Latest / SHeCOMMERCE / Episode 47: $100 Million. No Playbook: Brendan Cawley on Building Righteous Felon, His Way

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Episode 47: $100 Million. No Playbook: Brendan Cawley on Building Righteous Felon, His Way · SHeCOMMERCE

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_04: The most important voices take the test of getting involved.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_02: The people changing the industry.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: The ideas are challenging it.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: And the stories everyone is talking about collides.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_04: Our conversation, bold opinion, no corporate job.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: This is G-Commerce.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: Because it's not just business, it's personal.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome back to SheCommerce, where we talk about what's happening in commerce, what it actually means, and the people bold enough to change it.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Christina.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm Jackie.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_04: And Christina, I feel like commerce has been particularly caffeinated lately.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: Caffeinated?
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: I was gonna say more like unhinged.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: AI seems to be changing everything.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: Big commerce organizations are getting rebuilt, big companies are buying Challenger brands.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: We've got Advertising League, Digital Shelf Summit in London, Connected Commerce, New York.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_04: And approximately forty seven tabs open at all times.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: Minimum.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: So before we get to today's guests, we need to spill some tea.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_04: But apparently we're still not doing a particularly good job making sure women are helping to build that future.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and some of the numbers really stopped me.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: Women are only about 22% of AI professionals globally.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: They hold less than 14% of senior leadership roles shaping the technology.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: And women are also about 20% less likely than men to use generative AI tools.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_04: No.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_04: And here's the part that really worries me.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_04: We always talk about representation once the thing is already built.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_04: All the things that we've talked about have been things that have been built.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_04: It's historical, it's legacy.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_04: But AI isn't built yet.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_04: We're literally defining the rules right now.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_04: So if women aren't in the rooms designing it, leading it, training it, governing it, we are going to spend the next decade or three trying to fix biases we could have prevented in the first place.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_04: That's very true.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm gonna add another layer on top of that.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: We cannot not only make this conversation about women getting more AI jobs, but women need to be using the tools.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: Because if AI becomes a productivity multiplier and one group, men adopted faster than another, women, that doesn't close any of the existing gaps.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: It actually is gonna compound them.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_04: And this is where I want women listening to us to hear.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_04: You do not need to be an AI engineer, but you do need to become AI literate.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_04: AI is now in a scenario where it is as important as being able to construct a sentence, as being able to do your math, you have to become AI literate.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_04: You need to play with it, challenge it, figure out what it can do for your job before somebody else figures out what it can do to get your job.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: And in addition to doing all that, most importantly, you need to bring your judgment along with you.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: Because I'm not interested in a future where we're outsourcing all of our thinking.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: But I want technology doing more of that busy work so that we can do more of the work that actually requires strategic thinking and humanity.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_04: So our she commerce take is this don't wait for somebody to invite women into the AI revolution.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm saying this in my mom voice take the damn seat.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: Bring your own damn seat.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well, let's talk about some people news.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: And this is very relevant to what we were just talking about.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: Speaking of women taking the seat, we want to say a huge congratulations to Asha Khan, who has well, first of all, she is a She Commerce alumni, and we love her.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: And she has joined Densu to lead commerce in North America.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_04: And I love the way El Presidente announced this.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, yes, Aisha's the president of Densu North America, because her premise was basically commerce has an identity crisis.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_04: Retail media is over here, shopper is over there, social is somewhere else, creative, DTC, data, technology.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_04: Everyone is doing commerce, but too often they're doing it separately.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, preach, right?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: Because we have been beaten this job forever.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: The consumer does not wake up and say, hmm, today I am entering the retail media portion of my consumer journey.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_04: Wait, yours don't mind wake up every morning and ask which organization silo they'd like to engage with, you know, like and schedule it like really good little mythical customers that don't exist.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: Don't we wish the consumer experiences one brand and it is our organizations that continue to decide to chop that experience into 15 different departments and 25 different KPIs and 10 different agencies?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's ludicrous.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_04: It should actually be our duty to consolidate.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_04: As an organization looking after our brands, we should be, it should be our duty to consolidate all of that.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_04: Because otherwise, do you care about the consumer?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_04: And what I like about what Aisha is saying is that commerce isn't just that little conversion box at the bottom of the funnel.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_04: It's becoming an intelligent layer connecting media, creative, shopper, data, customer experience.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_04: Just all of it.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_04: This is so much a much bigger idea.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_04: This is so what you need to be thinking, what everyone needs to be thinking.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, thinking, but it also requires different leadership, right?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: People who can see horizontally across the business instead of just within their silo and protecting one vertical.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: So all this to say, Asha, congratulations.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: We're cheering you on and possibly inviting ourselves over to hear how this experiment goes or inviting you over to revisit GCommerce to tell us all about it.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_04: Oh yes!
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: But if we're going there, then field trip, field trip.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: All right, let's people news and number two.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: Big news in golf this week.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: Marissa Daly is the new CMO at PGA of America.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_04: Now I love this one.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_04: And the timing is hard to ignore.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_04: Women account for 52%.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_04: And by women I mean 50% women and younger women, girls, account for 52% of the growth in on course participation since 2020.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_04: And Augustine National only admitted its first female members in 2012.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_04: That's crazy.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: So that brings us to the Callaway and Good Good ad.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_04: The Epic Fail, a driver ad where a male golfer shoves a female golfer to the ground for reaching for his club with a line, do not touch my new driver.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_04: And it got through approvals on both sides.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, Callaway's CEO admitted they signed off on it and said the approval should never have happened.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, really?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_04: You think the fallout was huge.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_04: You know, Callaway ended the partnership, good, good stepped away as uh the title sponsor of its PGA tour event, and retailers pulled product.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, in a sport where women are driving growth, you definitely can't afford an ad that treats them as a literal punchline.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_02: So here's the question Is this a signal from the PGA that things need to change regarding misogyny and golf?
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_04: I think I think it's a signal that tolerance for it has run out.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_04: Brands and the tour reacted in days, Christina, not months.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_04: But let's also look at this uh more pragmatically.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_04: One hire or one scandal does not affix a culture.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_04: What matters is who's in the room before an ad like that gets approved.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and that is why Marissa's appointment matters.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: So congratulations, Marissa, to quote our queen, Shelley Zalis.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: We see a lot of marketing holes in one in your future.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_04: I love it.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_04: Next up, now this is right up your street, Miss Marinucci.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_04: We have pasta drama.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: My favorite category of drama, actually.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_04: Marilla has announced its intent to acquire Goodles.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, mac and cheese challenger.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_04: And that's managed to make boxed mac and cheese feel cool, modern, nutritious, and very culturally relevant.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_04: Ooh, side note.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_04: So tied to the vibe of our guest today.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: I think this one is really interesting because it it goes beyond pasta, right?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: Because we keep watching the same pattern across CPG.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: A big established company to smaller challenger brand.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: The challenger brand creates growth by doing something that the established category wasn't doing particularly well, or maybe didn't have the skill set to do, whether that's a product, a culture, the packaging, building a community, having that bold personality.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: And eventually big CPG says, hmm, we see what you're doing over there, and we'd like some of that, please.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: With a side of acquisition, whole digressing.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: And Goodles is only about six years old.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: That's what gets me.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: You don't need necessarily uh decades anymore to build meaningful brand equity.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: If you find that consumer tension and you create a genuinely differentiated product and then build a brand and a brand experience around it that people actually want to belong to, you can move incredibly fast.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_04: But but I always have the same question when a challenger brand gets acquired.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_04: Can the big company scale that that je ne sais quoi the the magic without accidentally killing the magic?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and that that right there is the question.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: An operational scale is usually the easy part, but the hard part is protecting whatever made consumers in the first place say and feel, wow, this really feels different.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: Because the minute that challenger starts feeling like every other big corporate brand, you've bought the asset, but you've lost the advantage.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_04: And that tees up today's conversation pretty perfectly, actually, Christina.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_04: Because we're about to talk to a founder who is dealing with that exact tension, just without having to solve the company.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: But before we bring him in, a couple of just quick community things.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's been a very busy week across commerce between advertising week and the digital shelf summit in London, AI, agenda commerce, and the collision of media, merchandising, and commerce have basically been across the globe and everywhere in between.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_04: Which tells you where the conversation is heading.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_04: We aren't debating whether commerce is changing anymore.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_04: We're debating how quickly brands and retailers, and frankly, all of us can reorganize around it.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_02: And that's a good reminder from us on Future Fierce as well.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_02: If you've been following along with what we're building here, stay tuned.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_02: We've got more coming, and we cannot wait to bring this community together.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_04: Because, you know, apparently working full-time, being moms, and producing a podcast was just not enough for us.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, our rule build brands, build careers, and definitely build each other up.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_04: 100%.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_04: All day, every day.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_04: And speaking of building brands, today's guest has built one hell of a one.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: That he has.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: And this episode is a little different for me because today's guest also happens to be my boss.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: So everybody, especially you, Jackie, behave.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_04: I I take Umbridge, but but also I make no promises.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_04: Today's guest is the fabulous Brendan Cowley, founder and CEO of Righteous Felon.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: Today we have a guest who pretty much checks all the boxes that we love.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: Founder story, absolutely, explosive CPG growth, yep, brand building, definitely, and a bit of chaos, actually a lot, and an entrepreneurial origin story involving an alleged middle school drug deal.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: Also, yes.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_04: Do be clear, for legal purposes, the contraband, friends, was beef jerky, which may make today's guest the only CEO we've ever interviewed thus far, whose founder story begins with being caught making a suspicious hand-to-hand transaction in a school bathroom.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: That definitely sounds sus when you say it like that.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: But that ridiculous moment actually tells us a lot about the company that came later.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: Because Brendan Cawley has never exactly taken the conventional path.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: What started with a Kmart dehydrator, first of all, Kmart dehydrator.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: Flashback.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: A couple of childhood friends, homemade jerky, and very questionable looking baggie eventually became Righteous Felon.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: A founder-led family and employee-owned brand that has grown from scrappy local startup into one of the fastest-growing names in meat snacks.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: And it has done it without following the traditional startup playbook.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: No massive institutional capital, no bloated organization, no sanding down the personality to make the brand more acceptable.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_02: Instead, Righteous Felon has built around bold flavor, irrevolent storytelling, and a cast of outlaw characters and a pretty simple idea.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: You can break the rules without abandoning your standards.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_04: This is a company that started with a few hundred bucks from friends and family and has now crossed the$100 million retail sales mark.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_04: I feel like I need to do that Austin Power's eye of$100 million while staying lean, profitable, and very much itself, which is the part that fascinates us.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_04: Because getting big is one thing.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, it's a great thing, but it's one thing.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_04: Getting big without losing the thing that made people care in the first place, that's a really different challenge.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I have a slightly different perspective on this episode because Brendan also happens to be my boss.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: So in the last few months, I've had a front row seat to accompany scaling at warp speed, bringing in new leadership, rethinking the next evolution of the brand, and figuring out what Righteous Found looks like when it's no longer the little outlaw crashing the party.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's becoming one of the bigger players in the room.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_04: And somewhere in the middle of hitting 100 million, running a hypergrowth company, and hiring Christina, Brendan also became a dad.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_04: Because apparently sleep was just thing, something that other people do.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: So today we're talking about how this whole thing started, what 100 million in retail sales actually feels like from the founder's share, how you scale without becoming too corporate, how fatherhood changes your definition of success, and why the next version of Righteous Fellon may be much bigger than Jerky.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: Brandon Cauley, founder and CEO of Righteous Fellin.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to SheCommerce.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much for having me, guys.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really excited.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_04: Brendan, we promise the interrogation may be slightly less traumatic than the principal's office.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking forward to that.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_04: So we obviously have to begin at the scene of the crime.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_04: Your kid selling homemade jerky at school.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_04: A teacher walks into the bathroom.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_04: He's a little baggy.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_04: I'm sorry, this is this is genius.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_04: He's a little baggy, changing hands for cash.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_04: Baggy jerky.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, genius.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_04: And understandably, think something very different is happening.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_04: So take us back there.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_04: What actually happened?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_04: And did you have any idea that this ridiculous moment would eventually help name a company?
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'll take it, I'll take it all the way back.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: So when I was a kid, so we I grew up actually in the town that that where our headquarters is today, which is we're in Xton.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: The next town over is Downingtown PA.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I liked like a lot of kids.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Jerky was an awesome snack.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: The pizza shop I went to most days after school had a brand called Wild Bills there in a jar.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I just loved, you know, I loved getting a stick of jerky with my slice of pepperoni pizza.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And shortly after that, or at some point after that, I traveled out to Pittsburgh where the rest of my family, extended family lives.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I had an uncle there who worked in uh in a steel mill in Pittsburgh, and he had a little jerky operation in his basement where he had like 60 hydrators going, two freezers full of beef, and he had this little jerky hustle out of his basement, and he would bag it up, sticker it, and sell it to his co-workers at the steel mill there in Pittsburgh.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, that was just this kind of epiphany moment as a kid.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think I was about 10 years old, the realization that you could actually create something at home and that has value and ultimately sell it to other folks.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I was kind of yeah, just taken up, you know, taken aback by that and impressed.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: And he taught me that weekend kind of how his process, his recipe, kind of how he went about it.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I went back as a you know, again as a kid and convinced my parents to get me a dehydrator and Kmart.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: From Kmart.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there was still there were still some Kmart's back then.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this was probably around like 1995 or 1996, just to put it in perspective.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I started making jerky at home, experimenting with different stuff.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: My mom would take me to Costco or to BJ's to buy all the ingredients, you know, like buying buying soy sauce by the gallon and buying these giant briskets, which at the time just seemed like an incredible amount of cost in an incredible amount of food.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it's kind of funny to look back at it today versus the scale we're at today.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, me and my friends just started experimenting with different recipes and cooking up recipes.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then as we started to share with ourselves or with our families or with our friends at school, it got pretty popular.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it got to the point where we were actually making jerky, weighing it out, bagging it up, and you know, selling five and ten dollar bags of you know, Ziploc bags at school.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And one day I was Tucker, who's my best friend since sixth grade, and he's a co-founder here.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: I was we were doing a hand-to-hand transaction in the in the boys' bathroom, and another teacher walked in, Mr.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Haddishau, and thought for sure that that we were doing an exchange that was also gaining popularity at the school at that time.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, confiscated that and walked us to the principal's office.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: And by the time we had gotten there, we were you know pleading our case that this was just beef jerky.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a it was a rather quick settlement there that this that clearly there was a misunderstanding.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: But to Tucker and I and our other friends that were kind of involved in this jerky ring, that was just a hilarious misunderstanding that we kind of ran with as an inside joke for years to come.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: We had no idea at that point that we would ever start a jerky company 20 years later, but we certainly thought that the misunderstanding was hilarious enough that we kept that going for years and years, and even on into college and beyond, when we were going on a snowboarding trip or you know, going to a music festival or something, we would all kick in money and and and cook up a batch of jerky and bring it there.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: And we would all that joke or that misunderstanding would always come back about this being this kind of illicit underground substance.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we'd all we always had fun with it.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't until many years later where the idea of this business started, and that that old joke kind of came back, and and Tucker actually threw out the name Righteous Felon, kind of as a tongue-in-cheek play on a lot of like jerky brands that we grew up with had that sort of Western outlaw persona to them.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that was kind of our way of of poking fun at it a bit.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: But by the time like it came off his lips, it was just really we thought it sounded really badass.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: We were like, we could we could probably run with that, and that's kind of where the start of where we started building out like the the Character universe of the different, you know, each flavor is kind of a different play or a different satire on like a famous felon or a famous character from a movie or just from like traditional stories.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: And we just kind of had a lot of fun building that that outlaw universe.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: And when you got caught, just a quick question, were your parents like, wow, our son's such an entrepreneur?
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: Or wow, we really need to keep closer eye on him.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man, definitely not the entrepreneur thing.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's that that was not, I don't think that was a word in our house at that time.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think confused.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_04: Probably confused.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like wait, he's got baggy.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_04: But he's got jerky in the baggy.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think they were probably more shocked that a teacher or anyone there thought that kids were were actually kind of transacting marijuana at that time.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Although they were, but I think it was a shock to my parents that that wouldn't even be happening.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: That could that could even be mistaken.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_04: So you said that when you were in the basement with your uncle, what hit you at that time was that you could actually see making something at home be a thing that you could do and then sell and then build on that on your own, right?
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_04: But you say that whilst it whilst it stayed with you, you didn't do anything about that for quite a while later.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I should clarify, it wasn't necessarily the selling part that the epiphany at that moment.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was more so that this snack that I bought off the shelf so frequently in my life, and again, 10 years old, so not a whole lot of perspective on the world.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: But it was the first time that I actually saw like an a commercialized item like come to life from raw ingredients, go through this sort of transformation from red, raw meat, big hunk, coming out into strips of finished jerky.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it was, yeah, it was just, I didn't know that's how the world worked at that time.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it was kind of this eye-opening moment where it was like, you can create things.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that was even outside of beef jerky, I think that was kind of a pivotal moment in my life just to realize that if you have the imagination and a bit of know-how, that you you can kind of put some things together and create something better than the sum of its parts.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and so then you go into a very different world where you build a corporate career, you learn manufacturing, finance, operations, supply chain, while also becoming fascinated by craft beer and that whole movement and this emerging natural food kind of space.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, yeah.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: And those things don't sound immediately related to most, I'm sure, until suddenly they really do.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: So when did that those pieces kind of click together into, you know, what if we took the mentality of craft beer and we brought it to beef jerky and they had a baby?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's pretty, that's pretty close.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I first of all in college, I went to East Strasburg University.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: I studied finance and marketing there.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: I studied abroad in Australia, and that at that school there was a brand, you know, there was a brand management focus, and I really enjoyed that time.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I kind of had the seeds of business and marketing and branding even before getting out of college.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: When I did get out of college, I went and worked at Sikorsky Aircraft, which is the helicopter manufacturer that builds like Blackhawks and probably the largest helicopter manufacturer in the world.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: And they had just been acquired.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: It actually was a it was a smaller helicopter outfit prior to that.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: They had just been acquired.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I was lucky to get in there, and I didn't realize it at the time, but I got in there during like this huge period of change for that company.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it was kind of the Wild West a little bit, and we talk about chaos here.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was pretty chaotic there.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that was, in hindsight, a great opportunity for me because I I was able to move up pretty quickly there, but even more so than move up was had access to a lot of the senior management.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: And to do my role, I had to meet with the senior management from each department almost every day.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because my job was really to pull together the sales proposals for these multi-million dollar aircraft, and they typically range anywhere from like 7 million up to I think our most expensive was about$120 million aircraft.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's all the delta between those is all about customization.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that was really my job is how are we going to customize this aircraft to meet the customer desires, and then working with all Switzerland engineers, supply chain folks, production, finance, quality control, you know, all these different groups to piece together this project that ultimately would take some of these aircraft took 18 months to build, putting piecing together the cost for that, how we should price it, as well as what the schedule and labor demands would be in order to actually execute on that.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: And as you can imagine, doing that every day.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes these things would have to be turned very quickly, pulling it all together into a proposal, spreadsheet, PDF, and then pitching it to the GM at the site.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: She would never let me off the hook with just one pitch.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was typically many pitches to get her convinced it was something we could execute at the price we were quoting.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was kind of just the probably the best learning environment you could have for a young person, and really getting to learn how she thought and obviously got better and better as that went on.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: But going on a tangent there, but it was just great business experience, and that was happening at work.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: At home, I was really falling in love with the craft beer movement, which during that time was you know extremely popular and growing rapidly.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you guys don't remember, at that point, there was a lot of similar to like protein today or tech in the last 10 years, there was small craft beer companies doing 50 or 100 million in sales being bought out by Budweiser for a billion dollars, like huge multiples.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was stealing all the market share from the conventional players, Budweiser and Miller, and course, and everyone was kind of going to these regional, kind of experimental, more bold flavor profiles of beer and styles, using better ingredients, having a lot more fun with the packaging and the naming convention and the branding, and ultimately being able to charge two or three times what the conventional beer costs.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that was super exciting.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: We happened to have one of the best craft brewers in America here in Downingtown with Victory Brewing Company.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: We did a, I guess I'll get to that partnership later.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: So that was really exciting and interesting to me as a consumer.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: But obviously, I was I felt like I was getting really great business training at work and thought I had the the wherewithal to do something myself.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: I really was falling in love with craft beer and the brewery culture and kind of the entrepreneurial culture around craft beer, and they were popping up everywhere.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I didn't want to be a brewer, and I thought, you know, maybe there's this how could I break into this and be a part of this community without actually being a brewer, which was super capital intensive, and there was already more, you know, there's there was just an overabundance of competition in the market.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: And really I thought maybe this is the time where I could kind of tap that old skill that I had of making beef jerky, but put the craft beer spin on it from a packaging standpoint, flavor profile standpoint, ingredient standpoint.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately that was what like the really early days of of Righteous Felon were.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_04: I'd love to expand a little bit more on that, Brendan, because what's what really stands out in terms of your story is how differently you built the company compared to your standard issued venture-backed startup playbook, right?
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_04: There was no giant institutional race, it was friends and family, it was personal guarantees, it was a tiny team.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_04: But there was a profitable growth and a lot of kind of basically figuring shit out as you went.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_04: What was the most important thing about staying independent?
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_04: Was that like always philosophical for you?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_04: Or did you simply just become really good at surviving without someone else's money?
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it I think it was a bit of both.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: Probably more so the figuring it out and surviving.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: I I guess I would also start by saying this wasn't the type of startup where prior to launch there was a business plan and like a path to doing a million in sales or 10 million or a break-even profitability point and how much what would our burn rate be?
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: There was none of that.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: It was very much so it happened very like sort of naturally and progressively, where we just first started with doing some local farmers markets or like food festivals or music fests, and we'd make we make 50 pounds a jerky, and if we sold out, it was awesome.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: If we had some leftovers, great, we'll do another show the the prior week, the next weekend.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: So there was never even the thought really of raising capital.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: And again, this is 15 years ago, so it was like it was a different, it wasn't as prevalent of like startups actually raising capital and and having a plan to scale that quickly.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: Even the Copac world was not as developed.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like today, if someone wanted to start a new granola bar today, they could they could get a list of 10 Copackers within three-hour drive to help them launch their brand.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: That was certainly not the case.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: I had to go and travel all throughout the mid-Atlantic, meet with tons of different farmers, meet with tons of different processors, and none of them were making beef jerky for other brands.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: They either made their own or they didn't make beef jerky at all.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I had to find that out just from driving, driving a few hours there.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I should yeah, so that kind of like sets the table that wasn't like a choice where we said, hey, let's not raise money and let's bootstrap this thing.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was just like all we knew was to bootstrap, and we didn't even know it was called that.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: We were just trying to, we were just trying to to make some product, bring it out to some of like the local beer fests or or some of the breweries we hung out at and see if they were interested in selling it at their place.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_02: Well, let's talk about then the ride over the last year because the numbers are are quite ridiculous, right?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: So you go from local markets and festivals to building the scrappy craft brand to running a company that's now across that$100 million retail sales market you mentioned.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: So numbers like that are definitely easy to talk to, talk about from the outside, but founders like yourself, you're you're living every moment of that, right?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: And every dollar to build to that.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_02: So when 100 million actually became real, what did that milestone mean to you personally?
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_02: Did you stop and celebrate, or were you like, great, what how do we get to the next hundred million?
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, it's funny.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: When we did when we finally did start, so earlier I talked about how we didn't really have a plan.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: After that first year, we did we did about a hundred grand in sales that first year, I would say almost by accident.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: And when we finally like tallied it up, it was like, holy cow, maybe there's something here.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then and then so we did start to plan a little bit more and have some goals and and some strategies around how we would grow.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: They were not very sophisticated.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: But I would say, like, within that first two years, we started to chase and set like a business plan to get to a million.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say that took, I thought that would take a year, and it probably took six.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't think we crossed a million until we were like six or seven years in.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that was definitely a big milestone, that first one.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think 10 million was was kind of another place where you just take a step back and and think like, holy cow, this is this is growing and this is significant.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the 100 million I never thought we would actually get to.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: That we all know.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Austin Power, like you called out Austin Powers, Dr.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Evil, that's a just an insanely big number to say.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, when when that occurred and I kind of realized that in trailing 12 that we had passed that, it was for me personally, like I didn't I didn't share with a ton of people that, but between like the managers here, just like, guys, did you realize like we we passed this number?
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I I think internally proud, but I've been proud of what we've accomplished.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: I should also say, like, the same those same friends that you know were in middle school are the same friends that actually threw in a couple hundred bucks to start this thing.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: They're the same guys that run our sales team today.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: So it is a we thing, and that's been the most rewarding part of the whole journey.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: But yes, that that was a big milestone for us, and it's just kind of fun to look at it and be like, this is insane.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: Who would have thought we could we could take it to this level?
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I would say it's burdened, it's it's short-lived that celebration because there's so much, there's always so much to do, and we know that we're not just chasing the next big number.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: We try to chase like customers and and get it into more helping people bring people in an entertaining and nutritious and flavorful stack.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of how we really measure success, not always just like not the top line number.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_04: I I kind of want to go back to what you said, uh Brendan, about your your friends from middle school.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_04: Because the people side of the story is is is just wonderful.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_04: And you've created this massive world with an incredibly lean organization.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_04: And at some point, every founder hits that uncomfortable moment where the skills have gotten them to here what may not necessarily get them to there.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_04: So, what has Brendan the CEO?
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, great question.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think I've been very lucky, or we have, I have, in that.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think another really unique thing about our company is like through all that growth, it hasn't been, I think a lot of times the team turns over a lot during that during that period, and people's skill sets don't match like the new reality of the business, and there's churn there, and you have to recruit more to to kind of bring in the skills that are needed during that period.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: Not to mention, over like a 14-15-year period, all the ways the market has changed, even COVID is probably the most pronounced one.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: But a really cool part of our team not just being here for that whole journey, those original group, but how they've all transmorthed and changed and adapted and learned new things.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like no one here is doing the same job they did two years ago, and definitely not doing the same job they did when they first started here.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: So the ability to learn quickly and adapt is definitely a core competency of like righteous felon employees.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that could be cross-departments, that could be within certain departments, and and almost everyone here started in our warehouse because that's what was needed at the time that they were all hired.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: It was during COVID and we couldn't keep up with with e-commerce orders.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: Other guys were losing their more traditional jobs due to what did they call that?
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: Not layoffs, but then uh when they sabbatical, like they've paused them.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what was that?
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: Furlough.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: All the furlough, the COVID furloughs, yeah.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: So guys were getting kind of furloughed and then just asked, Can I come help?
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: I want to make some extra money.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: And and they they did come to help in the warehouse, and now they've never left.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one thing, it's just like the adaptability.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: But with that, for myself, I'm not, I haven't done the best job of like stepping back, and I have been a very, very hands-on CEO, as well as many other titles here.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I I really enjoy that, but I have made a really concerted effort over the last 18 months, I'd say, to actually fulfill that that title and be more of the visionary or strategic vision, finding the strategic vision of the company and communicating it clearly, recruiting talent to help achieve kind of what that plan is.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the biggest, like to answer your question directly, like what I've had to change the most is the larger the company gets from either people, headcount, or just size with customers and suppliers and consulting partners and agencies, is really leaning into that clear being a leader, not just through example, but through communication.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of leaders are really good at leading through example, like working harder, working longer, working smarter.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you hope that the others around you kind of see that and replicate it.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: I and I think that works well in sports, which is kind of where I, my leadership, I think started.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it translates.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: I as I've grown and have seen more companies and have led this one, that doesn't translate well in the workplace.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think you really have to establish a clear vision, clear path to get there.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have to repeat yourself like crazy just so it doesn't, people don't lose sight of that.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: And particularly amongst all the chaos, as things, as there's like multiple large projects going on or large initiatives, or shit's hit hitting a fan on five different things at the same time, like that's where it's even more important.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where I've tried to not just, you know, that's where I've spent a lot of my time in personal development, as well as trying to remember that, stay grounded to that during the chaotic periods where other people may be getting overwhelmed.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm very much so in that I'm still very much developing there today.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: And Brendan didn't pay me to say this, but I would say one thing I can attest to is like you're a very authentic leader and you're also a very self-aware leader.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, most leaders don't come seek out feedback, or you know, we had we had a meeting last week, and immediately we came out and we were like, What could we have done better?
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_02: What could I have done better, you know?
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I think from like a founder leader perspective, that's rare to see versus like I I know this all, I've been here for 20 years.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I think I'm reminded most days now, particularly as we've hired great people like Christina and many others, how much I don't know.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it's funny, just to go back to Sikorsky.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: I remember starting at Sikorsky, and that's like a very military inspired, like the aerospace industry is very much influenced by military because that's the largest, that's where most airplanes and helicopters go.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: There is a million acronyms.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: When I started at Sikorsky, I remember being overwhelmed with acronyms.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's been funny since Christina started, and even Steve, who runs our ops now, just the amount of acronyms within this industry that I'm not even aware of.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's a nice reminder that there's still so much to learn.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: And and I that is why we are hiring you know great people, is is there's there's so much we don't know, and and I'm very comfortable saying that.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think there's things that I do well that that will lend themselves to other experts, and then there's things experts can bring to the table that will help me be better, and I think that's the best way to kind of get move fast and to keep the team small.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'll also just lean into that, like thank you for saying that.
• 39:53
  unknown: Dependent.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I think the other thing that has made the scale, the the path to growing so quickly with the small team and with that same same guys and girls around is transparency.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like I try to be incredibly transparent with everything going on in the business, so long as it's not like personally sensitive to anybody.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: And again, that just keeps things super easy and simple.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone kind of knows where the company stands, where they stand in it, and what the risks are of the company and what the opportunities are.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, efficiency standpoint and productivity standpoint for a leader, it's just so much easier to lead that way because you don't have to keep like six different stories, like one for the investors, one for the employees, one for your management team, one for your family.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like it can just be one story and it's the truth, and that's just such an easy thing to manage.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's that's helped a ton as well.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_04: I love that.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_04: The self-awareness, the humility, the transparency.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_04: Take notes, people, take notes.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_04: Right?
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_04: Isn't that refreshing?
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, Christina, do you want to go into the brand?
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_02: All right, so I want to move into the brand because this is obviously the part that I get to live closely every day.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the most interesting conversations happening inside Registral and right now is what does this brand become next?
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_02: Or how does it evolve?
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_02: How does it keep up in a very competitive category?
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone can say and is saying you know, the functional side of it, high protein, right?
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_02: Removing the bad ingredients, having real ingredients about you, old flavor.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_02: And obviously, those things matter a lot.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's why this category has been successful and is growing the way it is, but they are increasingly becoming table stakes.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_02: So I think the strategic question becomes what can righteous felon own that somebody else can't just copy and meet to and put on a package six months from now.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_02: So, what what is our differentiated unique proposition?
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I feel I think you're spot on is that when I started this company just using pasture-raised beef and clean ingredients, that was enough to be differentiated versus the rest of the category, which was conventional and a lot of shelf stabilizers and additives and fake colorings in them.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that's happened across every category, where it's like 10 years ago, which made you natural and unique, is now kind of commodity because the whole industry has shifted that way.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: And even the large CPGs are reformulating to kind of adhere to them the modern trends.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think first and foremost for for our brand, and I would say the brand that kind of spans all the different product lines we have underneath it, is just the authenticity and some of the storytelling.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm come from a long line of Irish heritage where storytelling is kind of paramount, and I feel like that has translated well into our company and our brands.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: Not just the kind of the origin story of Righteous Felon, but then the different characters we've created, how those characters sort of interact in different media platforms, where we put them, or just email communications.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: Also Tucker, the guy who I told you is kind of co-founder and creative partner, he went to school for creative writing, actually in Oxford in London, and then later in Boulder.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, he's just a writer by at heart, and that's really my creative partner, not just for this project, but for a lot of things in life.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think like that long form, like the back of our package still has like a 200-word essay on it, which every outsider has asked us to change over time.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: But for me, that's like very central to the brand.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it also tells that middle school story really well.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, storytelling is one, the character-driven, the personas on the bag, and we have a lot of plans that kind of make that translate into more mediums of our marketing mix.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's one, and probably I would say the most important one.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then two, we're really sort of starting to lean into more of this rebel against boring, bland, and basic snacks.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that is really trying to differentiate ourselves versus, to your point, like the the better for you space, I believe, and I think we believe.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Has gotten too functional and almost medicinal.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm all about the food is medicine movement.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: And once a year I do the whole 30, and it's a great diet for that time.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: But I think in general, over the long span, consumers want something that they still can that is healthy, but it's still cravable, and they can still make it part of their everyday routine.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't feel like a chore or that you're doing it just for some other purpose, which is to be healthier or to lose weight.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that that's really where I think we can stand alone and differentiate from the growing list of competitors is creating something that is super healthy, high protein, low sugar, all clean ingredients.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: It still tastes incredible, still has an amazing mouthfeel and texture, and something that you can go to multiple times a week or even multiple times a day across our different product lines and help you stay on whatever that journey is that that you're on as a consumer, but without sacrificing the fun or the flavor from that routine.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_04: I love that.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_04: I love that because protein and wellness, the protein and wellness industry have have kind of start made made being healthy so bland and and and flavorless, but making it fun again.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_04: That I that's the movement for sure.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_04: Making it funny.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: Be a great dad, be a great mom, be a great husband, you know, read your read your you know, your self-improvement book, get 12 hours of sleep.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just not realistic at all.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I think ultimately the the majority of us want to eat, want to eat healthy, but we also want to enjoy those moments when we do get a small break.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the void that we can fill, and that's what we're aiming to do.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_02: Let's talk a little bit about the personality too, because that tension you talked about, like healthy but still cravable.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_02: There's also this outlaw of the code, right?
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_02: Where very unapologetic, bold, disruptive personality that started all the way to your roots of you know, selling this in the bathroom, but yeah, legal something.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_02: So that what's underneath that like defiance and standards, like what are the rules that you can break bad rules, right?
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_02: You can reject conventional thinking, you can do things your own way.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have to conform, as you said, into this picture-perfect version of yourself.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think like one of my favorite quotes of anybody is is Nelson Mandela Dela.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, Nelson Mandela is our built-on flavor.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it's when a man is denied denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice to be but to become an outlaw.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I I think that's extremely well said, but then I think when you look around pop culture, particularly like pop culture, as I was growing up, that was really personified by like Alan Iverson.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I I grew up as a huge hoops fan and player.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: And like Alan Iverson in the Philadelphia area during the 90s and early 2000s was just larger than life.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't remember, he was, you know, NBA tried to ban him and outlaw him many times because of his tattoos and his do-rags and the friends he hung out with.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, what what it ultimately became is that is what every NBA player looks like today.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he was just an incredible inspiration to an entire generation.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_00: But there's many more, like the movie Blow came out when we were in high school, just kind of glorifying Pablo Escobar a bit and George Young.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's sort of like cult, and then you know, then you have Biggie Smalls, Jay-Z, uh, even the rock bands we were listening to, you know, red hot chili peppers and and rolling like that.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: That would there was just something about going against the grain in pop culture in the 90s, 2000s, and I would argue still today that was attractive.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I think it goes back way further than that.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you just kind of even look at like American culture, I mean, we were no shade to you, Jackie, but we rebelled against England.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, I I just have a passport, man.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_03: I was not as you can tell, I did not grow up here.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_03: Now we love England.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I yeah, and I think everyone, I just think that like deep down, that's part of Americans, America's DNA, that like underdog story, being an outlier, an outsider, and but still finding a way to persevere.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of those things are really kind of wrapped into that righteous felon name, but also like sort of the mantra of we're gonna do this our way.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that resonates with a lot of people because I think a lot of people definitely in today's world are are feeling a bit like but they have to they have to do that.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_00: The world isn't really being designed right now for for the every man.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of winners and losers right now, and so I think that's that's what we aim to kind of create with that name.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I think again, it was more for ourselves at that time.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: But I have it's been great to see over the years people that you know, fans that have come to us not because of the taste of the jerky, but because they kind of love the the kind of badass outlaw rebel with the code type of you know story behind the brand.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_02: And that's that sounds like the aspiration is, you know, 10 years from now to people to think of Righteous Fell and then as this like cultural brand that happened to start with meat snacks, but it's more about that movement you're creating.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that would be.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, early on, people said we had we were a t-shirt company that had a beef jerky problem because we were I was cranking out more righteous fellow and t-shirts than we were beef jerky.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe at some at some point we we return to that.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: I hope, yeah.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: I I hope I think food is a is the path to someone's heart.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so if we can really solve a food and snacking problem for them, which I think we're doing right now, you know, ultimately I hope that that evolves into a larger relationship if we can add, you know, if we can bring value to that to them in that form.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_04: So two things I've heard is that well, actually, one thing I've heard is that you have swag that uh Christina, I think you need to share some with me.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_04: And the second thing was the focus on all those names you said in the 90s and early 2000s.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, oh, hello, nostalgia hit.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_04: And I remember, I don't know if you guys remember no fear, no surrender.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_04: That was literally our our our class mantra for like the whole time.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_04: And the kind of stuff you do or did, because I'm a sensible grown-up now, you know, with the with the whole no fear, no surrender, and then you're like bleeding.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_04: It's you know, it was a movement, and even now when I hear, you know, no fear, no surrender, immediately it kind of switches like, yeah, come on, you know, it's just it's I I you're you're tapping into uh the emotion that something like Righteous Felon brings, which is which is fantastic because we say this all the time on the podcast, it's not just business, it's a personal which kind of segues which kind of segues neatly into the fact that last year hasn't exactly been quiet for you personally either.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's been quite the year.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_02: So obviously the big goal of crossing that 100 million retail sales, but most importantly, you became a dad.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_02: And of course you hired me.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_02: So I mean that's probably the most transformational thing ever.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_00: Three big life milestones.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: I would add if I, you know, we we brought it's been a crazy 12 months or 11 months, but those three things we brought in ground force as a partner, which has been awesome.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_00: I got a full-blown addiction to golf, and LeBron James decided to join the Philadelphia 76ers.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: So it's been my year.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: But yes, I undoubtedly, you know, Penny, my daughter, Penelope, has been just an absolute game changer.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_02: And sticking on that, has becoming a father changed how you think about risk, about the legacy you're building, the value of time, any all of that?
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: All of that, yes.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_00: Particularly the most, you know, value of time is it's crazy how quickly that realization happens and your behavior changes.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I also just immediately had an appreciation.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: We have a lot of dads here at the company, and for a long time I wasn't one of them, but almost instantly you realize kind of why they are the way they are a little bit in certain aspects of their life or in their work.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I just got a much better appreciation for like the per for why, you know, the what the purpose of work is.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, you know, as an entrepreneur, that's always just to build something great, to build something that consumers love, to build a space that employees and partners feel safe and coming to each day and can provide for their families.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, then you really realize, man, this is I'm here because I want to, I ultimately want to build comfortability for my family so that we can spend a ton of great time together, travel, she can grow up and do whatever, you know, whatever she'd like to do.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_00: Puts a big perspective on health as well.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like you really just want to kind of get healthier and realize you you want to live to be a hundred and hundred and ninety and and not not 80 because next innovation.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yes.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that's I mean, it's hard to put into words how much her joining has changed uh just my life, my life and my outlook and just kind of how I think about things.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_02: We're talking about penny now, maybe both.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's my daughter Penny.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_04: No, that's not me.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_04: That's all about me.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_04: That's you, Recruit.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_00: Enough about me.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about Penny.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a it's a big shift from like you live to work versus you work to live, and what comes with that?
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I also would say, like, I don't know, I had I was 40 when I had Penny, which is pretty, you know, rather late.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I think say that maybe the average age that you have a child is maybe around 30.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: But like that extra 10 years of not having a dependent, yeah, really creates it's a there's a big shock there when you go from that life with not a whole lot of responsibilities outside of work to holy cow, like this is by far the most important thing in life.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I need to spend as much time as possible here.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_00: There is a master plan here, and like part of that is bringing Christina on board and many other.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we've hired three great people this year.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's a few others in the hopper, but all a lot of that is I don't as much as I love working here and love building things, and you know, that's just in my DNA.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I I don't want to be here 80 hours a week, not even here.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's just I don't I I want to open up the the mind space to actually be a good dad, be a better husband, all those things.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we're building the team to do it.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_04: So this kind of takes me into a what's next part of Righteous Felon.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_04: You know, you've crossed a milestone that to be honest, not a lot of entrepreneurs reach, and you're not treating the hundred million as the finish line.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_04: So take us forward.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_04: What does the next version of the felon look like?
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_04: You know, are you looking at more households, more geographies, more products, more characters, different categories?
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_04: You know, are you thinking that 500,000 people need to eat Righteous Felon every day?
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think primary focus is really bringing it back to people.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that it is, I think we have a lot of room to improve our team, not just from a talent standpoint, but just that the culture here, and not saying the culture's bad, but I've just recognized this is people are gonna spend over 50% of their waking hours, you know, working for this company.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: I want that to be extremely enjoyable for them.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not just like the space or their pay or time PTO.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's like how they work and interact with one another.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's really key to me.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then people on the other side is our consumers.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we've for a company of our size, we know very little about our consumers.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the main one of the main impetuses for bringing Christina on.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_00: And already just in two months, you know, we've we've gotten incredible insights.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that we're just getting started, but really understanding that consumer, understanding what we mean to that consumer and how that consumer perceives our products, how they use them, how they're not using them, that maybe we thought they they were, like that is, I think, the most interesting thing to me over the next year or two.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if you take care of that, everything else kind of falls into place.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like we'll know from that what new products we should we should have, what flavors, what new characters should be created, you know, which ones should should be sunset.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_00: I really do feel like that's the last piece for us.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like we have a lot of the other things figured out as far as like new doors and geographies.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's covered, I and that will take care of itself.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's really like, can we understand how to become real partners to our consumers and help them with however it is that they want to use our products?
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we're gonna, we could talk about this for a long time, and I really enjoy being the one to interview you as a change in pace here.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_02: But let's go into the lightning round, shall we, Becky?
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, in fairness, we have allowed entirely too much thought and consideration with this whole CEO behavior.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_04: So it's a light back.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_04: We are looking at keeping it really simple, no rules.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_04: Well, some rules, very simple rules.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_04: No strategy decks, no five-minute answers, no it depends.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_04: So it's the first answer that comes to your head.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_04: Okay?
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_00: And we do have the ability to edit this if if uh if I have a 30 and slip.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_02: What's the most righteous thing about you?
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_00: My family.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: Extended family.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_04: What's the most felonious thing about you?
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: My punctuality and and procrastination.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care about that.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's criminal.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_02: I like that.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_02: One business rule you think deserves to be broken.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_00: You need a big team to do big things.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_00: One rule you will never break.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_00: Function over flavor.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think flavor, at least in snack food, flavor needs to reign supreme.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna ask this in the third person.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_02: One founder habit that Christina desperately wishes you would give up.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's not working late because you work later than I do.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh probably being late?
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you should answer it.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_02: I'll tell Jackie later.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: No, the only feedback, there's one I the only feedback I've gotten, it wasn't negative, but I think you asked me one day when I was fixing a slide.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_00: You said you were, what was the word?
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_00: You said you were pretty OCD about OCD about PowerPoints, aren't you?
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, right.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_04: I I'm totally, I'm totally, totally with Brendan on that.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but Brendan, here's an opportunity to kind of redress it.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_04: One thing Christina does that secretly makes you admit hiring her was a good decision.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a lot, there's many.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think the the most tangible one is I work late a lot, especially now with the kid, and it's it's been refreshing to get a response from Chris Christine.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_00: If I send an email out to the team or something, Christina may, first off, just on the further record, I try to do the send later for the morning so that I don't interrupt people's nights.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes I slip and Christina will always answer right away, and she's usually working at the same crazy hours I am.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, oh, this is good.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is yeah, that that helps me know that we have the right person who cares as as much as I do about like getting things done.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_02: All right, Penny becomes CEO of Richmond one day.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_02: What's the first thing you think she'll change?
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_00: Probably need a pink flavor.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_00: She really likes pink.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like a Himalayan sea salt or something.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_04: I like it.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, speaking of flavors, what was the worst flavor idea that has ever been seriously discussed?
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think so, same group of founders and everything.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_00: We're all we've all been pretty big fish fans for years, the band for decades.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it was pretty cool.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man, I'm this isn't lightning round, but I'll be quick.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_00: We were the like official vendors, jerky vendors of a few of their festivals for a few years in a row.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_00: And we wanted to make a uh, this was in like 2015 to 17.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_00: We wanted to make a special flavor for one of those festivals, like a four-day festival.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_00: We never ended up doing it, but the a famous song of theirs that the other workers here make fun of us for is called Possum.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we were gonna make a like a possum hoax jerky for that show, but we just couldn't get the packaging fast enough.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like that could be an April Fool.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_00: Thank the Lord you couldn't get the packaging fast enough.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_00: And we, by the way, we weren't gonna use real, it was gonna be a beef jerky framed as possum, not real possum.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_00: Real possum just doesn't taste good.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_00: Trust me.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_00: Trust me.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_02: What's one thing about entrepreneurship?
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_02: People romanticize way too much.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, the be your own boss.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it must be nice to be your own boss.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's the craziest term, craziest phrase in in the I've I think any entrepreneur has ever heard.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_00: Unless you're running, like unless you're a solo entrepreneur or whatever.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the the opposite is true.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think you feel like you have a million bosses, and that's like the team that works for you, for your consumer, for your customers, like your retail partners, like a target as for X, how you know they ask you to jump, you say how high, how fast, I'll fly out there tomorrow.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like, so it's I think that's the biggest one.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's not just I I think even my family, my parents and brothers and my wife, they often even like it's hard to put it for anyone to fathom just how the level of responsibility you feel to the idea, and that it's it's hard to like shut down sometimes because you are all so focused on you know delivering what you told people you would deliver.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_04: So, Brendan, before we let you go, there's one thing we ask every guest who joins us because she commerce has always been about more than interviewing women, it's always been about a network of women and advocates who are willing to make commerce better.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_02: And one thing we talk about constantly is that changing commerce cannot only be true and the responsibility of women alone, that we need advocates to hire women, sponsor women, put women into rooms where the decisions are actually being made, give them those opportunities.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_02: We talk about board representation a lot here and this radical concept that actually listen once women are there.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_02: So, Brendan, what do you take the F-Commerce Pledge to pay it forward to amplify women's voices and help shape a more inclusive future of commerce for women leaders?
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_00: One million percent, and I'd I'd do it with even without you guys making me pledge.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think women have had a profound my mom, my wife, my daughter, employees we've had here have had a profound impact on my life and on the business.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, I mean a hundred percent.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_04: Congratulations, Brendan.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_04: You're now officially part of the She Commerce Sisterhood.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_04: I'm getting him a pink shirt.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's potentially our first former middle school jerky dealer in the sisterhood, but we'll have legal you know, comply.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_02: Well, no, sir.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you for joining us and putting up with us.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_02: I really appreciate it.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_02: Giving us a great founder story to share with our network.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for having me, and I hope I hope I'll be invited back at some point.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely, for sure.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_04: And for everyone listening, keep putting legal substances in baggies and keep breaking the rules that deserve breaking.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_04: Both brands, fierce women, one sister.