Product Startup Podcast Episode 159: Build a Community Around Your Product

00:00:00 Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today we learn from $150 million per year direct-to-consumer product founder on how to build a community to scale your new hardware product sales.

00:00:09 Narrator: You're listening to the Product Startup Podcast, a show to learn from top leaders in product development, prototyping, manufacturing, product selling, and everything in between.

00:00:17 Narrator: Hosted by Kevin Mako, the leading expert on product development for physical product startups,

00:00:21 Narrator: sponsored by PTC's two best-in-class 3D CAD product development software solutions Onshape and Creo, and produced by Mako Design + Invent, the original firm providing world.

00:00:30 Narrator: class consumer product development services tailored specifically to startups small manufacturers and

00:00:34 Kevin Mako: inventors welcome back everyone today i'm very excited to introduce ashley black to the show ashley is the founder of FasciaBlaster and many other related products her company

00:00:43 Kevin Mako: sells millions of dollars of product per month directly to her customers all over the world and has built a community

00:00:49 Kevin Mako: of over eight million followers on social media she is also a two-time best-selling author her

00:00:54 Kevin Mako: most recent book is titled from passion and purpose to product and prosperity today ashley is

00:00:59 Kevin Mako: going to share some valuable knowledge in how inventor startups and small manufacturers can build

00:01:02 Kevin Mako: customer communities around your new hardware product, how to be the personal brand behind your

00:01:07 Kevin Mako: product, and how to ensure successful brand growth so that you can be the next hardware startup unicorn. Now on to the episode.

00:01:15 Kevin Mako: Hey, Ashley, welcome to the show.

00:01:17 Kevin Mako: Thank you. So happy to be here. Very excited to have you on today to talk about building a consumer brand. What better person to talk

00:01:23 Kevin Mako: about than somebody who's got over 8 million followers on social media, over 150 million in sales in your product, building multiple product lines.

00:01:31 Kevin Mako: You understand a lot about getting a hardware product from that idea phase, which is how you started through to a highly successful empire.

00:01:39 Kevin Mako: First and foremost, congratulations on winning the Stevie Award in the Women of the Year and Lifetime Achievement category for specifically consumer goods. That's a big award,

00:01:48 Kevin Mako: a major achievement.

00:01:49 Ashley Black: So congratulations on winning that. Thank you. I don't feel like I'm old enough yet for a lifetime achievement.

00:01:56 Ashley Black: No, but that was great. You know, you have people nominate you for these awards. And for me, charging in consumer goods, which is one of the harder

00:02:05 Ashley Black: ways to do business. It's also one of the most rewarding ways to do business to be recognized specifically for that. It was a lot of validation for me.

00:02:15 Ashley Black: And it was a big one. It was really nice. You don't do it for the awards.

00:02:19 Kevin Mako: But when you get them, it sure does feel good. Yeah, and that's a big one. I know there's like thousands of nominations. for that. It's a really big deal.

00:02:25 Kevin Mako: It's a globally recognized awards. So amazing that you accomplished that. But bigger picture, you've accomplished tens and tens of millions of dollars in

00:02:33 Kevin Mako: sales just on your first core product, let alone obviously you've diverged into a portfolio of products. How did you get from the idea phase from where you started to

00:02:43 Ashley Black: where you are today? I mean, I would start with passion. I think at the end of the day, you have to want it. You have to

00:02:49 Ashley Black: breathe it, eat it, sleep it, it has to be inherent to who you are in order to have the level

00:02:56 Ashley Black: of success that I've had, but also the quickness of the success and the resilience of the success. So I would say to anyone out there, like, that is

00:03:06 Ashley Black: the core ingredient, is the passion no matter what. And if and when the failures come, it's like, okay, next, what's the next thing?

00:03:14 Ashley Black: So for me, I talk about it all the time with my friends and family who many of them work for the company. I feel like I got everybody on board with my

00:03:23 Ashley Black: mission first. And anything that's happened in business has just kind of been gravy because our mission

00:03:31 Ashley Black: is to change the healthcare industry and the fitness industry. And we're doing that. We started doing that in day one, just with one person.

00:03:41 Ashley Black: You know, so having the sales and the business structure and all of that has almost been kind of the bonus.

00:03:49 Ashley Black: And I just really think if you focus on your mission,

00:03:53 Kevin Mako: the many follows. Give us a bit of a background on the story behind this startup.

00:04:00 Ashley Black: So going back to Passion, I was a collegiate gymnast, came out of the womb wanting to be an athlete, but I had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.

00:04:09 Ashley Black: So that was a little bit of a conflict. And then when I was 30, I got a flesh-eating bacteria that literally almost killed me.

00:04:19 Ashley Black: And I kind of just had to go back to that sheer will and determination. And I will find a way that I did as gymnast.

00:04:29 Ashley Black: And what I discovered was this whole system of the body fascia. Now, everybody's talking about fascia these days,

00:04:35 Ashley Black: but 20 years ago when I was 30, no one had heard of it. I hadn't heard of it. I actually had to have a bunch of papers from China translated to learn about this

00:04:45 Ashley Black: system of the body that is vital for our health. And the minute that I learned about it and used that knowledge to heal

00:04:54 Ashley Black: myself, I immediately was like, the world has to have that. And so that's where that burning

00:04:59 Kevin Mako: passion comes for me. That's the genesis. Amazing. And then that passion and that identification of a

00:05:06 Kevin Mako: need that led to facial blaster, which is a hugely successful product. Just give us a

00:05:11 Ashley Black: quick highlight of the story of the evolution of facial plaster. Yeah, so it's such a great story and it's really long, but I'll try to cut it in pieces.

00:05:20 Ashley Black: So the first way that I tried to launch, let's just say, fascist science, was in a clinical situation. So I ended up having eight clinics and 77 therapists.

00:05:30 Ashley Black: So I had trained, we were doing all this with our hands, basically, kind of the way a lot of people are doing now. And then I was like, let me raise some money and do a franchise.

00:05:39 Ashley Black: And then the franchise consultants came in. and then said, look, the value here is this knowledge and this result, not these walls and these people.

00:05:48 Ashley Black: So I ended up selling the business and using that as seed capital for the FasciaBlaster, which is a self-treatment tool.

00:05:56 Ashley Black: And I wasn't able to, quote, unquote, quit work. It's not like the FasciaBlaster was made and all of a sudden, you know, we launched it online.

00:06:04 Ashley Black: There was a good eight-year period where I still had to figure out how to make money for my

00:06:11 Ashley Black: So I moved to Hollywood because the thing I knew is that I was the best in the world at what I was

00:06:17 Ashley Black: doing. And so I spent quite some time in the celebrity market being like a celebrity therapist.

00:06:23 Ashley Black: So the most famous people in the world were the actual first users of the FasciaBlaster. And funny enough, they were all men, all men.

00:06:32 Ashley Black: I had almost exclusively male clients and then the occasional girlfriend dropped in. And I was using the tools for

00:06:40 Ashley Black: rehabilitation. And then when women started using it, they were like, wow, you know what, this is really smoothing my skin and contouring my body.

00:06:47 Ashley Black: And that was the first time I ever really thought this is a mass market product. And I had a huge, huge road hurdle to overcome because I had to say,

00:06:57 Ashley Black: hey, world, guess what? We have fascia. And then bring in the solution to the fascia problem. So I had to bring the problem and the solution to the market.

00:07:06 Kevin Mako: It required having some creativity. I'll put it that way. Amazing. And you've built that whole business by selling direct to consumer. And obviously,

00:07:16 Kevin Mako: one of the big things about selling direct to end customers, without middle people and whether it be

00:07:20 Kevin Mako: wholesalers, distributors, retailers, et cetera, you sold directly from yourself to the end buyer. You've done that by building a major community, a brand community around the

00:07:30 Kevin Mako: product and around the problems and solutions that you offer.

00:07:33 Ashley Black: How does a hardware startup start to develop this community for their product. So, you know, I don't have a sexy story here.

00:07:41 Ashley Black: I launched my product with Facebook ads. And I actually came in in the glory days of Facebook. So we're in the 2015.

00:07:49 Ashley Black: This is when you could do co-sponsored ads. It was before all the big guys, you know, really came in. But most of my community

00:07:56 Ashley Black: was built by people who were actually buying the product. So I focused on ads that sold the

00:08:03 Ashley Black: products and then we would obviously try to get them engaged in the social media. And even some of our

00:08:09 Ashley Black: ads were just directly to get them into our call it community because once they're in the community, the community speaks for you.

00:08:18 Ashley Black: It's much more powerful to hear from a woman that's like, my gosh, you know, I was bedridden and now I'm up and moving around than it is from the inventor and

00:08:27 Ashley Black: the creator. So I've always felt like my customers are really the best mouth. piece for me. We call them Ashley's Army.

00:08:35 Ashley Black: But at the end of the day, it is to pay to play. That's how it works. Like, yes, you can have things go viral. Yes, you can be the most amazing TikTok star.

00:08:43 Ashley Black: But at the end of the day, to get those, you know, core consumers and get those core people into your social, you pay. And I don't mean by your followers.

00:08:52 Ashley Black: What I mean is use advertising to create brand awareness, to get people involved in your community and also have direct sales that

00:09:01 Ashley Black: way. And so I I looked at it the other day. We've spent about $21 million now on various advertising on social platforms.

00:09:10 Ashley Black: But it's for me, the key, and this is great advice, I took out a $200 ,000 loan. I started with an agency. I still have the same guy on board with me now.

00:09:20 Ashley Black: And I said, look, we got $200,000 to get to a break-even. And we lost $80,000 before we hit the break-even.

00:09:28 Ashley Black: And then once you get to a certain return on your ad spend, then even though you're investing $21 million, you're making 80. So it's just getting to that point where you're not

00:09:37 Ashley Black: bleeding. And for me, the startup capital of $200,000 that I took out as a loan was to launch the

00:09:47 Ashley Black: business. I've self-funded everything else. So understanding that you've got to go make money

00:09:53 Kevin Mako: before you can raise capital, I think is a really big thing. That's very powerful. I mean, the key is you've got to develop a product. And as you did it, you self-funded it to the

00:10:02 Kevin Mako: the point where you had something that you could actually sell. And then from there, what I find

00:10:06 Kevin Mako: is very interesting is most people when they're looking to sell their first few units, even if it's

00:10:10 Kevin Mako: just a few thousand units or even a few hundred units, they're looking to spend money on direct

00:10:15 Kevin Mako: ads or a variety of other campaigns where you're spending a bit of money to try and get somebody to get eyeballs on your product and hopefully convert them into a sale.

00:10:23 Kevin Mako: But what you did, which is unique, is you didn't just focus on trying to sell somebody your product. You both did that, but also tried to engage them into your community.

00:10:32 Kevin Mako: And that had a bit of a compound effect, which gave you a better ROI on your ads, Ben, than just specifically trying

00:10:39 Ashley Black: to advertise to get direct sales. That's such a good point. And I would even back it up more than that. I always think

00:10:46 Ashley Black: about the Kevin Hart comedy where they say, everybody wants to be famous. Don't nobody want to do the work. Okay, listen, I stood outside of Crossfits.

00:10:54 Ashley Black: I slung them out of my trunk. And what did I give them? My social media tenure to please just post about. it. I'll sell it to you at cost. I had clients that were on the Yankees.

00:11:03 Ashley Black: I gave some to the Yankees. They got filmed on the sidelines. You know, I gave them to famous clients. I said, post about this if you love it.

00:11:10 Ashley Black: You know, so even prior to ads, I was doing the hard work. And I still do that. I had somebody over at my house yesterday and I was filming because every

00:11:20 Ashley Black: opportunity to introduce someone to your product to get a true reaction and then repost that on social media, that is an ad.

00:11:28 Ashley Black: It's just a non-traditional way to do ads. And I think people, when they go to launch, you know, they start going, well, I need to do Amazon. Then I need to get this.

00:11:36 Ashley Black: And I need, no, no, no. What you need to do is make money. Because if you make money, then you can say, okay, I made $5,000. Now I'm going to use that on that.

00:11:45 Kevin Mako: So I think the priority has to always be getting to selling your product. And you've got a method that you use. Obviously,

00:11:53 Kevin Mako: this is advertising to build the community, but also advertising to generate sales and kind of cross-pollinating those too. But you do it in a specific way.

00:12:00 Kevin Mako: You're a big advocate of being an authentic person, an authentic spokesperson for your own brand. In fact, you wrote the book,

00:12:07 Kevin Mako: which is a bestseller from passion and purpose to product and prosperity. And a lot of that comes down to being your authentic self and generating a tribe of individuals

00:12:16 Kevin Mako: who believe in not just your product, but in you as an individual and what you represent. Can you talk a bit about

00:12:22 Ashley Black: how that can substantially amplify both your community and your actual ad sales revenue. It's everything, Kevin. I obviously get asked the question all the time,

00:12:32 Ashley Black: how did you do it? And then I have people be like, oh, God, you know, I need somebody to do my social

00:12:38 Ashley Black: media. I just had this conversation with one of my best friends who's very successful. And I'm like, you cannot have somebody, quote unquote, do your social media.

00:12:46 Ashley Black: You can have someone help you respond in comments. You can have them work your inbox. You can have them slice and dice your content and

00:12:53 Ashley Black: make it cooler than I am at 50 years old and a total lack of technology. But your message, what comes

00:12:59 Ashley Black: out of your mouth, your colors, your what do I do on a daily basis? What is the post, the inspirational

00:13:06 Ashley Black: quote, the whatever it is that you are putting out there, all of these things have a vibration. So if you let a team of people or people who are like looking at market

00:13:16 Ashley Black: research or whatever do this for you, the resonance that you're putting out into the universe isn't authentic. It's not going to come back to you in an authentic way.

00:13:25 Ashley Black: So I've always been the belief that like, I love who I am. I know what I'm talking about. I do live an inspirational life. And you know what?

00:13:34 Ashley Black: If you want to be a part of it, I'll let you in. And that's what I do. I'm just literally like no makeup post. What is Ashley doing a day type post?

00:13:44 Ashley Black: Anytime I'm using my products, I'll say, hey, let me just film you for a second. It's very casual. And people see that. And they're sick of the

00:13:52 Ashley Black: They're sick of the high glossy stuff. And when the right person, which just happens to be a giant chunk of the market share, sees that, it resonates with them.

00:14:00 Ashley Black: And they're like, yeah, I'm friends with Ashley. Like, I actually get comments like that. They're like, they know me. Or when I win an award, they're like, oh, we did it.

00:14:09 Kevin Mako: You know, that's a very powerful thing to have. To me, that's a true influencer. That is very well said.

00:14:16 Kevin Mako: And this is something so powerful, especially to a hardware startup, because it's so easy for you as the founder, as the developer, as the innovator, as the leader

00:14:26 Kevin Mako: of the ship, creating this invention, this gadget, this thing that's going to change people's life in some way or another. How passionate are you about that?

00:14:34 Kevin Mako: Obviously, very passionate because you've built this thing. You've spent a whole bunch of time thinking about it, coming up with the

00:14:39 Kevin Mako: ideas, researching it, and then going through all the work to design and engineer and prototype and get into production and all of this.

00:14:45 Kevin Mako: So what better person than to advocate that product than yourself. And it's free because you can go on to your phone and take your recording or you can

00:14:55 Kevin Mako: hop on a podcast and talk about it or you can be authentic with your buyers, whether it's direct to consumer or even corporate buyers.

00:15:02 Kevin Mako: They want to understand who is the person behind the product. Why did you come up with this idea? How is it changing the world? And what is your passion

00:15:10 Kevin Mako: behind that value that you've done to the planet? Right. And that is something that you as a hardware startup can do.

00:15:16 Kevin Mako: You can start small and get comfortable with it over time. It's obviously not going to happen right away.

00:15:21 Ashley Black: You're not going to be comfortable in the beginning, but that's where growth occurs outside of your comfort zone, especially as a hardware startup.

00:15:27 Ashley Black: I believe this so incredibly much. There is magic in an inventor and how often do we not see them.

00:15:35 Ashley Black: And yes, there are gadgets that go on as seen on TV or, you know, end up in CVS and we think it's cool.

00:15:43 Ashley Black: But that is not going to get you a unicorn status. You don't have to be pretty. You don't have to be polished. You just need to be genuine.

00:15:53 Ashley Black: Because if somebody were to ask me about the FasciaBlaster versus a spokesperson, a spokesperson could say, oh, yeah, the claws are perfectly designed for

00:16:03 Ashley Black: blah, blah, blah with the tissue. The inventor can say, oh, God, I remember when we got the prototypes. We had big ones. We had small ones.

00:16:11 Ashley Black: And I dug them into this NFL player. And he was like, and that's when I knew I had the right angle of facial shearing and things like that. Like, we're the only ones that know it.

00:16:21 Ashley Black: And I get all the time, I hear from my own personal friends, but I'm just not comfortable on camera. Get over it. Literally get over it. It's literally like just pop that balloon,

00:16:30 Ashley Black: start doing it. And you'll find that the people who resonate with your brand of weirdness are going to comment and be like, I love it.

00:16:39 Ashley Black: You know, I love you. Or I hate you. Either way, they're watching, you know. And so I would have to say that this to me is the biggest thing with a consumer brand that

00:16:49 Ashley Black: worked for me personally, was to make the brand me. And everything about the brand is authentic

00:16:55 Kevin Mako: to me, what I do, what I believe, all my years of expertise. And that just seeps through my social media and the products.

00:17:04 Kevin Mako: Yeah, and it's worked. It's been incredibly successful. And not just your brand. I mean, we work with a ton of different clients that are using this strategy,

00:17:11 Kevin Mako: especially now, as we're going into, including 2023, this is something that's very powerful for a hardware startup to use your brand image to help promote and sell the product.

00:17:20 Kevin Mako: What that does is gives you a bit of an edge over big corporate. That's something that they just can't compete with.

00:17:28 Kevin Mako: They don't have that individual inventor authenticity behind the innovations as you do as a startup.

00:17:34 Kevin Mako: So as a startup, you have some disadvantages, but you also have a tremendous amount of advantages. This is definitely one of them.

00:17:41 Kevin Mako: And this is one of them that's free, comes out of the gate quickly, represents your brand and is being watched even by those corporate buyers or by the acquires.

00:17:49 Kevin Mako: So much is happening in the hardware startup space, especially with big corporate, where big corporate spending less money on R&D and more money on acquiring the next hot thing.

00:17:58 Kevin Mako: Well, one of the ways that you can make your product, not just a great product that's starting to show some traction.

00:18:04 Kevin Mako: So you've got a little bit of sales out there. But if you can actually pair that with a community, your hardware product becomes that much more valuable because

00:18:11 Kevin Mako: you're creating something that isn't just built around one product, it's around a community and a

00:18:16 Ashley Black: brand that can scale into a portfolio of products, which is exponentially more valuable. That's right. At this point, I feel like people, they want to know what I'm wearing, and

00:18:25 Ashley Black: I could go design pillows because people are looking at my pillows and they like them. I mean, so it really does open the scope.

00:18:32 Ashley Black: But you said something that's so important, which is every consumer brand, trust me, when you go to raise capital, they're going to want to know what your

00:18:39 Ashley Black: CTA. What is your cost to acquisition?

00:18:42 Ashley Black: And my entire initiative for this year is to continue to lower the cost to acquisition.

00:18:48 Ashley Black: So if you have to go out and pay Amazon, you have to pay Amazon ads. You have to give up 60% to a retailer.

00:18:55 Ashley Black: Then you got to still pay for your own advertising to go to the retailer. And you're a consumer good. Now you're getting where you can never make money. In fact,

00:19:03 Ashley Black: you're probably going to lose money. And the difference is in that CTA. So I can acquisition a customer right

00:19:09 Ashley Black: now. I could go on my Instagram and say, hey, you guys, I am launching my Ashley line of glasses and I'm

00:19:17 Ashley Black: going to have buyers with zero CTA dollars. My R&D, I go to my audience and I say, look, I'm thinking

00:19:25 Ashley Black: about inventing these five products for this year and I show sketches, which one do you guys want to launch? They feel a part of it. Then I go make it.

00:19:34 Ashley Black: I've had up to 100,000 people with our face tools, sitting on a waiting list, ready for those shipments to come in. And even in social media,

00:19:44 Ashley Black: it's like, I'm on list number two. I'm on list number four. You cannot do that without a community.

00:19:49 Ashley Black: I always think about somebody, like, because I want to have my products in Sephora. So what do they do? If they launch a new lip gloss, how do people know about

00:19:59 Ashley Black: it? Because if you go look at Sephora's social media, they have way less followers than me. And imagine the power that I would have or anyone else

00:20:07 Ashley Black: who's advocated for their brand and built a community around the brand, if I said, I have a lip gloss. And you know what? It's red.

00:20:14 Ashley Black: And the reason I did it red, you guys have seen my vintage land rover out there. And when I wear this, you know, now you've got people going

00:20:23 Ashley Black: into a store. And that's the story that you sell the store.

00:20:27 Kevin Mako: You cannot do that if you haven't from day one, let people in on the story of your invention or your brand. Wow, that's incredible.

00:20:37 Kevin Mako: Very powerful stuff. Ashley, there's one more thing I want to talk about. And that is being all in, especially if you've discovered something

00:20:45 Kevin Mako: that can change the world or at least a small part of the world with an innovation, especially in the hardware space.

00:20:51 Kevin Mako: You're a big advocate and you talk a lot about this about not only being a representation behind

00:20:56 Ashley Black: your brand, being your authentic self, but also being all in so that you can maximize the value of the thing that you've created.

00:21:02 Ashley Black: You know, I'm going to try not to like start yelling and jump up like a preacher, but it is so true.

00:21:09 Ashley Black: I joke because people are like, oh, well, you know, but what's your plan B? And I'm like, plan B, what is that? I don't even know what you're talking about.

00:21:16 Ashley Black: I have such conviction, like I always say at the end of the day, I know that people want my product.

00:21:21 Ashley Black: So if you're an inventor out there and you know that people want your product, then it's just

00:21:27 Ashley Black: up to you and the process and money and all the things that go into launching it. But that seed thought of I know people want my product,

00:21:37 Ashley Black: you can't do plan B. You can't do the safe plan. Like people laugh. They're like, oh, my gosh, you know, you've built this 100 plus million dollar business.

00:21:47 Ashley Black: You still own 90 something percent of it. Yes, I do. And that is because I maxed out the credit cards. I begged for the SBA loan.

00:21:57 Ashley Black: I sold the one thing that was producing income. I went and got $200,000, which was during the recession, it was all I could get.

00:22:05 Ashley Black: I bet the farm every day. And I just don't think that you can quote unquote stay

00:22:13 Ashley Black: in the safety zone unless this is your hobby business. You know, I have a hobby business. I like to do interior design. I've got some Airbnbs. That's fun.

00:22:22 Ashley Black: And if it fails, whatever, I'll sell the Airbnbs. But this business, this is my legacy business. This is my lifetime achievement. business and I'm 100% all in.

00:22:32 Ashley Black: And if it hit hit the fan tomorrow and I needed to loan my business, a million dollars of my retirement, I would do it. I think people just need permission to have that attitude.

00:22:43 Ashley Black: We have all this societal safety, safety, safety. But I can tell you, I don't know a single successful person that went from inception to consumer products

00:22:50 Kevin Mako: to anything close to a unicorn company that did not go all in every day, day in and day out for many, many years. That's incredible stuff.

00:23:00 Kevin Mako: And you have to think about it as well. If you're looking at your authentic self, you're looking at your product and you're not sure whether it's a massive product,

00:23:06 Kevin Mako: well, just know, this is a planet of eight billion people. There's a lot of people out there that are seeing what you see.

00:23:13 Kevin Mako: And if you are your authentic self and you're creating the product that you envision that can really help those people, then it's your job to go out there and put

00:23:21 Kevin Mako: those people

00:23:27 Kevin Mako: the highest chance of that community and tribe rallying around what you're doing and then helping you build the product business that you dream of, not just some

00:23:37 Kevin Mako: side hustle or some side business that you think might be a fun hobby. That's the difference between creating

00:23:41 Kevin Mako: an empire like Ashley did and a hobby business, which may or may not survive or may just trickle along over time because that's all you're really putting into it.

00:23:48 Kevin Mako: You basically get out what you put in. And if you've had the luxury or the opportunity to actually see something that can help change the world. How incredible is that?

00:23:58 Kevin Mako: I've heard it many times by very successful hardware entrepreneurs that you really only have, you know, one or two game-changing ideas or life-changing ideas.

00:24:07 Kevin Mako: Not to say that you can't build a brand and add more and more products. Of course, that happens, but the original one, the one that went from a certain, let's call it,

00:24:14 Kevin Mako: normal status of life to creating an empire. Those ideas will only happen once or twice in a

00:24:20 Ashley Black: lifetime. So if you're sitting on that idea, on that concept, don't let that one go. No, because that may be the only one. Ooh.

00:24:30 Ashley Black: If you're sitting there like me and I look at fascia, you know, fascia has been known since the turn of last century.

00:24:38 Ashley Black: Very famous and powerful physicians have known about it. I ask myself and ask yourself, you viewers out there, listen to this.

00:24:46 Ashley Black: Ask yourself, if I don't do it, is somebody else going to? Because with my industry, no one else was going to do it.

00:24:54 Ashley Black: I don't think anyone else had the passion that I had. This is something that took me from cripple to functioning.

00:25:01 Ashley Black: And so I feel, aside from the money, it's my duty to bring this to the world.

00:25:07 Kevin Mako: I'm the one that was given that God-given purpose. And listen, go interview your viewers.

00:25:13 Ashley Black: People know their purpose. And they just don't do it. They just don't act on it. Very powerful stuff. So Ashley, what's next for the Ashley Black Empire?

00:25:22 Ashley Black: Ashley is ready to expand. And I was just sharing that, you know, a great way to go from.

00:25:29 Ashley Black: My business is probably worth $225 million right now, something in that range, right? And I definitely want to have a unicorn company.

00:25:35 Ashley Black: I want to go to either the stock exchange or go to a strategic, you know, with a billion dollar valuation. It's a personal goal. I don't need it. It's a personal goal.

00:25:44 Ashley Black: So one way to do that would be with an umbrella company and, you know, acquisitioning successful brands that are sort of in the health space and things like that.

00:25:52 Ashley Black: And I thought about that. But at the end of the day, I'm not out of ideas.

00:25:56 Ashley Black: So for me, wow, I've gone so far as to engineer and I'm about to get the prototypes, like the actual prototypes built.

00:26:04 Ashley Black: I've built the garage prototypes for a medical device that does something very similar to what we're doing with the fascia blasters.

00:26:10 Ashley Black: I've got the concept for the fascia lounge, which is a giant, beautiful, luxurious franchise that I want to build.

00:26:17 Ashley Black: I have proven that I can grow hair and I want to launch that. So there's all these other like soon to be portfolio companies.

00:26:26 Ashley Black: So this year I'm doing a capital raise to get some of those up and going and get POs for those.

00:26:32 Ashley Black: And hopefully within I would say a year to two, the value will be there for that initial.

00:26:40 Ashley Black: I don't want to say exit because I'll still be around, but it'll be there for that initial late stage capital event, we'll call it.

00:26:48 Ashley Black: So I definitely, I have put my big girl investment banking panties on over the last two years.

00:26:55 Kevin Mako: And I want to go from being, you know, sort of the garage company to this success and the media and all of that to actually being able to bring it home.

00:27:04 Kevin Mako: You're on an incredible fast track to success. It's amazing watching the growth over time.

00:27:10 Kevin Mako: And I'm sure you'll accomplish great things in the very near future on track to that billion dollar valuation.

00:27:15 Kevin Mako: Ashley, hopefully you'll still come back on the show to give words of wisdom to the next

00:27:19 Ashley Black: emerging hardware startups as they come along. As you get to that level, we've really enjoyed all your words of wisdom today, very powerful episode.

00:27:26 Ashley Black: Thanks again, and we will chat soon. I loved it. I appreciate it. And I love to talk to entrepreneurs, particularly in consumer goods.

00:27:34 Kevin Mako: I think it's the hardest, but it's the most rewarding. So everybody out there, keep going. You can do it. If I can do it, I'm just a normal girl like everybody else.

00:27:43 Kevin Mako: Amazing. Thanks so much for being on the show, Ashley. We'll talk soon. Thanks, Kevin.

00:27:48 Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Product Startup Podcast. If you found some value in the show, please do us a huge favor and leave us a quick five-star review.

00:27:55 Narrator: If you have any questions, guest suggestions, or anything else, feel free to reach out to us anytime at our email, podcast at MakoDesign.com. That's podcast at MakoDesign.com.

00:28:05 Narrator: This show is hosted by Kevin MacC, North America's leading expert on product development for physical product startups.

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00:28:21 Narrator: product development services tailored specifically to startups small manufacturers and inventors thanks for joining and see you next time