Michael Pollak: Co-Founder & CEO of Great Many

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. Super, super excited to have my next guest. Here. We have Michael Pollak, who is the co founder and CEO of Great Many. And if you have not heard of Great Many, it is a brand new, or fairly new brand launched eight months ago, but you’re going to be so excited to hear all about it. Michael is actually a serial entrepreneur. Co founded another company that I had on the show a while back called heyday, and they’re at Great Many they’re on a mission to revolutionize hair health, creating a dedicated space for personalized hair growth solutions a little bit different than maybe some of the other hair growth solutions out there. Great Many offers treatments that range from PRP and prescription solutions to proprietary products designed to support hair growth in a holistic science backed way. I cannot wait to hear from Michael how this all came about, and everything that they’re doing. It’s very, very exciting. So Michael, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me super excited. So what inspired you to create Great Many and I guess if you want to even highlight what is maybe the 32nd ish elevator pitch on what is great. Benny,

Michael Pollak 2:04
yeah, well, you did it really well, so I could just compliment what you already started with. But we are a hair growth company. We are a hair growth studio, and specifically, and we opened our first location here in Noho in New York. And really, we are a, we call ourselves a home for hair growth. It’s a place you can come actually meet with a clinician and understand hair loss and all of the treatment options that are available, non surgical services, prescriptions, supplements, products. I think one of the challenges with hair growth, and I’m sure we’ll get into this, is when it hits you, it’s something that most people don’t research. If it doesn’t hit you, and then suddenly you wake up one day and you realize maybe you saw a photo on your iPhone that was from 10 years ago, or you noticed something in the mirror, and suddenly you’re like, my hair has shifted. What do I do? And most people hop on the internet and they start searching, and there’s a million products and solutions out there, and it’s very difficult to make sense of it. And so what we wanted to do is create a space that is clinically backed, staffed with medical clinicians who can really, kind of guide you through that process, educate you, and ultimately give you the solutions and, you know, products that you need to get the growth that you’re looking for. So

Kara Goldin 3:09
was this a personal need that you had? I mean, what is the backstory on on why did you decide I’ve got to go and do this? Yeah,

Michael Pollak 3:17
I think, I mean, there’s always, there’s always has to be, I think, some personal story with a with a founder. I think there’s for this one. There’s a personal and professional one. On the personal side, I’m half Chinese, I’m Jewish. I was like, I’m gonna have this thick head of hair forever. My grandfather was, like, in his 90s, and still had great hair. So I didn’t think it was an issue I was gonna face. My partner has always dealt with hair loss, and it’s always been something that has sort of knocked his confidence, and he’s focused on so I saw it from, you know, that distance. And then it was probably a couple years ago when he said, you know, hey, you’re thinning on the crown. And, you know, you don’t typically get to see your own crown. And I, sure enough, I held up a mirror, and I was like, Oh, that is not, that is not part of the plan. I don’t know what’s happening here. And even though I watched him kind of go through the process and explore treatments and, you know, transplants and prescriptions and all that I hadn’t done so myself. And so as I started to research that, I kind of realized how difficult it was to navigate and how difficult it was to make decisions and understand, should I do this drug? Should I try this supplement? Should I do this service? What happens if I don’t do anything? There are so many, almost more questions than there are answers. And that was a big aha moment for me, was that it was really hard to put it together. And because I’m a little bit of a nerd, I started to get really deep in the research on it. And I think one of the things I realized with hair, which is something that we almost teach every client who walks in, is that there are multiple things that impact your hair health and your hair growth. We all want, like a magic pill. We all want one solution that we’re going to take that’s going to solve all the problems. But hair is usually impacted by multiple things, and all of the solutions out there kind of tackle it from a different angle. And I like to think a little bit about it like a plant. Like if you’re trying to grow a healthy plant, you know you need. You know, you need water, you need good soil, you need sunlight, you might need pest control. There’s a whole bunch of things that you might do. They don’t all have to be perfect. But you know, if you optimize those you give it the best chance to thrive. And if you take on the house plant, you would never say, You know what, I’m just gonna it’s in soil. I’m not gonna give it water for six weeks. Let me just try the soil and see how that goes. We all know that that sort of won’t work, and that’s kind of the AHA I had with hair and that no one was really out there teaching you how to put together a more holistic plan to actually get where you want to

Kara Goldin 5:28
go. So, so interesting. So the average consumer that’s coming in to your location in Soho is what demographic Tell me a little bit about them. Yeah,

Michael Pollak 5:42
that’s, that’s actually one of the things I’m loving about this business. I think heyday was primarily a younger female demographic. It was kind of, you know, you could probably paint that picture more clearly, even though we saw plenty of men, and kind of opened men into that, into the facial and skincare category, but with Great Many, I think, as I started researching it on my own. I think, you know, even talking to a lot of investors, they’re like, Oh, it’s just gonna be a bunch of, like, balding men coming in your studio. And I was like, I don’t think so. My co founder and I both realized the minute we started talking about this, even on LinkedIn and asking to just hear about people’s hair growth stories, tons of people, and especially women who said, I have not had a place to talk about this, but this is something I’ve dealt with, and I’m either dismissed about it, or there’s just it’s always been kind of a men’s territory, and hasn’t been a place for that. So we kind of knew the hype, our strong hypothesis was that we were going to see about half men and half women, and that’s been true in the eight months that we have kind of come to life in the studio. We see people as young as their 20s, as well as people through their 60s who are dealing with different stages of hair loss. And I think one of the most fascinating things for me is people’s idea of progress is very much to their own. I think we’re trained to see these very dramatic before and afters on websites for esthetics or for anything kind of in this world. But somebody who maybe has been dealing with hair loss for 15 years. Progress to them might be, you know, I’m seeing I tried something, and I got a little growth, and I feel really good about it. So it’s been really wonderful to see a vast array of people kind of walk in our studio and kind of have maybe different needs and different goals, but ultimately, they’re drawn to kind of a really hospitality and clinically driven experience that we were delivering

Kara Goldin 7:20
in terms of staffing this business as compared to, maybe heyday. How does it differ?

Michael Pollak 7:26
Yeah, I mean, that’s a big learning for me. That’s very different. Heyday was all staffed by estheticians. So here they’re medical clinicians. So, you know, similar model in terms of, you know, shifts in scheduling and all the facets of running a four wall business. But, you know, it’s there. Everyone’s medical. There are nurse practitioners. They’re physicians associates. We have a Board of Medical advisors who we tap to kind of write protocols and decide on things like prescriptions, etc, a medical director. So it’s a, it’s a much more medical business, obviously. And you know, we really want to balance, I think, creating a new kind of more hospitality, forward experience within medicine. I kind of call them modern medical brands. But I think you’re starting to see a new crop of those come out where, you know, clients or patients are demanding, like not only great clinical care, but in a setting that feels good, looks good, and it kind of fits with their brand. And I think what we’ve heard from a lot of clients with Great Many in it specifically is, there is, there is a lot of stigma around hair loss, and so feeling comfortable and vulnerable enough to walk in a ground floor studio like ours, I think you have to be hospitality for the space has to be comfortable, the setting has to be fantastic, the people have to be warm, because someone’s already kind of stepping out of their comfort zone to kind of face this issue, and that’s Something that we really wanted to change in the category.

Kara Goldin 8:43
So Great Many seems very unique as compared to some of the other businesses that are helping with hair loss. Sometimes that is actually more difficult, because not only do you need to go out and raise money to start the business, but also licensing. And what kind of challenges did you have, actually, in addition to sharing with the consumer, how different you are, so a lot of education in a lot of different camps. How different was that for you and how difficult was it? Can you share any type of stories at all,

Michael Pollak 9:21
absolutely, I think, you know, even in the in the fundraising of this, I mean, luckily, I had sort of the history with Hey, so I had seen the road show of how difficult four wall businesses can be sometimes to raise money. I’m a big believer in that. My started my career in architecture and interiors and hospitality. So like, for whatever reason, I’ve always been drawn towards these experiences. You can literally, kind of walk in and feel and understand. So, you know, I love the I love the scale of software, but I always worked in these sort of, like, four wall spaces, so I knew that there would be challenges there. There are folks that just don’t, don’t appreciate that process and the growth that’s required. I think you have to grow really thoughtfully. You. Business, if it’s a service business is a is a people business. So it’s all about hiring, it’s all about culture. And I think if you move too quickly and break things on that front, you know, you kind of ruin the experience for the for the end consumer. So I think that was a that was a big learning is just like or a reminder that sometimes the the four wall investments can take a really special partner who understands, you know what, what you’re setting out to do. And I think you nailed the other one. I think hair growth is there is no one magic solution for it. I mean, if that was, if it was that easy, we wouldn’t have to start this company. So I think talking to specifically investors who maybe haven’t sat in the seat and felt hair loss themselves, or weren’t able to put themselves in the the shoes of the of the customer, can be hard to understand. You know, okay, this modality that we are doing maybe has, you know, clinicals that show 70 to 80% efficacy. Some people are like, well, that’s not enough. And then you talk to a client, and they’re like, I’ll take those odds all day, especially if you’re going to make it more affordable for me to kind of try it. So I think that balance, that that balance was, was a tricky one to educate on. Yeah,

Kara Goldin 11:04
definitely. So did you when you went out? Did you raise capital or before actually launching? And how difficult was that? Because you only launched eight months ago, so, yeah, pretty crazy time out there to for, I think, many entrepreneurs, to many founders to go and launch a business. So congratulations. I mean, it’s amazing that you were able to get it done.

Michael Pollak 11:27
Well, I think, you know, the genesis of this company, I think, is in a, in a, in a modern way, sort of a, you know, venture kind of studio model. So we actually met an investor who was interested in this space. And I, sort of, at the time, I had left heyday. Consulting and figuring out, okay, what am I going to do when I grow up? I was consulting with other four wall businesses and kind of figuring out what was next. And I was put in touch with them, and we really hit it off. And they understood kind of my background with heyday, what I had experienced, what I had created. And I had told myself, personally, I was like, I think I have one more of these in me. And we had a COO at heyday, who’s become like a really dear friend. And she was like, you can’t you need to do this one more time. You need to apply what you learned in the last decade at least one more time. So, you know, as I’m talking to this group, and they’re interested in the hair growth space from, you know, from, obviously, they, they’ve seen it. They’ve paid attention to it. They’re big into four wall. They said, We have this idea. We’d love to bring this to life. And we spent a couple of months kind of working together and workshopping it, kind of me as a consultant, understanding how we might work together. And so I found that was a very natural genesis of how this kind of came about in sort of them seeing the opportunity and what we, you know, mentioned a little bit earlier. I love, sort of seeing ideas on paper and then thinking like, Okay, I know how I want this to look and sound and feel and smell and all those things and actually bring it to life. So through that process, and through some networking, everything with this has been very serendipitous. We met my co founder, Steve, who’s amazing, and he was at Estee Lauder for 10 years. And then, oddly enough, on the side, he had, he owns a high end barber shop in the West Village here in New York that he started with his barber because he couldn’t get appointments with him. So he said, let’s open up our own thing. And he had been hearing so many guys in the barber shop ask about hair loss, asking their barber like, should I do finasteride? Should I do a transplant? What do you think about nutrafol? And he’s starting to think, okay, there’s something here these, you know, the clients are asking somebody who’s clearly not an expert in that, but that is their hair person, that’s their trusted hair, you know, hair guy, how do people not have the answers to this? There’s, there’s, you know, there’s HIMS, there’s keeps, there’s all these telehealth players, but there’s still something missing for a lot of people in terms of getting the education they need. So he was kind of on his own as wheels were turning, about hair growth and what to do in this category, in the four wall space. So when we kind of all got together, it was just very, very, very easy to see what we could what we could build. So

Kara Goldin 13:50
from the moment that you had this idea to actually launching, how long did that process

Michael Pollak 13:59
take? It was nine months. It was like it was a baby. Literally,

Kara Goldin 14:03
I love it. I love it pretty fast. It was fast. It was

Michael Pollak 14:07
fast, but I think it was fast because we are, you know, We’re experienced, and I feel like having, I think that’s been one of the saving graces of this, is doing this a second time. There are so many new learnings. And obviously we said this is a medical category. There’s new things compared to my heyday experience. But one of the things I’ve absolutely loved about this process is, just like leaning into the intuition and the knowing and being able to see, you know, the road ahead a little bit more, because I’ve seen it has been really, really wonderful, and I think that allowed us to move with a lot of speed. So I mean, we got together in September of 23 I had, I spend a lot of time upstate. I had Steve up there. So we spent a couple days like just talking about values and culture and what we want to build and potential. And then quickly, kind of dove into all the work streams that we needed to bring it alive from, you know, the value proposition and pricing and strategy, hiring, the actual physical space, the architecture, interiors, the web. Site. So, I mean, I love that. That’s always the phase that I love where it’s just like this one giant Gantt, you know, Gantt chart of a project that you have to bring to life. So, yeah, we it was not about nine months from when we first got together to when we kind of figuratively cut the ribbon. So what

Kara Goldin 15:15
are some of the biggest misconceptions about hair loss and, I guess, and hair regrowth that you’ve heard, we

Michael Pollak 15:23
could do a whole, whole podcast on this. I think there’s where to even begin. I think when it comes to hair growth, it requires a lot of patience, right? No one has figured out yet how to speed up hair growth per se, and so results in this phase can take, you know, six to nine months. If you’re a great responder to any modality, it can happen faster, but it requires a lot of patience, and I think that’s one of the things that we’ve been able to deliver. Is when you’re working with a clinician at Great Many you kind of have a partner. You’re seeing them once a month for treatments, and so you have someone to say, Hey, you’re doing well, like, keep up the routine. And some of that kind of personal training is, I think, really helpful in this category. I think that another big a lot of misconceptions come around the prescriptions, particularly around side effects. And like any drug, there are side effects, I think, but they’ve been so kind of, like pop cultureized and fear driven around them, that it can be hard for people to sift through and understand that. So again, that’s a lot of the education that we do. I think probably my, the top, top thing that people say is, when I fix this, when I get to the growth that I want do, I have to keep doing this for the rest of my life. And that is a that is a tricky one, but you have to educate and also say, Yeah, and it’s the same. We try to talk about it in the analogy to, like fitness. If I have a goal of a body that I want to get to, I’m going to combine multiple therapies to get there, or treatments that might be cardio, strength training, mobility, you know, diet and all that. When I get there and I get to that happy place, I might sort of taper into a more kind of maintenance phase, but you’re never going to completely stop. Otherwise you’ll revert to where you are. And so that’s an, again, another one of these education points that we that we have to tell people is like, this is how this is how it kind of looks down the line in terms of, in terms of what you have to do. And again, think the Internet can be a really tough place to kind of get your Get the facts totally straight on, on what works for people. And that’s what’s been so magical about what we’re able to do is really kind of get personal with people on what their results in their road could look

Kara Goldin 17:26
like. So can you walk us through the process when people enter your studio so you’re meeting with a physician or a medical clinician? Yeah, physician and then or clinician, sorry, medical clinician. And then what happens at that point? Yeah,

Michael Pollak 17:46
so somebody who’s interested comes in for an appointment. We always start with a consultation, and that’s about half an hour. So we spend a really good amount of time doing kind of what we were just talking about, kind of educating. We listen to your history, what you’ve tried, talking about learnings. There’s probably zero customers who come in and say, I am facing this problem, and I’ve never researched it before. People come in having tried things, having researched a ton. This is a category where people really go deep and start to try to form, you know, strong knowledge for themselves. So we want to hear about what they know. Want to hear about what you’ve tried. Want to hear about your goals, kind of, what, what brought you here, in terms of how long this has been going on, etc. So really spending a lot of time in that conversation. And if you come and actually see our space in the rooms, we start sort of sitting side by side, so it’s literally just a conversation between the client and the clinician. And then we educate a little bit. We talk about the different options out there. PRP is platelet rich plasma. That’s our primary service that we do today, and then we have the prescriptions and supplements that and products that we offer. So we spend some time talking through what an ideal plan would be for you, depending on your goals and your preferences. Are you a prescription person or your topical person? You know, it’s similar to my skincare world. It’s like you want a plan that someone can actually adopt and almost comply with, as opposed to giving something someone where they, you know that they’re not going to, you know, execute on it, to actually see the results. And then I think one of the important parts of our consultations is we actually look at your follicles up close. And that typically doesn’t happen. We don’t see that day to day. And so we use a tricoscope, which is a kind of a little camera and an iPad, and you can see the healthy areas of your scalp in terms of your follicle health, and you can see some of the areas where you might have more concerns and what the physical differences look like, and see where you might be able to get some growth back with some of these modalities and treatments. That’s often one of those, again, eye opening moments, where a lot of people are actually reassured by what they see, because you’re looking at, you know, photos from far away or whatever. But this is actually giving you that kind of up close view. And then if someone’s proceeding with their actual PRP treatment that day, we can do it the same day, which is very convenient for people. You don’t have to come in for a consult and then leave and come back. So a lot of people opt to kind of get going with their first session of P. ERP that day. And if you do that, everything happens right in the room. We draw the blood, we spin it in a centrifuge. There’s a short injection process into the scalp for areas of concern. And we have plenty of ways to keep you comfortable through that. It’s only about five minutes that part, and then you’re kind of on your merry way. And with us, you come back about four to six weeks, three times over that three month period to get started. And then we wait a little bit because hair takes time to grow, and you come back and you start your kind of maintenance and booster sessions, which is about two to three times a year from there. That’s

Kara Goldin 20:31
amazing. I mean, you’ve just started about eight months ago. But is there, uh, any stories of of incredible success that you can share with us, that

Michael Pollak 20:42
probably the hardest part about this is like you can’t open with before and after photos when you just open. So it’s been great now that we’re at that eight month mark and starting to see really happy clients, both in the dramatic sort of before and after photos, but sometimes it’s just hearing from people that you know came in for a consultation, and I said, I’ve never had this much I’ve never had anybody spend this much time with me talking about this, and it’s been such a concern of mine. I’ve learned so much. I just like deeply appreciate that portion of it alone, and we do those complimentary right now, so that’s a huge, I think, service that we’re able to offer. But yeah, I think hearing and seeing the results, and again, how different people express those results is so rewarding. I mean, we had a client who said I went to a wedding recently and I wore my hair down for the first time in as long as I can remember. So it’s just those little things that kind of, you know, are really touching when you when you hear that you can really impact how someone shows up in the world. That’s

Kara Goldin 21:36
incredible. So you’re a serial entrepreneur, and as we mentioned before, you co founded an incredible brand called heyday. Major success in launching. You’re still involved in the company. What key lessons from heyday Are you applying to this venture? I mean,

Michael Pollak 21:55
like everything so many, yeah, serial entrepreneur, I don’t know. I accidentally did this twice. Is kind of, I think, how I’d refer to it. I mean, there’s so, so many, I think that is probably the thing that had mentioned this that I’ve enjoyed the most about this process, is just having seen the road ahead, and I know better how to spend my time. I know better how to juggle all the plates that you’re, you know, obviously juggling as an entrepreneur and a founder, and I think that has made it, you know, just more rewarding knowing, knowing where the I can sort of hone the impact and find those moments a lot easier than the first time when you’re kind of just along for the ride and taking things as they come. Here, I think you’ve got, I feel like I have a much greater picture of what’s ahead and so that I would say, I mean, there’s so many, so many lessons from heyday that I apply every day here. Yeah,

Kara Goldin 22:50
definitely. I think when you when you’re doing things for the second time, and you can go back and look at that experience, and, you know, often I think it’s about trusting your gut, but it’s also great to have that experience of where you should have trusted your gut on something and you’re not going there again for for the newest adventure. So really, really powerful, powerful lesson, intuition

Michael Pollak 23:18
is huge. I mean, I feel like, as I’ve grown to I’ve learned to listen to that more. I think I’ve, in the past, almost devalued the gut in favor of the data. And I feel now I’m much more my first response is always gut. I will check data next, but I will always come back to gut to actually make the final sort of decision. And I think trusting that and knowing it has value, even though it might not show up as in a spreadsheet. In the same way, I think, is a really important thing as an entrepreneur. So you

Kara Goldin 23:50
chose to not just do a service business and a four wall standalone business, but also you launched products with it. I’m always very interested in ingredients and so many different industries that we have on the show, but what is kind of the the ingredient that you just really don’t like that is in many people’s hair care products. That is, maybe you won’t go as far as to say it’s causing hair loss, but it’s not helpful. And you tell people, get rid of

Michael Pollak 24:25
it. Yeah, that’s a great question. There are so I mean, and this comes from my skincare world too. There are so many formulas out there that are, I would say, either very old and kind of old school. And there’s so much new technology and new knowledge about, you know, what is healthy for us, what is healthy for the environment? So that movement towards cleaner, I think beauty and self care and care products is fantastic, and so the opportunity to build that from scratch was important and fantastic for us. I also think that there’s overly fragrance things that is just not that’s just sent. And you know, your shampoo shouldn’t like walk out of the shower with you. It should be an enjoyable experience. I think sometimes scent in a product is important because it gives you that ritual that gets you to adopt something. But I also, one of my pet peeves has always been the marketing in this category. There’s so much of, you know, oh, if I put a drop of this in here, I can make this claim that this ingredient does this, and I think, you know, that sells, but it ultimately does a disservice to the to the customer on the end, who isn’t going to get maybe the results that are promised from something because it is, you know, a marketing claim versus something truly kind of efficacious. So that’s always a, you know, a bone I’ve had to pick with the category, whether it’s skincare or hair care. So

Kara Goldin 25:40
educating the consumer. I mean, it’s great if they walk in and you can talk to them, but I would guess that social media is such a massive channel for you to educate the consumer word of mouth as well. But can you talk a little bit about how consumers are finding out about what you’re doing?

Michael Pollak 25:59
Social is huge. I think influencer has been a really important driver for growth for us. And I think it’s specific. I love it. And for two reasons, I think when we find influencers who want to partner with us, they’re doing it authentically. I mean, you’re not choosing to get PRP injected into your scalp for fun. So it’s something if they’re really dedicated to the journey and their own hair growth, they’re going to be an authentic storyteller of it. And so that has been wonderful. And I think the other really rewarding part about that channel for us is it shows the diversity of clientele that can come in here. And we can literally see if somebody is of a certain demographic or a certain hair type, might post about their journey or their experience with us. We will see phone calls literally come in and for someone who kind of looks like them and says, Hey, I saw this, and it feels like it might apply to me. So I love that that can help kind of widen our reach into different communities, or different people who are facing hair loss, social for sure. I mean, there’s plenty of myths about products, and the ad world is like a whole, you know, landscape and minefield of that, but it’s also a place where people are listening and people are getting information. You know, hair hair loss, on Tiktok, on Reddit, there’s all these places where people are going to kind of get the power of comments and numbers from from, you know, people’s experiences. So you kind of have to show up there and be there to be a part of the conversation, or at least understand where the conversation is happening. Would

Kara Goldin 27:20
you feel like one channel is working for you better than another right now, Instagram

Michael Pollak 27:24
has been our probably strongest channel. I think it’s probably the one we’ve as a startup and focused on the most. I’m a little old for Tiktok. I gotta, I gotta get into that a little more.

Kara Goldin 27:35
That’s, it’s so funny. It seems like they, they sort of, I mean, Instagram continues to do really well for brands in every category, but I think especially when, when there’s something like hair loss, where people don’t necessarily go and tell their colleagues at work or, you know, their family, it’s just something that they’re going to really Talk about, maybe to their close family. Maybe they’re close friends, but it’s, it’s amazing when you can actually launch information on these channels for people to actually spend their own time, their private time. That’s, it seems to be really powerful. And I mean that really does seem to be happening on Instagram for sure, so many founders talk about kind of the emotional highs and lows. You’re a serial entrepreneur building your second company. When you think about building a company and sort of launching you’ve got a co founder, how do you think about that? In comparison, I guess your own skill sets, you and I were talking briefly about it, that you’re not necessarily coming up with ideas all the time. You’re actually figuring out, okay, what is the look and feel and how do I execute on it if I have that right? But I’d love for you to talk a little bit about that, especially to somebody who’s thinking, maybe, you know, I don’t get ideas, I don’t have an idea, but can I still be an entrepreneur? Can I support entrepreneurs? All of those kind of questions that go around for people that you know are inspired by you and what you’ve done?

Michael Pollak 29:17
Yeah, I think, I mean, for me, the co founder relationship is so important. I think it, you know, it can be a lonely road entrepreneurship. So being able to do it side by side with someone is really important. And then I think within that, just finding those complimentary skills, I think you have to know where your strengths are, and kind of really, really lean in and double down on those and where you might be a little bit weaker. It’s like, how do I neutralize that, or how do I compliment that with with somebody else. So I think a great example that my co founder and Steve and I always talk about is he loves the like, zero to 80 of an idea. And I love the like. I want to be a part of that, but I love the 80 to 100 like, let me make the checklist to actually, like, operationalize this thing and bring it fully to life and get it across the line and the launch and all that. So finding ways where we. Uh, you know, speak the same language, and we’re deeply connected on things like strategy and direction and all that. But when we come to execute, we can play really complimentary roles in in how we bring something to life. So I think that’s a great example of kind of how, you know how to find that right partnership. But I think partnership is just important to me across the board, and that comes down to, you know, how I interact with investors and even my spouse or my family members or community, anyone is, you know, when you’re starting something, it becomes a huge part of your life, and I think you need to have the people around you to kind of support you, support you through that, through that process,

Kara Goldin 30:34
definitely. So what’s next for Great Many you guys are off to a very, very good start, but I’d love for you to let us know what you’re most excited about coming up.

Michael Pollak 30:47
Yeah, I think we’re excited just about growth. I think this the the non surgical hair space is huge, and it reminds me of where skincare was, you know, 1215, years ago, facials were not popular. There were no facial shops. At that point, Botox was happening, you know, in Durham’s offices on the Upper East Side. You know, now everybody’s got a skincare routine. People have tried these things. These things have been much more democratized. And I have that gut feeling that hair growth is at that phase, you are starting to hear women talk about hair loss more openly years talk. You hear about men flying to Turkey for transplants and doing like guys trips to do that. It’s just at this moment where it’s being something where people are approaching much more openly. So I think there’s an opportunity, you know, for this market to just continue to grow. And so we really want to just double down in that. I We, you know, plan on growing our studios. We’re going to continue to grow here in New York, and then take our idea to other cities. But then on the innovation front, you know, there are other non surgical hair growth modalities out there that we want to bring in and offer to people to complement their results or the things that they’re doing now. Or if you’re kind of hit a hit a fork in the road where you need to try something new, there are other things coming out there. So I think it’s a really fascinating space. It’s a consumer issue that’s been around for, you know, since the beginning of time, yeah, and it’s something that people, people care about finding, you know, really trusted solutions for. So we’re going to continue to grow, grow on that front.

Kara Goldin 32:09
That’s awesome. Michael, this has been such a great conversation, and Great Many. Best of luck with everything. You guys are doing incredible work that’s really helping change the game and and help so many people. And I love how you’re bringing science expertise and customer first approach to an industry that’s been long overdue for innovation. So we’ll have all the info in the show notes, but appreciate you coming on and just sharing all of your insights and and thank you everybody too for listening. So if you love this episode, don’t forget to hit subscribe and leave a review. And like I said, we’ll have everything in the show notes, but thank you again. Michael, thanks Kara, thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast, just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms. At Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building. Hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening and goodbye for now. You.