How to Get From Prototype to Product with the Founders of Frame

Ethan Peyton: Hey, everybody, and welcome to the startup Savant podcast. I'm your host Ethan, and this show is about the stories, challenges, and triumphs of fast-scaling startups and the founders who run them. We've got two founders on the show today. Our guests are Melissa Bentovolio and Lee Belzberg. They are the co-founding pair and happily wedded couple behind Frame, a fitness company developing a beautifully designed Pilates reformer and offering a workout membership to go with the machine. Now, I want to help these guys brag a little bit by telling you that they are going to be the first company in the industry to ship a large workout machine at the seed stage. And get this they've only got five employees. How did they accomplish this? Well, I guess you're just going to have to listen to find out. Before we get into it, I want to remind you all about our goal to hit reviews by episode. So if you want to help us out, head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and leave us a review. Simple. All right, without further delay, let's jump in with the founders of Frame, Melissa, and Lee. Hey, guys. Welcome to the show.

Lee Belzberg: Thanks for having us.

Melissa Bentivoglio: Thank you for having us.

Ethan Peyton: All right, so I gave the audience a little bit of a teaser on what Frame is, but I'm sure they'd rather hear it from you. So simple question what is Frame?

Melissa Bentivoglio: Frame is the first digitally connected Pilates reformer.

Ethan Peyton: That is a nice and tidy answer. So let's jump into the one step deeper. What problem is this company solving?

Melissa Bentivoglio: So, in the world of reformer, Pilates specifically reformers are not something that exists in people's homes. You typically have to go into a large group class and or take a private session. So we decided that we wanted to transcend the way Pilates was being practiced. We wanted to make it more accessible to pilates enthusiasts and really, everybody, whether you've tried reformer or not, it's one of the most efficacious workouts. And we now have created the solution. Which is you can have a reformer in your home that's beautifully designed, that looks like a beautiful piece of art or a piece of furniture, and you also have the user interface. To go along with it so that you don't have to be intimidated by not understanding how to sequence or even how to tackle a workout on a reformer because it can be perceived as complicated.

Lee Belzberg: It was lacking in innovation and steeped in foundation, and I think that's what we wanted to change and disrupt.

Ethan Peyton: So you guys started this business a couple of years ago, and things are really starting to move now. But what was the driving force that led you to start this business? Because I know that both of you have backgrounds in business and in fitness and instruction, so it kind of obviously leads to this. But what made you decide to do this business specifically, I'll let Melissa. 

Melissa Bentivoglio: So this is my second proprietary reformer design. I embarked on the world of industrial design and the intention was to create my own proprietary reformer for brick and mortar for my brick-and-mortar studio, which I was opening in Toronto, Canada. So I embarked on that journey. I loved it, the iterative the creative process. I loved having a concept and then bringing it to fruition. It was one of the most satisfying feelings I have ever experienced. And my studio, which I did end up opening, ultimately was shuttered by the Pandemic. 

So I had created a reformer. It was an amazing but very challenging three-year process. My studio was closed, and I said to Lee, when we know at home in quarantine early stages, like, I think my studio is only closed two or three days. And I said to him, I have an idea for a home version. Regardless of what was going on in the world, I'd already started to think about the competitive landscape of what was going on with digital fitness, but also just the and I had mentioned it earlier, but the ability to work out at home, the convenience it allowed. So I had this idea, and I said to Lee, do you want to partner with me? And he had already had successful businesses, and he essentially said to me, okay, well, show me the design. And I had created a preliminary design with the same industrial designer I'd been working with. And he was like, okay, so where's the business plan? And I was like, Well, I didn't get that far yet.

Lee Belzberg: The cart before the horse

Melissa Bentivoglio: He really stressed that we had to create a blueprint and really see if there was like we had to dive into some of the analytics. We had to look to see what the actual competitive landscape was doing, where the pilates and specifically the reformer pilates market was going. So we started doing research, and I would say a week later, he was like, let's do this.

Ethan Peyton: So, Lee, when you recommended that there be a blueprint put mean, it sounds like this is something that you've kind of done before. Is this an actual physical document that gets put together? Maybe it doesn't look specifically like this, but for every business, is there kind of like a form that you could create that's like a fill-in-the-blanks and then spit it out the other side? Or is it more of a bespoke process that you go through for each business idea?

Lee Belzberg: Well, I wish they had ChatGPT when we were initially doing our business plan because that would have made things a lot simpler, easier. But I come from a background where I work with a ton of different businesses. And when I look at those businesses, the successful ones that I've seen, they all have a blueprint of exactly understanding the market, understanding research that goes into deciding if this is something that you want to pursue.

Melissa Bentivoglio: Is there a problem? Do you have the solution? A one-year plan? A three-year plan? A five-year plan. Well and substantiate your claims, even just for ourselves, like, internally?

Lee Belzberg: Yeah. Some businesses, I think, don't need a lot of capital to start up, but the business that we were going into, you needed a lot of capital to get it to market. So when you're pitching, for instance, an investor and I knew we were going to have to go into a raise. And when you're pitching investors with an idea on a piece of paper, you better have done your research because they want to know that you've thought of everything. Obviously, it drastically changes as you pursue the business, but you need to make sure that they're comfortable with the investment that they're going to make in two founders. And really, it's not about the blueprint as much as about the thought and the work that goes into it, behind it. And then pitching, using a deck right? To back it up. When I see successful businesses, they have a blueprint, at least initially.

Melissa Bentivoglio: And the blueprint, is iterative correct? Yeah.

Ethan Peyton: I mean, everybody's got a plan until you get punched in the face. I think that was Abraham Lincoln that said that, right? All right, so let's jump back into Frame. Specifically. Now, every business can bite. Every business has teeth. But it feels like this business is like eight businesses in one. I mean, you've got the manufacturing process. You've got courses and a membership platform to build. You've got software, branding, marketing, sales, logistics. You've got three kids.

Melissa Bentivoglio: We do.

Ethan Peyton: What made you all think that this was a mountain worth climbing?

Lee Belzberg: You only have one life. Take a shot. That's kind of the way I look at it. In life, it's either you stay comfortable or you get out of your comfort zone and try and really make something of your life. Not to say that this isn't for everyone. And I think the fact that Melissa and I are together, it made it a lot easier because one of us wasn't gone all the time. Both of us were gone all the time.

Melissa Bentivoglio: I think also, I innately have a very risk taking personality. You are definitely more safe. Totally. Also, even just the fact that your family is sort of like a real estate type family, it's a little more conservative. Definitely not venture. So we were taking a risk together. And sometimes it's an intangible that you can't really describe why, you know, you're just supposed to do it. 

You could ask me specifically what was that moment where you just said, but I think there were several moments collectively where we just said, we know we have something. We know because we did some preliminary conversations with some very important people in the business. And when something is immediately received and again, not every business is going to be immediately and positively received. But we had that initial validation that for us was just like, it solidified. We just knew we were going to do it.

Lee Belzberg: Yeah.

Ethan Peyton: All right, so before we jump into the manufacturing that I'm hoping we can go pretty deep on, I've got one quick question about the dynamic of this co founder relationship. Obviously you two are co founders. Obviously you two are married, there's three kids. What is the secret sauce to building a business alongside a relationship with your spouse?

Lee Belzberg: One person in the relationship has to be a little quieter than the other.

Melissa Bentivoglio: I think for Lee and I and our specific dynamic and how it pertains to our business and why it's working, we are very different. So the old saying, opposites attract, true, but also we complement one another in a way that makes for a very successful business relationship. Lee is much more outgoing than I am. People really like Lee. He has a keen ability to connect with really almost anybody, regardless of their background and how it pertains to our business and growing the business. And I definitely have a stronger personality, but I'm able to disassociate and sort of take emotion out of business. And that also works.

Lee Belzberg: I think it's just tough decisions. Yeah.

Melissa Bentivoglio: I make them easily.

Lee Belzberg: I think it's also trust, right. When you start a business, it doesn't matter what business it is, you really have to trust your partner. And when you have three kids with your wife and your partner, there's more than just trust. You're building something for your future, and nobody can take advantage of two people that are in it together. And so in a startup, that's a very valid point. In a startup, you see people come and go, but the one person that will never leave, I hope, is my wife and partner. And by having that, you really have each other's backs, and I think that's extremely important when doing starting up.

Ethan Peyton: I think that's a beautiful answer and a beautiful message to everyone out there. We should all take a lesson from that.

Melissa Bentivoglio: Start a business with our partner.

Ethan Peyton: Yeah, exactly. I'm going to do it tomorrow.

Lee Belzberg: We actually had one of our investors initially, he wasn't an investor at the time, basically tell us because he was in banking in New York, and he said, I'm going to have to do some research on spouses.

Melissa Bentivoglio: Going to have my junior analyst pull some stats on how effective businesses are that are run by married co founders.

Lee Belzberg: And if you're out there listening to.

Melissa Bentivoglio: This, Joe, it's very favorable investing.

Ethan Peyton: Good job, Joe. You made the right decision. All right, so you mentioned earlier that you guys are different and with that you come from different backgrounds, but neither of those backgrounds is in manufacturing. I know. Melissa, you said that you've got a little bit of that starting in, but no deep, deep background in manufacturing. But luckily, manufacturing physical products is super easy. Right.

Melissa Bentivoglio: The complexity associated with manufacturing and manufacturing product and bringing that manufacturer product to market is something that would be very challenging for me to even describe to you verbally. It is an Iterative process. You're constantly iterating and if you don't, iterate I'm going to say in real time, but as quickly as required to continue and build upon the momentum, then I think that's when we see a lot of companies fail to achieve the.

Lee Belzberg: Next level, Just to elaborate on that, I would say now one of our biggest investors happens to be the largest manufacturer of fitness equipment in the world. So we're not using a third party. We're going right to the source. And Melissa and I actually made a trip out to China, I want to say, a couple months ago, last month.

Melissa Bentivoglio: It was so fun.

Lee Belzberg: And we got to see firsthand our product being mass. You know, being able to be hands on in the manufacturing phase, I think, really helped us expedite ourselves to get to market. And having really great advisors that have done this before and have created incredible businesses like Schwinn, Nautilus, StairMaster, Bowflex, Star Trek, you know, it gave us the confidence to really bring our product to fruition.

Ethan Peyton: So let's go back to the beginning and let's try to paint a picture together, because I think that this is one of the only physical product companies that we've had on the show. And based on just the size and complexity and everything else that goes into the reformer, I think that if we go deep on this manufacturing process, we're going to be able to really pull out a lot of helpful bits for people that want to also go into some sort of physical product manufacturing, whether it's as complicated as a reformer or as not complicated as a kitchen spatula. So let's try to paint this picture together. 

Let's walk through the process. And I know there are so many details that are going to be painted over in this case, but the big points kind of in the process of light bulb moment to the frame reformer landing on your customer's doorstep. How did this process start? And then let's walk through it as close to step by step as we can.

Lee Belzberg: I want to just say we're talking about manufacturing the hardware, but what we have not spoken about is manufacturing software as well.

Ethan Peyton: Right.

Lee Belzberg: So you're not just manufacturing hardware, which would be a lot easier to just manufacture one instead of doing both. But when you're dealing with hardware and software where they are married together, that's a big process from the manufacturing side. I mean, I'll let Melissa Bentivoglio: kind of dive into it, but I think we can't leave out the software component of it because it's a huge piece.

Melissa Bentivoglio: It's a huge piece. It's actually just as important as the actual physical hardware. You're taking the classes on a tablet that has a user interface that has all of our pre recorded content. And you're engaging with the software as much as you are engaging with the actual physical product, which is the reformer. Having said that, the way we tackled it, and I think we tackled it in a very expeditious and efficient way. Manufacturing, I mean, to simplify it so that it's digestible. You have prototyping phases. You have a design. You design something. You understand what you want to see from a functionality perspective. Once you've solidified what you want from a functionality perspective, you then think about the aesthetics that's all encompassed in design. And then you start the prototyping. You do a rapid prototype.

Ethan Peyton: Is that penciled on the back of a napkin?

Lee Belzberg: It's with an ID. Like an industrial designer.

Melissa Bentivoglio: Yeah. No, the preliminary you have an idea of what you want. I'm not a great artist, so my sketches wouldn't look anything like she's not a great artist. The actual renders, which is the earlier stages of design. So I'm highly verbal. I'm a verbal being. So I articulated exactly what I wanted, how I wanted it to function. The functionality component of a design is the most important thing you can fine tune aesthetic. Aesthetic is obviously very important to the consumer and also to myself, but it's all about the functionality. And there was novel functions, things that I wanted to do that didn't exist yet. So we had to understand how we could create the function. And then you move into rapid prototyping. So there's multiple steps in prototyping. There's a rapid prototype. You do a prototype in renders, and then you rapid prototype an actual physical, in our case, reformer.

Ethan Peyton: Sure. Are you still working at this level with, like, an industrial designer?

Melissa Bentivoglio: You work with an industrial designer, you work with engineers, and you're also already working with a manufacturer because somebody has to actually manufacture the physical product.

Ethan Peyton: Did you kind of piecemeal this group of people together, or did it all come in one package?

Melissa Bentivoglio: No, it doesn't. I mean, it could come in one package. I decided that I had already worked with an industrial designer.

Lee Belzberg: We wanted to make things complicated a little for ourselves.

Melissa Bentivoglio: Yeah, I already worked with an industrial designer, but there were certain aspects about that that I felt that I could improve upon. So I sought out a different industrial designer that I was really excited to work with. And then we found an amazing engineer who we developed a great relationship with.

Lee Belzberg: We still work with to this day. But what I was going to say, I just wanted to talk about. Once you're doing industrial design, you can design anything you want, but it might not be able to be manufactured. So the really interesting part about ID versus manufacturable product is that you have to iterate the ID, because the ID is the industrial designer. You have to iterate on that because he might make something look stunning. But you take that to the manufacturer and he says, this can't be done. So whether it be a long piece of wood where you have to cut into a couple of different pieces, right? So they're very different people. One can create a beautiful aesthetic product, the other one actually builds the product.

Melissa Bentivoglio: So working with sometimes there's a disconnect and that's why prototyping phases are so crucial. We went through three different Rapid prototypes. We worked with several different engineers.

Lee Belzberg: There was an evolution of our product.

Melissa Bentivoglio: The evolution is actually pretty insane. We have some earlier photo shoots where we were actually shooting content with some earlier versions of the reformer. And there are some pretty fantastic iterations that are now on our final product. But it is a lengthy process that requires a lot of resilience. You cannot get disappointed when the first two Rapid prototypes or the first two functional prototypes aren't exactly what you envisioned.

Ethan Peyton: Because that is normal, right? And I'm sure that it's also possible that the prototype that you have made can't be mass manufactured as well. And this is why I wanted to get into this, is because it's such a complex issue. But if you're a startup, if you're a company, if you are going to be building a physical product, these are the steps that you're going to have to go through. So it's really interesting to hear the actual story of what actually happened with you all. Let me give it back to you. We had a napkin drawing that was bad art. I definitely heard that part. And then that was sent to an industrial designer. And then once you worked with the industrial designer to create kind of the CAD mockup, you went to an engineer and an actual manufacturer to create the Rapid prototypes and then the working prototypes. So pick it up from there.

Lee Belzberg: We actually prototype with a company out of Portland initially that they had their focus in snowboards.

Melissa Bentivoglio: We were working with wood veneer. So it's also allocating and finding the right fit in the stage that you're at. For instance, our current manufacturer, which also happens to be one of our lead investors. Extremely important in the world of fitness and fitness equipment. As Lee Belzberg: had mentioned earlier, as one of the largest manufacturers of fitness equipment before we even got there, before we even raising a lot of the capital, our seed, we still had to create functional and rapid prototypes. And we did a lot of that initial work domestically because it allowed us to move quickly. So we were in Portland, Oregon, doing our initial first three prototypes and then.

Lee Belzberg: We sent them to our manufacturer to take a look at it and basically take it apart and rebuild it.

Melissa Bentivoglio: They had to reverse engineer and say, okay, is this all mass, manufacturable? And that's the big question. What do we have to change when we look to putting this on an actual assembly line? And then there's the beta testing and making sure that everything is safe. And then that's a whole other conversation when we're there.

Lee Belzberg: They have machines that are just pressing buttons all day long and then pulling the springs.

Melissa Bentivoglio: Our spring engagement is novel.

Lee Belzberg: You have hundreds of thousands of hours of just working with the reform to make sure all the components work properly, right.

Melissa Bentivoglio: How many hours we're going to get.

Lee Belzberg: And we actually just hit commercial hours now, so we have enough hours on our reformer that now they can be placed in commercial settings, which is really exciting.

Melissa Bentivoglio: He means in stress testing.

Lee Belzberg: In stress testing. Okay.

Ethan Peyton: And that's like some sort of, like licensure type of requirement or something like that.

Lee Belzberg: Well, when you have people that have done this before, they know exactly what needs to be done in order to feel comfortable putting in hotels or condominiums. But I would say going back to the manufacturing process, it wasn't just manufacturing it. Once we got it ready to go, then we had to decide how many steps we wanted our customers to have to assemble it, put it together, how quickly they can assemble it. We basically built the entire reformer in a way where there were only four steps to assemble it. To assemble it.

Ethan Peyton: And now this is assembly after it lands on your doorstep or assembly after it lands on the customer's doorstep.

Melissa Bentivoglio: Customers.

Lee Belzberg: Ours and the customers. So it's fully assembled.

Melissa Bentivoglio: So one thing that I wanted to do was I wanted to make sure that the actual structure of the reformer, the frame, no pun intended, remained intact and that that did not have to be assembled, because with traditional reformers, it comes in all pieces. The carriage is separate. You have to put it onto the frame. The frame itself has to be assembled so it actually comes as one piece.

Ethan Peyton: Why did you want that specifically?

Melissa Bentivoglio: Because I'd worked with traditional reformers for years, and even having to put your own coiled springs on is not easy, and I wanted it to be as easy and intuitive as possible, especially when.

Lee Belzberg: You're working out at home.

Ethan Peyton: Yeah. And springs are a mess. I know. I used to have a trampoline in the backyard, like so many of us. I'm sure did.

Lee Belzberg: Yeah.

Ethan Peyton: We have in our backyard, they sit out and they get in the weather for a little while, and then your kids get older and they get a little heavier and they bounce a little higher, and then those springs start to rust and they start firing off little parts when they break. And we luckily haven't run into that.

Melissa Bentivoglio: Aren't being subjected to weather.

Ethan Peyton: Yeah, exactly. You're not leaving them out in the rain. And if anyone is, that's going to void the warranty, I'm sure. All right, so the manufacturer that did the reverse engineering, was this the manufacturer that was in China that you mentioned flying out to?

Lee Belzberg: Yes.

Ethan Peyton: Okay. Gotcha so they're California and they had so they had a presence in the States so that you didn't maybe have to ship a full unit over there.

Lee Belzberg: They have a huge footprint in the USA.

Ethan Peyton: Got it. Okay, fantastic. Okay, so then we're basically at the point where the manufacturer, who's going to be building a bunch of these things, has re-figured out the design. They've worked with the engineers. Everything is kind of like ready to go at that manufacturing level. Then do you decide to then just basically print off of these things? Or how do you decide then how many you're going to make and maybe what are the other decisions that are kind of going into that at that stage?

Melissa Bentivoglio: I'll answer this for a moment. So you don't want to jump in right away into making because at this point and where our conversation left was that we have finalized a design. There's been beta testing in factory and there's stress testing, but now we actually want to see it in a controlled setting but still in market. So we made about final designs. We had instructors all around the world trying them. We shot a lot of content with our instructors on them. We've done over a hundred demos with top editors in La and New York and they've demoed the product. So we've had a lot of feedback, not only feedback but actual physical testing of the reformer before we actually decided, okay, this is the design. We think we've done enough work where we are ready to actually put it on an assembly line, approve it and move into manufacturing. So they were all like handmade prior. Even though it is the final design, it's not like a big mass-manufactured run.

Ethan Peyton: Right.

Lee Belzberg: So once we did our initial preorder, that's how we decided how many we were going to manufacture. Now we had an amount that we wanted to hit, but we surpassed that.

Ethan Peyton: Nice.

Lee Belzberg: Which was exciting. Thank you. And for a preorder at a product at our price point, it was really exciting to see the appetite that was involved and also allowed us for that AHA moment where we thought we had a product that is going to take off.

Melissa Bentivoglio: So without any marketing, we sold preorders. And then we were very comfortable saying we can move into our first manufacturing run of because not dissimilar to like a Tesla model we had already preordered.

Ethan Peyton: Sure.

Melissa Bentivoglio: So a lot of companies do the opposite. They go into a manufacturing run and let's say they preorder. Now arrives and there's a certain amount of pressure being applied that you have this inventory. You don't want it to be stagnant inventory and you must sell them.

Ethan Peyton: And I think that's the smart thing because if you make it and then nobody wants it, then our proof of concept was solidified.

Melissa Bentivoglio: And at the onset of us launching as a public-facing company.

Ethan Peyton: Obviously, as you mentioned earlier, there's software. And that's just like one of the other things. You've got the marketing. As I mentioned earlier, this is like eight businesses in one. You're doing all these photo shoots. That's management of basically a business. You're hiring instructors, you're making these classes. I'm sure you're building out these beautiful sets. It's so many different things. And I know that we've focused a lot on manufacturing, but I know that the seed round that you all raised was a million. Is that correct?

Lee Belzberg: Yeah, basically a million. Plus we ended up doing a safe.

Ethan Peyton: Got you.

Melissa Bentivoglio: So I raised an additional million just internally amongst our lead investors.

Ethan Peyton: Okay, that makes sense. Okay, so out of that, $ million and you don't have to give exact figures, but what percentage do you think went into just the manufacturing and design and building out of the frame reformer itself, not counting software, not. Counting the photo shoots and everything else that kind of goes along with that.

Lee Belzberg: Manufacturing.

Ethan Peyton: And manufacturing and prototyping and basically to get it to the point where you had ready to go. If I send an order to the manufacturer, they are going to ship me.

Lee Belzberg: What I want close to a couple of million dollars.

Melissa Bentivoglio: Okay, yeah, definitely. And by the way, software is very expensive also.

Ethan Peyton: Oh, I believe that. Yeah, absolutely.

Melissa Bentivoglio: Creating the actual brand associated, even just the digitization, it's all extremely costly. The one thing we didn't really engage with was marketing. Our marketing has been totally organic. We hired a fabulous PR company and all of our press has been organic. So we've not pressed play on the marketing just yet. And I think that's one of the reasons why we were able to get to market and actually start shipping in fulfillment with a seed funding company.

Lee Belzberg: I also think that keeping our team lean, I think a lot of people, when they go out and raise money, they look to kind of expand the team, expand the teams, take a little step back, maybe not be as hands-on. But for us to understand the magnitude of the business that we were getting into, from logistics to manufacturing to design to software to building out a subscription model to building out an investor base, we really wanted to understand the intricacies of the business. And the only way to do that was to be completely hands-on and to have enough money to get to market on a seed-funded company. You can't just start hiring people.

Ethan Peyton: Right? So let's touch on that team for just a second. As I mentioned in the intro, it's a team of like five people.

Lee Belzberg: It was four for a long time.

Melissa Bentivoglio: Myself and Lee, we had a consultant who worked as head of finance. And then there's some external partnerships. Like, we had a PR company. We have an assistant. We include her. When we say our team of four, our assistant is included in that.

Lee Belzberg: She focuses on social media. We have her doing a number of different things. Especially for a startup, you need everybody doing multiple halves.

Ethan Peyton: So you've got you two, you've got the assistant who's the one other. Okay. I'm sitting here digging and looking through the brush for the manufacturing experience, and it sounds like you all just made it. You developed that expertise.

Lee Belzberg: You know, the hours, that model about, hours.

Melissa Bentivoglio: What model?

Lee Belzberg: About, Well, if you do, hours, become an expert, master it. Well, we're on that trajectory where it's constant learning, constant reading, constant understanding. I actually read a book that one of the people for supply chain management recommended to me to read, and it was called Poorly Made in China. And when I was listening to this, one of my lead investors who are manufacturing partners said, things have really changed since the s. So a lot of the risk that I was reading about had been mitigated.

Ethan Peyton: Oh, man.

Lee Belzberg: It's definitely getting way more buttoned up overseas and having an investor base that could really help us and teach us. We really leaned on it. So as much as we were four people, we had a lot of great people behind us, really helping us expedite our way to market.

Ethan Peyton: All right, so thank you for sharing all that about the manufacturing. It's super cool to see you get this far and see so much momentum with essentially a team of four, including yourselves. But let's talk a little bit about what we're going to see, what's next for Frame?

Lee Belzberg: We're going to disrupt the entire market of Pilates, all right. By making it accessible. I mean, for us, it's not only the D to C market, which is the consumer market, but it's also the B to B market, which has a huge appetite for reformer, pilates. And we get emails every single day to put our products in all these REITs condominiums, hotel chains, amongst others, micro Gyms, and then also people that want to open studios. So for us, it's creating new product. We have a pilates box that is just part of our repertoire and then also starting having merchandise like clothing, socks, balls, amongst other things. There's a lot of when he says.

Melissa Bentivoglio: Balls, he means pilates, I think.

Lee Belzberg: Pilates balls.

Ethan Peyton: Oh, I'm glad you clarified.

Lee Belzberg: Yeah, glad you clarified as well.

Melissa Bentivoglio: And also being in people's homes.

Lee Belzberg: Yes.

Melissa Bentivoglio: So currently presently our Frame reformer is in our st early adopters, which was a partnership via Goop. I don't know if you're familiar with Gwyneth Paltrow's goop.

Ethan Peyton: Sure.

Melissa Bentivoglio: The feedback has been amazing.

Lee Belzberg: We actually had somebody recently write us that she would like to sleep on the reformer. She loves it so much.

Melissa Bentivoglio: Yeah, nice.

Lee Belzberg: So when you have your units in people's homes, you're definitely a little worried that wondering how it's going to go. But it's been an incredible experience so far from the early customers, and now.

Melissa Bentivoglio: Just landed in the US. So getting ready to schedule those out also.

Ethan Peyton: Nice. Yeah, it sounds like there's a lot going on. I'm excited to see, especially when you all press go on the marketing, I'm excited to see what comes out of that. But we're moving on to the question that I love asking the most, and I'm going to ask this to each of you individually. And Lee, let's go with you first. What is your number one piece of advice for early-stage entrepreneurs?

Lee Belzberg: Don't listen to anybody other than yourself.

Melissa Bentivoglio: Did you steal mine?

Lee Belzberg: I just think that people look at all the risks that are involved in starting a business and immediately the advice that they'll typically give you is like, don't do it, but as blatant as possible. Because if you have something that you believe in and that you think will be disruptive and go for it. I just think that there's not enough entrepreneurs out know that are really out there to take the risk. And I think that if you are one of those entrepreneurs, take the risk. You only have one life. Go for it.

Ethan Peyton: Go for it. And Melissa, go for it. What's your number one piece of advice for early-stage entrepreneurs?

Melissa Bentivoglio: My number one piece of advice would be to trust your to trust your gut. So I'm very intuitive and I think that a lot of entrepreneur have a built in intuition that oftentimes is ignored. And if you trust your gut instinct, whether that pertains to hiring, whether it pertains to who you take on your cap table because you're inviting people into your business, you have to trust your gut.

Ethan Peyton: All right. I think both of those are excellent pieces of advice and I thank you both for offering those. We're moving up right to the end here. This has been a lot of fun. I'm sad that it has to end. But last question, where can people connect with you online? And how can our listeners support Frame?

Lee Belzberg: So we were at Frame Reformer on Instagram where they can come and check out the content and kind of see the evolution of our company. And also we have a website, Framefitness.com, where you can go and purchase and kind of see what we're up to, see where we have been written about, see the awards that we've won already. I think the future is bright and we're really excited to grow with our customers.

Ethan Peyton: Awesome. Yeah. We're going to put links to everything that you just said and everything else we talked about in the show notes over at startupsavant.com podcast. If you're watching the video version of this, you can find the link directly below there. But that's going to be it. I think we all got a heck of a good education in the manufacturing process today, so thank you both for coming on. It's been a real pleasure. All right, that's going to be it for this week's episode of the Startup Savant podcast. Thank you for listening. Hey, if you're enjoying this show, share it with your founder friends. Besides the obvious and immediate benefits you'll receive from the deep level of gratitude your friend will express to you, it also helps us grow the show. So now let me share with you my deep level of gratitude. Thank you so much. Oh, you're the best. Let me give you a big old hug. Yeah, bring it in there, buddy. All right, that's going to be enough of that. Join us next week, next Wednesday morning, for another awesome founder chat. And until then, go and build something beautiful.