02:07:31 · John Coogan, Mark Swan, Jordi Hays
[02:07:31] S1: Oh, So a lot of the work I that saw financial advisers do... Okay. [02:07:34] S3: Yeah. Yeah. So what a lot of financial advisers do is actually, like, operational work on top of those custody platforms. So things like moving money open custody accounts take up the vast majority of the manual work. And so through our partnership with Schwab, we can unlock new opportunities to help automate those workflows and, you know, benefit our mutual customers, which are these RIA firms. [02:07:56] S1: Yeah. You're the anointed one. Well well, Muse and all the other agents are getting banned from Charles Schwab. Are... Yeah. Like, come on in. [02:08:03] S0: Come on in. [02:08:04] S1: You get to go into Schwab, which is very cool. [02:08:07] S0: Love the business. Make... [02:08:08] S1: Congrats on the progress. [02:08:09] S0: Yeah. Thank you so [02:08:10] S3: much for hopping on the show. I appreciate it. Thanks for [02:08:12] S1: having me on. [02:08:12] S0: Great to meet you, Mark. Sure. See you
02:08:12 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan, Christa Pitts, Chanda A. Bell
[02:08:12] S0: Great to meet you, Mark. Sure. See you [02:08:13] S1: at Let me tell you about Railway. Railway is the all in one intelligent cloud provider. Use your favorite agent to deploy web app service databases more while Railway automatically takes care of scaling, monitoring, and security. Up next, you know it's the road to Christmas, and we have a Christmas deep dive with Chanda Bell and Christa Pitts, the cofounders and co CEOs of the Luisa Stela Company. The company behind the elf on the shelf, We are going to bring in these twin sisters and talk about this incredible business. Welcome to the show. What's Thank you so much for joining us. How are you doing? [02:08:48] S4: Great. Hi. [02:08:49] S1: Thank you for joining. I'd love to get an introduction to kick this off from both of you and take us on a little bit of the journey of the company and the Sorry. Love Christmas around here. We have been counting down the days to Christmas trying to interview as many people. I'll take [02:09:06] S0: it down a notch [02:09:07] S1: But a little the economy, we have multiple levels of Christmas adornments on the Chiron. But I'll let you kick it off... [02:09:14] S0: A little more mild. [02:09:16] S1: Let's do a little bit of Christmas. [02:09:17] S0: Yeah. A little [02:09:17] S1: bit of Christmas. [02:09:18] S0: But... Working working on it. Working on it. It. That's better. That's better. We can... Thank you. [02:09:23] S5: Christa, we finally find people like fashioned out of our own heart. Yes. Like the love of Christmas is real here. We love it.
02:09:23 · Chanda A. Bell, Jordi Hays, John Coogan, Christa Pitts
[02:09:23] S5: Christa, we finally find people like fashioned out of our own heart. Yes. Like the love of Christmas is real here. We love it. [02:09:32] S0: Started our Christmas countdown at like a hundred and twenty days. [02:09:35] S1: A hundred and twenty days. We were deep in August. It might have been 95 degrees here in Hollywood, Los Angeles, but, we stuck it out. Now it's getting a little cool here. [02:09:44] S0: We heard those sleigh bells ringing. [02:09:45] S1: We heard the sleigh bells ringing. And we're in the... Yeah. [02:09:49] S5: We're only two months away. So it's gonna be here before... [02:09:52] S0: We're only hours away. Yeah. Over... Think over the last ten hours. [02:09:56] S1: Hours away. Anyway, I'm glad to have you on the show. But yes, let let let's go through the story. I would love to hear about your entrepreneurial journey, and then I'm sure we'll have questions about the business and and Christmas in general. [02:10:10] S4: Sheva, do you wanna run with that one?
02:10:10 · Christa Pitts, Chanda A. Bell, John Coogan
[02:10:10] S4: Sheva, do you wanna run with that one? [02:10:12] S5: Sure. Happy to. So, you know, this this was not something we thought we were gonna start a business around, when my mom and I, sat down in 2004, to write a story based on our own family tradition, really based on our elf that used to come at Christmas time, and it would watch during the day and report to Santa at night. And the morning when we woke up, you know, we would race around the house trying to find the elf to see where, you know, it came back. And when I had my kids on my own, and it's roughly 2005, and I'm having tea with my mom, and I look up and I see our elf sitting on a shelf. Mhmm. And I'm like, mom, you know, we should we should write a story about our elf. I had no idea what I was saying, and I had no idea what that would mean for us, and certainly, no thought that we would be starting a business. But when we couldn't get anyone to publish our little story based on our own family tradition, you have a good idea and that's all it will ever be, or you're going to have to to step out in faith and do something with it. And, that's the path that we chose. And so now, we're we're twenty one years in, and we have a whole Santaverse and a whole world of storytelling Fantastic. [02:11:27] S1: All built [02:11:28] S5: on this opportunity to work for Santa Claus. [02:11:31] S1: And what is the shape of the of the business? Is it... How much is consumer products versus books versus other revenue streams? Like, take us through the the...
02:11:31 · John Coogan, Jordi Hays, Chanda A. Bell, Christa Pitts
[02:11:31] S1: And what is the shape of the of the business? Is it... How much is consumer products versus books versus other revenue streams? Like, take us through the the... [02:11:41] S0: Do you get any kickbacks from your service From the big the man? Big man up north? [02:11:47] S5: You'd be amazed how how stingy Santa Claus is. [02:11:50] S4: Oh, yeah. Seriously. I mean, just to jump in on that Yeah. Our business is really well rounded. [02:11:59] S1: Okay. [02:11:59] S4: We've got a very robust licensing and partnerships business, not just consumer products, but also on the partnerships side. Right? We've worked with several major clients over the years. Beaches has been a great official Caribbean destination for us over the past several years. [02:12:18] S0: Woah. [02:12:19] S4: We also have an inbound licensing program that we announced this year because the elf on the shelf is a fan of whatever your family happens to be a fan of. And so we decided we wanted to go talk to folks that had major fandoms. So this year, we've got Disney princesses. We have Mickey and Friends. We have Spider Man. We have Olaf [02:12:43] S1: Yeah. [02:12:43] S4: From Frozen, and we have Harry Potter. So when your kids wake up in the morning, they might have just experienced a moment where their elf flew into the costume that they love best, and we'll be greeting them in the morning with something very festive from our other, friends in the fandom world.
02:12:43 · Christa Pitts, John Coogan, Jordi Hays
[02:12:43] S4: From Frozen, and we have Harry Potter. So when your kids wake up in the morning, they might have just experienced a moment where their elf flew into the costume that they love best, and we'll be greeting them in the morning with something very festive from our other, friends in the fandom world. [02:13:02] S1: That's magic. Can you, take us through, some of the various, turning points for the business? It feels to me like there was a big social media moment, a big viral moment where Elf on the Shelf became a much more prominent name globally. But is that just what I'm feeling... I also knew [02:13:22] S0: about Elf on the Shelf before I knew it was a business. [02:13:24] S1: That's true. Yes. Interesting. Which is good. Right? You knew it was lore before you knew it was a product, which I think is the best way to [02:13:31] S0: experience Yeah. Like tradition led rather than marketing. [02:13:33] S1: Exactly. Exactly. But yes, tell us about some of the inflection points, what it felt like on the inside of of the business.