w/ Kevin Lavelle, founder of Mizzen+Main and Harbor
Kevin Lavelle’s got a knack for big ideas and starting fresh. First, he took on menswear with Mizzen+Main, bringing performance fabric to dress shirts and making them a hit with pro athletes and office rebels alike. Now he’s back with something new—a baby monitor. Yep, from dress shirts to baby tech. In this episode, he breaks down the whole journey: the wild beginnings, early mistakes, and how he built a brand from scratch, twice. It’s a sharp take on the wins, the losses, and why some ideas just stick around until you finally make them happen.
Episode Highlights:
Brands & Businesses
People Mentioned
Sponsors
Kurt Elster
This episode is brought to you in part by Omnisend. Yes, that Omnisend. Alright, Shopfire friends. Are you ready to take your e-comm game to the next level? Then you've gotta check out Omnisend. the go-to tool for supercharging your Shopify store. With OmniSend, you'll be launching pre-built e-com automations in no time. segmenting customers based on their shopping behavior, and even trying out SMS or push notifications, all from the same powerful platform. And that's not all, over 100,000 e-com brands trust OmniSend to drive sales and build stronger customer relationships. Whether you're sending quick to create, highly relevant emails, or targeted texts, OmniSend makes it easier than ever to connect with your audience and convert them into loyal customers. Don't miss out on transforming your Shopify store with Omnisend. Check out we even have a link. It's in the show notes. Your dotomisen. com slash unofficial Shopify podcast. Omnisend. Today on the unofficial Shopify Podcast, we're going to be talking to Kevin Lavelle, who is currently chairman and previously founder of, well still founder of Mizin in Maine, as well as a a new a new thing called Harbor. So we're gonna pick his brain on the incredible successes he's had with Mizin in Maine that sells men's apparel um revolutionized it with a performance fabric dress shirt. I remember being at a conference and hearing people really excited about the brand and checking it out and being impressed then. Um, you know, unfortunately I don't wear a ton of dress shirts, but if I did, that's totally where I'd go with it. Uh you know, the rest of my wardrobe is all swag related. But okay, if you are your Shopify merchant, you're a brand owner operator, and you want to learn from an entrepreneur in the same space as you who's been very successful and choosing to continue to do so, well, then stick around and let's hear what Kevin has to say. Mr. Lavelle, how are you doing? Thank you for joining us.
Kevin Lavelle
I'm I'm great. It's always a privilege to get to talk about uh Mizen and Maine and Harbor. Uh and certainly in in the world of direct to consumer and Shopify is a darn good place to do it.
Kurt Elster
So let's start with some entrepreneurial beginnings, right? As if I had any hope of ever spelling the word entrepreneurial. Mizinen mains, this performance fabric dress shirt, this is a game changer in menswear. Really I f The story is that is a lot of your success. What was the spark? How'd you go from concept to mass production? Give me that origin story
Kevin Lavelle
So I in college, I was a political intern, which taught me I never wanted to work in politics. Thankfully I had that experience and have stayed far away from it. Um but I was working in DC and watched a congressional staffer run into a building soaked in sweat. And I grew up playing golf. Um, I watched performance polos, I'm wearing one of our polos today, take over on the golf course. Um, and wondered why no one had ever made a dress shirt out of that type of fabric. Now surely it would have to be a little bit different, but You know, there's there's compression shorts, there's golf polos, there's lots of different types of fabrics, so surely you can find something um that you could make a dress shirt out of. The idea stuck with me for many, many years. I wondered why no one had done it. Um, and uh after graduating college, I was a um management consultant and then an investment analyst. And one of the things I learned across those two roles was Almost no one has any idea what they're doing day to day. Um Brent Bishop loves to say businesses are loosely functioning disasters. Um and I just had this realization that, you know, if it was such a good idea, someone would have done it already. Doesn't really always apply. And then certainly learning Clayton Christensen's um uh innovators' dilemma. And as you go through becoming a a working professional, you realize um someone always has to take this idea, whatever that idea is, and bring it to fruition. So I started tinkering, trying to figure out how to find fabrics, trying to figure out how to make a shirt and I'll fast forward we can touch on any of the specifics, but long story short, in in um late 2011 had my first prototype and the aha moment uh uh that had taken place many years ago really came full circle when I I came home from work. Normally I went to work every day in a suit and tie, and I went and picked up my my first prototype that I had made, and I came home from work wearing the prototype, and my wife Um, did not realize I wasn't wearing a normal shirt. Um she it it's not like she looked at it and said, Why the hell are you wearing a basketball jersey with a tie? Right? Like it looked like it passed as uh a dress shirt. Now looking back on it, those first shirts were terrible.
Kurt Elster
But you know, minimum viable products, you gotta get going.
Kevin Lavelle
Passed the wife test. And she obviously knew what I was working on. Um, and then that really said, okay, this idea that I've had for so many years, it can work. Now I have to go figure out how do I buy a bunch of fabric? How do I actually find a manufacturer? How do I distribute? And you know, we'll come full circle back to Shopify as well. But one of the most fortuitous aspects of my timing was I was able to launch on Shopify, you know, basically for free. Whereas if I tried to do this even three years earlier, because we launched in tw 2012, you know, you would have had to have built the shopping cart functionality, uh the website hosting, all the payment processing, all of that stuff was almost plug-and-play when I started. It was early days of Shopify, um, but man, it was a game changer because I could focus on everything else. rather than how do I allow people to buy this and have to spend a lot of money just to allow people to buy the product from me.
Kurt Elster
The well, I mean certainly I love those those Shopify success stories. And like you, our attraction to it was we're like, wow, this is easy. There's just a lot of lot of BS and headache. with the other platforms that we had been dealing with that were like, oh, this goes away now. You know, I'm not dealing with trying to keep my WordPress account from getting hacked again. Um, sorry, WordPress. So, all right, visit in Maine, rapid success, but business is stressful. There are struggles, and it can't be all wins. Give me the L. I want to hear, you know, one time where you messed up and how you handled it.
Kevin Lavelle
Yeah, it was definitely not rapid. I mean we we were able to put some points on the board. Um I would say one of the biggest L's that I had in those early years, um, and you live and learn. One of the fabrics that we that I purchased, I had I ordered some simple fabric. I had a shirt made. I thought, man, this is great. Looks great, feels great, washes great. And um it turns out that the fabric basically just wasn't a durable fabric at all. And um if you think about a sweater, you know, big think about like a chunky cable knit sweater. It's so easy for that to catch on anything, right? You can catch it on a door handle, you can catch it on uh a desk, you can catch it on even itself. They kind of they kind of rub on itself and the the kind of balls pill up of the fabric. That's just the nature of a knit fabric. And um the fabric that I ordered, my at the time very naive wash and wear test was I washed it, I wore it, it looks great, good to go. Um, but when we started shipping the product, we realized this thing catches really easily. People's shirts are getting destroyed because, you know, they're put in the wash with a pair of jeans or something along those lines. Um the good news in that, and I'm not I promise I'm not doing one of those like my greatest uh my greatest weakness is actually a strength. The good news was we were so small then that like I I don't know, we had a maybe a couple hundred of the shirts and you know, you refund people, you know, you give them a discount on their next order, just something to sort of keep things moving along and Um the cool thing for us was we built such goodwill with our customers. They kind of g gave us grace and and forgiveness. Um but it really did change the way that I came to understand how much work needed to go into testing prior to shipping. And um the guy that we bought the fabric from, he was wonderful in many respects, but um I I reached out to him and said, hey, this is um Turns out this fabric's pretty terrible, uh, you know, in terms of pilling and and getting caught. And he goes, Oh yeah, that has a really bad pill rating and you know, nah yeah, I uh I hear you. Like Why did you not mention that to me in any way, shape, or form? And he said, Oh, well you didn't ask for the the testing.
Kurt Elster
He just assumed you knew what you were doing.
Kevin Lavelle
See he knew that I had no idea what I was doing. Like in some respects he just sort of assumed that I would know what I was doing, but in others he knew how how naive I was and That I didn't come from the industry. So every time I would go to order fabric and I'm not going to be careful not to say his name. Every time I would go to order spa any fabric, I would say Are there any tests I'm not asking for that you think I should ask for? Given, you know, people will wear this product in real life, right? They'll put it through a washer. So um you live and learn, and I attribute much of the eventual success that we found as m at Mizen in Maine to our mistakes were small enough at a scale that wasn't yet big enough that we could always recover. Um the example that I love to to give, and it's a very memorable example for anyone who's ever started a company or been early stage. Um after college, when we graduated, we went a a bunch of us rented a cabin not far from from Dallas and there were some people that were drinking there. And um one of the guys had like a 24 pack of glass bottled beer. Like he was carrying it on his shoulder. And he was walking down a hill to, you know, a little campfire area. And he started to trip. He was he'd had a few. He was starting to trip and he started falling forward. And the only reason he didn't fall on his face and the glass balls went everywhere is he just kept falling forward fast enough that his feet were under him, and then the ground caught up to him and he was able to sort of stand up. I it's such a vivid memory for me of with so much of Mizin and Main, we just tripped forward fast enough and like our missteps and our mistakes, we were eventually able to get to solid ground by the time we needed to. And uh that describes the journey of entrepreneurship.
Kurt Elster
So give me a sense of this. Roughly how big did Mizin and Maine get?
Kevin Lavelle
Yeah, we have done hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue since I started the business. Um, and we're continuing to grow double digits. We're profitable as a business now. So we're in a great spot. And while we're not a household name, you know, a la Nike, there are very few brands who ever do that. Um, we have built a really incredible overall distribution platform. We're carried in about a thousand stores around the country. We have 11 of our own stores today, mostly across the southeastern Texas. Um And you know, we've gotten to do pretty amazing partnerships, guys like JJ Watt and Phil Mickelson. We've worked with Tim Tebow, Kyle Forber, um uh and a whole bunch of others. It's been uh it's been a fun ride
Kurt Elster
What do you think are some of the the key strategies that helped you scale so effectively?
Kevin Lavelle
So um from the very beginning, we pursued wholesale. So that would be one. Um, focusing relentlessly on brand and connecting that with our customers. Um, and then finding influential people to raise our profile and voice. So those would be the three things that I think mattered most. The first In wholesale, um, right before I started the company, I got to have dinner with Damon John. And um yes, it was a very cool experience. Um I just happened to see something on Twitter around if you basically he was saying if you donate to Nifty, the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, you can get a phone call or all the way up through you can have dinner with him. And I think at the time, it may have been as low as $2,500. It may have been $5,000, but it was like the best money I could have imagined spending was to sit down with Damon John and get as much feedback on building a clothing brand as possible. And so we got to spend a lot of time together. Um, is incredibly generous with his advice, very direct. And um one of the key takeaways was you have to get people to try your product on in person. Because you can't describe the benefits. You're you've created something that no one has ever felt before. They have to try it on. And you are not going to be able to build enough stores with the capital that you have. Go so go wholesale. And in these early days uh of Mizin and Maine, this was the DTC boom era where almost every brand said, wholesale's dead, stores are dead, it's online or bust, and we'll never build a store or n will never be carried. you know, through through wholesale. I'm very grateful Damon gave us that advice because it really anchored us and said we want as many people wearing Mizen in Maine as possible and we really don't care where they buy it from and we meant it. Um we supported our wholesale partners. And um from the very beginning we went to trade shows. We were laughed out at the first trade shows, but you know, we got one account. And then the next one we got two accounts. Because in the menswear business, and we were going to menswear trade shows. synthetic polyester dress shirts were basically like uh I mean poison to traditional menswear enthusiasts So so many of the buyers that would go to these trade shows, you know, they had one store that had been around for 20, 50, or 100 years, and they were classic menswear, for better or for worse, elitists. And us doing something that was so far from the norm, including you don't have to iron it, you don't have to dry clean it, it stretches Frankly, the measurements matter a lot less because the product stretches, so where it falls on your shoulder is actually less important. These are just things that these menswear, again, I don't mean this pejoratively, elitists, because Menswear can be a very elite thing, just said absolutely not. Also, a lot of the guys that worked in these stores were in their fifties, sixties, and seventies, and you know, polyester dress shirts, a la John Travolta you know, there's a little bit of a uh you know uh uh a very bad association with polyester. No. Synthetics have come a very long way. And so We started building out wholesale and you know we went from one store to two stores to four stores and um within about a twenty-four months of a really concerted wholesale effort, we were at about a hundred stores And then the knockout effect of that was certainly people could find the product, but it, you know, if you walk into the store, but what we found was People would hear about Mizen and Main and they wanted to try it. So they would go into their menswear store, and normally the menswear guy in the store is saying, hey, let me show you something. And people were walking into these stores and saying, I heard you have Mizm in Maine. I want to try it on. And that was a light bulb for these guys, typically men. that said, okay, we've got something interesting here, and it drove sales. And then the the next knock-on effect of that was the menswear store in New Orleans is not competitive with the store in Tampa. But they might be friends. And so that we do really well in New Orleans, and then the guy tells his friend in Tampa, you gotta carry Mizin at me. Everyone's coming in asking for it. They'll put you on their website, they'll promote it. And so that started to really fly. And so we went from literally last out of the the room in our first trade shows to In about two years, we were we were flying. Like in the first trade shows, I couldn't even get someone walking down the aisle to look at me. And then we got to the point where we were booking up most of our time to trade shows became an opportunity just to meet with our customers. Like we were not actively seeking new business because our calendar was full basically from you know sunup to sundown.
Kurt Elster
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Kevin Lavelle
Like what Very vindicating. I I'll be honest. I I never really doubted that we were going to be successful. I just knew the product worked. Our customers loved it. And so when someone would tell me that they didn't like it or they didn't want to buy it, I'm like, well. You know, people didn't want cars when they first came out. I I don't know. We'll be fine. And and so it was a very rewarding experience, but ultimately It it felt somewhat inevitable. And I don't mean that in an arrogant way. Like, I mean, we built a great product and people want it. And so it's just a matter of time before everybody wants it. And and ultimately, many people have copied what we've done. Um, when we started, no one was using synthetics in virtually anything other than athletic apparel or golf. And today, synthetics are incorporated by almost every brand. Even the most elite, you know, menswear brands are incorporating some level of elastane or spandex or lycra to give a little bit of stretch, even if it's still 98% cotton. Just a little bit of stretch actually makes a garment much better. It's a much more comfortable experience to wear. So so so that that's number one. Um The second one really just focusing on brand and I did not consider myself a branding person when I started. I learned a lot. I tried to absorb as much as I could, but a consistent brand experience, the box, the packaging, the tag, the website, the social, and really incorporating a very holistic brand experience because we knew eventually people would copy us, and indeed they have. And so it needs to be people love buying from Mizen and Main, and they consider themselves a Mizen and Main man, main man. Um, and that led into the third piece, which was we became basically the dress shirt of professional athletes. Um and it was a big explosion in the world of CrossFit at the time. And CrossFitters tended to be working professionals in their kind of late 20s through mid forties. They tended to be more athletic. The fact that the product stretched and was moisture wicking, those guys tended to like that. And then it it also extended into the world of pro athletes. So we started doing trunk shows in major league baseball locker rooms, which led to an expansion in the world of pro athletes, which led to our first major endorsement deal with J. J. Watt. And and through all of that It was a reinforcement of who our customer was and who our brand was. Um, and so that was a very holistic kind of growth vertical for us. Um And then we can talk about uh as an extension of that. We sponsored Tim Ferris' podcast in 2015, and it was um like absolute jet fuel that has been Um still to this day a reason that I credit to the success of the business.
Kurt Elster
Was sponsoring Tim Ferris's podcast, Four Hour Work Week?
Kevin Lavelle
It was sponsoring his podcast, yeah. Within and I I've written publicly about the experience of sponsoring his podcast with kind of percentages um and absolute growth numbers. But basically within two days of the first podcast, I think we were net ROI positive across the three podcasts that we'd sponsored. And it was only two days into the first podcast. And it it was an explosion um at the time and we basically then doubled our daily revenue and never went backwards about a month later. So it was a huge inflated month and then we never went backwards. After that.
Kurt Elster
I mean the the timing, incredible too. Twenty fourteen, that's when season one of Serial comes out. That's when podcasts really explode. That was like our podcasting renaissance occurred 2014 and on. So Um really exciting time to be doing that and just what an incredible opportunity. So excellent that you made that choice.
Kevin Lavelle
I've been following him on Twitter for a while, but I hadn't actually ever even listened to any podcasts, let alone his, but I knew how big they were starting to get. And I Googled an article. I I Googled Tim just to learn a little bit more about the potential partnership. And someone wrote an article about what having Tim mention his book did for this guy's book sales. And that it was more important for Tim mentioning this guy's book than for his book to be featured on primetime CNN. There's a primetime CNN mention, and it was like a little bit of a blip in his total book sales. Tim mentioned his book and he shot from like 1,000 on Amazon to 172. And it would it there were markers like that that said this is a bet worth making.
Kurt Elster
As long as we're talking about strategic partner partnerships, you mentioned you got you partnered up with Phil Mickelson, JJ Watt. I want what advice would you have for other Shopify merchants trying to secure similar partnerships?
Kevin Lavelle
So um a couple things come to mind. The first is Be really vigilant in your due diligence ahead of time about potential partnership. So there might be a big name that's really exciting, but upon further investigation Their social media presence, their engagement is all very clearly 100% curated. It's mostly sponsorships and things that they're paid to do. It doesn't feel very authentic. Those things all those types of partnerships almost never actually move the needle because their audience is so conditioned to just not buy whatever it is that's being sold. You know, big companies, big budgets are happy to throw those people in the mix, including potentially for the ego of the marketing department or the CMO or the CEO who just wants to partner with that person. So diligence on the success of the partnerships, you can without a lot of work, you can figure out someone's engagement rate, um, just spend a little bit of time on their social media pages or whatever vertical they're using, whether it's YouTube or or something along those lines. Um the second uh and and maybe it should have been the first is just be really careful about brand alignment. Um so Some influencers may be amazing and drive a lot of business, but the alignment of your brand with their brand may be really toxic for you. Um, just the way they approach their audience, the way that they sell, the way that they are. Just be careful. Um, right. There's morality clauses in almost every endorsement contract today that sort of says that protect the business, where if the person, the the influencer, the celebrity does something that, you know, more uh there's there's a very funny legal term and I can't remember what it is, but it's like um morally offends or that there's some overarching legal term that that basically says if you do something terrible um that would harm the reputation of the business, the business can back out of the contract. But there's a lot of things that happen before that level that you may want to avoid. Um and then the the last major point of advice would be What are you actually looking to do with the contract and the partnership? Because a celebrity posting a few times, it's probably not actually going to do that much.
Kurt Elster
It really doesn't do anything.
Kevin Lavelle
Yeah, it's it's very rare that it does. Sometimes you get this kind of random pop, but it's more of is it kind of a foundation for ad whitelisting where you're giving your own ads more credibility? Is it that you are using the partnership to get to a news outlet, or you are using the partnership to give validity for yourself within a certain community? And so, you know, there are um There are no shortage of correct tactics, but understanding and really stress testing what is it that you are looking to achieve and how will you know if you are successful. Um And then uh I I would say the the last kind of bonus would be in today's world, especially as a startup, um whoever you want to work with is likely their team or themselves looking at dozens of similar types of offers And so what is it that makes you and your product and the partnership appealing to that individual? So in some cases it's giving them a role within the company. In others, it's You know, I'm now with my second business where working with a lot of moms and a lot of of dads to um kind of affiliate in Promote Harbor Some of the moms and dads basically don't want to do anything more with baby products, baby category, because they are looking to expand their overall portfolio. And in others, they have this massive portfolio and they're about to have their first kid and they're looking to have a good first entrance into the world of baby. And so I'd like to think, you know, using myself as an example with Harbor, given my experience with Mizin and Main, multiple celebrity endorsements, consumer products, big distribution, big reach. I'm the right type of person for them to bet on for their first partnership in this world. So those are the types of things you need to understand how to differentiate yourself and stand out when it comes to engaging with their agent because their agent is probably receiving twenty similar types of offers and then another hundred to thousand various things that come across their plate as their agent and manager. And so really understanding how you differentiate yourself relative to the hundreds or thousands of other things that could get their attention in a given day and Um I I said that was the last one, but the last last one that I would say uh that has become very top of mind recently with the crypto boom crash NFT insanity, all of the things that happened over the last few years with Web3. There are a lot of celebrities that went deep and quick and um exposed themselves in a very big way in the world of Web3 that came crashing down. Many of them are now being named in lawsuits for the way that they promoted these products and how they they received benefit. And so I've I've I have seen a lot of celebrities are pulling back on certain types of endorsement deals because they're just saying it's just not worth getting caught up in in that potential morass and mix. I'd rather just, you know, drive a Ford car and get paid, you know, half a million dollars for for an ad than take a risk on something earlier, even if it has big upside.
Kurt Elster
That makes sense. Um yeah. Well You're right. I think there were a lot of brand affiliate relationships that were a result of the pandemic and zero interest rate phenomenon that just really accelerated things. And so it's not that way anymore. But you're right, your pitch has to have a lot of empathy. I think you know even as a podcaster, the number of bad pitches I get or the number of pitches I get that are like so similar or that are really verbose because ChatGPT did it without being prompted well. Right? Uh by the way, the trick is tell it no yapping, then it'll shut up. So the but Now imagine you are an A-list celebrity and there's someone who has to sift through a hundred of those a day. So keep that in mind when you're writing that pitch. But it we've spent this whole time talking about your Mizen and Maine experience. You have something new and very different coming up. You touched on it, Harbor, uh a baby monitor product, right? Tell me about it.
Kevin Lavelle
Yes, and and um when I tell some people about this, I'll say pivot or career evolution from performance fabric dress shirts to baby monitors and remote night and telehealth. I get a lot of quizzical looks like that is a big jump. However, it's actually not that big of a jump because I have a product, physical product. that should exist, but current companies aren't making it and I can meaningfully change the industry and and hopefully with harbor people's lives. So the the genesis of this is honestly very similar to Mizam in Main. I had an aha moment, a frustrating Why doesn't this product exist? Um, we as a family, my son is about to be eight. Um, I did a bunch of research and bought Nanit, which was the is the leading baby monitor product on the market because that's what it's marketed as. And NAND is a Wi-Fi camera with an app on your phone. I woke up one morning because you have to sleep next to your phone, which I don't like doing for a whole host of reasons. But I woke up one morning and the app had just crashed. It just wasn't no audio was coming out. I ran upstairs. My son was fine. First time parents, understandably, very nervous. We tend not to give kids as much credit as they deserve for You put the kid down and and you do everything right, they're gonna be fine. But is a very unnerving experience as a parent because this is the thing that I'm relying on to watch my son on the other side of the house. And I did a little bit of research and just learned apps on phones are not baby monitors. There's no way for an app to alert you that it's crashed. Or just very simply, if you forget to plug your phone in, or you know You plug the cord in, but it it's come out of the wall, then your phone dies. There's no way to alert you that your phone has died. So we went out and bought an old school Motorola camera and an old school Motorola monitor. Not a very high quality product, commoditized. I mean I'll be blunt, commoditized junk from China. Across our two kids we had to replace it four times because it broke all the time. So we spent a lot of money and then we kept a Wi-Fi camera. Because I wanted to be able to check in. My wife actually worked with me at Mizin in Maine when she went back to work. We had a nanny. We wanted to be able to check in on the nanny or the babysitter. And so here we are, we have a Wi-Fi camera and a Motorola camera, and this is the best that parents have. With all of the advancements in technology and how much money parents are willing to spend to get their kid and their family the best, I've sort of hacked together this piecemeal system because no one product can do all of it. So it was that was the genesis for what is now Harbor and I've got these devices right here. So it is a camera and a 10-inch monitor that connect directly to each other without internet. So you are not reliant on the internet. And with the monitor being a dedicated single-purpose piece of technology, it only exists to display feeds from the camera. And so if it loses connection, it's going to alert you. If the battery is dying, it's going to alert you. If you have some sort of blip or outage. the camera will fail over to that direct local communication. So that means you know if you're monitoring your kid at night. Importantly also It's a 10-inch monitor, so you can watch up to four different streams at the same time. Not a lot of people need to do that, but it's a nice big piece of hardware as opposed to all the other monitors are about this big. It's really hard to listen to or watch two kids at the same time. And in fact, most of the monitors you can't listen to two at the same time. And so that both devices also connect to the cloud. So that means you have all the benefits of cloud connectivity. You can access it outside the house via a secure app. You can record, you can rewind, then we have a bunch of really awesome technology built into the camera. Uh there's an AI chip in the camera, so all of our advanced processing is done at the edge, not going through our servers. And there's a Wi-Fi chip in the camera, excuse me, there's a memory chip in the camera. So all of your footage is stored locally. And what that means most fundamentally is we don't process or store our customers' data. All the other Wi-Fi baby camera companies are processing all of your data and they're storing all of your data, typically not even in their own cloud. And so from a security and a vulnerability perspective, it's very different. So we could talk more about that, but um No, I I get this uh apparent, and so I absolutely see where you're coming from.
Kurt Elster
Had I uh seven years ago when we had uh when my daughter was born, I used a dumb camera, a dumb baby monitor, and it was crappy. Like you described, for the reasons you described, but then also had to pair it with a Google Nest camera. So two cameras side by side, because one's remote, one's local, same deal. And I was so annoyed by it And then e waste, you know, eventually the regular baby monitor broke, and then the working camera, which we repurposed as a security camera, Google said, you know what? We're just not supporting that anymore. So it's just gonna quit working April. And so now it's in a landfill, even though I know it worked completely fine, along with every toothbrush I've ever owned, right? And it'll be there forever and it annoys me. But as it should.
Kevin Lavelle
Yeah, you it is annoying.
Kurt Elster
You saw that experience and went, we can fix that. And so I love that. I love those stories. Where someone recognizes the problem and decides to do something about it. I saw the problem and said, I'm just gonna throw this out and move on with my life.
Kevin Lavelle
That's you know, you're it's not not everybody's responsibility to fix.
Kurt Elster
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Kevin Lavelle
But one of the the cool differences, having built Messian Maine and now building Harbor, two consumer products, two consumer brands. When I started Miz and Maid, I was terrified someone was going to take my idea. So I didn't tell anybody about it. And then we launched and took me a long time to make progress and build the business. But with Harbor I told everybody who would listen to me about what I wanted to do. And in 2022, when I launched it, I probably spoke to at least 400 people. And not just like friends in the neighborhood, but it was, you know, if you and I are talking about it, you would say, hey, I know somebody that works at this security company or this sleep company or this, you know, pediatric formula company. And It allowed me to grow my network substantially for to learn about why the product didn't exist and other challenges and and how to build a brand in the space. But then importantly, my idea was to build a better baby monitor. And I I think we're doing that and it's it's working well so far. We we've shipped um a lot of devices, consumers are liking it. But through the process of kind of stress testing the idea, the the idea morphed dramatically into an opportunity to help kids and parents get more sleep. So rather than just a better baby monitor. We use the product that we've built to create a sleep platform and we have coined the term remote night nanny. Most people in the country cannot afford an in-home night nurse or night nanny. You're talking three to seven hundred dollars a night, depending on where you are in the country, if you can even find one. And then if you can find one and you can afford it, do you want somebody in your house taking care of your child? And it turns out the answer for a lot of people is no, even if they can't afford it and they can find a trust embedded provider. And so what we're doing is replicating 95% of the benefit of an in-home night nine for five percent of the cost. You can hire us and turn over the controls of your monitor to our professionally trained nurses. Grant my nurse access to your camera feed and monitor. She'll turn the volume on your monitor down to zero once you're ready. And keep the volume at zero all night long unless you are needed to tend to your child. So if something is wrong, if their arm gets stuck in the crib slat or something falls in the crib, they're going to alert you immediately. Or if they start fussing or crying, and I'll use round numbers and say a five-month-old, really they should be able to and allowed to sort of fuss and cry and make a little bit of noise for About five or ten minutes before you go in. The problem, and the reason why most kids develop so late the ability to learn to sleep, is because as soon as a parent hears a child cry, they run right into their room.
Kurt Elster
Yep. They train them. Unknowingly, they've trained them.
Kevin Lavelle
Yes, the child does a great job in training the parents. We are not talking about letting your child cry for hours and hours. It's just a few minutes. But a professional using professional judgment from years of experience in training saying, not yet. Not yet. Okay, now go in. But importantly, if your child fusses or cries for three, four, five minutes and stops, that's great. They're learning. That's what they're supposed to do. That's how you learn the skill of sleep. But most parents delay that from happening. With this situation, parents don't hear anything at all. And so even if you don't go in until that five or ten minute threshold, you can be up and down all night long not sleeping. And with Harbor's Remote Night Nanny for as low as $20 a night, we will only wake you up when it's time to go in. So you are accumulating that deep and round sleep all night long in a way that is impossible. if you're listening to your baby monitor all night long. Because even just a a simple coup is going to wake up almost every parent, as sleep deprived as they may be And because we've built the hardware and software um in in a very important way, there are lots of fail-safes built in. So if the monitor or camera loses connection with our nurses. your monitor is just going to turn itself back on and then it's just like a normal night where you would be sleeping next to your baby monitor. Uh and so we've some other fail safes that we've built in, but the idea is to democratize access to sleep expertise. And I am very happy to um give credit where credit's due. It was not my idea. It was through one of our actually ending up being one of our investors. And we have seen Like all great ideas, um and remember I said it wasn't mine initially. Well, like all great ideas, there's a level of polarization where some people go, absolutely not, I would never, ever, ever do that.
Kurt Elster
And then other people go
Kevin Lavelle
That's the most amazing thing in the world. Sign me up immediately. And through we've now worked with dozens of families, parents are telling us things like, you gave me hope to have a third child. I haven't slept this well since my first trimester.
Kurt Elster
If this sounds if this sounds asinine to you, listening, it is because well A do you have kids, right? I think if you don't have kids, you may not get this. But if you do, and then you struggled with sleep training and you had those sleep-deprived nights, this suddenly seems brilliant.
Kevin Lavelle
Yeah, the the ability to help people remotely has ever been possible before in this way because of the device that we've built And almost every family struggles with this arc of sleep because it's a skill that children are capable of learning. It's just really difficult to get through. And there's a lot of really bad advice. And I I saw it with our two kids, but I didn't really pay much attention to all the bad advice because we were on the same page and we were able to get some support. But ultimately, there's a lot of bad advice that will make parents feel as if they're doing something wrong, if they aren't immediately holding their child's hand, you know, in the crib the moment that they're upset. But one of the doctors that we've done some work with really helped reframe this in such a productive way. It's that sleep is a skill that children need to learn. On their own. Now they're supported. So let's fast forward for a second. When your child is learning how to walk, if you hold their hands the entire time and never let them go, they'll never learn how to walk. And while you're helping them learn how to walk by supporting them and being around them, they might fall down and they might cry. They may even cry a lot. But they stop and then they learn and then they keep going. And if you come into work on a Monday morning and your child's learned how to walk over the weekend You wouldn't say to your friends, oh yeah, just let my child scream all weekend long. But but that's how a lot of the sleep habits and sleep training conversations go. It's like, well, I won't let my child cry. Like, well. Every child and every human cries, it's just a natural expression of emotions, and it isn't binary. It isn't let them cry, you know, untended, unfettered all night long, or hold their hands the minute that they cry. Very healthy middle ground. And the the best sleep experts and sleep consultants, many of whom we're working with, have that very healthy approach. And the goal is to support parents in that journey.
Kurt Elster
Well, you've were I to have another child, you've certainly sold me on Harbor. I think this sounds like a fabulous product. You are still Helping to operate Mizen in Maine while also growing Harbor. And it's because you transitioned from founder to CEO to chairman at Mizen in Maine. Talk to me about How you handle letting go, right? So really I I think the question is, what advice would you give other founders who are struggling with delegating or letting go as they grow or scale?
Kevin Lavelle
Yes, gosh, we could probably spend two hours talking about this, so I'll hit on a couple key things. As a founder, you are the person who gave birth to this concept and idea and you brought it to life and good for you that's amazing we need more people building and and birthing ideas and and companies but Any sober assessment and any appropriate check of your ego, you cannot possibly do all the things. Right? It's very easy to say, I'm going to hire, you know, in an office building, I'm going to hire help. uh for custodial or plumbing. I can't do those things. And it's very natural for people to say, like, as a CEO, I probably shouldn't try and fix the broken sink. I should probably get a plumber to come in and do that. That's a very easy thing to delegate. But this idea of helping empower sales or marketing or finance or operations, I understand why it's hard to let some of those things go. But a reframe is someone is better at that than you. And if you can find that person who's better at that than you, and it's sometimes that's really hard work and you gotta spend a lot of time and energy to make sure that they really are. you will it's not one plus one equals two at that point in time. It's one plus one can equal ten. And very small teams are capable of achieving extraordinary results because they are empowered to do so and they have their swim lanes where they are able to really apply their skills. And so part of my ultimate departure from Mizin and Main was Um, I was asked to go build something new that I was really passionate about. And at the time we had grown. so much and we were doing so well that working with an executive coach, I said, it's time for me to hire a president because, and the easiest way I can frame this up, whether we make 10,000 of these blue polos with you know uh orange flowers on them or 12,000 and is our warehouse located here or here Those are not the questions that I should be spending my time on. I should figure out how to go sell the next $10 or $20 million worth of product because that's where I excel. is sales and marketing. And anytime I'm having an in-depth conversation about our 3PL, where we're making the product, how much we're making, is it shipping in March or April? that is wasted time and effort once the company has achieved a certain scale. And I am doing the company a disservice. So I was in the process of hiring a president and I was asked to take on a new role, building something new in the world of philanthropy. And it's not the right thing for everyone to leave, and in fact it might be the wrong thing for most people to leave. But I thought, well, I'm trying to hire a president I'm asked to go build something and try to make the world a better place. And so I'll go bring in a CEO rather than bringing a president. And so that's a a quick brush over that process, but ultimately just know that you are holding yourself back. by not delegating. And delegating doesn't mean letting go. And delegating doesn't mean giving up. It means empowering other people who can create more value than you can.
Kurt Elster
That's really really good advice. Man, this whole interview has been has been fantastic. You're just a a wealth of knowledge, and I enjoy your approach. So I want I want to know one last thing. I want to know the common mistake that you keep seeing early stage, you know, founders, brand managers make over and over that makes you crazy. Like this is the w this is your chance. We could save a lot of people from this. Uh and then just general advice for people starting out.
Kevin Lavelle
I think the most common mistake is assuming I've made something great and so clearly everyone wants to buy it when you need to help people trust why they should buy it. In some cases you need to help people understand the distinction of your product versus another's or why there's a hole in the market. Um I I am obsessed with Simon Seneca's start with the Y. It's absolutely fantastic. But the second part of the mistake I see people making is they They just go all brand all the time from the very beginning. And ultimately, like start with the why from a company perspective is really important. But I I've talked about this a lot with Harbor. If all of our advertising was just about, well, parents deserve sleep and sanity. And that's it. That's our advertising Well, in a very busy world with people who very few people who know the name Harbor at all, I need to help them understand what it is that we do. Now I can't just sell features. I can't just sell benefits. But I can't also just focus on the why because if we do that, we're not going to get anyone to click into our ads. We're not going to get anybody to pay attention. And so in the earliest of days, you do need to call out the distinction of your product or your differentiation, not just the why. Um and so then the last thing I would say to anyone starting out a business, um don't forget how important it is to just sell your first hundred, your first thousand units. And like just do the things that don't scale. There's so many great books about the business that you want to build and the systems and all the things that you want to go do. But out of the gate, you just gotta go just pound the pavement and do everything you can to get those first ten hundred thousand sales. And then you can start to focus on expanding that aperture and not worry so much about ensuring that you're running the perfect systems and the perfect scaled operations ahead of actually selling the product itself.
Kurt Elster
That fabulous advice. Kevin, where can we go to learn more about you? Get some shirts by Baby Monitor.
Kevin Lavelle
Yeah, at Harbor, our mission is happier parents and healthier families. That's what we want to do. And so at harbor. co with harbor. co, we have a ton of free resources. You don't need to be a customer to access the resources. We got a lot of great information from. doctors, asleep consultants, and nurses, so go check that out. If you want to buy the product, great, but you can also just still get our free information. Mizinandmain. com, you can that's where we're everywhere you'll find us. Um and then if you're you're interested in anything I'm doing I'm I'm posting a lot on LinkedIn um and I'm also on X. So Kevin Lavelle on LinkedIn and then Kevin S. Lavelle on X. And uh, you know, grateful for the opportunity to share. Hopefully this is valuable to somebody. I've learned so much along the way from so many great entrepreneurs that have come before me. If I can help a couple people from this, um that's a great contribution to the world.
Kurt Elster
Kevin, thank you so much.
Kevin Lavelle
Thanks, Kurt.
Kurt Elster
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