Advice Line with Alexa Hirschfeld of Paperless Post

Hello and welcome to the advice line on how I built this lab, I'm Guy Ross.

This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges each week. I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show who will help me try to help you. And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show.

Our number is 1-800-433-1298, leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you like help with. All right, let's get to it. Joining me this week is Alexa Hirschfeld, she's a co-founder, along with her brother James of Paperless Post, it's an online invitation company, Alexa, it's great to have you back on the

show. It's great to be here. Thank you for having me. And I apologize for my voice, I'm battling a cold, but I'm feeling great.

So Alexa, you are first on high built as your brother Ronit in 2024 and you guys got this

idea and it was that you wanted to kind of recreate the beauty of a physical invitation, but to do it online and now almost 20 years later, like hundreds of millions of invitations have been sent. It is a great story and if you guys haven't heard it, we'll put a link to it in the show notes.

“And I remember we talked about this when you were on the show because one of the things”

that makes Paperless Post unique, many things, but one of the things is you have no ads on the websites or in the invitations. People pay to use your designs and your service, and it really feels like a high-ended

invitation, you know, like something you get in the mail.

We've used Paperless Post for so many important occasions in our lives. My wife's 50th birthday party last year, for example, and they're so beautifully designed. I'm sure you get this all the time where people are saying, "Well, AI is going to be coming for this for design and for creativity." And I know that you also have some AI technology that you're working with to help people

design cards. But I wonder how you think about sort of protecting the business, so it's, you know, it's thriving in 10 or 20 years. Of course, yeah, I am in a real believer.

“I think AI is pretty amazing and I think it can be an accelerator of human creativity.”

Rather than, you know, replacement for human creativity, I think that having more AI-generated content on the internet and in the world is also going to create more of a demand for human-created content and for really, it's just going to raise the bar for quality. For us specifically, the way that we are really focused on using AI at the moment is in taking work that users don't need to do out of the process of designing.

We're working on ways of collapsing steps and taking time out of the process of customizing, but enabling people still to put their fingerprint on the design. Now, you put out a blog post, at least you're about loneliness. People are not spending time with other people for obvious reasons, people are on screens and communicating through screens and you were a blog post about this and how you're trying

to do your part, I guess, as a business, in trying to get people to hang out more casually. Just to have like, you know, spontaneous parties or get together, there's a gatherings.

“Yeah, I think that for a lot of reasons, people haven't been prioritizing spending time with real”

friends and family in person because they have this idea that they are keeping in touch with friends and family by seeing images and stories and holograms of their friends online and different types of social media. And I remember after COVID seeing my friends at, you know, I was actually at wedding and thinking, wow, you know, you're so much funnier and more nuanced and sensitive and

interesting than I remember and then what I was getting from you in exclusively online form. I think real life makes people more dimensional and just better than they are when they're kind of like, just represented in two dimensions and so my advice is to really prioritize that type of interaction with the people in your life. Yeah, absolutely.

And so you guys are, I guess, trying to introduce a product that's trying to sort of create a more informal invitation, because when you get a paper list post, I think people think, oh, this is a formal party or, you know, but you guys introduce something called the flyer, which is, I guess, designed to be texted, right, not necessarily emailed. So flyer, yeah, flyer can be, all of our invitations can be texted, but you're absolutely

expensive than our classic product. There's a lot of free options. It's for people who want to express this aesthetic of their party, but not express that it's going to be wetting necessarily, it's just maybe it's just a pot like at your house for our friends giving.

And what we want to do is enable people to have more parties that don't need to be a big deal, because then you'll do it more. Yeah, Alexa, what do you say? Should we take a call? Let's do it.

All right, let's bring our first call or welcome to the advice line, or I'm with Alexa

Hirschfeld, co-founder of Hable's post. Please tell us your name where you're calling from and just a little bit about your business. Hey, guys, hi, Alexa, I'm just Walker in Washington State. And I'm the founder of Five.Post, a greeting card brand that specializes in cancer support, grief, and empathy driven cards.

Awesome. Thanks for calling in. Just tell us more about the cards.

“What do they, when you get one, what do they look like?”

So I came up with this idea in 2018 shortly after my late husband was diagnosed with cancer in our mid-20s. The support cards we were seen in the cancer space really felt like they resonated with a different demographic, and we were young, and we were fighting this in a way where you use like humor, and it was just different.

So the cards that I created specifically in the cancer space really lean into that, using humor as medicine, like if you can't laugh about it, it can be too heavy. That kind of energy, and it really resonated with the cancer community in general. Well, and it's grown beyond the scope of just cancer cards. We have full year-round seasonal everyday cards.

It's a much wider scope at this point. But receiving a card that really resonates, because it's written by someone who's really been there, and that's been the heart of all of our cards. I know that a lot of people have experiences where cancer comes into your life somehow, a friend or somebody in your family, or somebody you love, and it's really hard.

You don't know what to say. You don't have a react or a respond you don't, and you don't want to say the wrong thing.

“I've talked to people who are survivors, and they'll say the worst thing I heard was when”

people are like, "We're going to beat this together," you know, some people do want to hear that. And I'm looking at your cards and they're so great. They're so creative, chemo is tough, but I know someone tougher, cancer can suck it, cancer has no idea what it's coming for, this is so shitty I'm here for anything you need on

a card. What a great idea. I love this. It's just what you actually want to hear. When you're going through it, sometimes you don't want to see a sad flower that just

says, "Get better, you want to hear what you're thinking, you want to have that reflected to you," and to what you said, the main goal of five-dot post was to lower the barrier to entry to support someone because you get nervous to say the wrong thing, and I want to make it to where we provide the words for you so you can just go ahead and be the supporter.

You don't have to be scared to say the wrong thing, and to be honest, you're never going

to say the wrong thing, like it might resonate more or less, but they just want you

“to show up, and we just want to make showing up easier.”

Yeah. And so you expanded this to birthdays and graduations, and Father's Day, and Mother's Day, and do you write all the cards? I do. I am the designer for everything, and I come up with all the words.

We've recently expanded in the last few years to, I don't have to do everything now. I have a fulfillment center where in about 700 small retailers around the country is as well as national retailers, but I am still the designer for everything, and they're all my words. It has a business doing, give us a sense of what you guys are doing in sales.

Yeah. The last two years we've been about 350,000, both 2024 and 2025, and it's in a bit of a transition year where this year, I have entered a partnership with a pet brand called Sweep Paws, Marissa Gurdian. She's actually been on the advice line.

She was on the advice line. But she makes the two rings for dogs, right? Exactly. It's either. We're going into each other at a trade show last year, and decided to do pet sympathy

cards, taking what I do really well. She does really well, we created this collaboration.

It is grown exponentially in the first 12 months, and that partnership is we're now on

Chewy. We won three golden tickets at Walmart's Open Call, and in a few weeks we're going to be launched at every pet call nationwide. Wow. Wow.

Yeah, so we're in a huge growth spurt right now, so Justin Peos for that partnership. It's already exceeded last year's revenue just in January of this year, so. Amazing. It's interesting time to be ready in my business. Wow.

I love this idea. I mean, pet sympathy cards, and to do them well. So before we jump in a little bit further, what your, tell you what your question

My question is, when a collaboration like sweetpaws by five dot post, which is what we've been calling it with all these new retailers, when it grows beyond its original scope, how do you decide whether to keep that combined brand name or evolve it into a standalone identity, and are there benefits to maintaining a visible connection to the original brands versus creating something totally new?

All right. So you've got sweetpaws with your brand with five dot post, and in Alexa, you've done a bunch of collabs, you've done clubs in Martha Stewart, Richard Scary, the Richard

Scary books that are incredible cars and trucks and things that go, it's amazing collaboration.

You guys are doing a paper list post. What? I mean, collaborations are an awesome way to scale a brand and idea, but there's, you know, questions and things that you've got to figure out as they come. Yeah, congratulations, it's really an amazing story and congratulations on the traction

also that you're seeing recently.

“And I think my first question for you to understand how to better answer yours is, how much”

brand recognition do you believe that your original five dot post brand has? I think that's a great point.

When we first started, we didn't know it would take off.

So we were like, people will find these cards and then that will create the opportunity to send customers to both of our respective businesses. We thought that was like a positive, marketing tool and we're now seeing just as we're launching this stuff that it's, it's a little confusing for customers because they're like, who's, like, it's also quite wordy, sweetpaws by five dot post.

So we're just trying to decide maybe this is a bigger thing than either of our respective brands, even though we've both had success in our own worlds. Perhaps it makes sense just to create it as the separate identity. Because to your point, it does seem like it is growing at a more exponential rate than either of our, our respective businesses at this point.

“How have you, how have you set up the collaboration?”

It's, is it under five dot post or is it a separate, yeah, we have a separate LLC that is sweetpaws by five dot post and we're both 50% owners of that LLC. Got it, okay. And so I mean, I guess the question is, if this business is really sort of good, blow up and grow, I mean, I was looking at pet accessories.

I mean, this is a $30 billion global business is a huge, this accessories that doesn't

include food or, you know, other dog care products, it's just accessories. So you're talking about a huge market and I wonder whether it's, it would just be worth kind of creating a new brand around this and really focusing on that, this is a, is a separate business. I think that makes a lot of sense and, and again to your point, we, we also, we started

with cards and then we also have giftable lifestyle products as well, like accessories and things. There are going to be a lot of products under this new entity, so I do think maybe what you're saying to have it be its on stand alone would make a lot more sense to consumer. I guess the other question I have is how important the brand is for the sales of five dot

post and if it is important and you want to have a brand that makes sense for your product line and this collaboration, the other thing you could do is keep five dot post, create a brand that makes sense for this new collaboration and have them both live under an umbrella company which doesn't need to have a consumer facing brand, but you could imagine spinning off other brands underneath that that are owned by that umbrella company that really speak

to customers in different moments in our life with different, you know, different needs. That's a really cool idea. Yeah, I like that. In other words, you've got your human brand, which is five dot post and then you've got your animal brand, which is this new entity and, and by the way, how are you thinking

about protecting your designs and your, you know, and your IP for example, I mean, I don't know, Alexa, is it, I mean, in sort of the with what you do and your designs and even the

“things that you guys write, can you, can you protect those things?”

So, you can protect them, I don't, if we're talking about patents, it's not going to stop other people for, from trying to copy your product, especially from a design perspective. It's, it's really easy for a copycat to go right up to the edges of what's legally acceptable and offer a knockoff product.

as you are. I think that you probably shouldn't spend time worrying about patenting designs.

“You should focus on continuing to innovate and to offer this full, authentic experience,”

which you really have. And I think copycats, they might look like your product, but I think for the people that are really looking to buy something that is going to send the right message to the other person, they're actually, they're going to pay attention to the details and I think in many cases consumers aren't as easy to trick and pandering to them with copycat in authentic

messages, it's just, it's not as effective as copycats, I think. I really appreciate you saying that and I think that's great advice because I have copycats. It feels like lack of a mole, like I have a handful of trademarks, but there's really not a whole lot you can do other than spending hours of your very valuable time as a CEO, trying to reach out to have them removed and have seasoned to system.

And I think what you're saying is really powerful because you're right, it's not just

the sentiment, it's not just the image, it really is the whole experience and I think that's going to be a large part too with this new business is creating that experience for these pet parents and celebrating their identity as a pet owner, not just I got this that says like I heart my dog, it really resonates with who they are as a person. And also the brand that it's coming from and the story of the brand that it's coming from

is something that, you know, copycats aren't going to as authentically tell story around.

“I think that also is an argument for keeping five dot post what it is and having the story”

behind that brand and with the new collaboration having the right story behind that brand because that's something that's really hard for like an AI copycat to, you know, authentically communicate. Yeah, absolutely. I just walk her the brand is called five dot post congrats.

I would a great idea, I love, I love it, love what you're doing, keep us posted.

Good luck. Thanks so much. Thank you. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, another collar, another question and another round of advice.

I'm Guy Ross, take around your listening to the advice line on how I built this lab. Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Ross battling a cold, but I'm getting better. I guess today is Alexa Hirschfeld, co-founder of Paperless Post and Alexa, you ready for next call?

Absolutely. All right, let's bring our next color.

Welcome to the advice line, you're on with Alexa Hirschfeld, the co-founder of Paperless

Post. Tell us your name where you're calling from and a little bit about your business. Hi, my name is Carolyn Horoski. I live in Christadute, Colorado and the name of my company is the creative garland company. At the creative garland company, we create decorative garlands that are known for their

distinctive designs, sparking conversations, and elevating otherwise ordinary decor. Think ski chair of garlands with dogs and cats as riders, upside down, sleeping bat garlands, bicycle garlands, just to name of you. All right, Carolyn, welcome to the show, thanks for calling on the creative garland company. Okay, I'm embarrassed to admit this.

I was like, what's a garland again? And then I went on your website and I was like, oh, that's a garland. So can you just indulge me for a moment for the five people listening who don't know what a garland is? Can you describe what it is?

“Sure, well, I think most people, when they hear garland, they think of the nice floral,”

beautiful garlands on a line so that you would decorate an area, a lot of times for weddings, parties, things like that. And they're made in a paper, like cut paper. Yeah, I'm really the cardstock paper, as well as I was just getting into making some out of acrylic as well.

But most of them right now are cardstock. Cool, all right. And tell me about the business. How did you come up with this idea? I mean, it's cool.

I'm looking at all the things that you make and do you have a background in crafts and well, it all started during the pandemic and my daughter wanted one of those little cricket machines that you could cut or make sticks. She wanted to make stickers. And, you know, of course, being a little kid, she got bored with it within two weeks.

I took it over. I started getting into paper art and designed selling out our local farmer's market. And then, for one Christmas market, I came up with this charlotte garland idea and it sold out. Like ski charlotte.

Yeah. And so I thought it was on to something and I just took that idea and kept growing up.

So you are, so you've got, I'm looking at you say you've got all kinds of garlands, wedding garlands, bride and grooms.

“Do you sell, I'm assuming, only through your website?”

I sell through my website. I also do wholesale and then I've still been doing in person markets locally and then statewide as well. And tell me a little bit about how the business did in 2025. It did.

Well, we're growing. You know, I would say that I really started this business in the spring of 2024.

That's when I got a new machine, started working on it, and so last year was my first

full year in business, I would say, and it did about 43,000 in sales, which I was pretty happy with and I just keep growing. And you are making all of this yourself in Crestedbeard? Yes. So you get like all the paperstock sent to you and then you have like in your garage,

you've got, or you're just constantly cut, because it's, these are hand cut and then you're putting them on the twine yourself. I used to put them on the twine. I am now packing the twine with the objects and use our can do it. That's the thing.

It's fully adjustable too, so you can move the objects to fit your space. But you're still cutting every single one. Yes. Wow. That's a lot of work.

Okay. Before we dive in a little further. What's your question for it? Okay. So my business has reached a point where I can no longer handle production on my own.

How should I evaluate the decision between building an in-house production team and work space versus outsourcing manufacturing, all while protecting product quality, brand identity, and the creative flexibility that got me here. Okay. Alexa, thoughts for Carolyn.

My thoughts for you, first of all, are that I don't know that it's really this in-house

“versus outsourcing question that you need to answer.”

I think that especially for creative brands, it's more sequence and hybrid than that. So my advice is to think about what do you have to do and what things that you currently do are repeatable and you personally don't need to do. So for example, you know, concept and design, ideas, new skews, limited runs, that's probably one type of thing you do.

Then there's the production of the components, cutting, printing, raw materials, probably there's assembling and finishing, like, you know, string, sorting, and then there's fulfillment packaging, et cetera. And I think the question is, you know, if something defines your brand, it needs your taste if it changes often, that's the kind of thing you should keep close.

But if it is consistent and repeatable, systematize it, you know, I think you are already scaling your business and so you just need to decide what tasks to stare at his and

all and what can become a system.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree.

“I mean, you have a, you're bringing to this I'm assuming of the designs, right?”

You are designing everything. And that's the part I love. I love doing that. I love creating new ideas and they just come to me all the time. It's the time I don't have to do everything with it.

So you're thinking your question is, should I outsource this, like should I send the production elsewhere or not? And I guess if somebody else worked with you part-time and did the amount of your garage would that be a solution or not really? Yes, it would be, I need to get out of the garage.

I do have a space down the road that I'm looking at that hopefully, well, come to fruition and I can rent that out. The space in town in Crestabute. Well, a little in Crestabute about 30 miles down the road. So I think that you have an opportunity, right, to, as Alexa said, to find, I mean, maybe

you're small, you're doing $45,000, but clearly you're growing and there's demand. And so you may be in a position to hire somebody hourly, part-time, to do those kinds of things, right? Because when you're talking about outsourcing, you're talking about a whole different world that's like a long lead times and there's minimum orders that you, quantities

that you've got to order and they can't be as flexible. Like now, you can just turn on your dime if someone's like, hey, you know, I'm throwing a party for my wife's 50th and she loves musicals. Can you make garlands like you can do that right away? You can make something like that.

And so the minute you outsource it, it's trickier. And you can really only outsource once the variability of your product is low. In other words, once you're like what people are ordering, the demand is predictable. Like if if the slaves account are accounting for 60 or 70% of your business, then that might be a time to think about doing it.

I agree with that. I think also that the part-time suggestion is really smart.

can see is it working or is it not?

“And if it's working, then that is just the best way of vetting the quality of your work”

in relationship with somebody is actually working with them. So that's a nice thing, also, you know, less commitment. Another thing I might consider is are there certain parts of your process that those skills are required for manufacturing something else that maybe local, like the cutting, for example, are there other products that need to be cut in a similar way where you could

find someone who you aren't just training from the ground up, but actually they have skills in that part of the production process that you could leverage. I think that putting your creativity towards figuring out what parts of what you're currently doing in house, you can start to hire somebody else to do would be a good use of time.

“Okay. Yeah, you know, I'm looking at your designs. These are so cool. And by the way, I think”

you're your prices are pretty low. I mean, are you, is that standard? I mean, it's, you know, 25, 30 bucks for one of these handmade garlands? Well, I love that you say that because some of the feedback I get is the opposite. That some

people think it's a little too expensive, but I have always have to reiterate to them that

hey, it's, you know, it's hey, I made it's made in the USA kind of drive those points thrilled. So, so it sounds like right now you are, you know, you are in a great position to kind of grow incrementally and and find somebody part time. I mean, that could be helpful to get somebody to start doing it and to enable you to go to the trade shows and to do more business development and design. Yes, I love that idea and I love that idea of having

the part time person kind of vetting them as we go and seeing how they can work out if it ended up being a good fit. Awesome. Alexa, any last thoughts towards wisdom for Carolyn?

“I think that, you know, you should just think about how you can make your job into the”

part that you love and that you're really excellent at and use some of your creativity to figure out how you can solve for the other steps of the process that you know well, you can do well, but you don't have to be the one to do well. Okay. Yeah, awesome. Awesome. Congrats, Carolyn, on this idea. It's really, really cool stuff. The creative Garland company, thanks for calling in. Thank you so much. Congratulations. Thank you. Bye.

Stay with us because after the break, we'll talk to another founder working to take them their business to the next level that's after the break. I'm Guy Ros in listening to the advice line right here on how I built this lab. Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Ros and today I'm taking your calls with Alexa Hirschfeld co-founder of Paperless Post. All right, let's

bring on our next caller. Hello, welcome to the advice line. You're on with Alexa Hirschfeld co-founder of Paperless Post. Tell us your name where you're calling from and a little bit about your business. Hi, Alexa and Hi Guy. My name is Sa Yudi Tsuchitani. I'm calling from Los Angeles, California. Sumo yoga is a unique yoga concept that we define body positivity by empowering individuals to feel strong, grounded and fully accept their

own bodies. Cool. All right, welcome to the show, sir. It's a Sumo yoga. So tell me what it's your product that you're selling. I am selling Tatami Yoga Man. Tatami Yoga, like Tatami, those straw floors like that you find in traditional Japanese homes. Yes, yes, yes. Got it. Okay. And so tell me a little bit about this business. How did it start? I'm assuming you are yoga practitioner. Yes, I love yoga and I go to studio really justly. But there's

always one thing that bothers me, the smell of yoga man. When I went back to Japan to

be busy my mom, I realized she hasn't changed the Tatami Hello Washington. She first moved to the house. And there's still fresh clean and comforting after all those years. And I decided to create the Tatami Yoga Man with my experience with my goina in Japan. So to you are importing these yoga mats from Japan? Yes, I am making in Fukuoka Japan and importing to United States, yes. And I just spent two and a half weeks in Japan and stayed

the time. So I know how amazing this material is. It's like a grass, right? And it's

“woven and it's cured. Like, and tell me a little bit about your business. So far, where are”

you selling these online? Are you selling them anywhere else? I'm selling this at a little Tokyo farmer's market every Saturday. Got it. And how are they doing so far? What's been the response? So far, I sold my net gloss is 2,500 dollars at the moment. So it's a little star. But I mean also in the US Sumo community. And they're liking my product. And tell me a little bit about this idea of Sumo Yoga. Like, obviously, I know what a Sumo

wrestler is. And I'm looking your website. And there are the first, you see, it's a Sumo wrestler. What is that? What's the idea around Sumo and yoga? Yeah, so I grew up watching Sumo on TV is my great-grandmother. And then years later, I started doing a Sumo and yoga combine. And I created this Sumo Yoga concept, which is the squat base, which is called shiko. And squat base yoga. Yeah, Sumo squat basically. To the West, yeah. Nice. I

love Sumo squats. Very, very good for you. Yeah. So it sounds like you've got this concept of like a brand concept, but you're starting with these tatami mats. And so do you have this idea of other products that you want to create or like a yoga studio or a type of yoga that you want to promote or create? I would like to create a little bit more product base. And I am working on making a furo shiki yoga carrier, which is the pithub cloth, wrapping

with a Japanese shiro shiki way. And also, I'm looking for creating a tatami box so that you can use what you're doing in yoga sequences. And how much are the mats? How much are they cost? 1.99. 1.99 per mat. Okay. And before being a lexin, tell us your question for us.

Yes, my question is Sumo Yoga is unfamiliar to many people, making a education essential

to its growth. I want to explore the most effective tactic to educate a nationwide audience about Sumo Yoga while promoting body positivity and self-acceptance. And simultaneously drive e-commerce cells of tatami yoga. All right, so a lot that you want to do, you want to educate people about Sumo Yoga, you want to promote body positivity, and you want to sell your yoga mats. I want to bring

you in a lexin. Any thoughts or questions or ideas for a salary?

“Yeah, so I think that education is essential here and it's important that it's very crisp.”

When something is unfamiliar, people need a quick mental hook before they really, you know, ask more questions and lean in. And I didn't encourage you to define Sumo Yoga early and consistently. So, for example, it's a yoga practice inspired by traditional Sumo movement, whatever the right words are. It's not wrestling. It's designed to be accessible across body types and focus on strength, flexibility, balance, and confidence. Whatever the right words

are, you'll know better than me. But I think that that definition of front helps people understand who it's for and how it's different from other yoga practices or other wellness practices. And I think one of the questions people will definitely ask is, can I use this

“for all yoga? And if the answer is yes, I think it's really important to say that clearly”

because it reduces friction and it will expand the audience pretty meaningfully. And I think that the goal isn't to explain everything. It's to explain just enough so that people's curiosity is peaked and they want to understand more. Yeah, say, I agree. I mean, I think about the yoga market and we've done many at leisure wear brands on the show, Lou Lemon and Viori and many others. We're talking about, if

you think about yoga alone as a global market, it's a hundred and twenty billion dollar

global industry. It is a massive industry, right? And if you want to capture some of those consumers, I really think you want to lean into the map. Sumo yoga can be the brand and it can be inspired by Sumo wrestlers. But I think you want to be careful not to confuse

than a rubber mat or whatever other material mats are made out of. This doesn't smell.

“It's natural. It's from Japan. It's handmade. And I think that you want to kind of reverse”

what you're emphasizing here because when I go to your website, I see a sumo wrestler. And then I see mats that are two hundred dollars. And unless you know what tatami is, many people might think, well, a straw mat for two hundred bucks, I think you want to explain why these are so special. The the artisanship that goes into them, the the curing, the particular kind of reads that are used to make these mats. The trained artisans who make

them in a specific part of Japan and how you are making them specifically for yoga and why it's a better experience. I think you really want to kind of reverse what you're emphasizing now and focus on the mats and maybe back into the sumo stuff later on. Does that make sense? Yes, it does make sense. Yeah, definitely. I was also struggling how can deliver my message to the audiences. That was the main question as well, not just the selling

“that tatami yoga mats, so it was very clear now. I completely agree that I think that”

it's very compelling and relatable the story that you said about loving yoga, but not loving the smell of the of the mats and then describing your grandmothers tatami yoga mat. I think that is alone, it's just very compelling. It really is. It's a great story. I mean, a lot of yoga mats are made from natural materials like rubber, but, you know,

people don't always like that. And here you have your life experience growing up in a

home with tatami floors. It has natural grip. It's very durable. It's anti-microbular, anti-bacterial, whatever it is, and it lasts forever, and it's entirely natural. There's no synthetic materials. And I think that would appeal to a lot of people, especially the kinds of people, who are part of this 120, then a $30 billion global yoga industry. Yes, yes, I'd completely agree. So I think Alexa, we have, I think we've given, say you're

reading her marching orders here, really leaning on the mats, and on what and what the benefits of the mats are. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for your advice. Thank you. Thank you so much for calling in, Sarah. The brand is called Sumo Yoga. Good luck. Thanks for calling in. Thank you so much. Bye, guys. Bye, Alexa. Thank you. Thank you. Alexa, before I let you go, I want to ask you a question. I've been asking all the guests who

come onto the advice line, which is if you could go back to, you know, 2009 when you in James started, paperless posts, and it's a great story. We're going to, you know, everybody should check it out because you guys have had a lot of ups and downs in some crisis moments as well, especially around COVID. If you could go back to 2009 and give yourself advice on what you know now about how to run a business, what would have been helpful for you to

know? Yeah. I think that focus and always keeping the main thing, the main thing is a really

“important piece of advice. I think there are a lot of interesting ideas. It can be distractions.”

Those can be experiments. I'm not saying don't experiment. There are a lot of scary things that happen like competitors or funding that doesn't come through or press that you don't like. And I think instead of looking over your shoulder too much at those risks or those threats, think about why do you exist? What do you offer to your customers or to your users? The people who need you and who need your product and who you want to serve.

And that's the main thing. And you have to just keep that in mind the whole time. You know, we, the world has changed so much since we started. But I think we know very well who we serve, who just stay focused on what, you know, what the main thing is. I think as things evolve, it's a lot easier to roll with those changes and adapt. Yeah, for sure. Alexa, thank you so much for coming back on to the show. It's great having you. So great to see you again, guys. Thank

you so much. That's Papula's post co-founder, Alexa Hirschfeld. And by the way, if you haven't heard Alexis original high-built this episode, go back and check it out. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. And by the way, please make sure to check out my newsletter. You can sign up for it for free at gyros.com or on Substack. And of

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“This episode was produced by Remel Wood with Music Composed by Romteiner of Louis. It was edited by”

John Isabella. Our audio engineers were Debbie Dottree and Seenil Afrato. Our production staff also

includes Casey Hermann, Sam Palson, Alex Chung, Chris Messini, Kerry Thompson, Catherine Seifer,

“Niva Grant, Norgill, and Elaine Coates. I'm Gaira's and you've been listening to the”

vice-line right here on How I Built This Lab.