Creating an Online Cash Flowing Product Business, Entrepreneurship Advice - Nathan Butorac: Piñatagrams

**Garrett** (00:00:00) - Hello. Welcome to the pod with Garrett Elconin. And this is where I interview local entrepreneurs and solopreneurs, ranging from business founders and entrepreneurs to creatives and artists, to peel back the curtain on on their success and their stories so that hopefully we can extract some tools, tips and tactics that they use to become successful. And through that, I hope to inspire you, the audience, as well as hopefully give you some tangible things you can apply to your personal or professional life so that you can grow and live the life of your dreams. Hello everyone! Welcome to the pod with Garrett Elconin. And I'm here today with Nathan Butorac, founder of pentagrams and Better Than a Letter. And we're going to really dive deep into kind of direct marketing, as well as taking an idea from concept to product, and then go to market strategies there. Last year, he sold over 25,000 pinatas. And so, without further ado, let's dive right in. Thanks for being on the podcast, Nathan. Thanks for having me.

**Garrett** (00:01:10) - Great. So pinata grams, what is pinata grams? So Pinata Grams is an e-commerce website.

**Nathan** (00:01:16) - We sell both the consumers through the online presence on our Shopify store, as well as to our corporate clients through some partnerships with other third party platforms like Sentosa and Goody, which service our enterprise clients. But essentially Pinata Graham's ships miniature pinatas filled with candy that comes with a personalized message and a brandable or themed box. Very nice gift.

**Garrett** (00:01:41) - Yes, and I'm sure the reactions that when people get this in the mail, that's quite unusual. And they they're very surprised, happy and excited to to get into it.

**Nathan** (00:01:50) - Oh, absolutely. We're,, we like to say that, you know, spreading joy through the mail is our purpose as a business. And so the more units we get to move, the more smiles we get to make at doorsteps all over the nation.

**Garrett** (00:02:03) - I love that that's awesome. And so who is it for? What occasions do people send pinata grams?

**Nathan** (00:02:09) - So on the consumer side, the bread and butter is still the birthday.

**Nathan** (00:02:13) - It's the classic. It's about 50% to 50 to 60% of our consumer sales. But we once we were able to shift our product to have a variable graphic on the front, we were able to come up with designs for anniversaries, for weddings, for having a baby. And so suddenly the the world of occasions is our oyster. As far as the different things that pinata grams can be sent for.

**Garrett** (00:02:39) - And so you mentioned that's for the consumer side. So you have a corporate business enterprise side as well.

**Nathan** (00:02:44) - Absolutely. And so the the consumer side is about 70% of our business. And then the corporate side, the other 30% is primarily used for outbound sales and marketing. So a phenomenal first impression for those software companies trying to to get noticed amongst the rest of the software companies. And then we get used for internal employee appreciation and then also by account managers as client appreciation. So once you're once you're already a client, it's still nice to be appreciated. And the pinata Graham is a is a real fun touch point for them.

**Garrett** (00:03:16) - Definitely a little surprise when someone gets one of those. And a nice experience when everyone can gather around and celebrate.

**Nathan** (00:03:23) - Absolutely. We love to see on LinkedIn when a prospect gets a pinata, Graham and then post tagging both us and the client of ours that sent it to them. It's always a good feeling because you know that. To me, it's just it's no pun intended, a sweeter way to do business in sales.

**Garrett** (00:03:42) - That makes sense. And then I saw, thanks to your your social media saw, the most popular pinata of 2023 was the confetti birthday pinata. And then the favorite was a googly eyes. And then August was the most popular month where the two most sold pinata grams were the back to school and the first day of school ones.

**Nathan** (00:04:02) - Absolutely. Yeah. On the consumer side, again, an interesting use case that we were able to to cater to, and we have these little graduation caps that go on the ear of the pinata, which is real fun for the for the school related ones.

**Garrett** (00:04:16) - Did you do any specific marketing campaigns to promote that?

**Nathan** (00:04:21) - So by the time that we had launched those SKUs specifically, we already had a pretty decent audience. And we we did,, do a couple of targeted Facebook ad campaigns specifically for that. I'll be honest, in all of my media buying days, I have yet to hit the themed or the occasion ad correctly, and I'm not going to claim to be the best media buyer. But,, when it comes to advertising a Valentine's Day specific pinata, or even Christmas or graduation, when we create content around that and turn it into an ad set, it seems to never perform as well as our evergreen. Just look at this. Amazing. Fun thing you can send in the mail. And that we see that the traffic that that lands on our site from there finds what they're looking for to send it like the reason to send it. And that's how we get a lot of those kind of,, on the page side, graduation sales.

**Garrett** (00:05:19) - Well, we'll definitely dive more into that.

**Garrett** (00:05:22) - That side, the marketing, the advertising and,, and the sales. But before we do that pinata grams, this is definitely a more unusual,, business that I've come across and definitely very creative. Talk to us about how you came up with this.

**Nathan** (00:05:37) - Yeah. So the the origin story is always what people want to know. It's how could you possibly make a profession out of this? And I am as dumbfounded as anybody else that I'm a professional pinata salesman. The truth of the matter and a lot of people with their business origin stories, will kind of play to the narrative of what the company is that day. But I feel I'm very passionate about helping people get from 0 to 1 in their companies. So I try to be as brutally honest, even if it's not the most exciting story., I had been a part of many failed startup attempts through my 20s, my early 20s, and then I found myself living in Houston, working for an IoT company where you're developing a device that would touch enable hard surfaces.

**Garrett** (00:06:26) - Internet of things is IoT. Correct.

**Nathan** (00:06:28) - And so this device was going to let you knock twice on your coffee table, and it would turn on your TV or knock three times and it would lock your front door. And this was in the like as IoT Internet of Things was just emerging on the scene, me and the two co-founders had a little bit different of an opinion of where I was going to sit in the long term vision of the company, so I, I exited and wanted to start my own business again. And when you're faced with just a blank canvas., what do I want to create? I, I started I found it practical to give myself some limitations to ideate within. And those limitations that I gave myself were be able to start with less than $1,000 worth of capital. That it could go cash flow positive in two months so that I didn't have huge overhead, that it was something that could turn on profit very quickly, and that three would allow me to work from anywhere. And so I found e-commerce very intriguing because I knew I could if I had the right product, I could have a third party fulfillment center handle most of the logistics, and then I would just be marketing it.

**Nathan** (00:07:29) - So naturally, I didn't want to spend a lot on marketing. So I thought, it's got to be sensational. What could go viral? And I went to Google and this is the truth. I just searched crazy things you could send in the mail. Things were popping up left and right, and one of them was that you could ship insects in the mail. And I thought, what the heck? Doug dug a little deeper into sure enough, so I immediately bought mail a snail. Com and I was going to build a business mailing real snails using snail mail. It's going to be a prank mailer. I thought it was hilarious. It was going to be in the Glitter Bomb esque genre. I had the idea in the morning, build the website in the afternoon, and then by the evening I was asking friends on Facebook, hey, would you buy this? And a lot of them said, yeah, that's hilarious, I'd send one. So it's like 1 a.m. and I've got 100 snails from a California snail farm in my shopping cart online.

**Nathan** (00:08:23) - This is going to be my initial inventory. And next thing, next thing I know is I go to check out, I get slapped with all of these EPA documents that I had to sign because it was shipping and invasive species across state lines. I'm like, oh goodness, I'm idea's dead in the water, right?

**Garrett** (00:08:40) - Yep.

**Nathan** (00:08:41) - So I went back to Google and I was like, even crazier things you can send in the mail. And there was some mommy blogs that had been sending their kids pinatas completely outside of a box to their kids in college. I lived in Houston at the time. I'd had pinatas at my birthdays. I thought they were fun, so I snapped up a couple of domains, pinata grams being one of them. The next day I went to the party store, bought a couple yards, sent them up to my parents in Fort Worth three days later when they got there totally unscathed, I thought. I'm in business.

**Garrett** (00:09:14) - Nice.! This worked, and they had a great reaction.

**Garrett** (00:09:17) - I assume they called you and.

**Nathan** (00:09:18) - Yeah, I actually went up to see. I was so nervous that it was going to get damaged. I saw the mailman put it in the mailbox, but then I just told my mom, hey, the mail came and when she went out there and seen her face, you know, she had no clue what I was up to. She was very excited.

**Garrett** (00:09:33) - And so that was kind of a little light bulb of, okay, there's there's something here.

**Nathan** (00:09:36) - Exactly.

**Garrett** (00:09:37) - Got it. And so that's the idea. You executed it. And then how did you kind of really bring it to the market and and scale it. Yeah. So and what year are we talking. This is we're talking.

**Nathan** (00:09:47) - 2016.

**Garrett** (00:09:48) - 2016.

**Nathan** (00:09:49) - So we're going back a few years. And that was January January 6th of 2016 is when I had the idea about the website, everything like that. And then it sputtered along through Facebook, just friends and friends of friends sending them until March. And that's when South by Southwest, which is a popular tech and innovation movie music festival down in Austin, Texas, happens tons of people and not too far away from Houston.

**Nathan** (00:10:17) - So I thought, there's going to be a lot of foot traffic. I need to get guerilla marketing on this. And what I did is I printed a thousand flyers for missing pinatas. So think missing dog sign with the little pull tabs with the phone number, but instead of the phone number, it was our website and our social media. I called up my buddy Russ Russell, that's his real name. I was like, hey Russ, you got to come down to South by Southwest with me. We're going to hang some flyers, and we spent three days just walking in circles in downtown hanging flyers. Next thing we know, we're trending on Twitter., we couldn't believe it. The first time we walked by a sign and all of the little pull tabs were gone. Our minds were blown. We were like, this is actually working and got picked up by BuzzFeed after that and a couple other,, media sites, and that was our first little blip of notoriety.

**Garrett** (00:11:11) - Nice. That's a I mean, South by Southwest.

**Garrett** (00:11:14) - That's where Airbnb tried to launch unsuccessfully. And it's definitely,, a common where Twitter did launch. Twitter did launch.

**Nathan** (00:11:23) - One of their bigger initial launches.

**Garrett** (00:11:25) - Okay. Neat. Yeah. So South Bay. So then you kind of use its marketing and got the word out there, but you still had a 9 to 5 job or what was this producing income enough to satisfy your lifestyle.

**Nathan** (00:11:37) - So that's a great question. At that point I had gone from having a consulting gig and that IoT startup pay. I got rid of both of those at just about the same time. So I was running on fumes. But again, I actually was able to hit my escape velocity. I was I was cash flow positive within two months.

**Garrett** (00:11:56) - Because of those constraints and parameters.

**Nathan** (00:11:58) - That was that helped. I didn't spend a lot of money to start it up. So and I wasn't spending a lot on marketing. I was doing it all bootstrap guerilla marketing tactics. So, you know, each my acquisition cost was pretty much nothing.

**Nathan** (00:12:11) - So every sale was revenue that I could pay rent with. Now, I was not making a great living in 2016, but I was making enough off of pentagrams out of the gate, you know, after a couple of months to pay rent and and buy some, you know, the, the PB and J sandwiches that I was eating before.

**Garrett** (00:12:29) - We kind of get into the next,, more or, or next inflection point in the business. Are there any,, memorable or amusing stories from your early days as a founder and kind of growing in that sputtering stage from 2016 to, say, 2020 that stand out to you?

**Nathan** (00:12:45) - So Shopify has a sound whenever you get a sale that's checking the cash register sound. And in those early days you lived and died like your emotions, the dopamine hit that you would get from hearing the thing was just incredible. I mean, you know, a ten, a ten unit sales day was amazing out of the gate. Then the first day that I hit 20 in a day, it was just mind blowing, like, oh my gosh, this might actually work.

**Nathan** (00:13:16) - , after, you know, after South by Southwest or just being at South by Southwest and,, seeing all of these people, because what we also did is we brought 100,, pinata grams and gave them to pedicab drivers. So as everyone's looking for the missing pinata, they are seeing them ride by like, oh my gosh, there it is, taking pictures and posting it and just seeing that social,, social engine going was definitely one of the proudest,, early stage moments, I'd say. So.

**Garrett** (00:13:45) - You know, you have this product and now you're selling tens and maybe even hundreds a week. What were some of the challenges in terms of logistics to to accomplish that?

**Nathan** (00:13:55) - So, I mean, immediately out of the gate, it was stopped buying from the party store that I was buying from and try to find a real manufacturer and for.

**Garrett** (00:14:04) - Prices and to get your prices down or why prices are.

**Nathan** (00:14:07) - Consistently able to because, you know, the party store being one of. 5000 SKUs in their store.

**Nathan** (00:14:14) - They weren't concerned if they stocked out of that one product or one skew. But that's my entire livelihood, you know, leaning into the business. And so I had to go and find a manufacturer. And I got so desperate I was going to, you know, people that handmade them in Houston and saying, hey, how much would you charge me to make these? And fortunately, it was about the third person I talked to,, identified said, that looks like one of one of these people's,, pinatas. And I have been with that supplier that they, they turned me on to for the entire time now.

**Garrett** (00:14:52) - And so they're local to Houston.

**Nathan** (00:14:54) - This they're actually out of El Paso. El Paso. Yeah. They,, pinata grams currently are made in Juarez, and we purchased them from a family business that has been doing business between Juarez and El Paso for 30 years now.

**Garrett** (00:15:07) - That's very neat. And so one of your constraints or ideas with this was you wanted to live this kind of millennial dream of working from anywhere.

**Garrett** (00:15:18) - Did you accomplish that? And and where do you go and how was that lifestyle given? It is all over social media and a lot of people desire to to live a life like that.

**Nathan** (00:15:27) - To get to their. I had to solve the second challenge, which was I fulfilled the first about 200 units out of my apartment in Houston. Next step was find somebody that I could teach and pay to do this and cost effectively. And so I actually on Reddit, there was some Reddit entrepreneurship forum that I found my my three ple third party logistics company, and he was out of Illinois at the time, shipped him my next batch. And then once they were being shipped automatically, I saw the dream. I was like, I the sales are happening and people are getting their product and I'm not touching it. This is amazing. And so I promptly moved to Salt Lake City from Houston,, and went from one of the most humid places in the United States to one of the driest,, into the high desert.

**Nathan** (00:16:12) - But it was it was an amazing experience, and I'm glad that I did it., Salt Lake City has a lot to offer, especially in entrepreneurship. There's a lot of startups happening up there, but maybe too much. The ad entrepreneur in me immediately stopped focusing on scaling pinata grams once it was making enough for me to pay rent and stuff, and focused on everybody else's startup that I found interesting.

**Garrett** (00:16:40) - Yes, I mean, as a visionary and a dreamer and wanting to really enjoy that concept to fruition, kind of part 0 to 1 of the business that that does make sense. But then so you saw kind of pentagrams plateau a little bit or it needed some more love to take it to the next step is, is what I'm saying or yeah.

**Nathan** (00:16:59) - It's stagnated for probably end of 2016 to 2020 was just like ups, downs. Every now and then we get a huge corporate order that would make the quarter or sometimes make the year just off of one, you know, 1500 unit order. Suddenly it's like, oh my gosh, we're alive again.

**Nathan** (00:17:25) - , but I would not say that that was comfortable living in that period of time. So I was only pinata grams for pretty much 2016 and most of 2017. But by the end of 2017, I was back working with other early stage companies,, in a at least part time, if not full time capacity with a couple of different ideas.

**Garrett** (00:17:44) - What do you think drove you to do that? Was it help these entrepreneurs? It was interesting. It was. Were you kind of fearful that you didn't think Pinata grams could be that $100 million company and something like that? Or kind of talk to me about why you decided to help those other entrepreneurs instead of your own business.

**Nathan** (00:18:02) - I think I think it was a blend of exactly what you said it was fear that pinata grams couldn't scale and it would never scale. I mean, the honest truth was I wasn't giving it the attention to to actually do it or the risk. You know, I tried maybe $400 worth of Facebook ads, did miserable and then never touched it again.

**Nathan** (00:18:22) - , and so any opportunity that looked like it was a bigger growth market, one of the startups that I really dove in headfirst with was in healthcare. It was a software that was going to be acting as a patient advocate to navigate the complexities of the health care system. And it's certainly a huge problem., the market cap was massive to what we could potentially attain., and it was an exciting thing to be a part of., but so it was a blend of how good is pentagrams, really, how big could it be? And then another shiny object, another really big problem and wanting to try to help tackle it.

**Garrett** (00:19:03) - So what would you say to someone listening that is kind of similar minded in you? They have this side hustle, but they're also getting. Distracted by the shiny objects. Are there any questions that they should ask themselves? I'm sure you learned a lot about yourself and others while working on these other startups. You know what wasn't lost, but what? What would you say to that? That person?

**Nathan** (00:19:25) - The question they should ask themselves is, when I hear it podcast after podcast and read it book after book, that you should focus and focus and focus.

**Nathan** (00:19:35) - The question they need to ask themselves is look themselves in the mirror and say, why am I not taking that advice right now? It's still true to me today. I'm a hypocrite. I still have a hard time. I've got like three other projects I'm working on right now, to the detriment of the scale of growth of my business right now. I'm fortunate that I'm not risking the. Where I'm at currently in business is a very different place than I was, but if you are just getting started and suddenly you're trying to start four things at one time, again, I'm not the only person saying this. Don't do it. Listen to the podcast, listen to the books. Everybody out there that's been burned by by spreading themselves too thin is saying, figure out what you're good at and double down on it.

**Garrett** (00:20:16) - And triple and quadruple. Yeah, and.

**Nathan** (00:20:18) - Ten x, that exact thing. Exactly.

**Garrett** (00:20:21) - I had a similar conversation previously where if you look at the top 50 richest people in the world, not that any of us, you know, want to be there, but if you just look at it as an example of how did they become successful? They focused on one thing.

**Nathan** (00:20:36) - Yeah, absolutely.

**Garrett** (00:20:37) - And if you say private equity isn't something well, they focus in the game of private equity and they focus in the game of retail, or they focus in the game of whatever it is and they executed it.

**Nathan** (00:20:48) - And I guarantee you that out of the gate, if they were focusing on private equity, they were focusing on an industry and a deal type, and they were laser focused on understanding the players and the deal flow for that, like for that specific type. And then once they've established themselves and they've gotten the reps, they find the similarities in other industries that they can then do deals in. But even something as ambiguous as private equity still has definition and bounds, especially when you're getting started.

**Garrett** (00:21:16) - So give a real example of what it means to focus on your business.

**Nathan** (00:21:21) - That's a little bit of a loaded question for me, because I would take a step back and say, what is your personal context? How much time do you have to spend? How much money? What relationships do you have? What skill sets do you have, and what physical capital or assets do you have at your disposal? Because focus can look very different.

**Nathan** (00:21:46) - To people in different scenarios, like,, for instance, if you're in a position where you cannot leave your full time job but you want to do a startup, focus could mean dedicating three hours a night, five days a week. And in those three hours, you held yourself to the discipline of educating yourself on the industry and attacking the industry, you know, and.

**Garrett** (00:22:10) - Executing and.

**Nathan** (00:22:11) - Executing and doing that to the point where you started seeing revenue, and then you started seeing enough revenue to maybe consider leaving your full time job. Now if. You have the ability to take a year off and focus, I'm going to say full time. Don't be telling me that you're only spending three hours if you're not getting, you know, income elsewhere or you know, if if you're saying that you're all in on this idea, you're not., but the touch that that little point touches a little bit on the dangers of entrepreneurship. I don't think it's remotely talked about enough. How dangerous? Chasing financial freedom.

**Nathan** (00:22:54) - By building your own system or business is because it's the coolest thing to pursue mentally. But then as you put time, money and effort and you forgo other opportunities that could actually bring you money.

**Garrett** (00:23:09) - With way less risk.

**Nathan** (00:23:11) - Way less risk. Exactly. The risk versus reward ratio is great when you hit, and it's devastating to the degree of like losing personal relationships, family houses, everything. And we don't I think the industry as a whole just doesn't talk about that enough.

**Garrett** (00:23:26) - Most definitely. I think that like most things in in social media and what the media picks up is the glorified, the highlights, the success stories. But for every one success story, there's definitely 10 to 20, 100,, you know, challenges and stories that that ended up failing.

**Nathan** (00:23:44) - Well, and there's this anecdote right here, especially with growth startups and people that you're chasing an idea that you have to get money for, and you don't have the money, so you're going to go and pursue investors. Well, if you go to a venture capital firm and they put a million bucks into your company, the founder immediately feels incredibly validated about their idea.

**Nathan** (00:24:05) - You just got given $1 million to pursue this on the other side of the table. Those venture capitalists did that with nine other founders, and they only need one of you to succeed. And so when when you remember that even when you get large sums of money invested in you, that. That money might not be speaking the,, the confidence into the idea that you are interpreting it to have. Does it? Does that make sense?

**Garrett** (00:24:34) - That makes complete sense. And I'm so glad you brought that up, because it puts in perspective that you have to make your own decisions, because a venture capital firm might be wanting you to grow at all costs, because they just need every one of their portfolios to do that, so one of them can gain market share and succeed. But if you grow at all costs, you raise money at a value that you have to grow into. And then the capital markets pull back. Yes, like we're recently seeing, then you're going to be in a tough position.

**Garrett** (00:25:05) - And the venture capital firm, you know, was just minding their own business. And but you as the owner of a company, need to make sure that you're taking control and making decisions on your behalf. So that's a brilliant point.

**Nathan** (00:25:19) - Yeah. I mean that, you know, it just goes back to where are you getting your your confidence to move forward and to to risk., in pursuit of your idea. And hopefully it's from the customers and your target market. That is the gold standard of what you should be confident about. If you've got people pounding on your door saying, let me have access to your beta version of the software you're developing because we need it. How much money do we need to get into your beta? All right, you got some, you know, like, let's keep rolling. But if it's if it's like,, I've got this great idea. Now we've got some prototypes. We convince some people to give us a bunch of money as long, like, I'm actually okay with it if you didn't mortgage your house to get to that point.

**Nathan** (00:26:09) - But,, just know what. Like using other people's capital is a way to mitigate your risks. Understand? The opportunity, costs and the risks at the table of pursuing any idea that you're deciding to pursue.

**Garrett** (00:26:24) - I like that. So who should be an entrepreneur and what should their values or goals be?

**Nathan** (00:26:31) - That's a phenomenal question, and I think my answer is much like a lawyer. It depends. The. The personal context. Is is very important to it. Let's, let's define this a little bit more. Who should be an entrepreneur. Well we're going to assume that the goal is to succeed right? Yes. Because predicting that they're trying to build a business system that will live on and that can operate with them in it, ideally without them in it. The the people that should be entrepreneurs are those that are willing to continuously learn, continuously problem solve and have the emotional stability to weather some really bad times. Because very far and few between,, founders that just have an idea and it works out.

**Nathan** (00:27:27) - And even when it's working out as as things scale, you suddenly realize that you're, you know, suddenly you have a $10 million business, and one strategic business move is wagering the entire company. And so when you were just like, we're nothing, we're making $50,000 a year versus, you know, wagering the whole company at that point versus wagering the whole company at 10 million by, you know, opening up a new channel that's going to take a lot of capital to launch. Whatever the the business decision may be, there's ways that you are risking a much bigger thing down the road. And so it always those,, those problems just scale with you.

**Garrett** (00:28:06) - Adding on to that. It's interesting because in business you can't rest on your laurels because you can always the business can always fail. It doesn't matter. It doesn't have to reach a certain point. And then you can coast for the most part, you know, if you're not growing, your was saying, if you're not growing, you're dying.

**Garrett** (00:28:22) - If you're not growing, you're dying. And so you just have to keep on growing and keep on problem solving. And I would add on to what you said is, if you see a problem in your life and no one is solving it and you're passionate about it, and it's about that problem and solving that issue, then go for it, because then you will have the the emotional kind of background of, you know, this is a problem that needs to be solved. And that's usually a great business opportunity can be. And hopefully your passion about solving that problem and that will get you through the hard times.

**Nathan** (00:28:58) - I'm going to identifying a problem. And knowing that it's a problem is a. Especially if you're in the target market that's feeling the pain point is a very important thing. I'm going to push back a little bit in in that if you are, there is such a thing as product market fit and there is such a thing as ideal entrepreneur fit. There are tons of ideas. Had by people that should never pursue them.

**Nathan** (00:29:27) - I mean, even if at face value, they're already successful, they have money, they have connections, etc.. If they don't have the right connections, the right skill sets. It might just fall flat on its face. And so really analyzing am I the right entrepreneur for this? For instance, I had a phenomenal social media idea that I pursued right out of college. It was called Act Social. It was called it was action based social media. It was going to get people to use their phone to stop using their phone and have meaningful interactions in the real world to combat exactly the world we live in today.

**Garrett** (00:30:07) - I'm not sure sure about that business model, but continue.

**Nathan** (00:30:10) - Exactly. Well, it was there were I had some business models, but to that point. So I knew nothing about software development. And I was a recent graduate graduate with marketing and entrepreneurship as my background. But that just meant a degree there. I mean, talk about being outgunned with an idea. I was the wrong person to chase that.

**Nathan** (00:30:30) - Now, if you had a software developer paired up with an influencer at the time and an influencer that was focused on people living in the moment, and this software development developer was capable and they came in and teamed up together, they might have been a perfect team to execute on that idea, but I certainly was not.

**Garrett** (00:30:48) - That's a great point, and a resource people can use if you are looking for a co-founder, is Y Combinator one of the most prestigious accelerators incubators in the world? Has a co-founder partner matching platforms to just go to Y Combinator and look that up, and you can kind of search for whoever and message them and high quality talent. So if you're looking definitely a tool to use so that you can take that idea, pair up with someone with a complementary skill sets and and do your thing. But no, I think that you're spot on with with the challenges. And if you want financial freedom, don't be thinking that going into entrepreneurship is an easy path to get there, because you're the you're the last one to get paid.

**Garrett** (00:31:30) - That's from yourself. And it's a it's a long slog and facing challenges, but could be very rewarding. So there is definitely,, pros and cons.

**Nathan** (00:31:39) - Well, especially the the other thing that I guess we should address is that entrepreneurship is a very broad term. You know, if you're going to buy a laundromat that's already functioning and working and you're just going to step in, operate it and make make it better, you know, do a little capital investment here or there or any, any established business in an established market. It's a very different proposition than saying, like, I'm going to have to educate the consumers on what the heck this is. I'm going to have to build this.

**Garrett** (00:32:06) - Thing going from 0 to 1.

**Nathan** (00:32:08) - 0 to 1., and because those people that operate the, you know, brick and mortar, your plumbing companies, your HVAC companies, your trade companies, they're entrepreneurs too,, sometimes society doesn't look at them the same way or not society, but popular culture, I would say, just remember that sometimes they they know who they're targeting.

**Nathan** (00:32:28) - They know what they're providing. They know the unit economics of what they're providing because they can see their competitors. Even if you're starting in that space, you'll have a roadmap better than you know. I'm going to do a SaaS company that does, you know, I something no.

**Garrett** (00:32:42) - That's a great point. And I think that in terms of assessing the risk profile of what you want to do and who you are versus, you know, a 0 to 1 is the most difficult. But taking something from 1 to 2 is obviously the next. But taking something that's a four to a five and just steadily growing it because it's an existing industry, an existing market, existing customer base can can dramatically reduce the risk and increase your chances of succeeding. That's a great point. Well, and remember, the.

**Nathan** (00:33:12) - Higher up in the food chain, you have the skill sets to play at, the less risky it is. And what I mean by that is when you're up in private equity, you're investing in deals and you're letting venture capitalists take the risk.

**Nathan** (00:33:27) - And then typically you're buying with the VCs have already, you know, they're you're buying the one out of ten that worked for them. The VCs are looking at the family offices and the,, the angel investor groups and saying, what's working in your your realm? And they're investing in that into their one intent. And then the angels are like, who's making any type of product market fit and traction? We'll put money in that., and so all the way up that food chain of, of funding. But even, you know, again, buying a functioning business or being a part of a functioning business and then trying to, to purchase or start something in that same vein,, if you can find yourself higher up than just the idea, I love the 0 to 1 stage, but that's because it's what I've done throughout my 20s. I would I no longer immediately recommend everybody try to get out of college or from high school. Start something learning an industry and skills and trades and more importantly, making a network in a space goes so far into making a successful business.

**Garrett** (00:34:30) - You said making a network in space and relationships. Can you elaborate more on that and what's the why? Why you emphasize that?

**Nathan** (00:34:37) - I remember coming out of college and. Needing a quick piece of legal advice and not having any friends that could possibly help me in that regard. And. You know, whether it be paying somebody or calling up a bunch of random lawyers that I didn't know, and trying to get a little bit of advice versus today. Having been across a ton of different startups, networked in many different spaces, I have personal connections that if I have a quick question, I can just shoot a text and some of that comes, you know, it was definitely me dedicating being intentional about developing relationships and maintaining them. A lot of that is just time and the compounding effect. That's another thing we don't talk about is the compounding effect of time in the workforce., everybody wants to go from 0 to 1 million right out of the gate. I certainly thought it was possible for myself. I was going to be a billionaire by 25.

**Nathan** (00:35:32) - And here I am, 33, nowhere near it. But I respect the reality of the game a lot better now, and I'm a little bit less cocky. Well, this.

**Garrett** (00:35:40) - Has been great. I always love talking about this type of a topic and and especially items that don't normally get talked about too much in the entrepreneurship realm. Let's,, let's dive a little bit deeper into kind of,, marketing and, and pinata grams and kind of where it is and where it's going here. So let me rewind a little bit to 2020, okay. Covid hits and talk to me a little bit about the impact of Covid with your business.

**Nathan** (00:36:04) - Absolutely. So 2020, the start of 2020, I had just hired my first employee as my Hail Mary to pursue the corporate side of the company. I brought some inventory. I had a warehouse that I leased at least it since 2018, but this was my I'm going to scale the corporate side. So I had inventory there and then inventory in a three pl in Salt Lake City for the consumer stuff.

**Nathan** (00:36:33) - Well, when the pandemic hit, I mean, first of all, the first quarter was just terrible already. And then March 13th, 12th, 13th time frame, it just dried up because the world shut down. And I was sure that I was going to have to let go of my first employee, which is going to be tragic., and shutter the business. And this is where opportunity, you know, luck is opportunity meets preparedness. I happen to quarantine with a group of photographers and videographers that were out of work due to the pandemic. About two weeks in, we were bored one evening and we decided to shoot a pinata commercial. And so suddenly I had high quality content, and by the end of that two week period, people were starting to miss each other and our past customers were sending pinata Graham saying, hey, just hoping that you're feeling all right to their family members and friends. So with that organic uptick in sales and now high quality content, I jumped into Facebook advertising at just about the perfect day that you could possibly, which was about April 14th.

**Nathan** (00:37:42) - The big everybody had been able to pause their media budgets and at the exact same time. So less money than ever was being spent on digital advertising, when more people than ever were just sitting at home looking at their phones and it was like wildfire immediately just skyrocketed month over month. We were seeing, you know, 500% growth and that leaning into the ad spend. And then all of the supply chain issues that came with trying to keep up and in stock through the pandemic. But that rodeo of that year was where I would say I that was my MBA. That was me learning how to operate under fire and problem solved quickly.

**Garrett** (00:38:25) - It seems like that was a moment where it now switched to, okay, maybe pinata grams can be my full time thing, and if I dedicate time and put some love and attention into this and grow it, it can really blossom.

**Nathan** (00:38:38) - Absolutely. I mean, immediately within two months after that, it was this is definitely my full time job. And now this is five other people's full time jobs.

**Nathan** (00:38:47) - And by the end of 2020, we were up to 13 people., we are not at 13 people anymore. The business has a different structure now. We were able to get out from underneath fulfillment again. But it is it is still in a worldly, different place than it was before 2020.

**Garrett** (00:39:05) - And when you say get out from fulfillment, I assume that means you were doing that in-house and now you have, you know, outsource that, correct?

**Nathan** (00:39:12) - Yeah. So in 2020, because we had inventory,, for corporate orders and we were ready for big corporate orders,, when the pandemic hit and sales then started skyrocketing, we moved all inventory in-house and I ran operations. It was just easier,, logistically. And it turned out that all of those videographers that had and photographers that had helped me with the content ended up coming and help helping fulfill. So our whole little apartment complex community was was running off of Pinata and.

**Garrett** (00:39:43) - Graham's headquarters right there. So talk to me a little bit about, besides the high quality content in terms of the photography and the videography, did you learn anything else about advertising on Facebook or advertising pinata grams that you know can be applicable for others?

**Nathan** (00:40:00) - Certainly.

**Nathan** (00:40:01) - I mean, I that was the beginning of me understanding ad sets and. Creative like testing, creative warming, creative up, figuring out what the winners are and what the losers are. And any time I talk to a a younger professional or a college student,, I'm reminded that in 2020, as I was learning Facebook ads, I hired a YouTube dropship guru who was eight. He was 19 at the time and paid him $250 an hour to teach me how to manage my Facebook ads. And I think we had 4 or 5 sessions and it was worth every penny. And so when I'm speaking to anyone young, and that's because he had dedicated and focused on Facebook advertising and learned it front and back and and had shown that he could succeed at it. And then, you know, age didn't matter to me. I just wanted to go and see who was doing it correctly. And sure enough, he was able to teach me a lot.

**Garrett** (00:41:05) - Talk about making a wise investment in yourself and in your skills.

**Garrett** (00:41:10) - That definitely sounds like you leveled up your advertising and it and it paid dividends. I'm still probably still pays dividends.

**Nathan** (00:41:16) - It does. Yeah.

**Garrett** (00:41:16) - So then what was kind of the the next moment or milestone in pinata Graham's kind of trajectory and journey.

**Nathan** (00:41:22) - So 2020 was amazing. And then like many e-commerce companies that saw this incredible spike in Q two through four of 2020, then things started to slide. And so 21 and 22 for us was this steady backsliding of revenue and and growth. I mean, we were not growing. We were doing the opposite. But some of that was just the economy was completely different. You know, everyone didn't have their stimulus checks. All of the advertisers were back on Facebook. So it was more competitive than ever. And the cost, customer acquisition costs. Real quick shout out to a term that you should know. It's how much you spend to acquire a new customer. And a lot of people forget to factor that in when they're when they're creating their businesses.

**Garrett** (00:42:12) - And also LTV lifetime value of a customer.

**Garrett** (00:42:15) - So you want that lifetime value to be higher than your customer acquisition and a multitude. So therefore you have that profit margin.

**Nathan** (00:42:22) - Absolutely. But the.

**Garrett** (00:42:25) - Very basic but yes, with.

**Nathan** (00:42:26) - A higher acquisition cost, 21 and 22 was really where we leaned into creating new partnership channels. So we'd been partnered with a organization called Sentosa, which is an enterprise gifting platform. But then we worked out deals with one 800 flowers with this business called Goody Reach Desk, all of these third party platforms to have our products listed on them. And and so it just found creative ways to get our product in front of potential customers. And that led to 2023. We stopped the bleed, we saw a 10% growth. And hopefully we're back on the right path.

**Garrett** (00:43:08) - Well, it's definitely so what's, what are what are product? What's the product horizon and what are you excited about. And in terms of any initiatives or or anything that you got in the works.

**Nathan** (00:43:18) - Yeah. So a huge product advancement that we made last year was being able to have those themed graphics on the boxes.

**Nathan** (00:43:28) - , and something that we've been really trying to move towards this year is being able to offer next day shipping as well as,, additional non candy filling options, because as much as pinatas and candy go hand in hand, the reality is there's a lot of people that that's not the best gift for. And we want to be able to cater to a broader audience.

**Garrett** (00:43:53) - Most definitely. You could also get pretty comical as well, in which you fill a pinata with. So that would be great. And I saw that you you partner with a kid again community. Can you talk to me about that experience in that partnership?

**Nathan** (00:44:07) - Absolutely. So a kid again is a nonprofit that serves families and the youth that are afflicted with life threatening diseases, where hospital visits are a day to a daily, a weekly occurrence. And they dig in deep with these families. And it's not it's not just one big wish or event that they get to experience. It's a monthly activity and a monthly day where these families get to come out and not focus on some of the more complicated and troubling parts of their lives.

**Nathan** (00:44:42) - But to come together in a community in a fun, positive environment. And so we launched a couple of,, specialized SKUs of the pinata grams just for them, and they get a cut of revenue from that as well as we donated recently,, 300 pinata grams for a holiday event. And it's just it's really fun. We're about spreading happiness and joy through the. But that doesn't mean that we can't find fun and unique partnerships to help out and uplift wherever we can.

**Garrett** (00:45:14) - I think that's special and amazing and glad you did that. Does any particular story or come to mind with a reaction that one of those pentagrams provided for, for a patient or one of the members there?

**Nathan** (00:45:28) - We recently got told that at I believe it was the holiday event, there was a little girl that was kind of annoyed that she had to come to the event and that it was going to be all day, and then they walked into the room where the pinata grams were and got told that they were going to get them.

**Nathan** (00:45:47) - And her face, I guess, just lit up and she was asking, do I get to keep it? Do I get to keep it? And so it was kind of cool that even, you know, obviously if you're just a sister or something and you're at this event, it's all day. But for us to be able to provide a little bit of a fun element there, that was it was a cool story.

**Garrett** (00:46:05) - Here, man. That would be it would be special to to see that and the room, just all that joy and happiness that you're providing. So well done Nathan and the pinata. Graham's family there. So in an article you you were asked, what's the biggest lesson that you learned from all of this? And you said, sometimes persistence is what it takes. But then also looking back, I see just how reckless I was in my 20s by not focusing. It was a risky proposition to keep chasing startups for a decade. Then on this side of things, it's like, well, yeah, of course I'd do it again.

**Garrett** (00:46:39) - The reason why it did succeed is that I stuck with it for five years. So my question is, you know, your attention towards those other startups,, what would you have focused on specifically knowing what you know now?

**Nathan** (00:46:52) - I don't know if my personality type could have done it differently. If I was the person that I am today, I would have tried to get more people involved with pinata grams at an earlier stage. I would have been more vulnerable about what I didn't know and pursue the experts. So it was it was a humbling experience to reach out to that dropshipping YouTuber and say, hey, I, I need your help. I need to pay you to teach me this stuff. It's going well, but I know it could be going so much better getting out of my own way from my ego perspective at an earlier stage, and potentially raising money so that I could pour into the Facebook ads at an earlier stage, would have been a tactical thing I would have done differently. But that that response to that question was, you know, again, noting the dangers, but it is the people that find a way to keep scraping through and pushing towards that end goal that seemed to make it there.

**Nathan** (00:47:48) - So that doggedness and that, you know, even if it was misguided and I was just blind to the danger of the risk,, it was the persistence that helped get me to where I am today.

**Garrett** (00:48:01) - And that same article you were asked, what advice would you give someone who's trying to start their own business? And you said, if somebody wants to start a business, be sure that you are obsessively learning about what makes the other companies in that space successful. So my question to you is, what did you learn from other competitors that you've applied to your own businesses that have made an impact?

**Nathan** (00:48:23) - The brutal truth is, I still do a poor job of that exact like that exact statement. Taking my own medicine is tough, but that doesn't mean we aren't. We haven't done some deep dives into our competition. There are no direct competitors for pinata grams currently, but some of the other gifting companies out there, we've analyzed their websites, analyze their user experience flows, and as well as their price points and what they're offering for that price point.

**Nathan** (00:48:52) - And so digging in and saying when somebody is looking for a memorable gift, something special to for an occasion, here are their options. And how do we make sure that we are not only considered, but offering the most value for the money that we can? And that takes digging in deep on who those competitors are?

**Garrett** (00:49:14) - So the last section here is kind of just a bunch of random questions. Learn some more about you. And,, we'll start off with, can you share a memorable moment or realization that significantly influenced your approach to business or life?

**Nathan** (00:49:29) - So I had a, a professor in college, a marketing professor that described sales as nothing but problem solving, solving other people's problems. And if you're not, you shouldn't be selling what you're selling. And that hit me when I was in college. But being out in in the business marketplace and really taking that to heart, I think there's a lot of truth in that. That and I've even with some of my consulting clients, some other business owners that were having a hard time feeling comfortable asking for the sale as I shared that perspective, it radically.

**Nathan** (00:50:07) - Change the way they pursued their sales conversations, because suddenly they weren't asking for money or trying to get pull one over on somebody and land the sale. Instead, they were genuinely having a conversation to figure out this prospective clients pain points. And ideally, if their solution fit with that problem set, they had no problem asking for it anymore, asking for the sale, and if it didn't, they had no problem passing them off to somebody else that they knew could take care of them better. And so that that was probably an moment, was just hearing my professor say that and, and then leaning into it later in my career.

**Garrett** (00:50:48) - I think that's so wise. And to add on to that, if you're able to sell a product that you have so much confidence in that you think that the customer not buying it is doing them a disservice. Just think about how great of a sales person you will be. So be that person that promotes a product that you know will help this person solve a problem, change their life, and selling them on it won't feel like selling on it because you're just trying to help them out.

**Garrett** (00:51:16) - And that's how you'll be the most successful.

**Nathan** (00:51:18) - An example of that, I'm about to start selling a software that I just started using. Shout out Phantom I Phantom I. Com it is an abandoned cart recovery chat bot. So when somebody goes on to pinata Gram's ads a pinata, they write the message, they go to checkout, they give us some of their contact information and address, but then they they just leave it there and they don't click pay. That happens to I think on average it's 69% of e-commerce carts are just left abandoned. They're. The normal tactic is to follow up with email, while Phantom IE sends a text message and has a conversational bot to help address. Why did this person leave it there? Was it too expensive? Here's a discount code. Was it,, was there something about the product that you didn't understand or the shipping terms? Let me tell you. And. I could not believe the like. What has happened to our abandoned cart recovery? We personally went in the past.

**Nathan** (00:52:21) - We just did this like three weeks ago from 5% abandoned cart recovery to 30%. So do I believe in it? Yes. Am I excited to share this with other e-commerce owners?

**Garrett** (00:52:31) - Yes, that will be impactful for some of you watching.

**Nathan** (00:52:34) - Most definitely. Owners out there.

**Garrett** (00:52:36) - Yes. What's something you have eliminated from your life that's made the biggest impact?

**Nathan** (00:52:42) - I think there was a lot of self-doubt that kneecapped me for years that I have been able to overcome. And, you know, it's a chicken and an egg thing. I think with some of the. The business success that I've seen, it became easier to believe in myself. But I would recommend that people not put their self-worth in. Lumped in with how they're. Business is performing, because that is not a reflection of you as an individual self-worth and that you're, you know, a human with personality and,, intrinsic like self, like intrinsic worth, but that sometimes when you're so passionate about a thing and you're spending so much time working on it, suddenly that that identity shifts into the business.

**Nathan** (00:53:37) - And when the business isn't going how you feel it, it takes a toll. And so,, I think I've been able to eliminate a decent amount of that. And, and it's definitely led to a happier life that's impactful.

**Garrett** (00:53:54) - How did you get to the stage where you saw you were doing that, and then how did you kind of come out of that realization and remove kind of that self-doubt, or realize your identity isn't the business, and your friends appreciate you for who you are, and your family appreciates you for who you are and not that you are the founder and CEO of pentagrams, whether it's, you know, doing $1 million or whether it's doing $1 a month.

**Nathan** (00:54:20) - Well, again, being brutally honest, I think that for me to really to the degree that I've let it go, it took the business being more successful. And then even when it was more successful as it went down, I felt myself. And it's it's only three years in that like this month right now. Pretty bad month for us so far.

**Nathan** (00:54:37) - Not sure exactly why we're diagnosing it, but I am not nearly as emotionally tied up in that., I've seen myself pull through and be resilient and the company pull through, so looking forward to diagnosing it and addressing it. But during those times before any success, it was the communication and the honest conversations with my other friends that were going through similar things, as well as my family, and just being open about how I was feeling. That gave me the reprieve and the reminder that, hey, I'm bigger than this. Like I as an individual are much bigger than the business.

**Garrett** (00:55:11) - People around you are so important. Absolutely.

**Nathan** (00:55:14) - So have those conversations.

**Garrett** (00:55:16) - And be open and vulnerable. Yes. For the audience looking to boost their well-being, what's your go to life hack or daily ritual that keeps you on top of your game?

**Nathan** (00:55:26) - Ooh, I am trying to pepper more these in, but I have started to read more and screen time less and already in. You know this is the whole February now new year new me kind of thing, but for real, it's some little things like just a little bit less mindless content and a little bit more focused attention has really made a big difference.

**Garrett** (00:55:49) - One thing that's helped me with that was reducing friction for tasks that you want to do, and increasing friction for tasks that you don't want to do. So for example, before I would sit down on the couch and turn on the TV, well, I would put the remote in the other room and I'd put my book next to me on the couch. So you automatically sit on the couch to relax and. Wait a minute. I can't turn on the TV and I'm too lazy to get up. So I just realized, okay, let me just read this book.

**Nathan** (00:56:20) - I love that that's actually, I'm listening to a podcast right now about dopamine triggers and the the word friction got brought up in establishing habits. And, you know, just making sure that whatever you're trying to do has less friction in whatever you're trying not to do has more friction. So that's awesome that you're doing that.

**Garrett** (00:56:43) - Atomic habits phenomenal book has as many other pointers as well. All right. Who's had the biggest influence on you and why?

**Nathan** (00:56:52) - I'm gonna have to go with my mom, probably.

**Nathan** (00:56:56) - She instilled in me a curiosity about the world and fostered my desire to learn at a young age,, and is just an incredibly empathetic and caring person as well. And so,, I give a huge shout out to my mom for setting me up on a, on a good trajectory.

**Garrett** (00:57:17) - That's awesome. How has how did she instill curiosity in you? I think that is such a key characteristic of entrepreneurs and as well as interesting people in general. Yeah.

**Nathan** (00:57:33) - , so I was homeschooled,, homeschooled till eighth grade. And in her professional work life, before she taught me my brother, she was a curriculum designer. And so it was it was an amazing resource to have. But in natural conversation,, she wouldn't if I had a question, she'd try to answer it. If she couldn't answer it, she tried to get an answer, but also logical arguments. She would. She wouldn't let me just whine. She would say, make a logical argument and I'll listen. And so gave me the opportunity to make points using logic to do so.

**Nathan** (00:58:08) - And so I think just over all of the, hey, can I go to this friend's house? No. And then me having to bring up past precedents of times that were similar, it created a,, my mindset to address the problems that I see in my life with a much more logical framework than I think I would have otherwise.

**Garrett** (00:58:27) - And think before you speak, because you knew you had to have a backup to what you were saying and.

**Nathan** (00:58:33) - And just whining wasn't going to get it done. And in business, you can't just whine that your sales are bad.

**Garrett** (00:58:38) - No kidding. You know, I don't get to speak with someone who is home schooled very often. So if we could, you know, kind of double tap on that a little bit. What was the greatest thing about being homeschooled? What how did that impact you in a positive way?

**Nathan** (00:58:54) - Yeah. So I think that especially with my mom is my teacher being able to you know, I remember I got very interested in Ben Franklin at one time and, she let me read his autobiography.

**Nathan** (00:59:08) - And Ben Franklin went through a period of time where he taught himself. And I was like, I've got to teach myself. And so she gave me kind of a loose, objective, and I think it was either a couple of days or a week to just pursue, you know, hey, what are you trying to learn? And then let me go off and try to learn it. And sure enough, I was not nearly as good at Ben Franklin, at just learning the thing. So we went back to a little bit more structure after that. But again,, that flexibility to adapt to my learning styles, I think was really huge at that early developmental phase. And we also were part of a couple of different homeschool groups. So there was still a social element. And there's a, you know, homeschooling gets typecast as one thing, but there are there's a whole spectrum of how people go about it., some more strict, some more relaxed. There's a there's flavors for everybody in there.

**Garrett** (01:00:04) - Do you see more people going the homeschool route in the future or less?

**Nathan** (01:00:09) - That's a good question. You know, I've been out out of the homeschool realm for so long now. I went into public school in eighth grade and had a great career through through high school. I enjoyed the the school atmosphere, but I do think with you're seeing it in college, people questioning, is this the right move? And with the pandemic and then some of the state of our school system today, I think you still have some parents going, is this the right move? So I don't know if it's going to be homeschooling. I wouldn't be surprised if there's been an uptick since the pandemic., but I certainly see there being an evolution of what we consider the norm when it comes to primary education.

**Garrett** (01:00:55) - I totally agree. And the pace of technology and the change that has to occur with an institution to then teach their teachers how to teach the students. By the time they go through that process, it could be kind of too late.

**Garrett** (01:01:09) - And the next evolution of technology is incorporated.

**Nathan** (01:01:12) - And I mean. They have. We had the whole could we have a calculator or not? They have ChatGPT and. Large language models aren't going anywhere., you know, this is a tool that I would rather students understand how to use as a superpower and not just as a perfect cheating mechanism by prompt engineering., you know their paper in 30s?

**Garrett** (01:01:39) - Yeah. No, I totally agree. I think that education is really going to. And I'm hopeful that education is really going to transform for the better using technology. And I would always remember my grandparents asking me, you know, random historical stats or memorization things and said, I don't need to know that because I can just look it up. They weren't very pleased with that answer. But,, you know, the pros and cons of, of, you know, evolving and change. If you were to start pentagrams over today. What would be your first few moves?

**Nathan** (01:02:15) - I would be terrified if I had to start over, but,.

**Nathan** (01:02:20) - I would I mean the the blocking and tackling file for the LLC get the domains launched the website I would probably. Spend a decent amount, I'd probably have like a $5,000 budget to begin testing creative. I'm actually about to launch a another brand, so Better Than a Letter is the parent company to Pinata Grams, and the idea is that we will have a multitude of unique mail pieces. And the next one that we're trying to roll out is called tubes. And it is a. A tube filled with all sorts of goodies and ideally themed, almost gift boxes. So a golf gift box comes with or golf tubes. He comes with golf balls, a glove, you know, a divot fixer. And then it uses our graphics that we have for pinata grams wrapped all the way around. So a happy birthday gift in a tube that's got, you know, a golf, golf balls for the golf enthusiast or the bath bombs for the, the mom., and we're going to be rolling that out in the next couple of months.

**Nathan** (01:03:28) - So I'll report back on exactly what we do once we have the product ironed out.

**Garrett** (01:03:32) - Yeah, I mean, that's basically starting over a different product and and obviously some synergies with your current existing business with Pinata Grams. I think those are great additional product lines to roll out. You will cater to different audiences for different occasions and and experiences that elevated experience with,, gifts that are included or packages. So as you wrap up here, any topic or insight that we haven't covered that you'd like to to share with the audience?

**Nathan** (01:03:58) - If you're interested in entrepreneurship, dive head deep into the relationships with the people that are there. Just like I talked about being obsessed with your competition and figuring out what they're doing, that works well. It goes to the human element to who are the individuals that are doing the things that you want to do, and don't be like me and be very intimidated to reach out and communicate, because at the end of the day, they are just another human that has a desire. So many people that have made it and want nothing more than to reach back and help those that come behind them.

**Nathan** (01:04:32) - So don't be afraid to reach out and start building those those relationships today.

**Garrett** (01:04:37) - And I think that's great feedback. Where can people find you and learn more about what you're up to? And pentagrams.

**Nathan** (01:04:44) - Absolutely.

**Garrett** (01:04:44) - So and better than a letter and the future product launches.

**Nathan** (01:04:48) - So the main one is just pinata grams.com. Unfortunately I haven't launched any any content yet, so maybe you'll have to have me back on once I start start my own content for day.

**Garrett** (01:04:59) - Yes. Great. Well, is there an Instagram page too?

**Nathan** (01:05:03) - , at Pinata Grams as well?

**Garrett** (01:05:05) - Yep. 21,000 followers plus. Yep. I was on there looking at looking at some stuff, doing some today. There it is, 23 doing some research. Well Nathan, it's been a pleasure and thanks for all the feedback, advice and,, I can't wait to see what else you come up with, products you help launch and and keep spreading happiness and joy.

**Nathan** (01:05:22) - Absolutely. Garrett, thanks so much for having me on. It's been a pleasure.