Brad Weimert: Josh Snow, perfect. I appreciate you coming to hang out, man. Actually, I appreciate you carving out time in your residence.

Josh Snow: Absolutely. I’m happy to have you here and excited to catch up.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Likewise, man. Likewise. So, we’ve crossed paths a lot of times over the years. And I want to dig into a couple of the different parts of your business but people know you because you’ve branded yourself as Snow. Snow is your company and brand.

Josh Snow: Yes.

Brad Weimert: So, I want to talk about kind of the beginning of Snow and then the scale process but how did you start it and why did you get into teeth whitening in the first place?

Josh Snow: Yeah. It’s a good question. So, I’ve been a lifelong entrepreneur, built, scaled, exited many different brands. Also failed more times than that since I was 13 years old. So, I started super young at building websites. Didn’t know what I was doing that I was like, “Wow, whatever this is, I want to do this for the rest of my life.” Still went to college, first of my family. It’s very important to me and my family to do that. Graduate at 20. And so, for the last a little over a decade…

Brad Weimert: You graduated college at 20?

Josh Snow: Graduated Arizona State University and the Honors College right at 20. And I was out of there.

Brad Weimert: How did that work? Did you just ramp up credits?

Josh Snow: 22 credits a semester.

Brad Weimert: Damn.

Josh Snow: And 16 in the summer. Because I came in with pretty much zero. I might have had like six credits and needed like 200 or whatever. So, I took my major map and it was four years is how they kind of baked it in. And I just started moving stuff around, and I was like, “What if I did this three in the summer?” I did these two, stack it on top, went to class on Tuesday for this one. Did an online one for this one. So, I just reverse-engineered that major map to three years and then eventually to two years, 24 months. And I was like, “Okay. How do I challenge myself?” I like to sometimes make things I’ve learned about myself, make things harder than they need to be in order for me to stay interested. So, looking back, I didn’t know that but I was like, “Okay. I got to go to college.” I want to make my family proud, my future family proud. There’s no reason why I can’t do both. So, I was running my businesses out of my dorm room taking 22 credits a semester, getting pretty much straight As in that as well. And then I was in the Honors College because it’s important for me as a Hispanic growing up from West Phoenix to represent the highest degree that I could get while I was doing that was important to me.

So, going to college, I was making money already. It wasn’t just like, “I need a job.” I was good. It just meant something to have that accomplishment to me, my family, future family, my community, minorities, etcetera. So, I pushed through. I was able to finish in 24 months and then it was kind of weird because then I had all day to work on business. I didn’t have to share the time. For the first time since I was 13, I started making websites. I had to go to high school then I had to go to college and I was meeting clients and working around it. So, it was a lot. Then I went to just working and business took off because now I could literally spend 24 hours a day just working. No exams, no tests, none of that.

Brad Weimert: And what was business at the time?

Josh Snow: I was running a couple of businesses, but the main moneymaker was an agency. So, we’re managing media for other brands. A lot of Google spend. Facebook was blowing up at the time as well. So, we started managing Facebook spend. And in the agency, we white-labeled our services to larger PR companies, traditional media billboard companies. And we said, “We’ll do all of your media management. Just hand it over to us. We’ll white label it, private label it, whatever you need to do.” And that skyrocketed the business because now I got access. I didn’t have to do lead gen. They already had the client, and they were already selling them on it, so it was literally just fulfillment. I made a little bit less, but I didn’t have to deal with the front end and that business scaled. And that was great because I got to spend tens of millions of dollars of clients’ money acquiring customers. And then on the side, I always had my side projects. With my buddy, Tommy Mello, we built GarageDoorNation.com, which is still around today.

When I was 18, I think it was 17. I met Tommy around 17, 18, and still he runs A1 but I got to see him build that as well. And we built Garage Door Parts website online. So, I was kind of spinning off at the time already, kind of figuring out. I was doing a lot of affiliate marketing, selling millions of dollars of other people’s products, getting a commission. So, I was learning all that stuff, SEO, pay-per-click, Facebook ads, Google ads, and I was getting paid to do it while I was in school. And then eventually, once I graduated college, I was building that. After a while, I said, “Well, what if I could do everything, soup, nuts, bolts, everything, build a brand? And I always had this dream to create something like Snow where everything is custom, like formulated packaging, logo, website, everything from scratch essentially. Again, the intent, the addiction to the intensity, but also the addiction to the joy of achievement, and that intensity is something that drives me, and I know that now.

So, I said, “Okay. How can I pick one of the most difficult markets, oral care, to break into? And how do I turn oral care cool?” And I happen to be going through jaw surgery at the time, have been in braces a bunch of times, was going through jaw surgery. I started whitening my teeth at 13. I was buying the super strength ones on eBay, that you have to get from the dentist. And so, I had a lot of experience whitening my teeth, which meant that I had super sensitive teeth at the time, was going through jaw surgery, and I was trying to figure out what I was going to do next. I had a couple of investments, a couple of businesses I was running, but what’s going to be like that marquee Josh project? What is going to be that? And I knew that I wanted to do something because I figured out because I got really good at building 1, 5, 10, $15 million businesses, spin them off, sell them, whatever, exit them in some way, sell them to my partner. I got really good at doing that in all kinds of industries, garage door parts, supplements, skin care.

And then I said, “All right. I need something that I could technically run for the rest of my life if I had to or if I wanted to. Oral care toothpaste. I want something that I can explain in one sentence what we do. We make oral care products like toothpaste. Everyone gets it.” I also wanted the challenge of becoming a household name, a household brand, and toothpaste is one of the few things that man, woman, child do more than once a day other than eat, go to the restroom, maybe drive, just a couple of things, use your phone, but only a few things inside of there. I said, “Okay. This is a huge market. All the odds are stacked against me,” which is what I’m used to growing up in adversity. If the odds are stacked against me, it brings out another layer of competitor. And I said, “Okay. Huge market. Don’t know even where to start, but I know that this is something I think I could do.” Teeth whitening, when I talked to my oral surgeon, my orthodontist, and my dentist, I said, “Where do you think I should start?”

And of course, I’m not a doctor. We don’t own dental clinics, so we can’t take care of cavities, we can’t do root canals. And they all kind of said the same thing and they go, “We have patients all the time. They ask for teeth whitening after they get their root canal or whatever it is, and we buy that from another company.” And that’s kind of unless you wanted to go into like orthodontics supplies and things like this, that’s probably where you have a spot. And I said, “Well, I know teeth whitening.” Cosmetic Instagram had been blowing up at the time, the selfie.

Brad Weimert: What year is this?

Josh Snow: This was 2015.

Brad Weimert: Okay. So, I have a thousand questions about this that I want to unpack.

Josh Snow: Let’s do it.

Brad Weimert: Okay. So, you outlined like 15 things that are of interest. You compressed school, which is very strange for somebody that’s 18 anyway to think through this process of how do I do it quickly. You also mentioned a whole bunch of different businesses. What I know about you from both hearing you speak and talking to you in the past is that you’re very thoughtful and deliberate about the macro. And that leads me to ask the question, were you deliberate about the businesses that you got into that you were learning from while you were in college? Were you doing it to learn, or were you doing it for money and experience? Or was it just things that fell in your lap and you were figuring it out?

Josh Snow: It’s a good question. I think taking it all the way back to the public library, where I learned how to create my first little blog, I really didn’t know what I was doing from the beginning. And I think every year I felt like the year before I didn’t know what I was doing, right, but 20/20 retrospect. I had someone ask me, “How much do you charge for a website,” when I was like 14 years old. And I didn’t get there immediately. It was actually my librarian or librarian aid and was like, “What are you doing on the computer?” And I had some code up. It was nothing crazy. It was a blog, and I was editing some stuff, and we didn’t have a computer at home at the time, so I used the computers at the library. I said, “I’m making a website.” She says, “What do you mean making a website?” “I’m just making a website. I don’t know, like making a peanut butter sandwich.” That’s how it felt because the naivete is a huge advantage. Not knowing is your biggest advantage. Being broke is your biggest advantage, believe it or not. And so, at that time, I didn’t know what I was doing. Started building websites.

I remember googling how much to charge for a website. I didn’t know. Because for me, it was like, I just enjoyed doing it, like playing a game, and they wanted me to make one for you. I could. I’m kind of making my own stuff. So, it was kind of like out of my way. And then I realized, “Wait a second, $500 even for a website.” It takes me a day or two to build a website. $500 at 14 years old. If I do this five more times, I have enough to buy my first car. And so, for me, I take it quickly. There were times early on in the business or early on in my life, 13, 14, 15, 16, where I kind of felt a little bit like Harry Potter where it’s like I found this magic wand and I say these words and a little pile of cash shows up. And it’s like, “Oh my gosh, does anyone else have this wand? Like, what is going on here?” And nobody understood at the time what I was doing. And so, as I started making websites, then one client goes, “Josh, great website, but I need help marketing it now. Great website. Love it. Here’s your $500 or whatever. But I pay you a thousand bucks a month if you could help me with my search engine optimization.”

And I go, “Search engine optimization. What is that?” Go on YouTube, Google. I go, “Oh, that’s perfect because I don’t have money.” So, SEO is free traffic. If I master free traffic for other people, I could do it for myself. Okay. That seems good. So, a lot of it is just following the money and seeing where the demand was. They said, “Can you program this? Can you do this?” Sure, sure, sure. Then I found out about Freelancer.com and oDesk back in the day, which is now Upwork.

Brad Weimert: Yes. I said oDesk for like five years after they changed it. It still comes out sometimes. I still type in oDesk sometimes.

Josh Snow: I literally still say it just to keep it alive because it was so important at the time. ODesk was like the premium freelance website.

Brad Weimert: For sure. Yeah. Which I learned about, by the way, through 4-Hour Workweek.

Josh Snow: Oh, yes.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. So, that was my introduction to all those platforms was Tim Ferriss 2007.

Josh Snow: Right. 4-Hour Workweek, boom, here’s how you do it.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. It was like a roadmap to outsourcing.

Josh Snow: That was around the same time. I mean, I don’t know how. I might have just googled it too, but that was around the same time when I found out, “Oh, I can hire a web developer in Pakistan.”

Brad Weimert: Didn’t even occur to me until somebody told me.

Josh Snow: Mind-blowing. And when I’m in high school, I graduated valedictorian, number one in my class, so I was pretty focused on my schoolwork as well. But a few teachers were, and I’ll never forget, they were graceful in letting me kind of hop on a computer to check an email or as things kind of progressed, then I got an iPhone. So, now I could take calls in between high school classes. So, I walk to the back and take a call for a client like, “Hey, the website isn’t loading fast enough.” “Oh, I’m on it.” Then I send them Skype, a message to my team who when I go to sleep, they wake up for $5 or $6 an hour and I was like, “Okay. Now, what if I didn’t have to make all the websites?” So, just piece by piece following the money. And then affiliate marketing came natural because I was like, “Well, I have my own websites.” I put AdSense on there, and I remember the first night when I made like $0.20 on a click and I had made money in my sleep. So, I make $0.20 in my sleep. This is crazy to me.

Like, I have never seen someone make money whether or not… Like, as a kid, I would go around the neighborhood and pick up dog poop for $20. If I didn’t pick up the dog poop, I don’t make $20. It didn’t make sense. And I said, “What if instead of ads,” because I got curious, always curious, and I said, “Who’s advertising on my website that they could pay me $0.20 a click? Oh, wow. It’s a supplement company. I wonder how you make one of those? Maybe I could just advertise on my own website.” And so, it started from there. And then now you look at like Snow. It’s our own product, our own traffic sources. It’s pretty much the same thing, just 50 times more complex because I’ve taken on all aspects of it. But I think to answer your question, it’s been follow the money, see where the value is. Am I good at it? Can I get better at it? How fast can I get better at it? And how much more could I charge per hour, so to speak, being really good at that skill set?

And so, early on, I don’t think I thought of it that way. I was just how do I help my family out? How do I help myself out? How do I make enough money? I had this goal in my mind where I was like, “Okay. If I have X amount of money in the bank, maybe I won’t go to college.” And so, then that was a goal for a while but then it’s like, “Well, just in case, I’m going to work my butt off and get as many good grades as I can, so I can be the first in my family to graduate university,” because I didn’t know. Still, at that time, I didn’t know if I needed multiple backup plans. So, I was like, “Maybe I should learn programming,” which I did and I was like, “Worst case, I could go work somewhere as a programmer, get a salary, and a backup plan.” And then I think just the confidence came over time. And I hear this a lot from on YouTube. All kinds of people say this, Jeff Bezos, etcetera, “I wish I would have believed in myself even more than I believed in myself back then.” Even though I believed in myself a lot, I was just trying to get out of the scenario I was in.

There was adversity, being broke, not having a ton of access to resources, taking a city bus, those things, they didn’t feel right to me. I felt like I needed to change something about that. And once I realized they’ll pay me $500 for a website, it could have been landscaping, it could have been anything that caught on at that time, I would have went deeper into it because if I could get paid while doing it, it was a way that I could get a job because nobody wanted to hire. They can’t hire a 14-year-old like where are you going to go work? And I’ve had that feeling inside of me that I wanted to be financially independent when I turned 18. I wanted to buy my own first car, so there was a lot of that drive. I think internally that was there early that people kind of catch on to at different phases of life. But that’s where that initial and I just kept following that. Now, I’ve had marketing companies, SaaS companies, that I’ve sold all kinds of various. And then of course, Snow that I’m most known for, they’re all manifestations of at the time what I think I really needed in my life. And I think Snow is a big example of that.

Brad Weimert: It’s wild. So, I mean, there’s a lot to unpack there but like what I see is this throughline of I think a lot of entrepreneurs, the first stop is how do I take care of how do I make sure I don’t have to worry about money anymore? And you had this persistent chase for how do I make sure that I safeguard that thing? And what’s unique about your story is that you followed a ton of paths to create all these contingency plans and learn. And the curiosity around that is unique. And I think a lot of the best entrepreneurs, like the innovative entrepreneurs, have tremendous curiosity. We were talking about Elon Musk earlier, tremendous curiosity, where he’s like the idea of building rockets is absurd to people. And he didn’t go to school to build rockets. And he was like, “No, no, I can figure that out.”

Josh Snow: I’ll do that.

Brad Weimert: And it’s like it’s analogous to being like, “Oh, open heart surgery? Sure. F*ck it. I could figure that out.”

Josh Snow: Correct.

Brad Weimert: And society prescribes a path to do that, which is no, no, med school and probably for good reason or med school this is it, this is it. But to be a rocket scientist. And he’s like, “No, f*ck it. I’ll just figure it out.” So, I see a lot of that in the narrative here. Eventually, you got to a point where you started Snow and I often talk about marketing agencies. And when you’re picking a marketing agency, and you can weigh in on this, but when you’re picking a marketing agency, most marketing agencies are trash. And they are like they’re learning with your money. And then the really good ones are often taking revenue because they’re like, “Hey, I’m going to grow your company.”

Josh Snow: I know for a fact I’m going to grow your company.

Brad Weimert: “Give me some.” And then past that point, people that are really good at marketing do their own sh*t and sell their own sh*t. Because if you’re that good, you eventually realize, “Why am I selling other people stuff when I can just do it myself?” So, you got Snow. You had all these points. What was the launch of Snow? And like what was the initial path? So, like for people that don’t know Snow, Snow’s now nine figures plus, and you’re branching out into all sorts of stuff.

Josh Snow: Yeah. Toothpaste, toothbrushes, teeth whitening, of course, we’re famous for, CVS, Nordstrom.

Brad Weimert: But in the beginning, how did you launch it? And what was the first? What was the path to launch?

Josh Snow: Yeah, absolutely. I mean I will highlight that point about wanting to be successful so bad. And in the beginning, especially the first like seven figures, let’s call it, of personal income, even less than that, first 200,000, it’s Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. If you don’t have that food, shelter, security, I could eat whatever I want to eat, whenever I want to eat it. I can kind of live wherever I want to live. Maybe it’s not a mansion, right, you know at that point? But I could pretty much live in a really good place. I don’t have to worry about it. And then security, I’m in a safe neighborhood, safe area. It’s so difficult. And that’s what the American dream is and why America is so special is that you can go like me from rubbing two pennies together on a city bus to the life of your dreams five, ten years later. And that’s possible in this country. But I think that there’s, and I’ve done a lot of work on this with myself, even after I sold companies for tens of millions of dollars, there’s still that dialog inside that says on one side, it’s imposter syndrome. I’ve worked on that a lot but always is there.

And I’m sure even Elon Musk would say, “I deal with imposter syndrome sometimes.” It might be way less and he has one word he probably says that kills it in his mind right away, but it sits there and says, “Can I build a car company? Am I going to go under?” There’s moments that no matter what size, and I’m sure at that point you’re talking about billions of billions of dollars. So, what we do, and I’m saying we as entrepreneurs typically will do, is have 5, 10 side hustles at once because the fear of… On one side we’re like, “Yeah, shiny object syndrome. The better you control that, the more money you make. Focus is where most of the money is made anyway.” But there’s this idea of exploration and exploitation that Naval Ravikant talks a lot about. And I like the analogy of your exploration is, “I’ll meet anyone for coffee. When you’re starting early on, you have more time than money.” Where now it’s like, “I’ve got more money than time. So, the exploitation piece is more important.” Exploitation sounds bad, but you’re exploiting what you’ve explored.

You go and explore. You go to all the mastermind events, all the ever talk to all kinds of people, collect all your treasures. And now you say, “What is going to be my shop? What are we going to carry?” And that’s the exploitation side. And so, if you’re me, go back and forth to exploration out of my cave. I’m exploring. Get as much as I can in. Exploitation, take what I’ve learned and exploit it inside the business. But there was a toxic trait to that underlying piece, which is because I grew up in adversity and adversity doesn’t just mean money so adversity can mean anything, that adversity drilled into my head that I’ve got to be busy all the time, I’ve got to keep running, even with millions of dollars in my pocket. I’ve got to keep going. And there’s an addiction piece to that which is our sport of business. Just like Tom Brady is like, “I’m going to do another year and even if it means compromising my family, I can’t stop.” That’s just one example and I’ve dealt with it myself where what’s the goal here? Yeah. I think that changes every few years. So, I got to Snow. I said, “What’s the goal here?” At this point, I had made millions of dollars. I understand how to build businesses, but I’ve never…

Brad Weimert: And how old are you?

Josh Snow: 22, 23.

Brad Weimert: See, that’s wild. So, you had made millions of dollars. You’d had companies that you had built to 1, 5, 10 million and then sold.

Josh Snow: Yeah.

Brad Weimert: And you’re having this revelation when you’re 22, 23. That thing and I want to talk about kind of how your mentality shifted as you established now because that thing, that mentality is something that at each chapter in entrepreneurial growth and in your business growth, you’re confronted with new mental shifts, right? And where you get your dopamine, where you get your value? And it’s a really challenging thing for a lot of entrepreneurs, both on exit and at the different phases. So, you had this early and you decided to start Snow. Bootstrap Snow?

Josh Snow: Bootstrap. We bootstrapped the first 100 million in sales.

Brad Weimert: Jesus. So, okay. But you had money at the time to start it.

Josh Snow: I did but I didn’t give it all. This is just a practice of how I was building companies at the time. I would program the website myself a lot of times. I had my website design shop. I had my own media buyer. So, I would use that to build it as cheap as I could, but as well as I could to kick it off. So, Snow, I got to a mental shift at the time, and I had to start really young, and I wanted to start really young. And everybody has a path. You could take my window pane of overnight success story of ten years, and you can slide that around and you’ll find people that match that at 35 to 45 when they kick it into gear. I just always I’m the youngest in my family, always had an older soul, always wanted to be a community leader, wanted to represent my community. I think growing up not seeing, particularly for me, a Hispanic entrepreneur is like, “Who do you look up to?” “Steve Jobs.” There wasn’t like this someone where it felt all the way in that nature.

Brad Weimert: Just like you.

Josh Snow: Just like me, right? It’s like, “Whoa.” And that’s a big deal. And that’s why we do our TV show, Going Public, which is just from season two with Wall Street Journal. Being on that show means a lot to me. Not for my ego. Knowing that the younger me seeing someone even wearing a tracksuit on a publicly traded related show on Wall Street Journal, “Oh, okay.” Like, things have changed. And so, I think of that mental shift because this leads to why Snow has started. I had actually become pretty depressed for about six months. I had sold a company and I was so used to the intensity. I’ve got a client call at 9, another one at 9:30. I need you to come grab me at 10:15. And then I’m going to eat lunch at 11. That was how I had built my schedule because prior to that, I had 22 credits a semester plus the business. And so, I had kind of built my own prison of intensity that is very difficult to break away from. We all meet people there and I’m invested in two dozen companies all across the range, and I run a few of them still today. Even then, it’s a lot of work, right?

But you’ll run into people all the time and I was this person. I’ve got an agency, I’ve got a solar company, I’ve got this, I’ve got this. And they’re all making money, but not one of them is a standout where it’s like you wouldn’t spend time on anything else if that one was really standout. So, I was kind of in this chaotic intensity mode, which I still struggle with today. I’m always trying to keep it in check. And then I was lacking purpose. And that’s when it hit me that there wasn’t this… Because I used to write it down all the time, the vision board. I’m like, “Okay. When I have $10 million, this is what it’s going to mean. And then I’ll take care of myself and I’ll take a trip,” just all of these like super intense goals that were almost impossible so that I could wake up with that fire. And I think that when I was starting Snow, I realized that the pursuit is my happiness, not the pursuit of this point where you get to the peak, and that’s where the view and everything.

Because I had run up this mountain various sizes many times, and as soon as I got to the top, you feel elated for a little bit, dopamine hit, but the dopamine hit comes from the hiking. It comes from the challenges, the growth that comes from there, the pain. And I said, “Wow. That is more important to me. So, if I’m going to do that anyway, why not spend?” And with Snow, I’ve taken $0 off the table so we’ve sold hundreds of millions of dollars of oral care, absolutely zero outside of a salary that I now take, but $0 off the table for eight years now. So, you talked about burning the boats, going all in, changing my name to Josh Snow online. I needed that. And at that time, I was like, “Okay. Do I go and sell some more supplements, furniture? Like, what am I going to do? Do I become an investor? What does that mean?” At that time, I said, “I think I need to put on the biggest challenge that I’ve ever had to keep me focused so that I don’t go crazy. And if I’m going to spend that time on the mountain, I might as well hike Mount Everest because that’s where I get the joy from.

Anyway, if I die hiking and never make it to the summit, know that I die just as happy. And that was a realization. I see it now that I’m older but at the time it was just a feeling of like I was kind of frustrated like, “Oh, I build these onesie twosies. I want to have one thing that I could hold on to that would mean something and the challenge and the struggle would keep me alive. Otherwise, who knows where I’d be today.” So, Snow, even though I’ve taken $0 off the table, it’s given me more than I could ever repay it because it’s given me that sense of purpose. Similar to like a family would or having kids, it gave me that purpose where all the odds are stacked against me. So, I started out the business with just a small amount of capital for my own personal side. I needed to create the first version of the product, which is one product is what I launched with, one website, one traffic channel, which was Facebook ads. And at the time, because I was in the agency world, I had lots of people that I could kind of tap on even at that time, “Hey, would you run ads?

I reached out to like my buddy, Nick Shackelford, a common thread he was at at the time and just kind of tapped a few people once I set up the very basis, one-page website, one product. Let me see if teeth whitening oral care is even something I can get someone to listen to me on. We’ve now sold millions of units of product but that was the start. Me building the website, working with the website team, working with the ad team. I learned obviously throughout those years how to run media, how to build a website, how to program. I didn’t know anything. But like you said, same thing with Elon, if someone else can learn that, why couldn’t I learn that? It might take some time but let me challenge myself. So, that was the first iteration was what is now, I mean, it doesn’t look anything like this, but the first version was very similar to this teeth whitening kit, which we now have dozens of products in the line, toothpaste, toothbrushes. But it was teeth whitening kit and the idea was to like, how do we get maximum whitening results with virtually zero sensitivity? Because there are stuff with no sensitivity or whatever but they never really work.

Brad Weimert: Didn’t work well, yeah.

Josh Snow: And then you have like stuff that worked really well but all out it hurts.

Brad Weimert: Yeah.

Josh Snow: So, I’m like, there’s got to be something in the middle. And that’s what I launched with. The first kit was, “Professional-level results at home for a fraction of the cost of going to professional without the sensitivity you might be used to from those types of treatments. And if this is something interesting to you, click here,” essentially, right? Those are the first versions of the ads. And sure enough, it struck a chord. I wasn’t the only one that wanted super results, but I didn’t want to compromise the sensitivity and be in pain. How could I get both? And once I set those ads out, let’s put some money into those ads, started to get some conversions. Turn $1,000 into $2,000.

Brad Weimert: Did you have the products at this point or are you testing?

Josh Snow: I did a small test for like a week, just to test. Like, I went to Amazon, read all the reviews I could especially the one stars but also the five stars, and saw what was a commonality. Wrote the copy based off of that. So, it’s like the five-star is, “I love that it’s easy to use. I love that it’s affordable.” So, affordable, easy to use. “But I don’t like that it causes sensitivity or I don’t like that it’s slimy. I don’t like the taste of it.” So, together you got the five-star and then the one-star, and then the product is built right in the middle of that. And so, I tested the copy. Just found myself a couple hundred bucks in ads or whatever. Then I had the product six months later, and actually the first version of it, and I said, “Oh man, it’s now in my hands. Hot potato. Gotta get it off.” And it wasn’t until about a year after that that Snow really started to take off. But I just had a feeling for years that oral care was something that needed some innovation and that it was something big enough and hard enough that it matched my criteria of what I was focused on.

Brad Weimert: All right. Okay. So, I want to get the summary of like product development but I really want to get to the scaling phase. So, bullet points, you had to develop a product.

Josh Snow: Yes.

Brad Weimert: And Snow is a teeth whitening by light?

Josh Snow: LED.

Brad Weimert: LEDs. So, teeth whitening by LED. Did a product like that exist before you launched?

Josh Snow: There were onesie twosies definitely out there. There were a lot of the ones the little battery kind of operated, but the lights, there’s like eight little bulbs on there. It wasn’t enough because the idea is that there’s an awesome service in the dental offices for years called Zoom, which has done a really good job on that side of the market.

Brad Weimert: But they sell to dentists.

Josh Snow: They only sell to dentists.

Brad Weimert: And you have to do it in-office.

Josh Snow: You have to do it in-office.

Brad Weimert: Got it.

Josh Snow: They use ultraviolet, which is even more effective but they do have to put the gingival barriers since the UV is stronger.

Brad Weimert: Got it.

Josh Snow: So, it works. It’s an incredible system. And the idea was how do I mimic that as closely as possible through the results with something a little less intense but still strong enough. So, that’s where, I mean, Google is your best friend. And then LinkedIn was my best friend too, reaching out to people. I still do this today. Every week, when I’m looking for a new space that I’m looking to enter or even inside the business, an HR extraordinaire, and I’ll google which companies have been awarded for their HR practices. Then I’ll go search on LinkedIn, find their HR director, reach out, and say, “Hey, are you available? It’s noncompetitive. Would love to pay you for an hour every time. Huge fan of what you built. I’m working on this thing in Snow and I think you could be a lot of help.” So, kind of jumping to the front of the line where people are at, and almost everyone responds in one way, shape, or form. Now, I have tools like ContactOut, SignalHire, RocketReach that’ll get me their cell phone number, their direct email. So, my hit rate is even higher nowadays. And I use that for contracting vendors. I use that for all kinds of stuff.

Brad Weimert: Amazing.

Josh Snow: And so, I was reaching out to formulators and a lot of them will formulate for you for a set cost. They’ll say, “$2,000 I’ll formulate for you.” The good news is that most of the ingredients were already online. And so, I knew that hydrogen peroxide is famous for its whitening power. That’s what people use. There’s carbamide peroxide. Oh, wow. That’s a derivative of hydrogen peroxide. Could I use both of them together? And so, kind of researching that, going back to my dentist, my oral surgeon, and my orthodontics who had become friends now at the time. And just saying, “What’s your thoughts on this? Or what do you think if I put 12% hydrogen peroxide and 18% carbamide and that broke down, does that make sense to you? What I’m reading sounds right?” Then go into the formulator and say, “How do we put this peroxide?” It’s a difficult ingredient to work with. We’ve had so many batches that we’ve had to pull from quality control because if you put too high of an amount of hydrogen peroxide, for example, it liquefies everything in there. So, you go from a gel viscosity to literally like water because of that hydrogen peroxide breaking everything down.

Brad Weimert: Okay. So, that’s super interesting. So, basically, what I heard is you did a sh*tload of research by targeting the people that you knew. In Ray Dalio’s terms, it would be believable people.

Josh Snow: Correct.

Brad Weimert: Right? You were like, “I’m confident that they know what they’re talking about,” to figure out how to create the product, which is something that almost nobody does like actually listening to people. My question there is when you are super ignorant and you’re doing research, do you have some framework for establishing your own confidence? Meaning, if you’re going to be sold by people that are believable, right, they’re going to say, “Yes, this is the way,” and then somebody else can say, “Yes, this is the way.” How do you know what to trust and what not to trust? You have some method there?

Josh Snow: I like to get as much. So, when I find someone that I like listening to, let’s say a random podcast guest, I will then go and obsessively research everything on that person, listen to every podcast at 2X speed while I’m working out, while I’m driving to work. And it takes me about a week, usually, unless they have so much deep work that I’m reading like 20 books that they wrote. But generally, I can get through the gist of that person, and it allows me to download the pieces that I think are applicable to my mix of smoothie. So, it’s like, put a banana in there, put a strawberry in there, and you do a little taste test, which is let’s try that out. And then the customer’s ultimately right. So, once you have even one customer. I was calling customers back from day one. I’ll call them up myself, printing out a shipping label, and then I’d be on a phone with the customer. First customer, one random person. Someone bought this product. Why did you buy? How did you like the product? Did you receive it okay? And so, we learned a lot back in the day. We can see through where the product is today.

The oldest product we have, it’s evolved so much through customer feedback but in the beginning, when you don’t have a ton of that, I try to download what everyone says. “Oh, I don’t like that. I like this,” and they’re all believable people, put it all together with my research as well and say, “What’s two variations inside of her that could be right?” So, maybe he’s right, maybe he’s almost right, maybe he’s completely wrong. And a lot of times I’ll go back to those people as well and I’ll be like, “Hey, you were telling me this. I talked to so-and-so, Dr. Joe, and he says he doesn’t really like it.” “Well, he’s saying that because it’s the amino acids.” “What does that mean?” “Well, I see what he’s saying and that’s that.” So, I’ll go back and forth a few times just to thread it through. Then I can look it on a page and go, “Is that something I feel confident about?” Then feed it to the market and see if the market feels comfortable with it. And then that creates the thesis, right?

Now, we know what our customers like more so than what they don’t like. And you kind of get that over time. But I recommend everybody through the service or product business, talk to your customers, like not just sell them and check in on them. Actually, talk through the use case. “How are you using this?” “Oh, I have a wedding coming up. I need my teeth white, so I’m actually going to use it three times a day. I know you only recommend once per day, but I’m going to do it anyway.” And you hear this and you go, “Okay. Why do you need to do it three times a day?” “Because I’m behind. I should have been doing this before the wedding and I’ve got one week left. That photo means everything to me.”

Brad Weimert: That’s great.

Josh Snow: So, that becomes ad copy. That becomes testimonial.

Brad Weimert: Amazing.

Josh Snow: Taking those real use cases, and you won’t hear that unless you talk to enough people and you listen.

Brad Weimert: I love this. So, the first thing that I heard that people don’t do normally is and this is a really important consideration. Don’t take advice at service level. And even if you want to take advice from a believable person, make sure you understand their thought process. So, by going back to them and putting two opposing views together and having them explain it in probably a non-confrontational way.

Josh Snow: No, I invite them to dinner. I mean, one night I invite them to dinner and just like, “Hey, here’s what we’re thinking. Here’s what I’m thinking. What do you think about this? By the way, you guys should share your local. We should share business.” So, it’s a win-win. And I think that in one hour, just by listening to them even debate, you’re like, “Okay. I can take my stance on this and kind of try it out.” And I can go back to them and say what worked and what’s working. And so, now there’s that two-way communication where they’re saying, “Josh, you have 55 million shoppers. What is a community of oral care buyers thinking about? What are they prioritizing? Is it flavor?” So, it kind of switched.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. This is now very much later in the picture.

Josh Snow: Later, later, later.

Brad Weimert: But the other thing that you said that I think is really valuable is listening to customers and, look, this is one of these cliche things that every entrepreneur hears and you’re like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, listen to your customers.” But you gave a tactical thing that I think is really, really important and valuable, which is that when you talk to them, that informs all of your copy. So, when you talk to them, that’s what gives you the hook, gives you the idea of how to handle objections, of course, gives you the testimonial if it’s good but that allows you to market in the future. And I think that that’s something that might motivate some entrepreneurs to do it their own…

Josh Snow: A lot of people are afraid to pick up the phone and call.

Brad Weimert: Oh my God.

Josh Snow: I pull up Shopify. They have the phone number right there and I literally just on my phone type the number in, “Hi, this is Josh from TrySnow.com. Mrs. Jones, I see that you placed an order for our teeth whitening system. I’m so excited for you to receive it. If you don’t mind, can we spend 1 or 2 minutes? I’m curious. We’re building this business from scratch. And with customers like you, wanted to understand what made you pull the trigger on purchasing our product and what are your expectations with the product?” “Well, I just got divorced, and I’m back in the dating scene. I drink a lot. I used to smoke a lot and I finally quit smoking cigarettes, but I’m stuck with these stains. And I have super sensitive teeth. I’ve done the dental stuff. I know it works, but I’m looking for something that is a little bit more up my alley, and I think this could work.” Then you call them, and then you say, “How did you use it?” “I use it when I’m taking off my makeup. At night, I take off my makeup. It’s my nightly routine.”

Oh, so the ads should showcase someone taking their makeup off and nightly routine of how it’s used. I didn’t know that. And I talked to Kurt from Vital Proteins and he said the same thing. In early days, he was selling sports recovery for the collagen drink. Then he started to see a lot of women purchasing the product for beauty and hair and skin. And by listening to that, he pivoted and went from their old packaging, which you can still google and it was very more unisex, maybe more manly-esque, sports, athlete-focused.

Brad Weimert: Athlete-focused.

Josh Snow: Nope. And now Jennifer Aniston is their Chief Creative Officer. So, they went full on and they had a huge exit a few years ago, and they built this billion-dollar brand that is Vital Proteins by listening to the customer reacting to that. Because ultimately, you got your believable people but if you follow the money, even if it’s one client, two clients, three customers, people are afraid to have that dialog of conversation. And I try to look for the negatives nowadays more than the positives. We have tens of thousands of positive reviews, 10,000-plus transformation photos. So, we know the products work. We know what people are using them for. We have a lot of those angles. We get shocked all the time. COVID was a whole new thing for us because now you’re on Zoom and it’s just ahead. So, we went from selfie, where the smile is important, to just your head and you’re working. That’s it. Now, your smile takes up more than ever of your identity than before. So, we wanted to lean into that.

And so, we started changing our messaging, “Whiten before your next Zoom call.” Just that alone by saying, “Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Whiten before my Zoom call. I guess that does make sense,” versus, “Whiten before your next wedding,” and it’s someone that’s not even in that buying pool. That all comes from customer conversations, reading the one-star reviews. We respond to every review in the company now. We pull it into a dashboard to understand most of the negative. What’s going on? Supply chain issues. People can’t use PayPal and they want to use PayPal, just the most random stuff. We look for those patterns. And I think if you just keep doing what you can, you can’t do everything but if you can say, “All right. Let’s add PayPal as a payment option. That seems like a lot of people want it.” If you respond to that every month, you treat your business in an adaptive way that it becomes better and better. If everyone is saying the sandwich is dry and you add some dressing to it, and now your reviews went up, then you add something else to it. “It’d be great if I had chips.” “What kind of chips?” And now you create that around it.

Brad Weimert: I love it. So, let’s get tactical on this. So, how long did it take you to get from zero to a million in sales?

Josh Snow: About 6 or 7 months.

Brad Weimert: Okay. Fast. Especially for e-com. Fast. 1 million to 10 million?

Josh Snow: About a year.

Brad Weimert: Okay. The whole thing was f*cking fast. Yeah.

Josh Snow: Yeah. 18 months. Pretty quick.

Brad Weimert: So, when you talk about listening to customers, I can hear in the echoes of my mind thousands of entrepreneurs at varying stages. I mean, honestly, it could be a $30 million company and the entrepreneur being like, “I don’t have time for that sh*t.” At what point did you get out of operations and being the bottleneck of the business? And did you invest in a team? Because I know that you are truly a CEO that doesn’t do but leads. So, at what point did that transition happen in terms of headcount or money or whatever makes sense?

Josh Snow: That was hard because you have to learn not just delegation. That’s its whole thing on its own or E-Myth type of stuff. And that’s where you go from even six figure to seven figures, but then especially seven to eight. It’s very hard to do eight figures sustainably and profitably just on your own. I mean, there are businesses that do that. I have investments that do that, but not like an actual full-on business. And so, in the beginning, I was printing out labels because I sold the business, trying to figure out what I’m going to do, start investing, had a couple of other stuff still running. So, I had the time at that moment to say, “All right. I’m going to see where this goes.” I didn’t know from day one that Snow would be what it is today. I just knew that I had to make it that, and I had to try my best to make it that. So, you choose that business. That’s what keeps you from shiny object syndrome is every day you wake up and you choose that business, even when things are hard.

Now, if you’re losing a bunch of money, there’s no way out of it, and it’s ruining your life, be willing to swap out that business for something better, for sure. It shouldn’t be that difficult. But I think going from doing everything, calling the customers, immediately it was like, “Okay. I can’t call the customer so I need customer support help. I can’t ship everything myself from my spare bedroom. I need a warehouse or a third-party logistics player to ship out this inventory.” And then I can’t run all the ads myself, which was pretty evident early on. Even though that was a good use of my time, it still boiled down to not being the best use of my time. So, then it was ad buyers. And I started with some agencies to get comfortable. They had a team so they could bring on 4 or 5 people at once for, let’s say, $5,000 a month, reinvest that into that spot. Then 18 months through that process, you’re really just delegating pieces of you essentially.

Like, if I was doing customer support, I need someone to do customer support. If I was doing calling customers, I need someone else to call the customers. I was running the media. I need them to do the media. I’m ordering inventory. I need them to order inventory all the way up to product itself. So, product development, product innovation. I’m a patented inventor through Snow. We have five world-first inventions in oral care that is not done by myself anymore. I have a team that we work with, a small team but an incredible team that I work with, and a partner that is focused on product development. So, it’s hard. First, you got to break through delegation, trusting people, not being cheap to get really good people. That’s not just dollar amounts, but how do you manage people. Then how do you become a leader? Because leadership and management are different. Leadership and management and like six, seven-figure entrepreneurship where they’re the solo driver. “I’ll just do it. I’ll just do it. I got it. I’m selling the client. I’m fulfilling it. I’m creating the funnel.” Most people get stuck there.

Brad Weimert: Yeah.

Josh Snow: And so, in order to do something big, again, we go back to Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, you name it, Warren Buffett, same eight hours a day or 24 hours a day that we have but their ability to get a lot more done. How did they do that? Systems, sure, software helps, but it’s ultimately people. And so, I realize that the highest-paid skill in the world, in my opinion, is the ability to convince other people to work with you and to bring over. And the better you’re at doing that and the better of a company you have, like with Snow, people know coming in, I have all the cars and all that stuff. I’ve done that. I’m past that. I’ve taken zero off the table, so it’s not, “Oh, I’m going to help my boss just get rich and buy another car, do something like that.” It’s like, “Why is this guy here? Like, he’s successful. He’s wealthy. Why is he subjecting himself to all of this entrepreneurial growing pains? Oh, he’s passionate. He’s addicted to this. I feel safe.” And that signals a higher level of team member to come over than if it’s just, “Hey, I need to make XYZ amount of money, etcetera.”

You’ll attract good people but I think the people you’re really looking for, eventually, you have to signal that out. And so, I had to realize and this was hard for me, asking for help was one of the hardest things I ever learned to do. I always did everything myself. Figured it out myself. I’ll do it. I’ll figure it out. I got it. Solve other people’s problems myself. Just addicted to doing that.

Brad Weimert: Can you pin the transition of having this desire and addiction to accomplish yourself versus fully delegating and entrusting and empowering your team to some moment in time or something in the growth?

Josh Snow: I can, but it’s still there, right? Like, I still struggle with that today. It’s still a great opportunity of growth for me as a leader, and I think I’ll spend the rest of my life getting better at it because I’m committed to being the best leader that I can be. How do I instill, drive, or activate further drive in the right individuals? How do I get rid of people that aren’t a good fit fast enough instead of holding on to them? Learning how to hire people for where they’re at versus where I think they could be with my optimistic, entrepreneurial mindset. And so, there’s so much in there and I think I’m still to this day, I’ve got a great, for example, at Snow, INALA, any one of my brands, I’ve got great people there. But when things go haywire for a week or something happens, product is late or whatever, I find myself wanting to jump and I do sometimes jump back in, and it annoys some of my team members.

But I go back into and I’m not a micromanager by any means. I’m a macro manager, but I jump into that intensity like, “Oh my gosh, we got to fix this.” I’m up all night. Elon does it sleeping at his desk. He’s a billionaire and he’s like sleeping on his desk. I think that’s just part of the game. But you want to figure out how can I communicate better, communicate the vision of what I’m building better. Steve Jobs is one of the best at selling that vision and that story and used LinkedIn like how I used to reach out to really good people, the believable, strong people in the industry. And you go, “Man, this person has built exactly what I’m needing to build.” Let’s say it’s influencer marketing on TikTok. I know this person just did it. I checked the spy tool and I see that this brand is crushing it. I see their LinkedIn. They were there for four years. I can see the similar web traffic of where they blew up. This is the person. If I could convince this person to join our organization and do what they did there, that’d be huge but that’s self-serving. I’ve got to figure out what is in it for them.

So, hopping on a call and understanding, “What do you want to do? Do you want to make a lot of money? Do you want more equity, stock options? More acknowledgment? Do you want a title that you’re seeking? What is it that you’re kind of looking for?” And if I can actually provide that and follow through with that, otherwise, I stay close to them and I’ll ask them, “Do you have anyone you recommend in your network? Now that we’ve talked and you understand what I’m looking for, you might not be the great fit today, Brad, but is there anyone that comes to mind?” “Not right now, honestly, but I’ll keep it.” “Okay. Well, is it fine if I follow up with you next week and see if you think of anyone?” So, now you plant these seeds with people that are believable, qualified. And now you put… It’s like fishing. You put a net over here, put a net over here, but that’s not your water, so you need permission to throw a net in there, and then you go check your nets every day.

You say, “Whoa, we just got the guy or girl from Alo Yoga that built out their whole Instagram strategy, and they want to work with us and they might want to come on to the team.” So, creating that also culture where it’s not about what I did and taking credit. It’s how did I contribute to this and did it either drive brand equity or profitable revenue? Ideally both. So, that’s the framework we use internally to solve it. Those are the two. And if it drives both, just go for it. So, there’s autonomy. So, you kind of figure out along the way. I wasn’t really great at working with people early on. It was kind of like, “Get out of my way. Watch this. If you could just print the label, I’ll do the rest. Do not mess that up.” That was me in the beginning, right? Now I’m looking for more of those leading questions. Where do you think we could get next month getting that buy-in?

Because ultimately, if you’re not the one doing the work and you’re not there every second to micromanage, you have to actively got to hire the right people that have drive and all that. But then are we aligned and rowing in the same direction? Because what ends up happening is people delegate. They’re like, “Okay, I did it. I read E-Myth, 4-Hour Workweek, I delegated but it freaking sucks and they’re not listening and I’m having to jump back in.” That’s normal. Then you have to think, “Is it the people? Is it my leadership skills?” And that was the hardest part was, “Let me ask for feedback.” And I almost like tell people, “Roast me. Just tear me apart pre-game right now. Go.” “Are you sure? You’re my boss. I don’t want to get fired.” “I promise you nothing with this closed chamber for 30 minutes, go at it.” And they’ll share, “You know, sometimes when you send that message late at night, it makes the team feel a little bit insecure.”

So, you start listening and that’s hard to take in because you’re like, “Dang, I’ve got a long way to go. I’ve got to figure this out.” But then what I do? I go on YouTube, podcast, what I’ve done since I was 13. Reach out on LinkedIn. Reach out to a coach. “Hey, could it pay for one session? I really want to work on this thing that my team says I have an opportunity to improve on.” So, then you start to move into the leadership, communication, driving the vision, goals, weekly goals, monthly goals. And you become trusted by better and better people to do that, which means those better and better people can attract better and better people on their team to trust them to do it. And it becomes this kind of stack of competency, credibility, and follow-through. And if you’ve got those three pieces and really good people and you build that into your culture, your people will help you push out people that aren’t a good fit. They’ll help block it.

What you don’t want is you create a culture of mediocrity, and it blocks extraordinary people because it makes them feel insecure because of the mediocrity. People don’t like change. So, that’s a lot in there but I think I didn’t know any of this stuff. I can’t do this on my own. I need to hire someone. I mean, hire someone better.

Brad Weimert: Yeah.

Josh Snow: Then we hire another person. Now, there’s three. One of them should be a leader, so I don’t have to come in and check the daily reports as often. You’re now going to get paid a little bit more. You have a different title. You’re now in charge of driving that daily report. I just need a text once a day of what those numbers are, three numbers, and they need to be accurate. Got it. And like you get that by and then little by little you realize, “Wow. When you hire,” and I’ll end this point here is, “When you hire someone really good, you almost feel embarrassed.” And I remember early on in the business, even Snow, we got some really amazing partnerships, some really amazing team members that I was talking to, to bring on to the team. And it’s kind of like you have LeBron James goes, “I’m going to come play at your basketball court. We’ll play some ball next week.”

You’re waxing that floor. You’re making sure the balls are, you know, what kind does he like, make sure he’s ready so you can really make sure that you… If LeBron joins your team, let’s say for example, a basketball team, LeBron wants to join the team, we go, “Oh, my gosh, Brad. LeBron says he’s willing to sign with us. He just wants to come check out our core and see how we do stuff.” You start freaking out. Same thing happens when you hire an extraordinary person. They might make you feel uncomfortable. Like, “What are your SOPs? Do you have them documented and filed and organized?” “No.” “What about this? What about your sales taxes?” You’re like, “Uhhh.” That uncomfortability I think it’s important to figure out, wow, this person can come in and help me build that and say, “We don’t have that today. Do you think that’s important for our type of business?” “Obviously.” “Okay. Well, what did it take to do it last time when you did it?”

And so, taking that moment and if that person’s bought in, they’re willing to build. And I think it’s important that you hire people early on that are builders as well to their own degree because you’re not going to have everything figured out, and you have to have that entrepreneurial burst inside of those people that they’re going to not back down from adversity and not having everything laid out for them.

Brad Weimert: I love this, man. It’s so good because most entrepreneurs, the single thing that gets in their way is themself.

Josh Snow: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Brad Weimert: And a lot of that is ego, right? And so, the ability to recognize that it is not even plausible that you would have the answers and you’re not expected to. What you are expected to do is have a vision. And if you get great people, trust them to build. And I think so many good points in here. I know you have a hard stop and I have like 16,000 other questions about this.

Josh Snow: We’ll have to do another one of these then.

Brad Weimert: I love it. I love it, man. If people want to learn more about Josh Snow or the brand, where do you want to point them?

Josh Snow: Man, I’m @JoshSnow on Instagram. That’s probably where I’m most active. And then everything’s in my bio, @snow, @frost is our kids’ line, @inala is the haircare line, @goingpublic is a TV show. So, everything is pretty much at JoshSnow on Instagram.

Brad Weimert: Love it, man. Well, I appreciate it. I’m looking forward to round 2.

Josh Snow: Yeah. Let’s do it. Thanks, brother. Appreciate it.