June 25, 2025 • 32 mins
Alex Neist is the visionary founder and CEO of Hostage Tape, the #1 selling, original mouth tape that has revolutionized the market and drastically changed how millions sleep. The company has inspired over 200,000 customers worldwide and formed high-profile partnerships with the UFC and Joe Rogan's podcast, emphasizing the importance of quality sleep.
Before his entrepreneurial success with Hostage Tape, Alex was an Arena Football League quarterback. He later enjoyed a prosperous career in sports technology, building a seven-figure software business that provided video analysis tools for coaches and teams, which was eventually acquired. However, personal challenges, including chronic snoring that led to marital strife and divorce, prompted a significant life transformation.
The turning point in Alex's life came when he discovered the concept of mouth taping through James Nestor's best-selling book, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. This simple yet effective technique not only improved his sleep but also profoundly impacted his physical health and mental well-being. He lost 25 pounds, regained his energy, and reconciled with his family.
Fueled by his personal transformation, Alex founded Hostage Tape in 2022 to provide others with the same life-changing benefits he experienced. The company's rapid growth and success reflect Alex’s commitment to promoting nasal breathing and improving sleep quality.
Alex’s journey is a testament to personal resilience and the power of change. After reconnecting with his ex-wife, the couple has since gotten back together, and Alex now enjoys a fulfilling family life, sharing the benefits of mouth taping with his loved ones.
Before his entrepreneurial success with Hostage Tape, Alex was an Arena Football League quarterback. He later enjoyed a prosperous career in sports technology, building a seven-figure software business that provided video analysis tools for coaches and teams, which was eventually acquired. However, personal challenges, including chronic snoring that led to marital strife and divorce, prompted a significant life transformation.
The turning point in Alex's life came when he discovered the concept of mouth taping through James Nestor's best-selling book, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. This simple yet effective technique not only improved his sleep but also profoundly impacted his physical health and mental well-being. He lost 25 pounds, regained his energy, and reconciled with his family.
Fueled by his personal transformation, Alex founded Hostage Tape in 2022 to provide others with the same life-changing benefits he experienced. The company's rapid growth and success reflect Alex’s commitment to promoting nasal breathing and improving sleep quality.
Alex’s journey is a testament to personal resilience and the power of change. After reconnecting with his ex-wife, the couple has since gotten back together, and Alex now enjoys a fulfilling family life, sharing the benefits of mouth taping with his loved ones.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to another edition of CEOs you should know and
with us today. Alex Nice from Hostage Tape, Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
It's great to be here, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Okay, first of all, I thought I knew what Hostage
Tape was because I know I've heard the name, and
then I didn't know that you guys were based right here.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
It's wild. I mean, you wouldn't think that a company
called the Hostage Tape would be right here in Minnesota.
But Hostage Tape, it's basically this. It's the most badass
beard safe mouth tape. Okay on the whole planet. That's
what it is.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
So okay, So what do you mouth tape? What are
you doing with that? Exactly?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yeah? So what mount tape does, and it sounds crazy
when people think about what mount tape is. You've probably
seen it on TikTok. It's gotten really big on TikTok.
But Mount tape basically keeps your mouth shut and it
forces nasal breathing because, believe it or not, we shouldn't
be breathing through our mouths. We should only be breathing
through her nose, especially when we sleep.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Really, so, as I always heard, that can contribute to
bite too. I guess somehow you like that is like
a big deal.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Well, so it really comes down to when you're breathing
through your mouth, breathing through our mouth. That actually, when
you think of why we do it, it kind of
goes back to the poor foods we eat. We get
a bunch of processed foods. So that's that's gotten really
bad over the last twenty thirty years. And so when
(01:24):
we eat a bunch of or processed foods, we uh.
There's also a theory on breastfeeding, right, so the fact
that we don't breastfeed as much as we used to
and baby formula kind of really got introduced in the
late seventies early eighties, and I'm a product of that, right,
I was born in seventy nine. So having all that,
(01:45):
then we started to develop mouth breathing and we're mouth
breathing way more than we should be. So when we
mouth breathing, we breathe in and out of our mouth.
We're not getting any kind of oxygen we should be,
ah right, So we don't get oxygen. We don't also
trigger the release of night your oxide, which then opens
up the blood vessels, gets the blood moving, gets that
oxygen uptake going, and when you breathe through your mouth,
(02:07):
it actually triggers a signal so that your body feels
like it's in this fight or flight mode. Right, So
then you you're very stressed and you're very anxious. So
when you keep your mouth shut, breath through your nose
releases nitrog oxide. Now your body is in a very
more relaxed state.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
And so it's like, if you call somebody a mouth breather,
that really is like a bad thing, right it is.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
It's like, I think when you think about that term
mouth breather, it's a very dated term. But the Stranger
Things brought it back to us and they mentioned mouth
breather and so then it kind of got re re
put back into the zeitgeist. So people are like, oh,
mouth breather, what does that mean? So it's totally not
a good thing.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
So are there other health issues that go along with that? Then?
Speaker 2 (02:51):
So for there actually are. So when your mouth breathe.
A couple of other ones that are interesting, is it
actually damages you. So when you mouth breathe, it evaporates
the good saliva and the good bacteria, and then bad
bacteria forms. She got dragon breath right when you wake up,
and it also eats away at the enamel. Oh no,
(03:13):
and then you get cavities. And so I'm a prime
example of that. Like my whole life being a mouth breather,
my teeth got pitted out. And so when I was younger,
my dentist didn't know what was going on. And so
then later now I realized that it's because I was
a mouth breathing in my whole life, bad bacteria ate away,
pitted out my teeth, and as a result, I don't
(03:35):
have the greatest oral hygiene. But another interesting story is
so I don't usually go to the dentist as much
as I should.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Oh right.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
My wife is the one that drags me in there
because we've got two kids. So going into the dentist
after a two year window, right, I wouldn't recommend it.
But after to your window from I've been mouth taping
now for almost six years. I went back in and
the dental hygienis was she was looking at my teeth,
she was measuring the gums and everything, and she said, wow,
(04:06):
your teeth and your gums actually look way better than
they did two years ago. What have you been doing?
And I haven't been. I don't floss, I brush, you know,
twice a day what you normally should do. And the
biggest changes that I've been mouth taping every night religiously.
So that kind of gives you a real example of
why when you keep your mouth shut and you nails breathe,
(04:28):
it can protect your teeth in a.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Really big way. Interesting, tell me about the beard safe
thing is it's just it's easier on it.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Then, So when you think of mouth taping, most men
and their mine immediately goes, so, well, what about my beard?
What about my mus stage? How am I going to
mouth tape that's not gonna work? Or even if I did,
what am I gonna like, you know, rip off all
my hair and you know, give myself a Brazilian wax
or whatever. So the way that I designed the tape
(04:56):
was so that it would work really well with facial
hair that then men wouldn't have to be worried about
is this gonna work? Is this gonna stick? Because most
like if you use three m MicroPort tape or just
some paper tape, it's not very comfortable, but it doesn't
work that well with stubble and facial hair. Ah, right,
because it's really rigid and it doesn't feel very comfortable.
(05:17):
But our tape it's this flexible fabric, so it goes
over hair really well, and it moves with your face
and it goes over hair and stubble really well. So
it alleviates this worry for men that is this gonna work?
Because I have most of us beneficial hair.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
So do you have different types of products? Is it
all one? We do?
Speaker 2 (05:36):
We do have a second product, So the hero product
is the mouth tape, which goes over the mouth. But
then what happened was is one of the biggest questions
we kept getting was well, what about my nose. I've
got a deviated septum. I can't breathe out of my nose,
so why would I moutape? So then we said, well,
let's look at what breathewright did. And ironically, Breathewrighte is
(05:56):
a Minnesota They were a Minnesota find of company. Didn't
know that and smart here, I know, right, We're all
about the different nasal breathing things. And so when this
so they created this no strip, I went all right, well,
let's take what Breatheway did. Let's create a no strip,
but let's actually make.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
It look cool.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
So I took that, we redesigned it and we made
it look like hostage tape, this black, sleek, badass look.
And then now that's our hero B product. So when
people come to the website, they usually buy our mouth tape,
but then they can add on our black no strips
in addition to it, which is great for when you sleep,
(06:36):
opens up the nose. But my favorite use for the
no strip is when I go for a run and
I work out. Oh, because a lot of people don't
realize that, look when you're working out, you're going for
a run, keep your mouth shut, breathe through your nose.
We shouldn't be huffing and puffing out of our mouth.
So when I wear it on my nose, it reminds
me to keep my mouth shut, and then I'm getting
way more air in through my nose as I'm doing
(06:58):
a workout.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
You get a lot of looks doing that.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Sure, well, I do you know what though, So I've
been wearing a nose trip now religiously. Like I go
to Lifetime every day, I go to the chanass in
Lifetime over by the headquarters. And because I've been doing
it for a couple of years, everybody knows that's the
hosta tape guy, So I'm used to it. Yeah, Like
I don't. I don't get the looks from thinking to
(07:22):
myself like, oh my god, everybody's looking at me, because
now everybody's looking at me, going he's the hostit tape guy.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Because they see us everywhere. Tell me a little bit,
abou you're a Golden Gopher. Yes, tell me a little
bit about your your journey from college life to well,
I guess to what you're doing now. Yeah, Well, I grew.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Up in southern Minnesota, so shout out to Fairmont Nice
all the way down and by the southern border there.
So I grew up there, played football there, and I
wanted to be a football player. So then I went
and I actually was a walk on. I got recruited
to play. I played it under Mason and was a
Golden Gopher. So then that was a while experience just
(08:00):
being able to play big time football.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
I didn't play.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
I was a backup. So I wasn't like anybody that
you ever heard of. But I was the kind of
guy that I knew I had talent, very much like
a Kurt Warner. Right, Kurt Warner didn't play a bunch
in college, but he knewed to play. So I ended
up being able to go play arena football after college,
and I played about six years arena football professional and
(08:25):
made a name for myself. And then at the tail
end of my career, you kind of have this moment
where are you going up? Are you making it to
the NFL? Or are you going down? And you're not
really going anywhere? Right? So I knew that I wasn't
going up. I wasn't going to make it into the NFL.
So I said, all right, I'm gonna I'm gonna pivot
and I'm going to create a business. So I created
(08:46):
a sports video analytics business and I used my knowledge
as a coach and as a player of how can
I take video and analytics and use it as a
coach and for teams. And then I built that bootstrap
that for about six teen years wow, and ran that
for a long time and then I sold it. And
it was through that experience of running that company and
(09:08):
then selling it that I went I got to do
something new. I want to do something different, and I
wanted to get into e commerce. But I was also
I hit a low point in my life. I had
a rock about a moment. So this is where the story,
okay gets interesting.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
I know a little bit about this, and I guess
I had this idea like we'll just push people to
the website because it was I mean, I'll be honest,
I got I got pretty emotional reading about if we're
talking about the same thing here, but I mean, you
go ahead.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah. So the so I had this rock about a
moment because there's a point in everybody's life where you change,
you go from one chapter to the next chapter. And
for me, when I retired and then I started my business,
it was this whole new change in your life where
how do you adapt? How do you change? And when
(09:55):
you're an athlete your whole life and then you've become
a dad, right and you become a husband and a father,
learn all those things, you have to completely change your
life and how you look at it. So that that
was an adjustment. So then when I was running that business,
I started to go downhill. My health wasn't great. I
wasn't taking care of myself and I hit this low
(10:15):
point where my wife and I actually got separated and
we went through divorce and we have two kids, and
it was through that time where I was selling the business,
because it was I was sixteen years into this thing,
and you do anything for sixteen years, you then have
this moment of like, do I want to keep doing
this or do I need to do something new? Do
(10:36):
I need to pivot? And you know, bootstrapping any kind
of a business for sixteen years is pretty amazing, And
so I knew that I want to sell this, I
want to see if I can go to the next level,
or I need to pivot. And when I sold it,
I realized I hated it. Because every entrepreneur goes through
that moment of you sell your business. You have these
(10:57):
illusions of grandeur where you might be able to take it,
but then you realize when you get acquired, they didn't
want me. They wanted what I built. So then I
knew a year in that I hate this. I didn't
like working for this big company. I wanted to get
out and start something new again and build.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
I'm a builder.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I love building things. And it was just at that
moment too, that I knew, all right, I'm having this
rock a bottle moment. I snored so bad that to
push my wife into the other bedroom. Okay, and it's
crazy as that sounds for people listening to this, the
reality is that snoring was this accelerant. When you snore
so bad, she sleeps in the other bedroom, which is
(11:37):
way more common than you think. There's a lot of
people that call it a sleep divorce. There's way more
people doing that than we realized. They just don't want
to admit it, and we shouldn't be doing that. But
that happened for me. So when snoring's happening, resentments building, right.
I kind of explain it like Indiana Jones. You have
Indiana Jones running out of the temple and you have
this boulder chasing. At some point, the boulder catches up
(12:00):
to you and you don't know what the dude, it
overtakes you. And that's really what it was like. All
these things started to kind of escalate out of control
and you can't get it back.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
And so.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Then we got separated, went through the divorce, and then
I had this rock bottom moment where I was fortunate
to have my aunt. Her house was kind of down
the road, so it was near where my kids and
my wife lived, so I didn't have to like completely
uprit and go somewhere else.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
So I had this.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Moment in my aunt's basement where I'm like, Okay, what
do I need to do as a father, as a husband,
as a leader. How do I look at myself and
take the next step, make a change, take accountability. So
I started with my health. Okay, being an athlete my
whole life, like that was one thing I was great at.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
But then now it was the.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
One thing that I let go. Right, So I looked
at my sleep. I said, Okay, I was such a
bad snore for so long because as guys, we take
that for granted, like we don't always look at our
health and go I'm gonna go into the doctor, right,
None of us want to go to the doctor. No,
we're just gonna like, now, I'll deal with it, right,
you know, all of our wives are saying, like, here,
(13:14):
we you should go to the sea at the doctor, Like, no,
I don't want to do that. So I finally said,
all right, I'm going to take a look figure this out.
And I went on to Amazon and started finding like
how do I stop snoring? All those kinds of things.
And I went down this rabbit hole of mouth taping
because I discovered a book called Breath by James Nester.
It's the best selling book. Everybody should read it. And
(13:35):
when he explains this experiment that opened my eyes to
mouth breathing, the fact that because I was mouth breathing,
that was the root of my issues of bad sleep,
I went, WHOA, Okay, this is kind of earth shattering
for me because I'd never been taught this. No coach
that ever had said, Alex, you should be keeping your
(13:56):
mouth shut breathing through your nose while you're running or
while you're doing this. Never heard it before. I'd heard
it in yoga, so when I was doing yoga, the
yoga instructors used to say it, and I remember thinking,
this sounds crazy, like what does that matter? And that's
what most most of us think, that most of us
think in this country. Nose breathing and mouth breathing, What
does it matter? Like doesn't, but it does matter. So
(14:19):
then I started. I went on to Amazon and I
just bought some kind of tape that I thought would work,
medical tape, paper tape. Because six years ago it wasn't
a thing. It really wasn't his today, it wasn't what
it is today. So when I put on that mouth
tape that first night, Okay. The first thought through my
brain was what everybody thinks when your mouth tape. Wait
(14:41):
a minute, am I gonna die? What if my nose
gets stuffy?
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Like? Am I gonna write it? Yeah, it's a normal reaction. Okay.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
So I put it on and I realized, no, I'm
gonna be fine. I wake up the next day and
I couldn't believe how I felt. I felt like a
brand new person. It's like I discovered the cheek code,
like that Konami cheek code when we were younger playing
Nintendo exactly. It was like I found that code, and
I'm like, holy smokes, I just found this whole new
(15:08):
level that I never thought I would find. Right, But
it was just resetted me back to this is the
way that I should feel, This is what we all
should feel normal, okay. And then it was at that
moment that I went, oh, you know what, there's an
opportunity here. Maybe I can build a business around this. Now.
I didn't actually start the business right away. It took
(15:30):
me a while to kind of get, you know, the
gumption to say I can do this. I can build
a brand around this. Because when you think selling tape
tape's a commodity, like, how do you actually have a moat?
How can you build something that can get as big
as we built it and still keep going? And so
(15:50):
then it was the brand that stood out to me
as all right, we need to build a brand around
this that actually inspires people.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
So how did you? I mean going from your on
spacement too, it's basically a national brand now, yeah, and
I think I remember where I've I've I've heard spots
for it on a podcast, a very big podcast.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Well, speaking of that, so yeah, we got mentioned on Rogan.
Yeah a long time ago because Rogan was as a user.
But speaking of him, he just mentioned us again yesterday
on his spot with Bert Kreischer. So Rogan goes out
on the on the show and he talks about how
mound tape is a game changer for him and he
(16:30):
uses hostage tape. He's like, look, this isn't an ad,
this isn't a spot. I don't have anything for this,
but I use hostage tape and it's been absolutely amazing
for me. I don't snore anymore, and I wake up
feeling amazing. And like when we saw that, it was
just like you couldn't have asked for a better endorsement
from obviously one of the biggest people on the planet
right now that as a voice, So.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
So a little bit of luck or I mean, what's
what's at play here?
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Well, there's always luck, right, But I believe luck is
something that you create, right, Like, if you set everything
up and you're doing all the right things, then luck
is in your favor, right, And that was just the
luck of the drug.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Our product is.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
In so many people's hands, so many high level people.
I mean, Rogan's been a user, right, but this is
the first time he's actually publicly, really spoken out this
publicly for us. So it came out of nowhere. Like
I didn't prompt them to do it. But there's so
many people around him that use the product too that
I think when so many people use it in your circle,
(17:36):
you just keep getting reinforced by it. That he just
felt the need to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
So then what did you do after that? Like what
you know? That probably changed your game plan a little bit, right,
it did? Yeah, it curved all of a sudden, it's
going straight up. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Oh, our sales have like ten next since yesterday, Like
it's insane. It looks like Black Friday like whenever you
do Black Friday sales, you're Black Friday sales in Q
four Like they literally drubile. And that's what it looks like,
you know, over the last day and a half right now.
But again, what's great about it is that just you
have this voice that everybody listens to. Everybody knows that
(18:11):
now is validating, like, hey, this is legitimate, like mouth
taping is a legitimate thing. For anybody out there that
thinks mouth taping is crazy, somebody like him says no,
this is for real. And it changed my life and
this is this is how it made me feel. I
think that's the most important thing.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
So what sets it up other than the beard thing?
Of course, what sets it apart from like the stuff
you bought.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Yeah, well, so the stuff that most people might buy
is just like paper tape, MicroPort tape with surgical tape.
And the difference with that is it's a rigid paper tape.
It's not very comfortable, doesn't stretch, doesn't move, and it
doesn't really hold very well. Whereas our tape. I spent
about six months perfecting the adhesive stud so that it
(18:54):
was strong enough to hold but also comfortable. And so
because it's this flexible fabric, feels really comfortable. It moves
with your mouth, you can move your face right, and
it works great with facial air. Plus, the most important
part of it is it looks badass.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
It looks cool, right.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
I think one of the biggest things that we hear
from people is they'll say, you took mouth taping and
you made it cool.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
So we've really leaned into that idea of we've made
mount taping cool. We have this badass brand, very liquid death.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Lie. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
I like to explain to people with the Liquid Death
of the sleep space, who.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Is your Who's the consumer? Is it men? Women? Both?
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Yeah? So the consumer primarily is middle aged men. I
like to say it's thirty to fIF year olds. It's
everybody in this room right now. We're all thirty to
fifty year old men.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Right.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
That was who I wanted to go after because that's
who I was. I'm a forty five year old guy.
And most of the people in this country and around
the world who suffer from this problem of there's sixty
five million mouth breathers in the US right now. It's
a lot of people, okay, and most of them are men,
and so when you have that big of an issue
with people, I wanted to address those guys that were
(20:11):
just like me. And as a result, because of how
popular we are and everybody knows who we are, now
you get these other pockets of people like wives and
women who are like, oh, I think that's cool. I
want to try it too. So we've got about twenty
five percent of our of our customers or women, but
we do have a women's product now, So we have
(20:31):
a pink version for women because there was a point
where we said, all right, we've got enough women buying
the product, let's just release a pink skew.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
So very cool. Well, if I mean, you could maybe
turn the adhesive up a little bit if anybody's got
an issue. No, you don't want to do that, but
I don't want to make it too strong. But yeah,
two and one use there or something. But so as
you continue to grow your business, what sort of what
markets and opportunities do you see on the horizon. Yeah,
so I think some of the biggest areas that we
(21:01):
see our retail like that's kind of the we're obviously,
you know, we're already an eight figure brand and we're
primarily just a D two C brand, Right, we sell online.
We used shop Okay, we do use Amazon, but believe
it or not, Mount tape is actually banned on Amazon.
Oh and so there's this whole mind field that we've
(21:21):
been navigating with as a band.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
It's a good question. I don't know because it's called
hostage tape and no. Okay, So here's what they told us.
They said, well, mount tape is, we think it's a
safety issue, and it's a medical device and all this
other stuff which it's not. Mounthtape is a general health product.
It's not governed by the FDA. It's not a medical
(21:44):
device because it doesn't go in the mouth, right, And
so my response to them was, well, I have a
legal brief here from an FDA legal from this is
this isn't a medical device, it's not governed by the FDA,
So what gives? And so they haven't responded. So I
tell people just go to hostage tape dot com if
(22:04):
you want to find it. Yeah, and you can get
your best bundles there. But retail is I think of
the future. So as we continue to get bigger and
stronger in D two C, the next landscape for us
is getting into targets, getting into Walmart, because when you
have a product like ours that is a daily consumable,
(22:25):
you want to be where all the shoppers are. And
most people still shop in Target, in Walmart, you know,
in Walgreens, in all these places. So if it's a
daily consumable that they're like, oh man, I'm on a
hostage tape, I need to grab some I'm at Target.
I'll just grab it. That's where we want to be.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
So a challenge has been because I assume Amazon's like
the biggest e commerce or you got to be right
up there anyway, So that was kind of a challenge.
What other challenges have you run into?
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Well, certainly the challenge it's both the blessing and a curse,
is the name. The name that I picked hostage tape,
And let me find why I called it hostage safe.
For anybody that's listening thinking, why did you call it that?
That sounds like brand suicide. Everybody always thinks you should
fire your marketing department.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Okay, just like the water people, right, exactly right.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
People give them stuff crap about that all the time.
So the idea originally was, yes, you look like a
hostage when you're wearing table. You totally do. That's the obvious.
And when my kids would come over to my house
and they would sleep, I would warn them and say, hey, kids,
if you bust into the room and you see me,
it's gonna look like I'm being held hostage, So just
(23:33):
you know, don't freak out. But then on the flip
side of the coin, people actually feel held hostage by
poor sleeper, their partner, and they don't know what to do.
So there's this emotional connection that I knew that we
could tap into, because look, people buy in emotion. They
don't buy in logic, at least below you know, a
thousand dollars, Like if you have a low AOV of
(23:55):
a product, people are gonna buy based on emotion and
then validate later with facts as to why they bought it.
And so that was why I called it that, and
I knew we were gonna get people's attention.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
It's like that ninety five to five rule of ninety
five percent of people aren't in market to buy your product,
but the five percent are. But those ninety five percent,
once they finally get in market, which product are they
gonna buy? They're gonna buy the one that they remember. Yeah,
and nobody ever forgets hostage tape. When you see it
(24:27):
come across your feed, you think how crazy it is,
but you remember it. So when you're finally in market
to buy mouth tape, you go, oh, I'm gonna buy
I'm gonna buy hotch tape because I remember that, and
I've seen it everywhere and you know, I saw Joe
Rogan was talking about it, so I'm gonna try that.
And so it's attention, because attention is the currency in
this day and age with social media that I have
(24:49):
to stand out. I have to be able to grab
your attention and make you remember us.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
I don't want to ask this, but I have to
ask this. It's kind of an obvious question, like, uh,
do you have p people who we'll say they want
to re enact their favorite prime show on TV. You
know what I'm saying. You know what I'm getting That we.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Get we get a lot of jokes, Yeah, we get
we get a lot of both. We get a lot
of jokes. People who will make jokes about you know,
holding themselves hostage, holding their wife hostage or whatever, being
playful because look, we're trying to be a bit cheeky.
We're trying to be a bit fun and playful, not
take ourselves too seriously. But then there's certainly the people
who will build dm us and like they'll chastise us
(25:28):
on how awful they think, you know, what we did is.
And I always like to explain it as like, look,
the beautiful thing, the beautiful thing about about language is
that there's context. Context matters, the context that you give
to words and the intent behind it. So that's you
look at our brand and you do any research on it,
you'll see me talking about it all over the place,
(25:49):
and you're talking about my story about how sleep held
my my life hostage, right, and then everybody can relate
to that, and you go, oh, okay, I get it.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
This is fun. You've obviously really built something from I
don't want to say out of nothing, but kind of right,
you're an entrepreneur. How did you talk about I guess
make it into rolling into kind of a large scale
operation from where it was like the very humble beginnings
to where you are now.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Well, I like to call this my sixteen year overnight
success and the re because from anybody in the outside
looking in, you might go, oh my god, those guys
popped up out of nowhere and they're huge. Crazy that
just happened overnight.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
It didn't.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Yeah, So my first business, I bootstrapped it, ran it
for sixteen years, and there was a lot of failure, right,
failing over and over and over again to finally learn
and get to where we are. So now when I
launched this, I knew exactly what I needed to do
from the previous sixteen years of failing and flailing around
with the first business. Okay, so it was taking that
(26:52):
knowledge and then usually when I started business, I'll take
like a two year P and L forecast and I
build out exactly my roadmap of how to get from
pointing to point B. So I know how many how
I was going to scale this thing. And I knew
that I was going to use Facebook ads to scale.
All my money was going to be spent on Facebook
and it was going to be an inventory. So that
was what I doubled down on for me, learning and
(27:15):
truly understanding and leveraging. And so that's how we've scaled
is one hundred percent from using Facebook ads meta you know,
Facebook and Instagram ads and then obviously Google and then
we started to dabble into offline marketing with the UFC
and some other things there too.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
So with all that experience, what advice would you give
to somebody who's looking to start something.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Yes, So here's what I would say if anybody wants
to start a business, First, solve a problem. Look in
your life and see what's going on. What kind of
problem are you observing or you experiencing that you can
solve a problem, because those are the best businesses is
solve a clear problem solution, and that's what hostage tape does.
It solves a very clear problem with mouth breathing and
(28:03):
getting better sleep and breathing right. And then once you
solve and identify a problem, now develop the story around it,
a relatable story that you can create a brand, because
in this day and age, you can't just go into
Amazon and sell a product anymore. It doesn't work that
way because you go on Amazon and you try to
Like I didn't list hostage Tape on Amazon out of
(28:25):
the gate, and I didn't for a reason. I knew
that I needed to build a brand right right so
that way, then later I couldn't get ripped off by
somebody saying I could sell that too. And go on Amazon.
So if you go on Amazon too soon with just
a product, you're gonna get ripped off, just like that.
Anybody can do that, right, So if you actually build
a story, build a brand, and build this idea that
(28:49):
then you can relate and connect with people. Now you
have something, you have a moat, which then later we'll
stand the test of time and can't get ripped off.
Do you have a patent then wells, we've trademarks trademarks,
so you can't. There's certainly, I mean, we're selling tape.
There's elements around the tape that we've trademarked. We have
a great trademark from here in Minneapolis. So all these
(29:12):
elements around hostage, like we own hostage, the word, all
of that stuff. But let's be honest, I don't think
anybody wants to touch the word hostage, you know. So
we got lucky that I own all the ip around
hostage around the world. But so yes, there's enough things
that I can only ipon that we do, so we're
protected as much as we can be.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Where do you see this going in the next you know,
five ten years, whatever.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Well, here's my mission. My mission is to help over
a million mouth breathers transform their sleep.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
That's my goal.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
And we're up to about one hundred and fifty thousand
right now, so we've got one hundred and fifty thousand
users who use the product and I want to get
to over a million people that we're transforming their lives.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Wow, when you transform some his life and I'm thinking
about maybe it's to be a little careful. I guess
how we say this, but I mean the snoring and
hopefully stops right. Yep. This seems like if you can
make this work, like a better alternative to some other
things you can do.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Well. Okay, So are you kind of talking about seapaps
and things like that. Yeah, so full full transparency and
not a doctor. But I think the you know seapaps
and they serve their purpose one hundred percent. There's a
lot of people who need a seatpap, but I think
that most of us who are like average weight people,
(30:34):
you know, we don't need a seapap. We just need
to shout our mouth. So you know what a seapap
is great for is if you've got a lot of
extra excess weight, you know, around your neck that's pushing
down the tissue you need a seatpap. So most overweight people,
seapaps are great, right, And we have a lot of
customers who they wear a seapap, but then they're also
(30:56):
wearing hostage tape because it keeps their mouth shut, so
the seatpep works better and they're not getting air leak. Okay.
But we also have a lot of people who they're
just average weight people, they're not overweight, and they're like,
I don't need to wear a seatpap anymore. I can
just wear a hostage tape because it keeps my mouth
shut and now I get amazing sleep. So again, I'm
(31:16):
not a doctor, but this is what we're seeing, and
my personal experience is that for most of us, it's
just keeping our mouth shut, assuming that you can breathe
through your nose and you don't have any sort of blockage.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
You're an excellent shape. Now he's talked. He started, you know,
talking about how you're out of shape. I don't know
how out of shape you really were, but I saw
your video online and yeah, you look great there too,
and it's it's obviously obviously been going great for.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
You, So yes it was, so I was I was
probably a good twenty thirty pounds overweight. Wow, because look,
I mean that happens right when you become a dad
and you that's the greatest, just gonna stay at home, right, Well,
I love being a dad. Yeah, there's nothing better than
being and and we I coach baseball too, so we
got baseball coming up. Being able to coach my son, Like,
(32:01):
there's nothing better than that. But you become a dad,
and then life happens, and then your motivation changes. It
changes from going into the gym and working out. Now
it changes to your kids, to your wife, to the
home and all those other things. And so now I've
just been able to refocus and make sure I take
care of myself because at the end of the day,
(32:22):
my job is to take care of my family, take
care of my kids, take care of my employees. And
I can't do that if I don't take care of me.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
So Alex Nice, founder of hostage Tape, what do we do?
Or do we go to what hostage tape dot com?
Speaker 2 (32:39):
You can go to hostage tape dot com and get
some amazing bundles there.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Absolutely awesome. Thanks so much. You got it. Don't let
bad sleep hold you. Hostage
Welcome to another edition of CEOs you should know and
with us today. Alex Nice from Hostage Tape, Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
It's great to be here, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Okay, first of all, I thought I knew what Hostage
Tape was because I know I've heard the name, and
then I didn't know that you guys were based right here.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
It's wild. I mean, you wouldn't think that a company
called the Hostage Tape would be right here in Minnesota.
But Hostage Tape, it's basically this. It's the most badass
beard safe mouth tape. Okay on the whole planet. That's
what it is.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
So okay, So what do you mouth tape? What are
you doing with that? Exactly?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yeah? So what mount tape does, and it sounds crazy
when people think about what mount tape is. You've probably
seen it on TikTok. It's gotten really big on TikTok.
But Mount tape basically keeps your mouth shut and it
forces nasal breathing because, believe it or not, we shouldn't
be breathing through our mouths. We should only be breathing
through her nose, especially when we sleep.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Really, so, as I always heard, that can contribute to
bite too. I guess somehow you like that is like
a big deal.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Well, so it really comes down to when you're breathing
through your mouth, breathing through our mouth. That actually, when
you think of why we do it, it kind of
goes back to the poor foods we eat. We get
a bunch of processed foods. So that's that's gotten really
bad over the last twenty thirty years. And so when
(01:24):
we eat a bunch of or processed foods, we uh.
There's also a theory on breastfeeding, right, so the fact
that we don't breastfeed as much as we used to
and baby formula kind of really got introduced in the
late seventies early eighties, and I'm a product of that, right,
I was born in seventy nine. So having all that,
(01:45):
then we started to develop mouth breathing and we're mouth
breathing way more than we should be. So when we
mouth breathing, we breathe in and out of our mouth.
We're not getting any kind of oxygen we should be,
ah right, So we don't get oxygen. We don't also
trigger the release of night your oxide, which then opens
up the blood vessels, gets the blood moving, gets that
oxygen uptake going, and when you breathe through your mouth,
(02:07):
it actually triggers a signal so that your body feels
like it's in this fight or flight mode. Right, So
then you you're very stressed and you're very anxious. So
when you keep your mouth shut, breath through your nose
releases nitrog oxide. Now your body is in a very
more relaxed state.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
And so it's like, if you call somebody a mouth breather,
that really is like a bad thing, right it is.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
It's like, I think when you think about that term
mouth breather, it's a very dated term. But the Stranger
Things brought it back to us and they mentioned mouth
breather and so then it kind of got re re
put back into the zeitgeist. So people are like, oh,
mouth breather, what does that mean? So it's totally not
a good thing.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
So are there other health issues that go along with that? Then?
Speaker 2 (02:51):
So for there actually are. So when your mouth breathe.
A couple of other ones that are interesting, is it
actually damages you. So when you mouth breathe, it evaporates
the good saliva and the good bacteria, and then bad
bacteria forms. She got dragon breath right when you wake up,
and it also eats away at the enamel. Oh no,
(03:13):
and then you get cavities. And so I'm a prime
example of that. Like my whole life being a mouth breather,
my teeth got pitted out. And so when I was younger,
my dentist didn't know what was going on. And so
then later now I realized that it's because I was
a mouth breathing in my whole life, bad bacteria ate away,
pitted out my teeth, and as a result, I don't
(03:35):
have the greatest oral hygiene. But another interesting story is
so I don't usually go to the dentist as much
as I should.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Oh right.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
My wife is the one that drags me in there
because we've got two kids. So going into the dentist
after a two year window, right, I wouldn't recommend it.
But after to your window from I've been mouth taping
now for almost six years. I went back in and
the dental hygienis was she was looking at my teeth,
she was measuring the gums and everything, and she said, wow,
(04:06):
your teeth and your gums actually look way better than
they did two years ago. What have you been doing?
And I haven't been. I don't floss, I brush, you know,
twice a day what you normally should do. And the
biggest changes that I've been mouth taping every night religiously.
So that kind of gives you a real example of
why when you keep your mouth shut and you nails breathe,
(04:28):
it can protect your teeth in a.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Really big way. Interesting, tell me about the beard safe
thing is it's just it's easier on it.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Then, So when you think of mouth taping, most men
and their mine immediately goes, so, well, what about my beard?
What about my mus stage? How am I going to
mouth tape that's not gonna work? Or even if I did,
what am I gonna like, you know, rip off all
my hair and you know, give myself a Brazilian wax
or whatever. So the way that I designed the tape
(04:56):
was so that it would work really well with facial
hair that then men wouldn't have to be worried about
is this gonna work? Is this gonna stick? Because most
like if you use three m MicroPort tape or just
some paper tape, it's not very comfortable, but it doesn't
work that well with stubble and facial hair. Ah, right,
because it's really rigid and it doesn't feel very comfortable.
(05:17):
But our tape it's this flexible fabric, so it goes
over hair really well, and it moves with your face
and it goes over hair and stubble really well. So
it alleviates this worry for men that is this gonna work?
Because I have most of us beneficial hair.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
So do you have different types of products? Is it
all one? We do?
Speaker 2 (05:36):
We do have a second product, So the hero product
is the mouth tape, which goes over the mouth. But
then what happened was is one of the biggest questions
we kept getting was well, what about my nose. I've
got a deviated septum. I can't breathe out of my nose,
so why would I moutape? So then we said, well,
let's look at what breathewright did. And ironically, Breathewrighte is
(05:56):
a Minnesota They were a Minnesota find of company. Didn't
know that and smart here, I know, right, We're all
about the different nasal breathing things. And so when this
so they created this no strip, I went all right, well,
let's take what Breatheway did. Let's create a no strip,
but let's actually make.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
It look cool.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
So I took that, we redesigned it and we made
it look like hostage tape, this black, sleek, badass look.
And then now that's our hero B product. So when
people come to the website, they usually buy our mouth tape,
but then they can add on our black no strips
in addition to it, which is great for when you sleep,
(06:36):
opens up the nose. But my favorite use for the
no strip is when I go for a run and
I work out. Oh, because a lot of people don't
realize that, look when you're working out, you're going for
a run, keep your mouth shut, breathe through your nose.
We shouldn't be huffing and puffing out of our mouth.
So when I wear it on my nose, it reminds
me to keep my mouth shut, and then I'm getting
way more air in through my nose as I'm doing
(06:58):
a workout.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
You get a lot of looks doing that.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Sure, well, I do you know what though, So I've
been wearing a nose trip now religiously. Like I go
to Lifetime every day, I go to the chanass in
Lifetime over by the headquarters. And because I've been doing
it for a couple of years, everybody knows that's the
hosta tape guy, So I'm used to it. Yeah, Like
I don't. I don't get the looks from thinking to
(07:22):
myself like, oh my god, everybody's looking at me, because
now everybody's looking at me, going he's the hostit tape guy.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Because they see us everywhere. Tell me a little bit,
abou you're a Golden Gopher. Yes, tell me a little
bit about your your journey from college life to well,
I guess to what you're doing now. Yeah, Well, I grew.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Up in southern Minnesota, so shout out to Fairmont Nice
all the way down and by the southern border there.
So I grew up there, played football there, and I
wanted to be a football player. So then I went
and I actually was a walk on. I got recruited
to play. I played it under Mason and was a
Golden Gopher. So then that was a while experience just
(08:00):
being able to play big time football.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
I didn't play.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
I was a backup. So I wasn't like anybody that
you ever heard of. But I was the kind of
guy that I knew I had talent, very much like
a Kurt Warner. Right, Kurt Warner didn't play a bunch
in college, but he knewed to play. So I ended
up being able to go play arena football after college,
and I played about six years arena football professional and
(08:25):
made a name for myself. And then at the tail
end of my career, you kind of have this moment
where are you going up? Are you making it to
the NFL? Or are you going down? And you're not
really going anywhere? Right? So I knew that I wasn't
going up. I wasn't going to make it into the NFL.
So I said, all right, I'm gonna I'm gonna pivot
and I'm going to create a business. So I created
(08:46):
a sports video analytics business and I used my knowledge
as a coach and as a player of how can
I take video and analytics and use it as a
coach and for teams. And then I built that bootstrap
that for about six teen years wow, and ran that
for a long time and then I sold it. And
it was through that experience of running that company and
(09:08):
then selling it that I went I got to do
something new. I want to do something different, and I
wanted to get into e commerce. But I was also
I hit a low point in my life. I had
a rock about a moment. So this is where the story,
okay gets interesting.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
I know a little bit about this, and I guess
I had this idea like we'll just push people to
the website because it was I mean, I'll be honest,
I got I got pretty emotional reading about if we're
talking about the same thing here, but I mean, you
go ahead.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah. So the so I had this rock about a
moment because there's a point in everybody's life where you change,
you go from one chapter to the next chapter. And
for me, when I retired and then I started my business,
it was this whole new change in your life where
how do you adapt? How do you change? And when
(09:55):
you're an athlete your whole life and then you've become
a dad, right and you become a husband and a father,
learn all those things, you have to completely change your
life and how you look at it. So that that
was an adjustment. So then when I was running that business,
I started to go downhill. My health wasn't great. I
wasn't taking care of myself and I hit this low
(10:15):
point where my wife and I actually got separated and
we went through divorce and we have two kids, and
it was through that time where I was selling the business,
because it was I was sixteen years into this thing,
and you do anything for sixteen years, you then have
this moment of like, do I want to keep doing
this or do I need to do something new? Do
(10:36):
I need to pivot? And you know, bootstrapping any kind
of a business for sixteen years is pretty amazing, And
so I knew that I want to sell this, I
want to see if I can go to the next level,
or I need to pivot. And when I sold it,
I realized I hated it. Because every entrepreneur goes through
that moment of you sell your business. You have these
(10:57):
illusions of grandeur where you might be able to take it,
but then you realize when you get acquired, they didn't
want me. They wanted what I built. So then I
knew a year in that I hate this. I didn't
like working for this big company. I wanted to get
out and start something new again and build.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
I'm a builder.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I love building things. And it was just at that
moment too, that I knew, all right, I'm having this
rock a bottle moment. I snored so bad that to
push my wife into the other bedroom. Okay, and it's
crazy as that sounds for people listening to this, the
reality is that snoring was this accelerant. When you snore
so bad, she sleeps in the other bedroom, which is
(11:37):
way more common than you think. There's a lot of
people that call it a sleep divorce. There's way more
people doing that than we realized. They just don't want
to admit it, and we shouldn't be doing that. But
that happened for me. So when snoring's happening, resentments building, right.
I kind of explain it like Indiana Jones. You have
Indiana Jones running out of the temple and you have
this boulder chasing. At some point, the boulder catches up
(12:00):
to you and you don't know what the dude, it
overtakes you. And that's really what it was like. All
these things started to kind of escalate out of control
and you can't get it back.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
And so.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Then we got separated, went through the divorce, and then
I had this rock bottom moment where I was fortunate
to have my aunt. Her house was kind of down
the road, so it was near where my kids and
my wife lived, so I didn't have to like completely
uprit and go somewhere else.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
So I had this.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Moment in my aunt's basement where I'm like, Okay, what
do I need to do as a father, as a husband,
as a leader. How do I look at myself and
take the next step, make a change, take accountability. So
I started with my health. Okay, being an athlete my
whole life, like that was one thing I was great at.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
But then now it was the.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
One thing that I let go. Right, So I looked
at my sleep. I said, Okay, I was such a
bad snore for so long because as guys, we take
that for granted, like we don't always look at our
health and go I'm gonna go into the doctor, right,
None of us want to go to the doctor. No,
we're just gonna like, now, I'll deal with it, right,
you know, all of our wives are saying, like, here,
(13:14):
we you should go to the sea at the doctor, Like, no,
I don't want to do that. So I finally said,
all right, I'm going to take a look figure this out.
And I went on to Amazon and started finding like
how do I stop snoring? All those kinds of things.
And I went down this rabbit hole of mouth taping
because I discovered a book called Breath by James Nester.
It's the best selling book. Everybody should read it. And
(13:35):
when he explains this experiment that opened my eyes to
mouth breathing, the fact that because I was mouth breathing,
that was the root of my issues of bad sleep,
I went, WHOA, Okay, this is kind of earth shattering
for me because I'd never been taught this. No coach
that ever had said, Alex, you should be keeping your
(13:56):
mouth shut breathing through your nose while you're running or
while you're doing this. Never heard it before. I'd heard
it in yoga, so when I was doing yoga, the
yoga instructors used to say it, and I remember thinking,
this sounds crazy, like what does that matter? And that's
what most most of us think, that most of us
think in this country. Nose breathing and mouth breathing, What
does it matter? Like doesn't, but it does matter. So
(14:19):
then I started. I went on to Amazon and I
just bought some kind of tape that I thought would work,
medical tape, paper tape. Because six years ago it wasn't
a thing. It really wasn't his today, it wasn't what
it is today. So when I put on that mouth
tape that first night, Okay. The first thought through my
brain was what everybody thinks when your mouth tape. Wait
(14:41):
a minute, am I gonna die? What if my nose
gets stuffy?
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Like? Am I gonna write it? Yeah, it's a normal reaction. Okay.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
So I put it on and I realized, no, I'm
gonna be fine. I wake up the next day and
I couldn't believe how I felt. I felt like a
brand new person. It's like I discovered the cheek code,
like that Konami cheek code when we were younger playing
Nintendo exactly. It was like I found that code, and
I'm like, holy smokes, I just found this whole new
(15:08):
level that I never thought I would find. Right, But
it was just resetted me back to this is the
way that I should feel, This is what we all
should feel normal, okay. And then it was at that
moment that I went, oh, you know what, there's an
opportunity here. Maybe I can build a business around this. Now.
I didn't actually start the business right away. It took
(15:30):
me a while to kind of get, you know, the
gumption to say I can do this. I can build
a brand around this. Because when you think selling tape
tape's a commodity, like, how do you actually have a moat?
How can you build something that can get as big
as we built it and still keep going? And so
(15:50):
then it was the brand that stood out to me
as all right, we need to build a brand around
this that actually inspires people.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
So how did you? I mean going from your on
spacement too, it's basically a national brand now, yeah, and
I think I remember where I've I've I've heard spots
for it on a podcast, a very big podcast.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Well, speaking of that, so yeah, we got mentioned on Rogan.
Yeah a long time ago because Rogan was as a user.
But speaking of him, he just mentioned us again yesterday
on his spot with Bert Kreischer. So Rogan goes out
on the on the show and he talks about how
mound tape is a game changer for him and he
(16:30):
uses hostage tape. He's like, look, this isn't an ad,
this isn't a spot. I don't have anything for this,
but I use hostage tape and it's been absolutely amazing
for me. I don't snore anymore, and I wake up
feeling amazing. And like when we saw that, it was
just like you couldn't have asked for a better endorsement
from obviously one of the biggest people on the planet
right now that as a voice, So.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
So a little bit of luck or I mean, what's
what's at play here?
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Well, there's always luck, right, But I believe luck is
something that you create, right, Like, if you set everything
up and you're doing all the right things, then luck
is in your favor, right, And that was just the
luck of the drug.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Our product is.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
In so many people's hands, so many high level people.
I mean, Rogan's been a user, right, but this is
the first time he's actually publicly, really spoken out this
publicly for us. So it came out of nowhere. Like
I didn't prompt them to do it. But there's so
many people around him that use the product too that
I think when so many people use it in your circle,
(17:36):
you just keep getting reinforced by it. That he just
felt the need to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
So then what did you do after that? Like what
you know? That probably changed your game plan a little bit, right,
it did? Yeah, it curved all of a sudden, it's
going straight up. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Oh, our sales have like ten next since yesterday, Like
it's insane. It looks like Black Friday like whenever you
do Black Friday sales, you're Black Friday sales in Q
four Like they literally drubile. And that's what it looks like,
you know, over the last day and a half right now.
But again, what's great about it is that just you
have this voice that everybody listens to. Everybody knows that
(18:11):
now is validating, like, hey, this is legitimate, like mouth
taping is a legitimate thing. For anybody out there that
thinks mouth taping is crazy, somebody like him says no,
this is for real. And it changed my life and
this is this is how it made me feel. I
think that's the most important thing.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
So what sets it up other than the beard thing?
Of course, what sets it apart from like the stuff
you bought.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Yeah, well, so the stuff that most people might buy
is just like paper tape, MicroPort tape with surgical tape.
And the difference with that is it's a rigid paper tape.
It's not very comfortable, doesn't stretch, doesn't move, and it
doesn't really hold very well. Whereas our tape. I spent
about six months perfecting the adhesive stud so that it
(18:54):
was strong enough to hold but also comfortable. And so
because it's this flexible fabric, feels really comfortable. It moves
with your mouth, you can move your face right, and
it works great with facial air. Plus, the most important
part of it is it looks badass.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
It looks cool, right.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
I think one of the biggest things that we hear
from people is they'll say, you took mouth taping and
you made it cool.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
So we've really leaned into that idea of we've made
mount taping cool. We have this badass brand, very liquid death.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Lie. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
I like to explain to people with the Liquid Death
of the sleep space, who.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Is your Who's the consumer? Is it men? Women? Both?
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Yeah? So the consumer primarily is middle aged men. I
like to say it's thirty to fIF year olds. It's
everybody in this room right now. We're all thirty to
fifty year old men.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Right.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
That was who I wanted to go after because that's
who I was. I'm a forty five year old guy.
And most of the people in this country and around
the world who suffer from this problem of there's sixty
five million mouth breathers in the US right now. It's
a lot of people, okay, and most of them are men,
and so when you have that big of an issue
with people, I wanted to address those guys that were
(20:11):
just like me. And as a result, because of how
popular we are and everybody knows who we are, now
you get these other pockets of people like wives and
women who are like, oh, I think that's cool. I
want to try it too. So we've got about twenty
five percent of our of our customers or women, but
we do have a women's product now, So we have
(20:31):
a pink version for women because there was a point
where we said, all right, we've got enough women buying
the product, let's just release a pink skew.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
So very cool. Well, if I mean, you could maybe
turn the adhesive up a little bit if anybody's got
an issue. No, you don't want to do that, but
I don't want to make it too strong. But yeah,
two and one use there or something. But so as
you continue to grow your business, what sort of what
markets and opportunities do you see on the horizon. Yeah,
so I think some of the biggest areas that we
(21:01):
see our retail like that's kind of the we're obviously,
you know, we're already an eight figure brand and we're
primarily just a D two C brand, Right, we sell online.
We used shop Okay, we do use Amazon, but believe
it or not, Mount tape is actually banned on Amazon.
Oh and so there's this whole mind field that we've
(21:21):
been navigating with as a band.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
It's a good question. I don't know because it's called
hostage tape and no. Okay, So here's what they told us.
They said, well, mount tape is, we think it's a
safety issue, and it's a medical device and all this
other stuff which it's not. Mounthtape is a general health product.
It's not governed by the FDA. It's not a medical
(21:44):
device because it doesn't go in the mouth, right, And
so my response to them was, well, I have a
legal brief here from an FDA legal from this is
this isn't a medical device, it's not governed by the FDA,
So what gives? And so they haven't responded. So I
tell people just go to hostage tape dot com if
(22:04):
you want to find it. Yeah, and you can get
your best bundles there. But retail is I think of
the future. So as we continue to get bigger and
stronger in D two C, the next landscape for us
is getting into targets, getting into Walmart, because when you
have a product like ours that is a daily consumable,
(22:25):
you want to be where all the shoppers are. And
most people still shop in Target, in Walmart, you know,
in Walgreens, in all these places. So if it's a
daily consumable that they're like, oh man, I'm on a
hostage tape, I need to grab some I'm at Target.
I'll just grab it. That's where we want to be.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
So a challenge has been because I assume Amazon's like
the biggest e commerce or you got to be right
up there anyway, So that was kind of a challenge.
What other challenges have you run into?
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Well, certainly the challenge it's both the blessing and a curse,
is the name. The name that I picked hostage tape,
And let me find why I called it hostage safe.
For anybody that's listening thinking, why did you call it that?
That sounds like brand suicide. Everybody always thinks you should
fire your marketing department.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Okay, just like the water people, right, exactly right.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
People give them stuff crap about that all the time.
So the idea originally was, yes, you look like a
hostage when you're wearing table. You totally do. That's the obvious.
And when my kids would come over to my house
and they would sleep, I would warn them and say, hey, kids,
if you bust into the room and you see me,
it's gonna look like I'm being held hostage, So just
(23:33):
you know, don't freak out. But then on the flip
side of the coin, people actually feel held hostage by
poor sleeper, their partner, and they don't know what to do.
So there's this emotional connection that I knew that we
could tap into, because look, people buy in emotion. They
don't buy in logic, at least below you know, a
thousand dollars, Like if you have a low AOV of
(23:55):
a product, people are gonna buy based on emotion and
then validate later with facts as to why they bought it.
And so that was why I called it that, and
I knew we were gonna get people's attention.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
It's like that ninety five to five rule of ninety
five percent of people aren't in market to buy your product,
but the five percent are. But those ninety five percent,
once they finally get in market, which product are they
gonna buy? They're gonna buy the one that they remember. Yeah,
and nobody ever forgets hostage tape. When you see it
(24:27):
come across your feed, you think how crazy it is,
but you remember it. So when you're finally in market
to buy mouth tape, you go, oh, I'm gonna buy
I'm gonna buy hotch tape because I remember that, and
I've seen it everywhere and you know, I saw Joe
Rogan was talking about it, so I'm gonna try that.
And so it's attention, because attention is the currency in
this day and age with social media that I have
(24:49):
to stand out. I have to be able to grab
your attention and make you remember us.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
I don't want to ask this, but I have to
ask this. It's kind of an obvious question, like, uh,
do you have p people who we'll say they want
to re enact their favorite prime show on TV. You
know what I'm saying. You know what I'm getting That we.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Get we get a lot of jokes, Yeah, we get
we get a lot of both. We get a lot
of jokes. People who will make jokes about you know,
holding themselves hostage, holding their wife hostage or whatever, being
playful because look, we're trying to be a bit cheeky.
We're trying to be a bit fun and playful, not
take ourselves too seriously. But then there's certainly the people
who will build dm us and like they'll chastise us
(25:28):
on how awful they think, you know, what we did is.
And I always like to explain it as like, look,
the beautiful thing, the beautiful thing about about language is
that there's context. Context matters, the context that you give
to words and the intent behind it. So that's you
look at our brand and you do any research on it,
you'll see me talking about it all over the place,
(25:49):
and you're talking about my story about how sleep held
my my life hostage, right, and then everybody can relate
to that, and you go, oh, okay, I get it.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
This is fun. You've obviously really built something from I
don't want to say out of nothing, but kind of right,
you're an entrepreneur. How did you talk about I guess
make it into rolling into kind of a large scale
operation from where it was like the very humble beginnings
to where you are now.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Well, I like to call this my sixteen year overnight
success and the re because from anybody in the outside
looking in, you might go, oh my god, those guys
popped up out of nowhere and they're huge. Crazy that
just happened overnight.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
It didn't.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Yeah, So my first business, I bootstrapped it, ran it
for sixteen years, and there was a lot of failure, right,
failing over and over and over again to finally learn
and get to where we are. So now when I
launched this, I knew exactly what I needed to do
from the previous sixteen years of failing and flailing around
with the first business. Okay, so it was taking that
(26:52):
knowledge and then usually when I started business, I'll take
like a two year P and L forecast and I
build out exactly my roadmap of how to get from
pointing to point B. So I know how many how
I was going to scale this thing. And I knew
that I was going to use Facebook ads to scale.
All my money was going to be spent on Facebook
and it was going to be an inventory. So that
was what I doubled down on for me, learning and
(27:15):
truly understanding and leveraging. And so that's how we've scaled
is one hundred percent from using Facebook ads meta you know,
Facebook and Instagram ads and then obviously Google and then
we started to dabble into offline marketing with the UFC
and some other things there too.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
So with all that experience, what advice would you give
to somebody who's looking to start something.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Yes, So here's what I would say if anybody wants
to start a business, First, solve a problem. Look in
your life and see what's going on. What kind of
problem are you observing or you experiencing that you can
solve a problem, because those are the best businesses is
solve a clear problem solution, and that's what hostage tape does.
It solves a very clear problem with mouth breathing and
(28:03):
getting better sleep and breathing right. And then once you
solve and identify a problem, now develop the story around it,
a relatable story that you can create a brand, because
in this day and age, you can't just go into
Amazon and sell a product anymore. It doesn't work that
way because you go on Amazon and you try to
Like I didn't list hostage Tape on Amazon out of
(28:25):
the gate, and I didn't for a reason. I knew
that I needed to build a brand right right so
that way, then later I couldn't get ripped off by
somebody saying I could sell that too. And go on Amazon.
So if you go on Amazon too soon with just
a product, you're gonna get ripped off, just like that.
Anybody can do that, right, So if you actually build
a story, build a brand, and build this idea that
(28:49):
then you can relate and connect with people. Now you
have something, you have a moat, which then later we'll
stand the test of time and can't get ripped off.
Do you have a patent then wells, we've trademarks trademarks,
so you can't. There's certainly, I mean, we're selling tape.
There's elements around the tape that we've trademarked. We have
a great trademark from here in Minneapolis. So all these
(29:12):
elements around hostage, like we own hostage, the word, all
of that stuff. But let's be honest, I don't think
anybody wants to touch the word hostage, you know. So
we got lucky that I own all the ip around
hostage around the world. But so yes, there's enough things
that I can only ipon that we do, so we're
protected as much as we can be.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Where do you see this going in the next you know,
five ten years, whatever.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Well, here's my mission. My mission is to help over
a million mouth breathers transform their sleep.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
That's my goal.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
And we're up to about one hundred and fifty thousand
right now, so we've got one hundred and fifty thousand
users who use the product and I want to get
to over a million people that we're transforming their lives.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Wow, when you transform some his life and I'm thinking
about maybe it's to be a little careful. I guess
how we say this, but I mean the snoring and
hopefully stops right. Yep. This seems like if you can
make this work, like a better alternative to some other
things you can do.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Well. Okay, So are you kind of talking about seapaps
and things like that. Yeah, so full full transparency and
not a doctor. But I think the you know seapaps
and they serve their purpose one hundred percent. There's a
lot of people who need a seatpap, but I think
that most of us who are like average weight people,
(30:34):
you know, we don't need a seapap. We just need
to shout our mouth. So you know what a seapap
is great for is if you've got a lot of
extra excess weight, you know, around your neck that's pushing
down the tissue you need a seatpap. So most overweight people,
seapaps are great, right, And we have a lot of
customers who they wear a seapap, but then they're also
(30:56):
wearing hostage tape because it keeps their mouth shut, so
the seatpep works better and they're not getting air leak. Okay.
But we also have a lot of people who they're
just average weight people, they're not overweight, and they're like,
I don't need to wear a seatpap anymore. I can
just wear a hostage tape because it keeps my mouth
shut and now I get amazing sleep. So again, I'm
(31:16):
not a doctor, but this is what we're seeing, and
my personal experience is that for most of us, it's
just keeping our mouth shut, assuming that you can breathe
through your nose and you don't have any sort of blockage.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
You're an excellent shape. Now he's talked. He started, you know,
talking about how you're out of shape. I don't know
how out of shape you really were, but I saw
your video online and yeah, you look great there too,
and it's it's obviously obviously been going great for.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
You, So yes it was, so I was I was
probably a good twenty thirty pounds overweight. Wow, because look,
I mean that happens right when you become a dad
and you that's the greatest, just gonna stay at home, right, Well,
I love being a dad. Yeah, there's nothing better than
being and and we I coach baseball too, so we
got baseball coming up. Being able to coach my son, Like,
(32:01):
there's nothing better than that. But you become a dad,
and then life happens, and then your motivation changes. It
changes from going into the gym and working out. Now
it changes to your kids, to your wife, to the
home and all those other things. And so now I've
just been able to refocus and make sure I take
care of myself because at the end of the day,
(32:22):
my job is to take care of my family, take
care of my kids, take care of my employees. And
I can't do that if I don't take care of me.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
So Alex Nice, founder of hostage Tape, what do we do?
Or do we go to what hostage tape dot com?
Speaker 2 (32:39):
You can go to hostage tape dot com and get
some amazing bundles there.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Absolutely awesome. Thanks so much. You got it. Don't let
bad sleep hold you. Hostage
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