How Hiya Became a Category Leader Without Taking VC Money (with Adam Gillman)

side of e-commerce, digital marketing, and building consumer brands.

“I'm your host Nick Sharma, I've spent the last nine years building, scaling, and investing”

in brands, and through this show in my weekly newsletter at nip.co/email, I'm here to share everything I've learned. The wins, the losses, the experiments, the tactics, and the insights, also you can unlock your next $100,000 in revenue. Today's episode is a good one, but before we dive in, let me tell you about our

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“All right, welcome back to Limited Supply, I've got a very good friend of mine here, Adam”

Gilman, the founder of Haya, Haya, you've known, you've definitely seen the brand, you've probably known the brand, you may be a customer of the brand, but Adams on here, and we're going to talk through a bunch of really fun stuff starting with Haya, and then even getting into building a business. So Adam, thank you for being here, I'm excited to have you on.

Thanks for having me Nick, I'm excited to be here. So for the few people who may not have seen Haya, or maybe you know they're not a parent yet, or kind of in that world yet, can you just give us a quick introduction of Haya and also yourself, you know, maybe as if your mom was bragging about you at a friend of her's party.

Okay, so the quick overview of Haya is we're a better for you children's brand, focused on reinventoring the wellness category specifically for the under 18 market. We launched in 2020, so we're a little over six years old at this point, and we've grown to become the category leader in the United States to believe we've strapped. Oh, yeah, what my mom would say about me.

She'd probably say, "I'm shockingly handsome," that's, I have a knack for figuring out where the opportunity lies and things, and that I'm really good at building, and kind of my professional background over the past 20 years has been a series of upstart ventures and

a wide range of categories, ultimately leading to consumer, which is where I've been over

the past 10 years, and Haya has been by far my biggest success story to date, and by far my favorite thing to work on. What were some of the other ventures you had, and, you know, if Haya's definitely been at the biggest one, so what were some of the things that you learned from those ventures that you made sure you did right in Haya?

So I was initially in tech, and more specifically in mobile technologies, so when I was in my early 20s, it was when I found an Android was first coming out, and it's a very similar parallel to what we've seen over the past few years in terms of AI.

“I think this has settled down quite a bit, but a few years ago, everybody, and their”

mother was talking about what their A-strategy was going to be, and how badly they needed to figure out an AI strategy. That same dynamic was going on with mobile almost 20 years ago, and with Darren, my co-founder and Haya, as well as one other person, we had a mobile services consulting company where

we basically worked with content companies and brands to help them figure out their mobile strategy,

which for the most part was application development. After that, I was in the fitness industry, so I had a chain of fitness studios in the Los Angeles market called Cycle House, did very, very well, we were the leader in that market for years, unfortunately COVID ultimately took it out, after we had done kind of a private equity roll-up, and it wiped out the whole thing, which was pretty tough to see.

After that, I was in the cannabis industry, so I was in the cannabis industry in California in particular, started a company called Field, Field was focused on the ultra-pringion portion of the market, so the analogy would be, you know, $250 bottles of whiskey, competing against track-to-annvails and things of that sort, and that was probably the company that gave

leader, so raising money from VC and this is something I talk about often, if you follow

any of my socials, I'm not the biggest supporter of taking on VC today, and not that I

“don't think it has its place, I think it's very important in the market, but it needs”

to be done for the right reasons, and to me the right reasons are when that capital are really going to be an accelerant versus an excuse, right, and the reason I say an excuse is if you can very easily fall into the trap of being in the business of raising money rather than building a good business, and on top of that VC that their business model is predicated upon providing returns to investors, right, so when you take on that capital, you end up with a lot of pressure

to be on their timeline and making sure that you can produce those returns, and not all instances, but in most instances that takes the form of you have to grow at all costs regardless of what it means, whether or not it actually makes sense through the business, and you end up being in a

“position where even if you are able to achieve remarkable growth, you're oftentimes stealing”

it at uni economics that don't make sense, and if you can continue to feed money into the top of the funnel to support the negative cash flow cycle that you created, you're stuck in a really bad position, a lot of companies have been able to successfully execute against that strategy, but I don't know, however many have succeeded a hundred times more have failed, and that was very much my experience with field, on the leadership front, there was so much excitement in the

cannabis industry, particularly in those early days, where there were a lot of people that were having these phenomenal acquisitions primarily all stock transactions, but a fair amount of deals that were getting done in cash as well, and we were the bell of the ball for a period of time, and I was still obsessed with having this phenomenal outcome and achieving this acquisition that I kept my, or I didn't keep my eye on the ball, and nothing ended up coming to fruition,

and I was left with the business that had been neglected for a period of time, and that led to kind of a mute knee of sorts with my leadership team, and me having a step down as to see of the company that I co-founded, and it was kind of out of those ashes that Darren and I came back together and ended up watching Haya. Wow, that's pretty awesome, and how long ago was that?

We had that first meeting, I believe it was November 2018, so we started working on the products

right after that first meeting, and launched about 15 months later. Wow, and coming in from like two completely different industries, or I guess three, you did tech, you did cannabis, and you did fitness, and you said earlier, your mom would say one of the things you're good at is

“kind of like spotting opportunities, but the other piece that you have to do is also the execution,”

and how did you approach thinking about getting into a whole new space? You get to the top of one, or maybe not even the top, but you're rubbing shoulders with the right room, and then you're going

into a different industry, and basically thinking like, "Wow, I'm about to rebuild my reputation

in this space, go get that network, go get all of the connections." How did you approach that, or how do you think about that? Because I think a lot of people think about pivoting or switching their space, but they're, you know, prevented by that thought. It's that, dude, that's a phenomenal question. Unfortunately, I don't know if my answer is going to be that enlightening, because the answer is I don't, right? But it's not even a thought for you. You just go. It's not even a thought, like,

and we make a joke at Hio, where when we're talking about doing certain things, I'm very much of the mindset that I ask questions later, right? And there's people who like, when you're going skydiving, they research all the different skydiving companies, they understand all the intricacies, and, you know, plan B and plan C, then there's people who start asking those questions when they're on the plane, and then there's people who start asking

those questions after they jump. I'm that guy. And it's a blessing and a curse, because you certainly

were there. But I have a ton of confidence in myself, where when I select the right opportunity, I believe that I'm able to do whatever it takes to figure out what it's going to be like in order to be successful in that category, what I need to do in order to be successful in that category.

“And your 100% correct that execution is the most important element. I think my past failures”

taught me all the different areas in which you have to be able to execute if you want to build a best and class company. Yeah. And what are some of those things that you feel like are top a month or, you know, like top of that list? Yeah. So leadership is very important. And I think it's something that is often times undercounting. Supply chain extremely important, right? We live in this era where there's so many e-commerce that are successfully launching each figure brands that are

oftentimes drop-shicked products. And what they built are high paying, but effectively high paying jobs, right? And knowing how to build a supply chain and this is where the financial level of understanding comes in, how to build a cash flow sequence that allows your company to grow in the least painful way possible. Marketing is obviously particularly if you're talking about

“consumer and the most important. And it's something that's so fast moving that if that's not”

your course, you'll set, you better make damn sure that you're getting amazing people on your

team who know how to navigate that space. So those are kind of the most important areas that I

look at. And you mentioned a second ago that like your, you know, you'll jump out of the plane and then as your skydiving, you're thinking about what are the options? Are your co-founders or like the leadership teams that you tend to build around yourself? Are they the same way or are they kind of more like a counterbalance? And that's where that works. And and Darren and particular, he and I, so I didn't give the background, but Darren let co-founder of Haya,

“he and I think very different. Me and operate very differently. He's always prepared to his”

credit. He's always prepared to move very fast, but he makes sure that all the checkpoints are

there with more detail than I do. And when you look at the rest of our leadership team, they are a lot more careful than I am. And it ends up, ends up creating a really good balance in that I'm constantly pushing and I'm constantly getting challenged. And to me, that's a really important element of leadership is if you're not surrounding yourself with people that are comfortable challenging you and comfortable saying that they think something is a bad idea. And you're not

creating a culture where that's rewarded. That's stupid. You you want the day you don't want rootstank. And those were all things that I didn't fully understand when I was younger and I hadn't made a lot of mistakes. Now it's something I understand very well and it's kind of the defining characteristic of how I do things. Yeah, I love that. So now you know, highest started and you know back then there was not as many new brands coming out, you know,

per month or per year as there are today. But how did you get parents comfortable with giving

something to their kids that they've never heard of before? And you know, how did you earn their trust

early on? Transparency and education. So when we launched the first ad that we ever created that was an ad that we ran for years after we started was me walking down the vitamin aisle at Whole Foods and simply reading what was on the back of the competitive labels at the time and what ingredients they were using. So we very much focused on informing our potential customers on a lot of the things that they weren't paying attention to. And this was at a time right where

by far the most widely recommended supplement option for children by pediatricians was a

world has changed and there's a lot more understanding of what we're putting not only in our bodies,

but obviously in our kids' bodies as well. But at the time, nobody was really doing that. So we really wanted to focus on being their trusted expert advisor and just informing them of the ramifications

“of some of the decisions that they were making. And I think that that's a universal truth for”

every category, every brand that you're building, the the expert advisor to your potential customer, give them information for them to be armed with so that they can make really responsible purchasing decisions about what they're buying when buying things in that category. And if you're building a

good product because in today's day and age like building a good product is table stakes.

So if you're building a good product, the natural answer to their questions will be your products because you are the one who is advised. And as you guys were coming out with the products, what is something that you found customers to love about Haya that you didn't think was even going to matter that much that I didn't think was going to matter that much. I mean, so the packaging experience we knew was going to matter. We had no idea how much it was going to matter. And the funny

thing is is our initial vision for the form factor, the products was that we were going to put it in like a really elevated wasster pack. That was going to look really pretty. And you could punch out each day's worth of vitamins as you took them and it would be fun and the kid could do it, et cetera. And it ended up being a constraint by our manufacturer where they just didn't have

“that capability. And we had to come up with something new. And that's what led to the design of our”

signature glass bottle and the sticker packs. And that ended up being by far the most talked about element of our brand, more so than how clean and good our products was. It was about how beautiful the experience was. And it became something that and this is something I say often, right? Normally when you buy vitamins, it's inside of the cabinet. And we created a bottle that people put on their counter instead of inside of the cabinet. Because it was an experience of having

that conversation around health with your children, your child's got to personalize it and make it theirs. It became an art project to a certain extent. Yeah. And that ended up becoming so incredibly important. Yeah. And I feel like across your content, the ads, the website, the emails, the bottle is still very prominent in almost all the images. It's it's become our signature, right? Everybody, when when I run into somebody who does

and know about higher or thinks they don't know about higher, when I show them the brand, they're like, oh yeah, the yellow bottle, I've seen that. Yeah. Now, you know, high is one of the products that similar to like a jitter bug, the buyer is not necessarily the consumer of the product. So how do you think about copywriting or positioning or talking about high in a way where, you know,

“you're selling to one person, but trying to convey the benefits also through to the other person?”

Yeah. So you hit the nail on the head and this is something we say constantly. Our customers not our consumer, right? So if you're buying things for health relief, parents like the jitter bug, if you're buying things for a pet, those are categories that behave in similar ways. But it's his very delicate balance of understanding the messaging that speaks to a parent's heart, while creating an experience and experience means a lot of things, right? Before I was talking

about the packaging experience, but also the consumption experience, how it tastes, how the kid interacts with it, et cetera, that a parent is going to look at that and say, oh yeah, I want that

for my child. So we're always looking at things from the lens of how is a parent thinking

when making these purchasing decisions? What are the things that are on their mind when making decisions about their child? And we need to create things and do things and message things in a way where it peeps the parent's interests while at the same time, making them feel very confident that it's something that their kid is going to be excited about as well. Yeah, fully agreed. You know, I always think about, um, I call it the Fox News strategy,

like the phrasing and whatnot. Is that kind of something similar to what you think about too? Sometimes, yes, I mean, a dollar a day has become like a very signature thing that we're constantly pounding, right? Because when you look at it and you see something I cost $30, it seems very expensive when you frame it as a dollar a day, it becomes a lot more digestible and not that that's like

super unique to us, a lot of people frame things in that way. But we are always trying to look at how to

message what high it does in a way that's very simple and easy for parents to understand. And a lot of the key messaging points around that are, are oriented around picky eating, um, because a lot of kids are very picky, obviously, um concerns around sleep, not eating enough food. Those are kind of the key needs states that we're always figuring out different angles around that parents are always looking to solve for. Yeah, makes sense. Now, high as, um, super heavy subscription business

and, you know, acquisition for subscription businesses is way different, way way harder I would say too than acquisition for, you know, a brand that's trying to sell a product once. So how do you think about customer acquisition specifically making sure that, you know, the same customer you acquire, you know, if you have two different customers coming in on day one that, you know, they're staying

“till month three versus one just dropping off after a month. Yeah, so you have to be really”

obsessive about your cohort data, um, from day one, that's what we did, knowing that the payoff was ultimately going to come from retained customers. And I think it's, uh, a really important point around when you look at the way a lot of data see operates today, they're, they're so hyper focused

on those first order economics and I would say like 80 to 90 percent of effort goes into those

first order economics and then 10 to 20 percent of effort goes into everything afterwards with subscription businesses, it's actually kind of the reverse, right? So you are not in, in all likelihood at scale going to be able to acquire subscribers at a price where you're not losing early on. So you have to make sure that you're creating a product and a messaging cadence that enables people to feel

“comfortable and staying and you have to obsess over the back end data in parallel to make sure that”

the cohorts that you're acquiring are behaving the same or better than the cohorts that were in your baseline analysis to determine how much you were willing to pay to acquire that customer. It's all in the LTV and attack ratio, which isn't like a terribly novel concept, it just becomes so much more important in what you're subscription business. Yeah, yeah, I think recently to the,

you know, I'm sure you saw the news of I am getting a billion dollars of capital, you know,

basically strictly on the cohorts and the subscription cohorts. Yeah, the capital markets are starting to get very intelligent about these subscription businesses and they look at it like an annuity, right? Right. So they're able to look at cohorts data and price it accordingly and what I am, it is really cool. It's a very interesting way to take on financing and funding where they're basically selling the revenue, keeping their company and getting all this growth

capital in, in the interim and they wouldn't have been able to do that without really strong tow or data. Yeah, you can spend an hour working through your ad budget with AI and still have to make every change yourself. Triple Wells Moby uses your business data to recommend exactly

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You can plan before any money moves. Book a demo at triplewail.com/limitedsupply. That's TRI PLEWHALE.com/limitedsupply. Now, when you were expanding your product line, did you feel like you had to hit a certain threshold rather revenue or, you know, subscribers before you launched a new product and or was it something you said, you know, we've now got somewhat of a platform. Let's try to beef that platform enough. Beef it out. Great question. This is something I

your business economics work with a single product, you're not going to make it work with a second product. It should amplify a strong business that you've already built rather than fix something

that's wrong with a core business. And granted, I want to give the caveat that there are always

exceptions to the rules here. There are companies who have built really interesting strategies where they hook people in knowing that that's going to be a loss and the opportunities and all the other things that they cross out to them. But it's very, very rare to be able to do that effectively at that scale. So we did not do anything until we had a really, really strong business based upon just selling the multi-vitamin. And it took us over two years to launch our first

additional studio. Afterwards, the cadence started to poke up much more quickly. And it was almost

at the point where we felt like we could never miss where every additional product we launched

seemed like it was going to become another runaway product that was going to make millions of dollars in a revenue. We certainly have made mistakes along the way. But because we built such a strong business and such a strong community of people that really trusted us, that gave us the credibility to support playing in different areas that they didn't necessarily foresee us playing in when they first thought the multi-vitamin. Yeah, I love that. Now, I feel like

supplements have also just taken a crazy evolution since, you know, you started back in 2018. There's now supplement brands that do lollipops and gummy rings and, you know, all different

types of formats and formulas. And then there's always new ingredients now coming to market too.

What do you think is going to win in supplements five years from now that wouldn't have even existed

“five years ago. So, I think there's three main things that come to mind for me. The first is around”

channels. So, I think more and more were pacing towards a world where retail and D to C are really one business and not to. I feel like five years ago, you really picked Elaine and now the subscription is kind of like the mode that you build and retail becomes your amplification and sampling program. And the brands that look at that all is one unified funnel can really win versus the ones that are trying to treat them as entirely distinct channels and businesses

aren't going to be able to figure, aren't going to be able to look at the right data points to figure out how to build a really scalable disk. So, that's the first. The second is kind of

“obvious and this is more specific to D to C, but it's creative. You need to be able to produce creative”

shockingly high volume. You know better than me, Nick, that the platforms took targeting and bidding away and the only thing that's left is your product, your offer, your angle, what your attention looks like and how fast you're able to test. And if you can produce 40 angles a week versus four, that's going to be the difference between success or a really long grind. Obviously, like everything with AI creative is making this even crazier because at the end of the day, we're all

competing with one another when all these brands are utilizing AI tools to amplify their creative output. It feels like right now in late 2026, it feels like a race to infinity in terms of what the volume looks like. It's going to be interesting to see as endrovitant continues to release new updates. How this continues to evolve. Obviously, quality is going to continue to become a

“lot more important. And that's why you're seeing these really interesting brands that”

are doing controversial things like resilience, right, as an example, but like they're creating these like long form like cartoons with songs that people are watching. And they're really ridiculous when you watch it. But it's, it's, it's this kind of like, it's so entertaining. Yeah, but it's this merge of content and advertising, right? Like the platforms want very users to not really be able to tell the difference between organic content and and paid

both become that way, too. Now, so that what you're served is also now not chosen by the user. Yes, exactly exactly. The third thing, and this is what I was speaking to earlier, but again, I think this has become table stakes. And we just happen to notice this earlier than other people,

“trust is the products. You need to have an incredible product. If you're making it consumable,”

it needs to have a clean label. It needs to have readable ingredients. You can't make claims that you can't back. The categories are really flooded right now with brands that are waiting on ads in the losing on the second order. And I'm sure you've seen this as well. There's a lot of brands such as are not surviving because they're really good on the dimension side of things, but they haven't created a product that can last. And if you don't create that product that

can last, you're not going to be able to sustain in the future. And that's specific to supplements, but it relates to a lot of different categories. Yeah, I feel like, you know, one thing I used to think about is like, if Doritos or Recespina Buttercups were to launch today, would they even have

“an opportunity in the market or would they just get annihilated before consumers would get to them”

because of their ingredients panel? I would think they'd likely get annihilated. There's always

going to be an opportunity for like, and this isn't the right term to apply to like sugary candy, but I'm going to label it as like advice, right? Where people are going to do things that are indulgent that they know aren't necessarily good for them. But those are a few and far between. And people are paying so much more attention to the quality of everything that they buy. And when that relates to a consumable, it's the quality of the ingredients. Yeah.

Okay, I want to build a business with you. So you've posted a lot about on Twitter, which by the way, you're a great follow on Twitter, based on your Twitter for a long time before we started talking.

But you know, if you've got less than 50 grams, you can get past a million dollars in about 18

months. So I want to build one with you. You know, let's start with the product. So what's the product that we're going to start with? 50 grand, million dollars, 18 months. And also, I guess, would you say this is, would this be a subscription business, would this be a kids product, anything product? Do you have like a kind of a template you like to go after or certain boxes you like to check? So it would be a subscription product. I'm a big believer in subscription.

The product that I would want to build is a daily hydration and wellness product that's targeted towards adults over the age of 50. Nice. And a reason. Very niche. Yeah, very niche. It's an underserved buyer oftentimes purchased by an adult child. It's used daily. It's going to run out. It ships very easily. It ships flat. The formula can easily clear 80% gross margins. Lots of retail opportunities in terms of opening doors. And there's a lot of opportunities for

creator content as well. So basically, the things that you're looking for consumption on a predictable schedule here. So use daily runs out you mentioned. Easy to ship. You mentioned ships flat. So you're not thinking about, you know, you're probably thinking about the dimensions of the higher boxes with the bottles in them and how much of a pain that could be or how much

“simpler it could be if it was flat. 80% margin. Is that kind of the number you look for?”

Yes. Always. And then you mentioned big retail opportunity. So what I think that means is that

this is a consumer that's in retail and is probably underserved for this product. Not that just it could be in retail. Correct. That's exactly what I'm thinking. And then creator content. So kind of feeding what you said before, which is that creative has to be one of the biggest focuses. This will basically act as like a thing you can plug in there. Yeah. And the other thing I would say about this market, they respond very well to products that are targeted towards them. And there's been

a lot of innovation. Like I spoke about I am in or later like I think I am in an awesome product and an awesome company. Like they built something really, really cool. They're commanding extraordinarily high price point at a time when like the macro environment would say like this doesn't even make sense. And it's not optimized for people who are aging. And there's a lot

the product that perfectly suits their needs. And they might already be IMA subscribers or

“AG1 subscribers or if they're men, Mars men subscribers. You have the opportunity to say that”

you made a formula that's optimized for them and the place that they are at in the life. Right. Yeah. I love that. How do you think about building offers? I know for how you run half off

the first order. Did is that something that you tested first and it worked or did you arrive

at that after testing multiple things? And then I'm curious how you would build an offer for the hydration brand. So we launched with that offer and still run it today. We now have more offers that we run that I don't think we would have had the confidence in running if we didn't have so much co-ordata to substantiate, being able to do different things. But yeah, that's been there since day one and it's still kind of our most tried-and-true offer that we availed to

new customers. I'm sorry. The first part of your question was yeah. So the other part was basically like now thinking about the offer for the adult hydration brand. How do you think about putting that together? Yeah. So I act the same time that subscription is something that a lot more businesses as well as the capital markets are a lot more in tune with them. They look favorably upon businesses that have these large

monthly recurring revenue components. Customers are a lot more aware of it than they used to be, right? Because everybody is trying to turn something into a subscription. So when we launched TIA and still to this day, the majority of products that you buy on our site are subscription owners. You don't have the option to buy them on a one-off basis. If you want

“to do that, you need to buy the retail versions or the Amazon versions or things of that sort.”

And we make sure that the most competitive pricing is always available to our subscribers.

I would focus on very similar strategy to what I made those that a lot of people are doing, which is there is a one-time purchase option that is extremely expensive with substantial cost savings for these subscriptions. So it used to be five years ago that the overall and majority of companies were focused on one-time purchases and it would offer a very modest discount for subscribing, like generally speaking, ten percent. I believe that offering 30 to 40

percent savings for subscription is the best option. Also, and this goes in the vein of like the packaging and steering, but offering really compelling, well-branded, beautiful gifts with purchase and exchange for subscribing that directly relate to the needs aid and the product that you're selling. Yeah, a little bit. This isn't terribly novel, honestly, because I feel like a lot of brands are doing this today, but I think it works very well. So I don't have a fresh take necessarily.

Yeah, yeah, totally fair. And then how do you think about your first, you know, 100 subscribers is this something where you say, all right, let's start running the ads or is there usually a different playbook you like to get the first, you know, cohort and fun? It's definitely running the ads, right, because if you're if you're running a different playbook, the name of the game today is

“you have to figure out in that zero to one phase of D to C, what is the right mix”

messaging that's going to resonate with customers that's going to make them want to buy your product? And that means to start right away. I would even argue like before you even have a product to sell, starting to toy around what that makes a lot of sense. So it definitely starts with the advertising

strategies. Amazing. Now, you know, going back to you as an operator, you know how to start a business,

you know how to run it, you know how to sell it. I'm curious, your next business, what are you, what are you going to not do, or what are the parts that you enjoyed versus didn't enjoy? I mean, I focused a lot on short lead times, especially in the early days, even if you're overpaying, having that flexibility with your inventory is so incredibly important. And over the past five years, we've dealt with two international shipping disasters, one of which

And certainty is always the enemy. You want to have predictability. So near short supply chains

“is what I'm really focused on and would care a lot about. I'd also want to be focused on”

categories that are highly consumable. I want things that people are going to use often and happily because the biggest problem you run into is people might like your product. They just wait too often and end up with too much of it. And that becomes a reason that they cancel. And even if they have every intention of coming back, they don't. So I want products that people are going to use very regularly. And we have a strong use case to message them the importance of using

it regularly. The third is high rose margins. Gross margin is everything. It's what supports your ability to grow and scale your brand without having to get into a cash

franchise. Amazing. And now for, you know, there's so many people who listen to this podcast

that are running their own brand, you talk to so many founders that are that are scaling their businesses. What's one thing that, you know, a founder listening to this can do next week and maybe one thing they should stop wasting money on? Oh, that's a great question. One thing they should start doing next week is becoming obsessed with their cash flow cycle. If you are not running your business on a 13 week rolling cash flow forecast at minimum, you're not running a business where

you really have your hands on the wheel and can understand what you can't or can't do. So

“that's number one, you have to really understand, not just what the profitability of your business”

looks like, but what the cash flow of your business looks like. And the overwhelming majority of people I talk to, even people who have eight figure businesses, I would say the majority of them

to do not understand their cash flow cycle, which is shocking to me. And it's the most important

thing, particularly if your bootstrapped, but even if you're not. What's one thing they should stop doing tomorrow? It's funny for me to say this just because this was such a critical strategy for us when we were growing high, it's just the world has changed so much. Don't waste your time on these very expensive flat fee creator deals. There is still a lot of opportunity there, and a lot of brands that are building businesses using this model. It's just the loss rate is so high

that the overwhelming likelihood is that you're going to get hosts. So you really should be focused on the new wave of building own communities, building programs for people are creating content for you, and they have the ability to earn a lot, but only if they create content that works well in ads, or they create content that moves a lot of units, and build your business around that rather than wasting your time trying to find creators to do pay for posts.

Yeah. Again, it works for a lot of people. It's not entirely dead. This is strictly based on the fact that the loss rate has become extremely high. Right. Amazing. Adam, thank you so much for coming on.

“Where can people find you if they want to deflate your Twitter, but where else can people find you?”

Yeah, my Twitter or Instagram handle is Adam Gilman. G-I-L-L-M-A-N. Yes, sir. Amazing. Thank you, Adam. Thanks, Nick. This was great. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next time to cut through the noise on CPG, retail, and e-commerce. If you enjoyed this episode, why not share it with a friend, and be sure to subscribe wherever you listen, so you don't miss the next one.