from there then I applied to schools and so I ended up applying. I didn't have a ton of time. I ended up applying to, um, Stanford, Harvard and Cornell, and the Cornell one is interesting. Uh, uh, a brother-in-law of mine. You had mentioned that he had looked at going to Cornell. Cornell has this Mmm, leadership fellowship scholarship for, uh, several incoming freshmen or not freshmen, but several incoming students into the class. And so the more I looked into it, the more I was like, Hey, if I could get school for free, that's a no brainer. And then if I can get into a Stanford or a Harvard, that also is a no brainer. I'm going to try for all three of these and kind of see what happens.
Braydon Anderson:
Well, this is kind of a random question, but I'm curious at what point of kayak is, did you decide to like, what happened? What was the tipping point? What happened in October? There was like, okay, I've got to go to business. School was where you done working at Kia at that point. And like, what was the actual tipping point of quitting and saying, okay, now I'm going to just put all my eggs into this basket.
Josh Robbins:
Yeah. So we, I had been kind of unhappy in the business for awhile. Okay. Had we had hired on some new hires. Um, one of which came from Nike, um, had a different philosophy to the, to the business and, and that's kind of where this direction of let's go out and do this high end product line came from. And so ultimately, and I was not alone, but we could feel the control of the business, starting to slip away a little bit and go in this different direction. I still want it to work, maintain a good relationship. So even though I was going back to business school, I maintained the relationship and I actually worked at Kia Mmm. Until July, basically the month of school. But ultimately I knew I wasn't going where I wanted to go. I knew I wasn't going to make any more money.
Josh Robbins:
I knew I wasn't going to have, you know, the input that I'd like to. And so I can, you know, it was tough to walk away cause I'd spent five years building this brand, but the way that the brand was being treated at this point and, and the way the decision making was happening, they made it pretty clear. It's like, okay, super bummed, uh, to walk away from this, it's not like I didn't even get like a big exit, a big paycheck. It was just kinda like, ah, I don't like where this is going. Mmm. I'm not happy in the, in the role. This is definitely not what we set out to do. Originally. It doesn't align with the vision. It's it's time for me to figure out that next thing.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. And that just happened to be Cornell, which is a great next thing. Yeah.
Josh Robbins:
Yeah. So I was fortunate. I mean, I, you know, I didn't get it, didn't get an interview at Stanford or Harvard, but I did get that fellowship at Cornell. And, uh, you know, like I said, I would never change anything. Cornell was amazing and I absolutely loved my experience there.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. Tell, tell me a little bit more about that experience. Um, maybe just about business school and then maybe specifically about Cornell.
Josh Robbins:
Yeah. So, you know, because I had done, I already had a master's degree. I had done, uh, a mission for my church. I had, I've done Chi for five years. I was on the older end of the spectrum for my classmates. And so I had two kids already, a third one, which was a surprise came in between the first and second year
Braydon Anderson:
Is your like 30
Josh Robbins:
Maybe yes, I was 30 minutes. And you know, and typically, uh, you know, a lot of my classmates were between 25 and 28. There was a couple around my age, but the bulk were around 25. And so Cornell was awesome because it's upstate New York. It is, uh, you know, it's in the city of Ithaca. So it's, it's, it's family friendly. It's not like down to Asian arm, it's not Columbia or, uh, you know, right down in New York city or not Harvard down in like, you know, Cambridge, but it is it's, it's this kind of sleepy little college town, but it was great for the family. And so my wife had a great time. I had, you know, three kids there by the time I left and, you know, if the cut is beautiful, we did a bunch of hiking. And so family-wise, it was an amazing experience. And then school-wise okay. I met some of my best friends at that, uh, you know, in that, uh, class and today I keep in touch with them and I've been to several of their weddings and it's just been a fun ride. And I got an amazing education. So all in all, you know, I think it was a fantastic decision for me and my family.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. Now, if this is possible, um, what's your biggest takeaway or biggest learning that you've received from business school?
Josh Robbins:
Oh, let's see here. I would say that's a good question. Mmm. A lot of it, honestly, one of the reasons why I didn't want to go to business school was because I hated school getting my accounting degree. It was brutal. It was just so intense. So much homework business school was a lot more fun. So there was all these social hours and, you know, these recruiting events and stuff. And so I think one of my biggest takeaways from business school is, you know, the analytics is great and, um, you know, doing the analysis and making sure you've considered all your, all your options and looking through all these different frameworks to look at a decision. But I think ultimately one thing that I took away, probably the biggest thing is, you know, the relationships that you build with people matter, these people who I'm going to school with are going to run big companies one day and, you know, working with them now and being good friends with them and, and leveraging each other is how we all become successful. I think that's probably my biggest, my biggest takeaway, to be honest.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. That's phenomenal. And I'm also curious then if you were to do business school over again, like, would you do it at a different time in your career? Right. You're 30, you've had all these things going on. It kind of worked out because of Chi. Um, but I'm curious if you would do it at a different time in your career?
Josh Robbins:
No, I would. So Kai was fun. I did it for four and a half, five years and honestly, it's too long. And so I think there's a reason why a lot of these venture capital firms really want you, you know, when you take money, they want you to either scale or basically fail, shut the doors. Like we don't want to drag this thing on forever and never turns into anything. And so I look at it and say, you know, fantastic experience, tons of learning. If I could have out two of those years of Kia and gone to school two years earlier, then that would have been way better for me. That would have been ideal for me. So, but I'm curious why I think because you know, the learning stop, I mean, the learning is kind of stopped honestly, in that, in that five year period, I w is I take that back. I mean, you're always learning to some degree, but the bulk of the learnings, I think I did get in those first three years and those last two were starting to become frustrating. They were, um, again, we're not quite going in the direction that we wanted to. And so if I could have ideally said, okay, these three years, stop go to business school right here. That would have been perfect.
Braydon Anderson:
Okay. So, uh, at this point you, you graduate from Cornell and you had done an internship. Uh, I noticed previously you've done that at Amazon. Uh, is that where you go after you, you graduate from Cornell?
Josh Robbins:
It is. So I did my internship and then I went there, got the offer after the internship and then went to full time. And I do think, um, you know, what, the reason why I went to Amazon is because when I was at Chi you know, the, this, this person who joined the company that come from Nike and it was amazing, um, Nike is obviously a fantastic company. I was really surprised to see how much value is placed on, on that brand, on that person's resume and how much, um, I'm trying to think of the right word, how much, uh, wait, maybe yeah. How much weight is really, really placed on that. And so I looked at that and said, okay, when I go to business school, no one's ever heard of Chi. You know, very few people are gonna heard of Chi. So when I go to business school, the way that I maximize that that experience is I need to go to a world class, you know, recognized by everybody, you respected by everybody organization and Amazon kind of check that box.
Josh Robbins:
You know, everyone, you know, I don't know anyone who doesn't like it or doesn't shop there. I think everyone, um, you know, anyone who knows about the recruiting process there, I think he respects the process and, and kind of the things that Amazon does and has done, um, and you know, and the size and everything they're doing. And so ultimately Amazon kind of check those boxes. And so I feel fortunate that I was able to get the internship. And then, you know, once you get the internship, you've got a, what is it, a 12 week period of time to go earn that offer. And, and, you know, I feel fortunate that came through and, and got that offer to go back full time. But, uh, you know, Amazon's an amazing company.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. And that answers one of my questions. I was curious what, you know, why Amazon, and especially going from a startup where you're the founder to like one of the biggest companies in the world, which leads me to my next question is like, what was it like going from a six person startup to one of the biggest companies in the world?
Josh Robbins:
Yeah. It was definitely different. I mean, yeah. Six people, the hundreds of thousands of employees is very different. Um, you know, it, to some degree because I didn't have any real formal experience, I kind of looked forward to it as like, Hey, how these, you know, how do these other organizations do it? And quite frankly, being at Amazon and kind of seen the way they do things like, man, like I just learned why they are so good. And I, you know, ultimately I walked away from Amazon when I left. I was like, I would hate to compete with Amazon. Like they are just good the way they do things. And so there's these, there's these leadership principles that Amazon uses as basically a framework to decide who to hire. And it also kind of forms the culture. And as I looked at those leadership principles, when I was first looking around, I was like, I agree with every one of these.
Josh Robbins:
And, you know, Amazon is an organization that doesn't just talk about these principles, like once a quarter or at the end of the year, it is like ingrained. You hear these principles mentioned every day. And, and you know, basically it's the data that's used to promote people to fire people, et cetera. And so, um, but I highly agree with those principles and I think it's what makes Amazon good today. And again, you know, given its size, Amazon is great, it's still innovating and, and doing these things. And so ultimately I, it's a very rigorous company to work for. We grind Amazon, but, um, there's a reason why they're as big as they are and as successful as they are, because they have got some things. Right.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. And what, what did you do there? Tell me about your role.
Josh Robbins:
So when I first started there, I was a vendor manager, a senior vendor manager, which is essentially a buyer. And so I was on the tools and home improvement team. And so my job was basically, there's kind of three core metrics that I was using to measure my success. One was, um, revenue growth. The next is profitability growth and the third is selection growth or skew growth. And so Amazon, um, and so basically I would go out there and talk to a bunch of vendors and try to get them to sell us more product basically. And always on the side where you're actually selling direct to Amazon. Amazon actually buys your inventory as opposed to like a third party seller, uh, for those who are familiar with Amazon. So, um, so it's good experience in is interesting because Amazon is such a good company at, at building for the future. And so of those three goals, my most important goal was new skew growth and that's, and that was open because Hey, that doesn't affect the revenue today, but it does affect the revenue in a year or two from now.
Braydon Anderson:
And new skew growth is essentially getting more items available for purchase on Amazon. So that if I want to go buy tools that I have the widest selection possible on Amazon, is that right?
Josh Robbins:
Yep. That's exactly right. So, you know, I worked with like, you know, Bosch the waltz Makita, and my job was to say, Hey, if there's anything you haven't made available for us to buy, give it to us. And then I'd go to trade shows and I would talk to a bunch of other tool manufacturers and say, Hey, you know, sell to us. And so that, but that was, you know, it's funny, that was more than revenue or profitability Was get more skews today, more options. So that in two years, those are now generating 5,000 thousand dollars, whatever it is.
Braydon Anderson:
That's so fascinating. I'm just enthralled by that whole process. That's so cool. I would love to do that.
Josh Robbins:
It was good. The one downside was you always do these end of year negotiations. Yeah. Well, those would get those. No one looks forward to those, but, uh, it was, it was interesting cause I'd go to negotiate, uh, you know, new terms with, with vendors every year. And so, um, that ended up itself was a fantastic experience. I didn't love the experience, but, but from a growth standpoint, that was phenomenal as well.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. So one of your main reasons for going to Amazon was to get kind of this brand on and building your own brand and putting that stamp of approval if you will. Um, so my, my question is, is like, has going to Amazon done what you expected it to do in, and I'd even if you can like share an example of how it's helped you.
Josh Robbins:
Yeah. Um, I would say absolutely it has. And, uh, um, I think we're at, uh, you know, I've worked at a couple of companies where they're also been former Amazon employees. Uh, Qualtrics would be one of those lucid softer would be another [inaudible] I think for those who are familiar with the recruiting process and it's not just Amazon, you'll Google has a phenomenal recruiting process, Facebook, et cetera. But for those who are familiar with recruiting process, just getting through that, it's pretty intense. And then I think that the bar has held quite high internally. Uh, you know, Amazon has this concept called a bar raiser, actually. And so when you go interview at Amazon, there's someone that comes in during the interview process, who's unrelated to your team who doesn't care if you work there because they're never going to work with you. But that person's job is to say, Hey, does this person raise the bar for the company?
Josh Robbins:
Is this person better than 50% of the company? And if they're not, that person can veto you and you don't get through no matter what. So that bar raise your concept. It is a good concept, but it does kind of, it does show it's, um, you know, it's hard to get a job there. And so I think that that follows you in a career. And so, yeah, when I was going to Qualtrics after Amazon working for Amazon helps, there was a guy on my team that had worked for Amazon. Um, and so I think that, you know, he, it just helps, it adds credibility. A lot of people, again, people respect the company because they do great things. Um, they've grown to be a, uh, a really big size. And so I have found that that has followed me in every step of my career, having Amazon my resume has for sure help them benefited. And if nothing else where I'd say it really is a benefit is if I'm interviewing for a job and it comes down between me and someone else, the fact that I worked at Amazon, as opposed to maybe some other company that maybe isn't quite as well known or quite as well respected, I think maybe tips the tips, the, the hat kind of towards,
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. You got experience. So I'm, I'm really just curious and you've kind of alluded to this, but why does this brand matter so much? Why does that Amazon brand on your resume matter so much? And if someone doesn't have that on their resume, like is a holding them back,
Josh Robbins:
You know, it's fantastic question. I think the brand matters, you know, personal brand, what you've done and your, you know, your resumes, basically just a list of brands. And it's interesting because I don't think you have to have any of that by any means. And, you know, you could go do amazing things without graduating from high school or without graduate from college or without having, you know, worked at X, Y, and Z. And so I definitely don't think it, um, is a requirement by any means. What I do think it does is it does increase your chances. And I think the way that people look at it is it allows them to make for, for lack of a better term, a judgment about you. And it's, it's usually, you know, a positive indicator that like, Hey, if this person has worked at Amazon or, you know, a Google or a Qualtrics or wherever, then that does, that is an indicator that this person is good and, and will be good if I hire them, I think.
Josh Robbins:
But, and so it does, and again, I think in the recruiting process of companies, I think recruiters are always looking to say, okay, what are reasons to say no to people and what are reasons to say yes to people. And I think the brand on your resume and kind of telling good stories about those experiences is just giving ammunition to the recruiters and the hiring managers to say yes to you. Um, and I think it's a little bit harder of a, it's a little bit of a taller order. I'd say, if you don't have those experiences again, you can for sure do it and you can be better than the person who went to Amazon. But I do think it does facilitate the recruiting process.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. I love it. I love that response too. Um, so you spend, I believe it's a year or two at Amazon, but obviously as your career progressed, you decided to, to leave, uh, what, what kind of led to you wanting to leave Amazon?
Josh Robbins:
Yeah, so Amazon was like I said, amazing company. I think there was a couple of factors that were made me open to leaving. One of it was, I did have a long commute. It was an hour each way in a carpool. Um, and so that wasn't, that was not ideal. And, um, to be quite Frank, I liked the sun a little more than I realized I was living in Seattle. I was open to new geographies. They'll, Seattle's beautiful. I do love Seattle, but a little more sun is nice, but also it was super, I mentioned this earlier, super rigorous. So I, you know, as a, as a vendor manager, you know, you have your role and you manage this category on the site. And ultimately I was managing a $200 million business on the sites. Wow. But then they'll say, okay, you're also going to give this subject matter expert assignment.
Josh Robbins:
Someone gets the pricing subject matter expert. Someone is just this matter expert on deals, et cetera I was given. And they kind of just send it to you and say, you're in charge of this. I was in charge of deals and deals that are basically fourth quarter, get, you know, all the discounts that come with black Friday and everything that goes past that. And so I had to move around all these. So it was Thanksgiving day. I was working like an 11 hour day moving deals around, uh, to, you know, because some of them didn't have the inventory yet hasn't been received yet. Some of them, you know, we'd sold too many, there wasn't enough units to do the deal or whatever it may be. But I spent this huge long Thanksgiving day doing this. And I was like, yeah, this is just go ahead.
Josh Robbins:
But man, I don't want to do this for much longer. And so like, that was one reason why I was like, Hey, I'm open to other opportunities. Not that I'm, I shy away from hard work by any means, but, um, you know, you can, you could, you could work your life away to Amazon and pretty easily. So let me go this right. That's obviously the day before black Friday. So you're on Thanksgiving day, you worked in 11 hour day. I did. Yep. I, you know, fortunately I didn't have to be in the office, but I was at home laptop on my lap the entire day, you know, stopped eat the dinner, but you know, moving stuff around the entire day and it was just brutal, you know, you know, there's an impact for doing it obviously, which is great, but it's not how I want to spend.
Josh Robbins:
You know, I realized at that point, you know, I'm willing to grind for my career for sure. And work hard. But I also, you know, there are certain things that like, okay, I don't want to sacrifice too much. Um, and so I realized that, you know, there's a lot of opportunity for balance. And again, um, you know, I felt like, Hey, there's probably opportunity where I can still work really hard, but I can still enjoy a little bit more of, you know, some of these vacations and time with family. So I was open, I wasn't actively looking, but I was open to the idea. And, uh, a friend of mine that I had that, uh, had also worked at Amazon, he was at Qualtrics at the time. He reached out to me and said, Hey, we're forming this new partnerships team. And, uh, I think you'd be a good addition to the team.
Josh Robbins:
And I looked at that and said, Hey, this is great. I, I was on basically the retail side of the business at Amazon and I wanted to be more on the technology side. And so that was, um, when he reached out, I was like, Hey, this is actually a great way to take my career a little bit down, a slightly different path and more towards, uh, you know, tech or SAS, just, so what, what did you do at Qualtrics? See, I was doing, uh, strategic partnerships at Qualtrics. And so what that is, is it's looking at, uh, other organizations and saying, okay, how can I either have another organization influence a deal that Qualtrics is trying to close or bring us a deal? And so it's basically influenced and sourced deals. And, um, you know, that was a mixture of, uh, using tech companies, you know, there's, um, you know, the Googles of the world, the world or Amazons, and then that's also a mixture of service companies. So it's like, Hey, these guys will kind of help you design your, you know, design your surveys or analyze your data. And, and it's part of the deal that we're closed with Qualtrics is we bring in this third party to say, okay, we're giving you the full, complete picture.
Braydon Anderson:
Gotcha. Cause Qualtrics, just in, I assume they didn't have those services offerings internally. So that's where the value of the partnership would come in.
Josh Robbins:
Exactly. And so a lot of it is, you know, there's some sort of a gap that's missing for a particular customer. And if we can fill that gap of the partnership, we can close that deal. Instead of someone going with another, with a competitor of Qualtrics space. And again, a lot of them will, a lot of them, if we can build a strong enough relationship, they'll bring us deals all day, which is great and that's becomes a great source of revenue.
Braydon Anderson:
Gotcha. Okay. So you go to Qualtrics, tell me what, what that experience was like, and especially going now the opposite way from a massive company to a relatively small company. What, what were they, how big were they when you joined Qualtrics now?
Josh Robbins:
Yeah. So when I joined Qualtrics, they were just over a thousand employees. And so to your point, I'd had this experience on the really small, to really big, and now it kind of, you know, get hit back in the middle and it was good. I mean, quartz is a fantastic company for, for those who don't know, you know, recently sold $8 billion and so a wildly successful story. And when I joined Qualtrics, um, it was great. I, you know, some of my friends that I hang out with most today are, you know, from the company, I still keep in contact. They were just great people at Qualtrics, great company, great product. Ultimately for me, what I realized is, um, for me, when I was there, I felt like I'd gotten there maybe three to four years too late Qualtrics had been around for years. And they had like kind of a slow growth path at first, but it felt like, you know, a lot of the real, real good learnings and growth opportunities were happened to those who had joined three or four years earlier. And I was in there and, and for sure had things to, to learn from the company and an exciting things to do, but there was this, you know, part of me, that's kinda like, yeah, I wonder if I just missed the boat with Qualtrics, um, you know, on, on when you join.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. That's so fascinating. Um, is that ultimately, what, what made you want to leave Qualtrics then in and look for something else?
Josh Robbins:
Yeah, that was a big, that was a big reason. I mean, Qualtrics was great. Qualtrics had, uh, Qualtrics had done a fantastic job, you know, within their sales organization and partnerships set within the sales organization. And it was this new team we're trying to figure everything out, um, in terms of how we do partnerships within the organization. And, um, you know, there were lots of learnings, lots of things that we did well, lots of things that we did that weren't that well, that didn't go that well. And so, um, all of it was what was obviously a great learning for me, why I was open to leaving is, um, I looked, there was another, you know, Qualtrics partnerships wasn't as big or as important to Qualtrics as I maybe would have liked it to have been, if that makes sense. Yeah. So, so, so what I mean by that is, um, Qualtrics is a fantastic direct sales organization and I kind of was thinking, you know what, I'm not sure if, if partnerships will ever be as important as I want it to be. I want to be part of this. You know, I want to be where like the action is I guess, in the company. And, um, it, you know, so I didn't, I wasn't quite sure it was going to happen there at Qualtrics. We were doing good stuff again, fantastic people. And, um, actually since I've left a lot of great things that happened on that team, which is awesome, but, uh, that was kinda the conclusion I came to as why I was open to going elsewhere.
Braydon Anderson:
So how did you get introduced to lucid? What was that process like for you? And then what did you end up doing there?
Josh Robbins:
So a friend of mine had said, Hey, I have a friend of his and reached out to him. And they, they had a person who was doing partnerships that person had left. You wondering if that person had any ideas of somebody and I came to mind. And so, um, I was like, yeah, let's, let's talk. And so I talked to him, it was interesting because I had gotten some really good partnership experience at Qualtrics and they now had this open position. Uh, lucid had pretty good experience with partnerships. Google had been a great partner that had given them a lot of growth in the past. And so, as I was talking with lucid, I realized, Hey, you know, they, they, they really do value partnerships. It's been a core driver for them, of, of revenue and leads in the past. I've learned some really great things from Qualtrics. Um, I think I can actually add a lot of value and then, you know, I would ultimately be leading the team at this point. And so for those reasons, I was like, yeah, this seems like a really good deal. I, you know, I liked other people. Um, you know, it's funny cause Lucy does flowchart software basically, which isn't the sexiest thing in the world.
Josh Robbins:
Um, but they had such a great business model and it was, it was, it was so well run and they'd largely been a freemium company and they're starting to do some of the more enterprise B2B type stuff. And that's where some partnerships could really come in. And so it was all around a really good fit. So I think Qualtrics prepared me really well with some of that skillset. There's obviously things again, still to learn, but I could take what they had already done. I could take what I had learned and continue to build that and form that as the company kind of entered this new phase of growth.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. So you, you stayed there for, I believe a couple of years, a year or two years, and then you make a pretty big jump in my eyes from tech, you know, Qualtrics and Lucid, and now you go to Rags. Correct. So first off, what is Rags and then how, when and how did you get introduced to them?
Josh Robbins:
Yeah. So Rags is a limited edition kids' clothing brand and it really that the core product is this one piece romper and there's no snaps through the legs. So you basically get it on the child with a stretchy neck and you go all the way through the neck and there's no snaps to mess with it's one piece. So there's no matching required. You know, it looks good. And so definitely a different, different path than what I'd been doing. And I worked hard to get into tech. And then when this opportunity came up, I was like, well know what is this, what am I doing? And so it's interesting. So I got to know Rachel Nillson, the founder of Rags. I got to know her around the time I joined Lucid and someone who I had worked with at Calle was consulting Rags a little bit, and it had recommended I worked there and I got to know Rachel and looked at.
Josh Robbins:
I was like, I don't know, this seems really cool, but, um, you know, I wasn't interested in leaving where I was. It was great. I had just kind of started and I really liked to lose it. Um, Rags had shortly before that gone on Shark Tank. And so there was some kind of interesting, compelling things going on with the company. And then as time passed, uh, Rags had raised some money with kickstart seed fund, which was a mutual investor in, uh, lucid and, uh, Jeremy Andrus. Who's a, who's a local, uh, kind of rock star in the business world, uh, CEO of Traeger. And so those two organizations had invested and, um, kickstart and Jeremy, Andrew sat on the board. And so there came a point where Rachel is like, Hey, we've been talking for like 18 months on and off just we'd run into each other, whatever.
Josh Robbins:
And it can't point where she's like, Hey, I am going to fill this role. So, um, we've been talking about this role for a long time, but she's like, Hey, I'm actually ready to pull the trigger now. So we need to decide if you're, if you're interested or not. And you know, again, because they had just raised this money, you had this great board has been built. I was like, man, this is really pretty compelling. Um, and so, you know, she's like, Hey, we're gonna, we're gonna offer you the COO role. And at this point, you know, I struggled with it because I liked tech. I liked lucid. I liked strategic partnerships. And so I had zero complaints at what I was doing, but then I was like, okay, I'm getting this opportunity to go be the, you know, a C suite role in a venture backed business with some of the, you know, premier business leaders of Utah sitting on the board. Uh, it kind of an exciting company. I mean, one thing that's fun about consumer in general is just the passion that the end consumer can have for it. A lot more passionate than maybe someone would be for flowchart software.
Braydon Anderson:
Oh, okay.
Josh Robbins:
Although there, there was some passionate flowchart software users, so, but you know, and so I thought about it for a long time. I actually had several discussions with Jeremy Angeles, with Kurt Roberts about, Hey, you know, is this a bad move for my career? Am I closing the door on working in the tech space? If I do this? And there was a lot of debate going back and forth of, is this, is this a good move for me? It seems fun. It seemed like it would be fun. It seemed like it would be a really good growth opportunity, but is this the wise move? And so what are the bait lot of discussion? Obviously, no one has a crystal ball so tough to say, I think we ultimately concluded, Hey, there is some risks that if you do take this role, you might not be able to work in the tech space again.
Josh Robbins:
And, and, and, you know, Utah tech scene is fantastic. I live right here at point of the mountain where, you know, the Silicon slopes are where all these, you know, a lot of these tech companies reside. And so, um, I liked it. I lived nearby, um, an industry that I liked to work in and I respected and all the talent. And so it was a tough decision. Ultimately, I ended up deciding to take that job and really it came down to my thought was, Hey, I get this, I get this upgrade and opportunities that I probably wouldn't get while I was at lucid. And that is, you know, uh, you know, I'm on the board, I'm not on the board, I'm attending the board meetings and I'm working closer with the board and helping again, steer a little bit more of the strategic direction of the company and that, uh, I thought, Hey, you know, that gives me a seat at the table that maybe I would regret if I wouldn't take. And so I ultimately said, Hey, there's risk of me leaving. And, but there's also risk of me regretting not doing this. And I'm hoping that, uh, you know, things go well. And if things don't turn out quite as I'd hoped, for whatever reason, uh, you know, I've worked at some pretty great companies with some really great people who are going to do great things and hopefully, maybe they can hire me at what point
Braydon Anderson:
It was almost the same logic you had when you were [inaudible] and you had the opportunity to work there six more months, like, Hey, if worse comes to worse, I still have a Ernst and young job and I'm going to go have fun for a second.
Josh Robbins:
Exactly. Exactly.
Braydon Anderson:
You're consistent. I like it.
Josh Robbins:
Yeah.
Braydon Anderson:
So they were actually telling you, Hey, this could be a career ender on the tech side. Like I'm kind of surprised by that.
Josh Robbins:
So, cause we debated cause they knew where I was. I mean, it was tricky because Mmm. Kickstart wasn't an investor in lucid. And so there's kind of this, um, conflict of interest. So it's an agree taking people from one portfolio coming to another, um, obviously that stuff happens and you know, it's part of the deal. But one thing that I was, you know, I was concerned, I'm like, Hey, like what does this do for me? [inaudible], you know, does this close door, you know, again, I've loved my experiences at Qualtrics and lucid, you know, can I keep doing those experience potentially? Or does it like shut the door? People wouldn't hire me. And so he was kind of a question that I had as a question, I think that they had had as well. And, you know, ultimately we did determine that it was a risk, but at the same time, [inaudible], um, I've been amazed at how much overlap there is.
Josh Robbins:
And like, it doesn't take that long to learn a business model. And, um, you know, I didn't forget the stuff that I, that I've learned in the tech side or done [inaudible], I've been able to take a lot of that and apply that to the consumer business, which has been cool. And I think, you know, who knows maybe at some point I do go back into tech and I can probably take some things I learned in the consumer space and take that back and add value there. So it's a risk for sure. But, um, it, it seemed like it was worth, worth the risk to at least try some that says, okay, this could be good for me. And, and ultimately, you know, without disclosing too much information, but you know, my compensation shift from lucid to Rags cash wise was about the same, but I had way more upside from an equity standpoint. And so for me, it was like, okay, I actually have enough equity where there's some where it could be game changing if we get big enough. Whereas, you know, the equity that I had at previous companies, it would be really great cash that out, but it wasn't going to be life changing. So, uh, that was part of the decision too, was I was like, okay, compensation-wise my downside. It's about the same, but my upside Mmm. Can be a lot bigger.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. You kind of alluded to this, but I am curious this transition from software to like consumer retail, it's a big change. Um, has it been as it's not, has it been as challenging, but like, did the processes translate from one industry to another? Or did you feel like you were going into this blind?
Josh Robbins:
Yeah. You know what? I felt like they translated quite well. Now, now some didn't, you know, in, in software sales is a function of, you know, how many sales people you have and how many calls they're doing it, you know, what's their close rate and all these kind of things. And so it can become a little more to some degree, it can become a little formulaic to say, if you want to hit this much revenue, we can back into how many sales guys we need and how many calls you got to make, et cetera, with consumer and selling a website. It's not, you don't have as many levers to pull to like hit a number for the month, you know, in software, let's go discount. Let's go do this. Let's go, whatever it is. It's, e-commerce, you're, you're a little bit, you have again, fewer levers.
Josh Robbins:
It feels. And so that was one, one big difference. On the flip side, you know, a lot of the processes are the same and you think about it, you know, it's industry, but you're thinking about the same way. And an example of that would be, um, our product development team. So we've got product designers instead of software engineers, but really what they're trying to do is they're trying to build a product that you can sell. And the way that our design team was designing, when I first got there is he was a very linear design process. So we would, you know, we'd start a fall or spring season, we'd start it. And we wouldn't have anything to turn over to our production team to actually get it.
Josh Robbins:
I get it, you know, made in the factory until the very end, you know, so it'd be like this three month long process. And at this three month long process, then there's finally a deliverable that, um, is the design of the product. And the problem with this linear design process is if you start to slip on deadlines, then it starts to become a constraint and it starts to delay everything. And so that end timeline could get pushed out so far that then you're missing timelines. And for, for selling product, you can't really afford to have products not launching the correct season. So for example, you can't, your summer product is going to be tank tops, shorts, seas, whatever your fall and winter, Park's going to be longer sleeves. And so you can't really afford to launch summer at a time when maybe it should be fall.
Josh Robbins:
Yeah. I took the concept and, you know, in software developed, you know, has this, you know, agile software development process where you basically have these scrums and you see, okay, what's the most important can we do basically smaller chunks? And so we started taking this design process and saying, how do we take this design process and chunk it up into smaller chunks? Because, um, there's a ton of work on the back end for a production team to do before it gets manufactured. And so now what we do is we kind of work in, in a month long chunks. It's like, Hey, the design, team's gonna gonna design what we plan to release in January. They're going to finish that, turn it over to the production team. The production team is going to start working on all the specs to make sure the cuts and the sleeves of the right ear, the right thing for that kind of stuff. And so what production is working on that the design team goes under the next month and start designing. And so now we've got this, this process that allows for finished products to be moving a lot more quicker through the process. And so instead of, instead of big, long chunks of the same task, it's you do, you do multiple tasks, tasks to completion in a, in a short period of time and then do multiple tasks to completion on the next period of time.
Braydon Anderson:
That's so cool, such a great application, and being able to apply things from different, different worlds essentially, and how it's seeing the efficiencies of that. So Josh, I've noticed something fairly consistent here in your career where each time you've gone to go to get a new job, you are really introduced to that job by someone that you already knew. And I feel like there's kind of this, I don't know, like when I was in my undergrad, I got a, I had a job at RC Willey and my dad is the vice president of operations at Willey. And I hated telling anyone else that my dad helped me get this job because for some reason my pride was going to be hurt that I didn't get this job on my own. And I think there's this common consensus around that, but it seems like you haven't followed that. And I'm curious your take and kind of what's tell me about that process.
Josh Robbins:
Yeah, you're right. I mean, I've, I, you know, I'll have to turn in a resume to apply for a job, but ultimately I have had someone basically helping me out internally to get through the process and, um, I found it to be a really good way to get a job now you're right there. You know, there could be some of these, um, concerns around, around this. Maybe didn't get through on your own it's kind of thing. But, you know, I found so many companies, they want to basically say, Hey, like, you know, can you vouch for this person, this person good. Like, you know, they're looking for culture fit too. Like part of it is can they do the job? Part of it is, you know, do people want to work with them? And so I think if you're, you know, if someone is helping push that along, I think they can help you over some of those maybe question marks that someone might have about cultural fit or, or whatever.
Josh Robbins:
So I'm a big believer. So I think, you know, you can for sure get jobs through a traditional application process. And most it's probably you'd have to do formally apply at some point, but I have definitely found that. Mmm, okay. You know, getting, getting through this big stack of resumes and getting, getting that pushed through that to the hiring manager, to actually get the chance to talk have been really helpful. And, you know, there's, there's various reasons again, I've said this before, where recruiters are looking to say no, if I've got 40 applicants or a hundred applicants, they're looking for to find ways to whittle that down. And so if I can kind of bypass that too, to get that initial interview and not be part of that whittle that maybe they've looked at something and said, Hey, you didn't stay at quality is long enough. Cut them. Yeah. So if I can bypass that, you know, whatever they're looking for, just my new reasons to cut you, then, you know, I think that's sort of the PR the, the, I think that's sort of the purpose. And ultimately for me, you know, the is good. I think resume can tell you a lot, but getting in and talking to the, to the hiring manager, the recruiter is kind of really where you can figure out do they like you and do you like them? And so it's well,
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. And that's so fascinating. And I think, I don't know, I personally can't imagine trying to go get a job by just sending in a resume anymore. I just feel like I would love her. You know, obviously I'm a little bit more into my career. Maybe everyone that's listening isn't um, but I think that's just, there's no pride in it. Um, if that's going to be what helps you get the job? There's no pride in someone else helping you at least get the interview, right? You still have to get the job. They're just helping you get the interview. And your probability of getting that interview increases drastically. If they say, Hey, look at this resume.
Josh Robbins:
Absolutely. And it's funny. Cause even recruiting beyond that, you know, it, that's how I was able to get some stuff done. You know, doing partnerships is I'd have someone make an introduction for me to someone who could help make a decision. So I found, you know, it does help just get things done in general and it applies to more than just the recruiting, but I think it's a big factor in the, at least it has been for me.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. So Josh, one thing I'm really excited to talk about is, um, how Rags was on Shark Tank. Um, now I know that happened before you were there. You've been there for the last about two years. This happened about four years ago. Um, I'd love to just hear what has happened with Shark Tank. Um, do you, do you get to work with Robert ever or like what's tell me about that.
Josh Robbins:
Yeah. So Rags was on Shark Tank, they were on before I joined and they did do a deal with Robert and um, on TV. So what a lot of people don't realize is doing deals for it makes good TV. And so a deal has done on TV but on the backend, the deal didn't go through. Oftentimes the deal is not great for the entrepreneur. Or, or the, the, the shark, you know, cause there's some due diligence that happens after the show, the shark might say, listen, you don't need my money. You're in a good spot. You shouldn't even take it. Right. Like, and so there's all these reasons why it doesn't go through. And it actually, I think happens more often than people realize, but for R ags did, did the show, did the deal on TV but didn't do it in real life, but the nice thing is, that still gets aired as a rerun today. And so we, we still get benefit of people. All these people seem the brand on Shark Tank and it for sure has helped the company get exposure.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. Well, and it's funny. Cause as I've watched that episode, she was killing it. Like she didn't need their money. Maybe she needed some guidance and that's more so what she was looking for. But from a financial standpoint, it would have been, been a bad deal in my personal opinion. Um, but yeah, maybe the connections would have been really valuable and the process and how to grow a company. I'm sure that could have been helpful. But uh, for financially I feel like she was killing it already.
Josh Robbins:
She, she was. And when I joined again, there was, well I joined is she, she had just raised a small sum of money, but you know, it's been run really well. It's been profitable the whole time. And um, you know, the only raise reason to really raise money would be to try to scale things up a little bit, a little bit more, but the reality is she was in a fantastic position and quite frankly, I could have never raised money and still be in a great position.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. Awesome. Uh, now you've had some pretty cool partnerships with Rags as well. Uh, so obviously I imagine your past experience doing partnerships has really helped in this current role of, of kind of shaping these partnerships, but any interesting experiences you've had at Rags with these partnerships. Yeah.
Josh Robbins:
Um, you know, it's been great. And again, getting back to your earlier question, I was doing partnerships, these tech companies, and I can apply those same principles here in the consumer, which has been awesome. So we did a partnership with Nordstrom, you know, and obviously, you know, we're selling it to Nordstrom and put it in their different stores. And so that's been a great thing for Rags and he's kind of a, a feather in your cap still into Nordstrom, I think just cause it's, it's, it's a great company, great brand. And then we've also done licensing deals with Disney star Wars and Marvel. And so those deals consist of, you know, that gives us the opportunity to take their artwork, you know, the no Mickey and Minnie and you know, and all these different characters and use the artwork on the product and then in, so, and so part of that is, you know, we're given a license, a license fee for using that, but it's been a great, a great partnership for us.
Josh Robbins:
Um, and, and what we found is, you know, when we did partnerships with Disney star Wars and Marvel, it isn't so, you know, they're not doing a whole lot to move product for us, but it allows us to target different, different interest in, in user groups to get exposure to new customers. And so what we have found is, uh, one of the best products for getting new customers is, you know, launching a product, you know, Disney or Mickey mouse on it or something like that. And so it has definitely been a help, help us gain new customers. So we started out first with Disney and Disney did amazing. And then we're like, okay, let's do star Wars. And star Wars was coming out with movies at the time. And we thought, Hey, star Wars can be good. And star Wars did well as well. And you know, I've got four boys, we've got a decent amount of Marvel stuff and we're like, we should do Marvel.
Josh Robbins:
And we're all thinking, you know, Marvel is going to do great, you know, potentially marble might be bigger than Disney. We go and sign this two year agreement with Marvel. We've got this guaranteed minimum payments. We have to get, you give them, you know, whether we sell anything or not. We owe him this much money. And you know, our first, our first two releases and the first, you know, four months, we're doing like 20% of what we hoped to do. And so just kind of a miserable failure in all honesty. And we had all this product, we were like, great, we've got this product. It's not moving it for whatever reason. It just didn't, it just didn't appeal to our, to our consumer for whatever reason. And you know, so this one is started to really get me worried because we had again a two year agreement and we owed them a lot of money over those two years guaranteed.
Josh Robbins:
And so, Oh, I reached back out to them and just said, Hey, so, so I should give some background to Disney over the years has acquired star Wars and Marvel. And they let them run separately. Marvel is a completely separate division, has all different processes and systems, but it is ultimately owned by Disney. And so when we ran into this issue with Marvel, I reached out and just said, Hey, you know, Diana is the person that we were working with. And I said, Diane, Hey, can we chat? Like this is just not working out the way we had hoped we're bummed, you know, ultimately she's getting measured. And you know, the way that she gets measured on performance is by doing these deals, you know, and, and hopefully that we're performing above the minimum guaranteed amount. And we talked to her and explained everything and she was awesome.
Josh Robbins:
She's like, listen, this totally surprises me as well. Cause we were shocked. We were like, legitimately, we're shocked this isn't working. She's like, let me go see what I can do. And you know, some time passed and she came back and said, Hey, this is, she's like, here's an option. Let's cancel your Marvel agreement. We'll, we'll let it run for the first year basically. And we'll take your second year that you, that you've signed. Cause they had no reason to, they didn't have to let us out of anything. We signed it to your agreement, but she said, let's take that second year. And that's tack that onto the end of your Disney one and extend that. And that way Disney, the parent company gets a similar amount of money. Um, that way we don't feel this pressure or, or aren't losing money. And that way, you know, it does, it is good for Marvel in the sense that their brand doesn't get launched and not perform well.
Josh Robbins:
Ultimately it was, I mean, it was so great. I mean, she was so awesome to work with. She basically said, Hey, I get, I get it. Let me see what I can do to help out. It was probably to her detriment to do it. Um, but ultimately Disney, you know, we have to take this, this kind of negative experience with Marvel and, and turn that into, you know, we're going to do way more revenue, you know, three to four times the revenue with busy that we would have with Marvel. And so it ended up being as great win situation. But at the time it was freaking me out because we had this two year agreement and to pay money upfront even before you sell. And so it's like, Hey, we're not really wanting to pay out all this cash for something that we can't even sell in the first place. And so interesting, you know, interesting how to be partnership works out. And I kind of learned that in previous, in previous paths, we haven't got a good data that would suggest marble would've done really well for us. And even though it didn't, you know, it was great that we could find a way and kind of turn that into a wind, but it was stressful for a little while
Braydon Anderson:
I imagined. Geez. Um, I'm curious, what, what was it like in, what is it like to join a startup as a C level? Um, and, and actually even w were you the first outside C level higher? Yeah, I was even harder.
Josh Robbins:
Yeah. So the only their sea level was Rachel Nelson, who is the founder and CEO. And, you know, it was fun. I mean, it was, it was fun. It was hard. I, I feel fortunate that I was able to see a lot of good C level executives at lucid and Qualtrics. I didn't get interacted ton at all at, at Amazon other great leadership, but at lucid and Qualtrics, I got to see by example some great things to do. And so I think that helped come in. And ultimately, I think when you're in my spot, you're joining a company that's kind of earlier on. They usually, you know, usually the founder does a pretty good job with the product and maybe what they're lacking on is process or, and or people, you know. And so, so racks had some good people, some good product and had some good process, but I came in and basically said, okay, let's really figure out what, um, how do we kind of systematize a lot of these things?
Josh Robbins:
How do we find a ways to scale making it more efficient? And a lot of that is, uh, you know, I do, I do have a background in accounting and the data. And so I like to get in there and kind of analyze stuff. And so I spent a lot of time looking at our financials. I spend a lot of time looking at our sales history and what was working and what wasn't, and ultimately used all this data to say, okay, let's establish this process. And that process. And a couple of them were just, Hey, you know, at the time we would do all these product releases, but we would, we try to be fairly reactionary to current trends. And we have this really big following on social media. And so we try to listen to what the customer is saying and the end of the product, the problem was it put tremendous amounts of stress on the teams internally to make the product happen on these unimaginable timelines.
Josh Robbins:
And so things would get changed and someone would know, you know, so here's a perfect example. We were going to release the product on Tuesday, but because of some comments on social media, we thought it'd be better if we reached a different product. We'll that, that information wasn't communicated to our photographer who took photography of the original product. And so then we'd kind of go release it. We don't have photography of the product. So no one knows it looks like. And so, you know, small things, but a big part of it was, Hey, how do we, how do we get this company to communicate better? So that decisions, instead of being made kind of one off conversations, let's make decisions in meetings with all the stakeholders. I hate, I hate to just jam up everyone's schedule. So the meetings, you know, I know everyone's got like meetings, meetings, meetings, we're sick of them, but, but what was happening was all these decisions were being made with on the fly verbally without, you know, email confirmation or Slack and not all the parties were getting in involved or communicated.
Josh Robbins:
And so it would result in poor performance because half the job's getting done because the other half doesn't even know to do it. And so a lot of it was Kate, how do I help there be better communication? I set up this meeting that says, K, we're reviewing what we're releasing every week. And we need the photographer there. We need our production person there. We need a designer there. We need, you know, Rachel, the CEO there. And so anyone who touches a product release or marketing has to be there so that everyone is on board. Okay. We, we set, we made a decision in this meeting. This is what we're going to do. And everyone who's involved is there and knows about it. Yeah.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. So Rags is arguably a fairly successful company already. Right. But they're still very much in the early days of being a company. So what is it like in the early days?
Josh Robbins:
Do you know? It, it is wild, you know, I mean, there, there is. There's, there's just a lot of, there's a lack of structure for sure. And so, um, you know, people don't know who to go to for, for answers or questions maybe, or things change often. So those can be maybe some of the Johnny things, but it it's a blast. I mean, we, in the early days you don't have an overabundance of rules and, and, and, you know, process, you know, that could be good or bad, but you have fun. I mean, you, you go out and do some fun stuff as a team, you go out and you, you, you make this big accomplishment and it's really fun. So example is we're doing our first Disney launch and timeline-wise, it was really hard for us to hit. We wanted it to hit in August from a forecast standpoint, but we, there wasn't really a ton of room to do it.
Josh Robbins:
So part of the team was saying, Hey, we can't do it. We've got to push to September. And you know, we've said, Hey, let's, let's huddle up as a group and let's make this happen. And, you know, let's, let's do whatever it takes to make it happen and you do it. And it's fun. And it's, you know, and then the whole team just celebrates these big wins. And so it's harder to do that when you get to be a bigger company, I think, but when you can feel like, Hey, the whole company like rallied together around a single event or initiative that single event or initiative turned out really well. And then you can look around and say, that was awesome, everybody good job. That was fun on all coming here to win. And as you get bigger, those tend to not be as visible. But, um, it's a lot of fun. I really enjoy kind of the early stages.
Braydon Anderson:
What do you think Rags has done right early on?
Josh Robbins:
Racks has done social media really well. And, um, so Rags launched around when Instagram was getting started. And so they got a ton of a ton of followers, a ton of, uh, a ton of eyeballs on the product early on when it was free. And now Facebook makes you pay for everything. I mean, you got, you want to get new eyeballs, you're paying for it. And, uh, but w the, the Rags launched at this time when you could do that for free Rags also launched this, this, uh, group called the Rags VIP on Facebook and what this is, it's, it's a private group. You have to answer a few questions to get admitted. There's 17,000, or I think there's close to 18,000 members in this group, but what this has done is it's actually formed with this community. And so what we found is over time, you know, using paid ads to get new customers is becoming and less efficient because Facebook is wanting to take more and more of a dollars.
Josh Robbins:
And so you start to see like, Hey, you know, new customer acquisition becomes trickier over time, but because we've built this free basically social group, we can do a lot of things with this group in terms of bringing new customers into them, selling directly to them, et cetera. That's, um, that really goes a long way. And I'll give you an example. Let's say, you know, sometimes we'll have just like one or two units of something leftover, Rachel would join this VIP group and say, Hey guys, I'm turning on all of our ones he chooses. And we would do $20,000 in like 10 minutes just to post just a post in our Facebook, VIP group, just crazy. And so that's something that, you know, Rachel had this foresight of building this community on Facebook. And I think that that has been to this day, we have this direct line with the customer.
Josh Robbins:
They give us feedback in there. They, you know, they buy stuff in there. They go to each other for help on, on being moms, et cetera. And so that, that group, it has its negatives. Cause when customers want to get negative in there, it can get, it can get rowdy, but, but, um, you have this direct line of communication with the customer that has been really valuable for the company. What piece of advice would you give to someone that's currently in the early years of a startup? Um, no, that's a good question. I think, uh, the biggest thing I would say definitely definitely work hard. I mean, it's easy to kind of get caught up in, you know, I fall, I have fallen victim to this, you know, you want to rise up in your career title and role and stuff and, and don't get too far ahead of yourself.
Josh Robbins:
I would say, um, you want to set yourself up for that stuff though. So go out there and like own what you do and just knock it out of the park. Like the best way to think really progress is to just go own something and do it really well. And then the other side would be, you know, I think relationships matter. And so I would spend time getting to know everyone in the company. I would try to go to as many events as you can with the company. Not everybody's an extrovert. I'm I'm, I don't know if I'm not an extrovert probably, but I'm not an introvert. I kind of enjoy the social side, but I think as much as you can spend getting to know other people, um, building relationships with the people, that stuff comes in handy down the road in ways that you can never foresee.
Josh Robbins:
Um, but it definitely, it definitely comes. And so grinding it out, um, doing what it takes, um, being responsible, being reliable matter of time at the early stage, honestly. And here's the other thing. And the last thing I'll say actually on that is also being proactive. So if you're joining a company earlier stage, they kind of, no one wants to hold your hand for stuff. They want to be able to say, Hey, here's this new idea. Let's go start selling to these, to, you know, to this type of business. Can you just do it? And so you need to be able to say, okay, I'm to go down and sit down, make a plan, communicate that plan and go do it. And so as the leaders of your, of the company, likely don't have the time to develop the plan for you or kind of walk you through the whole process. But if you can be proactive to go go the plan, be very proactive in communicating over, communicate what you want to do, make sure you get everyone's buy in and then go execute. And to the point where your manager does not feel like they have to hold your hand, but they know exactly what's going on and they like the plan. Then you will crush it.
Braydon Anderson:
That's Josh Robbins, the man that has taken his experience from the world's most successful companies to help build Rags. Thanks for listening to today's show, subscribe on Apple podcasts or Spotify. Also, if you like to show, leave us a rating. And as always, if you know someone that you think we should interview, email me braydon@theearlyyears.show. I'm Braydon Anderson and this is the early years.