Pioneering Sustainable Bedding – Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Hey there, entrepreneurs. My name is Sushant and welcome to Treptalks. This is the show where I interview successful e-commerce entrepreneurs, business executives, and thought leaders, and ask them questions about their business stories, and also dive deep into some of the strategies and tactics that they have used to start and grow their businesses.

And today I’m really excited to welcome Colin McIntosh to the show. Colin is the founder and CEO of Sheets and Giggles. Sheets and Giggles is a Denver based company specializing in sustainable bedding products made from Eucalyptus Lyocell fabric. And he is also, uh, one of the founders of a new project, which is an AI resume builder called Sheets Resume.

And we’ll talk briefly about that as well. Um, and today I’m going to ask Colin a few questions about his entrepreneur journey and some of the strategies and tech that he has used to start and grow his businesses. Now, before we dive into this interview, if you enjoy this content, please make sure to hit the like and subscribe button.

For more interviews like this, please visit us at treptalks.com. And with that, Colin welcome and thank you so much for joining me today, treptalks. Really, really appreciate your time.

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: Yeah, thank you for having me. I’m excited to chat.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So, seems like you have a couple of entrepreneurial projects. Um, maybe we start with, uh, your main one, the sheets and giggles.

It’s an e-commerce business. Um, so maybe, and I know you were talking a little bit about your previous background. You were a recruiter. Um. So I’m very curious to know, how did you kind of, um, shift into entrepreneurship? Was it almost a, uh, a dream of yours or was it some, something accidental? How did you get the idea for sheets and giggles and Yeah, how did you start this?

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: There’s a lot of questions in there. How did I, did I always know I I was gonna become an entrepreneur? Did I start? Yeah. How did I start shifting giggles? Why? She like, so

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: give give me your, like, uh, you know the life story? No, no. The, the, the, the. What is it called for the superhero? The, the, um, the, the, how did you get started as an entrepreneur?

Uh,

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: I give, well, the tl, the TLDR, I guess, is that, um, I guess I always knew I was gonna be an entrepreneur. My, my father, uh, started his own law firm. My mom started her own acupuncture, um, practice, and she reinvented herself in her thirties and went back to acupuncture school. Um, you know, I saw my dad come home every night at 9:00 PM and leave at five or six in the morning to build this business.

Um, and you know, I’d stay up late to have dinner with him when I was a kid. Uh, and so I always knew that I was gonna like, run my own business. It was very normalized for me at people start their own companies. That was just what I was in my head is what people do. Um, and I graduated from Emory University in 2012.

Uh, I got a job at the world’s largest hedge fund in Connecticut. Uh, I promptly got fired from that in about five months, and I became a recruiter at the, uh, business that hired me, the agency that hired me, and I love recruiting so much and I was really good at it, um, that I ended up hiring myself at one of my startup clients.

From there, I ended up going through Techstars with a, a friends company that had gotten into Techstars that I helped start, and then two and a half years later, when I was 27 years old. I started sheets and giggles in 2017 and I actually started that company three weeks after I got laid off from my last job at my last startup.

Um, and so it’s been a really wild ride. It’s been about seven and a half years, almost eight years now, which is crazy to think. Um, we have hundreds of thousands of customers. Uh, we’ve been on Good Morning America. We’ve been on the view, uh, you know, we have a mattress now, pillows, everything’s made out of trees.

Um, for the most part, you know, all plant-based, uh, USDA bio preferred, biodegradable products. Um, and, uh, we have a really wonderful time with our marketing sheets and giggles is super fun. And, uh, like you alluded to, I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire. I think every entrepreneur. Has probably a hundred domains that they buy and a million business plans.

And so, um, when I start one here and there, I, you know, it starts to build up and become a real project over time. But yeah, so I’m happy to go into specifics on like, why sheets and giggles, how I came up with the idea. Anything that’s most interesting to your listeners?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, maybe, maybe, uh, start with the product itself.

So it seems like the, the value proposition, because I mean, sheets. And bedding is, I think, uh, it’s been there since humans have been probably, probably pretty boring alive. Right.

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: Big boring, big boring category.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: They need, they need some sort of a bedding. Right. So yeah, your value proposition is that it is built off this unique fabric, eucalyptus, lael.

Mm-hmm. So maybe you, if you can talk a little bit about your product line and what exactly is the, the value proposition for the

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: customer? Yeah. So it’s Cellulosic rayon, so it’s rayon. From cellulose fabric from plants, right? The early version of this is bamboo visco, which is made from taking bamboo and then turning it into visco using carbon disulfide, which is really bad for the environment.

That’s kind of the earlier process you have to throw away that carbon disulfide. It often ends up in waterways. Um, and it’s really toxic to workers and environments. Um, the second version of cellulose reon is called modal. Um, that’s made of beach spruce pine, very, very soft. If you’ve ever worn like modal underwear, it’s unbelievably soft fabric.

Um, stretchy, you know, very thin. And then the third version of the cellulosic rayon is called Lyocell, and that’s our fabric that we use and that’s mostly made from eucalyptus trees. Um, you take, uh, the tree, you turn it into a pulp, you turn that pulp into a yarn and that yarn into a super soft fabric.

And that uses amine oxide, which is actually, uh, harmless to workers and environments, and you don’t have to dispose of it. You can actually recapture and reuse about 99.5% of the chemicals in every single batch. Of fiber production. So it’s considered widely the most sustainable fabric in the world. Um, but we don’t lead with the sustainability as our core value prop.

’cause I believe that if a product is. Marketed to you as sustainability first. That’s kind of insinuating that it’s not as good as the unsustainable options, and that’s just not the case. With sheets and Giggles, our products are phenomenal. They’re softer than cotton, they’re more breathable. They’re cooling.

They’re better for hot sleepers. They’re zero static. They’re hypoallergenic. They repel pet fur, dust mite resistant bacteria, growth resistant. They stay fresher longer. Um, and really the value prop that we see most often resonate with people is the hot sleeper, where they’re naturally cooling, um, and they keep you at a really wonderful temperature all night.

So, um, it’s been really wonderful to bring these to market. We launched in 2018 with a $300,000 crowdfunding pre-order. Um, it was my proudest marketing accomplishment of my life to convince 2000 people to wait six months for bedsheets. Um, and, uh, like you said, it’s a very boring space. It’s a very old space.

And so for me, that’s what one of the reasons I started this company is it’s a blank canvas to do whatever I want in a big, boring space. And I, I call it the Seinfeld of brands. And that we don’t have to be a brand about anything. We can be a brand about nothing. Uh, one day we can talk about, you know, how we’re donating $40,000 to COVID relief.

Or planting tens of thousands of trees and reforestation areas, and the next day we can post a SpongeBob meme and it all blends together beautifully in this really wonderful brand.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. I’m very curious to hear more about crowdfunding. So when you started in 2017, I. Um, was it that these fabrics were not being used for betting?

Like there were no other business that was using it? Because I would assume that crowdfunding campaign mostly is targeting, um, uh, users that are looking for something new that’s not in the market. Right? So if, if there are options that are already in the market, like they wouldn’t go to, you know, someone coming up with, uh.

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: Something New Ex extremely limited at that point in time. So basically, uh, cotton was like 35% of the market. Polyester was like 60% of the market, and then like 5% of the market overall was like. Like every other fabric, bamboo, silk, linen. Um, it was very, very limited in terms of, um, alternative, uh, uh, fabrics.

And so for me, I really wanted something that sounded like magic. I wanted something that was fully sustainable. I wanted luxury product. That was the best thing you’ll ever touch. Um, you know, sleep is so important. It’s really interesting. The dividends that, like an exp like you can buy like expensive, uh, free weights or expensive.

Um, there’s really few things in your life that you can use over and over and over again that have like long-term dividends after paying just one time. Almost everything in our society nowadays is a subscription product, right? Mm-hmm. But with bedsheets, if you buy like one set of $150 or 200 bed dollar bedsheets.

The dividends that pays off for your life are like extraordinary. So I, I didn’t really want to compete on cost. I didn’t want to compete on, you know, uh, which cotton is the best, like organic, you know, pena cotton nonsense, um, all that false marketing about Egyptian cotton and, and nonsense like that. Um, and so I just really wanted to make something that no one had ever heard of before.

And I did some research and I met some folks and. Uh, Lyocell was very, very early, uh, product in the US in terms of bedding, um, and in fact in clothing it had caught on a little bit. It’s got a beautiful drape to it, so you’ll see it in some, uh, summer clothing. It’s very breathable, hard to take care of if you are wearing it at all the time.

Right? It, it doesn’t, uh, hold up to like tons and tons of like, usage, you know, that sort of sweating and that sort of thing, like in, in tight corners. Um, but for bedding it’s really wonderful and will last years.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So the idea with this is that, um, this is a little bit of a higher price point than maybe a cotton sheet or something else, but you know, as you said, the dividends are long term, so, you know, uh oh yeah.

When somebody purchases it, it’s, it’s for, I mean, they’re using it for the long term and they’re getting Yeah.

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: Five or 10 years. I mean, and it’s, and it’s something that like, you know, think about how many hours you spend in bed, even if it’s, you know, eight hours a day. Uh, you know, that’s over 25,000 hours a year.

Am I doing that math right or is it even more. No, it’s 200. My brain’s running really, really slow today. I apologize. Um, but yeah, so you know, if you’re doing eight hours a day, um, you know, you’re looking at something like, uh, uh, 2,500 hours. Sorry about that. There you go. For, thank you. Yeah. And, uh, and you know, when you’re, like, when you’re sleeping, uh, that’s the only time that your body’s releasing HDH.

It’s the only time that you’re actually healing, growing, uh, whether you wanna lose weight or, you know, reduce your anxiety. And so, um, I didn’t actually, you know, it’s funny, I didn’t have any experience in this industry before I started it. Um, so I had to learn everything on the fly about, uh, the sleep space, about fabrics.

Um, and that was really a, a fun challenge when we started out. But, um, yeah, we did the crowdfunding campaign in May, 2018, shipped our first box in October, 2018, and then two years later in November, 2020, uh, first million dollar sales month. So it’s been, it’s been a while ride.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. I mean, 2020 is when COVID also started.

Right? I, I’m assuming that’s probably your sales took off because everybody was, uh. Uh,

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: it was a little steadier than that. You know, I think that we had our first a hundred thousand dollars six figure month in April, 2019. So, you know, like we, you know, did our crowdfunding in, in May, 2018. We hit our first six figure month in April, 2019, and then we had our first seven figure month in November, 2020.

So it was, you know, it was fairly steady rise. Our first three Q ones were like 200 grand, 700 grand, like 2.1 million, you know. So it was, it was, um, and that’s brutal, the forecast in normal circumstances. But, uh, during COVID. I have some battle scars that I, I can’t even, like, I can’t talk about without getting upset from COVID.

Um, but uh, yeah, that was a point. Challenging area. Yes. Extreme. Yeah. I had, once I got a phone call from my freight forwarder and, uh, they said, Hey, we couldn’t get into the port of Savannah. Um, so we just dropped your containers off in Freeport and, uh, we hope that you can get them. And I was like, my, my brain was like a potato timer.

I was like, Freeport The Bahamas. And like, I literally, I like literally had to figure out how to get containers from The Bahamas to my warehouses in Utah. Super fun.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Wow. Yeah. Well, I’m, I’m curious about, you said that you, your crowdfunding was your favorite marketing campaign and then of course after that, uh, your sales kind of took off as well.

Can you talk a little bit about, um. How did you make your crowdfunding, uh, successful? Um, and then what did you offer that in terms of customer equity? Like what worked really well to really drive that hockey stick growth?

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: So, uh, with crowdfunding in particular, it’s all about understanding your goal and then working backwards from your goal.

So if you want a six figure a hundred thousand dollars campaign, you have to broadly get about 30% of that on day one. It’s about $30,000. And if you want $30,000 on day one, and you have a hundred dollars average order value, you need 300 customers on day one to get the $30,000 at a hundred dollars a OV.

And if you need 300 customers on day one, most of those are gonna come from your email list. And an email list reasonably converts at about 3% if they’re engaged and you’re nurturing that email list. So if you need 300 customers on day one, and it’s all gonna come from your email list at 3% conversion, you need 10,000 emails in order to get 300 customers.

And then working backwards, that will guarantee you a six figure campaign. And so that’s all I did is I just said, okay, here I need 10,000 emails. Blinders on. Great. I’m gonna go do this. And the way that I did it was pretty simple. I set up some landing pages. I did a photo shoot. I wrote all my own content.

Um, and I gave three value propositions. They’re more breathable than cotton. They’re better for hot sleepers. They’re softer than cotton. You’ll never touch anything like this in your life unless you buy these. Uh, and then the third value prop was that it’s sustainable. And if you sign up right now, you’ll get the best price we’ll ever offer.

And that was the best price we’ve ever offered. $69. I thought it was a funny price. Um, instead of, uh, you know, what we anticipated was about $150 MSRP and people went gangbusters for it. We totally got lightning in a bottle. Um, and it was, I think we captured emails for the signups at like a 46% clip. Uh, so we gathered about 11,000 emails.

We spent about $9,000 to do it. Uh, I think we had like an 89 cent cost per lead, if I’m doing that math right. Um, and then we shut the hose off. We said, okay, we have enough emails. And that took us about eight weeks to gather those emails. And then we launched on May 1st, and sure enough, our email list converted at four point a half percent and a hundred dollars a OV, just like we thought.

And we ended up getting $45,000 on day one, and then that snowballed into $284,000.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: And you advertised on Google or like social, um, platform to

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: gather? So this is back in 2018, so it was mostly Facebook and Instagram and those were really high performing ads at the time. I mean, both those channels, hell, I still used Facebook in 2018.

Um, you know, nowadays, uh. I mean, the whole landscape shifts every other month, so I can’t even say nowadays versus back then. Um, but uh, yeah, Facebook and Instagram were two main advertising channels for the email gathering. And then, uh, after that we advertised on Google as well as Facebook and Instagram.

Two early adopters. We kind of had a, a lookalike profile of people who were early adopters, who had back Kickstarter campaigns in the past who had backed Indiegogo campaigns. And then we also, because we were trending on Indiegogo, we were like the number two trending product for a few days. That got a lot of discoverability of people just going to indiegogo.com, seeing us on the homepage saying, Hey, what’s that?

And then coming to our page and, and purchasing. So I think all in, out of the 2 84 KI think. 190 K was revenue that we drove, and then like 90 k was revenue that was like discoverability on indigogo through their emails, newsletters. So it was, it was pretty solid amount of, uh, revenue they provided us just from the, that discoverability of being a trending product.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I mean, the, the most interesting thing for me is, uh, that you did the mathematics upfront. And I guess you said that I’m willing to bet $10,000 in, in ad ad costs. Like did you, did you think that if you spend that nine, $10,000, um, the SU success is guaranteed or were, I mean, there, of course there is some risk there, right?

So, totally. Yeah. Did you, did you Yeah. Consider that risk also upfront?

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: Absolutely. But the, the risk for me at that point in time was minuscule, right? I was 27 years old. Um, I had a girlfriend, but you know, I was single, right? I wasn’t married. I didn’t, I didn’t have any kids. I didn’t have a mortgage. Um, my rent with my girlfriend was we $1,500 for one bedroom apartment.

So it was 750 bucks each. And I figured, okay, if I try this for six months. And it doesn’t work out. Then I’ll forego six months of revenue at some job that I would be working at anyway, and I will just go do that job anyway after that. And yeah, I might blow 10 grand, um, which I didn’t have much savings at that point in time.

It was a big chunk of my life savings for sure. Um, but all entrepreneurs are risk loving. Um, and I think a lot of them have a DHD, uh, like I do, which means that you don’t make your financial decisions based on, uh, a lot of, uh, risk calculation. You make them more based on, uh, dopamine, unfortunately. And so, you know, for me, I, uh, I, I, you know, I, I’m making it sound a little more flippant than it actually was.

Um. What you do is you set up guardrails to make sure that you don’t do anything too stupid. So for example, I spent $500 on the first round of advertisements along with $250 on a friend who did a photo shoot for me with free models and bedsheets. I bought off Amazon, they were white sheets. No one would ever know the difference.

Hmm.

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: And basically I spent, you know, maybe a thousand dollars all in. On getting the website set up, getting the pictures, uh, getting the landing pages, and then experimenting with about $500 worth of ads. And with that first $500 worth of ads, that’s when we converted our first. Batch of emails, and we converted those at about a 38% clip.

I remember it was at the first week and I was like, damn, that’s a really good conversion rate for email gathering. We’re onto something here. And once I had that data point, and then I could see the open rates on the emails, people opening our emails at 60%, they’re taking our surveys at 45% clips. They’re like, they’re responding to us, they’re engaging with us.

They’re commenting on our Facebook ads. They’re sharing our Facebook ads. We have a referral program set up. If you refer 10 people, you get put into a contest for free sheets. Oh, great. People are referring their friends to sign up for the program. Once you get all that cooking, then you can start to say, okay, I’m gonna spend another thousand dollars now, another thousand dollars, now another thousand dollars.

Now I’m gonna talk to a manufacturer. Now I’m gonna start designing my sheets. Now I’m gonna say, Hey, I’ve got these people waiting to pre-order. We’re excited. What’s your minimum order quantities? And I do all this ahead of time. I, I met with these people in March, um, my manufacturing partners, and you start to put all of it together.

And then your real risk point is when you have to start making the product and you have to actually send a deposit to your manufacturer. And that deposit for me was tens of thousands of dollars. That was the risk point of like, I’m sending my life savings. To these people. But at that point, we were already one week into the crowdfunding campaign and we had already raised a hundred thousand dollars.

So I waited to hit send on that wire until we had the first a hundred grand in the bank from our Indigo campaign. But the, the initial 10 grand that we spent to getting everything set up and going, I would’ve cut loose and said, okay, it’s not gonna work out if I had spent the first $2,000, $3,000. Maybe five.

And I had said, okay, this is just not gonna work. Um, you’ve gotta be dispassionate about it. And you have to understand that like your business isn’t you. Businesses fail all the time. Um, and if you are overly emotional about it, you’ll throw bad, good money after bad, and you’ll keep pouring in capital to try to make it work.

But if you say, Hey, I’m gonna spend a few thousand dollars, see if I can get people interested in this thing. And if I can’t, like that’s okay. Um, but I think I can. And so that, that’s, you just have to be able to cut and run at certain goalpost, uh, moments or goal, goal lines.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Do you think that you Yeah, no, I think that makes a lot of sense.

Um, do you think that, uh, you have now have an advantage because you were kind of the first to market? Because I’m assuming that the manufacturers who are creating these products, um. Anybody can go and buy. I mean, I, I’m sure, uh, I mean if you’re, if you’re getting this manufacture in Southeast Asia somewhere, um, I’m sure it’s easily available now.

Right. So actually are there, are there a lot of competitors now?

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: Well, we actually do our manufacturing for our sheeting and Bahrain, and then we do in our comforters, and then we also do our, uh, pillows in Denver, and then we do our mattresses in Phoenix and our, and so, you know, we’re kind of a global supply chain.

Um, but uh, which is super fun to navigate right now, lemme tell you. Um, and, uh, you know, I would say that there are material differences. How I make my products versus how other people make theirs. And so even if you have the same fabric or the same fabric type, um, I mean, I’ve slept on a hundred percent cotton sheets that are absolute trash and I’ve slept on a hundred percent cotton sheets that are, you know, phenomenal, almost as good as ours.

Um, and it really depends on a number of different things. And you know how it’s woven. Um, depends on the thread count, obviously. Um, it depends on the yarn quality. Um, it, it depends on so many different pieces. And then, you know, at the end of the day, like, how are you, are you cutting corners? Like, are you, you know, are you trying to make a quality product?

Are you trying to make a cheap product? Um, you know, how is it heated, treated, kept stored? Um, so there are a number of different, uh, pieces to the puzzle. Uh, but I would say that like. There is a healthy amount of competition in the space right now, and it, I kind of built a category out of nothing. And, uh, now eucalyptus sheets are like a huge category.

Um, and that’s really fun because I think a rising tide does lift all boats. And we’ve definitely seen like the, the effects of more and more people finding out about it. And then, you know, we claim a lot of that conversion share by being one of the original. And most recognized, uh, eucalyptus sheet brands on the internet.

Um, but we, we at Jockey for position all the time, we’re always fighting.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Hmm. Uh, in terms of your team, um, and I know that you’re, you kind of started a second project also. Um, have you kind of now, like are you spending, what kind, what percentage of your time are you spending on, on this business? Have you kind of systemized everything?

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: On sheets and giggles. I mean, 90% plus of my, my time. I mean, I, I still spend, you know, at least 40 hours a week on s and g every week. Um, it’s not 80 hours a week like it used to be, you know, and I was getting started. Um, I, you know, I’m no longer falling asleep with my laptop on my stomach at 4:00 AM and waking up at 7:00 AM and drinking pre-workout.

Uh, and getting going for the day. Uh, but, uh, you know, I, I have five or 10 hours every week to spend on, uh, other projects and, uh, you know, even more time than that to spend with my wife and my family and that sort of thing. So, um, I’ve gotten better at, at prioritizing time as I’ve gotten older.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: What is the biggest area that you focus?

Are you focusing mostly on marketing? Are you focusing mostly on distribution? Like, what’s the biggest uh. Area where you spend your time on.

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: My talent is mostly within marketing, branding, and creative marketing ideas. Um, my other talents are definitely with product design and passion for building a really wonderful product, that customer experience component.

Um, I feel very connected to my customers. I feel like I have a very intuitive connection with them where I, you know, they are me, I am them. I have chronic pain. You can see me twitching. Um, you know, a lot of, he, a lot of our customers have chronic pain. They can’t sleep at night. Um, and so for me, I feel really close to people that have bought my product and I like to engage with them one-to-one.

I’ll get into customer care inbox and I’ll answer emails at two in the morning some nights, and people love hearing from the CEO and, um, but yeah, I mean, Mo I would say most of my main core responsibilities, aside from managing the team, managing the finances. Making sure we have enough cash, making sure that things are, you know, our, our third party partners are getting taken care of.

Um, my main thing that I enjoy doing and spending my time on is creative marketing strategies and campaigns.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Can you talk a little bit about your team?

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: Uh, yeah. So we’ve got, uh, team, we’ve had distributed team. We did, we were building in Denver, uh, we were building in Colorado. And then, uh, COVID came about 18 months after I shipped my first box.

Um, so that was super fun to navigate the transition to a fully remote team. Um, and now, uh, broadly speaking, we’ve got a mix of full-timers, part-timers and contractors and vendors. Um, all in, I’d say about 30 or 40 people touch the business on a daily basis. Um, and that’s a mix between, um, you know, folks that are, are part-time versus full-time.

Um, almost everybody that works with us is America based. Some are in Canada on our customer care team. Um, and uh, it’s been really nice to, you know, build these relationships over the years. Uh, you know, my director of product is like, uh, you know, a second father to me. Um, and, uh, you know, it’s been, it’s been a real joy to work with some amazing people over the years.

But, um, and then, you know, we do have agencies for, uh, you know, digital marketing spend, digital advertising. Um, we’ve got an Amazon agency that we use. We, we’ve got a, a web development agency. Um, and so you have to build, uh, very lean nowadays in today’s modern e-commerce environment. Um, and, uh, you know, it’s been really interesting lately actually with the rise of AI and seeing where that can complement and amplify your human hours.

Um, but it’s been wild to see the things that people have at their disposal nowadays versus what we had building this thing. Um, I am making a video right now with, uh, I think it’s Veo is, or vo I think it’s va. And, uh, Google Google’s video tool, and I’m literally making a video right now that probably would have cost me like over a hundred thousand dollars to do.

And I’m making it all within Veo right now. And I’m wondering at what point I’ll be satisfied with it if I’ll be satisfied with it for like an advertisement, but I think I will be. And that’s wild. Like, like we, like we’ve gone to Utah. Hired a team of like 50 people, like actors, like camera, crew, directors, writers.

We’ve, we’ve whiteboarded these ideas. We’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on videos. Like, I, I don’t know what’s gonna come for this industry, but it’s a freight train. Um, and it’s, it’s gonna be wild.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I’m going to check this out. This, so you said Veo, right? Veo?

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: Yeah. I think it, it’s go, it’s Google’s, uh, DeepMind tool.

Um, okay. It’s crazy. Some of the, some of the examples that people are posting are like, shocking. Mm-hmm. Um, and so I’m all over this right now, and it, and it’s, you have to figure out what the right compliment is to use AI in a way that’s not like that people can use ai, I think in a way that’s like overzealous, where they use it for everything.

They use it for, you know, their customer care, they use it for their marketing, they use it for their. Blogs like dah, dah, dah, I, I wanna use it sparingly, but at the same time it’s like terrifying because it’s like you’re in this black box of like, how much is your competition using it? What are they using it for?

What tools are they using? And it’s like this prisoner’s dilemma, game theory, arms race of, you know, how much AI are you going to use your company? How much are you comfortable using? Does it re you know, result in, you know, fewer man hours on certain things? Is it just amplifying, do people want to work with ai?

Right? Like, do you even have people on your team that are excited about that? Mm-hmm. Um, or is it something that changes how you hire? Uh, there, there’s so many things right now with this that that is just a whole landscape shifting underfoot.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, I think, uh, I mean, in the early days. The winners will be those who are adopting it, uh, sooner than later, but eventually I think everybody’s going to catch up and I think that then it’ll be interesting.

Everybody will coming up.

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: Well, I guess my worry is if everybody catches up and it’s like an even footing, then the only thing that really matters is capital. And I think that that’s, that, that’s the really scary thing for me is like. The only reason she and giggles exist is because a human me had a really weird and zany idea to do like a pun based betting company that, you know, was the weirdest, most visually differentiated brand in the industry.

And we stuck out like a sore thumb. We were a lightning rod brand and people gravitated towards us ’cause we’re funny and we’re, you know, we have a good time and we’ve got great products. But if. If companies like, you know, bed Bath and Beyond, RIP, you know, big box companies can, you know, go out and, and create all this content, like, and flood the zone with like video and, and written content and SEO content and AIO o content.

I just, I think it really crowds out smaller players. At the same time, it obviously empowers individuals to do so much more. With a smaller team, so I’m really ambivalent towards it. I, I don’t know how it’s gonna shake out. My gut tells me that it will become a capital game, and that is freaky because I think that if capital can be creative, you’ve really taken out a really core part of what it means to compete, uh, in a, in a competitive business environment for a human.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, it’ll be interesting to see how, how businesses, and, I mean the whole thing with AI and robotics is going to turn out. So, interesting discussion. I want to quickly talk to you about this sheets resume project. Um, are you kind of the, you know, given that now you’ve had success with sheets and giggles.

Maybe some have capital. Is this like you, you had an idea and you kind of, you’re kind of the main investor. Um, you hired some people to start this project. Uh, can you talk a little bit about how you came about with this?

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: Yeah, it’s actually quite a fun story. Um, I used to be a recruiter, like I mentioned earlier, and I’ve always loved recruiting.

I’ve always loved hiring. It is exhausting If you have empathy, it’s really, really hard. To be a recruiter because you, you see so many people, they’re all desperate. They all want a job. You can’t help people if you’re not gonna get ’em a job because you can’t waste your time and spend your time on people that aren’t gonna make money for the company.

Um, and that is just so tough to see people as dollars and cents and, and black and white resumes and not as human beings. And so I stopped being a recruiter maybe a year after I started because I just couldn’t keep doing it. Maybe a year and a half. And, but I stayed with the part that I loved, which was candidate shepherding and helping people get jobs.

And a big part of that is resume reviews. And so I probably did a hundred resumes for friends and family over the, the per the following years. And then right around 2018, after a few years of, of pause being a recruiter, I, you know, I’d stayed sharp on resumes. I’d stay, I’d done a bunch of reviews. I, I wrote, sat down one Saturday morning and I wrote this long post on Reddit about what the perfect resume looks like, and it went so viral.

It’s now the third result on Google when you search for resume template.

Hmm.

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: And I’ve gotten over the last seven years since I’ve written that post, I’ve probably answered in my own spare time when before bed and before when I’m drinking my coffee in the morning. Probably tens of thousands of comments, emails, questions, direct messages from people who are looking for jobs, and I’ve gotten so many people a new job.

It’s been a wonderful gift. To be able to give that to the world. And my resume’s been used over 4 million times that I know of. Um, just from my downloads and, uh, last year or two years ago, I called my friend Nate, who is my, my old colleague as a recruiter, I. He’s now an software engineer at Eventbrite, and I said, Hey man, um, do you have any time to do resume reviews?

I have no time, but people keep asking me and I don’t wanna keep turning them down because then they go to predators, they get charged a thousand bucks and they still have a shitty resume. And so Nate says, yeah, I, I can find some time. So he started doing a couple resumes here and there, maybe one or two a week.

We were charging like 150 bucks. 200 bucks for the resume review. Then more and more people kept asking. So then I found time to start doing them, maybe one every week. Uh, I didn’t have time to do all of them, and I wanted to dissuade people from emailing us. So we raised our price to 300, then 400, and then I, I stopped getting comfortable charging more because I was like, I, I, I’m, I’m pricing people out who really need this service, but I can’t help everybody who’s asking me.

And so that was about a year ago. Nate had the idea, he said. Hey, why don’t I put an AI wrapper on this and all of the advice that we’ve been doing for all these people that we have this wonderful, uh, knowledge repository of. And so I wrote like eight pages of instructions for the, for the AI builder. I.

Nate coded it. Um, and it is beautiful and, and we launched it last September in 24. Um, and, you know, maybe spending five or 10 hours a week on it, making it nice and, and optimizing it. And, um, it’s been helping out so many more people and we can offer it for, you know, nine bucks, 29 bucks, 99 bucks, depending on, you know, the access that somebody wants.

And, um, and I give it away for free to anyone who can’t afford it because it’s not my main income. So if anyone needs access to the resume builder, we have a cover letter writer now, a mock interview tool. I literally just give it to them for free if they email me and ask. And it’s been so cathartic to be able to help people out in this way after years ago, wishing that I could help out everyone who came across my desk.

Now I can. And it’s, it’s awesome.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Uh, just of one follow up, because I know we are now running out of time, is, uh. So is this built with open AI integration? Like you each pro it,

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: open AI and Gemini and um, uh, I think a little claw as well.

Okay, cool.

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: Yeah.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um,

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: it’s awesome man. It sheet sheets resume.com, if anyone looking for a job, uh, it changed your life telling you it’s, it’s the best.

And we have a free template on there too. My original free template that I wrote for people.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: And, and this business is probably a better business in, in terms of the financials, right? Like it’s, there’s not really a lot of costs associated with it

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: margin wise. I mean, yeah. I mean, and, and from a headache perspective, I mean, I’ve had, yeah, the logistics of, of, uh, betting and e-commerce is, uh, you know, nightmarish for, for me.

But, um. At the same time, like, I’m really good at it. So, I dunno, it kinda kind of depends on like what you mean by better, but, uh, yeah, overall margin wise, yes, it’s, uh, margin, margin wise. I mean, yeah. So there’s a, there’s a reason why software companies get, you know, 30 XA hundred x multiples. It’s the margin.

So yeah, it’s, it’s been really, really rewarding in that way too.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Uh, before I move on to our RA rapid fire segment, um, I asked this question to everybody. Um, in every entrepreneur’s journey there’s always mistakes made, lessons learned, failures. Um, what has been like a big, um, I know you mentioned, uh, you already mentioned one with the supply chain issue, but, uh, what has been like a big failure?

Um, that was a learning experience for you. What did you learn? What can other Well,

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: I chose white packaging for, for, for first packaging. That was a disaster. Uh, don’t choose white packaging kids, uh, FedEx and UPS will not respect how beautiful your packaging is, and it will show up totally destroyed to your customer’s house.

Um. I, I’ve made a lot of mistakes, man. I mean, it’s, your first business is all about learning, and I think that’s why a lot of founders are very successful. The second, third, fourth time they start a business. And, and of course the only, the only way you get to the second, third, fourth time is the first time you got, you know, you gotta start at one.

Um, but I think that the. Some of the more major mistakes I’ve made over the years. I mean, it’s, it’s a, a lot of it is like product and logistics related, you know what I mean? We, we did a 10,000 unit packaging run where we printed the packaging inversely, um, you know, we had a defect rate of about 10% on our initial production run.

Uh, so we had to replace all those units. It was incredibly expensive. Um, uh, we, one time I gave a sheet set to one of my investors. Uh, a Navy sheet set, and I know it was Navy because he sent me a picture of his mattress. He had sweat through the sheets and it had stained his mattress navy underneath his shape and the shape of his body.

Um, and, uh, that was, uh, it’s called the crocking defect when the dyes don’t, don’t set properly. Um, and so, yeah, I mean, I’ve, I’ve made plenty of mistakes and we, we spent. $50,000 on direct mail campaigns that have totally bombed. We’ve spent, you know, 40 or 50 grand on, uh, radio advertising that didn’t work.

Um, you know, you have to try new things and you’ll, and if you don’t try new things, you’ll never figure out what hits. But eventually you start putting together a playbook of. This works, this doesn’t, this works, this doesn’t. And then you really keep that playbook, um, you know, tightly and you, you make sure that you follow it.

Otherwise you keep making the same mistakes.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: For sure. Uh, now I’m going to move on to our rapid fire segment. Uh, in this segment I’m going to ask you a few quick questions and you have to answer them maybe in a word or a sentence or so. So the first one is one book recommendation for entrepreneurs and why?

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: Uh, it’ll be a. But it’ll be a book, no one’s ever said, and it has nothing to do with business. And it’s called Desert Solitaire and it’s by Edward Abbey. And he was the only park ranger in Moab, Utah from 1957 to 1959. And this is his memoir of his time in Moab, alone in a shack in the desert. Um, and it’s absolutely beautiful and it just reminds you.

How special it is to come alive for this very brief moment in time and how there’s so much more to our world than what we’ve made for ourselves in this modern society. And it’s really special Desert solitaire.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Interesting. I’ll, I’ll check it out. Uh, an innovative product or idea in the current e-commerce retail or tech landscape that you feel excited about.

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: Um, I’m both excited and trepidatious about, um, a company called INTE that I actually know quite well. I know the founders, they do price testing, um, really, really powerful price testing software like A, B, C, D, you know, uh, 20% of visitors see this, 20% see this, uh, mobile versus desktop, crossouts versus discounts.

Um, free shipping versus threshold free shipping. Uh, a really robust price testing software. And it’s really awesome for companies, especially in this tariff environment who are looking for extra margin to figure out which products have a, a lower price elasticity and which ones are able to sustain a little bit more higher pricing.

Um, at the same time, as a consumer, it freaks me out that, like, knowing that like basically everything I buy for the rest of my life is gonna be like. Price optimized to hit the absolute maximum dollar value that I’m willing to part with for the product at any given point in time. So, um, both excited and a little fearful.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Very interesting. So this directly integrates with like, uh, Shopify. Shopify,

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: yeah. It’s called intelligence Like Intelligence, but, uh, GEMS Intelligence,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: a business or productivity tool or software that you would recommend or a productivity tip.

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: Um, I really like, it’s a, it’s another GPT product. It’s called Site GPT.

Really nice kid. Uh, single solopreneur founder in India. Um, it’s a chat bot that plugs into your site, works wonderfully 24 7. You can train it off 100 URLs. So if you have a lot of content you’ve written over the years, you can train this thing, talk in your brand voice. Um, and it can answer questions and it’s like one line of JavaScript you inject onto your site, lowers customer care tickets, uh, increases customer satisfaction, increases conversion.

It’s a great salesman.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Okay, great. Uh, another startup or business that you think is currently doing great things?

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: Oh, I know a lot of founders that are just crushing it. Um, my friend Jackie at Pepper Bras. Uh, my friends in Boulder at Shy Sty, uh, make incredible modal underwear like I mentioned earlier. Um, and my friend’s also in Colorado at Epic Water Filters.

Um, they, they get make a water filter in the USA that filters out PFAS. And then, uh, my buddy Caleb, uh, runs a company called Cubby Beds that, uh, is making beds specifically for autistic children and other children with developmental disabilities. And it’s in similar space and we have a lot of respect for each other, and we’re really good buddies.

Um, he won Denver Startup Week the year before I won Denver Startup Week actually. And, um, his product is like a life changer for families with autistic children and, uh, so, so proud to know him and, and to see the business develop over the years.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. Final question, best business advice that you have ever received or you would give to other entrepreneurs?

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: Um, I’ve received a lot of advice, so it’s hard to know which one’s the best. I’m big on mentorship. The advice that I usually give, that I’m very particular about is, um, there’s two pieces and I’ll go, I guess I’ll go with the one you said two entrepreneurs, so two people who have already started a business.

I’ll say something I said earlier. Don’t make your company your entire life. Um, because companies fail. Uh, I’ve seen it a lot with people going through Techstars and friends of mine and, um, you know, we, we’ve had to go through COVID and a bunch of other really difficult challenges. Um, there’s so many things that can go wrong and that do go wrong when you start a business.

So start a business for the right reasons. Understand what your reasons are to work for yourself, to change the world, to make a positive impact, to help others. Um, you know, to make a boatload of money, whatever your reason is, keep that tight. Uh, get, it’ll get you through the bad times. And if your company doesn’t, you know, doesn’t make it a, don’t be afraid of that failure because afraid that fear of failure will make you never start.

And then b, just don’t make it your entire personality. Like, don’t, don’t only post about your business on Instagram, don’t post on LinkedIn every single day about your company. Don’t. Like, make your Twitter presence, like all about your co like post and do things in your life that are about your friends and family and interest and passions and hobbies.

Be a well-rounded person and, uh, I think that your business will actually benefit from it, um, because you won’t be so obsessive and so anxious about it.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. And I think, I think that’s good for probably your, your mental health also. So I think that’s a great advice. Thank you so much again. Yeah, Paul. Uh, those are all the questions that I had.

And, uh, if anybody wants to check out your products, what’s the best way to do that?

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: Sheets giggles.com for, uh, the best sheets you’ll ever own. Um, and then for any job hunters out there, if you need help, uh, finding a new career path. Sheets resume.com. I know it’s a funny name. I’m, I’m like the MyPillow guy.

If he wasn’t crazy, well, I’m a little crazy. Maybe if he wasn’t evil. Um, and uh, I’m the sheets guy, so my podcast is called Sheet Talk. Uh, my resume business is sheets, resume, uh, and sheets and giggles obviously is, uh, what started it all, um, in my life. So, uh, I’m easy to find Colin McIntosh sheets and giggles, and if I can help with anything, uh, your listeners are always welcome to reach out.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. Well, Colin, thank you so much again for sharing your story, for sharing your, uh, successes and failures and, uh, really, really appreciate you joining me today.

Colin McIntosh of Sheets & Giggles: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. It was a fun conversation.

Awesome.