Bryan Reisberg from Little Chonk

Sam (00:04): Bryan, welcome to Beyond the Inbox. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us.

Bryan (00:08): Right on. Thanks for having me.

Sam (00:11): Before discussing what led to you co-founding Little Chonk, we need to introduce Maxine. For listeners who don't know... There she is. For listeners who don't know who Maxine is, here she is. And what is her role in the founding of Little Chonk?

Bryan (00:28): She's our chief chonk. She's everything. She's the Little Chonk. Everything behind what we're doing is because of her.

Sam (00:40): I want to go back to 2015 when you first got her. Maxine has had this enormous growth on Instagram and I would love to hear the story behind you and your wife getting her. If I'm not mistaken, it was a wedding present for the both of you. And how did Maxine grow such a large following on Instagram?

Bryan (01:04): So I went to film school at NYU, and we were living on the Upper West Side at the time. And we got married, we got Maxine as a gift. And however imprudent it was to get a dog as being a young broke 20 something in New York City, it changed our lives. So I was lucky enough to work in an office that allowed dogs. I was a commercial director at the time. And also at the same time, the MTA, which is the subway in New York City, had a new rule stating that dogs had to be in bags to ride the subway. And like most little rules they would go largely unfollowed, including me. But then I quickly got a $200 ticket from the NYPD. And I was looking for every carrier to carry her in. I started carrying her in a tote because she was a little puppy. It was very cute.

(01:56): And then she got too big for me to carry on that side of my body, so I searched high and low and found a backpack. And it was this very cheaply made Jan Sport. And I started carrying her in the backpack. And I had started putting her on Instagram in around 2016 as a fun thing to do. It was a creative outlet. I loved taking pictures. I loved making funny videos because she was so adorable. There was never any goal to monetize it or do anything with it. It just filled the space because I just had to keep creating stuff. Like the commercial directing work wasn't coming in that quickly. So I would just spend time raising her, making content. And it just started growing slowly. And because there weren't a lot of pet accounts at the time and any pet account that was there, none of them looked good, they weren't interesting to me. They weren't funny.

(02:53): And so I saw an opportunity to make high quality stuff, like photos and videos and I started shooting stuff with my cinematographer friends. And that stuff would go viral and keep going viral and I would just kind of follow that. And I just kept on top of her Instagram account because it was something fun to do. And I went back to a day job and I would just bring her everywhere with me, because we didn't want to spend money on daycare. We didn't have the money to spend on daycare. I also just wanted to be with the dog all the time. And I brought her to every job interview I had from that day forward. I started neglecting my work. And then her account grew to the point where some of the companies I worked for were fine with the time I was spending on it, as long as I met deadlines.

(03:42): And over the years since 2016, I just started investing more and more time. I went where the eyeballs and I saw an opportunity to make people laugh. Again, we weren't making a lot of money. It was just a cool thing. It was really weird and funny to me. And then I think before the pandemic we were at about 400,000 on Instagram and TikTok just started to become a thing before the pandemic, if I'm not mistaken. And I got Maxine on and off five times because I just couldn't deal with it. I didn't like it. It's a really a creative shift to go from one platform to the other. And once we got on it, I think we just got in at the right time. And there was this period of TikTok where it was like rocket fuel was on every video.

(04:29): If you were creating something that was kind of interesting, it would just fucking skyrocket. And I would say to my wife, which I don't do this anymore and I only did this with this period of time. So I remember I said, "Hey, watch this." And I would show her the video, I was like, "Watch what happens." And I would click it and we would just watch these numbers go up. And the most important part of that to me was not the views or the quick vanity metrics, because I don't see value in short term gains like that in social media. For us, because we've done it for so long, I'm in a unique position that we've been able to see what the value is of longevity in terms of building an audience, building a community, making your moat, and becoming an actual brand.

(05:13): So that was just fun. And it helped us grow on Instagram because it brought a lot of those users over to Instagram. And I think I didn't quit my day job until, what was it? October of 2021. So six years, am I doing that math right? Six years after starting the Instagram. So I was in a very fortunate position that we had saved up enough money from the day job and Maxine that I could quit and focus full-time on launching Little Chonk, which we formally launched it two months later. I've been working on it for years prior, but now we could go full steam ahead. And the one thing that I think has led to our success is that this was born out of love. It was born out of a need to create genuinely. I need to just keep making shit. And I was so in love with her.

(06:09): I didn't think anything of starting all of this. I didn't have any hopes for it. We create because we love to. And we've been very fortunate that I left my job very late in the game. So we had saved up enough money that what we were doing, what we were making wasn't motivated by money, because I've had friends in the creator space, they're chasing a bottom line every month. It's work like anything else. And I think at least I wouldn't want to work that way. I wouldn't want to have those decisions influenced by money because I think that can really dampen what you're doing and change your strategy for the worst. So I think our trajectory it's been somewhat of a marathon, but we've just learned to go with the flow.

(06:50): And we've been very fortunate that the opportunities we've made for ourselves has compounded with the amount of luck we've had to time the market properly. And kind of come out with stuff as there was an inflection point in the creator economy which happened pretty recently. And we were ahead of a lot of those trends. So we've been able to put in the groundwork to get to the point where now what we're building has quickly become kind of a major player in the category. And a lot of it it's been hard work, but I don't want to undervalue just the amount of luck in some of this shit because I think that's pretty important. So I don't know, there're a lot of stuff in there to unpack. But that's kind of been how it's happened.

Sam (07:38): I love that you mentioned luck because I've been listening to some previous interviews you did, Brian. And it's so fascinating hearing the journey unfold over several years because we had the pandemic. And you mentioned in one interview that you saw an article and Maxine was in the article. And the article was about 10 things that will make you happy or something like that. And Maxine was bringing so many people Joy during a time when there was a lot of uncertainty in the world. And there's so much to timing. And I wanted to ask you, how important do you think timing is for all of this coming together? Getting in early before the other Pet influencers, getting in early on TikTok and so on. What role does that play do you think?

Bryan (08:20): I think timing is everything. I don't want to undervalue the timing of this stuff because I think there's a lot of factors that help some of these accounts rise. And the unfortunate state of... Well everything, it's just not a meritocracy. It's just not the way the world works. And I think that if... I don't want to mislead people and say that there is strategy behind this, because there's so much to what we do that there's no fucking strategy to it. You just kind of have to move with the ebb and flow of what's going on. Because if you try to strategize even a week out or a month out on certain things, it can become very suffocating to the process and the volatile nature of these platforms because at the end of the day you're at the whim of not just the way the world works. It feels like ever since the beginning of the pandemic, every day has been so different.

(09:25): And I'm sure a lot of people feel that for better and for worse. So we've been through this enough that once we got to the pandemic, making a company, trying to think ahead as much as possible, trying to make content in a creative economy that is so up and down every day, it's really difficult to do and it's really difficult to plan. So what we've been able to do and this trickles down to just making stuff, not even the kind of macro of it all, but really the minutiae of it is that if you've been through it enough, you've been through the peaks and valleys. You've known that, okay, I can't control this, I can't control this, I can't control this. I can't control how my shit performs.

(10:13): I can't control even when I want to go shoot with Maxine. I've done shoots with Maxine where it's like, okay, I need to get this, this and this. If I do it like that, I'll end up very frustrated because she's a dog. She's going to do what she wants to do. And so we've learned over the years to just go with it. There's only so much you can plan. And if you've gone through success and failure enough within creating stuff, having it not perform, selling stuff to an audience, it not going well, and how you can either iterate or pivot, then you start to get really comfortable with the volatility and the uncertainty on a day-to-day basis. And you're able to work within those confines to start to navigate it.

(10:55): And I think a lot of it happens unconsciously because I don't plan our content. I don't plan my days really. I have a calendar of course, but I think a lot of founders and entrepreneurs and even creators, they're very rigid about scheduling and planning and maximizing everything. That's just not the way I operate. So we kind of just go with the flow of what we're going to get, which is like, okay, if an opportunity comes let's say yes. Let's see what comes out of it. If nothing comes out of it, fine, can we learn anything and how can that inform what we do moving forward? So I think we've gotten into a place where there's just a lot not on paper about how we operate.

(11:33): And at least right now, I don't know how to work any other way because a lot of this is... I'm a very sensitive, creative person so I can get in these moods. And my goal right now is to try and put myself in a position that we can have a successful day, which means leaving a lot up to chance, planning a little bit here and there because the timing aspect it's really difficult to pinpoint.

Sam (12:02): Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there as well. I look at a brand like Little Chonk and I see this enormous following on social media that so many e-commerce brands would love to have. And one might argue that there's so much uncertainty with social platforms and the algorithm and so on. But then I go on your website and I see so much that has gone into the brand, the design, the funnel, how I can enter my email. I go for a welcome flow. I want to come back to social in a moment, but I want to ask you what other channels play a role in your overall marketing strategy? Like email for instance?

Bryan (12:45): Email's huge. I don't think anybody should be undervaluing emails and newsletters and stuff like that. We see huge spikes when we send out emails. And I think it's a massive marketing channel, even I would say arguably more so than the social aspect because I think it just depends on what kind of comms people want and how they're most receptive to those comms. There's not a lot of selling being done on Maxine's Instagram account. It's because for that audience, our backpack is kind of table stakes for a lot of people. And I'm sure there's a lot of people that don't know what we're doing, but a lot of what we've built is there's a lot of folks who have a lot of trust in us. And I do my best to not take advantage of that trust. And that even means selling the stuff we're selling.

(13:37): I trust in pet parents because over the years I've learned that a lot of people... And I would take this with a grain of salt, but I think a lot of people do their research and find stuff that is well reviewed or is doing well in the market. And we've seen that across, we're all over Reddit. We didn't do anything with Reddit. It'll just pop up there. And we've seen the flywheel of the content because not only do we have a product that we live and breathe, but we made a good one. And I think social media accounts and creators can only take their businesses so far, but there's a lot of people who say brand is everything. To some extent, sure, I agree with that. And then there's some people that say it really comes down to the product and sure, I agree with that too. But I think if you're putting all your firepower behind the launch of a product, if that product's good it's like pouring gasoline on the fire.

(14:35): And when we came out, it was named the best dog backpack by Wired and Good Housekeeping. And the Doto gave an incredible review saying it was good for dogs with mobility issues. And especially for the psychographics of the pet community, I know they want the best for their dog. I know they're sensitive, they're emotional. They feel very passionately about products as I do. At the end of the day, I'm just doing this shit for me because that's how I've created. That's how we've built this account, is that if I can think kind of how a fashion household design for their person, their woman, their man, for us, I consider myself to be an archetype of a millennial pet parent. Of course I don't say I cover all the bases, but at the end of the day if it's something that can pass my sniff test, then I think it's a good starting point.

(15:31): And that's how we think about the overall customer journey is what have I seen? And I come from a filmmaking and I was a creative director in advertising for a really long time. So there's a few unfair advantages to being able to parse through this stuff and know what I want. And it's just very simple to make something that people want, which was... I learned a long time ago, we were shooting a documentary on startups out in Silicon Valley and met a lot of people who went through Y Combinator. And one of the folks that started Y Combinator, Paul Graham, had a saying, "Make something people want." So at the end of the day, that's how I think about everything from start to finish. From the customer journey, from using the product, to the customer journey on the website, the customer journey afterwards. How can I make that as fluid as possible?

(16:15): How can I make it as comfortable as possible? And how can I start to integrate things that I would like to see as a consumer? Like oh, when I go to the site I want to know this, this, and this. And I want to know it in this order. And I want it this fast and I want it to look this way. And so when you launch with something like that, it's a very good foundation. But having a methodology like that is also really limiting because we learn so much about how people engage with our product, our site, everything. And I think there's a little bit of confidence but also naivety to the way we do it, which I like. I don't mind naivety, I think it's an opportunity to learn and grow. And there's so many parts of the business that are not at the level I wanted, but it's a growing pain. And we've run into our fair share of issues. And as long as we don't make the same mistake twice, I'm good.

Sam (17:11): I want to talk a little bit about the launch of the Maxine One. It sells out in four minutes and I am sort of here reflecting on the Paul Graham line, make something people want. Can you talk me through that journey of the idea. Okay, I want to make this bag, and what led to the launch and why it was such a successful launch.

Bryan (17:35): Over the years we do... And when I say we, I say we a lot because I don't like saying I, there's a lot of people that go in. My wife is a huge part of everything that we do. My business partner is a huge part of everything we do. So when we started all of this, we're in the DMs all the time talking to people. We have a very close relationship with the people that follow Maxine. I think the DMs are the most underutilized channel across any platform because it's really where we can engage with people. We screenshot conversations and we post them. And I think that's really the only way to build community, is to make people feel seen and heard. So we spent a lot of time talking to people. People would hit us up and they'll make comments.

(18:25): And usually I think where most people would just kind of ignore it, I'm asking questions like, "Okay, why did you say that? Why do you think this? Why oo you feel this?" And so over six years we'd gathered so much data, and it got to the point where me and my business partner were like, okay, we can do this. And I don't want to say we can do it easily because none of this stuff has been easy. But from a design and utility perspective, nobody's worn their dog in a backpack more than me. So when it came time to write a brief to give to a designer, I wrote it pretty easily. I knew it needed to be in there not only because I wanted it, not only because I knew that Maxine needed it as a long back dog who frequently has joint issues, I had been with her in every situation imaginable. So I know for a fact what this bag and what this whole category needs. Though, we built it with a designer and the entire way I'm posting publicly, I'm teasing, I'm bread crumbing people.

(19:17): We started an email list that started to grow up to about 20,000 people who wanted the bag. And we just led them along the way. And this was before all this shit about the creator economy came out about how creators should do it. It's just as a pet parent, what do I want? My wife will see me on the couch and she'll hear what's on my phone. I'm just going through Maxine's feed, I'm going through her Instagram stories over and over and over and I'm re-watching it, because at the end of the day I say to my wife like, "Oh, we had a good story today." Or, "Today's story wasn't that great." You're looking to give people an experience and every single frame from branded posts, from a photo, what can you do to make it better, funnier, more creative, more engaging? How can you delight people?

(20:06): So I'm trying to think about, if I'm in their shoes what do I want from this account? How do I want to feel? How do I want this person... This person being me, how do I want to see that person? And I think about that a lot about how I come across, whether I want to portray like a nice person who's open and receptive. And I'm here to talk to people and to try and dip the mold because there's really no playbook for this stuff. I think it's just all about what's the net effect. So as we go through this entire process, I'm thinking, okay, how can I give this back to people because that's really why we're doing it. I'm not doing it because I see a dollar sign. I'm doing it because I think there's a white space, there's a need for this and I think that a lot of lives can be improved.

(21:05): So we bring them along and we start to build out what we want this experience to look and feel like. How do we want to make news with it? How do we want this to go viral? How do we want this to be an elevated experience in a very, very crowded place, which is social media? How can we do that? Okay, first thing, let's just launch on Maxine's birthday. That was rule number one. Her birthday was December 15th, it was her sixth birthday. I was like that's a super cute idea because the future thinking about this is okay, if we're going to try and build the Nike for the pet industry, if we're going to try to give people something that has never existed before, let's think about how this story can be told in a really fun way. Story is really important to me, as I think with any creator, you're always thinking about the stories you're telling.

(21:56): And sometimes I get in these habits of reading a lot about certain times in history. I had gotten in an argument with somebody about the Civil War a long time ago. It was not somebody, it was my brother-in-law. And he was saying a bunch of shit. And I don't think it was correct. I didn't have the information to back it up. So I read this textbook on why we have this memory of... This is a tangent, I'll get back to where we're going, on why we have this memory of the Civil War of certain events, of certain people that are just factually incorrect. And why are we still holding onto these things? And a lot of the book was about, it was like, is it called... It's up there somewhere. It's called Race and Reunion. And it was all about why we have this very current memory of the Civil War and it's because the folks who controlled the media at the time, or the sons and daughters of the Confederacy they had a control of the information that was being spread around.

(22:46): So anyway, if you control the narrative, you can control I think your destiny of what you're doing. And I think that I'm not the best at bullshitting or self mythologizing. So it takes maybe a little bit longer to come up with a creative way to tell the story that is I think 100% true about how we went about doing this. What's the cute part of building a bag for the community and launching it? Well, launching it on a birthday, that's a super cute thing to do. That would be really cool to be able to tell people that. I think that will help the Instagram story versus launching on a random Tuesday. And I also thought at the end of the day when Maxine isn't here anymore, this will be a really nice anniversary. So we think about all these things and how we can make that feel like a more intimate experience. So again, the launch date, again, that was huge.

(23:38): What else about that launch? I think in the DMs, making sure people were heard about certain things, about certain features that they liked. So when somebody called out a feature that we were already doing, we would post about it and maybe we tease a little bit here and there and kind of get a reaction. And I think it's just stoking flames over a period of time that we talked about how long we wanted to do this for, because I can understand it gets exhausting. You only want to hear about something's coming so many times. And I think another important element about that whole thing was what we were planning for directly after launch. So all of this started on the subway.

(24:26): So I reached out to the MTA pretty early on in the year, like six months before launch and I said, "Hey, this is who we are." They knew of Maxine because she had gone viral tons of times. So I said, "We have an idea and we want a pitch it to you." And basically the concept was January is pet travel safety month. And because of just coming out of the pandemic, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to deduce that the MTAs numbers were very low. People were not writing. And I don't know if you ever look at the comments section of an MTA post, but very frequently it is just some of the worst language you've ever seen being directed at these poor people. I know the young woman who runs the account and it's just not fun. So we pitched an idea and I had never seen it in the MTA before, about doing a month long content program.

(25:23): The value of what we were pitching I think had to be high six figures, low sevens, about the amount of time, the content or the distribution channels would be given to them. And we said, "Here's what we want to do. This is our story. It's very organic. There's nothing about what we're saying that's bullshit. We created this product. And the genesis was the rules to need to carry a dog in a bag on the subway. And we want to help people not only know how to do it, because I think there's a learning curve for a dog in a backpack. We want to show people how they can safely travel on the train with their dog." But I knew that they had this other program, the MTA Away program that they were pushing, which is kind of like a sidebar Instagram account where they say like, oh, use our services, our trains and buses to get to these really cool places around New York City.

(26:14): So we pitched them a month of content takeovers, traveling here, a collab post here, a launch here. And in exchange for that, we got to use their marketing channels and their out of home network, which was huge digital billboards that we just pipe in one asset and it gets played around every single subway station. So it was really this two partnership that positioned us as a thought leader in the category because our content was very educational, which usually wouldn't perform well. But it was wrapped up in a lot of fun, which was like a dog in a backpack. So we showed people how they can train their dog to get into a backpack. We gave them three tips and these were before the backpacks actually were sent out to people. And we had some content go massively viral. There was one with the train conductor that we met. And this just happened like a train conductor came to take our ticket, recognize Max, went crazy and we're really good friends with him. It's Dev, the jacked train conductor.

(27:14): And we made all this content. It did really well. It helped them grow a little bit. It helped us. And then once the backpacks were sent out to people, the first videos that they were taking were utilizing all of the tips and tricks that we had put into that content to show them how to train their dogs to get into a backpack. So it really helped set everybody up for success. People knew how to use the product, they had a reference point for using the product and it helped us because a dog backpack is a content flywheel. So not only were you getting content, but you're getting content that's really good not just for the pet consumer, but for people who don't have pets. So it's good for people to learn from, but it's also really cute and goes viral.

(27:58): So that was kind of the launch strategy, bring the audience along, try and make it as much of a moment as possible. And plan the, I would say after launch, have an immediate plan for what you do in the days after launch until people get their product that can align with how you think. It's all a guess, how you think you need to be acting, which after years it's like, well, you can't just give somebody a product and they know how to use it. I think there's a learning curve. But if you can get over that learning curve and integrate it into your routine, sky is the limit.

Sam (28:43): Bryan, the time is flying. There's so much more that I want to ask, I want to be cognizant of your time. I have-

Bryan (28:51): Wait, hold on. I'm good. So if you're good, I'm good. All right, so-

Sam (28:56): Okay, let's keep rolling. I wanted to ask you about Little Chonk's customer lifecycle and what typically happens after a prospect becomes a buyer. They start using the product. I assume they start posting about it on social. Are you doing much to drive repeat purchases or are they referring friends that in a way is kind of a repeat purchase? What does that lifecycle look like?

Bryan (29:25): It's a lot of word of mouth because when you build something that's novel and solves a problem, especially with pet parents, they're very eager to talk about it and to show it off. In terms of repeat purchases, we try and remain as agile as humanly possible for a CPG company, which obviously there's a lead time when you want to create a new product and it takes longer than I would like. But we learned very quickly that there are still things people want. So we moved very quickly to see how we can give that to folks without eliminating what we've done. So customization, we realized huge thing. So we built out very quickly after launch the idea for some new add-ons, including a waist belt to add a little bit of support there. But also we designed this storage part that we call the snacc pacc, called it S-N-A-C-C P-A-C-C, which is kind of like there's that meme he protect, he attack, and then you say something that runs it. Anyway, it's like a thing online, I'm sure some people recognize it.

(30:38): And the bag was built and designed to have a custom patch on the outside, which we hadn't had the time or resources to integrate yet. So we're working on that. So it's trying to build a real community and an ecosystem where we have products that can help people customize their life with their pet. And it's not as quick as I would like to integrate these things, but such is life. So to kind of fuel repeat purchase, we just stay very on top of listening to the customer, figuring out what they want. We've done really fun things. I put out a video where I designed a custom ice-hockey jersey, found a supplier, created a one-off, made the video, it went viral, it got regrammed by the NHL. It got us to do stuff with the Islanders. And so we had a lot of people who were like, "Holy shit, where'd you get that jersey?" I said, well, all right, let me work on something.

(31:30): And so because of... Listen, the social channels get our foot in a lot of doors. So I reached out to the company, I said, "Can you give us... We're not going to make any money, just do some wholesale pricing on this so we can kind of lower some costs for people and pass off some of those savings." Because like a one-off hockey jersey drop. We're not selling it anymore. We did it once. But that's a fun thing that can help I think in the long term in terms of getting repeat customers, because there are so many levers nowadays that you can pull especially with building your data stack that can start to incentivize people in very traditional ways, whether it's retargeting, paid retargeting, stuff like that, which we're certainly utilizing. But I think what's interesting are how you can build up brand equity in different spaces and start to control Mindshare and on the internet.

(32:29): And listen, I don't have a piece of data that says, yes, that's successful but I think it is. As a customer I've done that with brands, where they'll do something cool and like yeah, you've got me. Or I perceive your brand to be a thoughtful leader in the space if you're doing this cool shit, will it get cash in the door right now? Probably not. Will it get cash in the door later? Yeah, because I think people are very attuned to the perception of a brand. So that's kind of like my non-data answer to that question. So yeah, we're doing some things, but we're doing some other weird things. We're testing a lot of stuff out. I think some weeks me and my co-founder wake up and we think, okay, this week we're going to go by the playbook. And then some weeks it's like, fuck it, throw it out the window. Let's just do this because we want to. Yeah, we're not in a rush.

Sam (33:25): What does the rest of the year look like for Little Chonk? What are you most excited about in terms of what you have planned this year?

Bryan (33:33): Our next product launch, undoubtedly. We're doing some really cool things that we've been working on this for a while and it's been funny, because we started working on this next product and a lot of the marketing around this next product in a very interesting way. And then recently we started seeing a lot of creator economy pundits talk about how brands should be doing it. And it's like, we're already doing it. It's cool, but it's just like it's some of the stuff that if you've been doing this long enough, it's like a no-brainer about how to maximize resources and how to get in front of a lot of people very quickly. So it's nice. We've spent a lot of time in the industry. We've made a lot of really great friends.

(34:17): And it's nice because a lot of those friends are supportive. And I think that the next product I'm really excited about. And I'm trying to think what else we have got that I can at least talk about. I don't know. We're doing another drop on Tuesday because we've been sold out for a few months. I'm excited about that to have finally made some product. It's just try and forecast as best you can.

Sam (34:47): Well, I'm really happy to hear about all the exciting projects that you have coming out over the next year, Bryan. Where can our listeners go to learn more about Little Chonk?

Bryan (35:00): Our website, littlechonk.com or you can follow us on Instagram and TikTok at heylittlechonk, or you can go follow Maxine, Mad Max_fluffy road.

Sam (35:11): Perfect. Well, thanks again for taking the time to join us, Bryan. And best of luck with Little Chonk and send by goodbye to Maxine as well.

Bryan (35:20): Oh yeah, we'll get up for you one more time. Come here. There she is. [inaudible 00:35:30] man. Have a good one.

Sam (35:26): Take care. Bye-bye.

Bryan (35:26): Bye.