YouSaid · the spoken record

Neil Blumenthal

lines on the record: 69
first: 2026-01-15
most recent: 2026-01-15
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

“Messini, Catherine Cypher, Carrie Thompson, and Ramell Wood. I'm Guy Ross, and you've been listening to the advice line on how I built this lab.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hey, 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 voicemo 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 Sam Paulson with music composed by Ramtin Arablui. He was edited by John Isabella and our audio engineer was Cina Lafredo. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Elaine Coates, Neva Grant, Casey Herman, JC Howard, and Chris.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“would I get an order, and then 10 minutes later, we get another order, and then another order, and then another order, and we kind of go from this feeling of elatement, oh crap, we don't have this much inventory.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At Sneehl Blumenthal, co founder and co-CEO of Warby Parker. And by the way, if you haven't heard the Warby Parker episode, go back and check it out. Incredible story. So good. Here's one of my favorite moments from that episode.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that's why we call you guys to help the people now. Thank you so much for coming back on the show, Neil. It's great having you back, and hopefully we'll have you back again.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think it was continue to build relationships with folks that were a couple steps ahead of you because that's where we tended to get the most sort of actionable advice from founders who were a few years in front of us and could share lessons of failures speaking with the founders of Bonobos, for example, who were also building a brand and raising venture capital and they had given us tons of advice, which was super helpful. Speaking to friends that had worked in venture because it was also unusual that not a pure tech company was raising capital. So we had to learn the language of venture capital to raise money for a tech-enabled brand. None of us had run an e-commerce business before. So speaking to folks that had run e-commerce businesses. So I wish that this podcast was available back then.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wow, super cool. Neil, before I let you go, I want to ask you a question I've been asking everyone who joins me on the show, which is knowing what you know now, if you could go back and say, hey, here's what I know, and here's some advice I'm going to give you, Neil, 15 years ago. Is there something that would have been helpful?”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The other thing is that you want to ask that person some basic questions. Like, what does cowboy country club sell? And if they say, well, you sell hats and shirts, that's not the right fit. You want somebody who understands that you're selling an identity. You're belonging into this club. It's sort of a tongue-in-cheek. Wink and an odd thing, but it's something deeper, right? You're building a brand. You're not just”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think that's a great idea. And, you know, especially if you can define specific projects, that works really well for contract work and getting somebody to come on for a period of time. They have some pattern recognition because they've seen this before. And not everything needs to be permanent. Not every relationship needs to extend for a decade. What I often tell our team at Warby is this train is going for a very long journey and people get on at different points in the journey and they get off at different points in the journey. And that's completely okay. And we can stay close with those folks and we hope that their time at Warby, they're thriving, they're learning, they're growing. But people leave and the needs of the businesses change over time.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Neil, just a quick question. I mean, is there a world where at this level maybe he even thinks about like a fractional head of ops? I mean, he's still small. I mean, one and a half to two million is great, but it may make sense to tap into a freelancer at this point. Or what do you think?”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Packing a hat or a shirt into a box and shipping that to a customer, that might not be something that you want to do in-house because there's lots of experts that can do that and they may have economies of scale and could even do it cheaper than you could do it yourself.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Having people in one location definitely is key to culture. And you saw that the companies that seem to function best during the pandemic, for example, had earned all the goodwill from a strong culture and strong relationships before the pandemic. So that way when people did go to work remote, they were able to sort of leverage a lot of that culture that had already been built. One thing that I would just think about long and hard is what are the things that you want to be expert in and that you should do yourselves versus what are things that might be a commodity and can be outsourced. And your brand, the design of your products, right, that is core to you guys and that's unique.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. You have to be coming up with prices. You have to literally be talking with the warehouse and figuring out how to connect your systems with the warehouse. So you really need entrepreneurial folks. Your first 10 hires have to be really entrepreneurial and problem solvers. And those folks tend to be at smaller organizations.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where we've had trouble hiring at times is when we try and hire somebody that comes from a much larger company because they might thrive in an existing environment where systems are fully built out and processes are fully established, whereas you're in a growth stage now and you literally have to write the HR manual. You have to figure out the flow.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like a product and operations person, right? Like that's really not necessarily a designer, but somebody who has, let's say five years of experience in apparel, like somebody who's now sort of mid-level, working at a business that's like, let's say two to three rungs above yours, because you just want somebody with some experience in apparel who can handle operations and product and who can develop relations with factories and figure out the margins and the supply chain stuff and forecasting. So it sounds like that's what is keeping you sort of occupied right now.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, you are the thing you want to sound like, well, you want to do is you want to build a culture, the community, and the demand. And Neil, this is probably, I mean, I'm curious about your, you started your business with partners and everybody had different skill sets. It seems like maybe, in your case, Tanner, you want to...”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have three different versions of merchandising, but at the end of the day, right, merchants are setting the product strategy, right? They're determining the collection. And I found that the better that I understood individual roles and the more comfortable that I came to like an organizational structure, then that made it easier to let go of certain roles and responsibilities because I grew more comfortable with the work that needed to be done. So that made it easier to write a position description, to evaluate somebody and hire somebody to do that work.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Congratulations on all the success to date and to your question about how do you delegate what I've always found that delegation is hard, right, especially when you're building a business yourself and you really want things to be done right and up to a very high standard and sometimes you're doing things that you've never learned how to do. So then it's hard to hire somebody to do something that you don't know how to do. How do you even evaluate somebody for that? And what I would do early on is meet with a lot of other entrepreneurs or just people in sort of similar industries to better understand what the different departments a company has and what the different roles folks had. So a role like a merchant and that could mean different things at different companies. So if you speak to three different companies, you might”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wow. And so, okay, so that's amazing. You created this brand out of nothing and you've already, you're doing one and a half to two million sales a year. Before we dive in further, what's your question for us?”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, Cowboy Country Club, a made up golf club, and you sell hats and apparel, and tell me the story about that, like what... How did this happen”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was posted. Yeah, thanks. Alright, 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. I'm Guy Raz, and today I'm taking your calls with Neil Blumenthal, co-founder of Warby Parker. And let's bring in our next caller. Hello.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Awesome. Awesome. Brian DeMint, the brand is called Salt and Light Wellness. Good luck, man. Thanks so much for calling in.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And being within close proximity allows you to provide greater support to the different locations and to physically be there and visit more frequently. Thank you for that. And we have seen that in our existing locations, there is a bit of a network effect amongst the three, which is great. And yeah, I mean, we're right next door to Orange County in San Diego County. So those probably are, yeah, I appreciate the advice that's probably a good market to move into.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe building out five to ten locations within an hour to drive from HQ before you go to Nashville or Dallas or somewhere else. Sort of test the model and be able to really have oversight because down the road, if this does catch fire, you want to look at what other franchise brands have done, like five guys. You're going to want to build like an academy where you train people, where they learn about the science of light, and then obviously the business model and how to acquire members. And the protocols and the history and the values and all those things, you're going to have to develop a very specific disciplined program. That's going to come way down the road. But even before you get there, you really want to think about keeping it really tight and close before you think about going out of state or even into Northern California.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that if you down the road, if you do work with some of these franchisees, you might want to look at what Orange Theory or Stretch Lab did, which is they built regional density first. You know, you want to start by”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. Last week I had about an hour phone call or video call with a gentleman from Nashville, Arizona, Northern California. So yeah, I mean, obviously Northern California is in California. But yes, it's all around.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You ask them, what does salt and light mean to you? What does that phrase mean to you? Tell me about your own light therapy solved challenges that you had. You really want to interrogate their own personal wellness journey to see why they're interested and to gauge their passion. The other thing I'm just curious, are you getting inbound from people outside of California?”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Usually, it's not one particular question, although I'll share an example. Sometimes I'll ask Do you remember when you first heard about the brand? And we're now 15 years in, so that question is perhaps not as relevant as it was five or ten years ago, but it starts a conversation and I can start to suss out, are they a customer? Do they believe in our mission? Are they a glasses wearer and can really empathize with customers? So what it does is it immediately invites a conversation where the individual can start to share what they know and what they love about the brand. And frankly, if they don't know a lot, then how could they possibly love the brand or the mission, right? They didn't do their homework, which”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You want to be really, really careful once you, let's say, land on somebody you're interested even before you hit the go button, you want to make sure that they do a shadowing period with you, that they spend time working the front desk, that they sit in on your meetings. Even then, you want to figure out some kind of trial basis because it's a huge responsibility.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Once somebody fills it out, you can go to the next step and actually have a conversation with them. And really what you're looking for is, right, are these people, do they believe in what you're doing? Not only Are they coachable and are they somebody you want to work with? But do they really believe in this, right? Because people who are looking for a passive income stream, that's not your person here. You're still too early You've got three locations. Those first five franchises we've learned from all our interviews that we've done with franchise businesses on this show, they're critical. Those first five are going to define so much of the culture. They can elevate the brand. They can dilute it. They have such a huge impact.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, Brian, I couldn't agree more with Niels' advice. We have an episode on Jimbury. And Jimbury went into the franchising direction. And the founder, she reached out to somebody who had expertise in franchising, which really helped the business. But that's down the road. I mean, in the short term, as Neil said, you want to build some barriers in just to make your workflow more efficient, right? So if there's inbound, you basically create a questionnaire with like 15 questions, ask about their business experience. They're available capital, any demographic information on where they are, why they're motivated. And that alone, just that barrier to entry is going to eliminate like 60 to 70 percent of the income. Because people who are just not going to bother filling it out.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Who you might want to work with. And that might be an application process. You know, it's interesting. Now, I would say that if you do license or franchise, your business model changes quite a bit. You now have a new customer. And those customers are the franchisees. So it's just something to think about as you decide on your strategy. How do you want to be spending your time in? Are you going to build a product for franchisees?”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We think that the key to success is people and culture. And if you look at enduring brands, right, it all comes down to people in culture. And what is culture? It's shared values, shared rituals, right? And a shared mission. So I think you're on the right track here in saying like, hey, selecting is really important. So I think the first thing is putting out into the world what the company stands for, what your mission and your values are, then people are already self-selecting, right? And reaching out to you, then do you actually want to put some barriers in place so that way you can narrow without investing too much time?”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. Well, congratulations. I love the rebrand, and it immediately evokes health and wellness for me. So exactly what the mission of the company is. I'm not an expert in franchising per se, right? Warby Parker owns and operates all of our own stores, of which we have over 300. We certainly go through quite a vetting process to hire our store leaders. And I actually still interview every single one. Wow.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Awesome, great question and a very solvable one. Neil, I want to bring you in. First of all, questions or thoughts for Brian?”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we opened as a red light and UV studio, but nobody knew what red light was in 2008. Our name used to be Perfect Tan. We knew the market understood tanning. That wasn't what I believed in. We would always make sure to coach people on appropriate times. We didn't run it like a fake and bake type of establishment. And I think that bore out results in the long run, but we actually rebranded to Salt and Light about three years ago. Rebranding and refocusing our marketing as the Salt and Light brand gave us a pop of about 30% over our previous operations.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, it's cool because you think of like Stretch Lab, and we can talk more about that later. But yeah, I mean, the fact that people wear whoops, there's even Hoka shoes were designed for people who wanted to train like professionals. Tell me a little bit about the business. How is the business doing? You've got three locations. I'm assuming that they're sustainable, that you're turning a profit”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I felt amazing. It does really reduces inflammation, lowers blood sugar. It does all those things. Okay, Brian, tell me, how did you start the business and give us sort of the basic story here”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Infrared light. He get a salt room, you got the cold plunge. Nice. I just did a cold plunge in the San Francisco Bay. It was so freaking cold. I can't believe I was in that water. But it was. All right.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, I love the light thing. I do my morning light dog walk every morning, you know, make sure to get that dopamine levels up and going. And it is actually really amazing and effective. Okay, so this is the light therapy. These are not like sun tanning salons. You go in and what you sit in front of red lights and tell me a little bit more about what you do. Like what's the experience?”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alright, let's bring in our next caller. Welcome to the advice line you're on with Neil Blumenthal, co-founder of Warby Parker. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a line about your business.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To meet you. Thank you. All right, we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with another caller and another round of advice. Stay with us. I'm Guy Ros, 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. I'm Guy Ross, and my guest today is Neil Blumenthal, co-founder of Warby Parker, and we are taking your calls. And Neil, are you ready for our next call?”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Awesome. Kimber Crandell, the brand is called Pro Pop. Good luck. Thanks so much for calling in. Thanks for coming to see me in San Francisco”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You don't really need to convince all of America right away, right? You really just need to get, and I think you're doing it, you need to convince one circle of parents who tell every other parent. Think of so many products we've done. RXBAR is a great example. They started with CrossFitters, and it just blew up from there. I think you really want to double down on the people who are attracted to what your value proposition is and let them be your force multipliers.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we created all these solar eclipse Viewers, and we made them blue warby blue, and we gave out thousands of them. If I think about where do I run the risk of cavities, for example, it's when I eat candy. And when do you eat candy the most? Perhaps it's around Halloween. So, you know, is there an opportunity to break through and create a moment when parents are worried, oh, my kids are going to be bouncing off the wall because they're eating so much candy and is this bad? For their teeth, that might be a marketing moment. There might be a there, but I think the bottom line is just, you know, when can you sort of insert yourself into the conversation?”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, okay. It may be worth really leaning into that as well. And you may already be doing that. It sounds like there are plenty of dentists who are using this as a replacement for fluoride. So it seems to me like those are also the partners you want to try and reach out to and work with and just offer samples to them and let them pass them out in their offices.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, that may be tricky because of the fluoride issue. Building on that, right, this ingredient you're using, and I don't know it. I'm sure I've heard of it. Nanohydroxa appetite, right?”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And there, the question also is how important is the parents to have that credibility from the medical and dental community. For at Warby Parker, for example. People generally trust glasses and you put it on, you can see it works. However, if you're going to go and get an eye exam, right?”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because what you have, your product essentially is a gummy toothpaste, but what it makes me think of, Neil and I were talking about this earlier of Mike, Jeff Rader, who co-founded Warby Parker and then went on to start Harry's, they have a product that they now bought called Lumy Dildren, right, Neil, is that right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And Lumi Diodoron, I believe, was started by a doctor. And that was the marketing of it was your doctor has solved underarmed deodorant. What if you thought of your brand as like the mom who finally fixed brushing, something like that?”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, there are probably millions, but you want to really focus on like 10,000 parents who live on TikTok or on Facebook groups who sort of gather around some of these issues, brushing fluoride-free, et cetera. Sampling makes, to me, I completely agree with Neil. It's like sample sample sample. You can make these small packets. Whoever is willing to give a daycare center, swim schools, summer camps. Neil said birthday party, goodie bags.”
2026-01-15 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT