Max Learmont, founder of Chill Chair, joins the latest episode of The Seller’s Edge podcast to talk about his journey in creating and launching an innovative office chair. Max shares his experience of starting the business during the COVID-19 pandemic, initial challenges with product quality, his company’s utilization of social media ads, and the subsequent success after improving the product. The discussion covers various aspects of running an e-commerce business, including product development, supplier relationships, logistics, marketing strategies, and target audience identification. Read the full transcript of the conversation below.
Episode 27 of The Seller’s Edge – Max and Jonathan talk about:
- [00:00] Creating the Chill Chair
- [04:15] Troubleshooting Design and Supply
- [05:55] The Implications of Product Size
- [06:59] Cost Vs. Logistics
- [08:36] Go-To-Market Strategy
- [09:35] Thinking like a Media Company
- [14:12] How the Role of Retail has Changed
- [18:52] Transition into Amazon FBA
- [20:51] Starting Internationally to Prove Concept
- [22:23] Approach to Social Media Advertising
- [24:47] Creating Competitive Moats
- [29:34] Lessons Learned in Hindsight
- [32:43] Cultural Challenges
- [35:05] The Problem with Dropshipping
- [36:31] Recap and Closing Remarks
Key Takeaways:
- Product Quality Over Price: Invest in creating a high-quality product that provides genuine value to customers. Be willing to set a premium price point if the product justifies it, focusing on superior design, materials, and technology.
- Embrace Customer Feedback: When customers provide critical feedback, view it as an opportunity for improvement. Be prepared to completely redesign or pivot the product based on honest consumer insights.
- Master Digital Advertising: Develop a sophisticated digital marketing strategy, with a particular focus on Facebook ads. Be prepared to:
- Allocate significant budget to advertising
- Continuously test multiple creative variations
- Use platform algorithms to find and target your ideal customer demographic
- Understand Your Target Audience: Deeply research and define your target market. For Chill Chair, this meant identifying “stressed out working professionals” across specific high-stress professions like lawyers, dentists, and salespeople.
- Stay Adaptable to Market Trends: Monitor industry shifts like remote work, changing consumer behaviors, and technological advancements. Position your product to solve emerging problems or meet new market needs.
Full Transcript of Episode:
MAX LEARMONT: So it was like peak pandemic. I think it was a little bit inspired by Covid Madness. I was trapped in my apartment for like six months. We had pretty strict lockdown laws in Australia. I’m wondering if I’m the first Australian on your podcast. If so, that’s a huge win. But yeah, I was just pacing around my apartment. I was always thinking of product ideas. Like I was the guy who was constantly scrolling through the Alibaba product section and going deep, deep within to see what cool new things were out there. And I was always thinking about products. And I tested probably 10 to 15 different products, mostly failures. But then I just had this idea of it’d be really cool if you could get one of those big airport massaging chairs, but have that experience within an office chair. And I’m like, I wonder if something like that exists. Began the sort of three to five year, the three year crusade of building out Chill Chair. And I found a product that sort of at first delivered on this goal, but to be honest, it wasn’t very good. And we ended up launching this first version of Chill Chair in early 2022. I had made sort of a reckless financial decision to sell most of my sort of life savings and stocks, stocks that I had at the time, which I called the Shares for Chairs initiative. Probably the worst financial advice in the world. I would never recommend anyone to sell their life asset and life savings and put it into chairs, but I did that launched this product in America. Our website was absolutely garbage. And for the first two months we didn’t sell a single product, which was completely and utterly terrifying because I had put, you know, my entire life’s work into this. Eventually I brought on a friend who was sort of an expert web designer to help me, like, fancy up the web page. And we started to move these units. The issue was because I had selected a product from a supplier who wasn’t fantastic. And the product to be on our first version of our product, to be honest, wasn’t very good. We got something like 20 to 25% returns. So I ended up making a loss on our first series of chairs. And at that point I was really ready to give up. But then I had a customer reach out who sent me one of the best customer emails of all time. And it was so helpful and I’m so glad he, he had the, he had the balls to send this to me. He said, this is a great idea, but this is a really shitty product. And I’m like, that’s actually great advice. Like I was really pleased to hear from this guy. So I went back to the drawing board. I found. I found a new supplier. We worked together to design the best possible version of this concept to deliver what was the dream at the start of delivering that, you know, big bulky massage chair experience, which makes you feel incredible after, but in the form and function of a typical office chair. So we then relaunched the product with the money I had remaining in November of 2022. And since then it’s sort of gone gangbusters. And so now we’re selling really well on our website, on Amazon. We’re in the U.S. we’re in Australia, and soon to be in the UK and Europe, which is tremendously exciting. I’m curious, when you said about the supplier, I mean, was it simply the supplier and materials or was it a design piece or both that you felt like that first iteration wasn’t as great as it could be? I think we, I think I just had the mindset of which I think a lot of sellers have, is find the cheapest product, really, you know, try and find what, you know and offer the consumer. Really, you know, I think, yeah, it was the shift from going from a value mindset and really trying to find a cheap product, trying to sell it at a cheap price, to sort of flipping that on its head and saying, okay, actually what’s the best possible product we can buy? And, you know, we’ll still try and get it to consumers at the most affordable price possible, but if it ends up being a more premium product, then so be it. And I think we made the decision to, we saw that people, you know, paying upwards of like $1,500 for their iPhone, you’re spending eight hours on your phone a day. You sit in your office chair for eight hours a day. So it’s a really high involvement product and it makes sense that people would spend as much money on their chair as their phone. So I thought it was a good idea to set, set, set a more premium price point, which allowed us to spend more on the product, which meant better design, better materials, better technology. And yeah, consumers have reacted really well to it. And our hypothesis that people would spend, you know, fifteen hundred dollars on, on a smart chair has sort of proven true. So that’s, that’s, that’s really exciting.
JONATHAN: I love that. I think that that’s, I mean, it is the, typically, the approach is, yes, find the cheapest products. So, like, I think that that’s a story I hear all the time. I’m curious because it’s a Large product. Like, I’m used to people selling things that are like this, something that you could fit on a desk. So when it comes to supply chain inventory, what’s it like working with a bulk product, like has that. Has that something that you were new to, had you had previous experience in some capacity with it?
MAX LEARMONT: Yeah, people usually get quite afraid when they hear, you know, okay, this product’s 35 kilograms. It’s going to be an absolute nightmare to ship over the world. The shipping rates are going to be exorbitant. And that is true. But there are pros and cons of every product and shipping. You know, with a, with a very heavy product, you’re going to spend a lot of money on, say, oversized handling with FedEx, and your shipping costs are going to be quite high. But I guess the beauty about furniture is that and technology as well to some degree is you’re selling it at quite a high price point. So, you know, everything’s relative. And so your shipping costs are going to be just a proportion of what your sales price is. So it’s not, it’s not too bad from a cost perspective, in terms of a logistics perspective and a hassle perspective, it’s pretty, it’s pretty tough. But I think that’s also a positive because it creates a great barrier to entry. And luckily, we’ve partnered with logistics companies who are experts in processing large, heavy, bulky goods, such as our chairs. So I think as long as you find the right partners, it’s not too big of a deal. I think what’s more difficult about our product is that because the value of one piece of inventory is so high, it’s not like a $60 item on Amazon where the customer’s unhappy. You’re fine to tell that customer, oh, hey, don’t worry about it, we’ll refund you. Just throw it away. Like, we actually need the inventory back because it’s, it’s. There’s so much spent in the inventory and we need to repackage it and use our products as replacements if another customer has an issue. So the real issue is these chairs to us are as good as gold is making sure we can make reuse, reuse our inventory where necessary, and having a really intricate repackaging process, which adds to the complexity of the operation because we’ve got about 30 different, you know, accessory pieces that we need to, like, use for each repackaging job. So, you know, as far as weight goes, it’s actually quite low down on the list of our issues over here at Chill Chair
JONATHAN: That’s fair. It’s funny, I was, I talked to another seller who does. It was the first time I came across it was fish tanks. And I was just like, that’s a hell of a thing to be sending in the mail because the breakage.
MAX LEARMONT: Yeah, yeah, lots of, lots of, lots of fish escaping. Lots of little, little nemos getting away.
JONATHAN: Yeah. And then as far as like your initial go to market, I know you’re heavy on dtc, what was your approach there like? I mean, were you just bombarding social media feeds with ads? What was the play?
MAX LEARMONT: Yeah, the play is, as you touched upon, is we spend, excuse my French, a metric fuck ton of money on advertisement. And really for me, the e commerce game is all about how well you leverage Facebook ads. So, you know, you have a product, you build in, you know, the cost of goods and shipping, your daily operational expenses, and then you’re left with a pool of money. That’s how much can I spend on ads for one product to be profitable. And luckily for us, because we’re selling a product at quite a high price point, it allows us, and this is the beauty of being in the high ticket game is you can spend more money on ads per product than you can for cheaper items. So that allows us, John, to spend quite a lot of money on Facebook ads. So at the end of the day, we’re really just more than anything a media company. So we’re constantly testing new Facebook ads. We’re running hundreds of different creative variations. We spend, you know, we give our old friend Mark Zuckerberg a huge lump of money each day. Funny story, actually. Mark Zuckerberg’s dad actually commented on one of our Facebook ads and I was like, surely not. This is, this must be a bot. This must be a fake person. Anyway, I went on his profile and it was literally Mark Zuckerberg’s dad. And his comment was like, I’m so glad my son’s company is helping out small businesses like yours. And I’m like, that would be such a strange comment for a bot. Like, surely this must be actually him. And it was, he’s like just this like dentist who just is very proud of his son and loves that his son is helping out businesses like mine. So I don’t know. Mark Zuckerberg said, if you’re listening to this, hello. So yeah, Facebook ads is the play. We do definitely leverage other platforms, but yeah, the technology and the, the algorithm is just so good on Facebook that really you don’t even need to give it too much direction anymore. To. To find your customers, you sort of just give Facebook a lot of money. You give it a lot of different ads and it is incredibly good at getting new customers. So, yeah, that’s where the bulk of our advertising is. I’m sure at some point that will cap out and there’ll be a point of diminishing returns where we will need to invest in other forms of media, probably like podcasts and more YouTube ads and go onto other platforms. But at the moment, yeah, it’s all about spending a lot of money on Facebook.
JONATHAN: Yeah, it’s definitely. The algorithm on Facebook is really great for training it for your audience. I’m curious as far as that’s concerned, like demographic wise. I mean, you. Serendipitously, you did this at the perfect time because everybody was going remote, so everyone was building an office for a moment needing a chair more or less, rather than having like the typical just company supplied chair at their cubicle. So have you found like a specific demographic that you are more prominent than others? I’m. I’m wondering how that actually works.
MAX LEARMONT: Yes. So the good thing about chairs, as I like to say, is everybody sits. So it’s a very broad product. You know, it. You know, every office professional has an office chair, whether it’s theirs at home or the company. So the market is huge. The actual global market value of the office, the, of the office chair market is like, it’s like $14 billion and growing quite quickly. It’s a very boring category, so. Which has allowed us to sort of be the sexy player in a very boring space. But you’re right, we sort of picked the perfect time to come in because when Covid happened, we saw this influx of capital from sort of commercial offices and people investing in the commercial space to investing in residential offices. And so we’ve sort of ridden that wave of this new form of work where people are working two to three days a week and have this added degree of flexibility and people want to invest in their home space and make it as comfy and cool and relaxing as humanly possible, which is fantastic. But to answer your question on who are audiences? You know, we say we’re for stressed out working professionals at the end of the day. And that’s great news because there is a stress epidemic in multiple countries, but especially yours, the American. You. You Americans, you really love to work and you’re very proud about how much you work. And you guys will work yourselves to death. And you, you say you have unlimited holidays and unlimited leave, but in reality you have no leave. But I guess that could be a whole podcast on that issue alone. So there’s an epidemic of people who are stressed. And there’s also this culture of people who are incredibly high achievers, but also like to work hard and play hard and in order to sort of facilitate that lifestyle, they need to find a way to alleviate the stress and prevent burnout at work. So naturally, we do very well with professions that have high, high degree of stress. We do very well with lawyers, we do very well with dentists, who are famously the most unhappy and have the highest suicide rates of all professions. We do, sorry to say that dentist, Please keep buying our products. We do very well with salespeople who are trying to hit this, you know, their monthly, their monthly targets. And also people just spend an incredible amount of time at their desks, such as video editors and music producers. So it’s sort of interesting we’re finding more of our niche audiences as we progress and as we hear more customer feedback. But I guess the, the, the, the broad level psychographic is stressed out working professionals.
JONATHAN: So that’s the, the DTC side. I know that you are kind of dipping your toes into Amazon. Is there a retail play as well? Is that something that you have in the roadmap?
MAX LEARMONT: Yes, I think the role of retail has sort of fundamentally changed though, for intelligent brands. So what I mean by that is because people are so comfortable now with buying a product like ours online. So for a chair back in the day, you know, it would be unthinkable to buy a chair online because you want to sit in the chair, you want to feel like it’s going to be a good chair. But I think the mattress industry was, was something that really pioneered the ability to create so much trust with the consumer online via just an amazing website experience, amazing testimonials, really selling the science and the comfort that people became more comfortable with buying furniture online and not needing to go into, you know, a mattress store or a furniture company and go lie down in 20 different mattresses. So because we have the ability to, to have such tremendous scale online, there’s sort of no point. You know, early on, John, we did pursue some retail opportunities with Best Buy and Costco, but honestly, it’s so much fucking work. It is. And the terms they give to our company are so bad that it’s not really worth the time, effort and we’re selling our product at a loss and we’re appearing in their stores which sort of erode the value of our brand because some of their brands are not fantastic. To begin with or opposite to sort of like being like low value brands. So, you know, the retail opportunity is, I don’t think, as exciting as it once used to be. That being said, I think some brands do it in a really, in intelligent way. And I think the brand that I look to as sort of a thought leader in this space is an Australian brand to toot the horn of my fantastic country. Came out of Melbourne, Aesop. And Aesop is a skincare brand that recently sold for billions of dollars. It was started in 1980s bootstrapped by this one guy and it, their retail experience just surpasses anything you could possibly imagine. And they’re really intelligent about using retail in a way that they’re not. Their stores, yes, that they use to ship product, but each one of their stores is individually crafted to reflect sort of the atmosphere or the vibe of the area in which it’s in. So each store feels different based on the city it’s in. So you go into the store and it’s sort of like this amazing experience that makes you really fall in love with the brand and whether or not you buy products in store, which you probably would, but you’re more likely to then think highly of this brand and buy it online. So Aesop used retail as sort of like, as another marketing channel, which I think is really smart. I think Apple does this too and they were one of the first to do it where you go into an Apple store and it feels like a religious experience where you’re going into like a church. So I think retail for the purpose of building out a brand experience is sort of the way to go. But if you’re relying on retail as a way to shift product at scale, that’s probably not the best idea. So maybe in the future we do have, you know, chill stores where you can come in and get massages on our products and there’s relaxing music playing and the stores are just beautiful. But they could probably be pretty small and you know, not there to move tons of product. They’re just there to help people have sort of like little relaxing moments throughout their day. I think that could be an interesting avenue for us. But you know, that’s, that’s probably a ways off. And I think we want to sort of get our online presence up and running in, in multiple different countries before we start investing in retail.
JONATHAN: Yeah. It’s something that is completely foreign to me just because again, I’m, I, I’m so used to dealing with people who, who sell small retail goods and when it Gets to something like furniture. I’m just curious what that’s like. And it’s interesting because I just the other day I was driving by a mattress store and I’m just like, how is there a mattress store like brick and mortar still in business?
MAX LEARMONT: Yeah, it boggles the mind. Surely, surely that can’t, they can’t exist for too much longer. Although the, the margins on the thing about the furniture industry is the margins are so good, people don’t really know. There are certain categories where people’s brains just don’t know how to value products. And furniture, I think is one where we’ve been trained over time that furniture just equals expensive. So I think that’s why it’s one of the last brick and mortar stores remaining is because people don’t really know the difference between a $2,000 mattress and a $10,000 mattress. In their minds. It’s like wine. It’s like, it’s like there’s no one can. All the Somalia jobs, they’re complete bullshit. No one, no one really knows the difference between a hundred bottle dollar bottle of wine and a thousand dollar bottle of wine. I think it’s the same with mattresses.
JONATHAN: Yeah. And then as far as Amazon, what was your kind of introduction into Amazon like? Because I came into Amazon about six years ago and prior to that I thought it was a pretty, I thought it was pretty basic. Like you put your. It was almost ebay. You’d throw your product up there and leave it alone and that would be that. And then I realized that it’s this ecosystem unto itself with all sorts of post apocalyptic laws and renegades.
MAX LEARMONT: Yes, yes. A lot of bureaucracy, a lot of paperwork. Andrew and the team at Marknology have been fantastic. I found, found them because a guy named Earl reached out to me after seeing my Facebook ads and put me in touch with Andrew. And at that stage Amazon was in the back of my mind. And you know, we had this first mover advantage of being the only company selling our product D2C. And I wanted to solidify that advantage by going into Amazon. And I just didn’t really know how to do it. And you’re right, it is the. It is far more complex than you, than you could possibly imagine. And, and it was made additionally hard because I don’t know if you could tell by my accent, I’m Australian. And I needed a whole bunch of additional sort of US tax things and paperwork in order to get approved and sell and sell on Amazon and things like I wouldn’t have Thought of, like, getting a. Getting a trademark and all these sort of additional legal processes to. To get set up and to get ready. And then there are tons of other issues that arise with customers and, you know, setting different settings and it’s. If you don’t really know it back and forth, it’s really hard to get up and running. So, yeah, I’m very lucky that I’ve had a team to support me and get our products up there and selling and, yeah, we’ve had some really good success. And, yeah, keen to. Keen to keep the momentum going on Amazon.
JONATHAN: Yeah. I’m curious. There’s two things that you brought up that I’m curious about. One is international markets. So you started. Did you start in Australia or was it the us?
MAX LEARMONT: No, I started in the U.S.
JONATHAN: Right. What instigated that decision and kind of where did it go from there?
MAX LEARMONT: Good question. Because most people, as your question indicates, don’t start in the US if they’re from a different country. They typically start in Australia or the UK or somewhere in Europe and then once they’ve proven the concept, they go to the us. The US is the most competitive consumer market in the world. And as well for advertising, it’s a very competitive market, which means your clicks are higher and your cost per acquisition is higher. I went into the US because there is just so much opportunity to scale and I thought, you know, if I can succeed in the us, I can succeed anywhere and if I can prove the concept here, then I can go out into other markets and find additional customers. But, you know, there’s 330 million people in the US. We target the affluent and people with a good amount of disposable income and probably, you know, the 1% of that 330 million people, which means there’s a, you know, 3 million potential customers for us, for us to go after. So that’s a really, really good amount of volume to. To go into the market and find the scale that we’re looking for. If I started in Australia, which only has 25 million people, it’s just like only having access to, like, California in America, which is great, but we really wanted to. To grow quickly and launching an America first allowed us to do that.
JONATHAN: Yeah, that makes sense. It’s like, if you’re going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance. Right?
MAX LEARMONT: I like that. I’m going to steal that, Jon. That’s a good sign.
JONATHAN: t’s not mine. You can feel free to steal. It was funny because you mentioned Earl commenting on your Facebook ads. And him and Mark Zuckerberg’s dad apparently are very impressed with your Facebook ads.
MAX LEARMONT: Yes, yes.
JONATHAN: I’m wondering what’s the, is there something special about the way you’ve approached ads? Is there user generated content, content that you’ve been using? Do you leverage influencers?
MAX LEARMONT: It’s a good question. So my background is in media and brand strategy. I worked at creative and media agencies for nearly a decade before, before starting this business. So I worked with some pretty big brands like Taco Bell and Carnival Cruises. And so I had experience being in the room with creative people to come up with concepts for, you know, very large, expensive, we call them TVCs but essentially T TV ads. So I always had the mindset of coming in and trying to produce content that felt like it came from a really big company, even though the budgets of Chill Chair are orders of magnitude smaller. So I think a lot of people really go cheap with their creative. Whereas I wanted to just, I had a really clear vision for the brand from the get go. And coming from a media and brand background, I was able to have a very clear idea in my mind what I, what I wanted to communicate and then find partners who could produce something that looks incredibly professional and slick and feels like it’s coming from, you know, $1 billion brand for a fraction of the cost. So I feel like that’s really where our competitive advantages is. We, we produce higher quality ads. We also produce ugc. UGC is great, but I think it’s more brand advertising that separates us from the pack. And to be honest, we don’t really look at our competitors or what they’re doing. A lot of brands go out there and they just try and copy the ads of the competitors. But the office chair category is so unbelievably brand and boring and lame that we just do whatever we want. And I feel like that really separates us from the pack because people don’t expect to see the sort of ads that come from us that they do from other office chair brands. That’s really our secret sauce.
JONATHAN: You’re the first mover in that space. You’re going to have a lot of people who are coming up and trying to copy that idea and make enhancements and try to get ahead of you. How do you keep that idea fresh? Especially because again, going back to you, you mentioning like the inventory being costly, like you don’t want to make your chair obsolete. So it’s like how do you iterate while also keeping that in mind.
MAX LEARMONT: These are the tough questions. Do you want a job, Jon? And then come and help us figure these out. Yeah, I’d be lying if I said I have all the answers for you right now. But I think your, what your question is sort of leaning towards is, you know, what are the competitive moats you can build to keep competitors at bay? And I think the first one we touched on is brand. Having a strong brand is very important. Some say we live in the age where brand is dead. I don’t really believe that. I still think people buy products still for how they feel, how it makes them feel, and what it indicates about them from a status perspective. The other, the other part of brand that I don’t think people consider is brand is really just memory structures and associations. And so it’s just how well are you remembered? So a lot of work that’s gone into Chill Chair is just being very easy and simple to remember because people are inundated with 100,000 ads a day. There’s a million billion different products. We want to be incredibly distinctive, very easy to remember. So when people think of what’s that cool office chair? Oh, it’s the Chill Chair. It’s kind of like how we say, like, you know, the Frisbee, that’s a brand name, or the boogie board, that’s. That’s Boogie Board was also a brand name. It’s like we want to be the brand that’s associated with the category. Like, like Google is probably the best example. So we want to be very distinctive, very easy to remember. And that’s going to be one of our competitive moats. And part of that is just advertising a lot and being in people’s to be top of mind and present as, as, as much as possible. And then the second competitive mode is technology. And so that is constantly coming to market with new and exciting features. So we’ve had many customers reach out about all the different things they want from their office chair, whether it’s heating, cooling, speakers, and many other more exciting sort of features. Maybe I can’t, I can’t talk about on this podcast, but we work very closely with our supplier to feed them all this customer information so that new iterations of our products can really push the limits of what people can expect from an office chair. And then I guess finally third, the other competitor, which is probably the most boring one, is just having really strong supply chain and processes and logistics, being able to work really efficiently in multiple different countries, have great inventory forecasting, you know, not, not to get too in front of your skis in ordering inventory and Getting into too much debt. I think these are all things to consider as well. So, yeah, those are the sort of three things we’re relying on at the moment. But, yeah, I think it’s only a matter of time before someone realizes we’re onto a good thing here. But hopefully by that stage, you know, Chill Chair will be synonymous with the smart office chair.
JONATHAN: Yeah. And then as far as brand recognition, I mean, customer response, you mentioned the guy who had the balls to send you that initial email. Is there another customer interact? Like, do you have customers that are just, like, vehement proponents for the brand?
MAX LEARMONT: Oh, people absolutely love our products. I’ve never seen. This is the thing that has surprised me about starting D2C brands is you. You do find these customer champions who are just like, oh, my God, where has this been all my life? And they tell all their friends and family about it. And this started happening to us quite early, is we would. I was. Because I’d be looking at every single order. Where was it placed in our. In our very early days, and we were getting some orders from, like, these very small country towns in America. And I’d see one go to the small country town, and then like, two weeks later, we get like, two more orders, and then like, five more orders. And then I’d like Google, the first person who had bought our product, and they’re a. The head of a car dealership or something. And so. And so they’re buying it for their employees. And then I see that they’re a member of, like, the local town hall. So this person just has become, like, the brand champion for our product, and this entire town has gotten behind it. So, yeah, you don’t want to underestimate the power of one person who just truly, truly loves your product. And when you find people like those, you’ve got to cherish them and send them nice emails and give them exclusive deals because they will reward you in return.
JONATHAN: It’s the best advertising, right? Like, it’s free and people. It’s higher conversion than any other advertising. There is word of mouth as far as people pushing on people around them.
MAX LEARMONT: 100%. I think it really helps us that we have a bit of an X factor product. And a product that has, you know, lends itself really well to not only social media advertising, but word of mouth because it’s an interesting thing to talk about. It’s like, oh, like, you got to try this chair. Like, it actually gives me, like, a massage at work. And people like, wait, what? That’s got to be A gimmick that can’t, that can’t be true. So it’s, it’s a, it’s conversation worthy which I think has really helped accelerate our growth.
JONATHAN: What was the biggest initial challenge and then since then, what was sort of the biggest unexpected challenge that came along later?
MAX LEARMONT: I think the biggest challenge is the change in pace and lifestyle coming from say a big ad agency where you’re in the midst of really awesome, high energy, creative people every day and it’s an incredible amount of socializing and you’re bouncing off people and it’s really energizing to being completely alone, building something by yourself all day, every day. So it’s, especially when you start. So it’s the transition from being, having a really social work environment to, to the loneliness and the struggles that come with that and the anxiety and the doubt and all these things that come with starting, starting a company. So I feel like a lot of people aren’t really well equipped for that sort of change in their lifestyle. So yeah, that’s, that’s really tough. And dealing with the highs and the lows of a company, especially if you’re in it by yourself, is pretty challenging. So that was probably the most thing, the unexpected thing. I mean, there’s been a lot of unexpected challenges that come along the way. I think it’s like the thing of starting a business is like the unknown unknowns and you get to the stage and you’re like, oh, you always know there’s going to be a problem going to come down the road, but you just don’t know exactly what. And you sort of just have to figure it out and you don’t really know what’s going to come your way, but you have to via Google or YouTube or talking to friends or people in the industry. You sort of just got to figure out the problem and you never really know what the problem is going to be or what the resolution is going to be, but it’s just sort of problem solving on the fly and only seeing the problems that are like this far in front of your face. That’s, I guess, the tough thing. And eventually I think you just need to develop a bit of a stoic mindset and sort of be, you know, the wall at the beach where the waves just constantly hit over and you just got to take, take each problem and just sort of be willing to accept these new challenges that comes because it never ends until you sell the business and go buy an island and live happily ever after. So yeah, that’s, that’s been the most unexpected thing is, is the, is the degree of strange and, and, and unforeseen challenges that come your way.
JONATHAN: Yeah, I can identify with a lot of that. And you don’t know what you don’t know, but it’s the, the loneliness. It’s. Listen, especially when you’re at the top, right? And especially when you’re starting an endeavor. I do film on the side and I do independent filmmaking and.
MAX LEARMONT: Nice.
JONATHAN: It’s just like trying to convince people to come fight and invisible windmills with you. Like, it’s like a daunting thing because you’re like, there’s this thing that really doesn’t exist yet, but I want to make it and I need some support. I feel like it’s the most concentrated form of imposter syndrome there could possibly be.
MAX LEARMONT: Oh, 100%. Well, it sounds like we’re two, we’re two kindred spirits in that way, John. But you’re right, you have to sell people on this thing that doesn’t exist yet. And you seem like a crazy person. I’ve spent a little bit of time in America and I think the best thing about America is you have this tolerance for failure and you’re more risk seeking as, as a people compared to Australians. Australians, we have this thing called tall poppy syndrome where we don’t like to see people who we think are too good, you know, too big for their boots, who, who, who, who try and stand above the crowd because as the saying goes, the tall poppies, they get cut down. So I think it’s increasingly difficult. Like it’s more, more challenging to, not to one up you or anything. But I think it’s, it’s more challenging from a cultural perspective to build companies in Australia because people don’t like to see people who are doing new and different things. So yeah, coming to, from, from my perspective, coming to friends and family and being like, oh yeah, I want to like revolutionize the office chair category and do something really interesting in that space. They’re like, oh yeah, sure mate, good luck with that. Whereas I think in America where people would be like, oh my God, that’s like great. Like go for it. Like you’re going to, you’re going to do so well.
JONATHAN: That’s interesting. I never thought about that. And you are right because I feel like we all are hyping each other up in the United States and everybody has, listen, you can like throw like, I don’t know, I’m in New York City, you can throw a beer bottle and hit somebody who’s like starting like the next great startup or something?
MAX LEARMONT: Yes, yes.
JONATHAN: And it’s interesting because I hadn’t thought about being in a culture where that isn’t the case. So I have a lot of admiration for that, especially because naysayers are. It’s. It can be insidious and it can get in your head. So I have that much more admiration for you doing that. And then you having gone through this, is there something that you would have gone back and done differently? Like, if you could have. If you knew, if you knew then what you know now, is there something you would have done differently in the initial trajectory for Chill Chair that you would have pursued?
MAX LEARMONT: Yes. As I mentioned earlier, we launched a product to market that didn’t meet customer expectations. I mean, that was useful as a test to show that there was initial customer demand, that there were at least people who would order these things. Unfortunately, a lot of them did return it because they weren’t satisfied. But I think we would have had the mindset just to deliver the best customer experience and product possible. I mean, it sounds, it sounds pretty simplistic, but things really started to go well for my business because I was. I used to drop ship products before I started this company. And a lot of drop shippers fail and a lot of them don’t know why they fail. And it’s pretty easy to imagine where they’re selling, you know, a cheap, low quality product from China that takes four weeks to arrive, and then they offer like zero customer support and they’re like, why am I making millions of dollars yet? So if you just flip that on its head and you try and do everything to the best of your abilities, things turn out pretty well. If you deliver an amazing product with amazing customer service, great shipping times, and just have an all around fantastic customer experience. Yeah. The universe will reward you. Just do things good and good things will happen. So that’s sort of the mindset we have. And I think we didn’t quite, quite have that at the very beginning. I think we were cutting corners. But yeah, that’s the mindset I would have going, going into it if I started Chill Chair today.
JONATHAN: I love that. And I can’t think of a better note to end on because that’s just like a perfect summation for everything. So I really like that.
MAX LEARMONT: Fantastic.
JONATHAN: Yeah. Max, you’re great and I love the product. I’m glad that you turned out to be a great guy too because, like, it’s always disheartening when, like, there’s a product that I’m, like, really interested in, and I meet the person behind it, I’m like, oof.
MAX LEARMONT: It would be pretty ironic if a guy who started a company called Chill Chair was just, like, not chill, just a bit of a dick.
