How this 29-year-old brought in $789K in 2025 selling landline phones
People are nostalgic for a simpler time without smartphones, social media and artificial intelligence. Cat Goetze is wanted.
The 29-year-old young man living in Los Angeles is the founder. Physical Phonesa Bluetooth-enabled landline phone business that has been on the rise in recent months.
His business generated sales of over $789,000 in 2025, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.
But like all “overnight” success stories, Goetze has been working on this for a while.
call waiting
Goetze says the idea for a landline-style phone product first emerged in 2023, after he spent much of the pandemic trying to reduce screen time. He imagined his childhood sharing a landline with his family.
Cat Goetze is the founder of Physical Phones, a landline-style phone with Bluetooth.
Tristan Pelletier | CNBC Awesome
“When I was growing up, there was a booklet that the school sent out to all the families in the school district that literally had all the students’ names and home phone numbers,” Goetze says. “I distinctly remember pranking some of the other people at school using that phone book.”
But when he researched what it would actually cost to install a landline in his home, including getting a new phone number and paying an $80 monthly service fee, he decided to find a different path.
Your job as a creative is to capture the zeitgeist and understand what people want creatively, spiritually and emotionally.
Cat Goetze
Founder of Physical Phones
“Given my technical background, I thought to myself that connecting a landline phone to my smartphone probably wouldn’t be that difficult,” says Goetze, who received an interdisciplinary education in science, technology, and society at Stanford. “Then I started looking around, prototyping, and finding a way to do it.”
In 2023, Goetze created a prototype of his first phone, a pink handset, and published it on TikTok. He didn’t have many followers on social media at the time, and his post gained neither traction nor sales.
“Okay, whatever, no problem,” I said. “This seemed like a fun project,” he says. “I wasn’t trying to make money from it anyway.”
Two years later, in 2025, she gained a following for her online brand. CatGPTWhere he discusses artificial intelligence and digital wellness.
He also noticed that more people were talking about wanting to reduce their smartphone addiction. This reminded him of the landline phone prototype, so he posted about it again.
This video from July 2025 went viral and has been viewed more than 8 million times on Instagram and TikTok. Officially branded Physical Phones, sales of the product exceeded $120,000 in the first three days.
“Your job as a creator is to capture the zeitgeist and understand what people want creatively, spiritually and emotionally,” he says. When he reconsidered the idea at just the right moment, he was “blown away.”
Christina Locopo | CNBC Awesome
flipping the business
Physical Phones are battery powered and connect to a smartphone via Bluetooth.
Once connected, the landline acts just like your mobile phone. If your phone rings, the landline also rings and you can place your call from the handset. To make outgoing calls, you can use the landline set to dial the number directly.
For most of us who can no longer memorize phone numbers, you can pick up the receiver and dial the star.
You can direct a call to a specific contact by activating a voice assistant like Siri on your phone.
The Physical Phone also works with voice calls from FaceTime and Whatsapp.
Goetze says pre-orders for Physical Phones begin in July 2025, and the first round of production is fully funded, covering warehousing, shipping, printing, hiring, and “everything we need to actually launch the business.”
Physical Phones currently sells three types of phones (handset, wall-mount, and swivel version) ranging in price from $90 to $110.
Tristan Pelletier | CNBC Awesome The business sources its phones from a manufacturer in Asia, meaning it loses a “huge chunk” of profits
Goetze says this is due to tariffs under the Trump administration’s new policy.
Goetze says working with a manufacturer was the hardest part of the process of bringing Physical Phones to market because he’d never done it before and, as he learned, it could take time.
“To be honest, it’s quite exhausting because what I took for granted before creating Physical Phones was how every single detail is scrutinized for a hardware product,” he says. He adds that the first Physical Phone took two to three months to complete.
Goetze said his goal for the first round of orders is to deliver them to customers in time for Christmas by December 2025.
Goetze says it would take too long to ship everything by cargo ship. The only way to achieve their goal was to fly all the phones from the manufacturer in Asia via cargo plane to their warehouse in California.
This venture cost the company approximately $74,000, which also covered the cost of international freight; customs entry fee; and delivery, service and administrative expenses.
“This was a big hit to our profit margin,” says Goetze. “But I also think it’s those kinds of decisions where you stand behind your customer and show them how much you care.”
Cat Goetze has issued a call for pre-orders of Physical Phones in July 2025. The business’ sales exceeded $120,000 in three days.
Tristan Pelletier | CNBC Awesome
Goetze says that after taking all the phones to their warehouse, he and his team “called every single friend, family member, colleague, neighbor I knew and asked anyone with a hand to come to the warehouse and help us dismantle and ship all of these phones out within 24 hours.”
Goetze says he and his team are preparing 4,000 orders for delivery across the U.S. in December 2025.
He steals the hook
Physical Phones currently sells three types of phones, including handset, wall mount, and rotary phone, ranging in price from $90 to $110. To date, Goetze says the business has sold more than 7,500 devices.
Arrows pointing outward
Christina Locopo | CNBC Awesome
Goetze takes no salary from Physical Phones and supports himself with earnings from his CatGPT media business, which includes branded content and content partnerships.
It recently hired a CEO named Josh Silverman, who was hired in the first round of production and now runs things on a day-to-day basis.
Looking ahead, Goetze says 2026 is all about scaling up Physical Phones, potentially through retail.
Cat Goetze is soon launching Cat Labs, a creator-first product studio where she plans to create new products, apps, websites and services.
Tristan Pelletier | CNBC Awesome
“One of the main questions we’re working on right now is: Do we want to have this type of drop model where we ship large amounts of inventory at one time, or do we want to have more of a traditional e-commerce or an evergreen model where we constantly have inventory on hand?” he says. “Each has its pros and cons.”
Goetze is soon launching Cat Labs, a creator-first product studio where he plans to create new products, apps, websites and services.
“My zone of genius as a creator-founder comes from my ability to raise the cultural antenna up and understand what my audience wants and be able to predict and create what they want next,” says Goetze. Want to improve your communication, confidence and success at work? Take CNBC’s new online course,Master Your Body Language to Increase Your Impact
I was laid off 10 months ago; I’m still paying off my $2,800 mortgage this way
