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Instead of arguing about what has been done for so long, start being curious about what could be done better in the world. And if you start thinking along those lines, you will either build something yourself or you'll find the next amazing thing, right? So there would be no true classic if I wasn't infinitely curious about building value in a really boring industry. And if you're going to build a business on any level, you have to get to the right answer and be a truth seeker, because people tell us, don't do that. It's never been done. And then we go and find it and we do it. And they look back and we're like, well, thank God we were curious because we had we not been, we would have just accepted everything at face value and listened to those legacy people that we challenged it. Now the business is better for it and that's why it keeps improving and getting better. Welcome to Self Equity, the podcast that dives into the inspiring journeys of founders entrepreneurs, athletes and entertainers. I'm your host. Jolene Tepedino, authorised officer and team business manager for the Zelniker Dorfman Car and Heritage Group at UBS. Welcome back for episode twenty four of Self Equity. Today's guest turned a three thousand dollars bootstrap into one of the most recognizable men's apparel brands in the world. Ryan Bartlett is the co-founder and CEO of True Classic, a company that's redefined what a great t shirt should be. We'll talk about scaling from nothing to a valuation of eight hundred and fifty million, building culture in a high growth brand, and how he's turned empathy and authenticity into business strategy. Joining me on today's episode is Scott Zelniker, managing director for the Zelniker Dorfman Car and Heritage Group. Hi, Ryan, thanks for joining us today on our podcast. Thank you so much for having me. We're excited to get into it. So, Ryan, before we get into the amazing story of True classic, can you tell us a little bit about your experience and your path to entrepreneurship? I think that I was ultimately born an entrepreneur. I think I just didn't know it until much later in life. So I really excelled in music early on in my life. And I think everyone kind of talked me into going that route because I just, I would get into an instrument and I would get really good really quick and they would go, oh my gosh, try this instrument. And then I would do it and I would get good. And like the same thing kept happening. And so everyone was like, you can just play all these instruments. You should definitely get into music production.
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And so I kind of fell into that, went to school for that. Um, was convinced that that was my path and then tried to do it for about a decade until I just got tired of being a broke traveling musician and session musician. And I wanted a family. I wanted to be married. I wanted to have kids. I wanted to have a house. I wanted a real life. And music just could not afford me that lifestyle. So I had to make a decision. And that decision was to get into business. And I had thankfully acquired some skills over the years through just being really curious about technology and learning Photoshop and coding on some basic level, marketing skills in general, and sales skills. So I kind of put that all together and started an agency where I was helping business owners and I was stacking up retainers. And the second I went into that, my life took off almost instantaneously. Once I started seeing the money come in, it was no looking back. And I just went full on marketing agency grew that over a ten year span. Um, nothing crazy, but like, you know, low seven figures like a year. It was a good business. It was a it was a really consistent business. And I loved working with different business owners, and it really taught me what to do and what not to do in marketing on the backbone of all their dollars. So when I started True Classic, I had already had a pretty big leg up on, um, knowing how to spend the money effectively and knowing really what to do. So that's kind of how it started. You've said that true classic started as a three thousand dollars experiment. How do you go from there to, you know, hundreds of millions in sales? Because I had millions of dollars in my brain to get me there. Right. Like the three thousand was only possible because I already had the knowledge. So with the knowledge, you know, it wasn't three thousand in a vacuum. It was. It was three thousand. But I knew exactly what to do by failing and trying different things and leading up to that. So it was very clear how I was going to scale it and what platforms I was going to use and, and where the money needed to go. If I didn't have all that, it would have cost me hundreds of thousands to get this thing off the ground.
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Um, maybe more, You know, having good co-founders as well really helped me not have to hire people, which kept our, you know, operational expenses to zero. And it was all equity, sweat equity essentially between the three of us and not, you know, none of us took any money out of the company. And we bootstrapped it, and we just wanted to ride the thing until, um, eventually we could get paid. But we weren't thinking about the money at all. I was obsessed with providing real value to people, and I wanted to reinvest all the profits back into the company. And, you know, doing that allowed it to scale very quickly. So that's where the three thousand comes in. You mentioned failures when you said that. You said getting through the failures. Can you talk through maybe an example of something that went wrong and how you pivoted? Every day was failures. It wasn't. I mean, even to this day there's failures. It just there is a fair amount of good things to happen, and there's a fair amount of bad things that happen. And as long as the good outweighs the bad, I think you're going to stay in business as long as you're not doing anything super egregious. We just failed forward on absolutely everything. You know, we would negotiate a big three PL to do all of our distribution. You know, there would be software issues with the three PL, and they didn't know how to solve it. All of a sudden, all of our shipments are getting split shipped and getting double charged. And we just became a lot less profitable. And like, now we got to get out of there and go to another one and renegotiate and do the whole thing. And it was just there was always things like that happening. And even to this day, there are things like that happening that are completely out of our control. Even just a couple weeks ago, uh, the Mexican government decided to shut down all textile imports into the US. And since we were trucking a lot of stuff up from Tijuana, all of a sudden we couldn't fulfill. And so where did that come from? Thin air. You know, you just cannot anticipate this stuff happening. And, um, luckily, we have distribution in the United States as well. So we weren't completely out of business, but it did shut down probably thirty percent of the business overnight. And there was just no rhyme or reason and no one to talk to. And it got crazy real quick and we really escalated it.
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But, um, it just kind of solved itself. So I just think the right attitude is that like, be prepared to just, uh, continually get out ahead of these issues and move incredibly fast when you're presented with problems, you just got to come correct with solutions and have really strong people around you that can help you on that journey. There's a really strong constitution here, right? Like problems happen and you just move forward. Is there something, you know in your life that gave you that fortitude, that gave you that ability to kind of overcome the negatives and keep going forward? It's from just failing my whole life, essentially. I got pretty numb to failing. You know, I'm a college dropout originally. Um, so that really started my amazing failure career. Uh, parents weren't too happy about that, but I paid him back eventually. And then, you know, I went into music. I did graduate, but then I went to Atlanta and I failed again, and I couldn't make any money, and I couldn't figure it out. And then I got into poker. And man, you want to learn about how to really fail. Start playing poker for a living. That is one of the most brutal industries of all time. But it did teach me a lot of great things. So I got numb to losing money. I got numb to failing, and it taught me risk tolerance. It taught me competition. It taught me how to read people. It taught me how to read the room. And when your rent money is on the line, reading the room is incredibly important. And in business, as you guys know, when you're interviewing somebody or you're talking to a prospect or like there's a lot of room reading happening every single day, and that intuition is a real strength in business. I found out later in life I didn't really realize that, but I really built that skill pretty rock solid. The failures never stopped. I went into marketing, failed again with certain clients, did things right, did things wrong. But by the time I got to true Classic, I was convinced that look, if it doesn't work, I move on. I'll try something else. Big deal. Like I'm gonna invest a couple thousand bucks. I had a lot of ideas too. So this was just the first one, and I was the most passionate about it, and I felt like I had the most to offer, and it had the most upside if I were to do it right. I was convinced it was going to work from the get go. I knew it was going to be a hell of a ride to really get it to scale, and I knew it was going to be complex. Didn't know it was going to be this complex, I'll tell you that. It is such a business, this this apparel. And now I see why it's so difficult for people to get to these levels. It is unbelievably complex. But to answer your question, just a lot of failing all the way up. And, you know, I watched my parents, you know, fail forward in business as well. They had a really bad mobile home business in Michigan. I watched them pull themselves out of debt and build a really nice business out of a failing business. So I think some of that was ingrained in me as well.
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So you mentioned earlier that you really didn't hire a lot of employees and you had really good partners. Are they wired like you? How did you find them? You know what's what's the common thread that makes this work? I would say Matt is wired like me. We are the same person in the sense that we are really ruthless entrepreneurs. We just got back from Vegas last weekend and him and I are crazy. Like at the at the tables, like we we run up big stacks. We are big time gamblers. We are big time risk takers. I would say Nick is more on the conservative side. Um, he is more of the apparel legacy guy. That's how I got him, was I actually, I was about to, like, launch this thing, and I'm just like, there's no way I can do this. I don't even have an apparel guy in my corner. I need someone that knows how to talk to manufacturing. And I called Matt and he was like, I got a guy. And then I basically gave, you know, almost half of the company to nick on that phone call. And then he gave some of that to Matt, and then Matt became our third partner. Matt was more of the, uh, kind of like a makeshift CFO accountant guy. And he also has experience in the M&A markets. So he understood growth. He understood what it's supposed to look like. He understood very early that we had tremendous upside. You know given the numbers that we were seeing coming through. So yeah, they are very like minded in the way that they think about business, I would say. But, you know, Matt and I are definitely the bigger risk takers of the three. So it sounds like you have like minded but complementary backgrounds and skill sets. Very complementary. We all stayed out of each other's lanes. That was the greatness of our trifecta was that I was everything marketing and customer centric and product. Nick was more manufacturing and dealing with that world that I didn't know. He could really bring my vision to life on the apparel side.
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And Matt was everything finance and Lord knows I knew nothing about that. So it was tremendous that we each had that separate skill set. So now fast forward, how many employees do you have now full time? We have about seventy offshore. We probably have another Other, I would say one hundred ish contractors. And there's different people that work all over the globe for us. We're finding a ton of efficiency in hiring some of these offshores that are a bit higher level. We're not necessarily trying to just, you know, save a buck here. We're trying to really be super efficient and get killers. And there's something to be said for these offshore people. They're incredibly grateful. They're incredibly hard workers. I still have a guide to this day who was our first employee that works in another country and makes a very good wage comparatively to where he lives. He's the sweetest guy in the world. He's just he's just like a workhorse, and he appreciates every single day. And I'm just like, God, I wish I had more of that vibe and heart in some of these other people. But yeah, I really love it. And I think we've done an amazing job in the hiring process. That was another thing that Nick was really good at. Nick was an amazing headhunter, um, which I knew nothing about. He was really good at recruiting the right talent and going after killers on LinkedIn and then getting them to see the vision. And that helped us build an unbelievable team. Yeah, we hear from a lot of our business owners, hiring the right people matters, and you kind of just went to it. What was that transition like for you guys? How did you reach a point where you said, guys, we need help here? Was there was there an aha moment? Was there something that that triggered a shift? Oh, we were just buried in work. We were like, what are we doing? Like we're just we waited way too long. We waited almost a year and a quarter basically to hire. And that was way too long in hindsight. You know, we I think we were just hell bent on, like, really making it work before, you know, accruing all this overhead. And we were so happy about the opex being so incredibly low, like in the single low digits relative to revenue. And we were hell bent on keeping it that way as long as we could. Now it's obviously inflated a lot with with all the hires and everything that we have going, but I just really wanted to make sure that we were profitable and we would stay profitable as we scaled this company up. So if we were going to hire people, they had to bring real value. That helped us get to the next level. So I needed impact makers, not just overhead, you know, spend it all costs hires, which you need some of that too, for the busy work. But everyone that I hired in the early days brought real value and got us to another level, right?
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So like our one of our first hires was customer service manager. Nick and I were doing all the customer service like the first year, and it was so much work. Oh my gosh. And that gave us a ton of leverage. Uh, the second we hired her. And then we just kept moving in that same direction of just like, what else can we get off our plate that really needs it for this business? One last question in this direction, culture, what does it mean to you? And do you think in your world here, does the culture you've created really matter, or are you just go out and sell and keep going? Culture has evolved a lot here. I've learned a lot too. I've learned a lot about culture and what it should look like. You know, it's different for everybody. But I think for us, you know, I started out very mom and Pop. We got to, you know, build a family. We got to build a family members. And I've realized looking back, that, like, probably not the best way because family members disappoint you. Family members are not going to work the hardest. Like we treat it now like we're a sports team. Like we are the dream team of DDC. If you want to come on this rocket ship, you have to bring a level talent. And you know, it just. It's just the way that it has to be for the sake of the company and the performance and things driving forward. And that's not to say that, you know, we don't take all talent on some level, but I would say that any leader that we have in this organization needs to be an absolute A-plus to run that particular segment of the business, because otherwise I'm going to babysit it or Ben's going to babysit it. Like, our top level guys are going to have to babysit it, but you need to be able to close your eyes and just know that if I didn't look at this for a month, I'm going to come back and there's going to be massive progress. They're going to be doing the right thing. They're not going to be focused on the noise versus the signal. They're going to be focused on what actually matters in that department, and they're going to be gold against, you know, some greatness in that PNL in their department. So, you know, I think culture is incredibly important. Your leaders have to be available to people. They can't just be in their ivory tower kind of sectioned away from the rest of the business. And everybody, you really do have to be available. You have to be there to help them if they want to transition out.
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We're always here to offer references and help people find a better situation. You know, culture and people are incredibly, incredibly complicated. And, you know, all their problems become your problems. You know, it doesn't always work out, but we always try to find a way to help them land softly. Yeah. That's that's kind of the motto we roll with picking up on a lot of your buzzwords, Ryan. They're very similar to to ours. You know, we talk about sweat equity, which we'll get back to a little bit later, talking about being prepared, community, culture, you know, all the things that no matter what, every business, you know, it kind of crosses over. I do want to talk about your product. I want to hear how you decided. Okay, let's have a t shirt brand and kind of what goes into that. You know, the material where it's being produced, the marketing around it. You know, the landscape has certainly changed from our fathers fathers t shirt brand to, you know, today you're on Instagram, you've got Facebook ads. I mean, it's completely changed the game with social media. So can you talk us through that? I'll just say that to kind of sum it all up, what it was was that this particular industry does not have a lot of creative players in it. You know, you would say that high end fashion has a lot of creativity in that world, but basics just does not. For whatever reason, you don't see a lot of Uber creative people playing in this space. So when you do get creativity infused in it and you have kind of a musician artist mentality first at the top, you see it come through in everything that we do, right? Like when I talk to people on the streets, oh my God, your ads and this and that. Like, it's always about the ads and it's always about the creative. And I'm like, yeah, because that's that's what I care about. That's like other than just obviously developing an amazing product. I really care how we come off in the world and how to build a connection with people. So that's why it was so easy for me to break through, because I'm dealing with a lot of corporate America that are very, you know, like like all the guys we're competing with are are very much wholesalers, not really B2C environments. Right. Like they're not going direct to consumer. They're most of their business is done behind the scenes through these legacy programs within, you know, all the big box retailers.
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And I just came at it from a completely different angle, and I was like, look, not only am I going to go directly to the consumer, I'm going to find a way to bring value in this one particular product and have it really resonate with everybody. And that was the angle that I took. I went super intentional in an industry that was highly unintentional for a very long time. I mean, that really applies to just about any business. You know, you look at different businesses and you can immediately start to pick apart where you can do better. And I just saw an opportunity in the fit, which was, you know, tighter in the shoulders and arms, but then also just like the fabric and then the price point. So I was really trying to solve three problems in the market. And that's what I went out and did. And I articulated it better than most. And I also, um, really cared about, you know, showing up for the customer and doing right by them and doing right by the communities and trying to just really move quickly and Efficiently and be there when they needed me, when something goes wrong. Essentially, run every department out of ten. There's just no other way to say it. If you look at some of the big guys and you were to give them a scorecard, you would say there are seven out of ten on the product. There are four out of ten on the customer service. There are two out of ten on marketing. And I'm like, we're ten out of ten on product. We're ten out of ten on marketing, we're ten out of ten on customer service. And when you can be that, you just inevitably take market share because it's just not lost on people when you're trying in a pretty thoughtless environment where most people just don't care. I just blew down the doors, and it was very much a Netflix blockbuster scenario where these guys were just kind of used to doing whatever they want, however they wanted. And then I come in and I go, damn, like, maybe we should figure our stuff out. Two guys, and now they're kind of, you know, people are starting to mimic a lot of what we're doing, but they still will never be true. Classic because still always comes back to how you build community and how authentic you are and how real you are, and how great the creative is, and all the components that are very difficult to execute on. So you talk a lot about community, not just, you know, the community within your company or the community of followers and customers that you have. Your Our Story section mentions your mission to make an impact on the world by giving back to communities, especially homeless veterans, which I think is a beautiful thing. Can you tell us a little bit about that and your social mission? And you know how it remains central to to true classics identity as you continue to grow? Yeah, I think the reason people resonated is because it's actually real. You know, I think most companies I look at are just checking the box of philanthropy and they're just kind of like, we're here to save the ocean. We're here to like, do these high level things to look like we're great, but we're actually doing nothing. So I was born, luckily into a family that really cared about their veterans and the homeless, and I did a lot of stuff growing up with my parents, and they put me in a position to care. And thank God for that. Like when people talk about luck, those are the lucky pieces. I was lucky enough to be born into good parents that cared about me and wanted me to be a good person in life. And you know, I didn't like it at the time. I'll tell you that. I definitely didn't like going to soup kitchens and mingling with homeless people. But, you know, looking back, I see why they did it. And thank God they did, because it's probably the biggest part of why true classic is what it is, which is just over caring. And so I knew when I started True Classic. It was never going to be about the money. It was going to be about the impact. And a big part of that impact was going to be how we gave back to the communities. And it's still something I'm absolutely obsessed with because I get to really make a difference in a lot of people's lives. You know, we don't film everything, we don't show everything.
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But it's the part of this business that keeps me still in the business. If I was just in this for the money and the problem solving. I would have been out a long time ago because this business is very difficult. It's very draining, it's constant fires, it's constant everything all the time. Problem solving. I had a very good life before. True. Classic. I did not have to complicate my life at all. I was already making low seven figures a year. Like I had an amazing life. I was, I was cash flowing. I had like just a few employees. Life was simple. There was no lawsuits. There was nothing painful in my life. It was all amazing. But I think what I kept coming back to was like, am I really making an impact in my life? And I didn't want to feel later in life like I was looking back and just making money just to make money. Because money in itself does not really make you feel like you're being impactful to the world, even if you're hiring a lot of people. Um, part of that is impactful. But unless you're wielding those dollars in an impactful way, other than hiring people, I just kept feeling like I'm not doing enough, and I wanted to build something big so that I could wield those resources for good later in life. So I always had that North Star in mind when I was starting True Classic, which is like, this is why I'm doing the whole thing of scaling an e-com company. I know it's going to be hard and painful, and Lord knows that was an understatement. But, um, the good part of it was like, yeah, I can I can shoulder all that burden. It's fine, because I know that I'll be doing right by so many people and providing so much value, but it's all worth it. It's all worth all the pain. So a lot of it came from just that as well. Yeah. It's funny, I heard somebody say recently there was something to the effect of those who lack purpose end up overindulging in purchasing. Right. Like you try to find something to make you happy, but you really need that purpose. I think that's what you're kind of getting into. Right? And I, I went through that. I went through the cars like I bought a bunch of exotic cars and I thought that was the the thing that I was going to love. And then I bought them. And then this I remember like it was yesterday, the first really, really, really nice car I ever bought, I drove it, I got that initial excitement, I came home, I laid down that night and I started looking at better models the same night. And I'm like, I caught myself and I'm like, oh my God, dude, I'm never going to be happy. I'm never. So if I'm already doing this on day one, that's when I realized, like, I was like, this game is endless. Like this. Like, let me just keep getting more and better and more and better. So after that, I started weaning myself and I, you know, I did buy more cars from there.
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But, uh, eventually in the last couple of years, I got rid of everything, and I just, I didn't find any fulfillment in it at all. And it's just so expensive to have a bunch of cars. Anyway, it was just like eating a hole in my pocket just sitting in my garage. So I answered one of my questions. But but you know, I'm interested to know how your relationship with money has changed, evolved, you know, through the years. I mean, now it's about what I do with the money to provide value for the world, less about how do I make a bunch more of it, because I've already accumulated a ton of wealth in the equity of this company, so I don't really have to worry about money anymore. And yes, am I gonna put money in the public markets? Probably. Like, am I gonna do some things to make more? Of course. Like that's just kind of how it goes at these levels. Like you, you always end up doing that stuff. But my relationship has really changed and I don't think about it in that way anymore. I just think like, what can I do to to set up a good future for my kids and my family and kind of take that off and put that aside and then think about what can I do with my time and energy to provide the most value to people outside of just giving them money? Because I'm not really going to live in that world either, where I'm just like trying to take care of everybody. And you know, that just doesn't work. I'd rather teach people to fish rather than feed a man a fish for that day. So. But yeah, I mean look, the what will I do with the capital once it's all there, uh, and actualized in my account, I will definitely be finding opportunities to invest in companies that I believe in, both, you know, privately and in the public markets. Like, I love the thought of seeing a really scrappy, amazing entrepreneur, seeing myself in them, being able to help them, but then being able to deploy some capital into those companies and see it through and believe in them is incredibly exciting to me. As long as I have my hands on it on some level, uh, I'm never going to be the guy that's just like, you know, the angel. Just write it, let it go, and we'll see what happens. And it's a numbers game. And like, I'm not that guy. Like, I really want to be a little bit more involved and feel like I have a way to make an impact with the money. That's really what I'm thinking about. So. So VC is not your game. You might not want to run the day to day, but you want to be in there and know what what these guys are doing, right? Absolutely. Because I also know that, like, there's so much that happens in business early on and no one thinks about that. I can bring experience to the table on and perspective that, um, will get them out of the weeds on certain situations. Like, I can just already see a lot of young guys come to me and ask me things. And I remember thinking that way when I was in that stage and just being able to help them push through and get to the next piece on the things they should actually care about is a really big deal. And not to mention this conversation around signal and noise ratio about focusing on the things that matter versus the things that are just wildly impactful to the business is such an incredibly important conversation to have. Because when I look back at the early days of True Classic, it was all signal. Everyone was focused one hundred percent of their energy on the things that matter to the end. Now we're in a stage where it's very easy to lose sight of that, because there's so many moving pieces in the business that you lose sight of what actually moves the needle in the company. You know, to this day, I can tell you what moves the needle. Even though we have, you know, all these departments and all these leaders, it always goes back to like customer acquisition, which is a big part of my job.
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Like, what am I doing to acquire customers efficiently at a low cost? And what categories am I getting them into other than t shirts? Like what is the LTV look like on those customers? The needle moving component is just such an important conversation to continually drive home with people here, because they get lost in the busyness of the work, like the busy work which doesn't drive the business. It's just work that has to get done. But usually in most businesses, it's only a small percentage of initiatives that actually drive the whole business. Everything else is just paperwork. That's an important component that I think I can bring a lot of value to with, uh, another company. So if you started with another company, at what point do you cut bait and say this isn't working? I think that if I start to lose hope in the entrepreneur himself, like the jockey, basically, I think that would be because like if you look at the people that truly succeed, they would have found a way no matter what. Right? Like look at I look at all the greats. It's the people. It always goes back to the person in the middle of it all who who started it, who built it. Because they will always find a way out of literally any bad problem. There's always some sort of creative solution. So like if I lose confidence in somebody on that level, then forget about the business. Uh, if the person, it's not like the business is just going to miraculously grow, it's like it always goes back to the person. Would you say that's more of an intuition thing, that you have it or you don't, or something that you can teach your team or teach people? I wish you could teach it. You know, I've found that intuition and street smarts is something you're kind of born with. I think we have really tried. It's something that Ben and I really, um, have been lucky enough to develop and and had early on. We are really good jack of all trades guys. We are masters of none over here at the top. And I think that's that's the right place to be. You have to be able to call bullshit in any department and be able to basically do at least a seven out of ten in that if you were to run it right. Like if I was just thrown into an apartment, I would at least be able to like keep it going above average. And it would be it would be decent. Would it be the best it could be. Absolutely not. Because I'm just not that guy. To be great in your role, you have to be able to see through things, and you have to be able to prioritize the right things and get the most out of people and have the right people and keep them inspired. You know, seeing your vision and why you're making the right moves. Being open to feedback is another big one. Yeah, it's, uh, it's a lot, but it's, uh, it's really important to be just incredibly objective as leaders, I think the smart people tend to overanalyze and they're overly analytical. And that's where your intuition kind of helps bridge that gap a little bit and you find solutions that they just they weren't thinking of. Okay, Ryan, so you've been very vocal about putting all your eggs in the Facebook basket in the early days, with the constant changes in digital marketing and ad privacy, how has your marketing philosophy and budget allocation evolved? It's interesting because, you know, most of our eggs are still in the Facebook basket on some level when it comes to customer spend and acquisition. But that being said, there is a moment now in the company really just in the last six months with Costco and Target and all these other buckets getting filled that we've been able to pull back and be a lot more profitable and a lot less spewy on the ad spend. So that has been amazing for the business, because we all know if you're a business in this day and age, it's all about profitability. And like almost nobody even talks really about top line growth that much anymore. They're like, yeah, yeah, everyone can burn cash. Good job. But like, what does it look like when it's all said and done? So it's been very exciting to be honest with you because, you know, our Facebook reps are freaking out a little bit because we're like one of the larger spenders on Facebook and, um, like, what's happening? How do we get back? How do we it's like, uh, guys, it's just like the life cycle of the company.
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This is just where we're at. So in the early days, you know, every dollar I had, I funneled into Facebook and Instagram, and that's just how we built the company. And a lot of that, it's not so much, you know, Facebook and Instagram in a vacuum. It is amazing, creative, really thoughtful, creative. And that is the piece that scales. The Facebook is just the vehicle, but you still need the driver behind the wheel. You know, if you have Jeff Gordon behind the wheel or Dale Earnhardt like, that thing is going to go. but if you're just the vehicle, it's just sitting there on the side of the road. So, you know, I want to give Facebook some credit here. They are pretty unbelievable with their ability to target, even in light of losing a lot of data over the years on customers, they are still the number one platform. Because if you were to just go apples to apples and spend on snap versus Facebook, it just it's wildly different on Facebook. Like they just they know how to find the right people at the right time. And that is why they are doing the numbers that they're doing. They are just driving unbelievable impact for businesses. Uh, across the board, big, big and small. So it's definitely evolved though. And our split has definitely evolved as well. Like Google is still a huge component to our spend. Um, we've been able to take that down a little bit too. But you know, other buckets are, you know, TikTok app loving, uh, has become, uh, pretty exciting, especially in Q4 when you have all the people playing their mobile phone games and all them other money just gets spent across like podcasts and brand initiatives and activations and all sorts of other things. But, um, I think the takeaway is that, yes, if you have no money to spend on anything else, just put it all into Facebook ads. But the caveat to that is you better be incredibly objective about the content that you're putting out to the world, because if you're not, Facebook isn't going to fix your crappy content for you, and it's not going to make it amazing. That is up to you and the people around you to say, look, I created this asset. What do you think, Jerry? And then Jerry says, um, six out of ten and then you go, okay, I'll come back the next day. Now, what do you think? Way better. Eight out of ten. Okay, great. Thank you. Let me talk to four more people, see what they think, go back to the drawing board, then put it out versus like, let me just put something out, spend against it, you know, accrue a lot of debt, burn through cash. Oh it doesn't work. Facebook doesn't work. It's Facebook's fault. Like I hear that stuff all the time. And then I go look at their ads and they're dreadful.
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I'm like, buddy, you don't work anymore. Your thought process on creation doesn't work anymore. It's not Facebook, okay? They're going to be there regardless. When you're ready to put greatness in the world, you got to take the time and energy to be a great, creative first and foremost. But that is also, as we know, incredibly difficult to execute on and why the pendulum is swinging from the big brands to the true classics, because we are able to gain market share on a different level when we do greatness and these big businesses still overthink creative, they over invest in creative. I mean, I sat on my phone last night, you know, Sora two just came out. You can prompt a video production and it's like literally a plus level production with, like, the best cameras money can buy. Lighting, filming. Audio, everything with just a prompt. It's pretty unbelievable. Now you only get 10s, so you have to make it really quick. But like I have, I created like forty assets on my phone last night. One of like Bob Ross, the old painter guy from the classic like eighties and 90s like painting like a t shirt and like I did that, like, literally with a prompt. And it was so funny and so amazing and so classic and throwback. I posted it today on our Instagram, but like, that took me no time and no energy and it came out with this unbelievable asset. So it's all out there for the taking. It just takes a little bit of know how to build some great assets. People are living through just an unbelievable time of content creation that there's no more excuses, like people in my office don't know nothing about how to edit or make content, or now making content at the click of a button. So I would say it's wide open, and it's never been better for creators or even non creators to get their feet wet. So true. Classic tea was formerly, you know, only DTC some retailers. What plans do you have for the next wave. Are there any women's collections perhaps in the work?
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Yeah, we're shooting it today here at the office. Actually, we, uh, it's launching, uh, end of this month. It's been quite the labor of love to get here. But, you know, I think it's going to go well, and I think we're just going to get better as we go. And to me, it's not like, you know, if you launch in, it doesn't crush, then it's all over and you close up shop and go home. It's like, uh, no, guys, we are gonna keep moving in the right direction. We're going to keep talking to the customers. We're going to keep innovating and getting better and better and better, and then eventually we'll win them over. Like, I never see everything as a zero sum game. I just think everything you do is accretive to the business in some way, shape or form. And so we'll see how it goes. I'm not hanging some crazy expectation on what the outcome will be long term. I'm just kind of like, this is as good as we've gotten it to. Could it be better? I'm sure it could have, but I think this is good for an initial launch. It's a nice little capsule, and, um, we'll see how it goes. Amazing. I'll look forward to it. One question we like to ask everyone on the podcast, Ryan, is what does sweat equity mean to you, man? It means just putting in the time and energy, right? Just really seeing the end goal without forcing a mechanism of cash up front. You know, we would have never been able to stay profitable if we were all taking salaries out of this thing. Now, luckily, you know, the three co-founders had already made some money before this thing. That was the fortunate part we didn't have. We had other jobs, but we didn't have salary, full time jobs. We were busy, but we didn't like have to get it to a point to where we could quit everything else. We were just like, let's try this thing. Let's work our asses off. And, you know, it was all sweat equity in the beginning. It was brutal, but it was for the right reasons. And it wasn't for an exit. It wasn't for any other reason than just like this company needs to be built the right way. And the way we do that is through sweat. A sweat equity and, um, you know, and basically earning the business instead of just trying to get a quick exit and find our way out of this and make some money. And when you start with the impact and the customer at the forefront, well, lo and behold, you build a real company and you build it for the right reasons. And then it does really well.
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So it's it's a nice lesson for I think most people when I talk to they're like, yeah, I want to do this thing and I want to do this and I want to exit and I'm just like, then don't do it because you're never going to get to greatness if you're only focused on the money. The money comes from doing, from being great but not trying to exit. If that's your goal, then you're just you're never going to get to the greatness component. You'll have a small exit. If you want a massive exit, you got to create unbelievable value first and foremost. And and you got to work your ass off. And that's where the sweat equity kind of comes into play. Ryan, thank you again for joining us today. It was amazing hearing your story to entrepreneurship. Congratulations on the success of True Classic. And we look forward to seeing all that you continue to do. Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me on. This podcast is presented for informational purposes only and
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