Kara Ebel:
Fabian, welcome to your own show. Today is going to be all about Toneoptic and your path from brand strategist to founder. I can’t wait to hear more about what you’ve learned through this experience. So thank you for letting me steal the mic away from you for this episode.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
You know, I still I still have my own mic here. So I feel like I’m still somewhat in charge, but it’s definitely a take over and it feels a little awkward. But thank you so much for being on the other side. This is definitely different.

Kara Ebel:
Of course. And do you think you could kick us off by telling us more about how Toneoptic even came to be?

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you have 3 hours, let’s jump in to it. I’m going to, I’m going to keep it, you know, keep it fairly concise. But it’s been a crazy, crazy journey. So, I mean, I’ve been a founder of pretty much all my life, but it’s such a different kind of animal to be a founder, not of a service oriented business, which suddenly to me feels like it’s a walk in the park. But to actually be in hardware, which they say, there’s the word hard in it for a reason, it’s really hard to be in hardware, none of that I had an idea of, right? So two and a half years ago, pandemic, I found this sketch of mine where I had this idea of, wouldn’t it be cool if you have all of your records, your vinyl records stored on the wall the same way that you have books stored in your library? Right? That’s what people want to do. It looks really cool. But you can’t find anything. There’s absolutely no way you can find it based on these thin spines. Some of them have no typography on them. Some of them are too thin to even have typography on them. Either way. It’s like during the pandemic, I realized I have close to 2000 records and I’m listening to, I’m listening to ten, over and over and over again, because those are the ones with the big fat spines and the bold type, and those are the ones that I always gravitate to. And so I found the sketch that I did a long time ago where I said, wouldn’t it be cool if you can pull out the records and the records rotate towards you and you can go through the records like in a record store, you can flip through them and you push it back into the wall. And so I had this idea, which really sounds so rudimentary, really, you know, easy. You’ve got, you’ve got something that rotates out 90 degrees and then you push it back in. And I don’t know what got into me, Kara, but somehow, like it was it was July 21, I think, I suddenly said, well, I mean, you know, it’s the pandemic. Why don’t I, why don’t I just use some of the time and why don’t I just contact someone and ask, how difficult is this? And that’s the biggest that’s the biggest mistake or the biggest opportunity. Because the minute that you say, well, let me just make a call from there on, like now I’m like, I don’t know, $70,000 later, you know, in the minors, like two and a half years later, you know, utility patents and whatever. And I’m like, yeah, that’s kind of how it started. It’s kind of crazy.

Kara Ebel:
All right. So, I mean, it sounds like you basically got the entrepreneur bug and you couldn’t let it go.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Well, that’s what happens with a bug, right? It’s there. Yeah, it keeps bugging me, but it’s, listen, I entrepreneurship is everything. I mean, when it comes to, when it comes to me running my business, I mean from literally, from the minute that I got a green card, I started my agency out of the garage. And so it’s not much different now. I’m like, I love that idea of putting something out there and being your own boss and doing something that, you know, just creating you know, on your own, on your own timeline. It is I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t change it for anything. But it’s hard.

Kara Ebel:
I’m pretty sure there’s no one listening to this podcast that would disagree with you on that one.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah.

Kara Ebel:
I really love that you’ve, you know, you’ve taken, you’ve taken risks in the past, whether it’s kind of going out on your own and creating your own branding agency and then now, you’ve shifted in a way from brand strategist to entrepreneur. How has that been for you?

Fabian Geyrhalter:
You know, it just to make clear for all my clients listening, I haven’t shifted. I’m doing both. So I’m still happy to serve everyone, you know. And it’s I mean, the way that it changed is that, you know, I mean, I have a lot and I mean I’ve always had empathy for my clients, but I have even more empathy for my clients now. So it really, it affected the way that I serve my clients where and this is something that I’m going to get into in January of this year and I’m sure I’m going to talk more about it in my mentorship groups and on Instagram and so on, where I’m really changing the way that I will work with clients now based on what I experienced. So now that I am in the driver’s seat, you know, as an entrepreneur and I see all this stuff that flies at me 24/7 and branding, which I, of course, as a brand strategist, thought was the most important thing in the universe ever. Bar none is, I mean, I saw myself going through this journey where suddenly I realized, oops, I forgot to put the logo on the product. And I’m like, wait, I am the brand guy. So it’s this thing where I just, I just learned a lot about how you navigate through these thousands of things and how I might better talk to my clients about branding and how to integrate, you know, branding in kind of like smaller pieces throughout the way. I’m in midst of this this, this thought process. More on that later. But yeah, it definitely has affected me as a brand strategist. You know, also being this being this founder of the site now of a, of a hardware startup.

Kara Ebel:
Yeah, but that’s amazing. And so you’re basically wearing many hats at this point. Brand strategist, entrepreneur. But tell us a little bit about what it was like to build the Toneoptic brand DNA.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
That was the easiest thing. You know, so the thing is, like I literally did it on one transatlantic flight. I’m like, oh, so it was really funny, Kara, because, you know, a lot about FINIEN and about my brand workshop and eResonaid and all of that. For those of you listening and who don’t know about this, right? I basically with my clients, I sit down for 8 hours and we define their brand. Right? And then for bootstrapped entrepreneurs, I have an online version which is called eResonaid, which you can do on your own. So I’m like, oh my God, I’m a founder. I need to think about my brand. I have to walk in my own footsteps and I have to actually take it, eResonaid myself. So I was literally on that plane ride, and I, a very well structured course by the way, highly recommend it. So I went through my own course and it came so naturally. And in a way, this really showed me that this philosophy that I have where great brands are not built by agencies, but great brands are built by founders that have the right advisors and consultants that understand branding along the way, that just really get cemented more and more. Because my brand DNA, its discovery. That came up immediately, like that idea of, you know, the reason why I built the product is because I want to discover these records in my collection that I otherwise would forget about because I can flip through them because they’re beautiful on the wall. All right. So that was kind of the reason. But then the thrill of finding a record that you’re looking for, for years in a store. That’s discovery, right? The thrill of listening to a new artist or hearing a new song by your favorite band and it just came out. That’s Discovery, right? And then now being in the world of product, to me as a product startup, I know there will be tons of innovation along the way, and I constantly have to do R&D and think about new ways of solving problems. That’s discovery. So, that brand DNA of discovery came to me super, super easy.

Kara Ebel:
Amazing. So, Toneoptic is discovery just like Coke equals happiness or Everlane equals transparency.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
That’s it. That’s the one word. That’s the one word. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Everything kind of goes around that word. Yeah.

Kara Ebel:
But then, you know, so, you know, it sounds like this time around you didn’t climb down. You had to sit yourself down, go through this process of building the brand. But tell us a little bit about how do you balance the creative aspects of brand building with the commercial realities of running a business? How do you approach that?

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Well, I mean, I don’t know exactly where you’re taking this question, but I’m sure you will take it into different directions based on my answer. But look, the thing is, I’m I still have, you know, a creative director on my side, you know, at all times, Jessie, who’s doing all the work for, for FINIEN, for my clients when it comes to creative. So I had this amazing luxury of having fun with the brand from day one because I didn’t have a product. So it’s like for the longest time we were selling a dream like any entrepreneur, like an Elon Musk does. Like we, we just, I knew from the beginning, let’s create buzz. We can create a brand. Let’s create the brand and have the product follow. So that is never a problem. And I mean, good example, just, just a couple of weeks ago from, from when this airs there was Black Friday. And so for the first time, I’m running a DTC startup. I had to do the whole Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday, right? The whole thing. And we literally we created, I think, 12 videos. We created so many posts, like, it was, it was a week worth of like a full timer almost, right. Like creating all of these design assets and brand assets. And then sure enough, the check out didn’t work. It’s like, it’s like things like that where I’m like, I’m full on the brand. Don’t get me wrong. Like, that is never a problem, right? We can do that. But then when it comes to like things, we’re like, oh, because now we give a free gift on the site and a gift doesn’t have shipping associated with it. Now suddenly you can’t buy the product. Oops. And I just slept for 8 hours and I wake up and I’m like, oh, we just lost $4,000. Not good, right? So it’s like, but, but that’s, you know, that’s the entrepreneurship where, you know, it’s Thanksgiving Day and then walking with my in-laws on this beautiful hike we planned. And within 10 minutes. I’m sorry, guys, you keep walking. I got to take, to take the car back home because, you know, I got to fix something real quick. I mean, that’s really entrepreneurship with a bootstrapped start up in the beginning, because you just every day you make 20 mistakes and you get like one or two, you know, like positive reactions where you’re like, oh, that makes it worthwhile, right?

Kara Ebel:
Mm hmm. Yeah. No, it’s it sounds like, you know, Toneoptic hasn’t been smooth sailing from day one. Do you have any other war stories that you can share with us that you’ve had to tackle? Any hurdles?

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Oh, do I have, do I have, well look, I mean, in the, in the end, if you, if you’re, if you’re crazy enough to build a product that hasn’t existed before in the market that you don’t understand with a vehicle which is e-commerce that you haven’t done before, you just expose yourself to some, some might call it failure or some might call it an immense amount of knowledge gathering and learning on the job. Right. And you know, like the way that I’m going to come out of this is going to be so much enriched, right. When it comes to marketing, when it comes to business, when it comes to all of that. So did I have fails? Yeah, I mean, too many too many to mention. Right. I think it was two months into doing this seriously where, you know, basically at that point I started writing checks. Right. I started well, I guess at this point I did sell. So I started, I started transferring money to people in order for this product to come to life. And a couple of weeks in, I started, I started realizing that this whole thing might never, ever make it. I might spend a lot of money and it might never make it. So the best that I can do is start writing a book about it. And so I started writing a book. And the first the first line of the book is, if anything, I get a book out of it, right? It’s basically, so there are so there are so many things that literally every day, right? It’s like, you know, I mean, a big one was that I spent half a year creating this super functional, beautiful, drool worthy product, which was extremely high end and super expensive to build. And it was like the Rolls Royce of like record storage, right? It cost $6,000 at the time, right. To like, to like, sell it, right. Like it was it was amazing. And I wouldn’t have even made a profit. And what happened is that that unit was not shippable. So, we built this beautiful thing. And the only way that you could basically transport it is, is put it in a van and drive it from point A to B. It would, it would come apart, airlift it would come apart, you know, everywhere else. So that sounds like such a such a weird thing because you’re like, well, I mean, didn’t you build it in a sturdy way? No, totally. But there’s this whole stress test that costs, you know, like $10,000 or whatever where the product gets shaken up like it would be on an airplane. And it does this and this. And you have to keep reiterating for another 10,000 or 20,000 on the packaging until it’s perfect. We didn’t have that money, so we just said, well, we built a really sturdy box that has a great mechanism in it and that just wasn’t enough. So, you know, put in another, however much money and another couple of months, and then you get to something that’s better and better and better. But this reiterative process where just because you can’t ship it, that’s something you can’t plan on. So that’s a big fail. It’s suddenly like, okay, half a year later and like another like $30,000, you’re like, oh good, we can ship this thing now. You don’t plan on that.

Kara Ebel:
I sounds like such a, such an obvious thing. And yet and yet.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
And it’s not obvious at all because you can literally take this thing, put it in a box, drive it to someone and everything is good. You can move it around, right? So it’s like this thing where, what I learned is that unless you have, just like in branding, if you don’t have specialists around you all along the way, you know you will make these mistakes, right? And so now that I’m two and a half years into that, I have all of these people around me, or at least as many as I can possibly afford still being bootstrap, you know, like just having turned on the ecommerce engine a month ago and starting to slowly start seeing money coming in. Right. So it’s about you have to, you have to have experts for everything around you at all times.

Kara Ebel:
No, absolutely. And I mean, speaking of branding, what does branding mean to you? Tell us more about that.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Well, you know, it’s so well, obviously, you know, I’ve answered this question probably in different ways you know, for the last 20, 30 years. So, maybe not 30. Maybe that’s too much. Right. But I always try to whenever I’m on a podcast and it’s like Fabian of, you know, FINIEN and Chameleon Collective and the brand author, and like me being the brand person and I answer this question, it’s always different because it really to me, that’s the beauty of the idea of branding. And the idea for the brand is even in my hat, it’s constantly kind of like, you know, like feels a little bit different. So I don’t have that standard answer, which I kind of like. But from an entrepreneurial point of view, now that I, now that I’m running this thing next to, next to what I usually do, I really think that, I would describe it that a brand is really a company that people love for a reason and then branding is honing in on and sharing that particular reason. That’s, that’s how I see it today, it’s going to be different tomorrow.

Kara Ebel:
Well we’ll tune into the next podcast and see if your definition evolved.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Exactly.

Kara Ebel:
So tell me more about, you know, are there elements that make up for a resilient brand? What can founders learn from you with respect to building a resilient brand and the key elements that it takes to build a resilient brand?

Fabian Geyrhalter:
I think I mean, a resilient brand. First of all, it’s really based, it’s based on the right strategy, right? And on the right product. So the right product is, you know, our service is something that that you can uniquely own. That doesn’t mean that you are uniquely doing it, but you can uniquely own it. In the case of Toneoptic, it is completely unique. No one’s ever done it before. That really helps us, right? Like get the foot in the door and be resilient in the way where people, it’s hard to get a piece of that right like that. That makes us resilient in that way. But having it based on a really strong brand architecture and brand strategy, super important because when it comes to like naming conventions and when it comes to all of these things, it can really break a business, you know, quickly or not having the right values or having really the cemented mantra of the company of like, look, this is who we are. This is how we want to function in the world. This is how we want to come across. And people can feel that because a lot of startups don’t think about that part of branding at all, right? They just push out the product, do A, B tests, make sure that the price is right and go for it. And they will never be a resilient brand. They will just hopefully have good products, or good enough products to keep going for a certain amount of time. But again, back to my, to today’s definition of branding for me is like that idea that it’s a company that people love for a reason and what is that reason? Right? And that reason most of the time is not just the product. And if it is the product and the product is so insanely overly awesome that you can feel the love just based on the product, right? Because you’re like, this product is so dang good that I’m never going to you know, I’m never going to go to any of the competitors because of that. So brand differentiation can start at a product level. Absolutely. But it needs to be, there needs to be this, this reason to love a brand for it to be resilient. And I think all of these, it’s this it’s all of these components together, right, that you’re just thoughtfully building a company into a brand that everyone working for you like it’s contagious. They feel that enthusiasm, they feel that excitement. They want to be part of it. And that then, that then sooner or later it just carries over to over to the customers. And that’s when, you know, you have something really exciting going on.

Kara Ebel:
And so speaking, you know, speaking of an awesome product and a brand that you can learn to love and get to know, it feels like you’ve really built a brand experience for Toneoptic on your website, you know. Could you tell us a little bit more about how can founders think about delivering a brand experience around their product when customers visit their website, look them up, etc.?

Fabian Geyrhalter:
It’s a, first thank you. And yes, it is, it is, it is really important. Right? And so even before I had a product that I could ship and for me that means a lot of things, no pun, you know, I already had, I had a podcast going where I interview people about like their record collection and, you know, like, like, you know, famous artists and DJs. And I already had, you know, the Toneoptic Ten, which is my favorite ten new releases of the last 30 days. And, you know, like there are things where I felt like we were ready getting in touch with what’s underlying, what’s the underlying excitement and love that we share with our audience. Right? And for me, this came very naturally because I love music. I, you know, I grew up in a household where my father was, you know, was a concert master for, you know, some of the most famous orchestras. And so he played the violin 24/7, in our house. You know, I dragged him onto my first record fair when I was 11 years old. So I started collecting records at 11. So it’s like to me, you know, I’m doing a side project, a music project. To me, music is just really life. So for me to become part of this, of this community, felt very natural, like I knew what I would like. And so that’s what, that’s what I give them now. So for instance, starting tomorrow, starting Sunday, we are going, I’m going to go to to a record shop and buy the coolest record that they have in the store. You know, you know, of course, under $100 or whatever. Right. But like something that’s really a holy grail. And I’m going to talk to the owners there and say, hey, what’s the coolest thing? And then I’m going to tell them about Toneoptic and I’m going to take the records. Hopefully they ask me that, oh, tell me more. And I’m like, hey maybe I’ve got some fliers in the car, right? Like, total grassroots, right? Like door to door. But then I’m going to post that record, you know, on Instagram and say, hey, we’re going to give that away, you know, in the next 48 hours, you know, all you have to do is just sign up, you know, like, leave your email in our, on our website and we’ll pick one of you to have this awesome record. Right? But that’s the kind of stuff where if I would be on the other end and I see that record and I know exactly this is worth a lot and it’s going to be worth more later on. I know 60 bucks is not a lot, but for collectors, this is the fun, right? I would totally opt in right, I’m like, this is cool. I want to be part of that community. Every month they give away this cool record and they talk to the record store owner and they’re tagged on it. And really that creates kind of like that snow. And this is a silly, this is a silly, small, small, small macro level thing, but it really creates this kind of like snowball effect, you know, where then this one record store owner talks to this other like, have you seen this Toneoptic thing? And then they’ve got fliers there, people see it and then it just like and then, you know, I tag them online and then, you know, like they then suddenly like they retweet it or they repost it. But it’s those little ideas where for me, it’s really fun anyways, like, I love doing it and I love I love connecting with the audience. And you know, a good example is there’s an audio retail chain in the US and I don’t want to name them right now because the deal is not 100% yet but they every time like I thought about the future of Toneoptic, I’m like, I just want to be sold there like I want Toneoptic there because super high end, they print these amazing catalogs, you know at Christmas time that everyone is drooling over even though it’s just a catalog, right. It’s like they’re doing so many things, right, I always wanted to be a part of that. Well I wrote them a year ago. You know, some sales guy there that came recommended and he never wrote back. And I’m like, oh, bummer. And then yesterday, the vice president of sales of that company left me a voicemail saying, hey, we saw you, we’ve been following you guys. We would love to sell you. And I’m like, okay, good. But when I picked up, when I picked up the phone and I called him back, he already totally got the idea of what Toneoptic is all about. He’s like, yeah, I’ve got 2000 records like down in the basement, I would love to just take like 70 up, put them on their rotation thing. And I’m like, I totally get it. This is so new, this is so different. And that to me, long winded answer to a short question, that is though how you can, how you can create these journeys where if someone goes to your website and they come out understanding exactly what it, what it would mean to them of like, oh, I can take my stuff out, I could put it up there, I can activate my record collection. If people start repeating the words that you put out there, then you know that the journey is a good one.

Kara Ebel:
No, I love it. I love it because it’s a way to convey your message. And of course, it sounds like your personal story, your passion for music. All of that affected the identity of Toneoptic. And so one of the things that I’d love to hear more about, and I think everyone would love to hear more about, is what would you recommend to founders when it comes to building the identity of their own brands? What should be top of mind for them when they really get into it?

Fabian Geyrhalter:
And when you say your own brands, you don’t mean their personal brand, but if they come up with a brand like Toneoptic that is very near and dear to them because it’s kind of like passion based, right?

Kara Ebel:
Right. That’s right.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I feel that after, after having talked to a hundred founders on a show called Hitting The Mark, which I used to run until today and I will again next time, after talking to all these founders, the ones that were solving a personal problem in a space that they feel passionate about. So let’s say, you know, someone who really loves cooking and then they figured, oh my God, there’s something missing in the process. And then they create that product or that recipe or that, you know, whatever service, it is so much easier for them to build that brand because they don’t need to do audience research, they don’t need to do market research, they don’t need to do any of that. As much as someone who says, let’s brainstorm about what startup idea we could come up with, which market we could penetrate, right? Let’s look at data. Which market is ripe for innovation, right? Those are the ones where it’s a data driven game, where brand is the last thing that they’re going to think about because it’s not really heart and soul that drives it. It’s really more like a financial, you know, idea that drives it, sort of like, hey, where can we find a market place, right where, you know, there’s a space for us. But the people who have a passion project and then suddenly they realize like there’s something in my hobby that’s missing, building a brand, yeah it might look like crap because they’re not designers, right? But creating, creating community and saying the right things, even though the copy might not be perfect. All of that, and fitting into these right groups and communities, that’s going to come very, very, very easy, very natural for me to it’s like one of the most, one of the most successful, you know, viral things that we’ve done was not creating. We had we had the unit set up in a studio. We spent like 12 hours setting it up, filming it, and it was perfect, right? That video was good. Got some traction, but not as much as when I put, you know, like a Depeche Mode record in there, like ten Depeche Mode records in there. And I flipped through them and I closed the unit again. And that’s the video. And I put it on the Depeche Mode Facebook group. People go nuts over it, right? And it took me 2 minutes to do, and it’s totally scrappy. And then I’m like, oh, wait a minute, let me do this for R.E.M., Let me do this for Bad Bunny. Let me do this for Mariah Carey, whoever. Right. Just put their records in, flip the thing, do the thing, and then suddenly everyone there goes crazy because they can relate to it. And they’re like, oh my God. Like, there’s someone, one of us. And it’s like, oh yeah, it’s my product. And they’re like, oh my God. Right? So it’s, there’s this, there’s this connection, but it’s easy. It comes easy because it’s all of these are your people in a way, right? We all love music. We all share this passion.

Kara Ebel:
Oh, absolutely. And you know, not to plug my own musical preferences, but you should absolutely do that with a Beyonce record, because if the Beyonce community picks it up.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Well, I talked, I talked to her and she’s going to ship me a bunch. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, look, I wanted to talk to Taylor first, but she, like, we kept playing phone tag and I’m like, girl, please. Right. So, you know, finally I got Beyonce on. Yeah.

Kara Ebel:
I’m glad you’re on it. I’m glad you’re on.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
I’m on it. I’m on it Kara.

Kara Ebel:
So, you know, based on everything we’re talking about, do you feel like every brand designer, every brand strategist at some point or another should try to build a product of their own?

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Well, I guess first, get a physical. Make sure your body is ready for it. No, it’s look, it’s it. I mean, the standard answer would be, yes, of course you should do it. Right. But I feel like it is really, you have to be, you have to be physically, mentally ready to do it because it is really, really, really hard. So, you know, it’s like I, you know, when you, when you create a product and you put so much effort into it and then you start getting hate mail, which people do all the time for anything, right? It gets really personal, right? Or when you when you work really, really hard and then things break and then you start, you go back two steps every day for 30 days, for 60 days, for 100 days. It’s hard for you not to break. Right? And not to say, you know what, screw it. This is silly. I can just go back to my day job. Things are fine, right? And I say this because I think it’s not, it’s not, it’s not talked about enough, right. Because it’s all like fail forward. Cool. Yeah. And it’s like, oh, we’re also cool. It’s like, no, there’s huge mental issues with entrepreneurs. Right. There’s no group that they can go to. It’s this thing where, you know, like they’re lonely doing the thing and they get 80% crap and like 20% positive messages and then suddenly, you know, they’re on Hitting The Mark and they’re like, oh, everything is great because we’re successful now. Yeah, it’s like, but until then, you had to suffer a lot, right? So I really think you need to be ready. I totally wasn’t ready. I had no idea. I’m like, oh, like, it’s going to be great. I’m going to have someone build it and I’m going to sell it. I mean, perfect. More power to me, right? It’s really, really hard. And it takes, it takes a lot out of you. It takes a lot of time away from you and your family, from, you know, the other job that actually makes money, right? Like, you really have to think this through if it is worth it for you, A and B, when the right time is. And I think it’s much more about the second, right? Like when is the right time in your life where you say, and for me it kind of was you know, it was at the end of the pandemic, it was, you know, like FINIEN is running smoothly and part of Chameleon Collective, work is coming in easier, like all of that stuff. Right. It was kind of like, not a bad time. But those are things that you need to ask yourself. And all of my advice is going to go right over your heads because the minute that you have an idea and you’re like, oh, that’s a good one, you’re going to do it anyways. And that’s just how entrepreneurship works, right? You’re like, oh my God, this would be so cool. And at that moment, either you do it or you don’t do it, or you sit on it for ten years and then you do it. But yeah, that’s an entrepreneur. You kind of want to follow through with your ideas.

Kara Ebel:
The passion is definitely there.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah. Yeah.

Kara Ebel:
So, tell me, you know. Tell us what’s next for Toneoptic. What are you excited about in the next six months?

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Oh, my God. Everything I mean, look, excitement is never like there’s always enough excitement. Well, first of all, we started selling these, these new units, which are now fully modular. You can, you can put them on the wall. You can have them, you know, like on a flat piece of furniture AHM build them in, etc., like these units, which are now $325 to $375, you know, fairly affordable shipping all over the world now, since yesterday. We got a great like, you know, like shipping rate. This is only 30 days in now, right. So for me, the next, the next, you know like two three months are all about like getting the units into as many, as many, getting as many orders as possible. We’re starting production next week. They’re going to ship in February. So for me, the next couple of months are all about getting a lot of orders in, making sure, you know, I keep pushing community and then making sure the production is insanely good, that everything QC right, everything goes perfectly to the right customers at the right time. And after that, it’s really, it’s kind of like the floodgates, right? Because then people are going to install them. They’re going to do videos and everything hopefully is going to, it’s going to be much, much smoother. Also starting retailers. So people will be able to then see the units, you know, all across the world, you know, like at their favorite audio retailers. So all of that is going to happen. But I tell you, Kara, there’s a list of like 20 R&D ideas that we sit on that we want to do with the unit. I get so much feedback of really good ideas that, yeah, I mean, you know, that’s why I love doing this, because I know this is not just this one quick idea. This this can really turn into something that you can just like keep on, keep on, keep on spinning. No pun. So.

Kara Ebel:
I love it. And you know what? Let me, let me add to your already exciting and long to do list. So if you could pick just one artist or one band, past or present, although present is probably more relevant, to fall in love with Toneoptic, who would it be and why?

Fabian Geyrhalter:
You know, I mean, so here’s the thing, and this is what really excites me. Artists love this thing. So on a Friday night, suddenly my phone lights up with an incoming Instagram video call, which I didn’t know that existed. And it was it was Sid from Slipknot, from the band. And he’s like, he wants to talk to me because he loves the product, right? I had you know, I had DJ Nu-Mark of Jurassic Five saying, hey, big respect. And I’ve got like bands and people that I that I really looked up to and still do like kind of like cheering me on, on the side. So I have that now, who is that one artist or that one? I, I’m not a fan boy, when it comes to that. I think everyone knows by now I’m, you know, I’m collecting Depeche Mode. I’m a big Depeche Mode, kind of like, you know, you know, fan when it comes to the music and collecting. So, wouldn’t mind, if you know, if Martin Gore and Dave Gahan are like you know but really for me, the idea that anyone who is in the in the scene reaches out to me and says, wow, I love your product. I would love to have a couple of those in my studio. That to me is amazing. I guess the one that I would absolutely love is Rick Rubin. So Rick Rubin is a is a producer, and he produced everyone from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to I mean, literally I mean, literally, he produces everyone and he’s got this insane Malibu beach studio which these Toneoptics would fit really, really nicely in. So that would be really cool. But yeah, somehow I feel like it might happen. You know, I’m very optimistic like that.

Kara Ebel:
Amazing. You got it. You got to keep the optimism high. I love it.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Absolutely.

Kara Ebel:
So then before we wrap this up, tell us and for any artists or bands that are looking for you after this question, how can people get to know Toneoptic?

Fabian Geyrhalter:
It’s really easy. It’s Toneoptic anywhere Toneoptic.com is the site, that’s the best place to start. I’m really active on Instagram, handle @Toneoptic, but Pinterest goes strong too, TikTok wherever go to Toneoptic and you can find us.

Kara Ebel:
Perfect well Fabian thanks for joining me today. I loved this conversation and I hope that everyone’s wheels are spinning after the insights that we got from you on this episode.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Well, thank you and thank me for having me. This is, I have to, I have to say, this was a really, really fantastic show. I’m going to, I’m going to try to learn more about it. Hitting The Mark it is, it sounds really good. It sounds good. I’m going to listen to this a lot.

Kara Ebel:
I’ve heard good things.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Thank you Kara so much for taking over for this episode and spinning it around. This was this was tons of fun.

Kara Ebel:
Thank you.