Alicia McKenzie (00:00.11)

Within a week, the news came out that she had filed for divorce. Right? So it's just like this house of cards that fell apart. Yeah. But then the business side of me, I'm like, I wonder how the brand is going to suffer or how well the brand survived this because you have you've built your content on your relationship. Right. That was your like the product you're delivering to the world was entertainment based on your relationship.

brand surviving.

Alicia McKenzie (00:29.138)

Welcome to Married to the Startup. I'm Alicia McKenzie, a wellness entrepreneur and digital creator. Alongside me is my amazing husband, George, the CEO who's always ready for a new challenge. We've been navigating marriage and running startups for over a decade, and we're here to share the real, unfiltered journey with you. Join us for insights and candid conversations about integrating love, family, and entrepreneurship. This is Married to the Startup, where every day is a new adventure.

Welcome to episode 59 of Married to the Startup. I'm your host, Alicia McKenzie.

I'm George and this is the news that matter.

Okay.

Okay.

Alicia McKenzie (01:11.96)

Can we talk about Desmond and Kristi?

I don't even know who they are, but yes.

God, you know who they are. You've seen their stuff. I know that you have seen their content.

You've told me about them,

George McKenzie (01:25.793)

I'm okay, sure.

And what really bothers me is that when I see a couple on Instagram, beautifully famous, have two children, have the world, like, you look at them and they seemed aspirational. And then you find out one of them is cheating.

ALICE well I mean it's... I think that's... it's more common than uncommon. I know! Yeah. Because I think it lends more credence to the fact that most of what you see online isn't real. I know! Right? So, I mean the only thing that's gonna tip me over the edge is if Chip and Joanna Gaines break up. something happens there, then I'm like, I'm done. There's... I'm not gonna invest...

But why?

George McKenzie (02:14.26)

any credence into online or TV personas.

It's so soft.

Yeah, I mean, I just think one, it's a lot of societal pressure when you're famous in a relationship, but then two, just don't know what's going on behind the scenes. So all you see is 15 second snippets on Instagram or YouTube or whatever it's on. Right. You don't see the other 24 hours of the day or 23 hours of the day of what's going on.

And I've always had this theory that the happier a couple seems online, the closer they are to divorce. And the only reason I came up with this theory that we had friends in the past and they started like posting a lot of like, I love my husband. I'm da da da da da. I'm sick. We've got a great, strong relationship, super powerful, and he's got a great career. I've got a great career. And then I would say like within three months they were divorced or they were like had filed for divorce.

Yeah, think. Yeah, well, I mean, that sounds about right. It happens quite frequently, but yeah, I think at talking with, you know, reading a lot of relationship things, I always read those because it's fun.

Alicia McKenzie (03:11.15)

One of them was cheating.

Alicia McKenzie (03:25.088)

Or because your algorithm feeds them to you.

Yes, exactly, my flipbook feeds those to me, but I read tons. But I think it's genuinely that way. Like lot of times, if someone is incredibly affectionate in social settings, a lot of times they're only affectionate in social settings, and they do it performatively to kind of mask or cover up the fact that there are, there is no attraction there anymore, or there is no love there, there is no...

affection there. So they put on the show when they're out in public, like a narcissist, because they want to be seen as having a great relationship and being super into their spouse. And then as soon as like they go home, like, everything's off. And yeah, I just, that would be a terrible way to live. But I think a lot of people do that. And it's very performative for the 20 minutes that they spend filming the 15 second snippet. It's all fun or

Like, it's like, what, Instagram or influences in the wild, I still love watching some of those videos, but I saw one the other day, or they got fed to me on flipbook or something, it was basically someone on the balcony like zoomed down on a couple, like looking out over the sunset. And you could see them, they're standing there and they look lovingly and then they just break and they go over to look at the camera and they come back and they said something, they go back and they go back to this lovingly pose. You're like, that's so typical, right? It's, it's

Yeah, very unauthentic. Inauthentic, unauthentic, whatever. it's fake. Fake news.

Alicia McKenzie (04:54.165)

in in authentic.

Alicia McKenzie (05:00.184)

So once I got past the heartbreak of their splitting. Well, I think I was because, like I said, they seemed aspirational. They seemed like they had it all together. They just went through this massive house build and I think it was Texas somewhere. They built their forever dream home and they posted their forever dream home on all over social media. And then I would say within a week, the news came out that she had filed for divorce.

You were emotionally invested?

Alicia McKenzie (05:30.134)

Right. So it's just like this house of cards that fell apart. Yeah. But then the business side of me, I'm like, I wonder how the brand is going to suffer or how. Will the brand survive this because you have you've built your content on your relationship, right? That was your your I don't even know, like the product you're delivering to the world was entertainment based on your relationship.

Will the brand survive?

public.

George McKenzie (05:58.2)

Right. So the question is, is her personality strong enough that she can carry it with a, you know, a backup player?

I don't know. And his brand was, he's a chef.

Yeah, maybe he has to... maybe... yeah. We'll see if the two brands can survive on their own.

That's what happens when you build a brand on celebrity. And then when that celebrity either goes away or doesn't translate to dollars, doesn't translate to the ability to business, how does that work? And I think that that's kind of what spurred the subject for today, right? It got me thinking about all of the celebrity brands that we've either seen start and fail or still use today like Jordans.

Beats or like I was just thinking of all of the brands that were built on celebrity. What is the difference between a brand that survives and one that doesn't? Right. So celebrity brands are everywhere and they're taking this one person and they're turning it into a machine. But I think the problem lies when you take that celebrity brand and you don't put a solid team behind them.

George McKenzie (07:06.528)

I think though, you know, to your point, the ones that have survived and are the ones that succeed like Jordan's or you can even see Kylie Jenner and some of that. They've all been paired with. An operational team of experts that understand how to take the marketing that a celebrity can do and take that into operations and be able to industrialize it and scale it and sell it. Yes. And the people that don't have that.

backing seem to often falter because being a great great marketer doesn't always translate to being great at business.

Absolutely. I actually think it means the opposite, right? You're really good at marketing, but you have no idea about the business side of things.

So you got to be paired up with people that are able to counterbalance you and be able to provide the things that you may lack and being able to stay in your lane as an owner or as a founder and understand, okay, this is what I really do well and I'm going to focus on this and be able to have other people focus on the things that I don't do well.

Absolutely. Do you think that ego plays into this?

George McKenzie (08:11.31)

Um, especially with celebrity, a billion percent. Sure. Yeah. Because it's really hard. Athletes, even business folk, anybody who's been really successful, it's hard to stay humble and know that you didn't get there alone. And I think a lot of times, especially if you're a celebrity whose brand and status is all about them. Like you're a professional athlete, like Michael Jordan, or you're a singer and the talent is yours, or you're an online personality. And if you

It's really hard to disassociate that success and say, that success is because of the team of everyone around me versus to me, made that success. Yeah. And then saying, can I foresee a time or a business that I wouldn't be successful?

Yes, so and one of the brands that really comes to the forefront of my mind and it's only because it was really influential during that period in time was House of Darion, which is Beyonce Knowles's first clothing brand.

And you know what's funny is I had never heard of it until you sent that to me. I know. Never heard of it at all.

I know. Right. Like, I mean, you're 10 years older than me. And when it came out, like, I think it was the 90s, right? That was that was when Destiny's Child was really big. Can you pay my bills? Like, she had this huge aura of just everything that teen girls wanted to be.

George McKenzie (09:18.443)

Yeah, never heard of it once.

George McKenzie (09:33.526)

Right, and I think it was on the heels that didn't like wasn't booboo out then and it was yeah like a couple of the rappers had

Juicy Couture and like all of the big brands that

They were translating kind of the music success into, you know, clothing.

Yes. And I never had the ass to be able to fill out the Juicy Couture pants. Very sad. I tried. But anyways, House of Darion. Never heard of it. Beyonce Knowles is debut clothing line, and it was Beyonce Knowles. So you think that her influence and her star power should have been enough to carry this brand?

you've seen.

George McKenzie (09:58.753)

Never heard of it?

George McKenzie (10:14.946)

Right. You would think on its face, you realize that business is more than just a front person.

And back then I have no clue. Right. Like, I don't know. Yeah. Right. It was a big cultural moment. It had distribution within I think it was Macy's and a bunch of other stores that I mean, I could never afford it. Right. Because during that time in my life, like we were very boom and bust. And that was a bust period. Right. So that was but I loved it. It's still it was something I aspired to want to be able to buy one day. And then they went away.

Why is it fail?

George McKenzie (10:47.564)

Yeah. Yeah. Doing some research on it. It's interesting. Like the dynamics between what we were just talking about in this company is that, you know, she started it with her parents and her sister, and it was really around kind of bringing to life her aunt or grandmother's grandmother's kind of fashion sense and saying, Hey, we're taking runway to the sidewall. I don't know if that was the slogan, but something like that. And, and I think founders getting this trap a lot on

Thank

George McKenzie (11:16.59)

I know I've fallen victim to it, at least at points, is you're so passionate about what you're doing. And I think she obviously was passionate about the fashion industry and she wanted to do that. And then she was so her identity was so tied to bringing her grandmother's kind of stuff to life. And she was designing products for a market that didn't really exist. she was creating things she liked and things she wanted.

And I think you have that a lot in the company when you're building a software platform or you're building, you build, if you don't get customer feedback and you're not out there engaging in the marketplace, you're going to start to build things around what you want or what you think is the market. And then in reality, there isn't a market for that. Like, so she was taking things that were very, runway ask, which has a very small market and then saying, I want to take that.

thing that drives that market and take it to the sidewalk market, which is a much larger market, but it's a much different purchasing. You know, they have purchasing power is much different how they buy as much different. And you kind of blend into two and not really solving a problem and creating, at least identifying what the market is. And yeah, they went through that. I think we've referenced Silicon Valley on this show like 10 times, but

There's another episode in Silicon Valley where they build the platform for the product. And like, that's amazing. And they're like, we got to send it out to get, you know, beta alpha tested. So he sends it out to all his friends, which are all engineers. And they're all like raving about how awesome it is. And then the woman who's one of the investors gets access. And then she's like, I don't understand this. It sucks. And they're like, you don't know what you're talking about. All the feedback is positive. Everyone loves it. And then they launch and then it fucking fails because

Good show.

George McKenzie (13:06.806)

The market that they were designing for is not the market that is the ones that are actually buying it or using it.

Yes. And one of the founders of one of the companies we're going to talk about later, Skims, the difference, he said that the difference between his company and other companies is the customer feedback loop. He said he has a very strong customer feedback loop through social media, through their reviews, so on and so forth, in that whenever they get negative feedback, like they take it and run with it.

Yeah, that's a good philosophy to have instead of, you know, a lot of times. you want to dismiss the negative because no one likes to.

dismissing

Alicia McKenzie (13:47.534)

Absolutely. I do it as an author, right? Like I don't read any of my negatives.

Right, but if you're a product owner and you're constantly evolving the product, you need to take that feedback. And yeah, sure. There's going to be some you just weed out, but at least need to acknowledge it.

Yeah, absolutely. So the problem here with Darion, with House of Darion, is that the celebrity was the strategy. Right. Right.

didn't solve a problem like the runway to the sidewalk. There was no like demand for that. No one saying, oh, I wish to God I could have this 70s style mixed with 40s player or vice versa, whatever. Yes. I don't know what their strategy was.

it was, was seventies. It was like a seven.

George McKenzie (14:25.664)

So mean, it was a cool concept, there was no market demand. It wasn't solving a problem. Yes.

It was just creating a product when you don't quite have your customer defined in your.

Passion.

Fine customer persona and the market wasn't identified and you said, Hey, I like this. I want to honor my grandmother. This is a passion thing for me. I think it's amazing. I love it. I would buy it. And turns out nobody else would.

And then problem number two, it was family run.

George McKenzie (14:53.1)

Yes, she didn't have the business acumen, especially in clothing. can imagine it's a lot with logistics and distribution and manufacturing. There's a lot that goes into it. If you don't understand that supply chain, probably risky. Yeah.

especially back in the 90s when you had so many other clothing brands that were popping up left and right. Like you had your guesses and you had. my gosh, I'm trying to think of the brands that I were, which we were in. I was in New York yesterday with our 13 year old and we walked past Puma and she's like, let's go in and get a pair of wedge sneakers. I'm like, are you kidding me? Has that really come back around? was like, Michaela, you realize I was wearing wedge sneakers like 15, 20 years ago. She's like,

No you weren't.

Puma tracksuits and the backwards

All of it. It's like I love how cyclical fashion is. makes me so happy because I don't like to get rid of stuff.

George McKenzie (15:48.398)

Well, you see like the jeans with all the holes in them and everything. then it just reminds me of, remember used jeans and everything? No. The used brand used jeans? Jeans? Yeah, that was the name of the brand.

It used, it was like the golden goose of jeans.

Yeah, I guess so. But they would like purposely have the holes and then they'd have like patches under the holes. And they say like used and yeah, it was a big thing. Maybe like acid wash, too. I think it was early 90s, maybe late 80s. I think it was nine. Was that I think it was early night.

What decade was this?

Alicia McKenzie (16:17.366)

Interesting. I also wear a uniform in school.

Yeah, well, in 90s, you were also element.

How old was I in the 90s? It was great. I love the 90s. Okay. Back to it. Where were we?

All the things that went wrong with House of whatever. Darion. The first problem is the name.

Dairy on.

Alicia McKenzie (16:38.936)

Can you stop? It's a family name. You're not allowed to make fun of it.

Yeah, there's a lot of family names doesn't doesn't mean they're great brands

But how so, Darion? And I was just going to say something that I forgot. something about culture.

House of Lannister. It's the right thing. Yeah, that's from Game of Thrones. didn't know. OK, well, now you know, they always pay their debts.

I did not know that.

Alicia McKenzie (17:04.492)

Yeah. So lessons from the brands that fail, right? Visibility is not infrastructure.

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it helped with the launch. Like they had probably immediate coverage and you know, that's the hard part for any small or business startup is how do you get marketing? How do you get your name out there? How do you get recognized? So she had that out the gate. Yeah, nailed.

nailed. But then you see that it's family run, which necessarily doesn't mean it's going to be run well. But this is, I feel like employing the family is a pitfall a lot of companies can run into a lot of family businesses, right? Because you feel like there's some obligation to help your family. If you can make it

Yeah. I think, you fall in that startup trap too, where, in the beginning you feel like, they're going to work hard with me because they want to see joint success. And yeah, we know each other we're going to.

Go hard.

Alicia McKenzie (18:04.512)

But it's like a social capital. Right. And we've had this conversation before, and that social capital is really expensive. You feel like you have some duty to help your friends, help your family. OK, I'm going to give you a job. Right. Like you see this with Travis Kelsey's foundation right now. And he got into some hot water because of it. He employed, I think, two of his friends who ran a management company. And it turns out, I guess they were only donating like 60 cents to every dollar.

to actual programs as a 501c3, which it's legal, right? There's nothing illegal about that, but it is not ideal. The ideal ratio, I think, is like 80 to 90 cents for every dollar is dedicated to programs. Right. And he wasn't doing that. And then I guess they were using the branding company to pay for certain things that some people don't think you should be paying for as a fiber or as a nonprofit. So on and so forth.

It's legal.

Alicia McKenzie (19:01.026)

but it's the trap of employing your friends and your family.

And how do it? How do get around that? Avoided if possible.

Yeah, I just think because it always ends. I always try to think of how is it going to end? Right. And it never ends well. Well, when I hire people like when you hire some random person, like you can see the end is easy if it doesn't work out, you know, we'll part and I'll never see them again. Or, you know, we part as friends. go on. They get a better job opportunity. I couldn't provide for them and they go and are successful. But when it's your family.

Yeah.

George McKenzie (19:39.502)

It's like, how do you motivate them if they are underperforming? And then if they are, when you get rid of them, how do you disassociate your personal relationship with your business relationship? I think we've had that discussion a lot is extremely difficult to do that. And I think some people handle it better and are able to say, you know, I can understand that you're making a business decision about me, and that could be different than we're a friend. Yeah.

Which is hard. Hard, hard, hard.

We just ran into this this past week. There was a brand we were partnering with, but friends with the CEO or friends with one of the heads of company and then had to make a decision that wasn't favorable and threw the friendship in there and like, well, I thought we were friends and so on and so forth. And like, don't do that. Don't do that. You have to be able to separate it. And if you can't don't do business with your friends. Yes.

difficult.

George McKenzie (20:35.822)

Yeah.

All right. Moving on to the brands that got it right. And this brand is one that jumps out to me because our sons are like ape shit over it. Jordan. Yes. Jordan, the Jordan Cleats, the Jordan tennis shoes, the Jordan basketball shoes, the Jordan emblems. And yet I guarantee you neither one of them have ever seen Jordan play. They have. Right. So this brand is what? 40, 50 years old.

which is.

George McKenzie (21:06.818)

probably. Yeah. Yeah, it's probably 40 some years old. think there's a great documentary about this. Yeah. That Netflix just did a couple of years ago. Did we watch it? No. Are you sure? We haven't. Well, no, that was a documentary on the bulls. Yeah. But no, there's a documentary on this whole the Jordan. interesting. Yeah. Well, we have to watch it with the boys, maybe. But it may not be for them. But it's really around how Nike was like not even a big brand.

How it started?

Alicia McKenzie (21:17.87)

Work his eyes yellow.

George McKenzie (21:34.616)

They were struggling in the sneaker business. They were behind a lot of the others and they decided instead of, you know, taking their meager marketing budget and putting it on, you know, a couple of athletes, they just put it all on one and create a brand around this guy. it, and it worked because they had the business people that were really focused on it. And they partnered that business and operational capacity with a celebrity to push product and launch a brand.

It just so happened to work.

Alicia McKenzie (22:03.02)

Yeah, so I think in this brand, they use the celebrity as the accelerator. Right. Right. Not the strategy. They weren't asking Michael Jordan to run the company. They weren't asking him to help with distribution.

No, they're asking him for you know creative Input and to be the brand ambassador. Yeah, and I think if you look at like a lot of Ryan Reynolds businesses like mint mobile he had a a gin aviation gin he has a lot of these businesses that he and The Wrexham team like that one. I think he's operating a bit, but he hired professionals to operate it But the other ones he was in and basically in his lane of I'm gonna handle marketing

marketing and strategy. That's Professionals are doing all the other stuff and they've all been incredibly successful. Yeah. Because he's really good at the marketing aspect. And if I got that covered and I partner with solid operational delivery folks, we can have a winning team.

And who doesn't love Deadpool? Who doesn't love Ryan Reynolds? I mean, that's a good that's a good celebrity to have to have behind your brand.

Everybody loves Deadpool.

George McKenzie (23:08.46)

Yeah, you can get them on the pot. Get behind the pot.

Yep. Okay. Beats by Dre.

Beats by Dre. Another one. I'm sure he didn't, you know, wasn't the engineer behind the headphones.

long have we owned beats? think that was Michaela's first pair of headphones was a pair of beats. Yes. And she was like two and they and we got them not because they were beats by Dre, but because of how they fit on her little tiny toddler head when we were flying back and forth from L.A. to California. Or L.A. to Virginia.

Yeah, and he did great because he was known in the music industry, so who better to pitch than audio.

Alicia McKenzie (23:47.384)

But Beats by Dre was his company to begin with.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and then it got purchased by who were they? I think Apple.

Apple? Was it Apple? Yeah, I think you can buy Beats by Dre inside of the- So you have Dr. Dre, who is like this hardcore cultural rapper icon. I guarantee you our kids have never ever listened to them, but they all know Beats by Dre. So clear roles, clear positioning. Dr. Dre was not running the-

Apple Word.

George McKenzie (24:14.168)

Yeah.

George McKenzie (24:17.998)

Yeah, but he was yeah, it was a product that had a market, right? It had a problem it was solving like, hey, since the creation of the Walkman, you've had these little puffy, shitty ear ear earphones. Yeah. Right. And then Apple had come out with this thing to put in your ear, which is kind of abrasive, hurts a little bit. And, you know, was still had the strings and wasn't the best. And he created a high functioning. You know, cordless Bluetooth enabled.

kind of headphone that fit on your head and was comfortable to wear.

Yeah, and I remember before that we had like the Sony headphones.

Yeah, we had like the podcast ones like, I don't know, they were radio like quality ones like high def and they were sounded amazing. But you had this huge cord. They're very big. Yeah. Hard to travel with. Yeah.

unattractive and yet here comes beats with the perfect solution for a problem nobody knew they had.

George McKenzie (25:11.182)

Yeah, where everyone had the problem, just, you know, there wasn't anything to fix it. So you were like, dwell on a problem you can't solve? Yeah.

Okay, so my favorite brand that we're going to talk about today. And it's not my favorite brand because I actually don't like the clothing. I don't like I don't wear any of the products. I'm their marketing practices are kind of questionable. I try to stay away from fast fashion, but skims.

I love this brand. I love what they've built.

Yeah, I think they knocked it out of the park when it comes to pairing operational delivery team with a celebrity kind of marketer slash innovator.

God.

Alicia McKenzie (25:51.884)

And let's give Kim Kardashian her roses like her beginnings weren't the greatest, but let's be honest, nobody's were. I feel like my beginning was a little questionable. I was a bit of a disaster when I was in high school. Same with you. You're a bit of a disaster. Maybe. Yeah. But we all got it together. Yeah. And she is a brilliant businesswoman.

Yeah, that whole bit that family's got it down

So you have Kim Kardashian, who is the definite she's the celebrity for starters, but then she's also the creative director. But then you back it up with the powerhouse of Emma Greed and Jens Greed and.

Yeah, and you know, that was a great combination of, you know, marketing, and business acumen and operational delivery and the fact that they were solving a problem like that. The, you know, the boutique kind of, you know, I don't know what you call that.

The boutique experience of buying a bra sucks. It's terrible. It's uncomfortable. The products don't quite fit right. Like it's just, it was all around bad.

George McKenzie (27:01.42)

Yeah. they just took this shapewear, which was kind of like a stagnant from like the 1940s corset kind of shapewear stuff. And they were like, let's revolutionize this and make it comfortable. Let's make it form fitting for anything. So you can wear it with t-shirts, you can wear it with whatever. And they came out with, so they solved the real world problem. They had a celebrity person to be able to get the marketing done right. And also be an ambassador for the product, you'd wear it. And then they had the operational delivery team.

all the ingredients were there and they had a great product market fit. The market was there for what they were building and selling. And then they had the ability to reach that market.

And now you go into their stores and they're very curated. A skim store is like a work of art. It's almost like walking into MoMA.

And I think the other difference here is they started out like direct to consumers, like online versus House of...Darion. More like partnerships with Macy's and all these stories.

I think that's an unfair comparison though, because back in the 90s there wasn't a of DTC and e-commerce.

George McKenzie (28:09.774)

Yeah, perhaps. But from a strategy perspective, being direct to consumer, you know, the consumer is the lifeblood of your company. Yes. That's how you're going to make your revenue targets and make profit and all that. And owning that relationship versus outsourcing that relationship. So when you have that direct to consumer, you can get that instant feedback. You can help curate the product. And then you also own all the data about your customers, which is extremely valuable. Yes.

And when you outsource that near there's a buffer in between that or a proxy. Now the customer relationship is owned by Macy's customer relationship is owned by Footlocker or whomever. And now you are only doing business with Macy's and Footlocker. you getting that feedback loop is harder. And how do you, you know, directly target or market or message to that customer? It's really hard. Yeah.

Cause you're not going to have that direct relationship and you don't own that customer data. So if you don't own that, who owns, what do you actually own? You're just making products and you're a wholesaler.

sure and I don't think I've actually ever bought a piece of skims clothing from the store. usually just if I like I like their sleep bras because they're just really tiny and small and fit well and I buy them online.

Yeah, I'm sure that's probably it's kind of like, you know, Apple, a lot of these places with anything. Yeah, very. You want a boutique that looks amazing, which means it's very sparse in terms of what it carries. And you go in there and you see it, you touch it, you get the that tactical feel and then you buy it online. Yes. And I think that's probably what they want anyway, because they want to drop ship it to you. They want to have your credit card in the database. They want to have you fill out like a mail to you, a market to you.

Alicia McKenzie (29:51.458)

And you have to think it's also, what is it, a shoplifting thing too, right? Because if you're in Georgetown, like the Georgetown aloe got hit for like $20,000. Right. So imagine having less product in the store is probably more advantageous for the company.

Yeah, and I'm sure like today's culture, there's very few people. I mean, I do it sometimes, but there's very few that because I'm an instant gratification kind of person. I when I spend the money, I want it.

But you buy something and then it takes you like months to wear it. I don't understand that.

Yeah, I know. Because when I I exchange my money for goods, I want the good.

even though you won't use them.

George McKenzie (30:27.458)

That's it doesn't matter. It's in my closet and I get to look at it. And then eventually when an occasion arises that precipitates me saying, okay, now I'm going to wear it. I'm going to rip the tag off now and now I'll wear it. It is. often takes weeks. Just the way I'm wired.

That's a choice.

Alicia McKenzie (30:48.622)

Back to Skims. Yeah. But walking into their store, it's really pretty. I just need to take you into one so you can understand it. It's beautiful. And it's it's so perfectly curated and the all the bus, there's different sizes, right? It's very inclusive. You've got somebody who's a zero and then you've got somebody who's a 22 and everything in between. And I think that's where she really nailed it is the sheer.

Yeah.

Alicia McKenzie (31:15.246)

availability of all of the products from all of the sizes and for every body shape and. Good for her. Got a rectangle like me, and then you've got hourglass shape like some other women.

Yeah, I think that's.

George McKenzie (31:31.018)

You're ridiculous.

I'm very aware of my downfall, my shortcomings.

think it's a good juxtaposition between the two, like why one was successful and why one, the others weren't. it's, I think a lot of lessons can be translated into any business you start, whether you have a celebrity marketer or not. It's really, you know, getting the right team together and having that team understand who's in what lane.

I think that's the biggest.

Alicia McKenzie (32:02.574)

clearly defined roles from

day one. then what, is your strategy? And then is that strategy scalable and defendable? You know, is it a business that you can build a boat around and defend, or is it one that's just another me too? yeah, doesn't actually solve a pain point for a customer every day.

Yeah, are you really solving a problem? Yeah. Or are you just putting more shit into the world that we don't need?

Yeah. And yeah, a solution looking for a problem. Yeah. Those normally aren't successful.

No. And then emotional decision making. Right? Like if you're emotionally so invested in the product that you're not willing to take any feedback or criticism, then I think that's a non-starter right there. Right?

George McKenzie (32:46.7)

Yeah, it's how are you designing the product for like who's the end customer? What's the market? And are you solving your customers problem or you just doing a passion?

Which is fine, I mean, if this is a passion project for you, great.

Right. If it's a passion project, then you're like, okay, what is the market for this passion? Like, you know, I was going to say Jelly Cats, but apparently Jelly Cats is fucking huge. But let's say I am building these one of a kind skull vases. I'm just making something up. Okay. And maybe there's a market of like, you know, at the Ren Fan, there's like, you know, a thousand other people that love this mug. Yeah. Then, you know,

to go from skull vases to mugs.

I don't know. And maybe the FOS isn't much. don't know. Whatever you're building, making, manufacturing, selling. Like if the market is small, that's fine. You can have a niche market and a product that serves a very niche problem. But what you can't have is, your addressable market being a thousand people. And then you have an idea that you think you're going to build a company worth billion. Right. If your market's only a thousand people.

George McKenzie (33:59.15)

You can only charge that and you're charging $10 of VAS, right? That's kind of your revenue. That's your obtainable market share. And maybe you could sell them a new mug every year with a different design, but it's not going to be this rapid scalable revenue model versus I've got a problem that 90 % of the population deals with, like skims, maybe 50 % of the population, 52 % of the population is women and you're targeting women and

Maybe 80 % of those women want shapewear. So you got your market right there versus house of. Darian. It's like, okay, what is that? Was it for women? Okay. Okay. So it's the same 52%, but of those 52 % and how many want that or need that style. And I think that's a lot of high fashion is built the same way. and, you know, I think skims does some interesting stuff, kind of like Apple and a lot of the higher end where they do limited release.

there.

George McKenzie (34:57.784)

stuff where you're artificial demand because you're limiting supply.

similar to a jelly cat that can only be bought.

Exactly. So I mean, is that. Yeah, supply side, you know, economics there. If you. it's like, you know, some of those high end designer bags, you know, it costs a lot to to buy them because there's just not so many of them. And the manufacturing quality is supposedly better because it's handcrafted. But if you only produce a thousand like Rolexes, they only produce so many. So it creates the demand because there's only

The scarcity of it.

And then I also think it has to do with your systems, right? The one thing that Skims did right is the ease of being able to purchase their product. Right? It's so easy. You just go boop, boop, boop, boop.

George McKenzie (35:49.422)

Amazon if you can buy anything on Amazon, but the difference between Amazon and scams is right. If you're a dropshipper or you're you're you're making something you sell it through Amazon. Amazon owns all that customer data. Amazon owns the relationship with the customer. They you do not. True. Yeah, you're a wholesaler.

Right. Is that. So if you if you're a wholesaler on Amazon, you don't get access.

to the I don't think you get access to this customer's data. You're not going to get their credit cards. You're not going to get their email address. really? Well, how would you if you go to buy it off Apple on Amazon? You just a couple of clicks and you bought it. I think you're just a wholesale. You're just fulfilling orders, order fulfillment. Huh?

Thank

Alicia McKenzie (36:32.782)

Now I want to test that.

Well, you sell books on Amazon. You don't get everybody's email that bought the book.

My publisher sells books on Amazon. Right. I don't know how that works. Not sure. OK, interesting. Yeah. Something to look into. But that just also made me think of there's this one company that I use for makeup and not buying makeup, but actually makeup services. And I go to this company because it is so easy to book an appointment. Their online system. And this isn't an ad. This is just it made me think of this. And because as a consumer, I want.

things to be simple. I don't want to call anybody to schedule a makeup appointment for somebody to come do my glam for TV show.

That goes for any company. Any product you're selling, you want to reduce the friction and the barriers to selling. I can tell you firsthand, having done a services-based business like SaaS business, look at SaaS business. How easy is it to buy a license? And it didn't used to be that way. You had to like buy software and they ship you a DVD or CD or floppy disk or whatever back in the day. And even doing service, but you look at, okay.

George McKenzie (37:46.958)

What's the, my buyer's profile, you know, the person buying it, if I'm trying to sell, you know, a service at $40,000, right. Or, or $70,000. You realize, Oh, the, people that want to buy my product, you know, a lot of times they may have budgetary approval for up to 50,000. So that influences how you want to price it. And then you're like, Oh, okay. Well, it has to go through the procurement channels. If it's even if it's 50,000. Okay. What's the easiest way to get the

procurement channel. Do I need a master services agreement? Can I do it as a purchase order? How do I get it? And finding all those things out to say, okay, here's the lowest friction possible way to sell it. And then that's how you go sell. Because if it's a high touch, high friction to buy, oftentimes the sale will fall apart. Time kills all deals.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So I think the bottom line of this episode is that celebrity brands are basically just a startup who they've got a little bit of a head start.

Yeah, they definitely have a head start in the marketing aspect, but even, you know, there's no guarantee of success just because you're a celebrity. Just like there's no guarantee of success just because you have the best product or because you were first to market. Like a lot of those things are phenomenal, but if you don't have the right pairing of business acumen, operational delivery and sales and marketing, there's a lot of things that go into doing it right. But there's oftentimes like

You could be the best sales person in the world and create a company that has an incredible top line revenue growth. But if you don't have great operational delivery folks that understand customer success and understand, you know, delivering value to the end customers, eventually, you know, you're just plugging holes because whatever you're bringing in on the top is just coming right out of the bottom and churn. Yeah. Well, then we need to find ourselves a celebrity.

Alicia McKenzie (39:42.54)

going from here, sir.

Alicia McKenzie (39:48.238)

I mean, there's no guarantee.

No, but we have the right business and operation. No, I don't want to do that. That sounds hard. I don't want to be a celebrity. That's how we started this whole thing off. Like there's too much pressure. Right. We don't want to do that.

Be your own celebrity.

Alicia McKenzie (39:59.598)

There is. Well, and OK, can we I was interviewed to be on a reality TV show. Was it last year? Yeah, we went through a few rounds and I won't say what show it is, but we went through a few rounds of the interviews and ultimately we decided that it wasn't a good fit. Like I'm I'm a little bit more reserved when it comes to real life and what I expose my children to. Right. I don't you don't see our kids on social media.

I think it was last year.

George McKenzie (40:28.224)

thought we're not high drama.

We're not high drama, but we're also very protective of our kids, our relationship, what we show online.

Yeah, marriage is hard enough as it is. You don't need to add other people into the bedroom. Exactly. And I'm sure that like with the couple you were talking about in the beginning, shit like that happens. Yeah. You just create, you start to inject undue stress. And especially if it's a newer relationship, like stress is hard.

That's just like outside opinions that we don't want.

Alicia McKenzie (40:54.22)

Mm-hmm.

Alicia McKenzie (40:57.654)

Well, they've been together since they were 14, which I think also that like 16 years, 16, 20 years of their life that you've been with one person and.

Maybe it was because of the renovation. Renovations are very hard on marriages. Like statistics say, those contribute to divorce.

We've made it through how many renovations? We've made it through three renovations.

At least three or four. And we've done lots of like house renos for like rental properties together. Call each other yet.

Yeah?

Alicia McKenzie (41:30.21)

Am I boring you?

Yeah. No, I'm cold and I'm cold.

Gerald. All right our dogs are losing it so I think we're gonna wrap this thing up. Any parting words?

I think it is.

Alicia McKenzie (41:46.198)

Now, have you said all your words?

I don't know. don't have any words. feel good parting words. What's the parting word? House of Dejaron Dejaron Dejaron De Leon

Darion? Darion! The House of Darion. Also, what does Pat your weave mean?

that's when you got to scratch your head. I know that one. Now, know, I love there's nothing like a little kid inside when I see somebody do it. I'm like, I know what you're doing.

I have introduced so much culture into your life.

George McKenzie (42:19.502)

Yeah, yeah. And I've given you, you know, five wonderful babies and, you know, the love for meat and spice. Frank's Red Hot, like put all the amazing things up.

culture and spice. Thank you for tuning in to Mary to the startup. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did, please take a moment to like, rate and subscribe to our podcast. Your support helps us reach more people and keeps the conversation going. If you have any questions or topics you'd like us to cover, drop me a message. I love hearing from you guys until next time.