Advice Line with Sadie Lincoln of barre3
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Joining me this week is Sadie Lincoln. She's the co-founder and CEO of Bar3. It's the fitness and wellness company with almost 200 studios across the country. Sadie Lincoln, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm thrilled to be here. Thrilled to have you. I mean, there was a time where it felt like you were on the show every week. And here you are back on the advice line.

to help us hopefully answer questions from callers. I'm most excited about this one, Guy. All right. Awesome. Well, today we are going to talk to founders who are, I think all of them are kind of doing something a little bit new and untested. And

And I wanted to invite you back specifically for this one because actually you were on back in the early days of how I built this. You told us a story about how you and your husband, Chris, basically sold everything, moved from the Bay Area and pursued this idea of opening bar studios. And you really took a huge risk and built this awesome brand. People should listen to this story because you guys really are an example, as most people

stories on how I built this are of people who really had no capital, you'd know, nothing. I mean, you just had to build this with nothing. You did.

That's right. Yeah. Every penny of our life savings, we went down to one small little rental and just poured ourselves into the studio with absolute optimism during the global financial crisis, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. 2008. Yeah. Yeah. Sadie, before we get to our callers, I want to ask you a couple questions, you know, especially about this idea of...

explaining something new to people, right? So what do you remember? What was the story you told people around bar? How did you set it apart from other workouts and convince people to try it? So the first was the name Bar 3 isn't a descriptor name. It's not clear what it is. So right under Bar 3, we had an exercise studio. Yeah.

And then right under that, we had our descriptor tagline, which explained it. We're a ballet bar meets yoga and Pilates. That is,

Whole conversation of figuring out the hierarchy of that we took a lot of time on because we knew that when people drive by our studio or in our case walk by our studio on the beautiful Teak Boardwalk in the Pearl District that the name and the descriptor had to work really hard for us enough so that they would come in. And then it was figuring out, okay, what is the main problem I'm solving for this consumer as they walk in the door?

And I really learned to reflect back whatever I saw. So if it was a young woman pregnant, I would say, wow, I just had two babies. I built this workout based on, you know, rebuilding your body and being present and purposeful in this moment of being pregnant. You know, I really started to storytell around what the product was based on who was in front of it.

You mentioned the Pearl District, and I think a lot of people know that's – you're talking about Portland, which is where you started Bar 3. And I'm curious – I mean, Portland is – it's one of those cities that has this really dynamic population. There's a lot of creativity. There's obviously great food, and there's a lot of vibrancy there. But obviously Nike and now Adidas has headquarters there. So from that perspective, it's a major –

sort of launching pad for certain products. But it's not, I mean, you know, you think exercise, people think, oh, you start it in New York or LA, but you started it in Portland. What was the advantage in the end? I think, how did that work to your advantage? I really liked the entrepreneurial spirit of Portland. Portland celebrates being a local business owner. You can feel it when you're here. And I authentically wanted to live here

The quality of life was a huge part of our decision. And there was no other bar concept here. And so I moved from San Francisco, the Bay Area, which was basically the Bay Area and New York City were the two first places that bar arrived. And I could bring that wisdom to Portland and do it in my own way.

sheltered from the competition. So that really helped me be authentic and follow my own values and my own way of doing bar versus, you know, kind of copycatting or doing something that someone else has done. Yeah. There is a lot, Sadie, that you can offer as a mentor today. So hopefully you're ready to go. I am. Let's do this. All right, let's do it. Let's take our first caller. Hello, caller. Welcome to the advice line on how I built this.

Hey, Guy. Hey, Sadie. It's a pleasure to talk with you guys today. Hello. Hello. Please introduce yourself. Tell us where you're calling from and a little bit about your business very briefly.

Absolutely. So my name is Dustin Bowen from Austin, Texas. I am the founder of Ketchustard. It's a new condiment. Ketchustard. It combines both sweet and tangy flavors of ketchup and mustard and creates a new blend that's both unique and delicious. I love it. Ketchustard. Portmanteau. It's my favorite thing. So this is a combination of mustard and ketchup in one bottle, one condiment. You got it.

Right. Which many of us do, right? Like we'll just put a little bit of that and that on a burger or whatever and...

you know, not on hot dogs. Don't do that on hot dogs. No ketchup on hot dogs for me. But this is, so tell me how this started. How did this begin? Where did this idea come from? Well, I've been oddly obsessed with condiments my entire life. Not odd, not odd. Fair enough. But if you saw my refrigerator, you might think so. It's about half full of different condiments. You know, my wife gives me grief for taking up half the space there. So, you know, I've been mixing up

And are you a food person? Is that what you do and have been doing for a long time?

So far from it, actually. So I am actually a mechanical design manager for factory engineering at Tesla here at our headquarters here in Austin. Okay. Yeah. So wholly unrelated to food. Nice. Spent most of my career in engineering and design. And so this is just a passion for me. It's something I've always really enjoyed on the side and really wanted to take a stab at it and venture out beyond my current career.

career. And tell me what the, I mean, you don't want to reveal your secrets, right? It would be like holding the colonel hostage and saying, give me the whatever 50 herbs and spices. What's your, what's basically, how do you basically make it? Is it, you know, tomato sauce and mustard seeds and

Yeah, if you took the raw components of each independent condiment and break it down to its bases, you know, find that perfect golden ratio between the two flavors and blend it all together, outcomes get trusted.

All right. I'm looking at your website. This is for sale now. And do you own that name, Kachustard? I do. It is trademarked. You trademarked Kachustard. I love it. It's brilliant. Yeah. Brilliant. Nobody, right? No one thought to do this. Here you go, Kachustard. What is your question for us today? Yeah. So as a new business owner, I'm really trying to help identify like a true branding personality and storytelling of a product and just really...

How to define what this product is. Do I embrace this goofy side of it or do I go the Sir Kensington tongue-in-cheek mature route? Really could go in a different direction and could use some advice on that.

All right. We can get to your question now or later, but Sadie, do you have any questions for Dustin before we dive into his question? Well, I would say congrats on that name. Thank you. Yeah. Kachuster. Yeah. I think it's pretty amazing. It says it all. It does. And like I was saying, I had to work hard to really explain what bar three is. You have your name and your descriptor in it.

In there. Yeah. What's Kachustard? What do you mean what's Kachustard? It's Kachustard. It's like, it's so poised to be a household term, you know? Well, I appreciate that. I hope so. Yeah, it's so beautiful. I love Mashups. Guy, one of my favorite...

how I built this episode is with Tofurky. Yeah, right. I think you were at that show. You went to that show. I was. You were there in the audience, yeah. I'm a super fan. I'm a super fan of this show and really of Tofurky. And it sort of reminds me of that. He built a big brand. Huge.

brand, but it didn't start with that. He started with a really thoughtful approach to tempeh. Tempeh, yeah. Right. And then I think it was a Thanksgiving thing. They developed the Tofurky and that name just caught on and he built a whole empire around a really fun mashup. So

I think this kind of name bodes for that really well. Thank you. Ironically, Heinz back in 2018 actually created a whole line called Saucy Sauce where they did the exact same thing. They mixed condiments together and even have the portmanteau name. And that was the moment when I saw it on the shelf. I was like, oh, this is a real brand. Heinz is doing this.

Let's see if they do a Kachuster. They never did. So I snatched it. Did they do they still do that, by the way? Do they still make these? OK, these mashups. Yeah, they have mayo chop and mayo must and crunch and all sorts of different combinations. So Kachuster and you have the website Kachuster.com. Is the concept something I don't think you can trademark or patent a recipe, right? Like you can't do that. Like somebody else could, in theory, do this.

Sure, but then they would have to use the name MustChup, and then that's just a flop. That's not going to sell. MustChup, yeah. Have you sent any to Elon? No.

I have considered putting one in his conference room just to see if he tweets about it. So we'll see. You never know. He's got like 200 million followers. It's honestly the best marketing plan that I could think of. Probably, yeah. Sadie, all right, let's dive into this. He's got...

There's a lot going for him. I mean, he's got the name. He's got this weird. It's like the purple cow theory, right? Like there's a lot he could do with this. And something we all do. Yeah. I do have a question. Dustin, do you have a specific food that you put this on that it turns the food from like good to magical or fantastic? Fries and tater tots is game changer. It ups the game for sure.

That's where it shines, but throw it on burgers. You can throw it on a hot dog, even though you don't do ketchup on hot dog guy. No. I have actually had friends say that they put it on pizza, used it as salad dressing before, which I don't know if I can suggest that, but people have said it's good. That's a Russian salad dressing. That's ketchup based and mustards and a bunch. That's not weird to me. Yeah. Yeah.

And then with that, have you done any user testing with your actual packaging and like how people use it? Do they spread it? Do they dip it? Do they, you know, take it to barbecues? I haven't yet, but I love going down that road. I think that's a fantastic idea to get a little user input. I think most people are dumping it on the plate and doing a little dipping. That's been some of the feedback I've received. I mean, I feel like you need to get this into the

cafeteria at the office, you know? Sure. It's a great idea. You just need to bring them in there and start to see what people say. I mean, the thing is, is that you're onto something, right? Because condiments and you can go to the grocery store, the condiment aisle is just massive and it's endless, you know? Absolutely. All kinds of cool things happening there.

But, you know, down the road, you are going to have to have more than just Kachuster, right? Spicy Kachuster. Sure. Right? Yeah, there's definitely some formulations I've thought of, some other product lines, not all condiment combinations, you know, potential vegan products down the line as well. So trying to map it out, really want to put all my eggs in the Kachuster basket for now, but then expand that product line. Okay, Sadie.

What do you think? I mean, he's trying to figure out how to kind of tell this story. I have some thoughts. I'm curious to hear yours. Yeah, yeah, I do too. Well, I feel like the name is like catchy, no pun intended on that one. But it is, it's such a fun name. And I do think that the name can hold a huge story with the right branding around it.

A playfulness, you mentioned kind of having a tongue in cheek playfulness about it. I do think that the name asks for that. It almost begs for that. Yes. There is something really convenient about this. I've got, you know, I don't need ketchup and mustard when I'm going to the barbecue and I just have the small cooler that I bring with me. Yeah. One bottle that I think that's, you know, something to talk about and that can carry you really far. Yeah.

I do wonder about what is the distinct differentiator about what you actually taste or what you created. And then-

That's specific with this product. But if you do a whole line of products, what would be the thing that tied those all together? Right. Yeah. And that's the missing link there. It's all food related, I suppose. And there is a condiment element to it. But the one thread that ties it all together, I think that's the and I don't expect you guys to find that

piece today since we don't have any other product lines developed yet, but definitely something to keep in mind as I'm continuing to explore that. And there's nothing wrong with having one thing and doing that really well and just focusing on that one thing. Especially at the beginning. Yeah, especially at the beginning. Yes.

Yeah. I mean, kind of doubling down on what Sadie said. Right now, I get it. Your website's just a placeholder. But you've got this really quirky concept that everyone can identify with because everyone does this, unless they hate mustard or hate ketchup. But everybody does a version of this on their veggie burger or regular burger, whatever it is. And your logo looks like –

a serious, like that. It's not funny. It's not sure there's no, there's no sort of quirkiness in the logo. It's a very kind of corporate logo. And so it design aesthetic to it for sure. Yeah. So you have an opportunity to do something really fun. And I would really take a page from what Sir Kensington did, which is they invented this fake, you know, character Sir Kensington, they create a backstory for him and he was the mascot. Now you don't have to do exactly that,

But there's something around this idea of like or like you look at liquid death.

Their whole point was death to plastic. They were just selling water. I mean, right? But it was death to plastic, and that was how they marketed themselves. I mean, you could make a really fun, funny little video and put it on your website of somebody just hauling a cooler, and they open it up, and half of the bottles are ketchup, and half of the bottles are mustard, and they're just struggling to put it in the car. And then you can make a whole campaign around how you're going to just save people, just like –

their, you know, the hassle and just make life so much more convenient. And

And then you open a cooler and it's just one bottle. You say everything is in this one bottle, all the ketchup and mustard. Yeah, absolutely. I totally hear you. It calls for it. I do wonder also, I'm just going to say it because I want to squeeze it like, and I can't squeeze glass. I just think it's so playful to do that. Like I think about, I'm sorry, guy, but I do, I would put it on a hot dog.

And just something about the design, like if you squeeze it and it was like, had some kind of design element to that. If you could find a, a, you know, environmentally friendly version of a squeeze bottle. You can, you can, there are, there are two, two aluminum, uh, tubes for, you know, uh,

like, uh, anchovy paste. Right. There you go. Right. All right. There's, there's some other options there I hadn't thought of. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like it could be a real iconic moment, you know, walking into a restaurant then, and all those containers are on every single table that serves the best French fries and wherever you live, you know, having those, that kind of brand presence with the container, um,

I think could really launch it. Yeah. I wonder if you could probably do something like that, like a giant sort of toothpaste tube, but not a plastic one, but you know, like that, what's that French brand, right? Or it's European brand Marvis of the old fashioned toothpaste, like in the aluminum tube, you know, or like how some like tomato paste comes in aluminum tubes. Like maybe you can make a big one and that's a new way to dispense calories.

Ketchustard. It would certainly be a unique way of getting a condiment out to the market there. I love it. I have a feeling your friends at Tesla could help you out with that. I think so. You probably know a couple of designers there. My God. Yeah. Yeah. I know a few product guys. Yeah. Maybe you can, they can just throw them in with the new car. You know, every time you get a new car, you get a bottle of Ketchustard. I can work with the team and see if we can arrange it. I'm sure they're up for it. I'm sure they'll be up for it. Yeah. Wow. It's such a cool, cool concept. Yeah.

It's called Kachustard and Dustin Bowen is the founder. Dustin, good luck, man. Thank you so much. Great talking with you guys. Yeah, for sure. Thanks so much.

I have no problem with you putting ketchup on your hot dog. People in Chicago will. They will not allow you to come to the city if you do that. I wonder how they'll feel about Ketchester, though. A little bit of both, you know? I know. It might just slide under. Like, it might just be okay. You know, it might be enough because it's not musta ketchup on the hot dog.

So I think it might work. It might be okay. How about on my Tofurky? I think you could get away with your Tofurky for sure. A hundred percent. That's where I'm going with this. Yeah. I think it's just the whole concept and the fun, like whimsical part of it. Like I'm, you know, like the purple cow idea. That's just so weird, but it's not because it's, I think people will see this and say, wait a minute, that makes total sense. How many people will say, why didn't I think of that? Why didn't I think of that? Yeah. Yeah.

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 Raz, and you're listening to The Advice Line right here on How I Built This Lab.

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Welcome back to the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz, and my guest today is the founder of Bar3, Sadie Lincoln. And I'm going to be talking to her today.

All right, Sadie, here comes our next caller. Hello, caller. You are on the advice line. Welcome. Hi, Guy. Hi, Sadie. Thanks for having me on the show. Hi. Hello. Who is this? Tell us where you're calling from and a little bit about your business. Yeah, my name is Andrew Pizzullo. I'm 28 years old, calling from St. Louis, Missouri. I am the founder of Pizzy Products, the company behind Ramps, a new game for backyard, tailgates, beach, and indoor.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much for calling in. Tell us a little bit about Ramps. What kind of game is it? Yeah, so it's a one-to-four player game. The best way to think about it is a combination of skee-ball and cornhole. Skee-ball and cornhole. Like skee-ball from Chuck E. Cheese. Exactly. Yeah, and cornhole or bags, depending on the region, you might call it bags. But you essentially slide these mini bean bags down a runway, off a ramp, and then towards your opponent's target.

And we have interchangeable targets, actually. And we have two that come with the ramps game set. So the first one is cups, which is our take on beer pong. So the first one to make all six cups wins. And then the second game target is called points. So there's a variety of different shells and then a center cup worth varying points in a race to 21 points like traditional yard games. Sadie, this is making me think of like, well, bar is Pilates meets yoga meets ballet, right?

It's skee-ball meets cornhole. Yeah, and fun. Good old-fashioned fun. Yeah. So, Andrew, how did this idea come about? So it was back in like February of 2020, actually. So we've been working on this for quite some time. I was actually on the way back from a business trip, and I just sat down on the plane and... What were you doing at the time? Consulting. I still am consulting IT stuff. So I was on the way back from a business trip, sat down on the plane and just...

put my mind to coming up with a yard game.

I'm pretty sure I must have seen the Shark Tank episode on Spikeball the night before in the hotel. I always watch Shark Tank. So I set myself to come up with a yard game, started to think about the methods of play and how there's a lot of tossing. There's a lot of throwing, but there's not a lot of rolling. So almost immediately I thought of skeeball and essentially to turn that into a multiplayer yard game. Right. And there you go.

And so how did you, you started to kind of design this concept, right? And then what? Like, how did you, where did you find like a manufacturer in China or somebody somewhere and say, hey, this is my design and can you make this? It's been a long road. So at first we worked with a local design company, Objects Design here in St. Louis. And we started to make a prototype and promotional material.

And we say we, you and a partner? My parents. Your parents. That was the first test when I got home from my trip, actually, was to convince my parents that this was a good idea. I'm someone that has ideas left and right. And, you know, I always pitch them and they always get shot down. But...

This was one of those ideas where, you know, they were actually like, hold on, this actually might be something. So, yeah, we started to work with Objects Design to create the prototype, the initial promotional material. And we were going out to all these large toy companies just to license it out.

And we worked with them for probably a year and a half or so and sent our prototype to different toy companies and they loved it. But it's more so a matter of the price point. And that is for $269 currently. It just wasn't working out. So we never ended up landing a deal. And ever since then, we started working to get it built from the ground up ourselves. Yeah.

And how much does one set, one set comes with two of these launch platforms? Yep. Yep. There's 33 components. If you include all the beanbags, the two ramps, the four legs to support the two ramps, and then the two game modes for each ramp as well. So 33 components, uh,

And we also include two carrying cases. Obviously, portability is top of mind when you're thinking about a yard game and taking it camping or to the beach or whatever. So we have all that and shipping included for the continuous United States. Got it. OK, Sadie Lincoln, I want to bring you in with some questions before we get to Andrew's question. What do you think?

Well, first of all, congratulations. You are the definition of an innovator. Thank you. And an entrepreneur. I love it. Yeah, I do. I'm looking at your website and your branding is very clear. It's very playful.

And it does look like a toy. It's plastic versus wood. I'm just curious what your choices were with the materials and how you're manufacturing it and if wood versus plastic, if there was a cost differentiation. So we did actually have wood prototypes built, yeah.

probably two years or so ago, just to actually start getting the word out, right? Put them in social bars. And we understood that some people might want that wood more of a luxury item, right? Certainly from the cost perspective, it was almost $500 for the wood versions and then all the man hours associated.

with that. So that was a big consideration. It still might be on our long-term plan to get nicer wood versions in bars, but as far as reaching the mass markets, we decided to do, you know, blow molding. That way we could produce them at scale and shipping is still insanely expensive, but a little bit more manageable.

Right. Got it. Okay. And what's your question for us today? So my question is, what advice do you have around selling our premium priced game? And how can we convey the value better to convert more customers? Sadie, I'll start with you. Yeah, sure. Well, how I look at value, there's like the value of the experience, the emotional value of something. And then there's the value of the actual product and how it's presented. Yeah.

And those are two different things.

And I'm a 52-year-old mother of children not too much, you know, a little younger than you. And I know I value if they want to do something with me, I'm going to do it, whatever it is, because I value my time with them and anything that brings kind of multi-generations together. And I value this wholesome aspect of playing games. We play pool together. We play ping pong together. I think...

Someone like me, and I'm not alone here, we value time like that, playing games with our kids. So something that they relate to and we relate to is valuable to us. So there is a consumer like me who has money who would spend that kind of money. And it is considerably more. I mean, I think this is probably twice what we paid for our cornhole.

But it's two games in one. It's portable. There is this kind of fun playfulness of it with the solo cup design and everything that I see here on your site. I love that. Yeah. Andrew, who is your target customer here? Is it fraternities? Is it...

Is it like, you know, I don't know, who do you imagine playing this game? When I first started, I imagined myself, right? You know, young adults, maybe from college all the way up to, I don't know, people play still in their backyard, right? So that was part of my initial struggle, especially when you start to get on and consider the high price tag, right? Because that made me second guess, right?

When I realistically looked at myself, I was like, okay, would I really be willing to spend $269 without having tried this game first? And I was like, probably not. I need to probably play this game and make sure I like it first, even though we have a satisfaction guarantee, right? And so I started to...

kind of lean more towards businesses. Wherever you see Cornhole or maybe Extreme Tailgaters that are out there every week supporting their teams, I still see that as our target audience. I just feel like in order to reach them, we first have to reach businesses to where maybe our other consumers can try the game first before they make their own purchase. And

One thing I guess I have a question for you around is have you thought about kind of piggybacking on other valuable experiences that people with money enjoy, like pickleball? You know, donating these to pickleball experiences where older people, younger people are playing together and they could experience it.

Another one that just jumped in my head as you were talking is KOAs. Yeah. Oh, campgrounds. Yeah. Campgrounds. But RVing, like we're a big RV family. We just love it. And we have so much fun, especially when the kids were younger, we'd go into these. Are you guys van life? Hashtag? Pretty much, except we're not that cool. We get like the motorhomes. Got it. Okay. Okay.

I imagine you in a really cool, like wooden paneled van life. Oh, no, no, no. I'm all about the convenience and the fun of it. Got it. All right. The refrigerator, the beds, the whole thing. And RV sites, you know, where there's like ice cream and socials and a pool and ramps, you know.

And they usually have a store attached to it, by the way, where you can buy what you just experienced. So I don't know, have you and your team, your parents, talked about how to introduce this to that audience or those kinds of people?

Yeah, we so our plans were to donate approximately two to three a month just given our, you know, the high cost of the item and our cash flow. And, you know, it's only our investment that's supporting all of this. But.

I will say, I don't know if you guys saw last week, we actually went viral on an Instagram reel from one of our micro-influencers we sent the game to, who's all about tailgating, Luke Lorik from Tailgating Challenge. How many views did it get? I think it's at 24 million views and over 11 million accounts reached. Wow. Wow.

Oh, that's great. And how many conversions were there? How many things did you sell? In the last week, I think we sold around 150. Awesome. And we only had 250 in our inventory. So far beyond our initial projections and expectations. So that was just...

a stroke of luck, I guess, that we went viral. Yeah. And a great, great for momentum. I mean, obviously, you know, that's one off and, you know, you're going to have to figure out a way to keep that momentum going. What I want, I want to sort of, I mean, I think Sadie

made a really important suggestion here, which is about tribes, right? And if you heard our, I'm assuming you heard our Spikeball episode on the show? Oh, yeah. Multiple times. And what, you know, what they did was they found, I mean, it was accidental, but they figured, they found out just looking at

you know, customer data from the online sales was that it was like interesting groups of people were using this, like youth, Christian youth groups, Amish people, Mennonite communities. So, you know, that's where they initially went because that's really where

You know, you begin to get momentum. I mean, and the other thing that Spikeball did, which you have to do is a demo, demo, demo, demo. You know, they went to they were in Chicago. They were on Lake Michigan and they would just set up Spikeball games all around the lake.

I would just play this game at a park and you identify a couple of cool parks and you start in St. Louis, but eventually you want to go beyond there and just find crowds of people and just set up the game around there and start playing it because you need to build awareness. Right. Before people are going to put 250, 260 bucks down.

They need to see it. And obviously that Instagram post is super helpful, but you also want to do a lot of grassroots stuff as well, as much as you can do. And eventually you're going to start to see who is, is it people in RVs? Is it people in campgrounds? Is it church groups? Is it youth groups? Are there fraternity groups doing this? So

I would really think about a strategy around just getting this out there and just playing the game and letting people see it. I totally agree. And how aggressive do you think we should be in... Because we have so many people that are actually reaching out to us that are asking for donations of our game for their religious group or their middle school or their whatever nonprofit or military group, whatever it may be. So...

Should we go beyond our initial estimates and cash flow with the two to three estimated a month? I don't know if we should be extra risky at this point in time. I think I'd be curious to hear what you thought, Sadie, but I think you need to be really strategic. If it's a one-off church group, no, because unless it's a church group with 25,000 members and they're really going to advertise what this is,

I think you have to be really strategic with the freebies for now because obviously you're a tiny company. You're financed by you and your parents. Sadie, what do you think? Be strategic, then give generously. I think knowing who is... Of those people that went on the influencer site, you said it was... How many hits did it have? Over 24 million. Amazing. How many people came to your site and then the people that came to your site and bought...

Do you know about them? How old they are? Household income? What their other interests are? Did you capture their email? I would start to, you know, maybe you've already done this, but a lot of consumer research about who's actually buying this or who needs to buy it. Like I think about like I'm so out of ideas for like the dudes in my life, frankly. Yeah.

They're hard to buy for. I can think of my son, my father-in-law, my husband. They would all love this. But how do you get in front of me? But you don't know that unless you know I would actually buy. So whoever is buying, try to get in front of more of them. And truly, I would continue. So parallel path, one thing I really encourage you to figure out is

And keep asking yourselves, is there a way to redesign ramps using less expensive materials? Is there a way to lower your costs? Over time, there will be because you'll be able to scale efficiencies. You'll have better partners. You'll have higher volume. You'll be better at inventory.

All those things that everybody in retail struggles with, by the way, and you can benchmark it with other groups who have done a similar thing and learn from them. All those things are very important to consider right now while you're capitalizing on the amazing momentum and marketing that you have going.

Absolutely. Yeah, that resonates with a lot of feedback we got because there's a lot of comments on a viral video, as you can imagine, both good and bad. But a lot of people were saying, like, I wouldn't pay more than $50 for this. And it's like, well, shipping can cost $60, but we are...

actually starting to put together like a light version or a base game set where it will only be one of the two games. So it gets like the base starting point down for people to see if they like the game and then have the add-ons. And I don't know, we think we might like take the shipping out of the price. So not bake it in. The research says to bake it in, but with our kind of price tag, I don't know if this is maybe something we treat a little bit more or a little differently. You can test it. Yeah. Thank you.

Fail fast. Try, test, fail fast, try it again. And you get to where maybe think of it as a game for yourself as the innovator that you are. Just keep innovating, keep trying. There are a lot of different kinds of materials you can use that look more premium.

that look wood that aren't wood for example um i think just just continuing to explore and have fun with it along the way it's gonna it's gonna take you far for sure for sure andrew pazulo ramps game um good luck man thanks so much for calling in yeah thank you guys for having me it's an honor to be here big fan of the show appreciate it thanks can i keep thinking about skeeball did you do you ever play skeeball as a kid like at chucky cheese or one of the one

of those kinds of places? You know, that's one thing I haven't played. Oh, that's right. You didn't grow up. You grew up in a, I remember from our story. You, yes. Cornhole. You were a commune. Yeah. I'm more of a hippie girl. Yeah. That's probably why I was asking about the materials, like the wood, the organic feel of it, I think would be cool. But on the other hand, I like that it's playful and it's more like a toy and it's probably easy to clean and light and flexible. Yep.

Alright, we're going to 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.

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Welcome back to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz, and today I'm taking calls with Bar 3 founder Sadie Lincoln. Sadie, what do you say? Should we take another call? Let's do this. All right, let's bring in our next caller. Hello, caller. Welcome to The Advice Line. Hi.

Hello. Hello. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Tell us where you're calling from and a little bit, very briefly, about your business. I'm Randi Pink from Birmingham, Alabama, founder of Ruffner Treehouse Village. Ruffner Treehouse Village is a nature-centered community space meant to foster connection in the predominantly black Eastlake neighborhood of Birmingham, Alabama.

All right, cool. Thank you for calling in. Welcome to the show. Randy, tell me a little bit more about Treehouse Village. It's literally a village of treehouses? Yes.

Yes, it is at the edge of a nature preserve in Birmingham, Alabama, and it will be four tree houses all themed around Birmingham history, literature, elders and the maps that built Birmingham. So it's a nature centric space for people in the lesser served side of Birmingham to go and explore and connect and learn.

Wow. Okay. So, Randy, right now, I guess you own some land near or in a nature preserve. And I guess the plan is to build these tree houses where the community can kind of come together and learn. And so how did you come up with this idea? Back in 2020, my now ex-husband asked for a divorce right in January. And I had a newborn baby at the time.

And then the pandemic hit. So I started to visualize a place where I could go with my young children. And that place did not exist, especially outside of the wealthier side of Birmingham. So

The treehouse village concept came to mind and I conceptualized it. But as a recently, you know, divorced mother of babies, I didn't have the money or the resources to do that. So as soon as Zillow posted the perfect plot of land right at the edge of the tree where I wanted the treehouse village to be, I opened my email and said,

My agent inserted $30,000 into my bank account. I write young adult novels and I got a $30,000 advance. Wow. So I immediately purchased that for $24,000 and started building my 401c, started building a board, beautiful board of people.

and a very small group of employees. We haven't built it, but we are working toward that with the land and fostering it as best we can right now. Wow. Okay. And tell us what your question is, the question you brought for us today. So my question is, in purchasing the land,

and starting to conceptualize building on it and making it happen. I ran out of money before I was able to publicize it. So I turned to TikTok and immediately went viral on TikTok about three years ago, which was wonderful and exciting and all of that. But I started to realize at some point that

I myself, Randy, became the Treehouse Village. And at some point, reality hit. I was at the Shell station pumping gas and somebody drove by and said, hey, there's the treehouse lady. You know, it was it was great. But I would love to transition myself out of just being the singular face of that business. And any tips on that would be my question.

All right. Sadie, I want to bring you into this conversation. First, any questions that you have for Randy? Yeah, one question I have is being the face of Ruffner Village, is that depleting you? Is it hard on you? Oh, that's a good question. It is. I would like to take a step back from that because as a single mother with kids,

I kind of want this just to be its own community space and not me be the face of it. And you're an author of multiple books. Yeah. Yes. I write young adult historical fiction. I've been doing that for about 15 years. Yes. That's so beautiful. Well, I'm just going to experience share based on,

When I started Bar 3 16 years ago, I didn't have a studio. It was just me. And it was the first time that I put myself in the arena. And if you haven't read Daring Greatly by Brene Brown, you must read it. There's this part about being in the arena. The brave ones are in the arena.

And there will be people throwing like tomatoes at you, but they're not in the arena with you. If they're in the arena with you, it's worthy of a battle, right? But there are a few of us that step out and say, I'm going to be in the arena. I'm going to start this new thing based on a problem I am solving that I am directly experiencing. That's vulnerable, right? It's also what attracts people to what you're building, both and.

And over time, I did become the face of Bar 3. And to this day, I'll walk into a restaurant and people will say Bar 3 instead of Sadie. But I think there's something really beautiful about that. And I've learned to really surrender to it, that they care about the woman behind the business. And it isn't Sadie Lincoln. That's not what it's about. And your beautiful village isn't you, but you're holding the container for it.

You're holding the vision for it. Just like you writing a story that is, those are your words. And then whoever's reading it gets to go into their own world with it. But you built the book, you wrote the book and it is about you. And especially before you actually have a product that people can experience, it's really only about you and your story. And so I guess I hope that helps a little, but I will say that it changes. It's a phase. Yeah.

Eventually, when you have your beautiful concept built and people are there experiencing it, it will be about their words and their stories. I think that's fair. And I appreciate that perspective. It's very beautiful. And I know I do know that you've been through it. I've heard your episode. It was very inspiring. So thank you for sharing that advice.

Well, I'm not alone and neither are you. You know, I think it can feel lonely. You can feel like just you, but you're the voice of many in your community. And I think, you know, sometimes you scratch your own itch and it turns out to be a whole bunch of other people's itches too. And they just need one brave person to come out and paint the vision and the story and inspire other people around it to make it happen. Yeah. Thank you for that. It's valuable.

Randy, and how are you? I'm just curious. How are you? Are you raising money for the project now? Are you going to finance it yourself? Well, I've been financing it myself through book advances. But I had through the attention on TikTok.

A lot of my followers, they're kind, they're lovely, they're wonderful. And they were like, you need to open a GoFundMe just to, you know, stop spending your own money. So I did that for a little while, but mostly it's been me and grants in the community itself.

A lot of followers on TikTok have reached out to the city of Birmingham like, can y'all help this lady? They've been trolling the city. Yeah, I think it's for sure creatively approached and just trying to figure out what works from day to day. And what's worked the most has been community support. Randy, do you have...

a concept that you're inspired by that's similar to what you're doing that's been proven? I look to...

Honestly, people like you who came up with something outside the box and different and kept pushing. One of my heroes is Janice Bryant-Howroyd, a black woman who... Yeah, yeah. She was on our show several years ago. She started the famous Beverly Hills Staffing Agency, Act One. Yes. She's wonderful. Just...

pushing through starting small and creating something incredible in that space and male dominated spaces. She's very inspiring. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's an awesome story. Janice is, is, is really, really inspiring. Yeah. And do you have a community of people who are,

have the experience in building a nonprofit and building a structure in designing experiences. Do you have thought leaders in those different arenas that you have not had experience in? Oh, that's a good question. I do. Um, I'm a writer, so yes, I have to hire the, not hire, but bring those people in. Um, I have architect on my board and, um,

teachers, nonprofit leaders. And yeah, and I belong to a few nonprofit groups just in Alabama. But one of my goals is to get into the Harvard Business Certificate Program to try to

really get some good information from there. But yeah, I'm working on it. It's still for sure in its infancy, but working on it every day. I think that's so valuable. Well, I can tell your superhero power is storytelling. And I, that's something I enjoy doing as well. And after 16 years of building this big company of mine, one thing I've learned is the power of surrounding myself with people and

who can compliment that. In the early days, I had a really hard time building trust with people because I go right to my heart, to vision and what's possible in the future. And people who are literal and need data and analytics and proof, you know, had a hard time listening to me.

And trusting me. But once I started to bring along folks that naturally talked in that way and could really help me prove out my concept, I was able to set myself free as a storyteller.

And I hope that for you. I hope that you bring that along. Of course, I've also grown as a professional. I've learned to bring my own data and to balance out my strengths, but not by losing or weakening what's already innately in me. And I just, I really hope that for you because I think you're really gifted and your idea is so beautiful and so inspiring. Really do. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Randy Pink, the concept is called Ruffner Treehouse Village. Randy, good luck. Thanks so much for calling in. Thank you. Thank you so much. Sadie, when you, you know, I mean, obviously you were in a version of these, you know, of where all these founders were, you know, back in the day. And if there was a way for you to kind of go back and give yourself some advice that you know now, that you have now, what would you say to yourself?

I think what I would say to myself is exactly what I would say to all them, but truly to myself, I would say, believe in yourself enough to know that you can attract the very best people around you to help you grow bar three into what you want it to become. You deserve the best marketer, the best finance person, the best operator on the planet to

like aim for the very best people you possibly can. And part of them being the very best is finding people who respect me and my unique strengths that may be really different than theirs. I really think all of us as founders, all of us as innovators who put ourselves out that who we surround ourselves with is a game changer. And I kind of wish I knew that a little earlier.

Sadi Lincoln, thank you so much for coming onto the show, onto The Advice Line. It's great having you back on the show. I love it. So fun. Thanks for having me. And by the way, if you haven't heard Sadi's original How I Built This episode on the founding of Bar 3, you should definitely go back and check it out. It's an awesome, amazing story. And you can find a link to it in the podcast description.

Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to check out my newsletter. You can sign up for it for free at GuyRoz.com. Each week, it's packed with tons of insights from entrepreneurs and my own observations and experiences interviewing some of the greatest entrepreneurs ever. And if you're working on a business and you'd like to be on this show, send us a one-minute message that tells us about your business, the issues or questions you'd like help with, and

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This episode was produced by Carla Estevez with music composed by Ramteen Arablui. It was edited by John Isabella and our audio engineer was Neil Rauch. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Chris Massini, Devin Schwartz, Elaine Coates, J.C. Howard, Catherine Seifer, Carrie Thompson, Neva Grant, and Sam Paulson. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.

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At a time when we're debating where policing is going, we're going to tell you where the police came from. They wanted me to write about the New York City Police Department, but without using the words violence or corruption, which is effectively impossible. A story of how the largest and most influential police department in the country became one of the most violent and corrupt organizations in the world. It doesn't matter if you're a self-emancipated black person or if you're free. They're just sending people back to the south.

When officers with the power to fight the danger become the danger. I was terrified. I'm not going to talk to the police because they're the ones who are perpetrating this. Who am I going to talk to? From Wondery and Crooked Media, I'm Chinjarai Kumaneka, and this is Empire City, the untold origin story of the NYPD. Follow Empire City on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Empire City early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.