Sorsoap Founder David Restiano - From Shark Tank to Building Community

In this full episode of the Franchise Freedom Podcast, Giuseppe Grammatico interviews David Restiano, the inspiring founder of Sorsoap! Hear the complete story from Sorsoap's shower-born idea to landing a deal with Mark Cuban on Shark Tank. Learn about building community, overcoming challenges, and the powerful advice David has for aspiring business owners. This episode is packed with inspiration and entrepreneurial wisdom! 

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Transcript

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My name is David. I started Sorsoap about five years ago. and we are a recovery company that's bringing a different way and a simpler way to treat yourself to the I thought it was going to be a rocket ship. You know, you get on shark tank, you think, wow, you know, I hit the lottery or this is a rocket ship. All I got to do is hold on and go for the ride. It's not like that. it's a grind. Every day is a grind. But when you start a business, as you know, it's more than just profits and losses, it's more than balance sheets and ledgers, it's It's your passion. It's your life. You become it becomes part of your identity. Welcome to the Franchise Freedom Podcast, where you can escape the corporate trap through franchise ownership. Here's your host, Giuseppe Grammatico, The Franchise Guide. Welcome to the Franchise Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Giuseppe Grammatico, your franchise guide, the show where we help corporate executives experience time and financial freedom via franchising. Appreciate you joining us today. Really excited for our show. We're going to really be mixing things up and moving a little bit away from franchising and just talking about a small business and various other business outside of the franchise world. Wanted to thank you for your feedback. I know you wanted more guests. So we're bringing on, we have 10 new guests that we're going to be bringing on the show, covering all different aspects, franchising attorneys, CPAs, and things like that. So, again, we really appreciate your questions and feedback. And that's really the point of this show is to educate as much as we can. So let's bring, let's see, let me hit the right button over here. David Restiano from Sorsoap, David, welcome to the show, man. Hello, Giuseppe. How are you doing? Very well. I'm a big fan. I see a lot of your work online. you do a really solid job. You definitely cover all bases. So I applaud you for that. I was going to ask you if you could do our marketing. We have fun with it. You know, we're trying to have fun and educate in a unique and different way. It's kind of one of the hallmarks of our company and we're trying to lean into that and keep it light and show people how easy it is to do what we're doing. I love it. Yeah, I learn a lot. it's entertaining and it's almost like, man, It just seems like you got content for days. So I love it. David, I guess, before we dive in, and really excited to have you on the show today is maybe give the audience a little bit of a background as to kind of who you are. And, you know, we'll start diving into Sorsoap as I find, I find this a business model in the business. thank you. I am, a 50-year-old ex-athlete, who still trains and plays like, I'm, still in the peak of my career, but I don't recover as quickly as I used to. I've got three kids, a beautiful wife, dog, you know, the whole thing. My name is David. I started Sorsoap about five years ago. and we are a recovery company that's bringing a different way and a simpler way to treat yourself to the masses. it all kind of started in my shower. Giuseppe, if we're being transparent here. during covid, my men's soccer leagues were all shut down. as we all kind of know, we were impacted in different ways. We were working from home. We were working out from home. I started to get into distance running just to kind of fill that void that soccer had left. one day after a run, I came back, I got in the shower, my hip flexors were really sore and I grabbed a bar of green soccer. soap that had a little curve on the bottom, and I started to scrape my muscles like an athletic trainer or a physical therapist has done to me in the past. and it felt great. you know, I kind of had an idea in my mind. I'm a graphic designer and an artist by trade. So immediately I pictured, well, what if we could make this easier to hold a little bit more utilitarian, you know, shape it like a real physical therapy tool. And yeah, Give the user the ability to hang it up in the shower, you know, on a little holder. And that was the day that Source Hope was born. jumped out of my shower, my wife thought I was crazy, ran to my studio, started doing 3D renderings, started designing a logo that you see here. we've adapted and adopted that right from the beginning. and That's how it started. A couple of weeks later, I called my physical therapist and I asked him if he was interested in starting a company around the idea and that's how it all began. That's awesome. Well, it's amazing to hear where these ideas come from. they say, you know, the shower is where a lot of stuff. Ideas happen that they said, I don't know what it is. It's the, yeah, the noise. I actually invested in a, in a Shark Tank product years ago. Aqua Notes I think it was called. it's waterproof, you got the pencil and the paper you jot stuff down, but you have to remember to tear the paper off and bring it back with you, That's the only catch, but I recommended it to everyone because I always have my ideas, showering. So we're getting into way too, too much information. That's where my head is. Is that a lot of times, to be honest with you, I've actually looked into that. when you're doing something that you've done a million times, like when they say like, it's like riding a bike, you don't really think about what you're doing in the shower because it's a rote behavior You know, we've done it since we were little. Part of your brain is freed up to think about those other bigger, you know, more, you know, abstract ideas because you're just kind of going through the motions. You're relaxed. The environment is relaxing and comforting to begin with, and that weighs into our company. To be honest with you, we've brought recovery into the shower because There's so many things that you could combine in life, but the daily routine of washing is something that we never skip. it's a comforting place and it's a routine and it's soap is a commodity So we're trying to bring a little bit of a different, aspect to that daily routine and you're 100 percent right though The shower is a great place to relax and let your mind wander and feel comfortable It's a safe place a lot of my life revolves around the shower now, to be honest with you, a lot of my content, a lot of my interactions with customers and, you know, it's kind of like you alluded to, it's a little bit of a weird subject sometimes, It's something that we all share. Most of us experienced muscle soreness, you know, in one point or another in our life. But yeah, we were talking about it before and, you know, playing soccer and things like that. And as we get older, yeah, recovery is not what it used to be. So, yeah. And by the way, if you're watching any of, David's content, just be aware, you know, you may, there may be a shower scene. there was a lot more frequency of me in the shower at the beginning when I was trying to get the idea across now, I try to limit it to one out of every five or six posts. But at one point, here's a funny story. my mother in law said to me one day, she said, you know, I've seen you in the shower way more than I ever expected. And she was joking around, of course, but, you know, it's true. But once I got over the whole, like, what do they say? Like, you know, get out of your comfort zone, right? If you're going to be the face of a company, which when we first started this company, my partner's a physical therapist, Dr. Dan Statz. I was naturally the one in front of the camera a little bit, but I wasn't as comfortable, you know, you do a podcast here. You're interviewing people. You're obviously great in the in front of the camera. You're comfortable with yourself, but it's probably taking some time to hone that skill and feel that comfort level. So for the first couple of months, maybe, you know, to a half of a year. At the beginning, I was focused on the product and I was trying to limit the, you know, being the face of the brand, so to speak, but to be honest with you, when I embraced it and really just made it authentic and genuine, we get a lot of good reactions to it and we get a lot of people saying what you said, you know, I enjoy your content and it shows. A little bit of behind the scenes stuff and it shows who's behind, you know, who's doing the work and who's the company, so to speak. And, you know, that's something that Dan and I discuss all the time. he makes a lot of educational content and clinical content. and I think it's a good representation of the company, you know. Right. There's a lighter side to it and there's a scientific side to it. And together he and I kind of, represent both aspects, which is nice. It's a nice combination. Yeah, I will say, it makes it fun. It's also kind of, you know, behind the scenes, what's going on deliveries, you know, who's getting what. So, yeah, I think it's great. and Dan, who our kids go to school together and I met Dan years ago, he is your physical and your partner, right? Both physical therapy and partner. Yep. He was my physical therapist for years before the whole notion of sore, sore soap started. So do you have, you know, so how, how did the product evolve? Because I know it started off, there was a, I forget the material. Was it steel? Was it, you know, there was a steel and then there's the, the actual soap. So how did, how did the product evolved into that? So there's a lot of steel, there's a lot of a lot of metal tools that you'll find, you know, we could go back and do the history of it. muscle scraping has been around for centuries, you know, generations, you know, it started and there's there's far east versions of this squash jade tools, wooden tools, stone tools. And then there was a version in ancient Rome and Greece that the gladiators would use a bronze or a brass tool to scrape their muscles clean. They didn't really even understand at that point. I mean, I'm assuming here. Yeah. I'm assuming they didn't understand that what fascia was and what soft tissue recovery was at that point. They were using a thing called a strigil to, to, they'd rub oil on their muscles and they would scrape the oil off and it would clean them and get the dirt off their skin after training or combat or, you know, exercise, whatever it was in the process of that unknowingly. They were also, mobilizing soft tissue, and it probably felt great. So this concept's been around forever. We're just the first people to make it out of soap. so we make a ultra hard bar of essential oil loaded soap. It's got menthol in it, and we have a couple different formulas. This is our original formula that we launched with. It's got menthol, lavender and chamomile with it, and you get in the shower and you use it like a muscle scraping tool. The cool thing about it is it's very user friendly. It's soap, right? It's not metal. there's no danger involved. Like if you're using a metal clinical tool, there is a small instance where, you could hurt yourself on a tendon or a nerve. Our tools are a little bit more, you know, do it yourself friendly, especially cause they're soap. They get you clean, smells great, gives you an aromatherapy angle that you otherwise wouldn't have in the shower. we make it in the United States of America, we make it in Omaha, Nebraska. And then. Like you alluded to before, we also make our version of the muscle scraping tool, a non soap version. It's called Soar Tool, and this came out after this whole idea, but we realized there was a hole in the market for athletes and other people that were on the go. a metal tool is heavy, it, it, you can't just throw it in your pocket and go for a run. Clangs around and, you know, it's not It's not user friendly, so to speak. So we made a super lightweight tool. It weighs less than, you know, a small pack of sour patch kids or a goo that you'd bring with you on a run, the running world has really adopted this tool. They keep it in their runner vests. They keep it in their shorts. We were at the Philadelphia marathon a couple of months ago, and we sold so many of these to runners once they, you know, came over and talk to us. And, Dan would show them how to use it with a little bit of cream. it glides with sweat and it was a great experience to interact with all these runners. And then the next day we got a bunch of text messages and posts on Facebook, tagging us on Instagram saying, you know, I hit my PR yesterday and I owe some of it to the fact that I had a muscle scraping tool. With me, which was really a cool thing. That's awesome. you try it, which actually brings us to the next topic here. So you guys were on shark tank recently. And I remember watching that, you know, local guys, super excited to hear that. And, struck a deal with, with Mark Cuban. And part of that, I remember him saying was, I was not, not sure if I was in, or maybe he was that, but then he went back in after trying is like my neck feels Much better. So I guess talk to us, you know, that to me, that's, that's super exciting. I I've never missed an episode since day one, talk to us about that whole process of, you know, how long were you in business before getting on shark tank? And, you know, how has that process been, you know, given that you've, you've kind of gone through this firsthand working with, both on the show and then working with Mark Cuban. So you see a big smile on my face when you start to talk about Shark Tank. It was, it was such a nerve wracking experience, Giuseppe, but it was also so rewarding. I mean, it's the brass ring for an entrepreneur or a startup founder in this country is, to get on Shark Tank, right? so when we were approached by one of the producers, they had seen some content that I made on TikTok. I was actually suggesting. A different product to a runner that I had become friends with a very accomplished ultra marathon runner out in california he was having issues with something and I said, you know You should try this product and it wasn't my product this producer from the show saw that and it kind of piqued his curiosity to say well, why is this founder? encouraging A runner to use something that's a competitor, you know, and it was just the right fit and it was the right answer for the for the for the runner so he he reached out he dug a little deeper into the content into us and into me and he He liked what he saw. He liked my personality. so he sent me an email and I thought it was a scam Like, you know this day and age you get an email that sounds too good to be true and immediately you think Oh my god, am I gonna? You know, click on this and everything's going to go haywire. so I called my son down who's 19 and ran it through the millennial filter. I said, does it look real to you? And he said, yeah, let's Google the name. So we Googled the name. Sure enough. He's the executive producer calls me a couple minutes later. we chatted on the phone for a good hour. We had a couple of things in common. We both played rugby at the collegiate level. so we just kind of hit it off. next thing you know. there's a lot that goes into Shark Tank, obviously, as you can imagine, being a fan of the show. We rehearsed, and we wrote, and we refined scripts, and that 90 second pitch that you see when you go through the doors, that's the only part that's scripted. So you hit your mark, you do your 90 second pitch, hopefully you get through it without any, flubs, because there's no stopping the cameras once they start rolling. so we made it through that 90 second pitch, the lights were bright, we're standing on that rug that you've seen it a million times, and I'm scanning across and I see Robert Herjavec, Lori, Barbara, Mr. Wonderful, and Mark Cuban. And I just said to myself, you know, Don't put too much pressure on this moment, right? which seems like a big ass because you're in front of the cameras, you're in Los Angeles, you made it to the mountaintop. so I just wanted to have a conversation. I wanted to stay calm, show them what we were all about, explain the products. Lori had a reason why she loved the product. She'd be a customer, but it just wasn't for her. It was more of just one product, not a full company, you know, and since then we've established a few more products in our line. Robert loved it as an athlete himself. He said, I love it. It feels great, but I'm out. So I'm starting to lose hope here, Giuseppe. I'm starting to think. I flew all this way, across the country watching all these little pockets of cities and towns thinking how we can help each one of these people. And then that's what I was thinking as I'm looking out the window of the plane. We get there, we land, we're shooting the show, and all these sharks are dropping one by one. Kevin, I'm out. You know, who's left? Barbara. You know, she had some great explanation why she was out. She liked us. We got along great, but she was out. So now I look over at Mark and he's doing this. Like, I think you saw this part. He's scraping, he's rubbing his neck with the tool. He wasn't out at all, but I thought, of course, he's going to go out too. We're going to have to slink backstage through the doors and we're going to be complete failures. But he keeps scraping his neck for a few more seconds. And I thought to myself, I think we might have a chance here. And that's when he stopped and he said, you know, my neck hasn't felt this good in months. And that's why I'm going to give you a deal. And I could feel Dan and I both exhaled and we, you know, that's when I think we both knew, okay. Life may change at this point. This might be that pivot in our life as small business owners, as startup founders, you know, we've got a chance here to make it out of the first couple of years where most small businesses fail. so now, you know, fast forward, we've got Mark Cuban after some due diligence and some business stuff that we took care of behind the scenes. I think it's common knowledge that not all deals close. We were very happy and fortunate that our deal closed. My partner, Dan, negotiated with Mark trying to get him a little lower with the number, and I'm thinking, I don't care what the number is, I'll give Mark whatever he wants, if he wants to become part of this passion project that we've started, and nurtured for the last four years, we've got an opportunity to have a billionaire businessman, a mogul, an icon, to join us. I said, I whispered in Dan's ear, let's pretend like we're negotiating, but we're going to take the deal. And he's like, yeah, heck yeah. So we said, you know, Mark, you got a deal. it was a surreal moment. He got up. He's a tall guy. He's six foot. He's got to be six, three, six, four, came over, hugged, shook hands. You've probably seen it on a rerun of the show. it was an amazing feeling. That's awesome. that is life changing. and you hear. being on the show, it's not, you know, it's a quick episode, but you're there for a while there's prep and not all the deals actually happened. So, I don't know what you can, what you can share, but how has it been so now that, you know, the due diligence, everything has been finalized and, you know, how has it been? to work with Mark Cuban and is he joining us today because he's more than glad he's sitting right here next to, no, I wish, listen, he, he's a part of what we're doing, you know, he's not some aloof, consultant off in the distance where he's unreachable or, or, you know, every time I email Mark, he gets back to me. Usually sooner than I would expect, you know, he's, he's just like you or I, if you emailed me at a four o'clock on a Tuesday, I would try to get back to you as quick as possible because that's the way I want to be treated. I try to live with that golden rule. I could tell we're raised in the same kind of way with a strong focus on family. Mark's the same kind of guy. He's a billionaire, but he's just a normal guy. He's a family guy. He's a father, a husband, and you don't become a billionaire. accidentally. he follows up. He's diligent with the advice that he gives us. we're not even part of his company for a year yet. our episode aired in April and that's when everything was timed, the deal closed. So we've been part of the Mark Cuban companies for almost a year in April, it'll be a year. so we see, the next couple of years our relationship growing and the trust between, his staff and us grows naturally as the longer we work together, So I see, I see a lot of exciting things in the future. I thought it was going to be a rocket ship. You know, you get on shark tank, you think, wow, you know, I hit the lottery or this is a rocket ship. All I got to do is hold on and go for the ride. It's not like that. it's a grind. Every day is a grind. every day you got to hustle to spread the word about your product to grow your brand to educate in our case because we're doing something new. it's not like a bottle of water that you walk by in the store and you go, Oh, that's water. I drink it. I know how to use it. Some people don't understand what soft tissue mobilization is. Some people don't understand how easy it is to recover. You know, in the shower or at the field or in the gym with our, with our products. So part of the fun challenge for us is, giving that education, especially to, there's some cynical people out there, you know, Giuseppe, that just say, Oh, that, that can't possibly work. And sometimes when I run across somebody like that on Facebook, a lot of it happens to be on Facebook for some reason. you know, I'll get a comment like, well, that's just stupid. Go ahead and do it with any soap. I guarantee it's going to feel great. when it gets slippery and soft and mushy and you can't hang it up on the holder because it's just a bar of soap, then come back to us and we'll talk about, how ours is a little different, but I always encourage people to take a brand new bar of soap and scrape whatever's sore. You're going to feel an immediate difference. and like we talked about before, that's how it kind of started with us. there's always going to be the haters online and that's just, that's just part of anybody you, you, you put your name out there, your face out there, especially on social kind of is what it is. So you're asking for it, but you can embrace it. You know, you get every moment that happens, whether it's a positive interaction or a negative interaction from when we signed with Mark and we, we aired on shark tank, you can imagine our sales volume exploded when we aired on the show. Right. What we were doing on Tuesday. as compared to Friday night when we aired was thousands of percentage points, incrementally increased, So I don't know if I said that properly it increased exponentially from here to a lot that I never even I couldn't even imagine couldn't fathom the sales volume, which was a great thing but When we started to, do all that volume, obviously, there was more customer care issues. There was more, you know, inquiries, there were more, you know, issues that when you go from doing a hundred orders a day to a thousand, let's just say, for round numbers. You know, you're opening yourself up to more of that cynic or skeptic, or, you know, the hater, so to speak, you know, social media is filled with people who are either unhappy or don't feel well, or had a tough life or had a tough day. And sometimes they take it out on, on you or me or whoever else is putting themselves out there on, on Facebook or Instagram or Tik TOK. So, you know, it's fun. Like I said, I try to embrace those moments and I try to show people that you can run a business and still care and still. Not take yourself too seriously and still be kind. and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. So, I liked it and I couldn't agree more and it bothered me. It was easier said now that I've gone through it, but I completely get it, understand. And I had similar to you, that imposter syndrome, right? Just felt like. Well, you know, what are people going to say if I say this or that? Well, if you don't have an opinion, if you don't put yourself out there, first off, no one's going to see it. So, you know, that's the risk you take, but anyway, it's totally worth it. So, I guess, you know, even, I mean, I've seen even deals on shark tank, whether they happen or not, just the exposure is huge. So I guess it was a Good experience overall to test the systems, right? because now you got volume, you got, more customer service, whether they're complaints. Maybe questions on usage returns and things like that. So, what did that look like? Did you have to change production, build out a brand new team to support all this? we were able to telescope what we had pretty quickly. the biggest thing I was concerned about, is we couldn't replicate. I did a stress test. we're built on a Shopify platform. obviously it's one of the standard, names in e commerce. They were great. we did some stress testing and I built the site myself. I'm a graphic designer by trade. I've been working in the industry For a long time, enough to work my way through certain things. I'm by no means a Shopify developer or e commerce platform developer. I figured it out just like we all do as small business owners. We wear a lot of different hats. I'm an artist by trade and a graphic designer. So the image part and the marketing part was easy, but. staying on topic here about stress tests the night before we aired, we had a party planned. I've gotten to know a lot of shark tank, founders, right? That have been on the show. And I would say most of them elected to have a party and celebrate the event right with family and friends. Some of them said things like, Nope, I was sitting in my office. I was monitoring my web statistics. I couldn't imagine doing that. We worked so hard to get to that point, relax, have some fun, share it with the people that you love. The people that have helped you get to that point. You know, I looked around the bar where we were at as a local place, the Manilokan Road ale house on Manilokan Road in brick, New Jersey. It's owned by a great small business owner and his family. they're great people in this town. Their local guys, ocean and Monmouth County. Being able to share that event with them, with their families, with my families, with all the guys I play soccer with and their wives and kids. My, my children were there. My father was there. Unfortunately, my mother has passed away, but she was a big inspiration. you know, maybe we talk about this next, but I wear her medic alert. Bracelet around my neck because she motivates me. She's, she was my hero. She was my idol. She was my biggest cheerleader. Um, and, and she was there with me too. But when you start a business, as you know, it's more than just profits and losses, it's more than balance sheets and ledgers, it's It's your passion. It's your life. You become it becomes part of your identity. so much so that, you know, sometimes it's hard to separate, you know, if you care enough like you do, and like I do, and like most of the founders that I've, I've interacted with, it's hard to separate yourself from that sometimes. So I chose to celebrate that night. and we spend it with, with everybody around us, but trust me, I was watching my phone very carefully and when it started to go, you know, once, when Mark said the magic words, you got a deal, that phone started to buzz and, and, and spin and Shopify. I've never heard some of the sounds that I heard that night on the Shopify app. it was great. It was scary. it was, I've used the word surreal a few times. It was surreal. It felt like I was living in a fantasy kind of world for a little bit and it hit me you know, then I looked at the numbers that we were doing and I was like, okay, now I got to figure out how we're going to pack this, how we're going to ship it all. And I'm doing it all out of my house. So my wife jumped in, Dan and his wife, came in and it was like all hands reporting for duty. You know, they were making boxes. I was packing them, shipping, putting the labels on. My wife was putting labels on soap. It was a family affair, It was cool. We got through it, I wasn't sure if we would or how, if we would have any sanity left by the end of it, but it was a wild ride and I tried to document as much as I could and share it with, all of our new followers on social. I don't really think of them as followers. The community that we were building. Right. and that was Mark's biggest, talking point. when we sat down and talked about what we were going to do first, you know, I thought, well, this is before the Luka Doncic trade to LA, I said to him, well, are we going to get the bars in Luka's hands? Are we going to do a Mavs bar? We'll do it in blue. We'll put the logo on there. He's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. He said, what we're going to do is continue to build community. And to be honest with you, I was like, huh, well, that doesn't sound that exciting, you know, it sounds more exciting to get it in the hands of superstars in the NBA, but it doesn't work that way. You got to build a wide customer base and build community. And that's an authentic way to build a business. And I'm glad that he gave me that advice upfront because it's changed the way I look at. the day to day. Sales are great. I love going to a pop up shop or a pop up event at a gym and making sales. But you know what I love more than that? I love meeting people and talking to people about how they feel, what makes them feel better, how we can be a part of it. You know, common interests. hey, you play soccer or you go walking or hiking or mountain climbing every day. Does it make you sore? Yes. You love it. So you're never going to stop doing it no if you're 20 or 50 or hopefully well into your sixties and seventies. those kind of conversations are great. just this last weekend, I went and did an event at a gym and I just thought it's going to be a bunch of fitness men and women, and we're going to talk shop about fitness. It happened to be, at a gym called Amped and Amped is short for amputee, amputated, the owner of the gym, Max Gomez is a below the knee. amputee and the event was focused around amputees of all ages. Now, somebody in my case might've said, well, this isn't what I signed up for. We're a fitness recovery brand, but we're not we're for everybody. and I embrace that. And I had some great conversations with people ranging in age from 20 up to 80, about how they could use our products to help them with grip strength, mobility, making their showers a little more accessible and easy. And it was, it was rewarding. I think you miss an opportunity to make an impact on somebody. and I always feel that impact on myself. It's a reflexive kind of thing. If you just stay narrow minded and focused on what you think your mission is, let the market dictate some of that, you know, and I'm not just talking about sales, I mean, in everyday interaction. So I feel like I talked a lot there, but now that there's a lot there, I'm actually, and you beat me on some, on some of the questions. I think there's a lot to unpack there. And I think that's super helpful. I think, you know, in this day and age, people are looking for The quick buck or, how quickly can I launch my business and exit and sell? And it's just, they miss all the moving parts that go along with it. Like, you know, being packed, packing the boxes, putting the boxes together, making deliveries. Oh, you know, I'd watch some of your videos in the early days, you know, as a business owner, it's about passion and doing and wearing every hat that there is, you know, you're not too good to do anything. If it means, you got an office cleaning the toilets. mopping up, whatever it takes. So I think people lose that, they want to get to that point five, 10 years down the road where they got this massive team and everything is running and you're just creating a social media video here and there, there's a lot, whether I'm in the franchise space, I grew up in an Italian restaurant, small mom and pop years and years ago. it's a lot of work regardless of what the business is. And it's the passion. It's the, the reason you're doing it because there's some, there's some highs and lows, you know, if you've been doing it, I'm 25 years in, this will be my 25th year. 20 years in franchising. And then I started, auto detailing was my first business out of my, my parents home looking back. and cost to do a car was like under five bucks, you know, between, and the water was free since I lived at home. So there's a, it's not, not a bad deal at all. I always tell everyone, you know, business ownership, isn't definitely not for everyone. they had a president of the IFA, the International Franchise Association. He said that 70, you know, franchising aside, 75 percent of people have dreamed across the U. S. of owning a business. And he said, and then there was a quiz after that, and he said, of that 75 percent group, what was the number one reason that they did not move forward? So I'll have you guess, and then I'll give you the answer. What do you think the number one reason was? And there's a lot of reasons I mean The reason that pops into my head is they're afraid I mean, they're afraid of failure or maybe not enough startup capital I would say the biggest thing that would keep me from starting this business might be Afraid to fail, you know, that fear of failure and, and that's, I mean, if you bundle it all together, that's part of it. and it kind of all, if you bundle it all together, it's not knowing where to start a bunch of that, you know, the failure kind of falls into play, but that was like a common, a common response, not knowing where to start. And I said, This is by the way, recorded beginning of January. So we're, we're in the internet age when you have phones, tablets, internet, lightning speed, we have more information than we know what to do with. They didn't know when to, where to start. And I found that, you know, that's shocking. Like, yeah, that's shocking. There's so many resources out there, but I think it just, you just inundate with, with so much information. And, I always challenge people to say. Well, like what's the hot franchise. I go, well, I have no idea what you can afford, where you're located, what your skillset is, figure out, you know, why you're doing this in the first place. There's going to be some dark days and some really good days, but you need to get past all that. And it can be simply spending more time with family. Yes. The finances, we all want to make more money, but You know, that, that whole idea of time freedom and people are like, yeah, you know, I didn't, I didn't think of that. You know, I work nine to five in New York city. By the time I get home, it's dark and I missed all the games and stuff like that. So I don't think people realize, the freedom, but on the flip side, it's a lot of work you don't get paid right away. People have never gone without a paycheck. So. I think if you set the expectation, yeah, it's a risk. it takes a leap of faith. When you say franchise, the first franchise I think of for me personally, through my frame of reference is Jersey Mike's. I grew up working for Peter Cancro in one of the local stores. I mean, He's an inspiration from a business standpoint for me, not only because He took a loan out from his football coach. I believe the high school football coach gave him some money to start up the original store in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. He bet on himself and look, he just sold to BlackRock for eight billion dollars, right? the numbers are insane, but you know, what's even more inspirational for me is the fact that along the way he was able to help so many different people and charities, and make people's lives better, you know, systemically, individually, I know personally we were impacted because he donated iPads to my children's private school It says a lot about a person, right? when you can be that successful in that rich, right. And still keep that civic notion of civic duty, you know, and altruism in the forefront of your mind while you're growing meteorically across the world. Right. he must've been so focused on growth and scaling, which he did an amazing job. I mean, you could do a test case, you could study his growth. I mean, as a franchise guy, I'm not a franchise guy, but I would imagine that's a company that you would look at and say, wow, that's just a perfectly scripted, you know, franchise model, and they still make a good sandwich, right? Yeah, they do. I'm a big fan. not because, you know, it's in my backyard, but yeah, I'm a big fan and yes, it was not. It was not easy. They were not a franchise originally, but yeah, it took a leap of faith, took a loan. I mean, shit, you know, you gotta pay that loan back, you know, especially it's like, I gotta make this work. You know, I know I took a loan from my grandparents. I'm like, if there's someone I have to pay, I gotta, I gotta pay them back when I was denied, for a loan when I started, over 20 years ago in the last business. So. it's not easy, but yeah, it starts with that dream, but you know, really getting educated as to kind of why, why you want to do it. There's a lot of easier ways to make money. I tell people, you know, you can get a corporate job, work nine to five. Maybe you don't love it, but you come home and you're done, you know, Friday night, you're done, you don't have to worry about work until Monday, but at some point it's like you start missing something like I, there's, there's more to this, that there's some meaning. Yeah. Am I helping people? going back to Jersey Mike's. Yeah. You know, it's, it's really using the fame, using the money, leveraging that to help. He helps everyone's schools. at the local high school, they talk about entrepreneurship and what it takes to start a business. And they hand out like 50 gift cards to all the kids. And they were just in awe. you know, giving back, he wasn't there, he had his staff there, but it was like, these are ways that we can help our community. So it's nice not to forget where you came from and really inspire and help others. this is, this has been fun. I'm sure we can definitely talk for hours and I want to be respectful of your time. So the audience, you know, a lot of people listening are, you know, corporate execs, they're looking for a change, whether it be part time business ownership, full time leaving the job, just dipping their toe and learning a little bit. So these are people looking to make the leap. into owning a business, what are, you know, some of the top pieces of advice you want to leave, the audience with today? Well, I think it goes back to what you said previously about not knowing where to start, right? I think I never felt that way. I always felt like I had every resource at my disposal. like you mentioned, the internet provides us with all the knowledge of the universe at our fingertip, but I think the. What might be missing from some of those people that get paralyzed, you know, and they're analyzing everything and maybe they feel stuck and they don't know where to start. Maybe they don't feel like they had the support, you know, either growing up or presently from their family. That's a big part of what gives me the comfort and the confidence to do what I do every day. not only because I feel like I'm helping people, I'm literally, we're literally making people feel better, right? Yeah. Something that I never realized the power of. I've gotten some feedback, some anecdotal feedback on TikTok live. It was during a TikTok live and I'll leave you with this because I think it's very poignant. somebody who I thought was being a troll said, you know, Sour Soap helped me lose 45 pounds. And I said, come on. And I kind of ignored it. You know, as you're scrolling through the comments, you kind of ignore the ones that are trying to bait you. So again, couple seconds later. 45 pounds I lost because of your soap. I said, okay, if I interact with this, this guy or girl, are they gonna, you know, like flame me or something? So finally I gave in, I said, okay, you know, what gives? How did you lose 45 pounds? But they said, I used sore soap on my shin splints and I was able to start running again and I was able to lose 45 pounds. And that hit me. That's the moment I knew that I was doing the right thing. it brought a tear to my eye, like we're, we never envisioned helping people in this way. We just had, I just had an idea for a product and we turned it into a company, but we're really, we're impacting people in a positive way, and I don't think I would have the confidence to be comfortable, even with imposter syndrome at times, creeping in, unless my mother, She raised me to believe in myself, she raised me to look at things from a different viewpoint, to be creative, and I think if I could leave anything with people thinking about getting into starting their own business, it's just believe in yourself, look at things in a different way, and the most important thing that my mother taught me is treat people the way you want to be treated, and that goes for whether I'm coaching soccer, or I'm interacting with, Columbia business school, talking with them. I don't care if they're the janitor or another CEO of a company, treat them the way I want to be treated. And a lot of people twist that rule around. these days they say, well, I'm treating you the way you treated me. That's not it. My mother was very clear about it. Treat people the way you want to be treated. And that has gotten me very far. I don't measure it by, you know, again, profits and losses or, or, you know, annual income. That's not that important to me. I'm hoping that if I can help enough people and we can build enough of a customer base and show people how they can feel better by using our products and really do it in a genuine and authentic way, then that other stuff, like the exits and the growth and the scaling, they'll all take care of themselves. I couldn't agree more. you very well said, I love that. I think we had the same parents, but you nailed it, right? you start focusing on too many areas on the wrong thing and yeah, you lose sight of what's most important. What's right in front of you. So yeah, no, that's some of the better advice that we've received. So no, I really appreciate that. how can people, find source? So what's the best place. Yeah, so Sorsoap, sorsoap.com and that's where you'll find all of our unique, simple recovery tools, whether you're an athlete or not. and it's a fun way to feel better. And we use the tagline. We have treat yourself. That's one of our taglines. It's kind of a double entendre, like treat yourself to an all natural, you know, hand stamped soap, but also treat yourself in the way that a clinician might treat you and you can do it in between appointments. You could do it to supplement that clinical care. But we also say, do more of what you love with less soreness. And I think that's kind of a universal, you know, thing for all of us, whether we're getting older or we're middle aged or we're young athletes. Nobody likes to be in pain. Nobody likes to be sore. Nobody likes to be kept from the things that they love. So if we can help in some small way, get more people doing those things, whether it's biking or hiking or mountain climbing or playing soccer like us, that's what we're here for. That's awesome. Well, listen, David, I really appreciate it. looking forward to seeing you on the soccer field. That'll be, this will be my, my, my motivation. That's next. I'm going to need a lot of soap. I will tell you that it's been a while, but I do appreciate it. I'm glad I'm sure we'll, we'll get to meet in person here, you know, in the very near future. And, thanks again. Yes. Stay on here. I'll, we'll, we close out the show. Okay. Thank you. Giuseppe. If you want to learn how to make the transition from corporate to owning your franchise, join Giuseppe on the next episode. You can also follow on all social media platforms and achieve financial and time freedom today.