Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Alc vs non alc legalities with Master Distiller Morgan McLachlan, co-founder of botanics brand AMASS

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Alc vs non alc legalities with Master Distiller Morgan McLachlan, co-founder of botanics brand AMASS · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Morgan McLaughlin for Female Startup Club. Hello, everyone. It's Dune here, your host and hype girl. Today, we're learning from Morgan McLaughlin, a master distiller and co-founder of Amass.
• 0:23
  This is a super insightful episode for those of us venturing into the ALK and non-ALK space. We cover learnings around the legalities when it comes to spirits versus non-ALK spirits. We talk through the key hires you need in this space and why you don't need an MBA to build a successful brand. You should save your dollars and use it as startup capital instead. Okay.
• 0:46
  Headquartered in LA, Amass makes clean, premium botanics for modern life. From alcoholic and non-alc spirits to personal care products, including hand sanitizer, hand soap, lotions, Amass uses natural botanicals to transform social and self-care rituals. Their products are proudly stocked in all 27 global locations of Soho House, so do check them out if you're a member, as well as in five Michelin star restaurants and four of the world's top 10 bars.
• 1:15
  And by the way, if you love the show and you like to consume things on email, we send out a weekly recap with a bunch of other cool stuff like jobs at female founded companies and small business spotlights. We like to think it's pretty cool. You should definitely check it out and sign up at femalestartupclub.com. But let's get into this episode. This is Morgan for Female Startup Club.
• 1:41
  Morgan, hi, hello, and welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Hello, thank you so much for having me, Dune. Very nice to meet you.
• 1:50
  I'm super excited today to speak with you, obviously, for selfish reasons, like I was telling you before, of wanting to speak to people in the ALK space and the non-ALK space so I can understand what's working, what's not working, what makes a brand successful, what the really tricky bits of being in this industry are. So I'm particularly very, very excited about this today. Yeah.
• 2:16
  What do you like to tell people in your introduction and elevator pitch in who you are and what you do? About me personally or about the brand? Both. Okay. So people, when they ask what I do, it's funny, I usually just say that I make drinks taste yummy. That's kind of my job.
• 2:42
  Although in the case of Amass, I also do product development on home fragrance and personal care products. But yeah, it's a difficult thing to really encapsulate. But I'm a maker by trade. I'm a distiller by trade. And I have a really fun job in that I get to formulate delicious beverages.
• 3:01
  Oh my God. Yum. I love that. You make yummy drinks. I know that you grew up with a love of nature and you grew up in a creative household. You grew up in Canada. And I know this is a big part of your story. So where do you kind of like to start your entrepreneurship journey? Well, it's actually funny because my sort of caveat is I did grow up in this artistic family. I mean, that said in a funny way.
• 3:31
  you know, people in the arts are often self-employed. So like growing up, my parents were kind of always hustling. They might have, you know, be selling art or they might have a job for eight months. But that while we weren't necessarily, my family aren't necessarily business people in the traditional sense of the word. I think that and even my, you know, my grandfather is a visual artist. So that made me comfortable with the risks involved in not,
• 4:01
  taking a conventional career path, going to college, getting a job at the telephone company, you know, with good benefits or, you know, that kind of thing. Not that that happens so much anymore, but in hindsight, I think, well, you know, I don't even know if I could tell you my family are good business people. They're certainly independent and entrepreneurial in their spirit. So that was, I think, actually a good foundation for moving into entrepreneurship.
• 4:30
  That said, the way I grew up, there's kind of a narrative. Business people were these bad, greedy people and or squares who just crunched numbers. And so the thought of going into business was never even a consideration for me when I was younger. But.
• 4:53
  And then my movement into, my previous career, I worked in the motion picture industry, and then I sort of just transitioned into this particular career path. You know, it just started as a curiosity. I was curious about, well, I had this love of nature, and then was sort of interested in experimenting with how we could celebrate nature through beverages and taught myself how to distill. So this was really, my current career really started as a hobby. I had
• 5:22
  It wasn't like I woke up when I was a little girl and I was like, I want to be a distiller when I grow up or make booze. It's always interesting hearing how people get into things. And this really kind of started almost more of an intellectual curiosity. And then I moved into developing this trade, this skill or this craft, really, which is distilled spirits. Then I moved into other beverage categories. And then from there, kind of thinking, well, maybe I could do this as a business.
• 5:52
  And really having no concept whatsoever, I didn't know what a cap table was. I didn't know what liquidation preference was. I didn't know what a financial model was. For that matter, I barely ever clicked around in Excel. So I was a little bit intimidated and sought the help of people who I thought were, at the time I thought were maybe business experts because they had MBAs.
• 6:21
  And this is actually a funny story. One of the people that I sort of engaged to help build my financial model early on, I trust, and this is a theme of my life, trusting professionals, because they have professional degrees. So they must know what they're doing, whether it's a lawyer or somebody with a different type of professional degree. I kind of discovered pretty quickly within several months of working with this person that
• 6:51
  they were a little dyslexic with numbers. And this is the person who was building my financial model. So the funny thing was, and this is a business prior to a mass. The funny thing was it was sort of trial by, you know, baptism by fire, because I had to learn my modeling, which is a whole business plan can really exist in a financial model. I had to learn modeling because I had to audit every single cell and every single equation
• 7:20
  in our financial model because this guy was so sloppy. But that made me learn. And then what I also learned is I actually absolutely love modeling, not fashion modeling, financial modeling. Well, I guess it's like a recipe, right? You're working on a recipe within a document and you're making it come to life. You're making it look good, taste good. Absolutely. So it was sort of interesting, I think, from there.
• 7:51
  that force functioned me to develop a lot of skills. And then of course, when you're fundraising, you know, you have to have answers to all of the diligence questions. So I kind of just did it. I didn't go to school for business management. I just kind of did it. And I also found, you know, I myself found early on several mentors in the industry, in the beverage industry as a whole, who are very helpful and,
• 8:17
  You know, I was like, well, should I go get an MBA? And they're like, oh, my God, no, don't do it. Just like start this business and you're going to learn. So that's my very long winded way of encouraging people who don't have a business background, but have an entrepreneurial idea to just go for it. You know, it is a lot of work to learn business principles, but I would really encourage people to do it.
• 8:41
  Absolutely. And I think it's so spot on. Sometimes you're thinking about, you know, everyone else has the answer when really you're the person that cares the most about your business. You just need to get in there, knuckle down and learn it yourself. And you're going to do it the best ever. And yeah, I guess an MBA is like building a business. Sorry. It's like an MBA times a million in real life. It really is. And that's, you actually bring up a good point
• 9:08
  which is nobody, when you're an entrepreneur, nobody's going to care as much about your business as you do. What any consultant, it doesn't matter how expensive they are, any employee, you are the one holding the bag in the end and you just have to accept the fact that no one's going to care as much as you. And this is also the other kind of sad part of it that you have to kind of understand is, you know, if you're in a founder role or a CEO, you know,
• 9:38
  No one's actually going to, people aren't going to care about you. Your employees, I don't want to, I know this sounds kind of dark, but like, you know, the same way that you care about your employees and your people, you shouldn't really expect them to care about you so much. So it's a little, I'm really glad that you're doing this podcast because being an entrepreneur is, is kind of lonely a lot of the time. And, and it's a really, it can be a very difficult trying to.
• 10:06
  endeavor in every sense of the word. It's certainly the hardest thing I've ever done. And it's good for entrepreneurs to connect because, you know, they also know how difficult it is. Sometimes it can also, it's also incredibly rewarding. Yeah. There's like highs and lows in every day. I totally agree. Talk to me about Amass. How did it come about? How did you meet your co-founder Mark and what's the journey there?
• 10:36
  So I had a previous business that I founded, which is I founded a craft distillery located here in Los Angeles. Pretty soon with that business, I realized that our strong suit, and this is talking about pivoting, wasn't on the marketing, sales and marketing side of Spirits. It was actually in the product development and production side of Spirits. And that was for a number of reasons. But frankly, sales and marketing isn't my area of expertise or my interest. I'm good at
• 11:06
  distilling and product development. And we just didn't really have the resources to launch our own brands successfully. So I pretty quickly pivoted into doing product development for other brands, which was really honestly just such a great pleasure because that's a really creative part of being of my profession. And then also I really enjoyed collaborating and in a way assisting my clients develop their brands. Some of them like Mark Lynn, who's my partner at Amask
• 11:36
  are industry veterans and incredibly knowledgeable and, and very, very talented entrepreneurs. I lead learn something from him still every single day. And, um, I deeply appreciate having the opportunity to collaborate with him. It's a real joy. So some are like Mark who, um, you know, serial entrepreneurs have lots of, lots of business savvy. And some people who this is their, their first thing, kind of like when I started out. So,
• 12:04
  Amass actually started as a client. And so Mark came to me before Amass was anything really and said, I have this idea for this business. And at that time, he wanted it to be sort of more of a traditional spirits portfolio. And he wanted to start with a gin and he wanted it to be a Los Angeles gin. And
• 12:29
  So from there, we kind of played around with the idea of what that would look like and sort of the mood and the spirit of this gin and the inspiration behind it. And we developed our gin, which that particular product has 29 botanicals in it and is sort of inspired by both the landscape terroir and the cultural landscape as well of Los Angeles. Now, Amass as a Botanics brand is,
• 12:56
  not just an omni-channel beverage category, and in fact, omni consumer packaged goods category company was really an evolution. So we launched a few products and this is, I, you know, this is a great testament to having the runway being open to pivot and being able to respond to consumer feedback and insight and data. You know, when you have a vision or a plan for your business, I think,
• 13:25
  you know, we say strong convictions, Lucy held, like, you know, we have a thesis about why this is going to be a success, but being open to the business looking completely different, I think was very empowering with the mass. And that's something that didn't really have in my old business, my old partners. So it started as a traditional spirits portfolio, but my passion and my area of expertise in spirits really is
• 13:53
  in botanical beverages and celebrating plants and the whole concept of biophilia, this connection, connection to nature and reverence for nature is actually something, especially in modern, modern society that we really need. We might just not have the words for. So we decided to just, instead of doing what all the other liquor brands are doing, we decided to just really focus on exploring and celebrating botanicals. There are beverages that,
• 14:19
  and having that be sort of the overarching thesis of what we did. From there, we just sort of started exploring what that would look like in different beverage categories, or even new beverage categories. So things kind of evolved there. And then actually, soon after that, we're like, well, botanicals, you know, really are a central part of fragrance, and also personal care products. So
• 14:45
  why don't we just play around in that space too and see what happens? So I actually got to develop fragrances for a company too that are, you know, out of, out of botanicals. And that was really fun. And, you know, there are a few, it was fun, but also it was really interesting because you're talking about, you know, ways to connect with consumers before you have, you know, a $50 million marketing budget.
• 15:10
  We just really as an experiment, we produced these home fragrance and personal care products that embodied our brand. But, you know, what we discovered was people were starting, even though we've been in the liquor market and bars and restaurants and off premise stores as well for a couple of years, we started to find that people were becoming learning about our brand and becoming intrigued by our brand by these personal care products.
• 15:41
  learn about a mass and in sort of a realm that would not, that's just not a traditional marketing channel. And I imagine also a lot of like potential to reach your customers directly when they're not, you know, there are so many legalities around shipping alcoholic products to every different state in America and all the things surrounding that. It's a way to connect with people directly without having to go through those millions of hoops.
• 16:08
  Definitely. And yeah, you touched on the complexities of working in the liquor space. I know the laws are different in the UK, but it's still very regulated and also heavily taxed. It's very, you know, in the liquor industry, it's very difficult to, A, like, I don't think there are any digitally native liquor brands. I mean, maybe house, but it's very hard to sort of
• 16:31
  develop and sell and market liquor brands on the internet. It's just starting to happen. And there's a lot of evolution happened with sort of force function because of the pandemic. But yeah, the regulations around shipping alcohol are quite draconian. You know, you have to get pretty crafty. I bet. I have had some people on the show before talk about, you know, the challenges that they face building spirits brands and alcoholic brands. Yeah.
• 16:59
  I'd love to keep talking a little bit about your early marketing strategies when it came to, you know, finding retailers and building your kind of direct to consumer relationships with customers, even though you weren't able to ship directly to them and how you kind of, what was it that you were doing to gain traction in the very beginning before you had big marketing budgets and before you had kind of the momentum? So, I mean,
• 17:25
  I'm sure you've heard this before, you know, and by the way, like, you know, we are primarily a beverage business. We have our personal care products, which, you know, are in really incredibly, you know, five star hotels and stuff like that. But, you know, that's really our that is our focus. You know, when we in the beginning, because, you know, you can't really do direct to consumer. And also you just we our strategy was to just focus our products are in.
• 17:55
  the looker industry considered super premium. So they are absolutely in that top tier. Our strategy was A, to hire absolutely killer VP of sales, Jennifer Marks. She was sort of like a secret weapon. She came from Pernod and she really engineered how we would enter the market, whatever markets we would go into, the accounts that we would target.
• 18:25
  And really, we worked on just focusing on getting into a cup like the California, specifically Los Angeles and New York and Miami markets in our first year. So we did not go spread ourselves out too thin. We didn't have the resource to do that. Those are the biggest liquor markets in the United States. Anyways, we did hire boots on the ground salespeople, which is something that not all
• 18:50
  We did have the capital to do that, which is very important. It's also very capital intensive in terms of headcount, but we did hire very talented salespeople in each of those markets. And then really it was, you know, a guerrilla effort, just going out and going out after those top 100 accounts in each city and trying to get, you know, backbar placements and menu placements. Now, you know, traditionally when, in the very least with, you know, higher end,
• 19:20
  products in liquor categories, most brands when they're starting out, generally speaking, are heavily weighted towards on-premise before they start selling in the off-premise. You kind of want your bartenders to be your brand ambassadors and you want them to be knowledgeable about the product and be able to share it with their consumers. So we did do that. That's a little bit of a convention in the liquor industry. We did do that.
• 19:46
  And we're just starting to get into a little bit of chain retail through working with our distributor, our liquor distributor, right before the pandemic. And so the pandemic was very interesting for challenger brands who'd only been in the market for a couple of years because, or Little Craft Distilleries, et cetera, who didn't have good retail distribution because in a lot of cases.
• 20:11
  like 80% of their sales happened at bars and restaurants that shut down. So that put back a lot of brands back, new brands back a little bit. In our case, we're lucky in that we had just started to get into chain retail. And we went from being brand that was 80% on-premise bars and restaurants to a brand that was 65% off-premise retail.
• 20:41
  We're very lucky that we're able to do that. But I will say that time was very difficult for new brands.
• 20:48
  You mentioned that, you know, for you in the early days, you were able to hire a VP of sales and you were also able to hire a team of salespeople on the ground and that that was capital intensive. Are you able to share kind of what kind of, you know, budget you need to have to be able to launch in that way? Or like what kind of runway do you need ahead of you to be able to do that right out of the gate?
• 21:18
  So yeah, this is a funny thing. With what we were doing, specifically in the liquor industry, and I would say any other consumer packaged good or business, you probably don't need this kind of headcount. The liquor industry is very archaic in that you need those boots on the ground, people visiting accounts. But for us, it was really like the seed round was really, I think it was one to $2 million. To be honest, that was before I joined the
• 21:48
  company. So I can't give you an exact figure, but it was around that. So it is pretty capital intensive. I would not, you know, I know I have obviously lots of friends in the liquor industry and friends with, you know, young brands. And what I've seen is you really do, you can, you can bootstrap and you can do it for less money starting out, but it's just much longer, a bit much, much
• 22:17
  path to getting into market. And so, you know, we're lucky because Mark is a, you know, he is a brilliant business person and he, there are investors really know and trust and love him. So he was able to, you know, raise that, that seed capital really easily, but particularly for liquor brand or beverage brand, you know, I see brands trying to, you know,
• 22:43
  do grassroots and you really do need a great salesperson, that's definitely an investment that's absolutely worth it. They're also really hard to find in the liquor industry. So yeah, so that's definitely part of the equation, I would say.
• 22:57
  That's such a great insight and great to know your thoughts on that. There was something else I really wanted to ask you about and to talk about, which is that kind of difference of legalities around an elk drink versus a non-alk. Because what I'm wondering and what I've been looking into myself recently is what are the kind of laws that apply to a 0.0 or a 0.005 non-alk?
• 23:24
  Bev, like, do you still need to jump through hoops? Or is it just the matter of it literally is like a soft drink and you can do all the things? Yeah, I don't know about 0.5. And of course, it depends on the country that you're in. But in the States here, you know, you fall, you shift from being in the in the alcohol category, which is governed by the Trade and Tax Bureau, which used to be the ATF. I always like to tell people I have to talk to the ATF all the time.
• 23:53
  But, and, you know, and there's both state and federal taxes on alcohol, on all alcoholic beverages, which depends on, you know, it's a different tax rate depending on what state you're in. Two, you know, you're really solidly in the food category, which is regulated by the FDA. So while you're not dealing with the taxes...
• 24:18
  that are applied to alcohol as well as the three-tiered distribution system, you know, working through a third-party liquor distributor. You can't, you're not really, you're not supposed to self-distribute alcohol in the United States. With non-alcoholic, you don't have any of those things. So it's non-alcoholic, it's much more appropriate for direct-to-consumer channels because you can easily legally self-distribute. Mm-hmm.
• 24:44
  What are the kinds of hoops that you need to jump through with the FDA and when it comes to that side of things? Really, you know, the FDA doesn't approve every label, for example, the way that they do in the liquor industry. But the FDA, you know, there are food safety regulations that you have to adhere to and labeling requirements that you have to adhere to. And, you know, you have to produce your product at a registered food production facility.
• 25:13
  you have to work with co-packers that that's what they do. You can't just, you know, make a drink in, in your home and distribute it. Unfortunately, I always want to do things myself, but yeah, so you have to work with, you know, like a licensed food production facility, but that's not that difficult actually. And you, you know, to be, unless you're a food scientist, you probably want to hire
• 25:39
  food safety consultants. That's a good one. That's an interesting thing that I haven't considered a food and safety consultant before, but that is obviously going to be on my list of things to do now.
• 25:53
  When it comes to, this leads me kind of nicely into, you know, your non-alc and your body care products, you're obviously able to build more of your direct-to-consumer D2C side of the business. When it comes to marketing, what are you doing with your D2C channel that's really working for you and helping grow and propel the brand forward? Yeah, that's a good question.
• 26:17
  And to be honest, you know, I'm really the maker of the products and more of the creative director. We have an incredible digital team at our company that we really only fully put together about a year ago. And so, you know, there's definitely, you know, the traditional ad targeting. We have a pretty good, you know, email list, but.
• 26:42
  Beyond that, I wish I could tell you what we do. That's really not my area of expertise. So I feel like a little bit of a jerk, like saying what we do. And I think honestly, you know, they've just been trying all sorts of different things to see what works. We're really still in the experimentation phase, but I wouldn't feel like it would, I shouldn't say that I have really any good knowledge of how we do that. I'm trying to understand myself.
• 27:11
  I love that. Okay. Well, let's not, let's not focus too much on that then. What do you think is the best advice you could give to an entrepreneur like me, who's entering the non-alc space or someone listening, who's entering the alc or non-alc space, the beverage industry, I guess, coming into 2022, what do we need to know? What you need to know is you need to be very patient. Building a
• 27:41
  beverage, a liquor brand takes a lot of time. You know, if you look at Tito's, Tito's was actually founded 20 years ago. And this is actually also important if you're fundraising and you are like to just to sort of to set expectations with investors, the idea that you're going to build a, you know, build a brand and it's going to scale and you're going to do
• 28:08
  $50 million in revenue in, in two years is just like, that's just not how it works in the liquor industry, even, and, and also non-alcoholic on honestly, even though you're not subject to the same regulations and, and the three tier system, you know, non-alcoholic brands really for the most part still have to, you know,
• 28:28
  do the same sort of dog and pony show that liquor brands do in the market to a certain extent. So I think it's important to just really know, like, A, knowing that it's going to take a while, like, on average, it takes maybe, like, seven to 10 years to build a liquor brand. Just also for yourself, because, you know, I remember when I didn't know that in the early years of my
• 28:58
  even getting a distributor and stuff, it just, these things just took so long. And, you know, it caused me a lot of, a lot of anxiety and heartache, whereas I wish that if I just knew this is going to take a while, not just, I would have been much happier. Also, you know, I wasn't, you know, I was doing, and just as an entrepreneur, I wasn't taking care of myself. I was working all
• 29:28
  I think entrepreneurs, being an entrepreneur is a very creative job. It doesn't matter what field you're in. And you have to step away from your work and go back to it, to recharge, to get perspective. Even if that means you're just going to an art gallery for the afternoon. And I didn't, you know, I just didn't take any breaks for years. I got really burnt out. And, you know, in hindsight, if I took a week off here and there, it wouldn't have moved the needle.
• 29:58
  So I recommend that people take a week off every quarter just to step away. When you come back, you have fresh eyes and you're inspired.
• 30:11
  That's so true. And it's something that, I mean, I'm experiencing this already. I was like, yeah, we're going to develop this non-alcoholic wine company. It's going to, you know, we're going to launch by Christmas. You know, a year later nearly, I'm like, okay, well, it's three times slower, three times more expensive. It's taking a lot of time. But I also kind of appreciate that time because you learn a lot.
• 30:33
  in the process and you have time to get other things in order, like your branding or your trademarking or, you know, early consumer feedback and research and all those other good things that you kind of do need to prioritize. So yeah, it's definitely one to keep in mind, even though it's so frustrating sometimes when things move slower than you obviously want them to. Definitely. But yeah, I mean, I can really relate. And
• 31:03
  And, you know, self-compassion is really key too. You know, there's so much that, especially when you're a first-time entrepreneur, there's so many factors that are beyond your control. Fundraising, working with consultants, you know, there's a lot that's beyond your control and you have to be able to be in a state of grace with that and be able to, you know,
• 31:29
  do what you can with things that are in your control and then also be in the flow if things, circumstances that you can't control. I think that's a big one too. That's such a big one. At the end of every episode, I ask a series of six quick questions, some of which we might've covered, some of which we might not have, but I asked them all the same. So question number one is what's your why? Why are you doing what you're doing?
• 31:55
  That's a great question. I think, well, you know, I'm really more creative director or, you know, the product person. So, you know, there's the why of a mask. There's my personal why. There's a real, you know, I have a real passion for what I do. And it really does come from this place of intellectual curiosity. But, you know, when it comes to beverage and, you know, whether it's not an alcoholic or or alcoholic,
• 32:24
  You know, we're not saving lives, but I like to make things that delight people and enhance their everyday life. It's sort of a quotidian. I like the idea of creating things that give people a little quotidian pleasure. And specifically with Amass, our portfolio, I'm sure you've noticed, is we have non-alcoholic products. We have low-alcoholic products and traditional spirits. We actually just launched a cannabis program.
• 32:53
  beverage. So we're really interested also, and I'm personally also really interested in inclusivity, creating products for people, also, you know, beautiful celebratory products for all sorts of people, whatever, whether they're drinking, not drinking, whatever the reason is. And, you know, for me, for all of our products at Amass, you know, they're very sensual products, like whether they're fragrance driven, you know, our lotions, et cetera. And then of course our
• 33:23
  And for me, they do fall into these two different categories, which is social rituals. I think ritual is very important in modern society, but we don't, again, like we don't quite have the language for understanding that we need ritual. Social rituals, people connecting, and then personal rituals, people connecting with themselves and connecting with nature. That's something I think we all may yearn for, and it's all part of our health, but we don't quite maybe understand the physics or the metaphysics of it.
• 33:53
  Mm hmm. Yeah, I love that. What a nice answer. Question number two is, what do you think has been the number one marketing moment that made the business pop? You know, for us, I don't know if you call this marketing, but we did develop a strategic partnership with Sohouse International. And that
• 34:17
  was actually a great opportunity because it allowed us to, you know, to connect with their clientele. And then, and there's a really good like brand synergy there. You know, we did, we've been fortunate enough to get a lot of really good press, a lot of awards and accolades and critical acclaim. You know, we've been in the New York Times and Forbes, and I was actually just on the phone with Monocle this morning. So that, that kind of consistent press, I think,
• 34:46
  people are kind of, there's a lot of liquor brands, but there's something a little editorial about our company. And so we've been lucky to get a lot of press there. You have a lot of great pieces online. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's, you have to keep, keep with when it comes to marketing, you have to just keep going at it from all sorts of angles and trying new things. I wish, you know, there's, this is why Mark, you know, marketing companies are paid,
• 35:15
  millions and millions and millions of dollars like nobody really knows what the secret magic sauce is there there's a few things you know conventions but it just tries stuff out and so her house is a pretty good one it's a pretty great partnership question number three is where do you hang out to get smarter what are you reading or listening to or subscribing to at the moment
• 35:40
  I am a little bit of a Luddite. I'm the type of person that I think would love podcasts, but just in my life, I haven't really had the opportunity or the time to listen to a lot of them with the type of work I do. And I also recently had a baby like 18 months ago. So in normal circumstances, I'm a bookworm.
• 36:02
  I do a lot of research online, but I love reading books. I love reading physical books. And I mostly sort of look for book recommendations from people that I know and trust and respect. And that's really, that's still my go-to. You know, my mother worked in the publishing industry. I come from a, actually, my family's been in publishing since the 18th century, big reader. Oh my God, wow.
• 36:29
  Just drop that in there casually at the end. Yeah, but so I've always been a big reader and I like reading biographies of artists. You know, I like reading technical things, but I also really, you know, I read, I do read a lot of, I think, good thought pieces online, but I think it's really important to read nonfiction.
• 36:58
  nonfiction that it just it kind of rewires your brain and in a funny way I think it teaches you to think differently and so I think it's like brain you know good brain exercise to read nonfiction so you're not necessarily picking up data but I think that's a very good thing and of course it's fun do you have a recommendation for us top recommendation or a recent fave
• 37:24
  this isn't a, if you're depressed, don't read this, but I'm a big fan of Michel Welbeck. I think he's quite, the French writer, I think he's quite fascinating. He's a little galvanizing, but I recently read The Map and the Territory. And the thing that's interesting to me about his writing and his, you can tell that his worldview has actually evolved as he's, you know, gotten older and put out more books, is he kind of looks at Western culture and
• 37:53
  he looks, you know, often really the grotesque parts of capitalism and Western culture, and he dials them up to 11 and puts them in some sort of like hypothetical future setting. So it's not like some, it's not like the Hunger Games or some horrible thing like that, but he really explores the human condition on the, you know, in the milieu of, you know, sort of
• 38:20
  hyper capitalism, which I would say we're already in that situation. And I really appreciate that because I can relate to it. I'm definitely going to link that in the show notes for anyone who wants to check it out and who is not depressed at the moment. Well, question number four is how do you win the day? What is your AM or PM ritual or habit that keeps you feeling happy and motivated? I'm a big fan of baths.
• 38:49
  I'm a big bather. I'm also an introvert. So I don't, you know, the pandemic didn't really bother me. I like alone in my tower in the sky, but no, I'm a big fan of bathing. I realized I was an introvert during the pandemic. I didn't know before. Well, it's good. It's good to find out, right? Because then you can find out how you recharge your batteries. And, you know, honestly, just reading.
• 39:14
  That's a big thing. I love a good reading session. Myself, question number five is if you were given $1,000 of no strings attached grant money, where would you spend it in the biz? What's the most important spend of a dollar in your opinion? Really important.
• 39:33
  Really working capital for product is, you know, essential if you don't have product to sell, you're not really in business. So and, you know, especially with the pandemic, you know, just in time manufacturing is a bit of a thing of the past at the moment. But, you know, I probably put a little bit of it into actually producing the product, but a big part of it into our people.
• 40:00
  And at this phase in the business, in our business, you know, we're a couple years in, but we're really still a nascent brand. Having really a talented team is an important foundation for, you know, aggressive growth. You have to have that infrastructure before you grow. So that's what I would do at this point. Love it. Nice. And last question, question number six is how do you deal with failure? What is your mindset and approach when things don't go to plan?
• 40:31
  That's, that's, that's also a great, great question. I love these questions. They're so they're really intelligent. You know, I think any, any entrepreneur who's, who's been at it for a while has had tons and tons and tons of failures. And I'll say early on, you know, the, and the stakes are often really, really high, but early on, I used to get really, really affected and have a lot of anxiety. And, and now things just don't really, like,
• 40:58
  As long as I can learn from the failure, things don't really bother me anymore. You know, failure, it's a cliche, but failure is part of the process. And as long as you don't make it mean anything about you and you have takeaways from it, of course, we try to do our best to avoid failing. But, you know, being an entrepreneur is risky. And I would say if you're not failing, you're probably doing something wrong.
• 41:29
  Absolutely. Absolutely. I totally agree. Morgan, this was so awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time to share about Amass and your journey and some stuff in the non-alc space. I'm so grateful to have had some of your time to learn from you. Thank you so much. Well, great to meet you. This was a real pleasure. Thank you, Dune.
• 41:57
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 42:22
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 42:44
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.
• 43:01
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 43:25
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 43:48
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.