Latest / None of Your Business Podcast / Insane For Popcorn with Aaron Zutler Co-Founder of Popinsanity Gourmet Popcorn

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Insane For Popcorn with Aaron Zutler Co-Founder of Popinsanity Gourmet Popcorn · None of Your Business Podcast

• 0:00
  Like, this is insane. This is crazy.
• 0:02
  This is insane. Insanity.
• 0:07
  Pop Insanity. Pop Insanity.
• 0:10
  Yankee called a lawyer. See if we could trademark that
• 0:12
  name. And that was a process.
• 0:14
  And then we got a trademark. And then when you got it
• 0:16
  registered, and now I'm sitting with you guys with a company
• 0:19
  called Pop Insanity. Business Oshi.
• 0:25
  None of your business, Michael. It's the None of Your Business
• 0:28
  podcast hosted by Michael Anoshi.
• 0:34
  Welcome back everybody to another amazing episode of the
• 0:38
  None of Your Business Podcast. Don't forget to like, subscribe,
• 0:42
  comment, get involved. We love hearing your feedback.
• 0:45
  Today we are joined by my good friend Ravaran Zuttler from Pop
• 0:50
  Insanity. You.
• 0:52
  Absolutely. Did.
• 0:54
  OK, great. You know, I, I just wanted to
• 0:56
  tell you something that paying so much money for popcorn I
• 1:00
  thought was insanity. But once you get the popcorn and
• 1:03
  you realize that it's not only just the item that you eat as a
• 1:06
  snack, it's a gift. It's something that you can give
• 1:09
  to feel good, something that you can give to console someone,
• 1:12
  right? You want to make them feel good
• 1:14
  about, you know, their loss or something, you know, just grab a
• 1:16
  popcorn that has s'mores and cookies and everything else in
• 1:19
  it. And we'll get into the all those
• 1:21
  discussions in a couple of minutes.
• 1:23
  We do have a new sponsor with us that's been sponsoring our
• 1:26
  podcast recently and that's the Serenity Center.
• 1:29
  And maybe we'll take another commercial break later and we'll
• 1:31
  talk about it because I, I thought that did really, really
• 1:34
  well. So thank you to the good folks
• 1:35
  at Serenity Center in Rockland County providing therapy
• 1:39
  services to the local community and beyond, which is an amazing
• 1:42
  thing. And I have to mention, thank you
• 1:44
  to our marketing team, specifically Kim, who got us
• 1:48
  these beautiful, none of your business mugs, beautiful Lukheim
• 1:52
  guys, Lukheim, Lukheim, Lukheim, these are beautiful mugs.
• 1:56
  Soon they're going to be on sale for 1999.
• 1:58
  Buy one, get one free. All right, cheers, guys.
• 2:03
  The first time I met you, it was a Saturday night, and my friends
• 2:09
  told me about this amazing, amazing gig that's going on in
• 2:12
  Manhattan. And I have to go before Yom
• 2:15
  Kippur to hear Yehuda Green. And he is going to bring in Yom
• 2:19
  Kippur like no one has ever done before.
• 2:22
  And it's going to be a level that you've never reached in
• 2:24
  your life, is what my friends told me over a decade ago.
• 2:27
  And I'm like, what are you talking about?
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  It's Erym Kippur. I'm supposed to be crying.
• 2:30
  I'm supposed to be, you know, mourning, and I'm supposed to be
• 2:33
  feeling sad. You want to take me to a gig, an
• 2:36
  entertainment something in Manhattan?
• 2:38
  Oh, it's in Manhattan. I'm in, right?
• 2:41
  That's what I said. I go to Manhattan and I go to
• 2:43
  this crowd and there's a huge, huge, huge, beautiful, holy
• 2:47
  crowd in this, you know, stuffing into a magnificent, by
• 2:51
  the way, synagogue in, in Manhattan.
• 2:53
  And we're there. And suddenly you who the green
• 2:55
  gets up with his tallest and he starts to sing.
• 2:57
  And there's an older gentleman there who's just rocking away
• 3:00
  with his guitar. And I got attracted to it
• 3:03
  immediately. And I, I love music.
• 3:04
  And I just started getting closer and closer.
• 3:06
  And the entire time I sat next to you and I prayed and I dive.
• 3:11
  And Yep, you didn't even notice that I was there cuz you were in
• 3:13
  your zone over a decade ago. Yeah.
• 3:16
  And I have to tell you that you didn't know me then and you
• 3:19
  hardly know me now. And that's OK.
• 3:20
  We're gonna get to know each other today.
• 3:22
  But I was inspired by your, your, the beauty of how you
• 3:27
  connected. And you were very in tune, pun
• 3:31
  intended, with the singer. A lot of times you see a
• 3:36
  musician who is gonna, you know, goes with a singer and he's a
• 3:39
  little bit off on it. What I noticed about you that
• 3:42
  evening and what really helped me connect and pray and, you
• 3:45
  know, connect and get ready for the holiest day of our year is
• 3:48
  that you were very, very in line with the singer Yehuda Green was
• 3:52
  singing. And it's not easy to keep up
• 3:54
  with him with his ups and downs and his lefts and his rights.
• 3:58
  And you did it and it really inspired me.
• 4:01
  And I just want to thank you for that.
• 4:02
  I really, really want to get into it.
• 4:04
  And you understand. Thank you.
• 4:05
  And I want to understand that background.
• 4:07
  And of course, you know, as the CEO, owner, founder of Pop
• 4:10
  Insanity, we have a lot to get into.
• 4:11
  Well, she you've heard of Pop Insanity before, I'm sure.
• 4:15
  Is that a question or a statement?
• 4:17
  I feel everybody's heard of pop insanity.
• 4:19
  I mean, you're living under a rock if you haven't seen it.
• 4:22
  Tasted it. What's your favorite one by the
• 4:24
  way? Is it?
• 4:25
  They're all my favorite. I love it.
• 4:26
  It's like a guilty pleasure. I I'm sorry, but I try to stay
• 4:29
  away from it because I try to watch my calorie count, but the
• 4:33
  caramel has to be up there. It's delicious.
• 4:35
  You know that recipe was 2 1/2 years in the making.
• 4:38
  And then make it parv. What?
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  What does that mean? 2 1/2 years to make a recipe.
• 4:43
  Trial and error, this could be better.
• 4:45
  Let's let's try it could a little bit better.
• 4:49
  Let's try this. Let's try that.
• 4:51
  I have great partners and they really, really strive for
• 4:54
  excellence. Well, I appreciate the S'mores
• 4:56
  1, so thank you for that. They're all good, they're all
• 4:58
  delicious. Do you have like a storefront
• 5:00
  also where you sell them or is everything through distribution
• 5:03
  We. Did have a small place in front
• 5:06
  of our original factory on right here in Muncie.
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  Is it on 59? Right near.
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  Right near. I passed it.
• 5:15
  I passed it a lot. I always see it with her in the
• 5:17
  background, Popping says. So that's your factory, That's
• 5:19
  where you make. Not anymore.
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  That's where we started in a small 800 square foot place and
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  then we were busting out and we're having people label things
• 5:29
  in the back on table. It was a disaster, but we got it
• 5:32
  done. We never did not ship an order.
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  And then the landlord, I told the landlord, if anybody
• 5:37
  vacates, just give me the space. So I took from 1 space to two
• 5:41
  spaces to three spaces. And then we were here.
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  We were there for eight years. And another thing that I don't
• 5:51
  even have to describe, but it was like Mama such siata de
• 5:54
  shmaya. I am now in a 12,000 square foot
• 5:58
  facility, which I get emotional when I think about it because
• 6:03
  when me and my partners were sitting there putting this stuff
• 6:06
  together on a napkin, I never thought that it would evolve
• 6:10
  into what Berkashem it has involved.
• 6:13
  But yeah, we moved to New Jersey.
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  We have our offices in Muncie, so we can come and go with not
• 6:20
  too much of A commute because we put a lot of hours in.
• 6:22
  So it's my partners and employees in New Jersey, but
• 6:26
  yeah, it's been quite a ride. And when did you decide I wanna
• 6:31
  be the popcorn king? I wanna get into this.
• 6:34
  What was that moment? When did this happen?
• 6:36
  So it didn't really happen like that.
• 6:38
  It really happened because it's a story.
• 6:42
  So I don't know what what your guys schedule is here because.
• 6:45
  That's what we're here. For what we answer is this.
• 6:47
  Is this the quick answer thing or is this the?
• 6:50
  You know, Oshie and I have a thing that we like to say to
• 6:51
  each other. It's a.
• 6:52
  Very, very good question and it's even it's a bigger answer.
• 6:55
  I want to tell you, Oshie, Oshie and I have a rule of thumb is
• 6:58
  that we just, we like to listen. We do like to talk a lot, sure,
• 7:01
  that's for sure. But we really enjoy what we're
• 7:04
  doing here. So it's like if we're asking for
• 7:07
  the story, we want to hear the story, and we're sitting back
• 7:09
  and we're enjoying. It and by the way, I think it's
• 7:11
  very important that you do share that and tell us how this all
• 7:13
  began. And we want to talk about your
• 7:14
  journey because people that are listening and everybody's got a
• 7:16
  big idea, but it's hard to execute on them and people
• 7:19
  always think it's just an idea. I'm not ever really going to do
• 7:22
  it. This was an idea that someone
• 7:24
  must have had at some point and went and did it and look what it
• 7:28
  became. Like you said, it evolved into
• 7:30
  something in your wildest imagination you never would
• 7:32
  have. Thought and to that point, we
• 7:33
  like to get into the pain of it, to where it starts.
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  What happened, what was the trials or the challenges?
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  How long did it take you to make money?
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  Like, you know, did you have to borrow money?
• 7:41
  When did this start? How did this happen?
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  How did this come to be? So the back story is very
• 7:49
  interestingly, my whole professional life and since I
• 7:53
  got out of yeshiva was I worked for serine owned companies and
• 7:59
  we sold electronics and I sold, you know, keyboards, mice,
• 8:03
  webcams, iPod accessories, all that stuff to big box retailers,
• 8:06
  whether it was OfficeMax or Staples or whatever it was.
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  And Fast forward on the side, I also play music.
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  So at the same time my company was sold by my my employers sold
• 8:23
  the company to a hedge fund or whatever.
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  And we all had the choice to stay or to go.
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  And the decision was made that I was going to move on and do
• 8:32
  something else. Actually, my boss, my previous
• 8:35
  boss, has also left the new one. Anyway, the guy comes over to me
• 8:39
  and he says, you know, a third musician in the band because I
• 8:42
  was playing drums and keyboard at the time.
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  But the guy comes over to me and he says, you know, Aaron, with
• 8:47
  your, you know, the experience that you've had over the years,
• 8:51
  maybe you could help. Yankee.
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  I said, Yankee who? Yankee Gold.
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  He's got this. He never tasted his popcorn.
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  I said, no, what are you talking about?
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  All right, do me a favor. Let me set up a meeting and see
• 9:04
  see if you could help him because you know, he's great in
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  the kitchen. I don't know that he has
• 9:07
  business skills or anything like that.
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  OK, you sit down, he comes stuff.
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  I don't necessarily love popcorn.
• 9:16
  It's not like the first thing I'm but it was interesting.
• 9:20
  You know, it was just like in regular bags or whatever.
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  You had a little cute little label he put on or whatever.
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  And I'm eating and I'm saying, wow, this is pretty cool.
• 9:27
  And he's a power of you. How did you do this?
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  And I'm asking a couple questions.
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  And I said, OK, you know what, I'm going to try.
• 9:33
  I have a network of people and, you know, maybe I can, you know,
• 9:37
  help him out. Love this guy, the sweetest guy
• 9:38
  in the world, played gigs for years and years and years.
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  I had no idea he was a foodie or a chef or any of his cooking
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  and, and food quality, you know, foodie qualities.
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  And OK, so I take a couple of bags.
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  I'm showing it to this guy, showing it to this guy.
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  They were inhaling bags. They were like, Aaron, where'd
• 9:57
  you get this? It's a long story.
• 10:00
  You know, a guy in a basement. Is that all right?
• 10:06
  I think you should, you know, put your hands around this and
• 10:09
  try to figure out because I've never really tasted anything
• 10:13
  like this. And it's power of, you know, for
• 10:15
  for weddings and for young different, you know, it's, it's
• 10:18
  a night. It could be an item.
• 10:21
  So I start to try to go to here and there again.
• 10:25
  I was just trying to help him launch a little thing he was
• 10:28
  working on in his basement. I said to YY, where did the
• 10:34
  popcorn start? Like what are you doing with
• 10:36
  popcorn? He says, well, me and my
• 10:39
  brother, OK, moved here from Florida and he's a great.
• 10:43
  He's a Baker, trained Baker. And you know, I do my thing.
• 10:46
  We were going to open up a cafe in Muncie kind of like across
• 10:51
  the street from Evergreen a little thing there he was going
• 10:54
  to make and a Long story short without getting into the details
• 10:58
  three days before grand opening he couldn't open building
• 11:01
  condemned. I I don't know there was a there
• 11:03
  was a problem out of his control and he was freaking out because
• 11:08
  he's putting his life saving into this little cute little
• 11:10
  cafe. He's making calls up his Lois
• 11:14
  Lois's Yankee. I'm talking to you as a friend
• 11:16
  now. Take everything out and don't
• 11:20
  have judgements against you. Try to return everything.
• 11:23
  You know you don't have all the money in the world to just oh,
• 11:25
  this didn't work, let me try the next thing.
• 11:27
  Return everything. Get your money back.
• 11:32
  Makes a deal with the oven guy, the refrigerator, the soda
• 11:35
  machine, the griddle, everything.
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  The one guy who said I'm sorry, final sale, I ain't taking it
• 11:42
  back is the guy he bought a little popcorn machine from.
• 11:46
  Get out of. Here.
• 11:47
  Wow. This popcorn machine was in his
• 11:50
  dining room in a box for 9 months.
• 11:54
  Yankee, am I right? Nine months, his wife said.
• 11:58
  Yankee out with the popcorn machine.
• 12:01
  The kids have no room to play. You know, it's not fair.
• 12:04
  Like, just get. Yeah.
• 12:05
  But he says, you know what? We're making a little party for
• 12:09
  his young daughter before his wife said, OK, before it goes to
• 12:14
  the curb, you can play with the popcorn and whatever.
• 12:17
  So party comes popcorn, whatever and he sees the had a cotton
• 12:22
  candy guy there, you know, pouring looking thing.
• 12:26
  Yankees, what is that? He says no, it's color, it's
• 12:30
  sugar. It's just can I have some of
• 12:32
  that? And he starts because Yankee
• 12:35
  understands, and he starts making flavours.
• 12:38
  You got pink purple popcorn coming out of the machine is
• 12:41
  Popping Popping's wife says. What are we doing with all this
• 12:43
  popcorn? Give me some garbage bags.
• 12:45
  We'll put it, give it to the kids.
• 12:46
  As the kids go home, they're going to little.
• 12:49
  Baggies. Yeah, give out the kids.
• 12:52
  No problem. Party's done.
• 12:53
  This is on a Sunday. Everything's gorgeous.
• 12:56
  By the way, Jake, guess what my daughter was at that party.
• 12:59
  What my daughter went to was in the same class as Slava
• 13:01
  Goldenthal. Wow, wow at your first party.
• 13:05
  How many years ago was this? I want to say I think it was
• 13:08
  2012 or 2011, something like that.
• 13:11
  So like 13 years ago. Wow, this.
• 13:12
  Is on a. This is on a Sunday.
• 13:14
  On a Friday, he gets calls. Yeah.
• 13:17
  This is Goldenthal. Where did you buy the popcorn?
• 13:20
  She goes, oh God, it's a sore subject, My.
• 13:22
  Husband, this popcorn is chasing me.
• 13:26
  Just I'll give you 20 bucks. Just just send me the popcorn.
• 13:29
  My kids, my husband's fighting this thing.
• 13:31
  Whatever he comes over to YY, I need you to make popcorn for the
• 13:34
  kids. He's comes home from a mitzvot
• 13:37
  every night at 3:00 in the morning.
• 13:38
  Popcorn is not on his first list of things to do.
• 13:42
  You can't. You can't upset the cavalry like
• 13:44
  you can't. So let's make it a popcorn.
• 13:47
  And now he tells me he was once coming.
• 13:50
  He came home from, I think he told me it was a concert with
• 13:53
  Abramo freed and he had like a second wind, couldn't sleep.
• 13:56
  Whatever he decides, go up to the kitchen, marshmallow, fluff,
• 14:01
  nuts, popcorn, you know, cookies.
• 14:03
  And he starts playing in the basement and he makes about 5 or
• 14:07
  seven, I don't remember the number 9 by 13 pans of different
• 14:11
  flavors. His wife comes down.
• 14:13
  She works for the one of the state schools.
• 14:16
  He says, you know what, I was just playing around with
• 14:19
  different things. Maybe bring this to the school,
• 14:22
  put it in the teacher's lounge. Let's see what happens.
• 14:26
  Just curious. She comes home with a list of
• 14:30
  orders, like the Boy Scout cookies.
• 14:32
  We got to make this popcorn for the teachers.
• 14:34
  He says, I'm not making. He says you're not going to
• 14:36
  embarrass me. Now for the teachers, you got to
• 14:38
  make the popcorn. Makes the popcorn.
• 14:40
  Two weeks later, he gets a call from the principal of a school
• 14:43
  of 450 kids. Yeah, Jacob, I, I I hear that
• 14:48
  you make really good popcorn. So we're doing a fundraiser for
• 14:51
  the school. This guy doesn't have a label.
• 14:53
  He doesn't have a name. He doesn't have anything.
• 14:55
  He's just making popcorn. So we pushed Fast forward and,
• 14:59
  you know, he started to bring the popcorn to the gigs and he
• 15:01
  would make in his little machine and this and that.
• 15:04
  So that's when this other musician found, you know, he was
• 15:08
  eating his popcorn, but he's not really doing anything to, you
• 15:12
  know, so God put me in a position where I could just try
• 15:18
  to help and see what I could do and introduce it to people.
• 15:22
  And as I got, I'm like every time, every, I realize as a
• 15:26
  salesman when you go in to pitch something, even if you have, and
• 15:31
  I did have, I had branded keyboards and mice.
• 15:35
  When I say branded, I'm talking about it.
• 15:37
  Back in the day, we had a license for Compaq, IBM, we were
• 15:41
  distributed for HP. You think you're going into
• 15:44
  OfficeMax, Office Depot and you're going to say, hey, I have
• 15:48
  HP branded keyboards and mice or, or or or IBM, whatever.
• 15:53
  You think it's a slam dunk. You're like, Oh my God, wow.
• 15:57
  I had to sell my soul to get that stuff in there because of
• 15:59
  the way it works. You have to buy shelf space and
• 16:02
  it's complicated. When I was just giving this
• 16:05
  popcorn to a people, the rise and the they didn't have to say
• 16:10
  anything. You just saw their fate like.
• 16:12
  They immediately loved it changed.
• 16:13
  Myself, the sales pitch was done.
• 16:16
  I didn't open my mouth. I got to think about that.
• 16:20
  And basically I, I try to help them more and more And before I
• 16:25
  knew it, I was knee deep. I was like knee.
• 16:27
  I was spending. I was in Brooklyn.
• 16:28
  I lived in Brooklyn driving 2 hours every day back forth.
• 16:33
  And to push Fast forward a little bit more, we said, you
• 16:37
  know what, I went over to my previous bosses, well, can I
• 16:41
  know are, are very, very affluent and very smart.
• 16:46
  And I said to them, I got this idea, I'm going to do popcorn
• 16:49
  and whatever he goes, Aaron, you, you want to sell a bag of
• 16:53
  popcorn for $10? You're, you're, you're nuts.
• 17:00
  But I know one thing, you worked for me for a long time.
• 17:03
  I know what your, I know what your talents are.
• 17:07
  How much do you need? I went over to this guy and I
• 17:10
  said to him, well, I need $10,000.
• 17:13
  He says to me, here's 20 grand. Pay me back when you have the
• 17:19
  money. I don't care if you don't make
• 17:22
  money. And never forget he told me
• 17:23
  this. This is coming from somebody
• 17:25
  who's worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
• 17:27
  I don't care if you don't make money.
• 17:29
  Just prove to me it's a concept. We'll figure out how to make
• 17:31
  money on the back end. We'll work it.
• 17:34
  We'll we'll, we'll reverse engineer it.
• 17:36
  So that's what we started to do, but we had to find a place to do
• 17:40
  this and I couldn't, you know, like rent, I mean 800 square
• 17:44
  foot store. You have two salaries.
• 17:46
  How, how am I making money? My idea was to go out, raise
• 17:50
  money, bring in like a, you know, half $1,000,000, a
• 17:52
  $1,000,000. There's money for salaries.
• 17:54
  There's money for machines that, you know, start a business.
• 17:57
  Everyone thought I literally they liked the popcorn.
• 18:01
  They asked for another bag before I left or threw me out,
• 18:03
  but they weren't investing money.
• 18:07
  So I said, you know what, Yankee?
• 18:09
  Bottom line is, you have a great product.
• 18:13
  I think we could really work well together, But nobody wants
• 18:18
  to do my plan, which is to invest, you know, get an
• 18:22
  investor and launch a company. So we have a choice.
• 18:25
  Either we could just move on, play gigs together, munch on
• 18:29
  some popcorn, or we can go for broke.
• 18:32
  He says, well, what do you mean by that?
• 18:34
  Well, we could take a small of a small spot, prove the concept,
• 18:39
  and then hopefully that will be a launchpad into what I want to
• 18:43
  do. Where are we going to do this?
• 18:46
  I said, you know, Muncie, I don't.
• 18:48
  So we start circling. We find the place, which is my
• 18:50
  current place now, and it was a yogurt store that went out of
• 18:55
  business or he moved or whatever it was.
• 18:58
  And I walk in. I said, this is perfect.
• 18:59
  We don't have to build out the grease traps are there, the
• 19:01
  oven, the powers there, the sinks are there.
• 19:04
  Like it's not a dentist's office where I have to back forth.
• 19:09
  The guy wants rent. We couldn't afford the rent, but
• 19:11
  I went to visit the place five times finally, and I'll say his
• 19:16
  name, Mike Rosenbaum. He said to me, guys, you've been
• 19:19
  here five times. What are we doing?
• 19:23
  I said I love this place, I really want to start my business
• 19:27
  here but I can't afford the rent.
• 19:31
  What could you afford? And I don't even remember the
• 19:33
  numbers. I gave him some number that I
• 19:37
  thought he would literally say OK do me a favor you guys are
• 19:40
  nice, not going to happen. He says to me, Aaron Jacob,
• 19:46
  deal, go after your dream. I'm going to give you 2 months
• 19:49
  free rent. Go after your dream.
• 19:52
  Here's the keys. Wow, I didn't find a lease.
• 19:55
  Wow, did you know this guy from before you met him there?
• 19:58
  He must have tasted the popcorn. Yeah, we probably did.
• 20:02
  But this was it. It was just we.
• 20:04
  I'm telling you it was. It was.
• 20:07
  What a guy. You know, I, I got a pause from
• 20:10
  it. I'm fascinated by your story.
• 20:11
  And you said that like, you know, your, your previous bosses
• 20:14
  brought you in and they know your talents.
• 20:16
  What are your talents? I, I don't know you that well,
• 20:18
  but it obviously you can sell, you can market.
• 20:21
  What, what was your core that you knew that you could take
• 20:24
  this to the next level? What was that?
• 20:27
  I didn't know I could take it to the next level.
• 20:29
  I didn't know that I had 20 years of experience of hanging
• 20:35
  out with the big boys, meaning I wasn't just working in a pizza
• 20:39
  shop or a grocery store. I was.
• 20:43
  I flew all around the United States.
• 20:46
  I have parts of the world also with my bosses who I was just
• 20:52
  who I built really very nice relationships pretty close,
• 20:55
  close to this day. And it's interesting because I
• 20:59
  was a sales guy and as I, as I got trained and as I did more
• 21:04
  and more, they put gave me more responsibility.
• 21:07
  But I was in meetings or he would ask me to come to meetings
• 21:11
  that had nothing to do with what I do.
• 21:13
  And I never understood it. Like, why do I need to talk?
• 21:18
  Be here And while you go over numbers or inventory, half the
• 21:21
  stuff I barely understood, but I started to learn it.
• 21:24
  Little did I know that that those meetings that I sat in on
• 21:29
  would help me not only be a salesman for a company, but to
• 21:33
  run a company. I understood taxes, I understood
• 21:36
  accounting, cost of goods, planning, margins.
• 21:41
  There was so many things. Very cool, I was able to learn.
• 21:44
  From sales to operations and the whole gamut.
• 21:47
  Through which so so in the. The short answer to your
• 21:51
  question, I think is Borrachashem.
• 21:55
  I've always been blessed with a people's person kind of
• 22:00
  personality. I've always because I've met
• 22:03
  with and dealt with lots of interesting personalities and
• 22:08
  I've always been able to navigate through them or with
• 22:10
  them. There's I I pride myself on the
• 22:13
  fact that there there hasn't been a bridge that I burned.
• 22:17
  If there's something between us, I'll fix it or we'll talk about
• 22:22
  it, or they'll become or. I'll give you some popcorn and
• 22:24
  you'll forget it. So, so that's it's, I like it's,
• 22:28
  it's people's person, it's sales.
• 22:29
  And then, like you say, went to operations and, and, and other
• 22:33
  things. And I'm also, I don't know if
• 22:35
  you know, I'm the smartest guy in the world.
• 22:38
  I know exactly what I don't know.
• 22:41
  And when I don't know something, I ask, I hire, I contract out.
• 22:45
  The right way to do things. And I, I, I ask for help and,
• 22:48
  you know, and advice. So I'm not afraid to many times
• 22:53
  you get on the phone, listen, if you, you know, with whether it's
• 22:56
  machines or workman's comp or whatever it is, no, by the way,
• 23:00
  you're talking to an idiot in this area.
• 23:03
  So start from the beginning. They go, no, no, no, it's OK.
• 23:06
  And they, and no question is off the off the table.
• 23:09
  When you claim to know everything and it's not, they
• 23:11
  expect that they start talking. Oh yeah.
• 23:13
  So the CVP is like this, the HOR is like this.
• 23:15
  You know what he's talking about.
• 23:17
  So I try to be very forthcoming and open and honest what we, my
• 23:21
  strengths are and where they're not.
• 23:23
  And we tried to, you know. Get back to your story before
• 23:28
  Michael rudely interrupted you with with another question.
• 23:31
  But like, we're literally at the crux of his story.
• 23:33
  Which one was that? When you're in the store, you're
• 23:35
  just getting, you're getting the rent for free.
• 23:37
  The guy's like, I'll give you 2 months for free.
• 23:38
  Just go after your dream. Like that's where you're up to
• 23:41
  Exactly right there. So now we have this place and we
• 23:48
  got to get machines, we got to buy ingredients, we got to buy
• 23:51
  all these things to, you know, to start.
• 23:54
  So we need a hash Kaka. We were getting hash Kaka, big
• 24:00
  OU, where do I start? Dial 1800 OU like what are we
• 24:04
  doing here? So I do what I always do.
• 24:07
  I go speak to my rabbis and one of the rabbis that I was not
• 24:12
  very close to but had a really good relationship with was
• 24:16
  somebody in Hushka and he told me, I don't come to my house.
• 24:20
  Tell me what you want to do, I'm going to guide you.
• 24:23
  Long story short, we had a plan, made some phone calls for me.
• 24:29
  I went there and of course it was a fantastic meeting with the
• 24:36
  I went to the OU. And they have like a
• 24:39
  headquarters that are you like a.
• 24:40
  Great team of people and you know I was just starting.
• 24:44
  I didn't have no investor. I didn't it was like credit card
• 24:48
  borrow from Yankel to pay my show when my shoes bill is done
• 24:51
  you go to your field. That's the way I ran the
• 24:53
  business. It was part pay Peter to.
• 24:56
  Robin, Paul. Peter.
• 24:58
  Thank you. So now all users listen, you
• 25:00
  give me this number and I said I really kind of you know what,
• 25:03
  when we are able to, I'm going to come back because I really I
• 25:07
  believe OU is my customer and because I want to be national
• 25:13
  and wait, wait, wait, wait. Where you going?
• 25:15
  Sit down. Let me tell you something.
• 25:18
  We just spoke here for an hour. I see the interaction between
• 25:21
  two partners, the, the, the passion and respect that you
• 25:25
  have for each other and, and you're really determined.
• 25:29
  They made it worthwhile for us. I don't remember if it was
• 25:32
  payment plans. They worked with me with
• 25:34
  something that can work. And now I boom, now I have OU
• 25:37
  now I need design. I can't afford designer.
• 25:40
  What am I doing? So my previous life, I worked
• 25:44
  with lots of people. When it was an $80 million
• 25:47
  company that I was working for, I said, well, I called up the
• 25:50
  guy. I said, listen, I need some
• 25:52
  design, this and that. What is it called?
• 25:53
  What? What do you typically charge for
• 25:54
  that? He tells me.
• 25:56
  I go, OK, I'll go on Then. Those days there was no fiber or
• 26:00
  Upwork or anything like that. I'll figure out.
• 26:02
  He goes iron, what do you need? Just tell me what you need.
• 26:05
  This, that, the other. So don't worry about it.
• 26:08
  I'll design it when you have the money you pay for.
• 26:12
  Why is everybody being so nice to you?
• 26:14
  Like what is like, like how are you getting all of this done?
• 26:16
  Everybody's like, we just want to help you.
• 26:18
  We just want to help you. Don't pay us.
• 26:19
  It's OK, Pay us whenever you have money.
• 26:22
  You don't have to pay us now. Like, are you Mother Teresa or
• 26:25
  something that people, everybody just wants a piece of you?
• 26:26
  The popcorn is really, really good.
• 26:28
  Is she? So are you giving people the
• 26:30
  popcorn a long way? So there's no I.
• 26:32
  I I'll tell you. I'll tell you what what it is.
• 26:34
  I I. I It's not like he has a drug.
• 26:35
  He's like he slips the drug under the table.
• 26:37
  Taste this. Like I said, I'm a people's
• 26:40
  person and Yankee is very, very well liked and we're just two
• 26:45
  guys trying to launch something that we hope to make a Parnassus
• 26:52
  with. And you played music together,
• 26:55
  right? You were in a band.
• 26:56
  Together, yeah, Yankee is a fantastic keyboard player.
• 26:58
  He's played thousands of weddings, travelled with the
• 27:01
  biggest singers, very, very talented both on stage and in
• 27:05
  the kitchen. So now this designer is also on
• 27:07
  on board here and is also helping you out and he's doing
• 27:10
  his part. Nobody's asking you for any
• 27:12
  equity along the way. Everybody's just like, you know
• 27:14
  the. People who OK, that's a great
• 27:17
  question. By the way, the people who who
• 27:19
  asked me for equity. So when I started again, I
• 27:23
  didn't have the money to really, you know, we oh, by the way,
• 27:26
  credit what credit is due when the landlord said go after you
• 27:30
  dream. I've got that's really nice.
• 27:31
  Now I got to figure out how I'm paying for rent.
• 27:35
  And Yankee's father-in-law said, guys, here's six months rental.
• 27:41
  I don't remember the number six months enough.
• 27:44
  You guys are dancing for a year, putting your blood, sweat and
• 27:48
  tears into this. I'll take care of it.
• 27:51
  I need you to concentrate on the business, not on the money.
• 27:54
  And because of his help and Mike's help and so many people
• 28:00
  along the way, we started and like I said, literally when we
• 28:08
  credit card bills were due and I needed to pay, I had orders that
• 28:13
  I couldn't, I didn't have money for the ingredients.
• 28:16
  So it was just a it, it, it was. And people think, you know, wow,
• 28:21
  you're buying a second. Yeah, really.
• 28:23
  How about not taking a salary for the 1st three or four?
• 28:28
  I don't want to, I don't know exactly, but multiple years I
• 28:31
  did not take a salary. I'm not embarrassed to say it.
• 28:35
  I borrowed money literally to get by those couple years.
• 28:40
  And by the way, the Urbani Shalom has a sense of humor
• 28:42
  because during that time he sent me two beautiful son-in-law and
• 28:48
  daughter-in-law where I had to pay for two weddings, court the
• 28:52
  seminary, no job, no income. I'm saying my wife has her thing
• 28:57
  going on. And I played a little bit of
• 28:59
  music, but that doesn't cover what what it was.
• 29:02
  And I'll just interrupt here for a second because people say I'll
• 29:05
  pop in sanity. The people who deserve the most
• 29:09
  credit are our wives. And I don't mean to pull out the
• 29:11
  violins. I mean it for a very serious
• 29:14
  reason. They could have said, Aaron, I
• 29:16
  know what you were doing before you did this.
• 29:19
  I know you know how things went and what you made and what you
• 29:23
  and Yankee, you had a sound company and you were playing and
• 29:26
  this and that. Do the popcorn on the weekend.
• 29:30
  Get a job as a hobby you got. Responsibilities.
• 29:33
  A job. They never said that to us.
• 29:36
  They never said that to us. They saw our passion.
• 29:38
  We put in the hours. It's not like we were waiting
• 29:41
  for something to land. Although along the way lots of
• 29:45
  things landed. There are things that happened
• 29:48
  in this company that I cannot explain.
• 29:50
  My key people. Lamb met my biggest, Yakov
• 29:55
  Varshevsky, who handles a lot of my marketing and so much, I
• 30:00
  don't even know how many hats he he he wears.
• 30:03
  We found him in 7-11, literally found him in 7-11.
• 30:06
  I have my my operations manager who runs my whole facility, Heim
• 30:11
  Goldberg. He was driving, he was in
• 30:15
  between jobs. Whatever.
• 30:16
  He met Yankee, met him somewhere.
• 30:18
  He just liked him. Boom, man.
• 30:20
  They want you to meet my partner.
• 30:22
  Hide him on the spot. People came from different
• 30:26
  places and scenarios. I'm telling you, there's no
• 30:31
  other way to a describe it then. Then it was a bracha from the
• 30:34
  Rabanchal island. Because any ad that I posted, I
• 30:37
  wouldn't find the personality and the passion and they would
• 30:42
  all take bullets for me and I would do the same for them with
• 30:44
  family. So basically coming back and
• 30:49
  making a circle. So now I put all these things in
• 30:51
  place. We have the, I got the design,
• 30:53
  we buy machines. I got to borrow money for the
• 30:56
  machines, took care of that. Now we have machines.
• 30:58
  Now we're cooking, making popcorn.
• 31:02
  OK, we got old. I'll never forget we had a wall
• 31:04
  full of popcorn. I go, OK, now we're we'll be
• 31:06
  selling this. Like what did we do?
• 31:08
  What did we do? What was the objective at the
• 31:09
  beginning? To sell it to distribution or to
• 31:12
  go directly to the consumer? What was your?
• 31:14
  I might directly to stores. It was never distribution.
• 31:17
  That was the and you're. Going to retail?
• 31:19
  Go to retail, go to to the supermarkets that we all know of
• 31:24
  and a website. So direct to consumer on a
• 31:27
  website as well, right? But I said, you know what,
• 31:30
  where's the low hanging fruit Yankee?
• 31:32
  You and I played shows for so many years.
• 31:36
  We know every caterer in the in the metro area.
• 31:39
  Let me call up this guy, that guy, whatever, call him up, He
• 31:43
  says. I said, you have a few minutes.
• 31:46
  I want, I got an item I want to show you.
• 31:47
  He goes, Aaron, you're a drummer.
• 31:48
  I've I've seen you here 1000 times.
• 31:50
  What are you talking about? No, no, no, I got a popcorn, he
• 31:53
  says popcorn. What do you, Aaron, do me a
• 31:56
  favor, call me back at night. I said I know you're 15.
• 32:00
  Yes. Could you give me 15 minutes of
• 32:02
  your time? He goes iron.
• 32:03
  Absolutely. I go in there, show him the
• 32:07
  popcorn. All right.
• 32:08
  This is good. What's the house owe you?
• 32:10
  Power. OK.
• 32:11
  How much is it? I said it's $18.00 for a little
• 32:14
  thing. Are you sick?
• 32:18
  I'll never forget it. He's sitting there like the
• 32:20
  iron. You're crazy.
• 32:21
  It's popcorn. It's.
• 32:21
  A lot of money. Popcorn.
• 32:25
  I do weddings. I do bar Halt and he's eating,
• 32:29
  Eating. I said to him, he says, what are
• 32:32
  you crazy? He's like, yeah, you crazy.
• 32:35
  Can't make this. I said, is it good?
• 32:37
  This is good. This is this is like crack.
• 32:39
  Like this is crazy. He says, you know what I said,
• 32:43
  you know what? Why don't you try it?
• 32:45
  And if it doesn't work, lose my number.
• 32:48
  We'll just be friends. We'll see each other at some
• 32:50
  place. He goes, give me a favor.
• 32:51
  He called somebody in with his book of parties and he goes, OK,
• 32:56
  boom, boom, boom. Give me 6 tubs for the next
• 32:58
  eight parties, 6 tubs. I leave you, I say Yankee, I got
• 33:02
  an order. He says I can't make that
• 33:04
  because we I can't make that by myself.
• 33:06
  As I'm coming to tell your wife, you're not.
• 33:09
  You're coming home real late tonight.
• 33:11
  I'm in five towns. I'm coming to Muncie now.
• 33:13
  I'm going to help you make it now with me making chocolate all
• 33:17
  over the walls. Whatever.
• 33:18
  I should stick to sales and marketing and he should stick to
• 33:22
  cooking but end of the day we it was just me and him making it.
• 33:28
  All hands on deck, everybody. Everybody's.
• 33:30
  Let's go, let's go. Make it, bag it, package it.
• 33:33
  He'd help me load it into my car.
• 33:35
  Then next day I'd leave. Sometimes I would sleep in his
• 33:38
  basement because we got done working 12 one O clock in the
• 33:42
  morning I'd sleep in his basement.
• 33:43
  In the morning I'd go start delivering and peddling the
• 33:46
  stuff. And for a long time I did all
• 33:48
  the deliveries, you know, and basically that's kind of how it
• 33:52
  started because we the low hanging fruit was the was the
• 33:56
  Simcha halls and people started to have it by simchas.
• 33:59
  And then they would go into a store and say, excuse me, do you
• 34:01
  have pop insanity popcorn? I go Papa, What?
• 34:04
  No, no, it's chocolate cup. I had no idea.
• 34:07
  If you get me a number, I'll I'll try to you know, and in
• 34:11
  time what was. The first big splashy order.
• 34:17
  What was that first kind of signature moment that you
• 34:20
  realize, oh wow, like people start, people know who I am.
• 34:24
  Was it a big like, you know, Evergreen chain or I don't know
• 34:27
  So and and the other grocery chain or.
• 34:29
  So I, I don't want to mention the name because they're going
• 34:32
  to say, Aaron, don't you remember it was me?
• 34:33
  I I don't want to. Exactly.
• 34:34
  You don't want to insult anybody.
• 34:35
  But but it was it was probably you know the two chains that
• 34:44
  have like 5 stores each. So once they put into their
• 34:47
  stores, it started gaining real. Popular, but there were guys
• 34:50
  like like who started out there's there's a a guy in
• 34:54
  Lakewood called confection collection at side of a guy has
• 34:57
  a little nut store. Somebody introduced us to to to
• 35:00
  him. He was my first store in
• 35:02
  Lakewood. This guy it was I have to
• 35:04
  understand it's one store in Lakewood.
• 35:06
  The buzz is out there. So everyone's coming to his
• 35:09
  store. So he was running out of stuff.
• 35:12
  He literally you have stuff I'm sending a car service from
• 35:15
  Lakewood. That's the way it was.
• 35:17
  I need tonight now then it was the notary.
• 35:20
  I have a car Satov to these people because they they, they
• 35:24
  really embraced my brand and really it, it was a right fit
• 35:30
  for them. It was something, you know,
• 35:32
  decadent. A high end, you know, candy.
• 35:35
  But you know what it was, we built relationships and I have a
• 35:38
  tremendous accursed to those people.
• 35:40
  And I don't mean to leave out any other names that I'm not
• 35:43
  thinking about now, but they were tremendous.
• 35:46
  There was a tremendous amount of, of not only the fact that it
• 35:51
  was like you say, it was the high end item.
• 35:53
  They wanted it for the stores, but they, I don't know how to
• 35:55
  explain they, they really took a liking from placement in the
• 35:59
  stores. You know, when 1 of the big
• 36:01
  stores called me, he says, you know, I'd like to buy you stuff.
• 36:06
  And I said, well, I, I, I'm not ready.
• 36:09
  I'm not ready to sell you. That comes off very pompous.
• 36:13
  So excuse me, I said, and this was in the beginning and you
• 36:17
  know, I, I said, I heard that the grocery business, you know,
• 36:21
  I, I have to hold it because you pay in 60 ninety 120 days this
• 36:25
  and that. I I can't do that.
• 36:28
  I'm I'm I'm dying to sell you. And not only that would be an
• 36:31
  honor for my stuff to be in your store.
• 36:33
  I physically I can't do it. He says, really He says, you
• 36:38
  know, what could could you could you come down to my store, talk
• 36:43
  to me? Would would you do that?
• 36:44
  Like he was a little bit attitude style.
• 36:46
  I said of course when I come there, of course with samples,
• 36:50
  he's big. He goes how about if I pay you
• 36:54
  COD? How about it?
• 36:56
  Oh, that works. He says, yeah, but but we're
• 36:59
  going to have another problem. He says, what are you, What are
• 37:01
  you talking about? I said, where are you going to
• 37:03
  put it? He says, what do you It's my
• 37:06
  store. What do you care about where I
• 37:07
  put it? I said, because if you're going
• 37:09
  to put it on top of the marinara sauce underneath the Twizzlers,
• 37:12
  a bag of popcorn for 1213 dollars is not going to sell,
• 37:15
  right? He says, well, where do you want
• 37:18
  to put it? I said, you want to go
• 37:20
  downstairs, Let's do it. I'll show you where I want to
• 37:22
  put it. Come downstairs, walk into the
• 37:26
  store. This is a big store.
• 37:27
  I said, OK, walk in here, meats here, fruits here, right here,
• 37:33
  right when you walk in, put a rack here.
• 37:36
  These are people going to trip over.
• 37:37
  I mean, and that's prime real estate.
• 37:39
  I I look how much stuff you got, everything.
• 37:40
  You got to pay for that spot. Yeah, I said.
• 37:43
  I know. That's why we can't do business
• 37:46
  right now. So when we could figure out
• 37:49
  because honestly, you're going to return it and I wasn't being
• 37:53
  playing. I wasn't playing, you know, hard
• 37:55
  to get. It's just I knew the thing,
• 37:57
  you're going to return it and it's not selling.
• 38:00
  Very savvy of you. You can't put your popcorn right
• 38:02
  next to the regular popcorn. You see the popcorn for $1.99 a
• 38:05
  bag or not even less, and then you see yours for 1299 and 899.
• 38:09
  I I don't want a headache. It's got to have its own little
• 38:11
  showing, its own little showcase.
• 38:13
  By the way, I was in Evergreen recently and I saw the Pop and
• 38:17
  Sanity popcorn. I see it a lot, but I noticed
• 38:19
  that in Evergreen it's right there in the front.
• 38:22
  It's like prime real estate, like people are walking by all
• 38:25
  day, you know, by the cashiers. You can't miss it.
• 38:28
  Like everybody sees it. So you're really but the funny
• 38:31
  presented this very well thing. Was and, and we can kind of
• 38:35
  circle back here. The funny thing was he goes.
• 38:39
  We're going to put it here. I said yeah.
• 38:41
  He says we're going to try it for two weeks.
• 38:43
  If it doesn't work, you know, then I put it.
• 38:45
  Where am I? OK, came around do blah, blah,
• 38:49
  blah. Can we put a put a rack here?
• 38:51
  He says put a rack here. He said OK, so now can we, can
• 38:56
  we sell a product? I said yeah.
• 38:58
  He says, well, when can I have it here?
• 39:01
  4 minutes. So what are you talking about?
• 39:03
  I always go when I do a sales call.
• 39:05
  Full rack, full first load in in my car because if the deal
• 39:10
  happens. You want to be there, ready.
• 39:12
  I'm there. Yeah, smart.
• 39:14
  So he says, really, 4 minutes me and Yankee are running through
• 39:18
  this store with wagons, pull it in.
• 39:21
  We're starting to put it up. People are starting.
• 39:23
  The guy says no, you can't take it's not scanned in the system a
• 39:26
  thing or whatever. They got to put the barcode on
• 39:27
  it. And then store by store by
• 39:30
  store. Wow.
• 39:31
  But one thing I must mention before you go on, and that's
• 39:34
  very important, I have another partner.
• 39:38
  A third party. We have three people, it's
• 39:41
  myself and Yankee started the company and a little bit later
• 39:44
  on a guy by the name of Yates Joseph joined us and Yates has
• 39:50
  been also fell from the sky. How do I find Yates, a guy who
• 39:56
  has 30 years experience in manufacturing internationally,
• 40:01
  forecasting numbers, stuff that. You know, I I I could touch
• 40:06
  upon, but that I don't know. Well, and I got got to one of my
• 40:10
  little snags and I said to my call up my Rebbe in Israel and I
• 40:14
  said, well, this is in the beginning, you know, I said, but
• 40:17
  what am I doing? I got this.
• 40:20
  You want to scale it? I want to go to the next.
• 40:22
  Level He goes iron and he doesn't come to America often.
• 40:24
  He says I'm coming to America. I said great he says I will come
• 40:29
  I have a wedding in Muncie I'm going to come to you 2 hours
• 40:32
  before the wedding. We're going to talk don't worry
• 40:34
  about it. Comes to the thing talking
• 40:37
  talking talking. He starts asking I knew him for
• 40:42
  he as a balaitza. Someone who I ask how do you say
• 40:47
  advice? From a.
• 40:48
  Mentor someone who I learned from 2 hours.
• 40:51
  I never saw him talk about how does this machine work?
• 40:56
  How does that, what does this do?
• 40:57
  How much is this? What's the difference between
• 40:59
  retail margin and wholesale? Like is this the same?
• 41:04
  I said OK, at the end of the game I said, Robbie, what do you
• 41:06
  say, do I have a business here? He says you have a business, you
• 41:09
  have a very, very good opportunity.
• 41:11
  I said OK, so what's the issue now?
• 41:14
  And I told him, he says I'll think about it, think about it.
• 41:19
  I got things to do. He says, you know what, come to
• 41:22
  me by the wedding later on tonight, I'll have an answer for
• 41:27
  you. I come to the wedding.
• 41:31
  I got to think about it. OK?
• 41:35
  Next morning it's like Joseph walks into my office.
• 41:40
  Now, mind you, when the Rev was here the night before, Yitz
• 41:46
  always drives him around whatever the Rebbe needs this
• 41:50
  Yitz is and I went to we went to yeshiva together.
• 41:53
  So my, my, my partner, we went to yeshiva 35 years ago, but I
• 41:57
  had no idea we, you know, seen by Simcha mazel tov, whatever,
• 42:00
  but I had no idea of his business experience.
• 42:04
  He walks into the to the door and he says, OK, so I'm here.
• 42:09
  The Rebbe sent me. What what, what's going on?
• 42:15
  We sat for four what is this and how does this work and what's
• 42:18
  this And and he started to really.
• 42:22
  Break things down. Be involved and help us.
• 42:25
  And he doesn't like when I talk about him.
• 42:27
  So I'm going to stop here. And the bottom line is we each
• 42:31
  have very different personalities.
• 42:33
  We each have very different talents.
• 42:37
  And we don't always agree on everything, but one thing we do,
• 42:41
  we always come to a bottom line respectfully, like iron.
• 42:46
  You're out of your mind. But I.
• 42:48
  But I I let's go for it. How much does it?
• 42:51
  Let's go for it. It makes sense.
• 42:53
  Why would you do this? It's let's go for it.
• 42:57
  We give each other each other's room.
• 42:59
  And sometimes Yankee comes up with a crazy flavor.
• 43:02
  Really. I don't know.
• 43:03
  Yankee. Do it.
• 43:05
  I'll sell it. Let's try.
• 43:07
  I read somewhere that you ended up on Oprah and, you know, I, I,
• 43:11
  I've heard about this story before, but I just want to ask
• 43:14
  you what just like candidly, I mean, how was that experience
• 43:17
  with her and. Did you meet?
• 43:19
  Oprah, No, no. So after selling the Jewish
• 43:25
  stores and the caterers, I realized there's no way that we
• 43:29
  can sustain a livelihood and not, not the kosher market is
• 43:33
  very big. And we're, we're every, we're
• 43:35
  almost everywhere where we want to be.
• 43:38
  There's always room for improvement and there's always
• 43:39
  new stores opening. I'm not saying that we, that we
• 43:43
  have it all wrapped up because we don't.
• 43:44
  There's always work to do, but my goal always was mainstream
• 43:49
  America. Sure.
• 43:51
  So I said how do we do that? And I decided with my partners
• 43:56
  that we have to do trade shows and be out there.
• 44:01
  We're in Muncie who Sees U.S. website.
• 44:03
  How do you market? So Long story short, I'd say,
• 44:07
  you know what, we're going to go to a trade show in Atlanta.
• 44:11
  It's a gift show, gift show. It's not a food show, so on one
• 44:16
  side we meet a guy selling Swarovski crystals, the other
• 44:19
  side of me, the guy selling Persian rugs from wherever, and
• 44:23
  here I am selling popcorn. Makes no sense.
• 44:25
  But at the end of the day, it's gorgeous.
• 44:27
  Boots, chandeliers, carpeting, little magician action.
• 44:31
  It's. The perfect gifting item?
• 44:32
  Yeah, for sure. It's a gift, you know?
• 44:34
  So Long story short, we're selling there.
• 44:36
  We're we're, we're doing our thing.
• 44:38
  And I see a guy, he's walking with a people, couple of women
• 44:45
  following him with notepads. And every time he makes a
• 44:49
  comment, they're taking notes or whatever.
• 44:51
  And I see he's like staring at me.
• 44:53
  I'm saying to myself, it's OK, what are we working to?
• 44:58
  We're working to customers in the booth, old son.
• 45:00
  The guy makes his way over and he says, what's going on here?
• 45:05
  I said, he's selling popcorn. I thought he's selling jewelry
• 45:09
  like and he's eating and he's like, Oh my God, and and the
• 45:13
  women are eating and they're and he's just tell me something.
• 45:18
  And I really thought like either he was a competitor or the IRS
• 45:21
  doing an audit. How much do you make?
• 45:23
  How many of this? What's going on here?
• 45:26
  Who do you sell? Where do you buy?
• 45:28
  Million questions and add to the point where I got a little bit.
• 45:32
  You know what's going on here. I.
• 45:33
  Said you know what, here's my card after the show.
• 45:36
  Feel free to give me a call whenever he says, can we talk
• 45:42
  over there for a second? And he says to me, he says my
• 45:45
  name is so and so. And I am.
• 45:47
  And he gave me his title and he said, I think this would be very
• 45:52
  interesting for oh, I said, what's O?
• 45:59
  He says, what do you mean? What's O?
• 46:01
  You never heard of Oprah? I said, of course I heard of
• 46:05
  Oprah, but I don't know what O is.
• 46:07
  He goes, that's her magazine. Oh, I didn't know that.
• 46:10
  You know, that's cool. You know, I look all over the
• 46:14
  United States for products for her list.
• 46:19
  What list? He says.
• 46:22
  So you do you live under a like I said, what do you want from 2
• 46:25
  Jewish guys from Brooklyn? What?
• 46:27
  About Oprah's favorite thing is as if you would know.
• 46:30
  And he's just no. Need any?
• 46:31
  A lot of them are Sparkle magazine.
• 46:32
  What do you want from it? Was very nice and he explained,
• 46:34
  you know what it is and you know, Yankees like thinking, OK,
• 46:39
  this guy probably went downstairs to Kinko's, bought a
• 46:41
  business card running around the show getting free samples, like
• 46:45
  very possible. Yeah.
• 46:48
  Like took his card. This was your first trade show?
• 46:51
  This is no, this is probably a year into sorry.
• 46:54
  There's another. You've done trade shows.
• 46:56
  Trade shows was a thing. Yeah, yeah, but I did food trade
• 46:59
  shows, right? Sweets, right?
• 47:00
  This was the first out-of-the-box idea trade.
• 47:03
  Shows like interesting, you know, and you know, he said OK,
• 47:08
  I think they would really like this whatever and took the
• 47:11
  business card He left and we do you know, doing our the rest of
• 47:15
  our day come back at a hotel Googling his name.
• 47:20
  He goes, isn't, isn't that the guy that just was?
• 47:23
  Yeah, he's real. And he's, you know, he's, he's
• 47:25
  real. And we said they got to send
• 47:29
  samples here. You got to send samples there.
• 47:31
  You got to send samples here. I say Yankee, worst case
• 47:33
  scenario, yes, Worst case scenario, we'll be out some
• 47:36
  samples like big deal South of Chicago.
• 47:38
  Send it here. Send it there.
• 47:40
  If Oprah asks for something, you give it to her.
• 47:43
  You do not deny Oprah Winfrey. Yes, you don't.
• 47:46
  Yes, She's a very powerful woman.
• 47:48
  I'm not sure if you're aware of this.
• 47:50
  And she also has a huge following.
• 47:52
  You'll have women like stalking you, like in your house with
• 47:55
  signs. They'll picket signs and they're
• 47:58
  just gonna. It'll be a nightmare.
• 47:59
  It's not worth. She has an army.
• 48:00
  She's a trope of our armies of of people like people follow her
• 48:04
  religious. Well, now he knows.
• 48:06
  She's got like a mad cult following.
• 48:09
  I knew that obviously she was very popular.
• 48:11
  I, I wasn't familiar with this list and products and I, I
• 48:15
  wasn't familiar with that. And, and then I remember on a
• 48:19
  mucho Shabbos, I got an e-mail or a letter or something that
• 48:23
  says, you know, you have been her stationary the whole thing.
• 48:26
  And, and it was, it was surreal because I didn't have, I didn't
• 48:34
  have a phone system. This was pop insanity.
• 48:38
  Whenever you called pop insanity from my cell phone rang.
• 48:42
  I didn't have a phone. Call forwarding.
• 48:43
  He had a call forwarding. Yeah, I didn't have this.
• 48:45
  I didn't. Oh my God, We need a phone
• 48:46
  company. We need this for that.
• 48:48
  So in no time. Put everything together.
• 48:52
  Get ready. Ready for Oprah?
• 48:53
  You got the cavalry going. And, and, and Long story short,
• 48:55
  it was a tremendous, tremendous, tremendous bracha from a shame.
• 49:00
  And it's not that. Oh, OK, now I could retire
• 49:02
  because it wasn't about that. It wasn't all of a sudden, you
• 49:06
  know, we went like this. But you saw a huge spike in
• 49:08
  sales since then? Right.
• 49:09
  It was a spike in sales, but more so it put us on because we
• 49:13
  got the national exposure. A lot of companies, you know
• 49:17
  what, let's try this company. If it's good enough for her,
• 49:19
  it's good enough for me. And we've, we sold companies
• 49:23
  well, not even crazy big orders, but we've sold companies, the
• 49:27
  biggest names in fashion, the biggest names in movies, the
• 49:31
  biggest names in, in, in entertainment.
• 49:34
  Because of that exposure. It didn't really change.
• 49:37
  But the fact is, you could go anywhere at any time.
• 49:41
  And you start by tell them, look, here's my product.
• 49:43
  I was on Oprah Winfrey's favorite thing list.
• 49:46
  That's it. That's all you gotta say.
• 49:47
  You got credibility instantly. She gave you something right?
• 49:50
  She really gave you. Like it was, it was, it was a,
• 49:52
  it was a very serious endorsement.
• 49:54
  Very serious endorsement. Very serious endorsement and I
• 49:56
  didn't I typically didn't like throw it in people's like in
• 50:00
  other words, and they would see and and they would do their own
• 50:04
  when I left the meeting, they would Google about and they
• 50:07
  would say, hey, Aaron, I see this and that and and I think
• 50:10
  they appreciated that I didn't hear it on my I was.
• 50:12
  Smart, smart, you said. Yeah, look up our company and
• 50:14
  you'll see do your research. He's.
• 50:15
  Very lucky he also gets to sell a product that always got to do
• 50:18
  like he said. Doesn't have to open his mouth
• 50:19
  sometimes sits down here. There you go, taste this.
• 50:21
  Now think about it. If I sold semiconductors.
• 50:24
  Yeah, it's hard, man. That'd be very, very hard to do.
• 50:27
  Wigabytes and gigabytes. Yeah, you saw the software, you
• 50:29
  saw a service. It's very difficult, Yeah.
• 50:32
  Here you go. Just dig.
• 50:33
  That's. A great slogan, by the way, for
• 50:35
  2025. Shut up and eat.
• 50:36
  Yeah, but just like literally dig in here, taste this and
• 50:39
  that's it. The.
• 50:40
  Other thing is the best part is, you know, like sometimes, you
• 50:42
  know, sitting with somebody, they go, oh, really?
• 50:44
  And when they grab for the reading glasses, you know,
• 50:46
  you're in trouble. They go, OK, so let me Aaron,
• 50:48
  the the, the, let me see the nutritionals say Bob, Sally,
• 50:51
  what if your name is let me help you?
• 50:54
  This is if you're looking for health food.
• 50:57
  Yeah, this is not it. So you can go to, there's plenty
• 50:59
  of retailers, you can get that Brussels sprouts and oxygen and
• 51:02
  Styrofoam. This is not a healthy
• 51:03
  alternative. Not yourself.
• 51:04
  That's not what this is. You can actually have that.
• 51:06
  This is a drinking pastrami sandwich with the trimmings.
• 51:09
  Yes, heart attack, and I say that for.
• 51:11
  A joke. I don't say it because it's so
• 51:13
  unhealthy. I say it to just make my point.
• 51:15
  And you know, you know what? Most of the time the answer is,
• 51:19
  you know, I really appreciate that, Aaron, because I have
• 51:22
  people, I will have people trying to sell me a pound of
• 51:25
  sugar and sit here across from me and explain to me why it's
• 51:29
  healthy, right? Right.
• 51:30
  So I said, I know my space. You know it's not, it's not
• 51:33
  garbage. Like a mayonnaise bottles, they
• 51:35
  have zero carbs like oh OK yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
• 51:38
  It must be healthy. Sometimes I want 0 poison.
• 51:41
  And I want something it's good. It's a gift.
• 51:43
  It's a gift. It's a it's a treat.
• 51:45
  It's. It's something instead of
• 51:46
  chickpeas at a Shalom Zahar, you know?
• 51:48
  What I'm saying how far, how big have you gotten?
• 51:50
  Are you really national right now?
• 51:51
  Are you selling in every state? We sell in every state.
• 51:54
  I would say. I mean, we deal with, I will say
• 52:00
  80% of the sales that we do is direct.
• 52:05
  I do have a distributor in California, so I don't have to
• 52:08
  go to all the stores and I used to have a distributor in
• 52:13
  Florida, so I don't have to sell all the stores direct.
• 52:15
  I do sell some of the biggest stores directly, but I'm working
• 52:19
  on finding. What's your hottest selling
• 52:20
  popcorn? Cookies and cream, caramel,
• 52:24
  chocolate drizzle and sweet and salty.
• 52:26
  Not for nothing, Oprah's, oh, Oprah's picks.
• 52:28
  That was Oprah's picks. What's next in pop insanities?
• 52:32
  How do you take this idea and how do you not just skill,
• 52:36
  you're doing a great job at that, you're really growing, but
• 52:38
  how do you like add more products?
• 52:40
  Like obviously this guy Jacob seems like talented like if he
• 52:43
  created this, how do you add to this brand?
• 52:45
  Is there a plan for something? Do you have anything emotions?
• 52:47
  So, so there's two, there's two schools of thought which I,
• 52:52
  which I, me and my partners talk about all the time.
• 52:57
  And that is I could either go very wide or I can go very deep.
• 53:03
  So in other words, I don't sell anywhere near where I want to
• 53:09
  sell with my current product. There's so much to do and
• 53:15
  there's so many people that don't know about us that there's
• 53:18
  a lot now when it comes to the kosher world, right?
• 53:23
  I don't know how many, how many, how many bags of cookies and
• 53:25
  cream am I going to buy? First of all, people buy it
• 53:27
  every week. But we came out with a nut line,
• 53:31
  13 flavors and five different nuts.
• 53:33
  It's doing very, very well for us.
• 53:35
  Then we we, we, we experimented with freeze dried candies.
• 53:39
  There's other ideas that we have, but in order to stay
• 53:43
  focused because Jack of all trades, a master of none is not
• 53:47
  my game. I want whatever I whatever I do,
• 53:50
  I got to do right. I'll test it.
• 53:53
  We've just, we've just a lot of trials and tribulations and a
• 53:56
  lot of things that we tried, thought it worked, maybe it
• 54:00
  didn't work, let's fix it. There's we do a lot of that.
• 54:03
  But at the same time we want to stay focused, do what you do
• 54:07
  well and sell it to a lot more people than just think, OK, we
• 54:11
  have to just sell all this and then you lose control of
• 54:14
  inventory. And yet.
• 54:16
  We always have this question, Michael, you and I in our
• 54:18
  business, like how do you, at what point do we go a little
• 54:21
  wider, a little deeper? It's very, it's, that's always
• 54:23
  the challenge. You know, there's something else
• 54:25
  by the way that I feel like we're kind of glossed over a
• 54:27
  little bit that's not getting enough of the headlines here.
• 54:29
  And I think this is a breaking story.
• 54:33
  You started a business at an older age.
• 54:36
  I mean, you're not 20 years old anymore.
• 54:38
  And your partner? 7:00 So I started when I was 50.
• 54:41
  At 50, you reinvented yourself into something completely new
• 54:45
  and different. Yeah.
• 54:46
  And look how late you start. I mean, this is really for other
• 54:49
  people listening. It's never too late.
• 54:51
  You started something that you could never have dreamed of.
• 54:54
  When you were in your 20s or 30s, you would sell popcorn one
• 54:56
  day. This was anybody's guess, but
• 54:59
  you did it. And you know, good for you that
• 55:01
  you had the goal to really go after it and not say, yeah, I'm
• 55:05
  too old already. But it's not that, and I don't
• 55:08
  take an ounce of credit for that.
• 55:10
  It's the chain of events that happened in my life.
• 55:13
  It was I was literally guided. I don't know how else to to to
• 55:18
  describe it. It's not like, OK, so now I'm
• 55:20
  going to look to launch a company.
• 55:23
  It didn't go like that way Woke up, I got this phone call.
• 55:27
  All of a sudden I found myself in Linden, NJ.
• 55:29
  The next day I found myself on a plane to It's just I I followed
• 55:33
  where? Yeah, I've looked.
• 55:34
  I take away from that. This is never too late to start
• 55:36
  a business. No 100%.
• 55:38
  But let's also not forget that this guy Jacob could have been
• 55:42
  today running a little small cafe cafe in Muncie, minding his
• 55:46
  own business and missed out on his entire world.
• 55:49
  And all of this happened because he thought his life was over.
• 55:53
  His life savings, you said, went into that cafe and his lawyer
• 55:56
  advised him to return all the equipment.
• 55:57
  And he did. And one thing he couldn't
• 55:59
  return. And that that was literally how
• 56:02
  everything just was a stepping stone to the next.
• 56:04
  Where's that popcorn, Michael? I was literally holding on to
• 56:07
  that question for like 1/2 an hour like I want to ask.
• 56:10
  Why you didn't want to say donut corrupt?
• 56:12
  I didn't want to exactly what ended up like, where is that
• 56:15
  popcorn? Where is that popcorn machine?
• 56:17
  Yeah, where is it? When you come into our office.
• 56:19
  Yeah, of course. In Lincoln Park, NJ, there's a
• 56:25
  wall which is pop insanity and a couch, and there's a popcorn
• 56:28
  machine there. That's it.
• 56:29
  On that popcorn machine, there's a plaque with our logo and it
• 56:34
  says this is where the insanity started.
• 56:36
  Wow, that's nice. There you go.
• 56:38
  That's very, very. Yeah, Stephen, great question.
• 56:41
  You get you get some of the credit for that.
• 56:43
  You know, I I I'm going to ask that question a little
• 56:45
  differently. I want to know where your
• 56:46
  insanity started personally. Where did you grow up?
• 56:48
  I don't I don't know anything about you.
• 56:50
  You One thing that I've been holding on to for 30 minutes by
• 56:53
  this. I'm scared to interrupt.
• 56:54
  You know, when sitting next to my Co host here, You you called
• 56:59
  Avram Fried Avramila. There's very few people that can
• 57:03
  call Avram from Freed Avramela. There's very few people that can
• 57:06
  say they learn on a daily basis with Mordechai Ben David.
• 57:10
  There's very few people in general.
• 57:11
  Not daily. Weekly.
• 57:12
  Weekly, you know, yeah, even even meet him so.
• 57:15
  Say, Michael, we held on to this question because it's not such a
• 57:18
  good question. I can't imagine anything that's
• 57:19
  going to compete with his pop insanity story.
• 57:22
  Like how many of these stories does he have?
• 57:23
  In his life, I know, but I've heard the pop.
• 57:24
  Insanity Story I I. Hung out with Mordechai man
• 57:26
  David, but just one Chavez. So what's the what?
• 57:30
  My question, first of all, just take me to your background.
• 57:32
  I'm curious about unless she has another business question that
• 57:35
  he wants, no I. I was.
• 57:36
  I'm fascinated by this whole thing.
• 57:37
  I'm I'm very fast he. Must be very like proud of every
• 57:42
  time you see a bag like you must kavel inside because you know
• 57:45
  the blood, sweat and tears that went into it and you know that
• 57:47
  and just like to see it all over the place everywhere you turn.
• 57:50
  Like are are you appreciating you know what you did?
• 57:53
  It may be a little bit too much. Are you like very high on your
• 57:56
  horse about it that you have a successful product out there?
• 57:59
  How do you keep yourself balanced of like, yeah, I did
• 58:01
  this, and also, yeah, I did this.
• 58:03
  You walk into the store and like make sure the bags are
• 58:05
  perfectly, you know, aligned and like, you know, I feel like, you
• 58:08
  know, you see a bag. It's like, well look, twisted me
• 58:10
  like. Yeah, he's what do you mean he
• 58:12
  still had? Popcorn in his trunk.
• 58:14
  I I. I love the question that he
• 58:16
  asked. Yeah, I'm going to give you.
• 58:17
  Forget my questions, please focus.
• 58:19
  On this, no, I'm going to answer your question, question 2, but
• 58:22
  you asked a very, very, very not only a good question.
• 58:25
  Watch a question that means a lot to me and I never do.
• 58:31
  I do I say, wow, look, with this maybe whatever.
• 58:35
  I'm more every time time I get emotional thinking about it
• 58:39
  every time I walk into my plant in Jersey and there are can I
• 58:45
  heard 20 something people working there, machines going,
• 58:48
  pallets coming going, and I see how big this place is like I
• 58:55
  have a hard time believing it. Wow, it's still not processed.
• 58:58
  I didn't sync, no. It's processed but I'm just so
• 59:01
  and I see. Grateful, you sound very.
• 59:03
  Grateful, very, very grateful. And when I see when people send
• 59:07
  me pictures. Hey Aaron, I'm in Hawaii and
• 59:10
  they sent me pictures of the thing.
• 59:18
  I'm like, Oh my God, thank you. I couldn't I I don't know how
• 59:21
  else to say it. I.
• 59:23
  You created a lifestyle. You created a brand.
• 59:25
  There's no question about it. Me and my partners, I'm very
• 59:28
  thankful to the people that I work with, extremely thankful
• 59:32
  for the people that I work with and they put a lot of hard work
• 59:36
  into it. Very often it's me and my
• 59:38
  partners. They get the credit.
• 59:39
  It's not. It's our families.
• 59:41
  I miss lots of weddings. I miss lots of parties and
• 59:44
  things because the order had to get out or we needed to cope.
• 59:49
  When, when it's this time of year, their holiday season, we
• 59:52
  have two shifts and it's, it's a, it's a lot.
• 59:56
  But just in answer to your question, it's, it's, it's a lot
• 1:00:00
  of, lot of a curse. I tell it's a lot of gratitude
• 1:00:02
  because it's, you know, a lot of people will take credit and it's
• 1:00:06
  not, it's not credit. Believe me when I tell you, so
• 1:00:10
  many things happen. I I look at my pond as like.
• 1:00:14
  How is it if I wanted, I wouldn't even know how to reach
• 1:00:18
  out to Oprah to offer her product to, to consider.
• 1:00:22
  I, I googled, I googled, how do you get there are school, there
• 1:00:26
  are seminars that you go to that teach you how to present.
• 1:00:30
  Even if she'll open it and this guy walked into my booth, that
• 1:00:33
  doesn't happen. So what am I going to say?
• 1:00:38
  It's it's it's, it's literally, yeah, every single.
• 1:00:41
  No way to explain it. I do have to tell you though, I
• 1:00:43
  I sit with a lot of people who want to start businesses and
• 1:00:46
  they have ideas, you know, every day, to be honest with you, of
• 1:00:50
  course you get a phone call. Can I sit with you?
• 1:00:52
  You're the king of that. And I do dedicate time on
• 1:00:55
  Sundays for people who want to like, you know, talk about their
• 1:00:57
  businesses and ideas. So I have to tell you, many
• 1:01:00
  people, I hate to say it, waste a lot of time on small pet
• 1:01:05
  projects of theirs because they think that their idea is the
• 1:01:09
  next big thing. I think that what I'm gathering
• 1:01:11
  from this, if I May, is that when God sends you the signs
• 1:01:16
  that things are working and you know, the flow of luck starts,
• 1:01:21
  don't slow it down, right? Embrace it and continue to build
• 1:01:25
  on it. And if he's sending you the sign
• 1:01:28
  that you know, OK, here's the, the landlord's saying, OK,
• 1:01:31
  father was running a check, just jump on it and run on it.
• 1:01:35
  But I I have to ask you though, what's your advice of people
• 1:01:37
  that are busy with their pet projects, with their things,
• 1:01:40
  that it's not going anywhere? I love that question.
• 1:01:42
  You know why? Because I believe it because
• 1:01:45
  like, like you people reach out to me and say, hey, you know,
• 1:01:50
  I'm starting this type of thing and I saw, you know, I've been
• 1:01:52
  watching you and maybe you can give it's name.
• 1:01:55
  And sometimes people come to me with an idea and I want to be
• 1:02:00
  very sensitive to them, but I tell so I spin it around.
• 1:02:04
  Instead of saying you're out of your mind, I say the the way I
• 1:02:09
  look at and this this is what happened with the popcorn.
• 1:02:13
  The way I look at being really investing knee deep in something
• 1:02:19
  is if Ioffer you this right, what am I telling?
• 1:02:27
  How am I convincing the buyer to buy that?
• 1:02:31
  Do I really believe that I'm offering a service that no one
• 1:02:36
  offered? You do.
• 1:02:39
  It's like, so not to go into a business thing, I believe a
• 1:02:41
  business has to have a couple of things.
• 1:02:43
  Let's start with. Three, by the way, please go
• 1:02:44
  into. Either one, yeah.
• 1:02:46
  Either you have an idea. It's a patent, you're the only
• 1:02:50
  one who has it. Lock, stock and barrel, you have
• 1:02:53
  an idea, done deal, you're done. The second opportunity I believe
• 1:02:59
  is if you have some sort of a proprietary, either license or a
• 1:03:07
  proprietary something, even if it's not a patent, but everyone
• 1:03:11
  else's goes like this, yours goes like this, like that, and
• 1:03:15
  it it there's an added value or there's something different.
• 1:03:19
  Yep. Because in the perfect example
• 1:03:21
  is if I want to sell you AT shirt, it's $1.60.
• 1:03:24
  If I'm selling you AT shirt with a swish on it or something else
• 1:03:28
  or a Disney or something, it's a different price.
• 1:03:31
  Why? Because of the difference in the
• 1:03:33
  item. The other third thing is
• 1:03:37
  everyone's selling this for $5. I sell it for two.
• 1:03:40
  So you're selling on price. So either you have a patent or
• 1:03:44
  you have some, some, some reason why it's different.
• 1:03:47
  It's a license. It's, it's a, it's a, it's a
• 1:03:50
  added value or something or price.
• 1:03:53
  I don't care what your name is or what it is.
• 1:03:56
  I buy it for this, You sell for that.
• 1:03:58
  I'm buying it from you. So now I tell the person, now
• 1:04:02
  that you have this thing, where does it fit?
• 1:04:06
  What? How am I convincing?
• 1:04:09
  Convince me to buy this. Yeah, but it's the best one.
• 1:04:12
  I know. My mother tells me that also.
• 1:04:14
  But. But tell me what?
• 1:04:15
  So that really I believe is before we, we, I started, I
• 1:04:22
  started talking to Yankee in July of 2013 until 2015.
• 1:04:27
  We spent two years spending money running around the
• 1:04:31
  country. Flavor houses, snack houses,
• 1:04:35
  machines, share design processes, trends.
• 1:04:42
  I took two years to just go into the popcorn.
• 1:04:44
  But what am I bringing to the table?
• 1:04:46
  How am I convincing this guy to buy popcorn from me?
• 1:04:49
  And the way I did it was every time I go into a meeting with a
• 1:04:52
  big outfit and they already buy buy, I buy all the sample.
• 1:04:56
  Not only do I know what's on his shelf and how much it is because
• 1:05:00
  if he has the same peanut butter ice cream for 999, what?
• 1:05:03
  What I find you selling up here that you don't have anything in
• 1:05:07
  this price point or you don't have anything in this flavor, or
• 1:05:09
  you have bags, but we have boxes.
• 1:05:11
  You have boxes. We have acrylic.
• 1:05:13
  You try to find where you fit into.
• 1:05:16
  Give me a reason to buy from you.
• 1:05:19
  I'll bring. I'll buy the samples off the
• 1:05:22
  guy's retail shelf and I'll walk him to the meeting with his
• 1:05:25
  stuff. And I'll say, John, here's your
• 1:05:30
  peanut butter popcorn. Yeah, I I know.
• 1:05:32
  I buy it. I know.
• 1:05:34
  Taste it. It's good, right?
• 1:05:36
  Yeah. This is this is really good.
• 1:05:38
  So now here is my peanut butter popcorn.
• 1:05:41
  Now, you see, we make our own peanut butter.
• 1:05:44
  We chop our own nuts. Taste this.
• 1:05:47
  OK. And remember what I said before
• 1:05:50
  he opens his mouth. You see, he goes.
• 1:05:56
  OK, OK. Yeah.
• 1:05:59
  I, I, I, I So you have the number 2 on a high level, you
• 1:06:02
  have the uniqueness, you have the it's, it's quality, the
• 1:06:05
  quality we. Don't Yeah.
• 1:06:07
  And by the way, it's it's it's it's also a negative because we
• 1:06:11
  don't just have seed in a high in a silo somewhere.
• 1:06:14
  You push a button, it goes from here, it goes from there into
• 1:06:16
  the popper onto the onto a truck into a distribution center,
• 1:06:20
  which happened a nuts. We're pouring the thing.
• 1:06:23
  We're we're labeled each. Really proprietary about pop and
• 1:06:27
  Sandy. Is it the recipe?
• 1:06:28
  Is that it like if I want to we'll start tomorrow, you know,
• 1:06:31
  Ushi and Michael flavored popcorn company, you know, and
• 1:06:35
  we can go to a manufacturer figure out how to get it.
• 1:06:37
  The obviously we're not going to have the same quality taste
• 1:06:39
  those yours is that the proprietary of the recipe?
• 1:06:41
  So the OR do you have like a machine or something the?
• 1:06:44
  Answer is I'll call it pop please.
• 1:06:46
  Don't. Stay away.
• 1:06:48
  Pop pop, none of your business. The the the answer is it's a
• 1:06:52
  little bit of of three things. One is the proprietary.
• 1:07:00
  It's a secret sauce. The recipe.
• 1:07:03
  But in addition to the secret sauce, it's also processes.
• 1:07:08
  Some people they leave, you know, you put it in it goes.
• 1:07:13
  We don't work that way. There are buzzers that get that
• 1:07:16
  go off cooling here, heating here, temperature just like
• 1:07:19
  this. When it gets to this, it's very
• 1:07:21
  complicated. OK, that's part of the recipe.
• 1:07:23
  And yeah, it's the. It's the recipe, the process.
• 1:07:26
  No, but I think what he's saying, I'm sorry, it's not just
• 1:07:27
  the recipe, it's it has to sit for two minutes.
• 1:07:30
  It has to. Go.
• 1:07:31
  You know, In other words, if I give.
• 1:07:32
  You I mean. I get it.
• 1:07:33
  Yeah, I could say that'd be the recipe.
• 1:07:34
  OK. Is that McDonald's was the first
• 1:07:36
  one to figure out how to, you know, make 1000 burgers, right?
• 1:07:40
  Just two minutes with a process, right?
• 1:07:42
  It wasn't necessarily the recipe.
• 1:07:43
  Is there process, right. Add a process big volume in a
• 1:07:46
  small little space. Right.
• 1:07:48
  So it's the recipe is the process, it's the packaging,
• 1:07:52
  it's the branding and that that's like, you know, pretty
• 1:07:57
  much 1020% of everything and you're 80% is the one above.
• 1:08:01
  No one above. That's it.
• 1:08:03
  You ever eat anybody else's popcorn or you only eat pop?
• 1:08:05
  Insanity. I've.
• 1:08:07
  Eaten people's popcorn? Sure.
• 1:08:08
  No, even now you go to the store the wife ever buy like wrinkle
• 1:08:10
  the popcorn? No, or you don't bring it into
• 1:08:12
  your house because that's like the enemy.
• 1:08:14
  Right. You watch a movie?
• 1:08:15
  Do you only eat popcorn? I wanted to know if you.
• 1:08:18
  When you no so, so we so we, we, we are actually soft.
• 1:08:25
  We soft launched savory popcorn, which we do for corporate
• 1:08:31
  accounts and certain private private label kind of things.
• 1:08:35
  It's not in the regular stores yet want to perfect it.
• 1:08:38
  But when we have a party or something like that, I call
• 1:08:41
  Yankee, it's a Yankee. Could you make me some of your,
• 1:08:44
  you know, sweet jalapeno or your garlic truffle or regular
• 1:08:48
  theater popcorn? And he sends home a bag.
• 1:08:50
  How do I apply to be a taste tester?
• 1:08:52
  By the way, I I'd like very much to be a taste.
• 1:08:54
  The right guy You. You take the popcorn with each
• 1:08:56
  of the movies like you put it in your pocket and you.
• 1:08:59
  Know, I try to save the but the problem is my popcorn's probably
• 1:09:02
  more expensive. I have to tell you, when I go to
• 1:09:04
  a movie, I take popcorn and I put Reese's Pieces into the
• 1:09:07
  bucket and I mix it because it's delicious and I have popcorn
• 1:09:12
  with the Reese's Pieces together.
• 1:09:13
  So you load. It here first on the there you.
• 1:09:15
  Go. I'm sure there's others by the
• 1:09:17
  way. And and that's a unique thing to
• 1:09:19
  get a savory in a whole new different world of yeah about
• 1:09:23
  sweetness. But that's also something that
• 1:09:26
  you don't need me. Like, say the same thing for me
• 1:09:28
  to go to a buyer and say, OK, here's my cracked pepper
• 1:09:32
  popcorn. Buy it.
• 1:09:33
  Yeah. Why?
• 1:09:35
  So I got to do something else. The product that's been good as
• 1:09:38
  a baseline, but we also we are just that anybody in the family
• 1:09:42
  getting into the business and each of the partners, nobody has
• 1:09:45
  any family in it, no. My my children are in healthcare
• 1:09:49
  and real estate and. Well, we know a son.
• 1:09:53
  Yes, we do. Yeah.
• 1:09:55
  My, I have one learning and my partners also have learning and
• 1:09:59
  daughters. I, I, I don't, I don't foresee
• 1:10:01
  it, but it was never really discussed.
• 1:10:02
  But I, I see, I don't, I don't see that that happening.
• 1:10:06
  But I don't know. Michael, when I get to your
• 1:10:10
  lightning round questions. Are we gonna be?
• 1:10:13
  Are we back now with the lightning round question?
• 1:10:15
  Go, let's go. We gotta wrap up soon.
• 1:10:16
  OK. All right.
• 1:10:17
  You know, so this segment of the Lightning Round questions is
• 1:10:20
  brought to you by Serenity Center.
• 1:10:22
  You like that? Is it really?
• 1:10:24
  Yeah, why not? I mean, there are.
• 1:10:25
  A lot of accolades I'm. Giving, I'm giving them a lot of
• 1:10:28
  action because starting to well, first of all, I like what
• 1:10:33
  they're doing. They're providing a service in
• 1:10:35
  the community and they're billing insurance and they're
• 1:10:37
  providing you a top notch level service for, you know, people
• 1:10:41
  that need the service. So the lightning round brought
• 1:10:44
  to you by Serenity Center on the Prime Source sponsored none of
• 1:10:48
  your business podcast. So we're going to do a lightning
• 1:10:50
  round. It's just a list of questions
• 1:10:52
  and you could say pass or none of your business.
• 1:10:55
  OK, What is the most expensive thing you've ever bought?
• 1:11:01
  My house. OK Oh, as a gift.
• 1:11:07
  What kind of watch you wearing again?
• 1:11:08
  How long did it take for pop Insanity to turn a profit?
• 1:11:14
  Lightning ground about approximate we don't want.
• 1:11:18
  The exact date, this is the slow rate when you open up a company,
• 1:11:22
  there's the expense machine. So I would probably say it took
• 1:11:25
  two years to. Two years, I would say that.
• 1:11:28
  Let's go with two years. Two years, you know, Oprah
• 1:11:31
  definitely helped, I guess in terms of the.
• 1:11:33
  Brand that it was a good endorsement and.
• 1:11:35
  Put it would be a good Jewish celebrity as an endorsement for
• 1:11:38
  pop insanity. That's a great question.
• 1:11:44
  Could be a lot of people. Go with your gut, give us an
• 1:11:47
  answer. Who would you be happy if you
• 1:11:49
  were spotted? A picture was spotted with them
• 1:11:51
  eating your popcorn in the Jewish world like Ishai Rebo?
• 1:11:55
  I don't know. I don't want you to.
• 1:11:58
  Who's? The face.
• 1:11:59
  Are you the You have a mascot? Is there a mascot for pop and
• 1:12:01
  sanity? No, but I mean usually when we
• 1:12:03
  have we when we do HS online shopping, TV shows and
• 1:12:08
  interviews and stuff like that, I do them.
• 1:12:11
  It's not that I'm any more capable, more capable than my
• 1:12:13
  partners, but I guess they'd always, they always yield to me,
• 1:12:17
  but they're welcome to come out here anytime.
• 1:12:22
  So there's no name that you're going to pick, right?
• 1:12:23
  Who is the person that you played?
• 1:12:25
  A lot of music. We didn't get into that, which I
• 1:12:26
  definitely wanted to. But what was your favorite?
• 1:12:29
  Give me a moment that you played.
• 1:12:31
  You played music with your favorite person, favorite
• 1:12:34
  connection, favorite. I've had some amazing, amazing
• 1:12:40
  moments with you. The green and it's not only,
• 1:12:44
  it's not only the performance, it's, it's like you said, it's
• 1:12:48
  the package to see how the people react.
• 1:12:53
  I mean, when we started doing sleekness years ago, I started
• 1:12:57
  2007, that's the first time. And you know, just so you know,
• 1:13:02
  they pay me whatever. And I was a little bit weird by
• 1:13:07
  it because this is not the type of sleekness that I was brought
• 1:13:11
  up with. It was more somber.
• 1:13:14
  And people are bouncing off the walls and I'm saying to myself,
• 1:13:17
  like, and then after silicus, I get text and I got some emails
• 1:13:24
  and I got some, some messages from people.
• 1:13:29
  I didn't realize how serious this was.
• 1:13:32
  Like, I would have been. I, I was planning on going to
• 1:13:36
  the movies tonight, but someone slept me here.
• 1:13:39
  And, you know, Rosh Hashanim Kip.
• 1:13:40
  I'll worry about it when it comes.
• 1:13:42
  And it was just an epiphany for and now nowadays when I spoke to
• 1:13:48
  one of my Rebeam, I said, you know, should I be doing this?
• 1:13:51
  You know, And after I shared with him some of the feedback I
• 1:13:53
  got, he said the question is not should you continue doing it?
• 1:13:59
  He said, are you allowed to stop?
• 1:14:01
  Because like this year, I always, whenever I'm playing and
• 1:14:05
  people are dancing, I always, I'm always looking around and I
• 1:14:09
  always want to find that group of people or person which says
• 1:14:14
  to myself, that is why I'm here tonight.
• 1:14:17
  And I and I look around and you see a guy without a yarmulke,
• 1:14:21
  with a tattoo, holding a book closed, crying in the corner of
• 1:14:26
  a shul. I'm saying to myself, maybe next
• 1:14:29
  year he'll he'll may connect with his family or something.
• 1:14:33
  You have people that it really, really effects them.
• 1:14:36
  So in answer to your question, it's not so much the
• 1:14:39
  performance, it's I had many beautiful opportunities with
• 1:14:44
  with Yehuda Green or others. I had the opportunity to play
• 1:14:46
  with Shlahama Khalbach years ago.
• 1:14:49
  That to me was amazing. What did you play with?
• 1:14:51
  Him do you remember? We played on on on Ocean Ave.
• 1:14:55
  What? What did I play?
• 1:14:56
  Play drums. Now, what songs did you play?
• 1:14:58
  Oh, I don't remember. It was a whole, but it was, it
• 1:15:00
  was just, it was just unbelievable.
• 1:15:02
  You know, I, I didn't really understand him the way I do now.
• 1:15:06
  He's a very, very big part of my life.
• 1:15:08
  His music, it's Davening, his Tyrus.
• 1:15:11
  There's a lot of special, special things that I've gained
• 1:15:15
  from from being so in tune to him.
• 1:15:17
  But I started playing with guitar.
• 1:15:19
  The first time I played out of my basement with a guitar was
• 1:15:24
  when what happened? David asked me to come up at one
• 1:15:26
  of the pays up programs. When we played together, I said
• 1:15:29
  I alright, let's go. And we did it.
• 1:15:32
  And we played just one Shabbos by the way.
• 1:15:35
  And that was when I came out of the basement with a guitar.
• 1:15:39
  And just probably right about then is when I ended up in the
• 1:15:44
  Kalbach show on one fish above night because in my shoe, you
• 1:15:50
  know, the run through acre, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:15:52
  I said, where where am I going to get that experience?
• 1:15:54
  Like you went to camp, remember, remember that you're sitting on
• 1:15:56
  the floor and the guy got up and smoked.
• 1:15:58
  You really connected. So I said, where am I getting
• 1:16:01
  that from? I said, you know what, let me go
• 1:16:02
  to a cobble. I don't know.
• 1:16:04
  Come there. There's like 12 people, a couple
• 1:16:07
  of people, lights are off candles.
• 1:16:09
  It was interesting whatever. And all of a sudden I hear from
• 1:16:12
  the back of the beam because they have different people that
• 1:16:14
  take different paracum. They say it out loud.
• 1:16:16
  Whatever, this guy, that guy, whatever I'm saying, OK, what am
• 1:16:18
  I doing? It was interesting and I hear I
• 1:16:22
  remember, I remember in his where you who started the first
• 1:16:26
  time I, I met him in his thing. It was the the Pasaka Leila and
• 1:16:29
  Ibakir. So I hear, you know, everyone's
• 1:16:31
  reading and reading and then I hear from behind the beamer.
• 1:16:34
  He's it's so beautiful and such Pierce Amelius and such meaning.
• 1:16:41
  And then again it's dark candles on the floor and I hear singing
• 1:16:49
  by himself and then slowly everybody's joining on.
• 1:16:53
  By the time it was over, it was fire, fire.
• 1:16:57
  I got so inspired. Who's this guy?
• 1:16:59
  Oh, you the green thing. I didn't know who he was and we
• 1:17:02
  connected and when I went out of the music business playing gigs,
• 1:17:08
  I stayed with him because I appreciate his music and his
• 1:17:10
  style and what he does and the effect that he has on people.
• 1:17:13
  So I I'm very happy to be question here part of that.
• 1:17:16
  What do you recommend we start calling the lightning round
• 1:17:18
  because it's taking too long to wait?
• 1:17:20
  Too long. Yeah, we tried this.
• 1:17:22
  We crashed. Yeah.
• 1:17:23
  And we're trying to bring it back and.
• 1:17:25
  We took it behind the barn, we shot it and then we just brought
• 1:17:27
  it back. This is what I say right now.
• 1:17:28
  OK, Listen guys, we're about an hour and a half into the
• 1:17:31
  podcast. Whoever is left right now
• 1:17:33
  listening all 10,000, no followers, then I'll sync to
• 1:17:36
  this podcast right now. Come back to us and please tell
• 1:17:39
  us should we continue the lighting round and what should
• 1:17:42
  we call it if we are going to continue it?
• 1:17:44
  Let's see what everyone says. Yeah.
• 1:17:47
  See, in my humble opinion, I think, I think, I think, I think
• 1:17:51
  the lightning round is is is interesting, but the questions
• 1:17:57
  have to really have to. Be one now have.
• 1:17:58
  To be lightning applicable, right?
• 1:18:02
  Right, And and and and I. Like where the questions lead,
• 1:18:05
  though, I like where the questions lead because it it
• 1:18:07
  opens up a whole new chapter to your life that maybe we haven't
• 1:18:11
  entered into and that's what I like about it.
• 1:18:13
  Was there ever a name of a popcorn that you guys we can't
• 1:18:15
  name it that and just. No.
• 1:18:17
  Hundreds, Hundreds. Hundreds.
• 1:18:19
  Yeah. Like it's inappropriate, yeah,
• 1:18:21
  but it's. A Oh, not inappropriate, it's
• 1:18:23
  just cheesy, no? No, no, no, no, he meant.
• 1:18:26
  Like, no, I meant like, you know, yeah.
• 1:18:27
  And that's really good, but unfortunately you just can't
• 1:18:30
  really use. It.
• 1:18:31
  No, we have some ideas for you. If our listeners have any ideas,
• 1:18:34
  you're coming up with anything new for 2025?
• 1:18:37
  Yes, yeah. Anything you could tell us?
• 1:18:38
  No, really anything that's imminent that you could tell us.
• 1:18:42
  Maybe perhaps that if we release this you.
• 1:18:44
  Know if all goes well, you will know about it.
• 1:18:49
  Fantastic. Are we in the inner circle now?
• 1:18:51
  Like do we get news a little bit before the rest of the public
• 1:18:53
  does? Excellent, excellent.
• 1:18:55
  I'm also expecting pop and sand if you deliver it to my home for
• 1:18:58
  Shabbos. Just like thank you for having
• 1:19:00
  me on the podcast. Here's a box full of my goodies.
• 1:19:03
  I have to tell you learning about your story was amazing and
• 1:19:06
  the fact that Shlomo Kala Box yard site actually was what
• 1:19:09
  brought you here. If you remember when we met.
• 1:19:10
  Oh, right. And that was beautiful.
• 1:19:13
  So music is always very meaningful to to me.
• 1:19:15
  And I appreciate your background and what you do and you're
• 1:19:17
  inspiring from a business level, from a personal level, and the
• 1:19:21
  fact that you, you keep staying true to the idea of none of this
• 1:19:25
  is possible without the one above and that everything
• 1:19:28
  happens for a reason. And you know the take away that
• 1:19:31
  Ushi, we were saying before, but that one stupid popcorn machine
• 1:19:35
  that couldn't be returned and that lease that didn't work out
• 1:19:38
  and the cafe that you wanted. And you waited 50 years to open
• 1:19:42
  a cafe and it was your dream and it fell apart.
• 1:19:45
  And learning that everything happens for a reason and take
• 1:19:48
  it, take it with you and understand that it's like it's
• 1:19:51
  going to be your biggest blessing, right?
• 1:19:53
  Which is amazing. Any final message to anyone
• 1:19:55
  that's listening? Absolutely.
• 1:19:59
  And that is, and I'm not, I mean it from the bottom of my heart,
• 1:20:04
  it's very important to understand that everyone goes
• 1:20:09
  through trials and tribulations and everybody has ideas and
• 1:20:12
  everybody has a job or has a or is struggling in one way or the
• 1:20:16
  other. But when it pertains to
• 1:20:17
  business? And it's, it's really very
• 1:20:22
  important that you do your research and you do your
• 1:20:26
  Histadlis and you do your put in that elbow grease and really
• 1:20:31
  invest in making sure you're not fooling yourself.
• 1:20:34
  Like I said before, why should I buy this?
• 1:20:38
  Do you really believe this is a good idea or or you just like
• 1:20:41
  trying to if you could, if you really believe in something, go
• 1:20:47
  the normal way. We have to make a hishtadlas,
• 1:20:49
  although we know that the hishtadlas and the outcome has
• 1:20:53
  nothing to do with each other. How many people that do you know
• 1:20:56
  that have two left hands that are much, whether it's financial
• 1:20:59
  or otherwise, that are successful in so many ways?
• 1:21:02
  And then you have guys, brilliant guys who can't, the
• 1:21:06
  kids that don't get along with a who can't make it Panasa the
• 1:21:09
  marriage or there's all I'm saying is if you have an idea or
• 1:21:14
  you have a goal, put the work in, put the hishtadlas in, but
• 1:21:20
  understand very clearly that it's not in your hands.
• 1:21:26
  It's not in your hands And so many different and it took me a
• 1:21:31
  while. Everyone knows, you know, Muna
• 1:21:33
  Takhan and this is Bashar and that's Bashar.
• 1:21:36
  It's all very fine. It's all words.
• 1:21:39
  But in the last, I would say three years, I delved into what
• 1:21:43
  all that means. And and and it doesn't mean, Oh,
• 1:21:47
  just we talking, just just, you know, rely on it's not you got
• 1:21:51
  to put in the work and you got to put in the grease and you got
• 1:21:54
  to put make the investment and you got to take risks.
• 1:21:57
  But understand, make them smart, make smart or is best to your
• 1:22:02
  ability. Ask people, get advice.
• 1:22:05
  But at the end of the day, if you really believe that it's you
• 1:22:09
  and you're doing and your connections, I can't tell you
• 1:22:12
  how wrong you are. I really can't tell you how
• 1:22:14
  wrong you are. You have to really believe that
• 1:22:17
  someone else is running the gig. And once you understand that
• 1:22:21
  together with your her Stadlus, I believe that is a recipe for
• 1:22:25
  success if it's supposed to happen.
• 1:22:27
  Yeah, I appreciate it. Couldn't have said it any
• 1:22:29
  better. Yeah, we're going to be wrapping
• 1:22:31
  it up in a minute. But Stefan, if you don't mind,
• 1:22:33
  ask David for his guitar. I have AI have a personal
• 1:22:36
  request for him and and you. Play guitar as well.
• 1:22:40
  You play drums, guitar and keyboard?
• 1:22:43
  Yeah, all three. When did you start by the way?
• 1:22:47
  So drums I drums I, I, I started playing professional in 1987
• 1:22:52
  with Nagina Orchestra, with a lot of guys gave me breaks, She
• 1:22:57
  Mendelwitz, Oliver Shalom and Yoshi Briskman and Aaron
• 1:23:00
  Teitelbaum. And there's so many guys I don't
• 1:23:03
  want to, you know, leave names out.
• 1:23:06
  But a lot of people also were so good to me and helping me start
• 1:23:10
  in the business. And Ding, I travelled around the
• 1:23:13
  world with Uncle Maishi for 18 years and I've had tremendous, I
• 1:23:18
  thought, you know, you think Uncle Mai, it's a joke.
• 1:23:22
  You don't know what this, these songs did for children that were
• 1:23:30
  not affiliated with you. This guy, when you, when you're
• 1:23:34
  in one city one year and then you come back the next year and
• 1:23:38
  they tell you, you have somebody knocking on the dressing room
• 1:23:42
  and they were backstage, whatever.
• 1:23:43
  And then sobbing, like uncontrollably sobbing.
• 1:23:46
  And you, what's the problem? Can I speak to whatever?
• 1:23:49
  And we said, well, you know what our son was was not well and he
• 1:23:53
  passed away and whatever but on his matseva he wanted, don't
• 1:23:58
  walk in front of me, I may not follow.
• 1:24:00
  Don't walk beside me, I may not leave.
• 1:24:02
  That's the song I want to hear. That's what.
• 1:24:07
  And then you can't you don't you?
• 1:24:08
  Then then it's not a then it's not a gig anymore.
• 1:24:10
  It's it's, it's meaningful. So, so that's what I like about
• 1:24:16
  you. Who The Greens music is very
• 1:24:17
  meaningful. Take us back to the Don't Don't
• 1:24:19
  Walk, and that's one of my favorite songs, by the way.
• 1:25:27
  Wow, wow, wow, wow. That's amazing.
• 1:25:30
  Thank you. All right, Rebarin.
• 1:25:32
  And I have to call you Rebarin now because anytime I learn
• 1:25:35
  something from somebody, they become my rabbi.
• 1:25:36
  So I love you and I appreciate you.
• 1:25:38
  Thank you for coming on. This was an amazing, amazing
• 1:25:41
  discussion. Great.
• 1:25:42
  We learned a lot, really. And we appreciate you and thank
• 1:25:45
  you everyone for joining. Thank you.
• 1:25:47
  Please don't forget to like, subscribe and comment.
• 1:25:50
  Love you all, thank you.