Ty Haney
Appearances
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
That cut article blessed them. That was quite funny. I just remember sex and bananas is like my two favorite interests. So that was nice. Nice of them. Marked in time forever. Anyway, yeah, I think if you haven't been a founder yourself, you... could certainly have a perspective, but you don't really know. You don't really get it. Like, I don't know why people would be feeling that way.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
I think, for me, OB, you know, it's deeply rooted in me. It's in my DNA. It's from how I grew up. And so obsession is what comes up for me. Like, when you're a founder, when you truly commit to taking something from zero to something, it requires an insane obsession. And so... It took a number of years for me from when I resigned at After Voices, and the resignation details are kind of funny.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
I'll tell you about those. It took a number of years to understand or work through, like, why did this happen? Like, I was so focused on growing this thing and purely intentioned. How the hell did this happen? And so I still haven't fully reconciled that, but I've been able to emotionally grow past it in a way that I can be grateful for, but Ovi will always be part of my story and part of my DNA.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And it's something I wake up and am driven to do personally and then help other people tap into, which is find a way to move because it maximizes happiness. So it's an important mission and there will be for sure upcoming ways to kind of like thread that back in, Joggy being a different vehicle for that same mission. But it's something that's never going to leave me.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
But yeah, I think I'm actually curious your thoughts on that question with the cut. The cut just, yeah. Yeah.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Oh, beautiful.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
it's like when is this going to stop let's change the narrative finally yeah I think very much saying it myself and ourselves first is so important nowadays and you'll see that kind of over the next months as we have some big announcements upcoming but I'm someone who trusts and potentially trusts too much when the cut had come to me they like showed me this content franchise where they're all glowing and I'm like it doesn't need to be glowing but it's potentially an interesting filter
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And then what came out was so clearly just another takedown.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Which is unfortunate, but life goes on. It got me some more followers. That's nice. Who cares? But what would I say? I don't know. That's... an unfortunate still period in time. So I've gotten a lot less comfortable or just like, it's not part of my playbook to go to journalists anymore. We are the source of truth and that becomes more and more important.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And for me personally, knowing how other people want to depict the scenario.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Yeah. I tried to navigate that very thoughtfully as well. And looking back, I feel quite proud of just like, that was a cluster, you know what I mean? There was a lot to unpack there as a young woman who had
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
tried her best to go after this thing and you'll see we very much have a commitment to like spinning up our own direct content and formats and hopefully are doing the same thing for other brand builders and founders that are on the TYB platform but I know firsthand how important and powerful saying something yourself and directly is and then let people pick it up from there yeah
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
I had never worked somewhere else. I guess in college I did, but I hadn't left or been fired. And just kind of the buildup, there was tension between Mickey and I. We had very different views on how to grow the company. I had gone to the board and said, we're going to have to make a call here because we definitely have divergent views.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
There was an article that came out that had been authored or co-authored by a Mickey and another journalist, and I... That night saw it come out and literally looked up how to resign. And so the message, I kept it because it's kind of funny. I hereby tender my resignation. Doing things, Ty, like the most formal ever. I didn't know if legally it needs to say that or not. So that's marked in time.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Very nice. Right after I had had Sunny. A lot going on. But I was so... And I read that article and was like, I saw this coming. I had brought the board into, you know, something coming. We need to make a call here. And then just felt so betrayed in a sense. And so I tendered my resignation, hereby tendered my resignation doing things Thai. Beautiful.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Yeah, full stop ownership matters. And this ties back to how you fund the company. But at the end of the day, we had raised a bunch of money. And as you looked at the cap table, I had diluted myself to a point where I didn't have control. So I didn't have enough ownership of the company to be able to control whether we moved someone out or not.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
There was an article that came out and I that night saw it and literally looked up how to resign. For me, it was no option to like come off this wave of painfulness, losing essentially the company that I started and being caught up in this female founder takedown thing. But I had no choice but to get back on the horse. It's amazing to be able to start again.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And so that's a pretty helpless position to be when you're the one who started it and are used to having kind of full agency, autonomy, et cetera. And so it's really impacted how I think about setting companies up and the cap table and how you fundraise and what amount of capital you're willing to bring in because at the end of the day, ownership matters or you lose control.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Yeah. And that's something I wish I had learned before doing it, but I do understand... I think in my first fundraising go, I had heard investors be like, I only invest in second time founders and that kind of tracks because there's certainly a lot you don't know the first go.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
But really things like secondary and prep stack at 23, I just dove all the way in and trusted and ultimately a business at the end of the day doesn't work like that.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
tapping into kind of what I am obsessed with, and that is building this recreation universe. Again, committed to that mission of movement. And I still, it's such a wide open lane. It's shocking to me.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And so coming off of OV, I started thinking about almost creating kind of these expert brands within the recreation world, but with a shared operating team and a shared backend to figure out if there was a way to make it a more efficient model by having kind of a shared team, resources, ops, et cetera. But then very specific and precise experts in shoes, energy, etc., etc.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Joggy was the first brand in the box. And I had started Joggy because I, at my time at Outdoor Voices, drank a lot of Red Bull. And as I clicked into the ingredients, it was like, this is not a recipe for energy in the long run. So I tapped a group of scientists in finding the most premium plant-based products. energy, caffeine source. And so that's what we have built Joggy around.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
As I started thinking about going to market with a From Zero brand, I remembered with Outdoor Voices, we had obviously a very strong and evident community, and it became our most productive and profitable growth channel at the end of the day. That said... At Outdoor Voices, we had over 10,000 ambassadors called doers.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
We would engage them in things like coming upstream in product development processes, picking colors from a line sheet, like helping us from an insights and preference standpoint, be smarter about our buy decisions. They'd host local events at their universities, etc. They'd submit UGC, all of these things as brand builders and business builders that we knew to be very valuable.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And being able to do so a second time with all of this experience under my belt, I'm a much more refined and savvy brand and businesswoman.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
We could take that content and then put it on our channels and use it in paid, et cetera. That said, it was engagement that was valuable, but we didn't have a tool to make it measurable. And so I remember back at Outdoor Voices, sitting in a boardroom, a lot of D2C brands had found success spending money on Instagram and Facebook, like 30 to 40% of what they had raised to acquire customers.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Mm-hmm. Meanwhile, our community strategy, as we connected the dots from a data perspective, anyone who came through our community strategy and community playbook was four times more valuable over time. That, however, was really difficult program to manage across a variety of channels. So Slack, Google Docs, DMs, emails.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And then most importantly, it was hard to measure and essentially sit in that boardroom and be like, this is the ROI on community. Therefore, we should go put more dollars here versus to Instagram or Facebook, whereas we acquire customers through here. They don't stick with us. And so I really became obsessed with proving that community can become a growth channel.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And I had started Joggy and started thinking about going to market. And that's where the idea for TYB and creating this community tool came. That would allow a brand from zero to tap into creating and cultivating this community that could essentially become a more efficient way to grow than funneling dollars through discovery optimized ad platforms. So started Joggy.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
TYB came to mind from a platform perspective as something that I wanted to use in this day and age to go to market. And then it was off to the races from there.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
It was going to be these brands like Joggy with a shared backend team. But as we started to go to market, the idea for TYB, the app, the platform came to fruition. And so we started working on that in parallel with Joggy. So we started to raise money for TYB. The platform, essentially, TYB is a rewards app, and it really started to take off.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
It was beneficial early innings to have Joggy as an owned brand. So TYB at the time owned Joggy because we could dog food or use Joggy to understand what was working or not with the platform and the tool. As we've grown, so a number of years in, we separated the two. In September, Joggy spun out of TYB into its own company. It has its own team, its own resources, and TYB similarly.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
TYB is a software kind of SaaS company, and so it didn't make sense to have the two together, but there were benefits early on. And that is the walk-up in terms of how both have come to fruition.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
No, no, they don't.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Yeah. So, so we kind of, I, I put on ice this idea of physical product brands with a shared backend because to you, I'd be. Yeah, became so obviously what I needed to do next.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Energy as a growth category has been on fire lately. I think we're seeing with a lot of the recent CPG exits with poppy, siete foods, etc. There's massive tailwinds behind better for you products. Energy as a feeling, it's a need state. And so it's not nice to have, it's need to have for many people and something that they're having or consuming multiple times a day.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
At the end of the day, it was really solving for a personal pain point. And then it became so obvious to me that there's no clear winner brand in the clean energy category. Though it's from a financial standpoint and then just a need state standpoint, such an important category. And so I kind of joke, but it's been almost like a hobby project that's now gone to market and is turning on.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
We just went into 900 targets. We have an amazing COO and team around it, and it's off to the races. My main focus really is on TYB. So I've been fortunate to take my time getting the product right and then have almost set it free with an operating team that does have deep beverage and CPG experience. And I get to play where it's fun on the product and brand side. But TYB is my main thing.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Alani Nu. Yes. Yes.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
It's not, which is crazy. So the two things that we're up against, which just feel like no brainers that we need to replace, are synthetic caffeine. So synthetic caffeine gives you that jittery kind of like rocket ship up and crash.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And then fake sugar. So sucralose is in Alani Nu. Like they're still... ingredients that are not good for us and things that market themselves as healthy. We found essentially the most premium organic caffeine from the Guayasa plant. It's called Amity Maxx. That's what gives you the buzz of joggy. And then we've rounded it out with real organic juice, L-theanine, lime juice, and water.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
It's very simple, but it gives you that spark, that focused, beautiful kind of buzzy energy. And as people going after it, like you and I and many of your listeners, it's a nice thing to have in your toolkit.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
I'm not sure. But L-theanine paired with caffeine is a common situation and it's a really nice effect.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Yeah, of course. We're replatforming loyalty. Loyalty that's actually fun to participate in. Forever loyalty between brands and fans, let's call it, has just been a point system where I, as a loyal fan, earn points based on how much money I've spent. TYB is very cool in that It's a rewards app, so you download it. It stands for Try Your Best.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And it's a new way to play a game with your favorite brands and then earn not only for purchases, but for completing challenges, things like creating content, referring a friend. Submitting reviews for your favorite products like you earn for a whole suite of actions that you take beyond just a transaction. And so it's a rewards app.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
All of the best brands essentially live in your pocket through TYB. And it really allows for loyalty to become an identity or status thing. that works across multi-brands versus just kind of baked into one. And so, yeah, it's been a really fun thing to work on.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
I think from a brand perspective, CYB gives brands an owned channel to own relationships with their most loyal superfans and then directly incentivize them for helping to grow. And so a lot of what worked at Outdoor Voices, we've now packaged into this platform and made it accessible. for brands. And I like to think of it as a game. It really is.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
On the user side, you play with other super fans who are obsessed with brands like Rare Beauty or Glossier or Set Active or Say. You collect essentially badges, coins as you complete these challenges. And then you can unlock access to things, perks, PR boxes. exclusive access to product, etc.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
So play, collect, earn on TYB and it's essentially a new way of creating a loyalty experience that you actually want to be part of.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Yeah, I think the holy grail is making community and your members of that community measurable. And forever, those relationships have been disintermediated by an Instagram or a TikTok where I, as a brand, go put all this effort into growing my community or following on Instagram, but I don't have...
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
any level of depth in terms of what the composition or kind of details around those people who are participants, supposedly. And so that's what owned means, is with TYB, as people join your community, anything that they're giving you in terms of zero-party data, preferences, insights, accesses,
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
actions that they've taken, coins earned and status, all of that on the brand side is viewable in essentially your community CRM. And then we have really cool integrations with Shopify and Klaviyo.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And so as you have this rich data that ports into Klaviyo and makes essentially all your performance marketing, email, et cetera, like more personalized and sophisticated because of all this rich data that you're able to port from members that engage with you on 2IB into your email service. And then on the Shopify front, it's quite cool.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
We're able to compare the value of a member versus non-member and over time. And so the holy grail of loyalty is how do we make members more valuable over time? And I think we have 200 brands on platform now. And there's two metrics that really matter. When you look at community members versus non-community members, increased frequency of purchase and then increased lifetime value.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
That's essentially what the tool does for brands. And really, at the end of the day, it's proving that community can become a growth channel.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Exactly. It comes down at the end of the day to brand fan incentivization. We call it community commerce. And so that's the crux of it. And for me, the future of brand building is two part. It's co-creation.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
So almost taking that Reddit thread, let's say Glossier Reddit thread, where there's clear evidence that people really care and talk about the brand in-house and then rewarding for productive and valuable behavior.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Yeah. I mean, there's such a standard for what traditional loyalty programs look and feel like. It's like baked into your site as a brand. It's points for purchases that you then earn on your birthday. It's such a rote, I guess, program. And so we've kind of exploded that definition to include a lot more of the fun, active participant.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
type behavior where we as brand builders know things like high-quality, authentic, user-generated content is something that I'd happily pay for, right? Generally, brands would want this experience white-labeled. What we very much believe in at TYB is Users want one portal into rewards and relationships from their favorite brands.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And they want essentially their status with one brand to potentially mean something across this universe of brands within the TYB experience. And so the early innings was us convincing brands that loyalty just on their site and this traditional points system was ultimately not where the engagement happens. And rather...
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
fans of the future, the most high value consumers are going to be in an app playing games and they want all of their favorite friends and interests and favorite products in one spot. Brands were resistant to that. Now we see 50% monthly active users in the TYB app, which is for every brand that signs on by far their most engaged channel.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
So where the engagement happens, we're then connecting that and being able to show the frequency of purchase in LTV. And It's cool because every brand that comes on expands the ecosystem. And so this becomes very much like a multi-brand loyalty network.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And it's where people are on a daily basis tuning in, completing challenges, collecting badges, progressively earning status within communities to unlock special perks. And I think game at the end of the day says a lot of it because loyalty hasn't felt like a game. It hasn't been a fun thing to engage with. And loyalty status within one brand hasn't spoken to others.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And that's what I think becomes quite compelling over time.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Yeah, it's quite simple. So TYB. they promote it across their own channels. So join our rewards program or membership or community. People can use whatever term they like. But it's simple.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
You're essentially like taking a link, brand.tyb.xyz, across email, across social, linking to it, and then your users unlock a membership collectible and then have access to your world where they can share or play with other people that are part of the community and complete challenges, shop, et cetera.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
This journey from software. soft, W-E-A-R, leggings to software, W-A-R-E, has been a journey because it's like wildly different, especially not as a technical person. I haven't learned to code and have been very conscious of bringing exceptional technical talent onto the team. It's been interesting because, again, like similar to Joggy, we've been
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Solving for a pain point that I, in my early innings, felt deeply. We didn't have that direct access to our superfans or a tool to prove that this engagement ultimately can be quite valuable. And so solving for a pain point, I think at any point in time is ultimately a valuable space to play in. Like I uniquely know the pain points of the customers that we're serving.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
I think of it as like the next gen, kind of Gen Z Amex, where it becomes where I as a consumer have my status. And so that status means things across all of the brands and ecosystems that I want to. engage with and it really becomes part of my identity, this idea of proof of fan.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
For instance, Rare Beauty, Selena Gomez's brand is on platform and when you enter the community you start in level one and they have fun names for it and then as you complete challenges, refer friends into the Rare community and complete obsessions around products that you love, you're progressively earning your way into higher status.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
So level two, level three is called rare BFF and people are sharing when they reach level three rare BFF on social, it becomes like a bragging right. And what's going to be quite cool is as we continue to build out this ecosystem, for instance, brands can say anyone in rare BFF level three get, access to this new product from, let's say, a Nike.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And so really this world becomes rich and dynamic in that my status is something that I as a user own within TYB. It ports across different brands and experiences with me. And it becomes an identity layer that we haven't necessarily seen in the loyalty space before.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Yeah, exactly.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
There's four parts. So when I think about a brand tapping into the power of community, it starts with a clearly articulated mission or reason for being. So in OV's world, it was get the world moving. Like, how do we inspire people to move on a daily basis? The second is building rituals for activation, which could be in the active space. Our version, again, was
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
standing up these kind of local activities for people to participate in, in support of that mission. In the beauty space, there's built-in ritual in terms of I'm going through that routine multiple times a day in terms of putting lipstick on or blush and recording it, etc., or master classes, etc. And then the third is around connection.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And so giving this third space for super fans or people obsessed with your brand to connect. And the fourth is incentivization. So we're coming from a world in Instagram and social where... I, as a fan of something, am pressing but not getting much for that.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And so the cool thing about CYB and really where we're headed is every action I'm taking, I'm getting a micro reward and earning further status for. And so that suite of four things to me is ultimately how you activate a brand or a community and find that engagement and enthusiasm around a brand or a product that you might be building.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Yeah, and that's why I think TYB is so cool. I think of it as this experiential funnel. And so quite simply, what the tool allows you to do is to create automated engagement campaigns. And they live next to any marketing campaign. And so the tool lives in parallel with any marketing campaign you might have on your roadmap.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And effectively, it allows you to create a game which drives more engagement around that marketing initiative. and have direct access and measurability to all that's happening within your most obsessed superfan. So it's a pretty fun space to play and proving not to be a very effective tool for brands that want to have and realize the opportunity of community as a growth channel.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
What I'm most proud strong at or what I love to do is to create movements around things and so it's almost like a religion that people have real kind of sense of belonging and emotional connection to so we did that well without our voices I think that opportunity is still alive and well for me kind of creating that religion it's around movement and so that's again a very personal thing like
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
I need movement on a daily basis to show up as the tie that I most want to be both in business and kind of personal aspects of life. So creating movements around things is really what excites me.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And I think we're creating this movement around brands being able to incentivize directly their most valuable fans in a way that sits a bit outside of the influencer world as we know it and the paid acquisition world as we know it. So again, I think TYB becomes this movement, and I'd say creating movements is something that I... love the most about what I do.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Not to go too deep, but it's really cool to think of it like that. The movement creation is something that I love to do. I also... you'll see this turn on. I'm very committed to this recreation universe building. And so I think it's funny because I do have a number of businesses that I'm part of and people are often like, whoa, that seems like a lot.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
But to me, they're all quite synergistic in this world building or underneath kind of the recreation umbrella.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Thank you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
I very much believe that compression of time creates value. And so particularly in startups and when you're really trying to go from zero concept to actually something with traction in a real business, pace matters. And so the quicker that you can test something, learn, evolve, iterate, I think that's something I've really loved about building in the tech space is
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
You're running sprints, two-week sprints, and here's what we're going to get done in this amount of time. Like, by when is a really crucial end point from a management standpoint to compress time around getting things done. And so that's more just of a operating offering.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Yeah, I think it's a team sport. So there certainly can be a Michael Jordan or kind of the star of the team, a Steph Curry, but then there's a cast of characters that all each have an equally important role. And I think not just having a single point of failure with one face is the way of the future, though I
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Again, there is such power in having people kind of attached at the forefront of these businesses. It's an emotional business. It's an entertainment business. But I think rather than one face, it's a team of people. It's a team sport. And that's really where there's strength. Let's end with some advice.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
It's all about it starts with us. And so it needs to be something that isn't just applied as a marketing tactic, but really you need to take the time to understand authentically, deep down in the DNA of this brand and yourself and your team, what is it that makes sense for us as a ritual for activation or a way to activate people around our mission and theme and purpose.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And so it's really not just a... filling a spot on a marketing calendar. I think it really needs to be an authentically differentiated and unique part of your DNA that you pull on and activate. And that then becomes that movement that we talked about.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Yeah, I love that. I think it's a group of people rallied around a central mission or reason for being purpose. And the evidence that comes from that when it's activated appropriately, where there's tangible enthusiasm, engagement and passion for that reason for being that whether it be a product or a brand. this clear north star in terms of why we rally around something.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Thank you for having me.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And I think coming with that is the sense of belonging. But I love community. I very much believe in it as something that's central to how we build brands and businesses that last. And making it something that's tangible, measurable, and there's evidence of it is part of what I've really focused on in my new business.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
It was interesting with Outdoor Voices. Our mission was to get the world moving. And so really, the positioning of the brand was all about freeing fitness from performance. So the Nikes, Under Armour, Lulu's of the world love them. But they, in a lot of ways, prioritized being most athletic, strongest, and fastest. And
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
OV really found success by flipping that positioning and instead prioritizing, how do we inspire people to be active for the fun of it with friends? Do it every day. Is it with your dog? Is it with your kids? Doesn't matter. It's just about getting out there and connecting the dots from a day-to-day standpoint.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And so as we think about OV and what the magic moments were, it was really almost flipping the playbook of direct-to-consumer at the time, where everybody was going online and spending money to acquire customers through Instagram and Facebook. And really the playbook that worked for us was I called it Activate IRL and then Amplify through digital and social.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And so we really created and set up these rituals for activation through movement, dog walking clubs, Iker's clubs, yoga in the park, very much prioritized that activation and connection IRL, like in person where you can high five somebody. And then, of course, people would, you know, capture that content and then share it on social. And it really did become an effective growth.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
mechanism but one one memory in particular was we had an office on canal street in new york our second office ever i think we had 14 people on the team at the time and one of our values at the company was it starts with us and so every friday we would go for lunch to the basketball court down on canal street and the team made up of good and bad players would play together like recess effectively
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And so it kind of merged this activate IRL, amplify through digital and social in terms of a growth strategy with it starting with us, like authentically as the team building a company with this important mission.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And I think back very fondly, it actually is funny because the New York Times, our first New York Times feature ever was a portrait of us in our Canal Street office, like having just played basketball, the 14 of us. And I think that's such a special and kind of unique souvenir of what really the success came from.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
At that point in time, when I was starting After Voices, when Emily was starting Glossier, it wasn't all that common to see women in these founder, CEO, leadership positions, especially starting companies from scratch.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Of course, in history, there have been those, but it was a moment in time where barrier to entry to start a company and then funding next to that really allowed for these great visionaries and people who were obsessed with product and could see by our own personal pain points, what was missing in the market for young women in particular, that caught fire and was accelerated quickly with D2C.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
I think at the same time, whether this was intentional or not, we became stories like connected to these brands and people fell in love with it, but it ultimately also became an Achilles heel. And so we had this really beautiful rise of exciting founders and brands and people really emotionally connected to these companies.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And then I think at the end of this, and we felt this similarly, that exposure being the face of the brand became an Achilles heel. I remember at the end of my chapter at Outdoor Voices, there was a BuzzFeed article that had allegations around, I think it was someone on my team having to clean up my dog's poop at some point in time in the office.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And I thought my life was over when that story was about to break with these crazy allegations. But for whatever reason, there had been this trend for journalists to go interview ex-employees of a company, potentially people who had been fired or let go. And that became this sensationalized clickbait story, which really made these journalists and these outlets make money.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And so we had set ourselves up to be these brands that people really cared about, but then it flipped on us. I think I'm very grateful, and I'm curious your thoughts here. I think people are becoming a little less sensitive. So there's potentially less importance in... takedowns, particularly with female founders, and what's been most important to me having gone through that.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And 90% of my time building Outdoor Voices and being a young founder, having started Outdoor Voices at 23, was amazing. And I can look back at that and tie a bow on a masterclass. Thank you. I know much better how to run a business today and what I will do again and what I won't do again and who I'll play ball with. But the most important thing for me is just starting again.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
So for me, it was no option to come off this wave of awesomeness and then painfulness, losing essentially the company that I started and being caught up in this female founder takedown thing. But I had no choice but to get back on the horse. And I think for me, like modeling that behavior has become very much kind of part of what's so important with TYB and Joggy. We can start again.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
It's amazing to be able to start again And being able to do so a second time with so many learnings and all of this experience under my belt, I'm a much more refined and savvy brand and businesswoman.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Yeah, no, 100%. I'm appreciative of the current state of the environment because it feels like it's neutralized in a sense. And I think female founders or just founders in general, we're here to make money. And all eyes and the full team and the full force of our efforts are able to say that. We're almost like 10 years ago and maybe it was just my youth.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
I didn't fully understand that as the mission because the brand felt so important. And so when you run a business, when you take the responsibility on of raising capital and taking investor money, Like you are fully 100 percent accountable to seeing that through and ultimately this being a for profit business.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And not that that wasn't clear to me before, but with my experience and I think a lot of us as first time founders, female in particular. were able culturally to show up and commit to that in a way that maybe didn't feel as okay in the past.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
Totally. Yes, we had stories and products and fandom that were very investable. But in a lot of ways, as young founders, we were able to raise too much money too quickly. And then the stakes got so high, like growth at all costs and like, massively compounding quarters, quarter after quarter.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
And when you're selling things in a physical, like physical widgets, so leggings in our case, things can go very wrong when it's an inventory business. And so those variables compressed and then this mandate to grow at all costs in a lot of ways made the wheels come off in situations that probably didn't have to go that way. So D2C is cool.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Introducing Our Newest Show: Social Currency with Sammi Cohen
I think many of us found ourselves in that equation where we were able to raise a the stakes got very high and then maybe didn't have the infrastructure or certainly the experience to know how to navigate that in a way that the outcome and kind of the sustainability of the business would be in the best interest of all the stakeholders.