The NSFW Framework & the Magic of Community-Product Fit with Amanda Goetz | Where It Happens

0:10literally lost his words we just had amanda from house of wise do an episode with us and she really challenged our thinking yeah she's amazing had so much fun talking with her honestly this whole like not safe for work framework for business building is so cool so excited to dive into this one i also loved how she talked about start with the community and then build the product and how she co-created the product from scratch to build it to what it is today and it was amazing let's dive right in i hate banking most banking products suck so when i was starting all these new businesses and going on this new

0:47adventure i turned to mercury mercury is banking four founders by founders they make everything so easy and a beautiful elegant design there's free wires virtual and physical debit cards they even have a raising platform where they will connect you with other investors out in the ecosystem have you tried mercury i have and let's be honest when you log into traditional banking websites and apps it's hideous when i go into mercury it's like a walk in the park so i love using it feels fresh and i can't use anything else you should definitely check it out at mercury.com it will completely change the game for your banking experience i guarantee it

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2:07cameras are rolling mike is hot that's probably in the shot we got greg on twitter here so we should actually i'm going to wait [Laughter] twitter is a hell of a drug dopamine hits galore which actually leads to my question for you to start today yeah turning off talk to me about how you turn off like unwinding what do you do so you're like me like you're on twitter you're building and it's hard to stop thinking about this sort of stuff um and [Music] you gotta it's like healthy to turn off yeah so um over the years i've been collecting little life hacks to turn off

2:55and everyone is different so for me i'll just like list off the ones that come to mind yeah the office the show the show okay i was gonna say going to the office doesn't sound okay got it the show michael scott yeah i mean just like when i put on the office like i could it puts me in a meditative state okay so is that like a before bed unwind thing like pop it on netflix and watch yeah so i think the lesson there is like find your office yeah like it could be minus family guy it's true which is really bizarre because i don't think anyone really watches family guy

3:30anymore i love family i watch it almost every night before bed so it could be seinfeld friends it could be rick and morty like you name it yeah it's endless mindless yeah so that's one thing uh i recently tried like a cbd tincture okay what is tincture so it's like it's basically like a bottle where you have a dropper dropper yeah okay and people use it for sleeping okay and people usually use it to just kind of relax yeah someone described it to me as like an ibuprofen like it's just like a natural ibuprofen okay and it helps you sleep because one of the hardest parts of sleeping is turning off

4:14getting your mind to just like be at ease chill that's the hardest one of the hardest parts of life by the way like you say the hardest parts of sleeping i think i have a really tough time either focusing my mind in on one thing because we're like in this constant connected state where there's just constantly you know you're like notifications and things bugging you i mean you talked to me the other day about do not disturb mode on your phone it's changed my life already notifications turned off suddenly you don't have the like constant drum beat of things hitting you but i think it's cbd is an interesting

4:43one i've never tried it really yeah i mean i think you know you don't have to get it with thc which is the psychoactive ingredient in it it's just pure cbd and you know people use ashwagandha that's another one um there's mushroom tinctures there's a company called rainbow r-a-i-n-b-o i think not the crypto wallet not the crypto wallet that um you know also sort of helps with that sort of stuff so i think it's like find your tincture is maybe another good little life hack yeah which is um [Music] something that you take as a part of a ritual that helps you unwind yeah and and

5:26ideally that's not not something that you know is destructive right like don't go on like twitter might not be that thing for you right yeah um you need to find ways to escape general reality it's interesting because today we have a guest in who is building something that is basically in line with this overall thesis they're like people are um overly connected they're not finding ways to unwind they're not finding healthy ways to kind of escape and to get away and to improve their health and well-being and their mental health and stress levels etc and so it'll be fun to talk to amanda about how she's thinking about

6:01that and also honestly like destigmatization right all this stuff cbd thc i mean all of it mushrooms like all of these things are really stigmatized still in our culture and so it'll be interesting to talk to her about how you build out in front of that destigmatization i'm interested in the startup side of de-segmentation right so it's like how do you like what's you know it's really the wild west yeah and like how do you build a business around it yeah and how do you navigate like the legal aspect of it yeah um what does it look like shipping cbd products yeah across state lines across state lines countries like

6:40how does that like yeah be an interesting question for yeah let's dive right into it it's good segue what are we drinking we are drinking my favorite tequila i actually just i tweeted this uh yesterday i was like i only drink como's you can just twist it i think and it'll pop right off boom friend joe thank you for the komos he sent us over some some coma so i'm going to give you we talked about unwinding and we're talking about de-stressing and this is tequila a nice stiff pour of tequila drink in moderation and drinking water always drink in moderation cheers cheers cheers to you man cheers

7:20all right oh that's good okay so i actually thought that was a good segue um to some of the stuff i wanted to talk about today i've got a couple ideas around this i know you do too um so where are we gonna start destigmatization as like a thesis or a backdrop to build businesses um it relates to a lot of different things we've talked about in the past of you need to have a view of what the future looks like have it be different and then right and this is an area where you can do that right like we talk about cbd you're talking about cannabis and the way that

7:55that industry has developed over a long time talk about psychedelics all of these are industries where historically they've been viewed very differently than what they are likely to be viewed at viewed as in the future and so how do you build a business around that so the question is how do you build a business around and destigmatize yeah destigmatization uh as a mega trend and then where are the opportunities from a business standpoint around that so the hardest part about building a business in a stigmatized arena is people are not educated so you have to get them to unlearn certain things so for example with cannabis

8:37you know for for decades there was you know essentially propaganda yeah that was actually highly racist around uh you know saying that you know if you use cannabis you will go crazy basically yep um i think it started in like the 20s and 30s um and you know here we are today in 2021 where um there are people in jail for selling small amounts of marijuana it's absolutely black i mean it makes absolutely no sense to me it's crazy yeah and i think you know at the core of it it comes down to racism and and and control but there's been so many studies around you know cannabis helping all sorts of

9:18people anxiety cancer dealing with stuff ptsd so there's plenty of med you know medicinal use cases of of cannabis and um and also recreational yeah you know in moderation yeah um so my point is when you're when you're creating a business in one of these arenas like let's say you want to create a startup in in cbd your first step is educating people about hey like here's all these use cases and here's like here's why you should be using this yeah and that's tough right that's tough to do yeah like whenever you're educating a market you have to spend money to educate on market ultimately like sp

10:01spend resources time content yeah uh but maybe there's a business you can so i think you're hitting on something really interesting it's making it's giving me a business idea so yep bear with me on this um so psychedelics i have a similar set of profiles to where i think marijuana thc cannabis was 10 years ago in that it was criminalized in the 60s and 70s i think as part of this like massive moral panic that happened in the u.s like some people you know did some bad things when they were under the influence of psychedelics in extreme cases that happens with a lot of it happened to people on no drugs and so

10:37it became this like moral stigma the government took it into their hands criminalized all these things and the reality is science is starting to show in a meaningful way that psychedelic compounds can be extraordinarily useful for people dealing with depression i mean we're gonna it's gonna completely separate and completely change antidepressants anti-anxiety medicines and part of it is like lobbyists and all the money they're spending for pharmaceuticals and big pharma and all of that's going to get blown out but right now you're at a point in time where people don't understand it and so to your point on education what business can you build around that

11:13my mind goes to this idea of like a concierge i've talked about concierge ideas in the past i love this thing but think of like psychedelics as a service like psychedelics as a concierge and how you could build a business around that so say i'm new to this space and i want to learn more about how these compounds might be able to help me might be able to help me experience new things about myself mentally physically spiritually whatever it is i have no idea where to start right now i mean i could go and read for hours and hours there's no one that i can go to that's

11:46like my point person my river guide if you will to kind of guide me through this landscape so my idea would be you start a business that is kind of part education but part um you just have a point person a concierge to guide you through the entire range of experiences that you might be able to have and then actually make the connection points and the introduction so that you can execute those experiences as you see fit or as you want to i actually first of all i love concierge businesses in general i actually i started in 2012 i started a company called five by which was our

12:21tagline was your online video concierge okay and you went there and it served you up the best internet videos based on who you are what you know what that sort of thing so i think like whenever whenever you want to give you know something on a silver platter a concierge business makes sense and like there's a ton of verticals that you can apply to now when it comes to let's say psychedelics i think it's a perf it's perfect so i think my question comes to like comes down to like what is the business model is it like a monthly fee that you pay and how does it work and also like

12:55how do you make sure that the concierge is giving recommendations that you know isn't like his buddy you know so here's how i would do it it needs to be trust is really important in concierge type businesses yeah so here's how i would do it i'd go first off i'd go premium so the price point would be high call it 100 plus a month that you're paying to this concierge um i would go regional so basically i would go pick an area that had a high density of high stress working professionals probably okay tell me why you'd go premium why i would go premium versus just like

13:34so i think it goes to trust like when you're paying a premium price point and you're getting like something that feels really premium the trust is kind of baked into the appearance and the feel of it like when you go to a website it's a really nice premium website you immediately have this feeling of trust you don't worry about putting your credit card information in there there's just like a degree of trust that comes with something looking really appealing and i think premium pricing and a premium feel to the entire experience creates a level of trust and so when you're dealing with something that's stigmatized you're dealing with like a

14:02sin industry quote-unquote i think it's really important yeah okay i buy that i like starting i like starting high-end and then making your way sort of you know mid-tier and low-end yeah so you're going to start there 100 bucks a month and then how like how does the product work like do i have is it via text is it yeah do i get to speak to someone so the way i would do it is i would like i said regional say say you started in new york city ton of working professionals a lot of people that are highly stressed out um they subscribe to this service and it is your point person

14:35it's like your river guide that can give you the entire range of experiences both through the website or through like individualized you know texting calling platform whatever where they'll give you all of the different kind of options what is out there i honestly don't know i would benefit from something like this is it ayahuasca is it mushrooms is it lsd is it acid like all of the different things that exist in this ecosystem and all those words sound scary to a lot of people and so having one person that you can ask questions about it you can you know discuss the risks you can ask about what the range

15:06of experiences is and then there's like an open platform for who they recommend like the best experience with ayahuasca maybe it's someone in joshua tree and they know and they're like a preferred provider through this but basically this becomes your conduit to get information ask questions be connected to safe and high quality providers of these things and this company the concierge actually kind of sits as like a middleman where you're not dealing with all of the issues of actually distributing or sharing these products but you can kind of exist as like switzerland if you will sitting in the middle layer of it i like the idea

15:42of so to add to your idea maybe it's like a monthly call that you get with your river guide okay by the way i've never heard the term river guide but i actually agree it's a great term so like maybe you call this thing river guide yeah so you go to riverguy.com and you set up like your monthly call and it's it's not only about the transaction of like buying whatever you need to buy but it's about like hey it's almost like a you know a therapy session right so you're like having this like therapy session 30 minutes 45 minutes an hour maybe it's a hundred dollars to 500 a

16:18month maybe more a thousand dollars you can charge and then if it makes sense that's when it's like oh hey like i think this is a really important time for you to have like a spiritual quest yeah and it might not be every month it might be once a year yeah but you have that and you're building that ritual yeah and it's a highly word of mouth driven river yeah we should call them yeah it should be river guide yeah because it's a god i love river god yeah it's a god and it has the resonance too for people with like a psychedelic experience you have a god but i like the

16:50idea because it has um you're taking like the therapy aspect which i like that you just added that because then you're kind of figuring out and you're creating a pattern of like what does this person need what what is the experience like are they highly stressed out do they need to have and you know are they anxious do they have issues with depression like and you can curate the overall experience that they're getting with the different psychedelic components with that that's how you and the website when you get to the website it should feel like you're signing up with like pandora right or something like that yeah where

17:22it it learns about you so like for example with five by uh our mobile app that we started in 2012 the the first thing it said was like in our onboarding it was like are you are you the type of person that likes to go to coachella or like ski in the alps or like go hang out in you know on the beach and we would like ask a series of these questions and from that we would infer a lot of data to get them to a place where they were getting um great you know a great content experience yeah so i like that like you

17:54when you come into it you're like onboarding that you could create is asking these different questions that then kind of put you into a path that your person can flesh out and provide insights around i the thing i like too is just these businesses where when you're playing in destigmatization and we should talk to amanda about it when we have her in the product path is really tough and so i'm interested to get her perspectives because dealing with the product pack you have to deal with shipping you have to deal with things across state lines federal regulation versus state regulation with this like i said you're

18:22kind of switzerland you can exist in this middle layer where people haven't really wanted to touch it because it is stigmatized as an industry but you don't have to deal with all those shitty challenges that you have to deal with when you're on the product side so you can kind of take the pure profit of this monthly recurring revenue and not have to deal with it it's sort of like i got pitched recently on like a sin stripe business you know like stripe doesn't want to touch porn and they don't want to touch uh you know all of these other industries drugs all of these things and

18:51so there's a industry that's forming to basically build stripe but it's a you know payment rails that don't care about what you're doing and just let it happen it's sort of like what silk road did way back in the day and obviously ross is in jail but like that whole idea of build something around um an area where people don't want to touch it because of the stigma yeah i mean i i i think pay safe is uh the paypal of sin yeah they're uh you know three to four billion dollars in quotes because i i don't think many of these things are really well i think i think like how um

19:26how society views it yes and there's tons of biblical sin biblical saying i think there's there's tons of there's tons of opportunities to build there yeah uh if you want to build there i just think that going back to saying earlier i think it's the the challenges with those types of businesses are often education yeah um but there's tons of opportunity there yeah and there's actually vc firms that are popping up to support those industries like ten years ago five years ago like good luck rape i couldn't hear what you said five years ago ten years ago say it again because my apple watch is being very

20:04rude five years ago 10 years ago good luck finding a vc to back your cbd business yeah um now there's a lot more support for that sort of stuff yeah and there's even vc firms dedicated yeah um to these industries yeah well that's interesting i mean it's like consensus you know forming over time right like feces get a hard time for just like following the crowd and doing the same thing as everyone else but it's cool when you have these vcs that are starting to think differently about these industries and deploying capital into them because ultimately i mean i'm a i'm a capitalist and i'm a free market

20:40guy i think that when you start having capital flow into these ideas capital plus people talent like people that are watching this and starting to think about psychedelics or destigmatization you're going and building in that space that's how change happens because there will be a lot of smart people building in it building new things new ideas you start having regulation you know kind of as a lag and following that i do think in 10 years it's hard to imagine the level of criminalization around psychedelics as exists today and so if you were out in front of it and building you should reap outsized rewards for doing that yeah so i would say like for

21:12those listening watching i think like start with the science like believe in what you're doing yes um and it has to be authentic be authentic uh figure out what is the the easiest way to educate people in a consumable way that's fun and interesting um pick a vertical like don't just go for everyone like if you know go to new york or premium or pick people who are stressed like come up with that identity um the atomic unit of this by the way is exactly what you said which is education and the component of like you could build something that all it is is that opening portal you mentioned

21:51that you guys did with five by where you just log in you click you know different things you're experiencing it's like gamify it's a fun little game and it spits out here are the kind of different like um the different compounds that might be a fit for your life and for what you need and here's how they might benefit you that literally could be a business in and of itself you could probably do advertising around it bring in advertisers that would want to sponsor the page and make money off of it and that's how probably you should start yeah which is like a very simple way to do customers

22:19no code no venture capital like it's actually probably what you validate build the audience like learn and then from there it's like okay you know where do we go from here and i think like one of the best ways to build a business is when you you know you've built an audience right yeah you've built a big audience around a particular vertical so like you built a big audience around people who want to sleep better using cbd yeah and [Music] and that's what i want to talk to amanda about actually like she built an audience on twitter yep um and learned a lot on twitter didn't you know and then

22:56from there kind of like built a business around it yeah so i think like yeah curious your perspective there yeah yeah i mean you know i agree with the idea of building audience and going and using that and the distribution around it i think we should talk to her we should bring her in i want to talk to her about this idea because i'm curious for her thoughts i know she's going to have a lot of interesting perspectives on it and i have like it's forming in my mind now from hammering it around with you the exact way that i would go and do this and i think you can just like

23:22hammer away with audience and with targeting distribution like buying ads in a specific locale to bring people into that like opening funnel and just use that to launch a business very quickly in the space but i want to talk about it whether yeah and i also i also have a question about like ads right like sure can you buy facebook ads for this sort i don't know it's a good question actually let's let's bring her in let's bring her in and we'll talk about this this is a good one how did you do homeschool three kids eight six and four years old i guess they were seven five and three

23:55and you started your business last year yeah are we even recording right now oh yeah yeah i'm like i actually want to i actually want to know this but we can throw it in later but like how did you actually manage that that's insane um so i moved i left new york city moved to charlotte north carolina just because i wanted space and like outdoors and i found two 24 year old girls who basically lived with me for a year amazing and it was a small village because like they were in the house all the time i have i would have four moms from the neighborhood in my garage

24:28packing up house of wise shipping it out like we had a little compound but like child care if you think back to like what it was hundreds of years ago it was like tribal and now we're like left to do it on our own or like hopefully with a partner but yeah i felt like i brought that tribal mentality back and it was incredible my kids were flourishing yeah because they had all these people who loved them and were helping them but we all have different views and experiences so cool it was cool it's like it takes a village thing yeah yeah it is it's interesting just

25:05like historically that was the way that kids were raised and they were part of it was part of the overall community and there was really a community feel i don't feel like society has that community feel anymore i'm trying to convince like two of my friends in brooklyn to move into a house with me they have two kids and i'm like let's just all right create a mini commune like wouldn't that be awesome and then if like if i want to go out and they can watch the kids if they want to go on a date you know what it's like it's like the kibbutz you know those uh

25:31in israel uh jewish people they did the kibbutz in israel which is well no it is it's like an israeli it's an israeli jewish thing it's like a community in there yeah it's a social it's a it's a socialist thing too right like they share in their like basically uh you're like farming right you're farming and you create stuff yeah and then you share it and you're all together we're in it together a little socialist society i grew up on a farm in illinois okay it's like 800 people my parents didn't go to college and they built the house i grew up in and they're still in like my parents have never been

26:10on an airplane like to this day they still live there yeah and they built the house three miles from my grandparents farm and my mom is one of 11. so growing up it was just you'd go and spend all weekend at your grandparents house with all of your cousins and no one was watching you yeah it was not safe unstructured but yeah i spent a lot of time like unstructured you have siblings one older brother what is he doing he's in central illinois i'm kind of the like you were the one that kind of escaped yeah okay what i was up to yeah what what like just what sparked that

26:45were you like from a young age super independent wanting to escape and go run away and go do something literally my parents had to put like alarms on the house when i was two because i would literally just leave the house someone just told me a business idea about this with having kids where um so i'm about to have my first kid and thank you and uh apparently you need to like baby proof your house where like not right away dressers and things you need to have them like attached to the walls so the kid can't pull them over and someone pitched me on this business

27:18idea of uh like a service that comes in and baby proofs a house because i don't want to do it like i have to hire a handyman i don't know like yeah electrical side there's probably a bunch of things i don't know that i actually need to be baby proofed and so could you like build a service that just comes in and does all that stuff for you you pay them like 500 bucks concierge yeah they come in and do the whole thing uh maybe that's a good segue to actually bring it to our actual conversation so amanda amazing to have you we're so so excited um

27:47you're someone that i've looked up to and admired from afar for a long time now um for a number of reasons which we can get into um but a big piece of it is you are building something that a lot of people would be scared to build um and you are someone that is building a product company as part of this wave of de-stigmatization around an industry what we were just talking about before you came in was this whole idea we have around building a company to educate and like river guide people through psychedelic experiences and so this whole idea that like you can create a concierge and charge a premium

28:27price point to have a business that explains to people educates them on this entire new world that most people are scared of and don't understand you have any thoughts on just like that as a business i mean there are companies in the ketamine space that are doing this where you can do like a ketamine experience at home um i mean i think we have to break the conversation down into like medicalization versus like recreational use okay because i think that they're two separate conversations of like which one you're you're thinking about because the thing that gets me i guess most heated or most like animated about this topic is just that

29:09there's so much that these that psychoactives cannabis etc can be used for like depression anxiety ptsd and everybody's lumping it all together and we're like at this like blocker whereas if we decouple the conversation and say okay there's decriminalization like if you're using it for personal use like you don't go to jail like we still have 40 000 people sitting in jail for cannabis charges when it's like not yet federally legal it's insane right and it's mostly young african americans and hispanic people by the way so that like the racism overlay to this is very real sure so i mean the the criminalization of cannabis is so rooted in

29:54um like it's named marijuana because it was a mec tied to mexican race so it there's so much i didn't know that it's interesting there's so much rooted in racism there um and like the war on drugs is like truly a war on people yeah right but um but yeah i think that there needs to be if we don't decouple these things people are dying from mental health like every single day we saw today's veterans day like reading about veterans and how they can't get used to like medical use with cannabis so i'm i there has to be more focused on this because it will yeah help people so

30:34let me pitch you on this idea okay so i'm a working professional in new york i imagine imagine me like i mean you kind of are yeah i'm not a banker i don't have banker energy but imagine i'm a banker in new york city and i'm stressed out all the time i work a ton maybe i have some depression issues some anxiety probably just because i'm getting 8 000 emails a day and i want to learn more about this because i've heard or listened to podcasts that talked about it hubermann like some of these amazing podcasts michael pollin's book change your mind how to change your mind

31:05and i want to learn more about it but it's intimidating these new industries new spaces you're like oh all i've heard about it was from my parents it's different generation to your point the narrative hasn't shifted yet there's a lot of noise right like noise so you create a business where i go into this like beautiful looking website and i put in like yes i this is the industry i work in finance and i have some issues with anxiety and maybe i take a couple of these medications whatever it is and it spits me out like here are the psychoactive compounds and different experiences whether it's ketamine

31:39whether it's mushrooms whether it's lsd acid whatever it is and here's the kind of range of things that might benefit you given your profile and now by the way here is this like amazing beautiful concierge experience you can have where someone will talk to you once a month and guide you through all these different things and refer you to the right people where you can have a safe experience with these so you kind of exist as like a switzerland like you're not selling the product but you're kind of sitting in the middle and you're educating plus connecting people to have these experiences and like creating the

32:10on-ramps to this new world love everything two things you're not solving for that are really big issues is acquiring and quality control okay both of those are unsafe right now like i've had bad experiences where you don't know where it's coming from and you have a really bad trip right so you're telling people what to use but then that's a huge leap to like where do you go how do you get in yeah who do you call if you have a bad trip like all those things i i feel like it'd be very dangerous to start that company without the like pathway to acquisition yeah so that's a

32:52great call out so i do think i think that's a great point and it's a dangerous point if it goes wrong so i think you would have to have like preferred providers people that you know like sort of like on yelp or on any of these sites where you have the like people five star reviews yeah exactly like you know exactly but because you wouldn't be the one actually with the product you kind of de-risk yourself a little bit from a business starting standpoint but i think you have to have that i i totally agree with you i think you should also have like a help

33:19line like if you're having a bad day yeah that's a great point you're having a bad trip like you need someone that you can call that could talk you out of it i think that's like i mean i'm curious your perspective on that like how important is talking someone off a cliff when they're having an experience um and have you seen any services out there that help people i mean the academy one year like mind bloom is the one that comes to mind like they're they're being funded um like our in-house sex expert just did a at home ketamine treatment she like did a whole tick-tock series on it

33:54um that's a big company now mind-blowing it's like getting a ton of traction i don't know if you've seen that it's a very cool company yeah i have i haven't done neither right like i haven't experienced it but interested to see what it like would do and unlock but um it's more of an anti-social experience from what i've heard in in the like sufficient doses and so it's a little different from how a lot of people think about these things where you're going out and experiencing things it's more like internal but to answer your question dosing like you're talking about like you've already taken too much

34:26right and so like or bad or bad product or a bad product so again it's like everything that has to happen before the person ever takes something which is what is the proper dosing because like i'm in the cannabis industry and i still like quality control is a thing i like if you take an edible from one dispensary versus another and that's the other issue like most of what the fda is doing tests on is from like mississippi and it's like really diluted they dry it out so the terpenes aren't in it like it's not like they're not even doing research on like the stuff that is

35:01actually in dispensaries so it's not one to one and so dosing is a huge issue quality control is a huge issue so i think you have to vertically integrate this whole thing for it to be i think a really great company yeah this is an interesting point because my whole thesis was you could create the switzerland like you could create this middle layer where i called it a river guide and like business name like you need someone to guide you down the river and like guide in a real sense as like for these trips but also when you hit rapids or when you have a bad situation you need

35:37someone to be able to guide you through it and my whole thesis was that you could be you could be horizontal in it what you're saying is that it's actually really hard to do that because and you've experienced this so i actually trust your opinion much more than my own but verticalization within this is important because then you can control the entire experience for people yeah so that's interesting i um i'm curious for your perspective like you're doing the product side of this you're building something that honestly is still stigmatized people don't like to talk about sex like even now which is it's crazy but on the when

36:10i go to your page house of wise what i see on the front page is sex gummies so like talk a little bit about building product that still triggers people a little bit there's something that people feel when they when they see those words for me i go into the i get really curious on like why are people triggered by talking about something that everybody does and that comes from a very patriarchal society right that women aren't supposed to talk about so right and also like if you think about sex as utilitarian when you become a mom like why are you posting sexy photos because you've already had your kids like and as

36:52a mom like i just think that changing the narrative for me the thing i get out of bed every day and say we have to change the narrative on owning your sexuality not for in a hetero normative sense a man's pleasure and that's why there's so many things that affect libido especially in women like we have hormonal cycles we are have a higher stress level which blocks cortisol and or high cortisol blocks like testosterone release etc right so there's so many things that affect your libido but yet there have sexual health has not been a vc category until about like two years ago seriously but yet erectile dysfunction medicine

37:38huge industry but we're not supposed to get help because we're women and it's because the vcs are generally white males didn't want to talk about it right i go in there talking about sex gummies and they're like yeah we're done here or they just like feel you get pushed back in your chair and you see a bunch of guys like oh i don't want to talk about this but it's our number one product because women need help in that department and that shouldn't be stigmatized right like like we're all having sex partner or not like let's have an actual conversation so we can figure out because if we're

38:13not even having the conversation we can't figure out what the problems are so then we can't solve or create products to solve those problems and so i'm just fortunate that i have a ton of women yeah in my community in like our slack channel that we have like real time like user research on what the actual issues are so we can talk to it like create content that actually speaks to us in a way that's like not this like polarizing thing where we're super super taboo and talk like trying to make you blush it's like no sex is healthy it releases oxytocin it helps with serotonin like these are

38:51good things for you so let's talk about as sexual health yeah it's um you hit on a few things there that i think are amazing so one the community aspect which we've talked about this before but amanda what you did with building an audience around all of this and building the community around all of it is amazing because you're a perfect example of someone who built this audience around the product you were going to be releasing into the market like you had built this big audience and you were building this audience prior to launching any of your products and so suddenly you were already talking about

39:23these things you were yeah you were part of the destigmatization of all of these things and then you were releasing a product into it and so it's this amazing case study of this new world we live in where you can do that you can build audience before product and then go and launch into that where you already had people that wanted that from you is that what happened you you built an audience and then you're like i want to see this product like can you walk through a bit of like the timeline of i wish i could say i was like this genius the grand strategy of that so

39:52when i got my divorce i was like at the height of my career early marketing for big company and had three kids under the age of four so that's when i started using cannabis i had never touched cannabis in my life i was an athlete my whole life so never touched it realized it was helping me realize all my friends were drinking so much alcohol and they didn't understand what alcohol was doing to them but no like it affects your rem cycles like it does lead that affects your libido like it's this kind of snowball effect right and so covet hit i saw my friends literally drinking more

40:30than i've ever seen and they are you know struggling with depression and anxiety so i was like [ __ ] i need to go create this i it was in my head already that i wanted to create a brand that destigmatized cannabis for people like me executives moms etc were you still at your job at that time when you had the idea yeah yeah um came up with the name on a work trip to india it was a very like you pray love moment um but india has that effect on people i've spent time there and it's oh it's like this when you see that many different type of people and

41:03the culture and the struggle that a lot of people have just like how much that grounds you as a human being yeah sorry i interrupted you but i agree it creates clarity in so many ways and grounding but um yes i saw my job i raised a pre-seed round while i had my full-time job i told the investors i couldn't leave because i was in the middle of a pandemic with three kids on my like taking care of them so raise the precede and where were you with like twitter followers at this point like were you at 25 000. no i just got on twitter now

41:35two years ago yeah you were at the same time as me i remember this yeah i remember this yeah and so i i'm an open book like if we if we're at dinner like i'm gonna talk to you not only about business but like my dating life or whatever right and so i just started tweeting like i talk and then i would do like tweet threads about marketing or you know this is my second startup so i tweet about startups or whatever and all of a sudden it was just like things started to take off and the things that were taking off were like just me talking about authentic yeah

42:09realness like the struggles of being a parent during the pandemic dating life whatever so we launched december 1st my fault like my followers were probably around like 30k something like that and then i got to meet jack dorsey like that was that was like a cool twitter moment because they literally reached out and they were like we don't know how you're doing what you're doing that's cool how do we like what how can we make twitter better for women so that more women voices there's more space for women um that is a huge issue they have actually yeah yeah it's male dominated very much though yeah it's a bit it's a

42:51boys club for sure yeah it comes with network effects though because like like you saw with clubhouse even like in the beginning it's like you guys all know each other that was where we first met was in a clubhouse room we were both on this panel in a clubhouse room i remember that that's right yeah yeah so then launched december 1st started talking about what i was building but to grow my wise women is what we call them house of wise we have wise women so we have 700 women who are micro affiliates they talk about the products of their friends they like use these things to like sell it on

43:25their phones et cetera right i tweeted out like does anybody want to talk about how to have better sleep sex etc i'm building something for women my dms were not and so i hired like a person like a taskrabbit to literally go through put all those names in a spreadsheet and then i invited all those women at the time it was like between 400 and 500 women into a slack channel and so i treated them like they were part of the company they were investors i gave them updates on the products i would send out a few like early samples to have them they talk like show them

44:02packaging et cetera and then by the time we launched on december 1st we had over 500 women that had digital assets that were just talking about it so it felt like it was everywhere yeah so houston wise is a community-based product like right it's like community through and through it started with a community and the community is is really what's driving a lot of the success yeah 100 so cool this is like it's uh it's giving me a new framework which greg makes fun of me i'm like the frameworks guy on the show but um this is like the uh it's like the nsfw framework of like

44:40building businesses around things that people are afraid to talk about at work like things you're not supposed to talk about you're not supposed to talk about sex you're not supposed to talk about drugs you're not so let's talk about all these things yeah they're all being destigmatized it's all becoming more normal and we're starting to live in a world where you can talk about all these things but because it's been so taboo or stigmatized things haven't been built the infrastructure the product companies the infrastructure layer has not been created yet and so can you go just like use that as a business ideation to go build around that i think it's cool

45:11that's a good framework i like it i mean it's cool that's a really good one i think like to me this is a classic example of authentic like you're not your own you're not the only person that's feeling this way right so you like identified this feeling that people have you brought people together you created an intimate space and you co-created a product yeah you didn't create a product you co-created a product yeah i think everyone that was has been there from day one they feel like their fingerprint is on it somewhere which is really cool that's why like the word even founder like i'm just thinking

45:47out loud here but like it's almost like an outdated term like because like i feel like the products of the future you know it isn't one person isn't you know these like multiple founders it's like it's your micro affiliates right it's it's your co-creators yeah you're a co-creator captain of the basketball team totally you also have exceptional founder market fit like you use a i hate using bc terms generally but like founder market like you were the right person yes you got a drink every time you use a bc term i think it counteracts the a16z comment actually now i'm good i'm like at baseline um but

46:24i think like you were the right person to start this too because it was so authentic and it was something you really deeply cared about and something you had benefited from and experienced in real time and so to go build a community it's really hard to build community if you're not authentic and credible around what you're trying to build around and so you were the right person to build this community because you were experiencing these things you were a mom you were trying to manage your kids and teach them in a covid world which was nuts and like you're trying to manage that with the stress of

46:50being a full-time you know working person and then starting a business and it's just like it all builds up to there's this amazing credible authenticity that you were kind of going with um i just think it's i think it's amazing yeah well the thing that i saw is that there's a lot of vc-backed businesses around talking to women about their careers then there's vc-backed businesses that are like let's talk to you about motherhood there aren't that many spaces about your sexuality yeah right but like time is our most finite resource and if i have to go to three different groups of people to talk about my one self that is so [ __ ]

47:32exhausting so true so i'm like we are multi-hyphenates like that's like the term that we like to say like i am a mom but that is not my identity like that is a job and function that i have i'm also a sexual human like that is a part of my life i like i'm a marketer whatever whatever your roles are i don't want to talk to 8 000 groups so i wanted to create this community that was a space that acknowledged that first and foremost as a principal like you are a full human yeah i love it i think it's amazing it's a good place to end too i think because that like

48:10that final point of embracing everything that you are and the like full circle of who you are as a human is a really really cool takeaway for me so thank you so much for the time you're the best this is awesome this was seriously awesome and where can people find you i do want to give a i want to give a product plug here because first off i'm super excited to take this pre-workout pre-workout yeah people think cbd is just a downer but like when it's paired with really good active audience it works i'm really excited for it house of water is not just for women

48:39right you could be a wise man there you go forward to it thank you so much and tell us the website houseofwise.com amazing thank you so much for coming in you're the best yeah you're the best saaho what was your biggest takeaway from our conversation with amanda so i think for me first off i think this business idea is really interesting the whole idea of like creating river guide for these new experiences where you need to educate you can create a concierge experience i think there's actually a business to be built here so as a community takeaway i would love to get in there and jam on

49:10this further and riff with people that might be interested in building it yeah and my biggest takeaway is that i feel like for years people have been saying that you know cannabis is the they call it the green rush right um and there's all these like stigmatized spaces and there's all these people coming in and you're not too late i guess my biggest takeaway is you're not too late there's still tons of opportunity tons of narratives to own tons of community-driven products that you could create um so the future is bright yeah i think the community-driven piece is key i mean amanda's a great example of that what

49:45she built building that community stoking that and just creating a safe space for people to talk about these things that they were never supposed to talk about and then launching a product alongside it it's brilliant so i learned a ton from it i thought it was amazing and i'm really excited to further the conversation get in the community with you guys and continue to jam on all of this so if you've got any ideas around stigmatized businesses throw it in the discord and let's let's chat appsumo is the number one place for entrepreneurs it is a marketplace where entrepreneurs can find the products they need to build and scale their businesses

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