 The reality is, without these products, we were running out of money. Sure. You know, it was getting pretty tight, but the towels got us through. They got us through a period where, you know, we didn't have a lot of money coming in. We were running out of investor money and we're waiting for this Series A, which took forever to close. And thank goodness, you know, we sold. We had a huge Christmas, I think it was 2018. And that allowed us to kind of stay afloat until the Series A closed. So I think, you know, we'd go back to entrepreneurship, like getting to the point where you're actually selling something is really, really as fast as you can, you know? This is Start of the Storefront, the podcast where we inspire entrepreneurship through truth. Today's guests are Ryan Goldman and Jonathan Friedman, co-founders of Volo, the beauty company that has reimagined the humble hairdryer. If you haven't given much thought to hairdryers lately, that's okay, because Ryan and Jonathan have spent the better part of the past decade doing exactly that. They saw the inefficiencies of existing hairdryers on the market, with their thousands of watts going in every direction and the reliance on a power cord, and they vowed to change that. But inventing a better mousetrap takes time and money. So in order for the fledgling company to stay solvent, they tackled a smaller problem first and invented a new fabric, which they then turned into a hair towel. The success of their hair towel was enough to buoy Volo until this year when they were finally able to release their flagship product, the world's first cordless hairdryer. So listen in, as we cover everything from why you can't actually patent a cordless hairdryer, how their idea was nearly ripped off by a Chinese manufacturer, and why you need to quit your current job if you want to start a new company. Now, back to the episode. All right, welcome to the podcast on today's show, talking to the founders of Volo Beauty. Thanks for joining. Ryan, jump into a little bit of all you started the company. Thanks for having us guys, I appreciate it. Yeah, our pleasure. Yeah, so just to start it off, my name's Ryan Goldman, born and raised in San Diego, California. And I've been involved in the beauty business for over half my life, about 25 years. In what space? What space did you start in terms of beauty makeup? I actually got involved with the family business that my grandfather founded in 1945. Third generation in the industry. I've never met anyone like you. Yeah, it's incredible. Yeah, it's been a long run. So my grandfather started the business. I got involved after college and we had a chain of retail beauty supply stores and salons. Same name, different name. Empire beauty supply, it's called. Okay, so it's been around a long time. So you know the game? I know the beauty game. Yeah, I've been in it a while. Okay, and what was the first product you guys launched or brought to market? Well, the first product, I mean we can talk about this a little later, but this was really what sort of preempted the business. This was a concept that I came up with that I can sort of elaborate on how and where I came up with the idea, but the first products that we released to market are these here, these are our Volo Hero Herital. So we can speak a little bit to that, but I'll let my illustrious co-founder jump in here. Yeah, I met Ryan from living in the neighborhood. So we were friends for a long time, and he approached me almost six years ago with this idea for a cordless hairdryer. And what was your background? So I studied engineering. I'm from the East Coast. I went Cornell Biomedical Engineering, actually. Also from the East Coast, also from the East Coast. Oh, nice. A lot of civil engineering here. Oh, there you go. So they were basically brothers. Awesome, yeah. Mindshare, okay. Yeah, where'd you go to school? UMass Amherst. Okay, cool, cool. Yeah, a lot of long Islanders up there. Yeah, so I was at Cornell, and then I went on to do technology, consulting, supply chain, manufacturing. I've always sort of wanted to work with product-based companies and start my own. I had a machine shop, as I was mentioning before, for a while, and I had a software company, which I did for a while. But then Ryan came over to me with this idea, and I said, well, that's a pretty damn good idea, a cordless hairdryer that's never been done before. So then off we went. This was six years ago. Yeah, six years. It was just an idea, and he had his background, and he had some inspiration from his older brother who had started a beauty line, and where we went. Before we jump into this, why had it never been done before? I mean, you think of all the technological. Hundreds of reasons. Yeah, so one of the things that immediately comes to my mind is power. That's it. Is that strictly? That's it. Yeah, you do the math, and with conventional hairdryers and conventional batteries, that's a 10 or 15 pound battery, or it runs for 90 seconds. So that was the first obstacle we had to overcome. Okay. So I was getting my haircut today, and I asked Cher Lynn, who cuts my hair. I was like, hey, have you ever heard of a cordless hairdryer? She's like, doesn't exist. And I was like, what do you mean? She's like, doesn't exist. I said, why doesn't exist? She's like, if it exists, it doesn't put any power out. Right. And so I was like, let me show you this website. And then I was like, what are the immediate things that you think of? She's like, battery's not gonna last, and there's no power. And I was like, okay, now I know what to ask. These are good questions. That's great, yep. Yeah, and so just going back to my background and where I came up with it, we have salons as I mentioned, and the idea just came walking through salons and just seeing the cords strung out all over the salon stations and with the same thing at home, with women with cords and being tethered to your bathroom. And so came up with this idea, sort of started to talk to some smart people that have done some product development and engineered products. And that's when I introduced it to Jonathan knowing his background. So yeah, it's what started as an idea as a cordless hairdryer. He and I are here today to sort of announce the first units that have shipped out to our backers. We did a Kickstarter and an Indiegogo years ago, so we're proud and honored to finally say we did it and happy to share a story with you guys. Yeah, no, it is a relief. Like this is the biggest milestone, right? To have the product for sale. How did you guys decide on price point for something like this? So if I'm in that market, and again, I'm gonna ask a lot of questions, I don't. I definitely don't know the answers to this. But in terms of like range, when it comes to price points for these things. Yeah, so... How did you guys decide to land where you are? It is on the higher range in terms of price points for a hairdryer, but there is a competitor, Dyson, who many of us know of. They... Part of them? Yeah, they launched an innovative hairdryer a couple of years ago. Accorded. Accorded, mind you. And it was $399, was their suggested retail. Then they have a $450 unit in a... Yeah, some other device that's $500, yeah. So it sort of validated our price point. We were actually kind of pleased to see that they came out with a $400 dryer and it sells all over the world. I mean, it's, you know... That's great. If I'm a female, let's say, I guess males have hairdryers too. But if I'm just a human who has a hairdryer, how often do people swap them? Do people keep one forever? Do they have it for like a year? Did they get multiple? It all depends. I mean, how, you know, the quality. I mean, you get what you pay for, I've found with selling hairdryers and distributing hairdryers all these years. Some will hold on to them for a long time if they're bulletproof, but others... So 35 million hairdryers are sold in the US every year. Whoa. That's a lot. Yeah. Yeah, it's about a $18 billion worldwide market just for hairdryers. So it's a big space. That's insane. Yeah. But I've never guessed that. People have multiple, you know. But to sort of add to that answer, people also tend to buy innovation too. So what's new, what's great, what works better. Absolutely. So we kind of find ourselves in that sweet spot. You're on the cutting edge of that. Yeah. Yeah, well, since you guys were able to figure out the power issue for a cordless hairdryer, what is it looking like for how long it takes to fully charge? And then how long you actually get from the battery out of that full charge? So it takes about two hours from completely empty to totally topped off. And then it'll run for 24 minutes with our smart mode. And a good portion of that is heated. But then right when it kind of gets pretty low, it'll go into what's called a cold shot. And then, which is actually a good way to finish styling your hair. And we're talking about sort of funny research stories. I actually spent a full day in one of Ryan's salons with a stopwatch, like measuring stylist drying hair. You know, and I did like 20 of them. And then, yeah, we had some other people. And the average time is about seven and a half, eight minutes of runtime. So we definitely adequately cover that. And then we've obviously done a lot of testing with it. So this thing actually dries really long, thick hair. On one charge, it hasn't been a problem. And are the batteries interchangeable? Yeah, so you can have multiple, too. Yeah, this thing actually comes apart. So we'll drop the concentrator there. So that's the battery right there that you just. Yeah, this is the battery pack. I have inside the handle. Yeah, and then you got the fuel gauge there. Do you guys sell the batteries separately? Yeah, we will. Yeah, we obviously just launched this last week. But yeah, we're going to have the same thing with a charging base. Like if you've got two homes or something, you want to have an extra charging base. And so in my head, like I said this before, but we'll repeat it. So in my head, when I think about your market, right, it immediately went to salons. And then I thought of like hotels would be a great place to, for one, for marketing, frankly, but also because it's probably the same clientele. And then three in my head was my wife, like you're just your normal consumer. Is that what you guys see too? Yeah. We've actually been approached and you can show her. Oh yeah, that's right. So hotels are concerned about power. Like major hotel chains. And the things that consume the most power are hairdryers and then irons. And so we've actually been approached by one of the biggest chains out there because they want to start to move all their hotels to, I forgot the acronym for it, but it's basically sipping power off of almost like a USB type of connection. Very little power, like low power, low voltage. And we can charge this thing. It's not one of those big honking cores. You can charge it off the port in your car. It's a low power drop. So it's a charging charge. So it's a low charge. Whereas if you plug in a hairdryer, you're pulling 1,800 to 1,800 something. Yeah, you're ripping it. So this is just a simple cord versus your typical hairdryer has what we call a rat. Or it's basically, it has a reset. So if it overpowers, it actually has that. Like a trip, yeah, yeah. And then I see you guys have this bag here. And so as your, so I, you know, most people don't think about bringing, I guess their hairdryers with them when they travel. Are you guys thinking about that? Is that something that's purposeful? Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I guess this is the only time that maybe this allows, this kind of product allows that type of. Yeah, go wherever. We hear so many stories about people who want to use them like van life sort of situation. There's a lot of that with COVID now. Yeah. You can fly with this, by the way. This goes through, you can carry it. Because you can remove the battery. Okay. Well, yeah. This particular, I guess the battery pack that we have, you know, it's certified to go through. We've traveled with it. We've traveled all over the country in the world. Nice. And part of the thinking when we decided on this bag was like packaging is so crazy these days. Like, and we wanted to do something that's more reusable. So it actually protects it during shipment and all that stuff. And that was the original thinking. So you get a nice old. It's a nice bag. It's a real tote bag, yeah. It's neoprene, soft, protects it. So I think people who are listening, a lot of entrepreneurs tune in. And so when it comes to launching a product like this, what is on your roadmap? Like what are you guys doing? Are you guys busy? Obviously you're on this podcast, that's a part of it. But what does your entire sort of go-to-market look like? Sure. So I'll rewind that to, you asked what our first product was. And actually the first product we released was this hair towel. And that's because about a year and a half into this we recognized that it's gonna take a while to build the world's first salon quality cordless hair dryer. And so I've done a bunch of entrepreneurial adventures in the past and it's like, we gotta make some money. We gotta get some revenue. We gotta actually prove out that we can sell stuff. We gotta start building a brand. Smart. I like it. So our team. And the other thing was we're gonna do a Kickstarter for the dryer, but it's good to do a Kickstarter for something and then do your second Kickstarter for the main product. So we were like, well, what's something that we think we can- Smart key point there that he just dropped for people listening. Not a rookie move. Yeah. Well done. So we started working on this towel. And I didn't even know what a hair towel was. You know, like, all right, well, let's come up with it. And we went through about 50 fabrics and realized that they're all kind of not so great. And that's just through talking with women who use hair towels. So we actually invented this fabric. We made this fabric ourselves. You invented this fabric. Yeah, we engineered it. We call it nanowheave. Yeah. And it's extremely, there's so many fibers in there. Really soft too. Okay. So it's unbelievably absorbent. And then we looked at the size of it, right? And if you hold that thing up, it's actually pretty big. Feels like it might be able to dry my entire body. Yeah, no, actually. No, it actually does. Yeah, you can use this bath towel. I use it as a bath towel. Yeah, it's great. And then you see that strap there that's on it. Just got a visual of you naked. That's nice. Oh, God. We wanted to make sure that this was an innovative towel. Yeah. You know, we didn't want to just got to throw something out there. Yeah. So the other thing we did was looked at the way these are held on top of the head. I'll demonstrate this. He'll demonstrate. We'll do this. Put her on the back. You do the twists. That's the wrap. Here's the twist. I've seen my wife do this. Oh. And here's the tuck, right? That's, okay. So that strap there has not been done. Well done. There we go. Yeah. My wife would be losing her mind. Yeah. That's amazing. This has been, we call it the hero. And it's really been a hero for the company because as Jonathan mentioned, you know, it was great, not only great revenue stream. Sure. But the way this product's been received, you know, the reviews that we have are phenomenal. Oh, well-branded. Yeah. Very nice. We were very meticulous with the design, the fabric. As you mentioned, we went through a lot of different prototypes. But really the idea behind it was, you know, as we were developing the hairdryer was hair health in mind and how women are currently damaging their hair with hairdryers and product and heat styling. And so what we've found is that when hair is damp, it's very vulnerable and that's when it's, can be damaged the most. So we sort of created what we call this baby blanket for your hair. It's super absorbent, minimizes hair drying time by 60%. So all these great things that lead into using the hairdryer so it's minimizing drying time and less hair damage. How much do you sell the towel for? 39. 39. That seems fairly reasonable. Yeah. But it's one of the highest priced ones, if not the most. OK. Yeah, so we got a premium price point. It's got this beautiful packaging. Yeah. And we're actually on QVC yesterday. Oh, wow. Yeah, we had an airing on QVC yesterday. This is our third run on QVC. And we run today's show and Good Morning America with this. So we've had some great press with the towel. So it's really a nice lead-in to who we are as a brand. Who has the bigger bump? Between Good Morning America, QVC. Honestly, today's show kind of killed it. It was like out of the blue. Whoa, we just sold everything we had in one day. We just sold out of inventory in about eight hours. That was a nice day. Wow. That's an interesting data, because I would have guessed QVC because people are actually tuning in to our stuff. We're getting the, yeah, QVC is you sort of. Is it a long tail? Is it a different or longer wave, I guess? Yeah, you kind of have to lead in, make sure the product's well-received. And they keep asking this back, which is great. Do people get shocked that it's two men behind all this? We have a team of women there. They make sure all of this goes well. And the person on QVC is this wonderful woman. But he's got the beauty industry background. Right, right. But no one would have to give a shout-out to our team. People don't know necessarily. We definitely have to shout-out to our team, and that have all been with us, and I'd name you all, and you know who you are. But we really appreciate all those, these girls that have helped us from marketing to business strategy to all of the just running our operations. How big is your team now? We've got about 10. I mean, we have a, yeah, it's starting to grow. We've got a dream team, which has really helped us. Because in the beginning, it was lonely, the two of us. All right, that's how it goes. We're working out to help all you girls out there. Thank you. And so you were saying, so when you guys, before you ended up launching this, you had this one product, so you're getting, I guess, the brand awareness, you're getting the word out. Is there a second product? There's another product here that you released, maybe after. Yeah, we sort of did these, we called them sidekicks, because they're sort of the sidekick to the hero towel. So this is a hair scrunchie, which you guys are familiar with scrunchies. Using the same microfiber material, we designed this. It's just, scrunchies are kind of something that's come back, but it's innovative and it actually will dry your hair. We have some techniques, some of our educators have, but these are also selling well. We're selling these together. How much are the scrunchies? The scrunchies. $16 for two. And then we have this. All this sounds very reasonable, very approachable. These have been fun. I mean, we've kind of, as I said, the concept was to sort of build around the brand and they sort of work hand in hand with the whole volo experience. Yeah, but I mean, the reality is, without these products, we were running out of money. It was getting pretty tight, but the towels got us through. They got us through a period where we didn't have a lot of money coming in. We were running out of investor money and we're waiting for this Series A, which took forever to close. And thank goodness we sold. We had a huge Christmas, I think it was 2018. And that allowed us to kind of stay afloat until the Series A closed. So I think we'd go back to entrepreneurship, like getting to the point where you're actually selling something is really, really as fast as you can. And so it's really been a savior for us. And it's kind of got legs of its own. To answer your other question though about how we're launching, so we have a lot of customers and we've got 30,000, 40,000 people who have used our towel that love the product that leave amazing reviews. So obviously they're prime candidates. And then a lot of social media press and just getting out there, it will take a while to build this up because it's a new technology, right? It's at the very front end of the innovation curve. So when it comes to raising capital for this type of product or company, right? I look at this in two ways. You have the product here that probably does well on its own and it's very beauty-centric, female-focused. On this side, we have something that I would call a technology, maybe a completely different investor. As you guys are going through and raising your Series A, what is your investor makeup look like? Are these traditional technology investors or are these people who understand the beauty industry really well? Is it a hybrid? That's a great question. Yeah, because it makes it hard, right? It makes it like, this is the challenging part. Who do you speak to? These are two different monsters. Totally. But yeah, this, I mean. This one to me is more approachable. I got as an investor. I get this. This I'm like, ugh. This is what we came out of the gates with. Yeah, okay. The business, Volo Beauty was, well, we weren't even Volo at the time. Yeah. We didn't have a name. But yeah, when we came out of the gates, it was about this idea and this concept. So that's really where our first angel investors were sort of friends and family that came in and believed in us as a team. That's technology, yeah. Okay. And even the Series A. was really about the dryer. I mean, it's like, oh, that's cool. You have the towel, that's doing great. Sure. But yeah, this is, I mean, now we have seven patents on it. Like, it's out on the market now. That's a huge milestone. I mean, it's easy to see the potential in this product for sure. Yeah. How did you guys come up with the name Volo? So we had a firm that basically said, well, for $100,000, we'll help you. Come up with your brand name and all the stuff. And you know. Did you do that? No. So, you know. Good show. Yeah. You know, I said, Ryan, we're going to do this. And we went into my garage. We had a whiteboard and a bottle of scotch. And we said, and we just sat there and I did this. I did a class in business school where we did these mind map things where you just start putting circles and kind of go out. We just did that for a couple of hours and came up with different words that were associated with it. And then, you know, we started with cordless, right? And freedom and all these things. And it came up with the word flight. And then we translated flight into Italian. Oh, volare. Yeah, volo. And then it also means desire, I guess, in Latin. So, yeah, that's how we came up with volo. And then went on. Okay, that's available. That's always the second step. Yeah. We weren't sure if we were going to get it. There was a moment we had some pushback on the name, but we got it. So, it's great. Like, I think this is a good time we can jump off into the patent process for this because, you know, brand new product, not to mention the patents themselves, but like the idea and execution of it, I imagine is where the gold is. Where you guys, like, I have to imagine super protective of this idea before you had the patents because, you know, if this gets out, the bigger companies like the Dyson's can just swoop it up. Like, was it like a big weight off your shoulders once you got those patents rolling in? Yeah, great question. Yeah, I mean, the truth is you can't patent a cordless hairdryer. Like, that was sort of out there in the public domain and that sort of idea. So, what we really focused on was our unique heating element, right? And the way it interacts with the battery and some of the different aspects of how air flows through a cordless hairdryer. We also came up with one of the first patents we got was related to very high tech. It has to do with how the dryer can communicate outside of the unit itself. So, it can actually send signals to a phone or a Wi-Fi. A laptop or something? Yeah. Okay. And basically give feedback on, you know, how you're using the dryer. You know, take readings off of the temperature of your hair. We haven't done that with this unit, but that was actually the first issued patent that we got when we were testing. This is like the TheraGun where you can set it. Like, you can basically massage your body and then it'll tell you if you're going too hard. Exactly. There's a sensing technology that links to an app to make sure you're getting the best massage. Yeah, so we're looking forward to doing that. So you guys have that. Right, and then you can share it with your hairstylist. You can, you know, you can get recommendations on products, things like that. But yeah, and a couple of the patents are more sort of protective as well. I mean, sort of looking into, as you mentioned, you can't patent a cordless hairdryer. So we have some sort of defensive or preventative patents for anybody. You can patent probably the way it breaks apart. Yeah, there's a lot of design patents, but we actually have a function you put on the front. Concentrator? Yeah, as airflow comes. Does it be a design patent? Yeah. But in terms of functioning patents, as airflow is coming in, it's cooling the battery pack. And as that heat's coming off the pack, which is not a lot, but it is there. Yeah, for sure. It's actually adding more heat, so that's another sort of. So what's interesting about that patent is somebody who's trying to create a battery-powered hairdryer cannot allow the heat from that battery into their airflow, because we've got that patent. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, yeah. That's going to be a tough workaround. Yeah, exactly. But now there was definitely times when we were very, very tight-lipped about the patent. Even when we were working with factories in Asia, most of the hairdryers in the world, 99% of them were made in Asia. So we went over there to select a company. And one of the companies we were talking to made a dryer, a quarter dryer, but it used the bulb. And it was really the only one that we could find. So we were kind of interested in talking to them. But we never told them that we're doing a cordless hairdryer. We just told them we wanted to see their factory and learn more about the infrared bulb as used in a hairdryer. And I remember we were in Beijing. And we actually just went there for fun to go check out the Great Wall of China. The next day we were flying to this factory. And I went online and I found out that the daughter of the owner, who was a San Diego student in a business program there, had released and marketed an infrared dryer. Just like the one that we were basically asking them to make for us. Because, yeah, and she basically ripped it off. Like ripped off our idea. Thankfully it was a quarter dryer. But we were like literally the night before we're meeting with them, we're like, oh my goodness. That's what they do best, though. She is totally like it was a project. But now she's really trying to market this product. And we were going to go visit them the next day. And we did. We had a very awkward meeting. Yes. Yeah. That doesn't surprise me. The thing that Theragun did is they basically patented their attachments. And so it was their way. Because if you think about the percussive muscle technology like that, it's just something repeating. And so the attachments is where they make their money. And people copy them. And so that's where they have all the patents. Yeah, we've learned a lot from that experience, but also from the people that I've known in the industry and Jonathan's known. We've surrounded ourselves with some great people, overseas engineers, people that we've trusted since the beginning. And we're still working with all of them. And one thing that's interesting about the patent stuff is once you have a stake in the ground, you can kind of expand it easier. And that's why the first patent was the hardest. And then the second one, that was pretty hard. But then like three, four, or five, those kind of just rolled because I think we had, because we're just kind of getting a little bit more real estate. We're just kind of getting a little push, pushing that boundary out a little bit more. But really our stuff is all about the heating element because we think that's the way to go. I mean, if you're trying to do this with nichrome, you're just never going to have the heat. You're never going to be able to dry hair. It's just, it draws too much power. It's almost designed to be inefficient. If you look at regular dryers, which we have like underneath, where you do the heat maps, it's coming out in every dry. Like it's just, it's just, they want to be able to put on the side of the box. 2000 watts or whatever, you know? But they're just, it's not, it's not in every direction. Yes, I just, it's all about power, you know? It's like this marketing thing and it's not really about like healthy hair or drying your hair even, it's just about. To add to that is, you know, we're trying to educate people as well. Right, that's the magic. It's, you know, you're damaging your hair. Like whoever's out there using your 1875 watt hair dryer that you paid whatever, 50 to 300 or $400. Technically you're damaging your hair every time. And so this whole system of, you know, obviously starting with the towel, moving on to this infrared technology is really the game changer for us. And that's really what we want. Our customers that are like, okay, sticker shock, it's 400 bucks or $450. Well, it's a better hair dryer. And, you know, it's also cordless. How do you guys think about educating your customer, specifically in like a social media era? Is it, do you guys do a lot of that education via your Instagram? Or is it maybe partnering with certain influencers? Cause the awareness has to be approachable. And that's kind of the hard part, right? I think sometimes people will partner with like a major celebrity, but then nobody believes them. Cause obviously the major celebrity got a check. Gotta be credible. And so there's a lot of like micro influencers that people believe almost like they made a, they made their following based on science, you know, telling people what to avoid. How do you guys think about that? I'd say it's a combination of all. You know what I mean? Instagram is certainly helpful. You can educate through that. Our website is very informative. We just revamped their website. I mean, use your generated content, like getting real people to either just leave a review, take a photo, take a video. And we saw it with a towel. It's the best towel, but it took a good year for it to really kind of, you know, it's like starting a fire. You know, it starts with little tiny things and then it builds and builds and builds. And then you finally throw in logs on that thing. And we're fully expecting it. It's gonna take a little while. I mean, it's cutting edge technology. We're on the early adopter curve and we need to get those first people over. And once you get, you know, a slice of the people that love it, that believe this is a better technology, then we just go from there. Can you guys turn it on? Is this, is this? Go for it, yeah, if you want to. I just want to like hear it. I think it's just, is it light? Can I grab it? Yeah. Oh, it is light. Yeah. And then there's a cool setting. Yeah, just hit it. There you go. Yeah, there's another setting on there. It's two, in one we called smart mode. And basically what that does is it gives you a little more dry time. And what it does is it regulates the heating elements that kind of pulse on and off. So it'll give you a little longer run time. Yeah, these units are available. We just launched, we just shipped out our first units which we're very proud of. Yeah. That's huge. That's amazing. Yeah, they're for sale on our website now in a limited quantity. We have more coming in on the way. And we're also doing a black, sort of a black and sort of dark gray. I was going to ask, because there's another version or color. Yeah, that's just coming later. We had launched with it, but we had some, we sort of just pushed forward with the white and those are being. Do you think like the male market will ever be as interested in drawing hair? Yeah. I've seen a lot of barbers actually. At least when I think about, again, I don't have much data, but other than my own. But in terms of like, I think about it like, okay, so when I think about beer, most women weren't, they didn't drink beer because marketing didn't tell them they could do it, right? It was like, oh, guys hanging around a football game. And that's like the best market to go after. And so now we're seeing seltzers and it's the growing market. When I think about this, similar in the sense of like, men are probably a pretty large opportunity to educate them on why they should dry their hair. Like I don't dry my, I shower and I'm out like. Sure. So I think about like, if I were to buy this, I'd want it to be a robe. There you go. It's coming. Yeah, we do have a robe coming. We do have a robe being manufactured right now. Something that dries me without no work No, barbers are very interested in this, right? Cause with a male haircut, they typically finish up like a quick little thing, but it's kind of cool. It's fast, it's cordless. So we're seeing a lot of interest there. And we've had some pretty celebrity type hairdressers reach out to us. Yeah. And they want to track it out. Yeah. Now that we have it, they want to see the, you know, the finished unit, but we've had prototypes that we've, you know, shown around to some pretty high fluten. Male hairdressers out there that were like, I want it, I want it now. So we're, For them, I would have to imagine it's also a factor of wanting to have the latest and greatest to impress their high profile clientele. You know, if you come out with a cordless hairdryer, that's, that sets you apart from your competition, right? Who's also a hairdresser. And it's definitely eye catching for sure. And in fact, so like going back to what you had said earlier about educating the consumer on your website, on your website, you have a progression of like the very first hairdryer from the 1920s, all the way up until this right now. And I believe the caption of the very first hairdryer says something along the lines of, you know, not much has changed. And to be fair, it looks pretty much exactly the same as any hairdryer you would ever see today. I mean, maybe with a wooden handle, but I mean, it's one of those things that strikes you. It's like, why has it taken this long to like really progress and really innovate in the market? I mean, like it's shocking to me because for what you said earlier, like it was 13 billion dollar industry, something like that, 18 billion dollar industry, even better. Yeah. Well, we didn't know where we're getting ourselves into. Yeah. I think that was part of, you know, that's why, you know, it's like the innovators dilemma. If you guys have read that book by Clayton M. Christensen, you know, big companies, this was way too risky. Everybody said you could never be done. So we just, we didn't know what we didn't know, but we, you know, we figured it out. The other thing that's kind of interesting is it doesn't make you hot, right? So, you know, women with these old traditional hairdryers, they actually start sweating in the summertime, that, you know, they can't do their makeup because they're sitting there blasting themselves with this heating unit. And one thing people keep saying is like, yeah, I'm not sweating like I'm, it's actually kind of a cool way to dry your hair. And back to your question or your comments too. It hasn't changed the technology inside, but what I've seen in selling, you know, I've been retailing and wholesaling hairdryers forever is it's really just, you know, each year I go to the trade shows and they show me the new, you know, 1875 or the 2000 watt. It's basically just what some new slogan on the box, but it's the same damn product. And they don't need to innovate it. They just want to say this is the super turbo. They add ionic, you know, these things are, they do make changes, but they're not, it's just not been innovated. And the, you know, when you plug it into the wall, you can draw 1875 watts all day. So they're just going to stick with that and just market it and said, no interest in innovating. And, you know, Dyson did innovate it and we give them, you know, kudos for what they did. It's a beautiful design, you know, they have great reviews. It's sold all over the world, but it is still corded and it's still a nichrome wire technology. So. When you think about the salon game, do you think about like a bigger one, like something that could probably withstand the use of just a repeat use of someone in a salon? We have a design for a multi-bay charging unit. All right, so you can hot swap the batteries. Yeah, and different lighter batteries, but, you know, that so you can just swap in. We also have cordless curling iron, cordless flat iron, so. All on the horizon? Yep. One thing at a time. Yeah, one thing at a time. We've started to, you can't really lose focus, you know, one of our great investors and mentor of mine told me one time. It's all about planting flags. We were talking about this and that and he just said focus. Yeah. I always, we always go back to that. Plant your flag theory, where it's plant your flag here, on that market, plant your flag there. We believe that at some point, every hairdryer will be cordless and we're just the first, right? I think that makes sense. I mean, that's very like, I call that like linear thinking, like that makes perfect sense. Like why would it be anything else that makes, it's in line and you guys are a first mover and so that makes it attractive from like an investment standpoint. Yeah, the first mover, yeah. Right, yeah, and we're building a brand, you know, we've got some technical barriers, we're just trying to do all the things. Working people buy it, tell them where they can purchase. On our website, volubudy.com. Okay, yep. 450. 450, yep. Ryan, since your family is in this business, was there ever a moment where they were like, oh, why didn't I think of that? Well, it was kind of, I've got to give some credit to my dad. I mean, he and I, just, he's an innovator and I have to give him full credit. I mean, he's, he's taught me a lot. About this industry, my mom as well. I mean, we worked as a family business and my dad is an innovator, man. The guys, you know, when he started back, when he started working with my grandfather, he really sort of innovated the beauty supply space and you know, had salons in the back and you know, the guy was just an incredible salesman and he taught me a lot, but he just had a lot of ideas, a lot of great ideas and this sort of was, I owe him a lot of credit for this concept too. One of the questions we have to ask is this like time in your entrepreneurial journey where you had to like do more. And so this would be the moment of like, maybe you were on the cusp of failing or didn't have enough cash to sustain you for more time. How did you lean in and make it through that? It was real, so. A lot of this. Yeah. Well, I mean, I sold my house. Yeah. Wow. And I mean, part of it, I was going through a divorce, but. We'll leave that out. You sold your house. But I, you know, we weren't taking pay, right? Yeah. And we put all our chips on the table and then, you know, Ryan also. I basically, my family business that, you know, I'd help grow from seven stores to 21 stores and distribution and I basically had to step down and resign because I needed to focus on the business. And there was sort of a segue of where I was trying to work both and it was just too much and I needed to dedicate myself to the business. And so I sort of resigned from that salary and stepped into this full time where I had no salary. So I took a big risk and that was a lot on my family and he and I, but we powered through. I mean, it's a great question. I mean, he and I, we sort of feed off each other. I mean, he's taught me about books and things that he's read and given me inspiration. And I don't know what the hell I did to help go on, but I was there. No, it's just, we sort of fight together and we have good days and bad, but we've been at it six years and for considering what we've accomplished here, it's been just about, John has sent me this thing a long time ago, it's about a guy that's got those posts and he's climbing up that wall. That's really what is in the back of our mind. But for people on the fringe of maybe deciding to leave their job and pursue their habit or their passion or their company, you would say it's required, right? I think it's required. I mean, if you really want to have success, I mean, that's what did it for me. I could have failed the company if I hadn't done it another way. And Jonathan had another startup company that he was sort of trying to get off the ground at the same time. And so we both sort of just said, effort, let's go and let's dedicate ourselves to this. And I have to say it's a lot of fun. It's very rewarding. Even the tough parts, you know, and my wife would say, you're a different person. You just seem like you're happier at what you do, even though you don't make any money at the time. But we're, you know, we've sort of endured. And I say when you're, you know, your back's up against the wall, it sounds cliche, but you're never done till you're done. No, we need that. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll tell you what, we've never even thought about giving up. I mean, the persistence that we've had through so many crazy situations where people are like, you know, we didn't think we were gonna have money. We didn't think we could do it technically. We couldn't get the patent. We couldn't get the trademark. People are, you know, falling away and we just keep going. We just never, we never said, we're not gonna keep going. Not even once. Like we just keep moving persistence and just like hanging in there. And yeah, and we're still not there. I mean, we still got another five years of building for this to really get to, you know, so we're, that's a good way to think it's healthy. Yeah, I mean, we're about halfway through. You know, and then you read, you know, I don't know if you ever, Sam Altman, he does this, he did a series at Stanford on startups. And, you know, they basically- It's the Y Combinator. Yeah, and he did a whole amazing series. Yeah. Really good stuff. And, you know, he's got all these guys come in and talk, but they're like, it's gonna be five or 10 years. Like set yourself up for that, you know, and really, you know, that's how long it takes to build a business. A meaningful one for sure. Yeah. Well, you guys have crossed a major milestone in getting this thing out to market. Yeah, yeah. So, serious congratulations. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you. Well, listen, tell everyone where they can find you guys and support and purchase the products. Yeah, I mean, follow us on Instagram, VoloBeauty, www.volobauty.com. You can reach out to us, you know. We're pretty approachable, so find us. Yeah. We're very approachable. We love it. Thank you guys so much for coming on the show. Yeah, we appreciate it.