YouSaid · the spoken record

John Stein

lines on the record: 86
first: 2026-02-05
most recent: 2026-02-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“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 guyroz.com or on substack. And of course, if you are working on a business and you'd like to be on this show, send us a one-minute message that tells us a little bit about your business and the questions or issues that you're currently facing because we would love to try and help you solve them. You can send us a voice memo at hibt at id.wondery.com or call us at 1-800-433-1298. Leave a message there and make sure to tell us how to reach you and we'll put all of this information in the podcast description as well. This episode was produced by Nora Gill with music composed by Romtina Rabloui. It was edited by John Isabella, and our audio engineer was Quasi Lee. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Casey Herman, Carrie Thompson, Catherine Cypher, Ramelle Wood, Sam.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Been up all night. I knew that I would have to deliver this amazing speech if I wanted Betterment to be successful. And this is my baby. This is the thing that I've been working on for the last three years. And I had a Blackberry at the time. And the BlackBerry timestamps when you leave these notes. And I woke up in the morning and I saw every 30 minutes all night long. I had been awake and writing down edits to my presentation. It was probably the most nerve-wracking day of my life.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And by the way, if you haven't heard John's original How I Built This episode, you've got to go back and check it out. We'll put a link to it in the show notes, so make sure to check it out. And here's one of my favorite moments from that interview.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, wow. Aren't we lucky to, first of all, to be here giving advice to folks who are just starting out? And I think that all the time, one thing that I have been shocked by as I've been advising more and more folks is just how hard it is to find that early product market fit. And once you've got it, lean in and give yourself some grace that it's going to take some time to find it. To me, that's the sort of unpredictable part of the journey. And know that you”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Before I let you go, a question for you which is now that you have all of this experience having built what you built and you're building now a new company and you've been involved in advising so many founders, if you go back and say, hey, you know, I have all this experience, John, I'm going to give you some advice. What would you have wanted to know?”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a great idea, right? They literally ever pulled so much fun. That's a great idea. Maggie McDonald, the brand is called floofball. Good luck. Thanks for calling in.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I mean, I've got a child who's a, believe it or not, as a fan of Everton. And that's the team he picked, the other team in Liverpool. And we actually went there a few years ago to see his matches. Yeah, I mean, when you love a team, like you love everything, you buy their jerseys, you buy their stuff. I mean, this is a really, really cool idea. Congrats.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a great question. I'd say that focus doesn't mean exclusivity. So we still market direct to consumer at betterment. That's a lot of the brand origin story. That's where we came from. And we built around that customer. But our marketing dollars, there's only so many dollars we can spend efficiently in that channel. And I think we max that out every year. The only way we can spend more and continue to grow faster is through B2B where we have more of a repeatable sales motion and we can find more ways that we can always hire more bodies and call on more businesses to sell more 401ks. So it's those kinds of scale channels that over time you have to look for. It doesn't mean giving up doesn't mean you only do one thing, but where are you putting your focus and your time is so valuable in this? And so I really want your leverage going towards those channels where you feel like you can scale them right now.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I love that. And as a consumer, I'm sure it's not an eco-friendly attitude, but I do love a well-branded box when I get something that's beautiful and it tells the story of the brand. I love that. I love a little postcard in there, you know, like I see on your website there's this photo of you and your husband celebrating a soccer one. That kind of stuff builds connection with your customer.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's a great idea. And it honestly just gave me an idea where maybe, like, on the packaging itself, even to the product that I send to Chewy, like maybe I can make it even more branded than it already is to encourage the customer that buys to kind of connect back with the flu fall community in a way so it's not just like, oh, I bought this on Chewy and forget about it, but still a way to kind of grow the brand, even though it's not direct to consumer.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I guess that's kind of what I'm wondering right now where to put my resources because there's definitely the opportunity to work with the brand to do kind of on-site promotion, things like that, kind of pay a little bit extra, I guess, to market on their own platform. But maybe now that we're talking about this and I'm thinking about it, maybe that would. Result in a greater return on my marketing spend, my marketing budget than my direct to consumer marketing just simply because of their large platform.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, the other question I have is about Chewy, because Chewy is such a, I mean, I think it's the biggest distributor of pet supplies. I think bigger than Amazon when it comes to pet supplies in the U.S. You're talking about, you know, I mean, there's an incredibly trusted brand. Are you able to work with them to push it out, to promote it on their site?”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, absolutely. And maybe the reason we saw better margins, I guess, with El Paso is because they are a lower league. So maybe they don't have as many kind of hoops to jump. So yeah, I definitely get what you're saying there for sure.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I kind of see it as a scale marketing channel. I guess one of my visions for the brand is a fan could walk into their favorite clubs team store and see flufall on the shelves. So I definitely see it as a channel to scale for sure.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so In theory, it's our direct to consumer. But as I mentioned in my question, our marketing spend is just getting so high. But actually, maybe what I will say in terms of our best margins, it. Right now, it actually might be the professional club partnerships. We just started production with our first club partnership a couple months ago.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so we mostly gift shops, pet shops, and sports shops. We actually sell a lot to soccer specialty stores, and they actually tend to be our highest Converting wholesale retail customer and also our highest repeat rate as well.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah Gosh, I do think it might be our standard wholesale. We've started to gain quite a bit of traction in the back half of this year, and we've been seeing a lot more reorders than kind of when we initially started. So that's definitely been a good indication, I guess. These are gifts.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The long term, over the long run, those B2B businesses are the way to get scale, and then they feed you more retail customers as you go. And so I think you're doing a lot of the right things already, getting into Jewie's great. And I'd ask you questions like which channel is giving you the”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maggie, the challenge that you're facing is a familiar one in consumer categories, this idea of D2C. You built an amazing product. And I really do think this is great. I can already think of people I want to buy this for. I also think that being picked up by Chewy is real validation. That's not just a channel for you. I mean, that says that you're meeting a high bar, you're operationally sophisticated. It's a real trust builder. It is familiar, this idea that you build this awesome thing and then you kind of cap out when people, you know, like the early word of mouth sort of like has a max. And I experienced this at Betterment where we were, you know, we just, we maybe hit a ceiling on retail and we started going B2B. We started the 401k product. We started the advisory solutions product because we realized”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, John Stein, really interesting idea. I love it. She's got liver pooch and bark zill for Brazil, but with the same colors and Chelsea, not Chelsea, but Chulsey, it's cool. Really cool idea.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, as I just mentioned, we're in four different revenue channels, and I'm struggling as a young founder looking to scale this business really where to put my focus for scaling. I initially thought that I really had to put most of my focus into our direct-to-consumer channel to really kind of build our brand and connect with our target persona. direct to consumer marketing is becoming very expensive For it's become a lot slower to scale than I had originally anticipated. So with that in mind, I'm wondering if it's worth considering shifting my focus if I'm really looking”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. So right now we're in four different channels. We're in direct to consumer. We're in wholesale. We're on Chewy. And we're starting to explore some professional club partnerships as well. So this year, we're expecting to end the year at 75K”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nice. Okay, cool. I mean, the pet category is crazy. It just grows year over year. I've got two dogs, two cats. We spent a lot of money on our pets, and I have children too. I probably spend more of my dogs. And so I totally get this. And tell me a little bit about where you're selling right now and what you expect to do in sales this year.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so my husband is from Argentina, and when Argentina won the World Cup back in 2022, we were, of course, very excited, very special time for our family. And we were looking for something for our dog to celebrate with us. And we couldn't find anything on the market that existed quite like what we had in mind. And so my entrepreneurial spirit really started to kick in. And I spent about six to seven months trying to figure out how to build a dog toy. And I just brought it to life myself.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I see. So it's like because it's a Pegasus, I think, for Liverpool, but it's a dog with a chew toilet. And I guess you can do that because legally it's like a parody. This is all protected. You're inspired by the designs, but you don't need their permission to do that.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Kind of so we put a unique dog twist on all of the designs. So one example that is one of our newest collections is inspired by Liverpool, but we actually make it called Liverpooch. So instead of their classic logo, we have a dog with wings.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so, okay, all right. So these are like if you like a specific team, you can get the logo and the brand on the dog. Whatever accessory that you buy?”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so we basically call them like soccer kits for dogs. So what they typically include is a plush soccer ball dog toy. And a matching bandana. So if you are a fan of a team that you love and you have your own jersey, well, we think a dog should have their own kit as well.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hey guy, hey, John. My name is Maggie McDonald. I'm calling from Atlanta and I'm the founder of Fluf Ball. We design soccer-themed dog toys and accessories inspired by famous teams that fans know and love, but with a unique dog twist on all of our designs.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's get our next caller. Welcome to the advice line. You're on with John Stein. Down for betterment, tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a line or two about your business, please.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, we're gonna take another quick break, but we'll be right back with another caller. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're 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 on Guy Raz, and today I'm taking calls with Betterment founder John Stein. And let's bring in our next caller. I'm excited.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You got to do it, Mike. You gotta do it. Raise those prices. Mike Smith, MTS Wordworking. Good luck, man. Thanks for calling in. Yeah, I mean, well, you know, the other thing, John, is I'm in the Bay Area, and if Mike's business was here in the Bay Area, I mean, the demand for somebody who's skilled out here is so high, the waitlists are so long.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A general rule of thumb that I'd love to see is 80% might be profit, 20% might be cost of goods. So if you think about what you'd have to do to your prices to get there, then you would have room to rent space and hire people and expand confidently.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I think you've got to raise your prices because building materials are getting more expensive, but also your time is expensive.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have looked at the maker spaces. Their biggest draw is all the tools that they have, but at this point, I have everything that they have. And they don't offer any storage capacity. So if I take more than a single day to get a project done, then it doesn't work. But I have not looked at subletting from an existing shop. So that's something I could pursue.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, is there another alternative? I mean, obviously, you could say money because you could do the building, you could do the build out yourself, but is there a sort of an alternative way? So, I mean, I rent office space. I've got a studio up in Sonoma County, and I rent office space there very cheaply. It's basically a corner of an existing office, and I rent a sublease, a corner of it. I am sure in New Hampshire you could find an existing shop where you might be able to rent space from them or maybe there's like a shared maker space, or maybe there's a short-term commercial lease that you can find. Have you looked into something like that?”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That makes complete sense. The smallest way I can grow would be just to put an addition on our house and just have it be part of that. But does it require some debt? But if it's done in a smart way, it wouldn't be a huge impact, I don't think.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wanting to keep it custom. And then can you rent space without a long term commitment? Can you just get a little, can you use the corner of somebody else's shop to expand? Can you get people part-time or without a long-term commitment to actually hire somebody and take on that burden? So how can you, are there ways for you to grow in the smallest way possible?”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I get worried when I hear you talking about wanting to take on debt to fund that growth. And I'll tell you the story of hardened furniture doesn't end happily, right? The company doesn't exist anymore. My family furniture company, partly because they took on debt. Partly it was due to foreign competition, but ultimately went under the couldn't service the debt payments. What I want for you is to find ways to expand thoughtfully. So I'm thinking like, what's the smallest expansion you could make that would meaningfully change your income? Because you want to grow this thing, that passion to grow it is clear. But how can you do that without increasing your risk profile too much? So guys right on with those couple of ideas of like raise prices. I mean, if you can raise prices, raise prices. That's the easiest change you can make. And if you can build more standardized things, I like that. The challenge with standardized things is they're often commoditized by others or copied by others. If they get good and if you get big. So I understand.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're increasing your margins and your overall sales, but you're doing less work and you're more in demand, or you do fewer custom projects, and then you hire somebody or part-time to do the sanding and pick up the materials, and they're more sort of standardized pieces with maybe some minor customization like a stain or something like that. And there you get you increase your revenue, but also you are building a more complex business. I think that those are your two best options, especially to do it safely.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I bet. I mean, the challenge is it's very hard to scale custom work, right? I mean, you can scale repeatable work. So as you mentioned, the Adirondack chairs or the free libraries or a specific table that people seem to be reordering. And then you could kind of You could kind of lock in the material and the dimensions, and then you make slight customizations like that. I think that to me, and John, you might have a different perspective, but I think you've got two options here, right? Which is you keep doing what you're doing and how you're doing it as a solo craftsman, but you dramatically raise prices and you create a longer waiting list. So you're essentially limiting the volume.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, and I was selling them on Etsy, and I actually was, I sold like $30,000 in a year of those. And I just kept growing. But the problem I had with those was shipping them because I sell completed ready to go products. So there are these huge boxes and the shipping companies kept smashing them. And then I have to make them again. It's just me. So I would get way behind. So I kind of transitioned into the custom furniture market. And that's been pretty good. I bet.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think I'd have any trouble because I don't have any inventory and I don't advertise. So everything I sell is already sold before I start making it. So it's already paid for. So if I had someone working for me along with helping me with these tasks, I could make products that I could advertise. For example, like Adirondack Chairs and Outdoor Libraries, I know they sell really well, but I don't have time to make them because I'm too busy with the custom stuff. So I would definitely have ability to grow if I had people working for me.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. So I think one of the things that I definitely need to be a part of is the design and working with the customers. That's something that's essential for me to be able to continue doing. And then maybe some of the more detail oriented things, but a lot of the larger processes that take a lot of time, like sanding or driving around to pick materials up or delivering or even assembly can be, I could train people to do that. I would say probably 20 to 30 percent of my time has to be me.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My family has a long history of making furniture in upstate New York. I had great, great grandparents who were making chairs who started out just like you, making chairs in their basement or spare bedroom back 150 years ago. And that became this company hardened furniture, which at a time was the largest family-owned furniture company in America. So it's a great category. It feels like you've already proven product market fit. You've got people who want to buy your furniture, but your throughput constrained. So my questions for you, and I know you want to scale out of that phase, my questions for you around, one, you know, which parts of your work truly require your hands, your touch, versus what just requires somebody competent?”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's gross. That's including your costs. Okay. Okay. John R, I'll bring you in here. So basically Mike is looking to try. But of course, there's a lot to consider there. So just thoughts, yeah, for Mike.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My question is right now, my biggest constraint is space. If I had more space, I'd be able to do things more efficiently and also hire some employees. But I need to try to figure out if right now is the best time for me to take on debt in the form of expanding our home or buying a bigger home or maybe even taking out a commercial lease. Or if I should just wait a little bit and focus on paying down our personal debt.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So now you run the business out of your house, and that's really started out to save money on childcare. Okay. And so what's your question for us?”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But when my second son was born, you know, when you have your first child, you get a big baby shower and all these gifts and all kind of stuff. So number two was born, and we're on our own. So we're at Baby's R Us shopping for furniture. And I see some of the stuff that's available. And I was just, you know, I could make something better than this for less. So I went out and bought tools, built my sun addresser. And from there, just kind of did stuff for friends and family and they kept encouraging me and saying, oh, you're really good at this. And I eventually started listening. And then in 2020, we found out that my third son was going to be born. And we were like, oh man, what are we going to do? I'm like, I'm not paying for childcare. So I'm just going to just quit my job and started doing this full time.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, so I've had, I like to say that I've had all the jobs right out of high school, I joined the Air Force. I was a mechanic. After that, I went to college and got a degree in biblical studies and youth ministry and music and was a youth pastor. I still am a youth pastor part-time.”
2026-02-05 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Jon Stein of Betterment · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT