Sam Rose - Founder & CEO of Mvnifest: Storytelling, Working with Friends & Family, Living a Boundaryless Life

Sam Rose  00:00

Humans love stories. We have been telling stories to each other since the beginning of recorded history. Storytelling is the beginning of recorded history, because the beginning of recorded history is just stories that were verbal that somebody finally figured out how to write down. So I think that there is a deep instinctual element of how we relate to each other, that storytelling facilitates.

Callan Harrington  00:25

You're listening to That Worked, a show that breaks down the careers of top founders and executives, and pulls out those key items that led to their success. I'm your host, Callan Harrington, founder of Flashgrowth, and I couldn't be more excited that you're here. Welcome back, everyone to another episode of That Worked. This week, I'm joined by Sam Rose. Sam is the founder and CEO of Mvnifest, a full stack product agency in 3PL. Before Mvnifest, Sam founded the award winning kitchenwares brand GIR, which she led as CEO until its acquisition by Pattern Brand in 2021. I had a ton of fun in this conversation. Sam is not only an incredible entrepreneur, but she's also hilarious. We talked about what Sam describes as the "best-day-ever problem." And we also dove into the benefits of working in an early stage company. And Sam gave us one of the most honest explanations of how to work with friends and family that I've ever heard. This is a pretty common topic, and people usually are on one side of this or the other. And Sam has been very successful working alongside friends and family for years. And I loved hearing what she calls living a boundaryless life. Now the part of the conversation that I loved the most was talking about the power of storytelling. And I loved hearing how Sam uses storytelling to better connect with people. I think anyone in any position can benefit from hearing Sam's breakdown. So with that, let's get to the show. Sam, welcome to the show. I'm excited to have you here. I'd love to start out, tell me about the parking lot in Delaware.

Sam Rose  02:30

Oh my gosh, I wish you'd been there. I could've used the help. So I have this trope in my life and in my business. I call it the best-day-ever problem. The best day ever for an entrepreneur is when the call comes. The call could be Oprah, it could be Target, it could be- it's like a scaling event, and customers want what you have. And the joke goes like the worst day ever is the very next day, because then you got to deal with the consequences of your success. The line around the corner to the bakery, and then every store in town is out of flour, or whatever. So my best day-worst-day-ever problem, or one of the many, happened- I mean, the worst day ever was the parking lot in Delaware. So Target calls, and they're like, hey, are you EDI compliant? We want you in our store, like can you check all these boxes? And we're like, totally, yes. Just like, absolutely yes. No blinking. And we get the PO. And we call our 3PL and we're like, hey, we've got a PO from Target. You're gonna help us fulfill it now. And they're like, no, we're not. But, yes, you are. Like, no, we're not. So my husband and I- because by this time, like the business is six years in, and I've recruited him from his cool corporate job, and now we're like in entrepreneurial and marital bliss together. I'm like, sweetie, we're getting a box truck, and we're going to Delaware. And we show up at our 3PL, and get all of our stuff like out, and stick it in a box truck, and drive to a storage facility in Delaware, and fulfill 10,000 orders in the rain, in November, from the parking lot in Delaware. And that was really two weeks of the worst-day-ever. But I like to tell that story because it really was an inflection point in the growth of me as an entrepreneur and of our brand. Like we started a 3PL after that. And we learned a lot about operations and growing a scrappy business. And when that product brand that was implicated in the parking lot in Delaware was acquired, we were like, hey, maybe we'll stick around and be a 3PL for a little while and help people design stuff. So that's Mvnifest's sort of genesis in that in that parking lot.

Callan Harrington  04:36

I love that. And it's what's so funny for me hearing that is, now I've since founded my own company, but I was on the sales side, leading sales teams, and I started out as an individual contributor sales rep. And I can tell you on the enterprise side in the tech world, the amount of times somebody's like, well, how are the API's? And, as a salesperson, oh, they're great, ya know, we'll integrate with anything. And then the engineers get word, and they're like no, no, Callan, we can't do this. Not a chance. So I love hearing that story. And one of the things I'd love to talk about is, you mentioned this best-day-ever problem. How did the company rally around that? What did that look like? You mentioned that you got the box truck and everything else, but I have to assume there had to have been a lot more behind the scenes to make that happen. And almost, a lot of times, the business gets put on hold. Did that happen? What did that look like?

Sam Rose  05:28

Yeah, I wish there had been more of company to rally around. There were six of us at the time. And a lot of those people are still here, actually. Everybody shows up in a moment like that. So we had Brian's sister came down, she subsequently became an employee. Thanks, Kathleen! Family, friends came down, we're all working from the parking lot. There's no toilets, there's no electricity, we got a Wi Fi hotspot, we were sleeping in the car, and buying envelopes at Staples. So all hands come on deck in a moment like that. And what I love about moments like that, too, is that they're really the proving ground for entrepreneurs, not only as leaders, because you're like, how do I tell everyone how bad this is, but how fine it will be in two weeks. And then just gratitude. People really show up. And they, you know, they left their houses like that afternoon and drove down and tried to help us pull it all together. Those are also big moments of learning how you're going to need to grow. Like we realized that we needed to have our own fulfillment operation and a roof over our own heads. And that turned into a bunch of jobs for people that are working at the 3PL. I mean, it's a different building now, but much bigger operation. So everybody goes all hands on deck, and then you're like, friends forever. People come and go in every business, but shared experiences like that, shared challenges, are really part of the DNA of a business that then, in easier times, you're like, well, that's nothing, do you remember the parking lot? And you know, then that's the hallway conversation, and the watercooler conversation, and we have a joke here that's like, how hard could it be? Because almost nothing could ever be as hard as that. And if it is hard, it's like well, done this before. You know, we got reps on challenge. So yeah, I like moments like that. Because as long as you can bear the time it takes to get through them, you come out so much stronger as an individual and as a team, as a result.

Callan Harrington  07:25

It's amazing how much it brings the team together. Well, you know what, actually, it goes one of two ways it either brings people together or it tears it apart. And actually, I think sometimes even the tearing apart is okay, because you really realize, really quickly, it's like, do you want to be part of an early stage company or not? And that's okay, if you're not, but there isn't- and I talk about this quite a bit where it's, you're going to work really hard in an early stage company. It's hard to get, in my opinion, it's hard to have a lot of balance in your life in those very early stages. And some people it's amazing. And some people it's not. And there's no right or wrong answer. It's just I found that to be the reality. I'm curious to get your opinion on that.

Sam Rose  08:05

Yeah, yeah. I think I have kind of two emotional and intellectual reactions to that. One is that early stage is not for the faint of heart. But it is for the fun of heart. If you can find fun in the multiple hat wearing, and just that every day is different, and that Sundays are just the absolute worst grind, but that maybe tomorrow is going to be the best day ever, then you can self-actualize in that environment. And I think one of the things that's worked for me, and this boundaryless life that I have is not for everybody, but I'm just playing the game. And when I call it a game, sometimes I have to be careful not to imply that I'm trivializing what we do as a business. I take it very, very seriously. But I'm in it for the love of the game. And so when I have to work on a weekend, I'm just playing. And it's like a chess tournament or something like that. Like, it doesn't really bother me. That is not for everybody. I think a lot of people thrive with more clear boundaries than I have discovered I need. But I think the other thing that's maybe a little bit unusual about my circumstance is that I work with a lot of friends and family. So I'm having fun with the people that I love, problem solving on the world stage, and to me, what could be better than that? So that's sort of like maybe my, I don't know how much that can be generalized to everybody as a piece of advice or what not, but if I could turn it into a piece of advice to dispense, it's that if you can find the fun in it, then no matter what you're doing at that early stage, kind of startup life phase, and no matter how challenging it is, you can actualize into, I'm just solving big problems, and that is fun. Then it's like not work anymore. And then you're infinitely capable. And that turns on like just the energy machine of like, well I'm never gonna stop, because because I'm having the day of my life. Others thing that I've discovered about finding colleagues for whom that is also true, is that moments like that, of the parking lot moments like that, where you're all under high pressure, prove to everybody how capable they are under pressure, and also how appropriate it is for everyone to be wearing multiple hats at an early stage. Like, the folks here, that have been here for a long time at my business, we've packed boxes together, we've built software together. Like we've had the highest highs, and the lowest lows, and the cleanest days, and the dirtiest days. We've gone to trade shows together, we've gone to- not trade shows, well, we have gone to trade shows, but we've gone to like, I don't know, the Hester Street Fair- street fairs is the phrase I was looking for. Everybody's been a salesperson, everybody's been on the fulfillment team, everybody's been on the product design team. You know, we'll bring a prototype in, and feedback is welcom from everyone. Everybody's named a color of a product that we've made. So everyone gets to play in all of the different sandboxes of the business, and I think that that's a very joyful part of wearing a lot of hats at an early stage company. And I think sometimes, the phrase "wearing a lot of hats" can be, I don't know, either like abused or pilloried. And like if, "well, if a business is asking you to wear so many hats, then like, they're probably not paying you enough, because you're overworked." And it's like, if a business is giving you exposure to so many different types of collaboration and problem solving, then it's a two way street. And that's the excitement that I find in it. I mean, obviously, I'm not using it as an excuse for asking people to do too much. I'm using it as a pathway for giving myself, and as a result, everybody else, exposure to like, all of the different facets of building. And that's pretty cool.

Callan Harrington  11:48

Working in early stage startup is probably gonna be one of the fastest ways to test out all sorts of different places of a company to see what you really love to do. There's not too many places where you can drink from a firehose in so many different places at one time. So I'm really interested in how your approach to working with close friends and family. But before I go there, I'd love to hear a little bit about the founding story of GIR just in general. I think it's a really interesting story, from the research that I've done. And you've had two, that I saw, just in the research, really successful Kickstarter campaigns. Why Kickstarter? What led to that? And what was the thought process behind that?

Sam Rose  12:28

Yeah, well, you know, it was the, it was the time, man. So I ran nine Kickstarter campaigns for GIR, eight for GIR, and then one for another brand that I founded called Voltaire. So the founding of that business was really just like, a close to my heart problem solve. I had this idea for a one piece spatula. I thought, you know, ideas are cheap, this probably exists, I'm gonna Google it. Didn't exist, which was the first surprise. The second surprise was that I could invent it, and successfully prototyped, and made one, and patented it, and all that. Then I just decided that I loved product, and started to build a brand around these kinds of single piece silicone kitchen tools that were durable and colorful. And I used to describe them, because I'm a big dork, as the Platonic form of like, each of these tools. So they were very simple too. I mean, when I say Platonic forms, we have one here, because I always have a spatula nearby.

Callan Harrington  13:25

So I'm gonna do a quick anecdote. I told my girlfriend I said, hey, you know, that spatula we have, the one that you like, love? She said, yeah. I said, I think I'm talking to the founder that created that spatula today. It also, it's probably funny to note, she's the- her first thing was, what did something happen to it? Like she was genuinely worried that something happened to it?

Sam Rose  13:47

Did you break it? No, it's indestructible. So that I mean, just that moment, that nugget of, I have a really little problem that I am very passionate about solving for myself. I mean, what better inflection point might you have into entering an entrepreneurial journey than a problem that's close to your heart. And fortunately for me, was like solvable using the talents that I had. So grew that business for about twelve, eleven years before it was acquired. And so the new business that we run is really around helping other people do the same thing. And our joke is that it's a twelve-year-old, six-year-old, three-year-old business, because Mvnifest has existed for three years. And six years ago, we started helping other people with design and 3PL services. So sort of like what we're doing at Mvnifest has been around for six years. And then twelve years ago, we started GIR on Kickstarter. The why Kickstarter, to track back to that part of the question, you know, there was a moment where crowdfunding was news in and of itself, and the story was as much about how it was coming to market as what the product was. So over the course of the several years that I built and ran that business, we ran nine different Kickstarter campaigns, it was an awesome launch platform, we found great community there, we found great feedback and product ideas there. And frankly, it was a way to kind of de-risk what we were doing. So that very first production run, and I'd never owned a business before, I was just like, how do I test this? How do I market test this? And I could do all the research I wanted, and I could have all the conviction and my product design that I wanted, but the experience of actually going out and trying to get someone who wasn't, you know, my grandma, who I really love, to buy one. My Grandma's gonna give me ten bucks no matter what, you know, she's been buying Girl Scout cookies from me since I was a kid. But to have a person that you've never met, and don't have any relationship with, agree to give you money for your thing, and then you deliver on it faithfully, that experience is really hard to replicate in any other environment. And crowdfunding was a way that I could do a lot of that very, very quickly. So I got reps on sales, and reps on storytelling and conversation, and a great community to help me, encourage me, to go build other things, which worked out great.

Callan Harrington  16:08

I know you talk about, you mentioned storytelling. And I know you talk about storytelling quite a bit. Why is that so important to you?

Sam Rose  16:11

Humans love stories. We have been telling stories to each other since the beginning of recorded history. Storytelling is the beginning of recorded history, because the beginning of recorded history is just stories that were verbal that somebody finally figured out how to write down. So I think that there is a deep, instinctual element of how we relate to each other that storytelling facilitates. And I enjoy that process. I respond to it as a consumer. And I also find that it's the best way to just paint a picture really, really quickly. I mean, you started with a story too, so I know that you know this. How else can I get you feeling the emotions that I'm feeling about my thing, and I can't just do it by telling you what features it has, or where you can buy it, or how much it costs, or why you should want it. I need to connect with you on a deeper level. And for me, that's not facile. I'm not just doing that as a tool. I'm doing that, because that's how I get excited. And as you might detect, I am like an excitable person. I'm like all in all the time. So that is the why for me. It's how I respond, and it's how I relate and connect to other people. And it just so happens that that's like, it's a good way to sell things too. But that's the side effect of it, side effect of connection.

Callan Harrington  17:33

I'm a huge, huge, huge believer in storytelling. What is your process for it? Do you have a structure that you like to use? How did you learn and start to perfect the craft of storytelling just in general?

Sam Rose  17:44

Oh, gosh, it's such a good question. I read a lot. I read constantly. So I think I'm in tune with being told stories all of the time. I was an English major, and I was a writing concentration, so I've had a lot of classical training in how to storytell and how to create narrative arcs. But I think to de intellectualize it a little, you know, when I'm telling a story, I'm really just connecting with an emotion that I'm having, and like trying to make you feel what I feel a little bit. And I think that you can do that in a very structured way. Hero, challenge, obstacle to overcome, surprise twist in the middle. But ultimately, I think I'm saying out loud the things that I'm experiencing, and I'm trying to contextualize what's happening around me in the form of stories. And it just so happens that like in saying it out loud, we can relate to each other. I don't have a particular trope that I'm trying to fit any of this into, other than the trope of being an excitable person. (laughs)

Callan Harrington  18:47

(laughs) I think it's interesting. It's something, it's an area too that I've been diving into more, really getting into the particulars of it, like you just mentioned, the different structures. And interesting thing that I've found lately is how oral storytelling is different than written storytelling. And The Moth came out with a book on how to tell a story in a Moth style, which is more of the oral storytelling, and I think- I thought it was kind of fascinating. And I wanted more of what you just said, like five point story structure and everything else like that. And it wasn't, but it told you a way to do it, and I just thought was really interesting. So I hear exactly what you're saying on that.

Sam Rose  19:24

I think one of the advantages of verbal storytelling too, and this is this is in my wayback machine, but when I was in college majoring in writing, I focused on poetry. And so there were these like very tight structures to fit a lot of ideas in very, very concisely and to make a word do the work of five words. And then to use the structure, and rhyme, and rhythm as sort of like leverage on those words, and then how to pack them into each other. And then how to make it easy to find the next right word and write the next right line. And I think one of the really fun, playful elements of verbal storytelling is that you can have this kind of like warbling and intonation that you can use to add emphasis, and the words don't have to do quite so much work. And I'm used to having to make a very, very few words do so much work. And I love storytelling in person, because my hands can help. And my face can help. And there's so many other ways to elicit reaction. And I think that's the other fun element, is that it's an engagement with an audience, when you get to storytell to a live audience. And that part is really, really fun. It becomes a two way street, and I can feed off of you as much as you can feed off of me.

Callan Harrington  20:41

It's so true. It's so true. It's so interesting when you really dive into it. So you mentioned, so you ended up selling to GIR to Pattern Brands.

Sam Rose  20:50

Yeah.

Callan Harrington  20:50

And once you exited this, one of the things I want, and I want to come back to this that we had talked about earlier, you mentioned that a lot of these people are still with you today. And in particular, the one I'm curious to talk about is, you said a lot of them are close friends and family, and some people can do this, some people can't. What always worked for me was, if we started working together, and we became friends, that worked, but sometimes I'll struggle to work with my close friends. How do you make it work? Do you have processes? Is there certain boundaries you have to put in place? What does that look like?

Sam Rose  21:25

No, it's no boundaries. That's the secret. (laughs)

Callan Harrington  21:27

(laughs) You did say that earlier? I should have came back to that.

Sam Rose  21:31

Well, here's a question back for you. So the friends that you have made through work, would you found a business with them?

Callan Harrington  21:40

100%

Sam Rose  21:40

100%? Why?

Callan Harrington  21:42

Absolutely. Okay, so this is a good question. Well, one, the reason I'd found a business with them, is I know we work really well together, and we became friends through that. I think my friends that I've had outside of that, I don't know, I think I'm more concerned at am I going to be able to, if I- especially if I'm the one that has to manage them, that can be tough. If we don't agree on something, I don't want it to impact the friendship as much. But with the people that I've already, I became friends with, we've already been through all of it. Especially since we've all done startups, and we've been through a couple of these, I know how they're going to react in a business perspective, when their back's really against the wall and we're all very stressed out. And we've made it through a lot of those, so I think that's probably why I'm more comfortable with it.

Sam Rose  22:30

Okay, so you hit on the right nugget, which is that you've got to know them very, very well. But once you know these folks well, you're already comfortable with the idea of managing each other, probably. You're already comfortable with needing to lean on each other, or expect more, or you don't have to put in the extra mile. You're already comfortable with creating structure, or working within structure, together. So when I advocate working with friends and family, which I proudly and vocally do, it's friends and family that I know very well. And it's because I know them very well, the very same answer to your question, where like you've been through it together. And like, yeah, we've been through it together. And I know that there's nobody I would rather spend a hard day or a great day with than family and friends. I mean, not everybody at the business is family or friends, but the folks who have started that way, or the friends that I've made through business, they all share this archetype of being people that I would want to spend the best day of my life with, or the worst day of my life with, which goes back to the entrepreneurial story 101 of the best day ever. The days that we are hunting as entrepreneurs are the best days ever. And I want to spend the best days ever of my whole life with my family and friends, and with new friends, hopefully, that have come from the professional context, but that become friends at work. And I know that we are also going to be spending the worst days ever together, but like there's nobody better for that either. I think you mentioned boundaries, and I think that that's an important thing to acknowledge. You have to have a pretty high comfort with a boundaryless life for this to work successfully. I think where I've seen collaborations, work collaborations with friends or family, not work so well is where people are seeking really solid boundaries or need that just for themselves in their lives, which and there's nothing wrong with that. And you'll find that you you lose that, you lose the ability to have a boundary, because if a work problem trails into 6, or 7, or 8pm, and now you're home with the kids, but you're still problem solving, your problem solving together. Like there is no boundary. So it's not that you have to want to take boundaries away. It's they will be taken from you. And if you're not comfortable with that, it doesn't mean that every interaction all the time has to be boundaryless, but you have to be comfortable with the fact that boundaries will be taken from you, if you're on the entrepreneurial journey. And compound that with the boundaries being taken away from the family and friends that you work with. And unless there's just like, total resolve that that's a fine thing, that that's acceptable, then it can get really uncomfortable, hard, that's when it doesn't work.

Callan Harrington  25:19

That's interesting. That might be the most realistic explanation I've ever heard on how this can work. Because, when I think about this, it doesn't shut off, right? And I know that, and that's, of course, can be a problem at times, and what you just said is so true, like, they're gonna come up. There's just nothing you can do, especially if you're the CEO, or partner or whatever, because you have to do it. You have to react to it, you don't really have a choice often. So I appreciate that, if I'm hearing what you're saying. What I'm hearing you say is, it's got to be boundaryless. For it to work, it has to be boundaryless, because there's going to be times, even if you have a loose boundary in place, there's gonna be times where that boundary is going to get bulldozed. And you have to be comfortable and be okay with that boundary being removed for that point in time. Did I hear that correctly? Is that right?

Sam Rose  26:08

Yeah. If I was to really try to frame it out as like a self management framework, I don't know that it needs to be boundaryless by design. But it will be boundaryless empirically, at some point. Work will seep in, or family will seep in, and if you're not just comfortable and Level-Set with that, then it can be problematic. That doesn't mean that you can't not be working, or that you can't not take a minute out of work to go do something with your family, or to be with the person that you love that you're working with. But that you have to be comfortable with the appearance and disappearance of the clarity around when what is working and what is not working. Can I ask you a question when we're getting ready for bed? Or no? Is that not okay? But what if someone just asked me a question that's really urgent, and I know that you're the person that has the answer, but there- The boundary will disappear. You don't have to design it so that it's never there, you just have to be comfortable that it has like an invisibility cloak. Like, sometimes I'm just gonna throw the invisibility cloak on and be like, bye. (laughs) Then you're gonna be like, okay, like, it's Saturday, and we're hanging out at the beach, but I;'ve got a work question. But see, that's a superpower too, because if everybody's comfortable with that, then you can problem solve together in any context. You can play the game in any context. And I find that to be really freeing and also very efficient. That's where some of my infinite energy machine comes from. But for me, work doesn't feel like work. Work feels like proactive, excited problem solving. And I think that's a big part of it, too. I think if work for you feels like a grind, then it's not gonna be fun to have the boundary gone. But if work feels to you, like, damn, that game was fun. When do we get to play again? Then, like, well, forever? (laughs)

Callan Harrington  28:03

(laughs)

Sam Rose  28:04

Right now!

Callan Harrington  28:05

Well, I I'm so glad you said that It's a perfect segue. So was it a foregone conclusion you were starting Mvnifest after exiting GIR? I mean, I know you you had a couple of other companies as well. But it feels like you're going back in heavy from just what I've gathered. Is that right? Or am I off on that?

Sam Rose  28:21

Yeah, no, we've more than doubled down. Maybe it was a foregone conclusion. I've not heard it characterized like that, but I feel seen. (laughs)

Callan Harrington  28:33

(laughs)

Sam Rose  28:34

So for a couple reasons. First, the impetus for selling GIR was to give ourselves freedom to work on this. It wasn't for financial freedom or to go to the beach. We had a lot of irons in the fire, we were building, we were building out our 3PL business, we were building out our design agency business, we were building SaaS, and then we had this brand. And it was all bootstrapped, and it was just like a lot of- it was a lot of work, a lot of fun. And so a compelling reason to sell, for me was like, gee, I think this problem is going to be really interesting to solve. It's not that GIR's problem's uninteresting, but I'd solved a lot of it, and I could have happily continued building it, but I had other problems that needed energy to be solved, and that were newer to me. And I thought, yeah, I'll trade that. And I love GIR. I mean, it's- I still, I mean, of course. So it was hard to let it go. I wasn't done with it. But I also was just starting with some other things that really needed love, and attention, and energy, and focus. And so I earned the right and the time to go and do that. So sort of as an answer to your question, it was a foregone conclusion, because the reason for selling GIR was that it was a foregone conclusion. We were already in this other business. We were already launched, and we had to find a way to make sure that we were giving it enough focus that it could grow, which fortunately has been the case. But I think maybe a nuanced answer to your question is, in selling one business, would I almost certainly have started another? And the answer is yes. I think I would much prefer to be working a long day solving problems that I enjoy, and then engage my body, my mind, and all of it, then just hanging out somewhere. So for my kids sake, I hope I can prove myself wrong at some point. They're like, hey, we're here. They get plenty of me, they get plenty of time. We spend lots of time together, and they're such a blast. And I feel well balanced as an individual, as a parent, as a partner, and as an entrepreneur. But I don't ever anticipate that I will be finished problem solving on a permanent basis, even if we like sold Mvnifest tomorrow.

Callan Harrington  30:48

Yeah. And it's interesting. It's, for the repeat founders that we've had on the show, and that I just know personally, it's very similar. It's, they couldn't imagine doing anything else. So I'm curious, what did you do differently when you started Mvnifest, based off the learnings that you had when founding GIR?

Sam Rose  31:08

Well, that's a great question. I didn't do that much differently. I probably should have. But we were already started. You know, we were already in it. So I didn't have that much time to step back and reflect on what went well, and what didn't go well. But what I can say is that I'm doing some things differently now, and I would do things, some things, differently if I were to start GIR over again. I think that- And I will share those now. (laughs)

Callan Harrington  31:35

(laughs) I was gonna say, what would be those things? What were those things that you would do differently?

Sam Rose  31:39

So I'm an English major, as we've discussed, and I probably would have given myself some time for a bit more financial education before starting in business. I got that on the fly, so it's here now. But at the time, I was just like a kid, frankly, with a cool product idea that I couldn't get out of my head. And so the financial structuring of the business wasn't really top of mind. Corporate governance wasn't top of mind. We did things right. And I think in some cases, we got very lucky, or we were just very hardworking and capable, so it worked out. But I would probably spend a little bit more time as a young entrepreneur, reading an accounting book, and just getting a basic financial orientation. I think that that's like super valuable to me in my job today. Of course, that was a business with zero employees, or just me, and I was free. And this is a business with seventy employees, so like some of it is like required, required reading. Corporate governance becomes required reading when there are seventy people on payroll. That's one thing I would do differently, I would prepare differently and prepare better. Here's the thing about product that I would do differently. GIR and its products were inexpensive. We had great margins, like amazing margins on a percentage basis. On a gross margin dollar basis, we made a couple of bucks a sale, like a couple of bucks a spatula. And so that forced us into being omni channel because we couldn't afford direct to consumer ads and to just be digitally native. So it actually had a great side effect, because it created operational maturity for us really early on. And we've now like monetized that in the form of our new business, because what we do is back end operations, and we do it well. But it really limited our growth. If I was going to start a new product brand, I would choose something that not only, I believe, would have good and healthy margin potential but also gross margin dollars. So I'd be selling something that was just like, and also easy and small and easy to ship. Make something small and easy to ship that- sell diamond rings. (laughs) Sell something tiny and expensive. Because I think it was challenging to grow two dollars at a time.

Callan Harrington  33:49

I do find it super interesting, though, that you made the superpower of operation, of having operational efficiency, which drove you to the next business and starting out as a service business. And now you're spinning a tech company- or I don't want to say spinning out- you've created a tech company within the service business. How has that transition been for you?

Sam Rose  34:08

Well, I will say that being the founder of a SaaS product requires a lot of different hard skills than being the founder of a hard goods product. And I ran up the self-education mountain of hard goods very comfortably. I'm a product designer, I understood manufacturing, I really got into the details and into the weeds on like how physical products came to life., and I was very capable of designing them. So all of that really worked. And because they're hard skills, not- hard skills don't really translate, like soft skills translate but hard skills don't necessarily. And so like being a good business owner, and a good founder, and a good leader of people. So soft skills, those translated. I built a software team very, very quickly. And we started building product really, really quickly, and I had like, the product roadmap defined and sat down. But some of the hard skills around SaaS, were just like, I didn't know what I didn't know, like system architecture. I get front end development. I can code lightly, and some light Python and HTML, so I didn't feel completely out of my depth. But when we're like building system architecture, and infrastructure, and Lambda files, and I was like, whoa. Starting another product business would have just been zero to one, so fast. Zero to one on SaaS, after ten years of running a hard goods business, consumer goods business, was just like, much slower. That doesn't necessarily mean I would do any of it differently. That was just a hard thing. My joke is it's not a dream journal. (laughs) Business operations, software, commerce, there's a lot of API's, there's like a lot of things to connect to. And when it breaks, well, I should say, it cannot break, our system must be stable all the time, because it's managing people's orders, inventory, their catalog. It's connecting to a lot of other systems and points of demand. And that took a really long time to build a stable system. So we couldn't just like go to market quickly with a scrappy version of what we were doing. Because what we were saying was, we're going to take over these other systems that for sure exist for you. We're not giving you an optional new system, like a cool bell and whistle that your business has never used before. We're replacing software that is part of the core operational tooling of any commerce stack. And replacing an existing solution is a much harder, not only a much harder sale, but also just like a much less trivial exercise than like, try my dream journal.

Callan Harrington  36:43

Yeah.

Sam Rose  36:44

Nothing against dream journals.

Callan Harrington  36:45

Nothing against dream journals, of course. Well, one of the things I think it's really interesting that you did is, and I see this quite a bit, and I've given people advice of service companies that want to go into SaaS, because my whole background has been in SaaS, but solve that problem internally so that you can get more efficiency out of your people in the services business. And then I see it all the time is, once you have that bill, then you can take it to the outside, and it's a win win no matter what. And then you can grow a great SaaS business out of that. And it sounds like that's exactly what you did. Is that right?

Sam Rose  37:16

Yeah, that's exactly what I did. And what I underestimated was that some of the features that were mission critical to us as a business weren't necessarily mission critical to other people in our ICP. So if we had accepted a less perfect solution for ourselves earlier on, we could have gone to market earlier and monetized earlier. And that just would have been nice, because having money is nice, because then we can hire more people and move more quickly.

Callan Harrington  37:43

It's key. Yeah, yeah.

Sam Rose  37:45

So we limited our ability to go to market early, because we were building something that was really robust. And I think if I were to do it over again, I would still build a system that would solve my problems, and then try to tell the story of that solving other people's problems, too. But I might have accepted solving fewer of my own problems earlier.

Callan Harrington  38:05

So you've successfully exited a company, you've created other companies, you're now growing and scaling a SaaS business. What comes next?

Sam Rose  38:16

Well, what's next is, I sometimes describe what we're doing today Mvnifest as sort of this, we're taking three arcs through building our- tooling up our business, then SaaS kind of underpins all of this. But from a service perspective, and from like, a what-can-we-deliver-on perspective, I always thought, okay, like first one I need to do, I'm going to take our superpowers of building products, manufacturing them at scale and cost effectively high quality, and of getting things out there and storytelling, and of getting things to people's doorsteps- I don't know, they're not really superpowers, they're just powers, they're things we can do- and I'm going to expose that to the world as services. Step one is, let's do this as an agency. And we'll use our agency as a testing ground and kind of maturing ground for getting really, really good at doing for others what we were able to do very successfully for ourselves. Step one is agency, we're going to spend three or four years doing that. Just like, really getting good at it, getting consistent cash flow out of these businesses, and using that to grow and build into other areas of expertise. And that part of the story really only lasted like two years. Story number two started, and I always knew that story number two would start, it's just like it started so much faster than I anticipated, which was for us to be an accelerator or an incubator. And the way that I differentiate what we do as an agency or 3PL from what we do as an accelerator is sort of in in two ways. One way we can define it as: if we do like five things for you, then you're basically in our accelerator. We're powering your growth. If we're just your 3PL, like, cool, we're just your 3PL. Or if we're just your branding agency, cool. We, like, we'll just do your brand design, and then you know, you want a new deck or you want a new website, and we'll do that too. We can just be a manufacturer for you. We can just be your software platform. But if we're doing like five of those things for you, then what we're really doing is helping you operate your business. We're accelerating your growth. And the other way to define it is when we basically trade upfront service costs, like what an agency would do for long term gain, that could be rev share, it could be equity, it could be a combination of both, but we're saying we're gonna hold our breath on the win here. We're gonna win with you long term in the end. And if we're doing that with you, then you're in our accelerator. And I also characterize us as being responsible for growth in either of those scenarios. So if we are expanding your marketplace presence, or if we are your sales reps, basically, we're you know, we're calling every museum store in the country to try to get an order first six items at the end of January, you're in our accelerator. And step number three, is a venture equity studio. We're not there yet. But we got- we're getting close. I say we're not there, because we haven't raised a full fund. But we're almost there, because we've already started to acquire businesses into Mvnifest, and then operate them effectively, like in our accelerator, but as wholly owned entities in-house. So what I want to do, what's next is a venture equity studio. We'll raise, it's not gonna be a huge fund, I don't think, but somewhere on the order of twenty-five to fifty million dollars. And we're going to deploy that into businesses that are ready to grow and need help. It'll be a seed stage fund. And what's going to make us different, or my thesis, my investment thesis, is that good ideas get funded all the time, but good ideas fail all the time. One in every twenty venture backed companies succeed, and the other nineteen fail. Like, why do they fail? It can't be because the idea was bad. They're venture backed companies. We're not even talking about the hundreds of companies that don't get funded in this mathematical construct. We're just talking about the twenty that were good enough ideas to get funding, but still nineteen of them fail. Why are they failing? They're failing because of operations. They're failing because of execution. And they're probably failing because of unknown unknowns that couldn't be exposed when their good idea got funding, but that they discovered along the way, and aside from extrinsic market powers and stuff like that, businesses are failing because of operations. So our thesis is that if we can be an activist investor, sort of like a PE fund would be but on venture scale, and at seed stage, then we can help great ideas stay alive by participating in the execution and the operations of the brands that are in our portfolio. So that's what's next.

Callan Harrington  42:43

Yeah, it makes sense. It's totally aligned. We've actually had other guests that have had a very similar model in that as well. I think that's excellent. Last question I have for you is, if you could have a conversation with your younger self, what advice would you give them? What would that conversation look like?

Sam Rose  43:01

Besides reading the accounting book? (laughs)

Callan Harrington  43:02

That's it. (laughs)

Sam Rose  43:05

It's just the accounting book. (laughs) Nevermind, I forgot we already got your answer. (laughs) Well, I'm gonna give you a surprising answer that's not that adjacent to like, the conversation that we just had. But do read the accounting book. My advice to myself would be not to stay in bad relationships. Now there's a very specific anecdote around this, and it's not a personal relationship. I'm talking, I was an employee, and it was a bad relationship. My boss was mean, I had a terrible time working there. I was really young. I probably was doing a lot of things wrong, but I didn't know it, because I wasn't getting any feedback. And I stayed in that, I'm calling it a bad relationship, because I want this to be abstractable to lots of other situations, but really it was just like, if your job sucks, you should quit. (laughs) But not being in bad relationships is a way that we can make it very broadly applicable. I was in a bad employee - employer relationship. It wasn't working for either side. I was afraid of quitting because I was afraid of failing. And I thought, my young self thought, that if I just continued to grind it out, that my sweat, and tears literally, would get me out of any situation I was in. And I was too scared to say, this just isn't working, and I need to give myself time and space to find something better. And I think that that's true of any relationship. If it's not working, call it. But my advice is to apply, I mean, that's really easy advice to apply to romantic relationships. It is pretty obvious, if you don't love someone, don't be with them. But I think it's harder for people to apply, at least from my generation, the generation of like, please don't quit, and also like, jobs are scarce. Like if you have one, you should keep with it. And I wish I had had like a little bit more of a, maybe this generational, like the generation that's coming up, approach to it, which is just: I value my happiness, I value my time, I value myself, and I'm gonna stick up for it, man. Yeah. Anyway, hopefully that has stuck with me for long enough now to become a useful life lesson for other people, too.

Callan Harrington  45:12

I love it. And I think about that, where, if you're giving it all that you have, and you know that you're really giving all that you have, and you're just stuck in this cycle, and this thing is just becoming more negative, it's just not going anywhere, you don't owe the business that you're working for anything because the second they've got to do layoffs, the business has to survive, and I understand that part of it as well. So it's like you don't owe anybody anything. So I love that advice. Sam, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you so much for coming on. I really enjoyed this.

Sam Rose  45:45

Thank you. It's been a real pleasure. Let's do it again. If you're looking for some friends to build stuff with, keep me in mind.

Callan Harrington  45:50

100%. I love it.  I hope you enjoyed Sam and I's conversation. I loved hearing Sam's take on the power of connecting with people through storytelling. If you want to learn more about Sam, you could find her on LinkedIn in the show notes. Also, if you liked this episode, you could find me on LinkedIn to let me know if you really want to support the show a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify is very much appreciated. Thanks for listening, everybody, and I'll see you next week.