Latest / Hurdle with Emily Abbate / Episode 53: Paddy Spence, CEO Zevia

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Episode 53: Paddy Spence, CEO Zevia · Hurdle with Emily Abbate

0:01
Speaker 1: New Week, New Hurdle. What's going on? Guys?
0:04
Speaker 2: You are listening to episode fifty three of Hurdle, a
0:08
Speaker 2: podcast that talks to everyone from entrepreneurs to top CEOs
0:12
Speaker 2: and athletes about how they got through tough times hurdles
0:15
Speaker 2: of sorts by leaning into wellness.
0:18
Speaker 1: Today's episode, I'm chatting with.
0:20
Speaker 2: ZVA CEO Patti Spence. Before we get to it, quick
0:25
Speaker 2: shout out to my sponsor, Athleticgreens. Complete with twelve servings
0:29
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0:33
Speaker 2: I need to kickstart every day off right.
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0:53
Speaker 1: that's Athleticgreens dot Com slash Hurdle. One of my favorite
0:57
Speaker 1: quotes from today's episode, Patti says, find the craziest risks
1:01
Speaker 1: you can take and go after them.
1:03
Speaker 2: The ZVIA ceo he reevaluated his entire life back in
1:07
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five after his brother passed away unexpectedly on
1:10
Speaker 2: the job as a paramedic, and three months later, the
1:13
Speaker 2: former Cashie vice president of sales left his job to
1:16
Speaker 2: follow his heart. Now he had a stint in market research,
1:20
Speaker 2: and then the Massachusetts native bought Zvia and his life
1:23
Speaker 2: changed forever. In today's episode, I know I wasn't holding back.
1:27
Speaker 2: I asked Spence all about the risks of diet soda drinking,
1:30
Speaker 2: and then he really gets honest in me and gives
1:32
Speaker 2: me the lowdown about their line of naturally sweetened zero calorie,
1:36
Speaker 2: zero sugar sodas, energy drinks, and mixers. We also chat
1:40
Speaker 2: about his biggest business failures. He talks to me about
1:43
Speaker 2: how we cut out all sugar from his diet about
1:46
Speaker 2: twenty years ago, which is insane to me and also
1:49
Speaker 2: super impressive. And we chat things that we both love,
1:53
Speaker 2: like endurance events and triathlons, and he tells me about
1:56
Speaker 2: how he swam from Alcatraz to San Francisco, because that
2:00
Speaker 2: is just something extraordinary humans like Patty do every.
2:03
Speaker 1: Now and again.
2:04
Speaker 2: Let me tell you, I recorded this episode a couple
2:05
Speaker 2: months back in Los Angeles, and listening back to it today,
2:09
Speaker 2: I'm reminded of just how awesome and refreshing It is
2:11
Speaker 2: that I get to talk to such a wide array
2:14
Speaker 2: of individuals on the regular. Patti is humble and intelligent,
2:18
Speaker 2: and in a society today where the average American drinks
2:21
Speaker 2: forty seven gallons of soda a year, he's really trying
2:25
Speaker 2: to make a difference for the benefit of overall public health,
2:28
Speaker 2: and I think that's pretty rad. I'm released in this
2:30
Speaker 2: episode from London this week, and to be honest, I'm
2:32
Speaker 2: super excited just to take a little bit of a
2:35
Speaker 2: breather after a hectic April.
2:37
Speaker 1: You guys know the drill.
2:38
Speaker 2: Just because I'm in another country doesn't mean that I'm
2:41
Speaker 2: not on the gram. Hit me up at Hurdle Podcast, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.
2:46
Speaker 2: Huge shout out to all of you for the awesome
2:48
Speaker 2: feedback I got in last week's Hurdle Moment. If you
2:51
Speaker 2: haven't had a chance to check it out yet, it's
2:53
Speaker 2: for strategies that I used recently to get rid of
2:56
Speaker 2: negative self talk. I got super vulnerable, and I really
3:00
Speaker 2: appreciate the messages that I got from you all reaching
3:03
Speaker 2: out telling me you appreciate it, telling me that you've
3:06
Speaker 2: been going through something similar. I think it's really special
3:09
Speaker 2: that we can have these open and honest conversations together,
3:12
Speaker 2: and of course, feel free to shoot me your own
3:14
Speaker 2: hurdle moments. You can email me anytime you want. It's
3:17
Speaker 2: Emily at Hurdle dot Us. I promise I see your
3:20
Speaker 2: messages coming in and I do my best, my absolute
3:23
Speaker 2: best to get back to you as soon as I can.
3:26
Speaker 2: And that's all for now. With that, let's get to hurdling.
3:40
Speaker 2: I'm excited to be sitting here today with Patti Spence.
3:42
Speaker 2: He's the CEO of Zva. Hey, Hey, let's talk a
3:47
Speaker 2: little bit about what Zva is.
3:49
Speaker 3: Absolutely so, Zbia is a product, a brand that makes
3:53
Speaker 3: zero calorie drinks. And our business really grew out of
3:57
Speaker 3: my own personal habits and my wife went off of
4:00
Speaker 3: sugar almost twenty years ago, and I didn't know I
4:03
Speaker 3: was a sugar addict, but I was a hardcore sugar
4:05
Speaker 3: addict and started doing a food journal and realized just
4:08
Speaker 3: how much sugar I consumed, and we knew there had
4:11
Speaker 3: to be a better way, and so I found this
4:13
Speaker 3: company eight years ago, and it was the first company
4:16
Speaker 3: putting Stevia into a carbonated beverage. Sounds simple, right, Yeah, soda,
4:21
Speaker 3: we know it's bad and it's largely the sugar or
4:23
Speaker 3: the artificial sweetener. So let's just make a better mouse
4:26
Speaker 3: trap here.
4:26
Speaker 1: Interesting.
4:27
Speaker 3: So that was eight years ago and we've really changed
4:30
Speaker 3: the soda category since then.
4:31
Speaker 2: And when you say you found ZEBA, you weren't the
4:34
Speaker 2: person that created the company. You discovered the company.
4:37
Speaker 3: That's correct. It was a tiny startup just pioneering this
4:41
Speaker 3: new type of drink, and so I was able to
4:44
Speaker 3: partner with the founders and I've been the CEO for
4:46
Speaker 3: eight years now.
4:47
Speaker 2: There's so much to unpack in that brief intro. The
4:50
Speaker 2: first thing I'd love to touch on is what you
4:52
Speaker 2: were doing before ZBA. So let's dial it back what
4:55
Speaker 2: I like to do at the beginning here, real it
4:57
Speaker 2: in and go and do your backstory a little bit absolute.
5:00
Speaker 3: So I grew up in the Boston area in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
5:04
Speaker 3: I grew up with a single mom in an economically
5:06
Speaker 3: challenged household, and so from a very early age I
5:10
Speaker 3: learned that if I wanted spending money, it was going
5:12
Speaker 3: to be self generated. And so whether it was a
5:15
Speaker 3: paper route or a lemonade stand, or mowing lawns or whatever,
5:19
Speaker 3: I guess I was always into entrepreneurial ventures from pretty
5:23
Speaker 3: early on. Coming out of graduate school, I ended up
5:27
Speaker 3: somehow going to business school despite being a Latin and
5:30
Speaker 3: Greek major in college. So that is useless major, folks.
5:35
Speaker 3: If you want to get through college, study Latin and
5:39
Speaker 3: you'll have a great time.
5:40
Speaker 1: But can you still speak both? Can you speak both languages?
5:43
Speaker 3: I can read, and I probably my vocabulary has slipped
5:46
Speaker 3: a bit in the last thirty years. But so I
5:50
Speaker 3: ended up at business school, and coming out of business school,
5:52
Speaker 3: I just knew I wanted to do something that I
5:54
Speaker 3: felt good about personally, and I wanted to work for
5:57
Speaker 3: a small company. Through happenstance and writing one hundred letters
6:02
Speaker 3: randomly at a time, I found this little company called Kashi,
6:06
Speaker 3: and it was a serial company in La Jolla, California,
6:09
Speaker 3: and it was one of those early brands to cross
6:11
Speaker 3: over from natural foods kind of into the mainstream consciousness.
6:15
Speaker 3: And so that was my intro to the natural foods
6:17
Speaker 3: business back in nineteen ninety two. And so since then
6:20
Speaker 3: twenty six years, I've been doing that same thing. He's
6:23
Speaker 3: taking little natural brands and saying, what is it about
6:26
Speaker 3: this brand that would excite regular consumers and how can
6:29
Speaker 3: we use this to improve people's health just by one percent.
6:33
Speaker 3: We're not going to cure cancer, but how can we
6:35
Speaker 3: just make people feel a little bit better every day
6:38
Speaker 3: through what we eat and drink.
6:39
Speaker 1: I think that's something that a lot of people struggle with.
6:41
Speaker 2: They feel like on a lot of things, whether it
6:44
Speaker 2: is with their diet or their exercise routine, or whatever
6:46
Speaker 2: the case may be, that they have to make a
6:49
Speaker 2: dramatic shift when these one percent gains, Like maybe, for instance,
6:54
Speaker 2: you want to become a runner. While becoming a runner
6:57
Speaker 2: can be a little challenging, even though really all you
6:59
Speaker 2: have to do is lace up your shoes and get outside.
7:02
Speaker 2: But instead of getting up one day and saying I'm
7:04
Speaker 2: going to run a five k, like, you don't need
7:06
Speaker 2: to do that. You can just get up and run
7:08
Speaker 2: for five minutes.
7:09
Speaker 3: Well exactly. And I think so many people in today's world,
7:12
Speaker 3: because we're so stressed and always crunched for time, we
7:16
Speaker 3: want to find that solution, that magic bullet that no effort, boom,
7:20
Speaker 3: it's done. And exercise isn't like that, family life isn't
7:24
Speaker 3: like that, careers aren't like that. Now there is no
7:26
Speaker 3: magic bullet, and so the idea of natural foods to
7:29
Speaker 3: me is just a little bit better, something that I'm
7:32
Speaker 3: I can consume, enjoy and it will make me feel
7:34
Speaker 3: a little bit better than the fat laden or the
7:37
Speaker 3: artificially sweetened or the sugary stuff.
7:39
Speaker 1: So did you grow up eating really healthy?
7:43
Speaker 3: Well? It's interesting, you know, everybody can look back and
7:47
Speaker 3: find things about their diet growing up that were probably
7:49
Speaker 3: really healthy and then things that were insane.
7:52
Speaker 1: Yeah.
7:52
Speaker 3: So my mom did shop at Bread and Circus, which
7:56
Speaker 3: was a predecessor of Whole Foods, and I thought it
7:59
Speaker 3: was normal to have deemed tofu for dinner. So yes,
8:02
Speaker 3: I grew up in that world. But what was wild
8:04
Speaker 3: was in beverage. We always had a two liter of
8:07
Speaker 3: coke in the fridge. Yeah, and we didn't know any better, right,
8:10
Speaker 3: you know, And there weren't zvas in those days, and
8:13
Speaker 3: we didn't have better for you beverages. And so while
8:16
Speaker 3: we had this freakishly healthy diet, in some ways, we
8:19
Speaker 3: also had what we now know is a freakishly unhealthy diet.
8:23
Speaker 3: And I think that's what's so fascinating. Even the most
8:26
Speaker 3: dedicated person, you have those little achilles heels in your
8:30
Speaker 3: diet or in your exercise routine or in the way
8:33
Speaker 3: you conduct your world.
8:34
Speaker 2: But so you grew up eating really healthy, which is
8:38
Speaker 2: is that what triggered your interest to kind of go
8:41
Speaker 2: and do these health conscious brands, starting at Kashi and
8:43
Speaker 2: then moving forward or well.
8:45
Speaker 3: I think for me, it's this idea that wellness impacts
8:49
Speaker 3: the way we feel every day and the way we operate.
8:52
Speaker 3: And I really do think of you know, my body
8:55
Speaker 3: is just a machine, right, and we've all been through
8:58
Speaker 3: that when you have that annoying noise and you're driving
9:00
Speaker 3: and you don't even know what it is, but it
9:02
Speaker 3: is so distracting, some banging or something. It's the same
9:05
Speaker 3: way when you're going through your day and you don't
9:07
Speaker 3: feel physically good or you don't feel mentally good, that
9:09
Speaker 3: affects everything you do. So the whole idea of fueling
9:13
Speaker 3: your body with products and foods and beverages that make
9:16
Speaker 3: you feel good to fuel your performance both mentally and physically,
9:20
Speaker 3: that's just core really to who I am and my philosophy.
9:23
Speaker 1: So when did you stop consuming sugar in your diet?
9:28
Speaker 3: So it was two thousand and I really do have
9:29
Speaker 3: to credit my wife Jara for kind of the epiphany
9:33
Speaker 3: because I thought I was healthy, and we both thought
9:35
Speaker 3: we were healthy, and I was doing triathlons and shopping
9:38
Speaker 3: at a natural food store inactive and then we sat
9:41
Speaker 3: down and we did a food journal for a week,
9:43
Speaker 3: and I realized that it was a game changer. Oh
9:45
Speaker 3: my gosh. I realized I was getting two hundred and
9:47
Speaker 3: fifty grams of sugar a day, all from what I
9:50
Speaker 3: thought were healthy products. So like what protein smoothies, a
9:53
Speaker 3: bunch of energy bars, juice space spritzers, a little bit
9:57
Speaker 3: of unrefined cane crystals in my tea. Well, at the
10:00
Speaker 3: end of the day, all that stuff was sugar. Yeah,
10:02
Speaker 3: And I thought I was being healthy by eating a yogurt,
10:04
Speaker 3: Well there was another thirty six grams of sugar and.
10:07
Speaker 1: It's unloaded yogurt.
10:09
Speaker 3: Well, right, And so so much of what we do
10:12
Speaker 3: with processed foods, even natural ones, they're full of sugar.
10:15
Speaker 3: So it's getting a thousand calories a day from sugar.
10:18
Speaker 3: And we went off of sugar cold turkey, went out
10:21
Speaker 3: to a cabin in the woods, nearest grocery store fifteen
10:24
Speaker 3: miles away, and we detoxed. And I typically have a
10:28
Speaker 3: lot of skepticism about that whole concept of detoxing. I
10:32
Speaker 3: physically broke out in hives. Yeah, head to toe, all
10:35
Speaker 3: over my back itchy read Weltz because my body was
10:39
Speaker 3: literally detoxing. Oh my god, what happens when you stopped
10:41
Speaker 3: consuming two hundred and fifty grams of sugar? Your body
10:44
Speaker 3: goes into shock for a couple of days.
10:46
Speaker 1: That's insane.
10:46
Speaker 3: So for a week I felt horrible. Finally that passed
10:50
Speaker 3: and then started feeling better energy levels. I lost ten
10:54
Speaker 3: pounds in a month, even though I wasn't trying to
10:56
Speaker 3: h And that was eighteen years ago, and so ever since,
10:59
Speaker 3: we've really made hained that low to no sugar diet.
11:02
Speaker 1: Whose idea was it to go to the cabin?
11:05
Speaker 3: The cabin was a key component of it all because
11:07
Speaker 3: you can't cheat, right, And it was just the two
11:09
Speaker 3: of us. We're in the middle of the woods, and
11:11
Speaker 3: whatever groceries you brought is what you got, nuts and berries?
11:14
Speaker 2: Right, I guess that's my next question, what were you
11:17
Speaker 2: eating instead?
11:19
Speaker 3: So for me, and one of the things we did
11:21
Speaker 3: at the beginning of this detox is we really went
11:24
Speaker 3: strict and so dairy has sugar from lactose, fruit has sugar.
11:28
Speaker 3: So my wife actually did no fruit or dairy for
11:31
Speaker 3: almost a whole month. I wasn't quite as strict, but
11:34
Speaker 3: I was going really hard on protein and so tons
11:37
Speaker 3: of I'm a meat eater, so it's eating a lot
11:39
Speaker 3: of chicken, a lot of lean red meat. For the
11:42
Speaker 3: first few days. It was all I could do to
11:44
Speaker 3: kill the cravings.
11:46
Speaker 2: I can definitely relate with this because I'm sure when
11:49
Speaker 2: I was younger, I lost a ton of weight in college,
11:52
Speaker 2: and in doing so, a lot of that was writing
11:54
Speaker 2: down the things I was eating.
11:56
Speaker 1: But it was more so to keep track overall.
11:59
Speaker 2: And not so much to analyze specifically which foods had
12:02
Speaker 2: a ton of sugar. It was kind of just a
12:04
Speaker 2: food journal, pretty bland. I think today if I did
12:07
Speaker 2: that again, I would really have an awakening, kind of
12:10
Speaker 2: like you had, because I think a lot often about
12:13
Speaker 2: the foods I'm consuming that do have a lot of sugar,
12:16
Speaker 2: whether it's added or not. I definitely consume a ton
12:20
Speaker 2: of fruit. I think there's a lot of confusion about.
12:22
Speaker 3: That, well exactly. And I have a friend, one of
12:25
Speaker 3: our sponsored athletes, who told me he was for a
12:28
Speaker 3: long time a fruitarian. Yeah, and you know that's an
12:31
Speaker 3: extreme diet and you're consuming mostly fruit in the form
12:34
Speaker 3: of slav only fruit fruitarian. Yes, and you also can
12:38
Speaker 3: consume things that are botanically fruits, so beans and legumes
12:41
Speaker 3: as well tomatoes, Yeah, exactly. But so what was fascinating
12:45
Speaker 3: about that diet is when you're on it, if that's
12:48
Speaker 3: all you're doing, that works. And what he told me though,
12:51
Speaker 3: is he developed the sugar addiction, that didn't realize it.
12:53
Speaker 3: And so once he started replacing just the shakes with
12:56
Speaker 3: regular foods, yeah, it was a disaster.
12:59
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
13:00
Speaker 3: And so you know, philosophically, I'm a big fan of
13:03
Speaker 3: just measurement. Right. If you measure think something, you can
13:05
Speaker 3: control it, whether that's a workout or a diet or
13:09
Speaker 3: your performance at work. And so what we've evolved to
13:13
Speaker 3: at home is this whole idea of a sugar budget, right,
13:16
Speaker 3: And so every day I consume fifty grams of sugar.
13:20
Speaker 3: Now I can get it from any source. I can
13:21
Speaker 3: eat a you know, half a pint of ice cream,
13:23
Speaker 3: or I can have some milk and a banana and
13:26
Speaker 3: some other things during the day. But that's my budget.
13:29
Speaker 3: And some days I might go over, some days i'll
13:31
Speaker 3: underspend it. But just using that as a baseline kind
13:34
Speaker 3: of creates some measure of control over our behavior that
13:38
Speaker 3: we've been able to sustain for almost twenty years.
13:40
Speaker 1: Are you still writing everything down?
13:42
Speaker 3: Not writing it down at this point? So it's more mental.
13:45
Speaker 3: And again, it's like a budget. You know, I may
13:46
Speaker 3: have a budget when I go travel. Gosh, at the
13:49
Speaker 3: end of the day, I may have overspent it one
13:51
Speaker 3: day and the next day we underspent it, but I
13:53
Speaker 3: don't have to write every single expenditure down. So similarly,
13:57
Speaker 3: and it's the kind of thing that we've pushed it
13:58
Speaker 3: down to our kids now. So my nine year old
14:01
Speaker 3: daughter wants a lollipop, Well, is that what you want?
14:04
Speaker 3: Or do you want this banana? Or do you want
14:08
Speaker 3: a beverage that sweetened? And typically, you know, the beverage
14:11
Speaker 3: is the first thing they pushed aside. I'd much rather
14:13
Speaker 3: eat ice cream than drink a lemonade. Yeah, But that
14:16
Speaker 3: whole concept of having a baseline and having some quantification
14:20
Speaker 3: of it makes it so much easier to stay on track.
14:22
Speaker 2: It's really special that you're teaching your kids what's in
14:25
Speaker 2: their food, because, like you, while I was growing up,
14:29
Speaker 2: you know, we were my father's Italian We were making
14:31
Speaker 2: baking egg and cheeses in the morning.
14:33
Speaker 1: My mom makes an amazing omelet.
14:35
Speaker 2: We at night, we're doing everything from Chinese food to
14:38
Speaker 2: pizza because my mom worked nights, so Dad was just
14:40
Speaker 2: trying to do the best steak code with what he had.
14:43
Speaker 1: And I think a.
14:44
Speaker 2: Lot about what we were consuming at the time, and
14:46
Speaker 2: I wasn't really educated as so what was in my food.
14:49
Speaker 3: Well exactly, And I think so much of bad habits
14:53
Speaker 3: comes from just not knowing. Yeah, right, why did people
14:56
Speaker 3: smoke cigarettes for so many years? Well, because we were
14:58
Speaker 3: being fed livees that it didn't kill you, right, Right.
15:00
Speaker 3: As soon as people were confronted with the reality that
15:03
Speaker 3: smoking cigarettes will kill you early, guess what, cigarette consumption plummeted.
15:07
Speaker 1: Right.
15:08
Speaker 3: People want to do the right thing, and so it's
15:10
Speaker 3: just about knowing what you're doing. That's the first step
15:13
Speaker 3: toward doing the right thing.
15:14
Speaker 2: Before we talk a little bit more about your backstory,
15:17
Speaker 2: I think I need to address the elephant in the room,
15:19
Speaker 2: which is I need to talk just about the concept
15:22
Speaker 2: of diet soda. I've read the research that says that
15:24
Speaker 2: people that consumed diet soda, they had a seventy percent
15:27
Speaker 2: greater increase in waste circumference compared to non diet soda drinkers.
15:31
Speaker 2: I'm just trying to sort through all the stats.
15:33
Speaker 3: Sure, well, and I think you know there's connection and
15:35
Speaker 3: there's causation, and certainly there is a long, scientifically proven,
15:42
Speaker 3: an established connection between diet soda consumption and weight gain. Now,
15:47
Speaker 3: does that mean that dietzta promotes weight gain? Maybe? Maybe not.
15:51
Speaker 3: We really don't know scientifically, but we certainly know that
15:54
Speaker 3: people who drink dietza gain weight. And I think there's
15:57
Speaker 3: a philosophical component to that as well, because this whole concept,
16:01
Speaker 3: what is a diet? It's a temporary state that gets
16:04
Speaker 3: us to a place we're not in today, right, because
16:06
Speaker 3: it's not a life. Well already, that makes no sense
16:08
Speaker 3: at all. What happens when we get to that place?
16:10
Speaker 3: Do we give up? Do we go back to where
16:12
Speaker 3: we were? It's not a diet if it's an ongoing state, right,
16:16
Speaker 3: And so to your point, it's a lifestyle. Yeah, right,
16:19
Speaker 3: what do we call it when we fix the banging
16:21
Speaker 3: noise in our car or when we filled up our tire.
16:24
Speaker 3: There's no name for that. It's called a car that
16:26
Speaker 3: runs well, right, Right, And so you're when you've optimized
16:30
Speaker 3: your nutrition. Is that a diet? No, that's just life, right,
16:34
Speaker 3: And so so I think the whole idea of for me,
16:38
Speaker 3: whether it's career, family, life, or health, it's a marathon,
16:42
Speaker 3: not a sprint. And it would be great if we
16:45
Speaker 3: could arrive and say, Okay, I'm in shape, now, I'm done,
16:48
Speaker 3: or I'm healthy now, or I'm a great dad now.
16:50
Speaker 3: Well guess what. None of those things have an endpoint.
16:53
Speaker 3: And I may have been a great dad yesterday, but
16:55
Speaker 3: I got to get up and do it again today. Right.
16:57
Speaker 2: Interesting, So what do you at ZVA do to kind
17:02
Speaker 2: of counteract a lot of this feedback that I'm sure
17:04
Speaker 2: you're getting constantly from either your consumer or other people
17:07
Speaker 2: in the industry that have an opinion about your product.
17:10
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I mean the first thing we say is
17:12
Speaker 3: it's not diet. So this isn't about a diet. We
17:15
Speaker 3: have a zero calorie alternative that is demonstrably better than
17:19
Speaker 3: what people drink, which is sugary beverages. Okay, and so
17:22
Speaker 3: that's one piece in your overall dietary regimen. Are you
17:27
Speaker 3: never going to consume sugar? Of course not, but pick
17:30
Speaker 3: your moments. And so one of the things. That's fascinating
17:32
Speaker 3: that we're seeing, and I think it's a great sign
17:35
Speaker 3: is that younger consumers today have really rejected that whole
17:38
Speaker 3: diet label. Right from a psychological standpoint, it's horrific, right,
17:43
Speaker 3: this idea that where there's something wrong with us that
17:45
Speaker 3: we got to fix because of society. Right, it's called living.
17:49
Speaker 3: And so young people have rejected the label diet, and
17:52
Speaker 3: similarly they've rejected artificially sweetened diet products. And so Zba
17:57
Speaker 3: shoppers who are younger a lot of times talk to
18:00
Speaker 3: them and they have a classic coke sometimes, so they
18:02
Speaker 3: have a sugary beverage sometimes, but their go to is
18:05
Speaker 3: a zero calorie naturally sweetened drink like Zeba. So sugar
18:09
Speaker 3: has a role as an occasional treat. Stevia, as a
18:13
Speaker 3: zero calorie natural sweetener, has a daily roll. And why
18:17
Speaker 3: do we need that aspartame stuff. It's just a bad
18:21
Speaker 3: imitation of the stuff we want to indulge in.
18:23
Speaker 1: So what's in zvia.
18:25
Speaker 3: So Zba is really simple. It's basically for simple plant
18:28
Speaker 3: based ingredients. It's water, natural flavors, Stevia, which is a
18:32
Speaker 3: plant based sweetener with no calories and a little bit
18:35
Speaker 3: of citric acid to control the pH of the product.
18:38
Speaker 1: Where does the name come from?
18:39
Speaker 3: So the name is almost synonymous with stevia, our primary
18:42
Speaker 3: sweetening ingredient, and stevia, frankly is it's changed my life.
18:46
Speaker 3: It's a plant in the sunflower family, so it's about
18:49
Speaker 3: as basic and natural as it gets. And if you
18:52
Speaker 3: chew that leaf, it's literally two hundred times as sweet
18:55
Speaker 3: as sugar, with no calories and no impact on blood sugar.
18:59
Speaker 3: And we don't make any health claims around zevia, but
19:01
Speaker 3: there is some emerging evidence that shows that not only
19:03
Speaker 3: does stevia not impact blood sugar, it actually could help
19:07
Speaker 3: control blood glucose levels. They found that in rats and mice,
19:11
Speaker 3: so we haven't done those human trials yet, but wow,
19:14
Speaker 3: that's pretty promising.
19:15
Speaker 1: Right.
19:15
Speaker 3: So, when we think about what's really the biggest public
19:18
Speaker 3: health challenge facing the world in many ways of sugar consumption,
19:22
Speaker 3: in the next fifty years, a third of the world
19:24
Speaker 3: would be diabetic and it's just because of our diet.
19:27
Speaker 2: I forget what the stat was I read the other day,
19:29
Speaker 2: and I'm gonna it's something wrong, but I want to
19:32
Speaker 2: say it's like sixty to seventy percent of America is
19:35
Speaker 2: now considered obese.
19:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, where does it start. We drink forty seven gallons
19:42
Speaker 3: of soda on average per year. Really, forty seven gallons Jesus,
19:47
Speaker 3: So that is a lot of soda. And so imagine
19:49
Speaker 3: if that's forty seven gallons of sugar, sweet and soda. Yikes, Yeah,
19:53
Speaker 3: it's forty seven gallons of diet coke. Not so great.
19:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, gosh, if you.
19:57
Speaker 3: Could take forty those gallons and shift them to Zvia,
20:00
Speaker 3: you've just taken so much sugar out of your diet.
20:02
Speaker 3: And that's one of the things we tell people. So
20:04
Speaker 3: statistics show half of added sugar comes from beverages. So
20:09
Speaker 3: I said to people, if you want to be healthy,
20:11
Speaker 3: you just want to do one thing. Eat all the
20:13
Speaker 3: nachos you want, eat all the fat you want. If
20:16
Speaker 3: you only took sugary beverages and swapped them out for
20:20
Speaker 3: non sweetened or zero calorie beverages, you cut your sugar
20:23
Speaker 3: in half.
20:24
Speaker 1: Right, What drew you to ZBA to begin with?
20:27
Speaker 2: Because if I remember correctly from our phone call, you
20:31
Speaker 2: met the guys behind the brand at a booth.
20:34
Speaker 3: At a trade show booth trade I said, you know
20:36
Speaker 3: what I'm a consumer of one. But first of all,
20:38
Speaker 3: what's the craziest thing you could ever do in business?
20:41
Speaker 1: And what year is this?
20:42
Speaker 3: This is twenty ten, twenty ten. If I thought about it,
20:45
Speaker 3: what's the dumbest or craziest thing I could ever do.
20:48
Speaker 3: I'm going to take Coca Cola on head to head.
20:50
Speaker 3: I'm going to go and say, you know what, that
20:52
Speaker 3: red can that billions of people around the world drink.
20:54
Speaker 3: I'm going to replace that with a better beverage. That
20:57
Speaker 3: sounds nuts, right, And in twenty ten it was, but
21:00
Speaker 3: no one had ever done it, and so that was
21:02
Speaker 3: half of the excitement. The other half was, Wow, here's
21:05
Speaker 3: this can of cola, no calories, no sugar, naturally sweetened.
21:09
Speaker 3: I would consume this. There's got to be people like
21:12
Speaker 3: me out there. And so it started out as a
21:16
Speaker 3: fascination and over the last eight years it became a mission.
21:20
Speaker 3: And so we started getting letters from people saying, Wow,
21:23
Speaker 3: You've changed my life. I just had a baby and
21:26
Speaker 3: nothing that I wanted more than a cola Yeah, and
21:30
Speaker 3: I just I couldn't do that to my kid And
21:32
Speaker 3: I found zvia. Yeah I'm diabetic or I have kidney disease.
21:36
Speaker 3: I found ZeVA. I'm a CrossFit athlete and I lost
21:38
Speaker 3: one hundred pounds and I found Zevia.
21:40
Speaker 2: Wait, but how did you kind of infiltrate the system?
21:44
Speaker 3: Well, one of the things we did first is we said,
21:47
Speaker 3: who out there wants a product like this? What's the
21:50
Speaker 3: first target? And so you start experimenting. Well, I had
21:53
Speaker 3: a young family, and I knew what's the first thing
21:56
Speaker 3: that a kid wants when they're five or six or
21:58
Speaker 3: seven years old? They want soda? Yeah, And it's really
22:01
Speaker 3: tough to explain to a young child why soda isn't
22:05
Speaker 3: something I'm going to give you. Wouldn't it be easier
22:07
Speaker 3: if I just had something I felt good about that
22:09
Speaker 3: I could give them. Yeah?
22:10
Speaker 2: But how did you, Patty infiltrate the Zevia family? Like,
22:13
Speaker 2: did you just walk up to them and you're like,
22:15
Speaker 2: you guys, I'm going to come work with you guys.
22:17
Speaker 3: Now, that's a great question. And I guess I got
22:19
Speaker 3: them excited about that I'm ready to climb this mountain
22:25
Speaker 3: and climb to the top or die trying. Yeah, And
22:28
Speaker 3: I think it was just that excitement and that commitment
22:31
Speaker 3: to taking on the big guys, big Soda and changing
22:34
Speaker 3: the world. You know, when you start out, you're just
22:37
Speaker 3: trying to kind of sell a few cans and survive.
22:40
Speaker 3: But as I said, very quickly we realized this is
22:42
Speaker 3: a product that's changing people's lives. This is really a mission.
22:45
Speaker 3: And what's so cool is as we've grown now we
22:49
Speaker 3: realize we're the only company in beverage who exists. We
22:52
Speaker 3: wake up every day to improve people's public health. I'm
22:56
Speaker 3: not sure many other companies, certainly not in the carbonated world,
22:59
Speaker 3: can say. You know, at Monster Energy, Rockstar, Coca Cola,
23:03
Speaker 3: great brands, they're not trying to help people be more healthy.
23:06
Speaker 2: Okay, so you're working at Kashi and things are going well,
23:09
Speaker 2: and at that time you told me that you were
23:12
Speaker 2: dealing with a lot in your personal life.
23:14
Speaker 3: That's exactly right. You know. In nineteen ninety five, my
23:17
Speaker 3: brother was killed tragically in a car accident, and on
23:21
Speaker 3: the job car accident, twenty six years old and not
23:24
Speaker 3: something I ever imagined would happen. I think of my
23:27
Speaker 3: life before Colin died and after two different lives. Yeahly wow,
23:32
Speaker 3: And you know, I remember it's twenty plus years later.
23:37
Speaker 3: It's like it was yesterday and that next that day,
23:40
Speaker 3: everything changed for me, and I had never experienced loss
23:43
Speaker 3: on that level. This is the person I was closest
23:45
Speaker 3: to in the world, and it really completely changed the
23:49
Speaker 3: way I thought about everything in my life. And starting
23:52
Speaker 3: with I guess this idea of risk, you know, the
23:55
Speaker 3: whole idea of what risk is was turned upside down
23:57
Speaker 3: because we're led to believe that so many things in
24:00
Speaker 3: our life are consequential. When you know, whether it's how
24:03
Speaker 3: does my hair look today, or did I get to
24:05
Speaker 3: work on time or whatever, and ultimately, in the grand
24:09
Speaker 3: scheme of things, those things are fairly meaningless, right, And
24:13
Speaker 3: when you lose someone very close to you, I think
24:14
Speaker 3: you realize what loss is and what risk is. Going
24:18
Speaker 3: bankrupt that's like a joke compared to losing your best friend, yeah,
24:22
Speaker 3: or your brother, or your mom or whatever. And so
24:26
Speaker 3: for me, it was I realized that my life could
24:29
Speaker 3: end at any moment like his head, and that I
24:32
Speaker 3: had to make the most of every day and that
24:34
Speaker 3: all these things that I thought were so scary and risky,
24:38
Speaker 3: ultimately we're pretty inconsequential.
24:40
Speaker 2: So what were some of the risks that you were
24:42
Speaker 2: kind of avoiding before this, Well, you know.
24:45
Speaker 3: From a business standpoint, you have this perspective that's been
24:49
Speaker 3: told to you that you kind of work your way
24:51
Speaker 3: up and you do things that are gradually more and
24:53
Speaker 3: more challenging, or you roll rise within an organization and
24:57
Speaker 3: then suddenly you're at the top. And I realized, well,
24:59
Speaker 3: that's garbage, right, I can go out and start a company,
25:04
Speaker 3: you know, pushing your body. What's the craziest thing I
25:06
Speaker 3: can do? Well, I'm not an awesome swimmer. Maybe I
25:08
Speaker 3: should try and swim from Alcatraz to San Francisco. We
25:11
Speaker 3: did that after really scary and I did that and
25:14
Speaker 3: I was like, Okay, we don't know what's going to happen, sharks, current,
25:18
Speaker 3: cold water, but I survived. And then I think that's
25:22
Speaker 3: the kind of thing that to me was able to
25:24
Speaker 3: bring the joy back into life, is to realize that
25:27
Speaker 3: I could do things and the consequences were, you know what,
25:30
Speaker 3: I'm still here and this is what life is about, Yeah,
25:35
Speaker 3: is challenging yourself and pushing yourself and taking those risks
25:38
Speaker 3: because we don't know how long we're going to be around.
25:40
Speaker 2: So would you say you're more of a risk taker
25:42
Speaker 2: after I mean, you said that not happened in nineteen
25:45
Speaker 2: ninety five, So you're more of a risk taker.
25:46
Speaker 3: Now, yes, yes, I mean I think I was a
25:49
Speaker 3: risk taker without realizing it. Yeah, but again, the calculation
25:53
Speaker 3: of what risk even was and the consequences completely changed
25:56
Speaker 3: after that.
25:58
Speaker 1: Swimming from Alcatraz to the coast is frightening.
26:01
Speaker 3: It is the most terrifying thing I've ever done. The
26:04
Speaker 3: first time ever did it, I threw up, how long
26:07
Speaker 3: is that?
26:08
Speaker 1: How long is that distance?
26:09
Speaker 3: It's a mile and a half. And for folks who
26:11
Speaker 3: are strong swimmers, you know that's not as much a
26:13
Speaker 3: daunting distance. Yeah, it's the current that's really tough. The
26:16
Speaker 3: water's freezing cold. There's definitely waves, and you know, in
26:21
Speaker 3: a controlled environment they're going to save you. But in
26:23
Speaker 3: real life you'd get swept out to see if you're
26:25
Speaker 3: not fast enough. Right, So yeah, it is like it's
26:29
Speaker 3: one of those gut wrenching things. You finish and you're like,
26:31
Speaker 3: I can do anything. Yeah.
26:33
Speaker 1: I mean that's how I feel running marathons.
26:35
Speaker 2: It's like you cross the marathon finish line and like
26:37
Speaker 2: life is your oyster and I can do anything.
26:39
Speaker 1: I set my mind to and I'm victorious.
26:41
Speaker 3: Well exactly, And I think that's that's for me such
26:46
Speaker 3: a key part of how I get inspired is finding
26:48
Speaker 3: little things like that that just become victories. And ultimately
26:53
Speaker 3: you can find those things in smaller and smaller and
26:55
Speaker 3: smaller ways. You know, I made it to work on
26:58
Speaker 3: time today. I got the kids to school on time.
26:59
Speaker 3: That's a tiny victory. Yeah, you know, against all odds,
27:02
Speaker 3: we left the house early, we got a couple of
27:05
Speaker 3: good traffic lights, and we made it.
27:07
Speaker 1: Yeah.
27:07
Speaker 3: So I try to find those little victories and challenges
27:10
Speaker 3: and everything.
27:11
Speaker 2: So did you find that after this tough time in
27:14
Speaker 2: your life you were working at Kashi, did you kind
27:16
Speaker 2: of reevaluate where you were in your business and your career?
27:19
Speaker 3: I did, and within a month I left. I resigned, Wow,
27:23
Speaker 3: because I said, you know what I need to I
27:25
Speaker 3: need to go out and find what it is that
27:27
Speaker 3: I need to do. And ended up starting a business
27:31
Speaker 3: almost immediately after that. What business it was a market
27:34
Speaker 3: research company. Basically we got data from retail stores like
27:39
Speaker 3: Whole Foods and what they were selling and then provided
27:42
Speaker 3: that to brand owners. So that was started ninety five
27:46
Speaker 3: and companies still around one hundred and something employees and wow,
27:49
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's gratifying. But again that never would have
27:52
Speaker 3: started if I hadn't said, you know what, there are
27:54
Speaker 3: billion dollar companies that sell data, but I can do
27:57
Speaker 3: it better, and I can just go out there and
27:59
Speaker 3: try and do it.
27:59
Speaker 1: Are you still involved in that at all?
28:01
Speaker 3: I'm not, but I'm a user of the data now,
28:03
Speaker 3: and so I'm happy to say we did benefit companies
28:06
Speaker 3: like ZBA in terms of having information on what's happening
28:09
Speaker 3: in the market.
28:10
Speaker 1: So you were there until twenty ten.
28:13
Speaker 3: I was there actually till three and sold the business
28:16
Speaker 3: in four. And then I spent a few years in
28:18
Speaker 3: hair and skincare, again something I know nothing about what
28:22
Speaker 3: I have here, but I didn't know anything about it.
28:26
Speaker 3: And again, for me, it's about learning great like gosh,
28:29
Speaker 3: what could I learn? Well, I learned how shampoo's made.
28:33
Speaker 3: I learned a lot about anti aging skincare. I then
28:36
Speaker 3: got into color cosmetics, and I know a lot about
28:38
Speaker 3: loose versus press powders and all sorts of crazy makeup stuff.
28:42
Speaker 3: So for me, it's just about learning and being stimulated
28:46
Speaker 3: by what I'm doing and getting excited about is it not?
28:48
Speaker 1: Was it natural makeup?
28:49
Speaker 3: It was? Yeah. We had some non natural stuff as well,
28:52
Speaker 3: and I learned, you know, what harsh chemicals like benzol
28:55
Speaker 3: peroxide do to your skin. But it was it was
28:59
Speaker 3: a great experience, and again it's just about learning and
29:03
Speaker 3: trying to help people.
29:04
Speaker 1: When you met the guys at the trade show, what
29:06
Speaker 1: were you there doing?
29:07
Speaker 3: I was there looking to figure out what I was
29:09
Speaker 3: going to do next. Oh wow, yeah, And and you
29:12
Speaker 3: know I saw this product zeb and I said, Wow,
29:14
Speaker 3: this thing could change people's lives and I could really
29:18
Speaker 3: get excited about selling it.
29:24
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30:18
Speaker 1: Let's get back to it.
30:26
Speaker 2: So often I'll hear someone talk about their day to
30:28
Speaker 2: day and that they're not exactly they don't love their
30:31
Speaker 2: job or what they're doing. And my question is always,
30:34
Speaker 2: then what are you doing to change that? And I
30:37
Speaker 2: think to put yourself out there and to even go
30:39
Speaker 2: to something as simple as a trade show and try
30:41
Speaker 2: something new, it's such an easy thing to do. I
30:43
Speaker 2: mean there's trade shows all the time, right, but no
30:45
Speaker 2: one does stuff like that well exactly.
30:47
Speaker 3: And I think even more so, we all do things
30:50
Speaker 3: in our personal lives that frankly could become businesses. Yeah right, So,
30:55
Speaker 3: years before zeba ever existed, my wife and I used
30:58
Speaker 3: to make our own ginger ale. You know a little
31:00
Speaker 3: bit of carbonated water, liquid, stevia, ginger and lemon. That's all.
31:04
Speaker 3: It's engineer all, Yeah, we were doing that ourselves and
31:06
Speaker 3: so it's not rocket science to put that into a can, right,
31:10
Speaker 3: And yet I think, you know, what are the things
31:12
Speaker 3: that prevent people? It's not technical, it's really not financial.
31:16
Speaker 3: It's that terrifying feeling of what if I fail. Well,
31:20
Speaker 3: after you've lost someone, you've already experienced. The worst that
31:23
Speaker 3: you're ever going to failure is tiny who cares well?
31:27
Speaker 3: You know, we fail every day. And it's one of
31:29
Speaker 3: the reasons I love doing martial arts is I get
31:33
Speaker 3: my ass kicked every single time I go to a class,
31:35
Speaker 3: and it's usually by someone smaller or less experienced or whatever,
31:40
Speaker 3: and it's just humbling. Yeah, it makes you realize, you
31:42
Speaker 3: know what, we're going to fall down and we've got
31:44
Speaker 3: to get back up again.
31:45
Speaker 1: How long have you been doing martial arts?
31:47
Speaker 3: A long time. I started wrestling in fifth grade, so
31:50
Speaker 3: I did eight years of wrestling, and I've been doing
31:53
Speaker 3: Brazilian jiu jitsu since two thousand and one with some
31:56
Speaker 3: breaks in between, and kickboxing for seven years time. But
32:01
Speaker 3: it's one of those things there is no endpoint, you know.
32:03
Speaker 3: Bruce Lee famously said, no one knows karate. We all
32:06
Speaker 3: practice and study karate.
32:08
Speaker 1: It feels like yoga. When you call yoga practice.
32:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, you don't know yoga. There's no point where you're like, Okay,
32:13
Speaker 3: I'm done. No, never I mastered it.
32:15
Speaker 1: I never feel like I'm done with yoga.
32:17
Speaker 2: On the subject of failures, what would you say has
32:20
Speaker 2: been one of your most quote unquote successful failures to date,
32:25
Speaker 2: either with ZBA or with aside from that completely.
32:29
Speaker 3: Well, here's an example of failure at ZEBA that then
32:33
Speaker 3: we were able to turn around. So one of the
32:37
Speaker 3: things we did a couple of years ago is we
32:38
Speaker 3: took caramel color out of all of our products. So
32:42
Speaker 3: typically things like cola and root beer are colored brown
32:45
Speaker 3: because of caramel color. Well, we started getting letters from
32:48
Speaker 3: our fans and we did some additional research and we
32:51
Speaker 3: found that caramel color in zero calorie drinks was linked
32:54
Speaker 3: to cancer. Well that sounds horrible, right. We had a
32:58
Speaker 3: moral obligation to remove that ingredient, and so we did so.
33:03
Speaker 3: But as any neuroscientist will tell you, our brain receives
33:09
Speaker 3: indications by what color of beverage is as to what
33:12
Speaker 3: it's supposed to taste, like colon is supposed to be brown.
33:15
Speaker 3: We got literally thousands of letters from fans saying, this
33:18
Speaker 3: stuff tastes horrible, it's not brown. Well, so that's a disaster,
33:23
Speaker 3: right when your number one product, you're getting literally thousands
33:26
Speaker 3: of letters from people saying this is messed up. So
33:30
Speaker 3: what do we do? Well, we said, well, gosh, we've
33:32
Speaker 3: got to go back to these people and involve them
33:34
Speaker 3: in the solution. So we actually engage three thousand fans
33:37
Speaker 3: of ours in a co creation exercise. We went back,
33:40
Speaker 3: worked on the products, and we sent them cans and said, okay,
33:42
Speaker 3: can a can be? Which do you like more? And
33:45
Speaker 3: we got fantastic feedback from the people who care the most,
33:49
Speaker 3: the people who drink the product every day. Long story short,
33:52
Speaker 3: we put that revised formula into a can and sales skyrocketed.
33:56
Speaker 1: Interested and is it brown? No, it's clear, it's stock clear.
34:00
Speaker 3: But we were able to just tweak some of the
34:01
Speaker 3: flavor notes and ultimately people realized, do I want to
34:06
Speaker 3: drink a cancer causing chemical or do I want to
34:08
Speaker 3: have this stuff that looks a little different but I
34:10
Speaker 3: feel better about?
34:12
Speaker 1: Yeah?
34:12
Speaker 2: What about personally, in terms of some hardships that you've
34:16
Speaker 2: gone through, what would you say has been one of
34:18
Speaker 2: the most difficult times.
34:19
Speaker 1: That's taught you the most.
34:20
Speaker 3: This last year, I had a health issue. I woke
34:24
Speaker 3: up one day and I got a detached retina.
34:26
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
34:27
Speaker 3: And it wasn't kickboxing or jiu jitsu. It was out
34:29
Speaker 3: of nowhere. And between June and October of twenty eighteen,
34:33
Speaker 3: I had four eye surgeries.
34:35
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness.
34:36
Speaker 3: And for folks who haven't had eye surgery, it is
34:38
Speaker 3: not fun. I've had a bunch of sports surgeries, and
34:41
Speaker 3: those were easy by comparison, because when you're recovering from
34:44
Speaker 3: eye surgery or at least retina surgery, you can't read,
34:48
Speaker 3: you can't write, you can't work out at all, you
34:51
Speaker 3: can't lie down. And everyone's different, but my position, as
34:54
Speaker 3: it were, I had to sit up for four weeks.
34:56
Speaker 3: During that time, I was a horrible parent, and I
35:00
Speaker 3: wasn't a good friend, and I probably wasn't a very
35:02
Speaker 3: good coworker, and I certainly didn't work out with any
35:05
Speaker 3: of my training partners, and so I felt like I
35:08
Speaker 3: was failing in the worst way possible. And yet I
35:11
Speaker 3: still was alive, and I still had to go through
35:13
Speaker 3: all that and figure out how the hell do I
35:15
Speaker 3: get through every day? Feeling physically lousy, feeling mentally terrible,
35:21
Speaker 3: and feeling like this is never going to end.
35:24
Speaker 1: So what'd you do?
35:25
Speaker 3: So I meditated a lot, and I just focused on
35:29
Speaker 3: what I could control, which is frankly, my breath, and
35:33
Speaker 3: listened to music and said, Okay, it's one o'clock. I
35:35
Speaker 3: know two o'clock is going to come, and then it's
35:37
Speaker 3: going to be three, and eventually I'll be able to
35:39
Speaker 3: go to sleep and wake up tomorrow. And it was
35:43
Speaker 3: really really tough. And one of the things that were
35:46
Speaker 3: not good at a lot of times is being vulnerable.
35:49
Speaker 3: You know, my kids saw me in the States. They
35:51
Speaker 3: had never seen me before, and for the first time,
35:54
Speaker 3: my nine year old started saying, Dad, are you okay?
35:57
Speaker 3: And that's not something kids typically do with their parents,
36:00
Speaker 3: and so what a humbling experience to have your small
36:03
Speaker 3: children say are you okay? Are you doing okay? Dad?
36:06
Speaker 3: So it was really tough, and again I focused on
36:10
Speaker 3: trying to be a little bit better at trying to
36:12
Speaker 3: heal one percent every day.
36:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like it's really hard as a parent,
36:17
Speaker 2: or as a friend, or even as a partner, whatever capacity.
36:20
Speaker 1: We always want to.
36:23
Speaker 2: Be okay for the people that we surround ourselves with
36:26
Speaker 2: and to be able to be vulnerable and honest, it's scary.
36:33
Speaker 3: It is. And there were long periods of time where
36:34
Speaker 3: I didn't even want to go outside because I felt
36:36
Speaker 3: so vulnerable. I didn't want people to see me. And so, yeah,
36:42
Speaker 3: what a humbling experience. And again, though that idea of
36:46
Speaker 3: tomorrow is going to just be a little bit better,
36:48
Speaker 3: just I won't have that pain like nail being hammered
36:51
Speaker 3: into the back of my eyeball, or my vision might
36:55
Speaker 3: be a tiny bit better or whatever. And so it's
36:59
Speaker 3: just kind of one step at a time. Let's just
37:01
Speaker 3: get through the day.
37:02
Speaker 1: How are you handling your business while you were kind
37:05
Speaker 1: of in this recuver.
37:05
Speaker 3: Well, I am so fortunate. My wife is just unbelievable.
37:09
Speaker 3: We woke up the first day after my first surgery
37:11
Speaker 3: and I had one hundred and fifty emails in my
37:13
Speaker 3: inbox and I couldn't read. Yeah, and she read every
37:17
Speaker 3: email to me and I dictated responses and it was
37:20
Speaker 3: one of those things you're either going to hate each
37:21
Speaker 3: other after a day or you're going to figure out
37:23
Speaker 3: how to make it work. Yeah, and we made it work.
37:26
Speaker 3: But thank goodness for Jara because it was really challenging.
37:29
Speaker 2: I think that that's also something when people don't want
37:33
Speaker 2: to find a solution, they won't. But if you do,
37:36
Speaker 2: then you find the will inside to pivot and figure
37:38
Speaker 2: out how to you know, navigate going on.
37:41
Speaker 3: Well, not only that, but you also realize, you know,
37:43
Speaker 3: there were some things that I thought so that I
37:47
Speaker 3: was so certain about that turned out to be totally wrong. Yeah,
37:50
Speaker 3: like what, Well, like gosh, if I don't get involved
37:53
Speaker 3: in the color on this new can that we're creating,
37:56
Speaker 3: everything's going to fall apart. Well, guess what. I was
37:58
Speaker 3: out of the office for eight weeks, pretty unavailable, and
38:01
Speaker 3: things worked really well, and so one of the things
38:04
Speaker 3: I was able to do is start to try and
38:06
Speaker 3: make that list and figure out what I could let
38:08
Speaker 3: go of. Well, I certainly realized that staring at my
38:11
Speaker 3: phone all day wasn't adding a lot to my life.
38:14
Speaker 3: And so when I couldn't read for eight weeks, guess what,
38:16
Speaker 3: I didn't look at the phone at all and the
38:18
Speaker 3: world continued. Yeah, and so little things like that, and
38:22
Speaker 3: it's it's about then, just that idea of kind of reassessing.
38:25
Speaker 3: And you know, we talk about spring cleaning, Well, we
38:28
Speaker 3: can do spring cleaning in our lives. We can do
38:30
Speaker 3: that almost every week, and we can say, what are
38:32
Speaker 3: the things that I'm doing that maybe aren't adding to
38:34
Speaker 3: my life? What are the things that I really want
38:36
Speaker 3: to do more of? Yeah?
38:37
Speaker 2: What else during that time did you realize you needed
38:39
Speaker 2: to kind of sweep under the rug and get rid.
38:41
Speaker 3: Of Well, certainly phone addiction. This idea that vulnerability, I
38:46
Speaker 3: think is really important. And so the idea that I'm
38:48
Speaker 3: going to go through life just kind of everything's perfect. Well,
38:51
Speaker 3: that doesn't work anymore. I got a bad eye now.
38:54
Speaker 3: I didn't realize it ever have a bad eye.
38:56
Speaker 1: Right right, I never realized that was going to happen.
39:00
Speaker 3: No, No, And you know when you get eight stitches
39:02
Speaker 3: in your eyeball in a four month period, you realize, wow,
39:05
Speaker 3: this really sucks, and so regular life is that much sweeter.
39:10
Speaker 3: And at the same time, you know, fifteen hours into
39:13
Speaker 3: a day, my eye is telling me, hey, you got
39:15
Speaker 3: to stop reading now because those eight stitches are getting
39:18
Speaker 3: really dried out and uncomfortable, and I feel like I
39:20
Speaker 3: got a hair in my eye. Yeah. So so those
39:23
Speaker 3: reminders and those kind of things that say, you know what,
39:25
Speaker 3: enjoy what's good keep in mind that things aren't always
39:29
Speaker 3: going to be perfect.
39:30
Speaker 2: I think, especially also as a parent. I was watching
39:32
Speaker 2: the Today Show last week and I want I think
39:34
Speaker 2: his name is pronounced Deva, and still his daughter had
39:37
Speaker 2: cancer and for so long that both of them were
39:40
Speaker 2: trying to be strong for each other, and he wasn't
39:43
Speaker 2: crying around her and she wasn't crying around him, which
39:45
Speaker 2: is so wise beyond her years, because she's so young.
39:49
Speaker 2: She finally said to him, like, it does this not
39:52
Speaker 2: upset you? And he was like, I've been trying not
39:55
Speaker 2: to be upset in front of you. I've been trying
39:56
Speaker 2: to be strong for you. She's like, it's okay to
39:58
Speaker 2: be upset. She's like, cause I'm upset, right, And and
40:01
Speaker 2: that's like such a strong lesson and oh my god,
40:03
Speaker 2: to learn that type of thing at such a young age,
40:06
Speaker 2: it's invaluable.
40:07
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and I think we have to accept that.
40:09
Speaker 3: You know, we're going to have failure in life, We're
40:12
Speaker 3: going to have loss, and if we can be comfortable
40:14
Speaker 3: with that and just try and do our best and
40:16
Speaker 3: enjoy the good parts, you know, as they say, if
40:19
Speaker 3: you don't have sadness, there's no such thing as joy right, wow, right,
40:24
Speaker 3: what is joy in the absence of sadness?
40:26
Speaker 1: It's just right, you're feeling right, Yeah, So.
40:28
Speaker 3: It's the negative allows you to understand the positive.
40:31
Speaker 2: So what are some of the things in your day
40:34
Speaker 2: to day now that bring you joy?
40:37
Speaker 3: Watching my kids get inspired and learn, so, you know,
40:41
Speaker 3: one of the best experiences we've had in our family
40:43
Speaker 3: in the last few months has been watching my nine
40:46
Speaker 3: year old daughter start to do sports. So she's never
40:49
Speaker 3: competed in any kind of sport, and she started doing
40:51
Speaker 3: cross country running in third grade. Okay, so well, they
40:57
Speaker 3: competed against a lot of running clubs, and these kids
40:59
Speaker 3: in nine year old in a running club are very
41:01
Speaker 3: serious and so it was really, really tough. And my
41:04
Speaker 3: daughter had never done a race, and and the first one,
41:07
Speaker 3: I was like, that was kind of a wake up call.
41:08
Speaker 3: She's like, yeah, this is really hard running two miles.
41:13
Speaker 3: But over the last few months she's realized how to
41:15
Speaker 3: push her body, and she's realized that, you know, each
41:18
Speaker 3: race was more fun than the last, and it didn't
41:21
Speaker 3: matter if she was last or second to last or first,
41:25
Speaker 3: and that was ross exactly. And so just this idea
41:28
Speaker 3: of pushing yourself and feeling the good things that come
41:32
Speaker 3: from that has been incredible.
41:34
Speaker 1: And how old is your other daughter?
41:35
Speaker 3: My other daughters seven, so you know, similarly, she's been
41:39
Speaker 3: pushing herself in ways. And so this Saturday we were
41:42
Speaker 3: at a spelling bee and wow, you know that is
41:46
Speaker 3: really get up in front of one hundred adults and
41:48
Speaker 3: kids and spell words on stage.
41:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's scary.
41:51
Speaker 3: It's really scary.
41:52
Speaker 1: I think I'm still scarred from spelling bees when I
41:54
Speaker 1: was like that.
41:54
Speaker 3: And at the same time, it's so exciting, you know,
41:57
Speaker 3: seeing somebody spell garbonzo and it's looking at me and smiling,
42:01
Speaker 3: knowing they know how to spell garbanzo because we practiced it.
42:05
Speaker 2: You meet the guys at the trade show, you start
42:08
Speaker 2: here at ZBA, what would you say so far in
42:12
Speaker 2: your time here has been one of the biggest lessons
42:14
Speaker 2: that you've learned in your current position is to think big.
42:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, is to do crazy stuff. And when
42:21
Speaker 3: we started, it was just about can we sell a
42:23
Speaker 3: few cans of this thing that's better than diet coke?
42:26
Speaker 3: And then suddenly we realize, Wow, we're changing people's lives.
42:30
Speaker 3: And now, you know, we got a statistic the other
42:33
Speaker 3: day that in the total soda category. In zero calorie soda,
42:37
Speaker 3: ZBA is adding the third most dollars to the category
42:42
Speaker 3: after diet coke and Coke zero. Those are billion dollar brands,
42:45
Speaker 3: and then we're growing almost as much as those guys.
42:48
Speaker 3: That's incredible. We're a tiny little brand and yet we
42:50
Speaker 3: are changing people's lives. And so I think the most
42:53
Speaker 3: exciting thing is this realization that there's billions of people
42:57
Speaker 3: around the world who could benefit from what we have,
43:00
Speaker 3: and we're going to find a way to get our
43:01
Speaker 3: product to them.
43:02
Speaker 2: What types of offerings does Zeba have, because it's not
43:05
Speaker 2: just Zba's version of cola well exactly.
43:08
Speaker 3: So we started out with soda because that's a drink that,
43:11
Speaker 3: as I said, forty seven gallons a year the average
43:14
Speaker 3: American drinks. Ninety percent of Americans drink soda. And then
43:18
Speaker 3: we started looking at other categories and we said, gosh,
43:21
Speaker 3: energy drinks. You know, great idea. We all love caffeine,
43:25
Speaker 3: but what about tourine. How much are we supposed to
43:27
Speaker 3: drink of that and all these other weird chemicals and
43:30
Speaker 3: colors and stuff. So we made a clean energy drink,
43:33
Speaker 3: We made clean mixers. You know, people love drinking Moscow mules,
43:36
Speaker 3: But who needs fifty grams of sugar from the ginger beer?
43:39
Speaker 1: Right?
43:39
Speaker 3: And sparkling water and now organic tea. You know, I
43:42
Speaker 3: grew up loving tea and wouldn't organic tea be awesome
43:45
Speaker 3: if it didn't have thirty grams of sugar? So one
43:48
Speaker 3: by one we're just finding those ways that we can
43:51
Speaker 3: improve people's lives for every member of the family every
43:54
Speaker 3: time a day, and how can we give people something
43:57
Speaker 3: that they can trust and believe in.
43:59
Speaker 2: So that's a huge less than what do you think
44:01
Speaker 2: has been one of the biggest challenges.
44:04
Speaker 3: Well, certainly you know, fighting Coca Cola company every day
44:08
Speaker 3: and PepsiCo. You know, those are one hundred billion dollar
44:11
Speaker 3: companies with one hundred years of expertise, and eight years
44:15
Speaker 3: ago I had never sold the canisda in my life. Yeah,
44:18
Speaker 3: I was a rank amateur. And so the idea that
44:22
Speaker 3: you know, it's so humbling competing against folks who've been
44:25
Speaker 3: doing it for one hundred years. So that's the toughest
44:28
Speaker 3: thing is you know, Coca Cola is one of the
44:31
Speaker 3: most recognized brands around the world, and so that's the challenge.
44:35
Speaker 3: The opportunity if you ask a hundred people who wants
44:37
Speaker 3: to drink more coke next year, not many will say yes, right,
44:40
Speaker 3: And so that's what's so exciting. We've got this everest
44:43
Speaker 3: we're trying to climb, but we know if we can
44:45
Speaker 3: get part way up that mountain, it's going to be
44:47
Speaker 3: really fun and exciting.
44:49
Speaker 2: In terms of obviously cutting out added sugars and keeping
44:53
Speaker 2: a budget every day, what are kind of other nutritional
44:56
Speaker 2: guidelines that you adhere to or things that you keep
44:58
Speaker 2: in mind when you're going about your day.
45:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know, for one of the things
45:04
Speaker 3: that I think is always hard for anyone who's trying
45:06
Speaker 3: to restrict their intake of something is you got to
45:09
Speaker 3: replace it with something. Yeah, right, And everything is a fat,
45:12
Speaker 3: a carb, or a sugar I mean, or a protein.
45:15
Speaker 3: Excuse me. And so if we take out a lot
45:18
Speaker 3: of sugar, we're taking out a lot of carbs. So
45:20
Speaker 3: what are we going to eat? So for me, I
45:23
Speaker 3: try to eat a lot of protein. We do a
45:25
Speaker 3: lot of lean meat. I consume a lot of dairy
45:27
Speaker 3: just because that works for me. But I consume a
45:29
Speaker 3: lot of peat protein as well. And then you know,
45:33
Speaker 3: we consume a fair amount of fat egatiating. You know,
45:36
Speaker 3: cashews and almonds are very filling in high calorie, but
45:39
Speaker 3: they don't have any sugar.
45:40
Speaker 2: So obviously you've come in here and done a lot
45:43
Speaker 2: with ZVA, and you have a history of doing a
45:45
Speaker 2: lot with some really great brands.
45:47
Speaker 1: So what do you think is on the horizon.
45:50
Speaker 3: Then, well, our categories that we compete in, our six
45:54
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty billion dollars globally. Wow, And as I
45:58
Speaker 3: mentioned earlier, you know a third of the world is
46:01
Speaker 3: going to be diabetic in the next fifty years. This
46:03
Speaker 3: is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, public
46:07
Speaker 3: health challenges globally. You know, I think today we're just
46:09
Speaker 3: in the US and Canada, and yet every day of
46:11
Speaker 3: the week we're getting inquiries from around the world. And
46:15
Speaker 3: sugar consumption is a global public health challenge. And people
46:19
Speaker 3: in Malaysia and people in France, and people in Iceland
46:22
Speaker 3: are concerned about it, and people in Mexico, and so
46:25
Speaker 3: there's global demand for products like ours, And I think,
46:27
Speaker 3: you know, I won't be satisfied until people around the
46:30
Speaker 3: world can get off of sugar using ZBA. Nowadays, when
46:34
Speaker 3: I travel around the country, I can always get ZEBA
46:36
Speaker 3: within a mile or two of where I am.
46:38
Speaker 1: Wow, that's pretty impressive.
46:40
Speaker 3: So we still got some work to do. If I
46:42
Speaker 3: go to the airport, you know, tougher to find. If
46:44
Speaker 3: I go to a movie, if I'm going to a
46:46
Speaker 3: college football game, but those are all venues we're working on.
46:49
Speaker 1: I love that college football game. Walk into the stadium,
46:52
Speaker 1: and that's the first thing I'm running for exactly.
46:54
Speaker 3: Well, Hey, if I go to a CrossFit event, that's
46:56
Speaker 3: the first thing I'm going to do is get my ZBA.
46:58
Speaker 1: They have it there. Yeah, have you been the Games before?
47:02
Speaker 3: It's incredible And so you know, when we think about inspirations,
47:05
Speaker 3: I do have to name Brent Pakowski as one of
47:07
Speaker 3: our athletes. Brent is phenomenal, Catrin David's daughter, two time
47:11
Speaker 3: winner of the Games, unbelievable, But honestly, for me, my
47:14
Speaker 3: biggest inspiration is a young woman named Kayla Stefano. Kayla
47:19
Speaker 3: is last year, as a seventeen year old, competed in
47:22
Speaker 3: the CrossFit Game. She's won it twice before as a teenager,
47:25
Speaker 3: and last year she finished third and it was just
47:28
Speaker 3: wild watching her and watching her demeanor during the games.
47:32
Speaker 3: And I learned so much from this young woman. When
47:34
Speaker 3: you've won twice and then you come in third, how
47:37
Speaker 3: do you deal with that? Well, the way she dealt
47:38
Speaker 3: with it a smile on her face, a hug for
47:41
Speaker 3: her competitor, and just the most incredible attitude of perseverance
47:45
Speaker 3: and learning. And wow, Yeah, that's what I want to
47:48
Speaker 3: be like. I want to be like Kayla.
47:50
Speaker 1: Stefano seventeen years old. She's incredible lifting any lifting.
47:55
Speaker 2: The amount of weight that they left on the regular
47:57
Speaker 2: already blows my mind, but to think about being able
48:00
Speaker 2: to do that at seventeen is mind boggling.
48:03
Speaker 3: She's also the junior national champion and Olympic lifting. Yes,
48:07
Speaker 3: she is a powerhouse.
48:09
Speaker 2: Aside from the crossfitters you mentioned, who else are ZEBA athletes?
48:14
Speaker 3: We also have a bunch of UFC folks, so Nathan
48:17
Speaker 3: Diaz in the UFC, Demetrius Mighty Mouse Johnson to fighters,
48:23
Speaker 3: ore ZBA athletes. So you know what's neat about our
48:26
Speaker 3: brand is there are people who are just trying to
48:28
Speaker 3: do extreme things and sometimes that extreme thing is just
48:32
Speaker 3: fight kidney disease, or lose weight because I just had
48:36
Speaker 3: a baby, or keep my kids healthy. But you know,
48:40
Speaker 3: we're a brand that fuels those adventures for people of
48:43
Speaker 3: all walks of life, and that's what's so cool.
48:45
Speaker 1: So these crossfitters inspire you. Who else outside of that?
48:49
Speaker 3: You know, I'm inspired by a lot of folks. I'd
48:52
Speaker 3: say in the natural foods business, there is a number
48:54
Speaker 3: of people who have really changed the world who inspire me.
48:56
Speaker 3: There's a gentleman named Mark Reetzlof, and Mark is amazing.
49:01
Speaker 3: He started Horizon Organic Dairy, the largest branded organic dairy
49:06
Speaker 3: products company, and I'm a big Horizon fan. Mark also
49:09
Speaker 3: started an original natural foods business retailer called Alfalfaz, So
49:14
Speaker 3: he's been kind of in the early stage of many
49:16
Speaker 3: of these classic natural foods brands. He's a guy who's
49:19
Speaker 3: in his early seventies and he's still working, and he's
49:22
Speaker 3: still working to help the next generation of entrepreneurs kind
49:25
Speaker 3: of navigate this whole landscape. So folks like that inspire me.
49:29
Speaker 3: I had an opportunity to meet Bud Selig, who at
49:32
Speaker 3: the time was the outgoing commissioner of Baseball. Mister Steeling
49:36
Speaker 3: was eighty years old when we met, and just so incredible,
49:40
Speaker 3: scary guy to be negotiating with. I'm sure I don't
49:43
Speaker 3: know if I want to be across the table from him,
49:44
Speaker 3: but as an individual so inspiring, he had already decided
49:49
Speaker 3: what his next job would be. At eighty he was
49:51
Speaker 3: retiring from baseball and he was going to go teach
49:53
Speaker 3: a class at University of Wisconsin in the history of Baseball.
49:56
Speaker 3: I was like, Man, that's what I want to be
49:58
Speaker 3: like at eighty. I want to have my X challenge
50:00
Speaker 3: already mapped out.
50:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, wow, what a cool way to segue into retirement.
50:05
Speaker 3: Exactly exactly. And I think you know that when you
50:08
Speaker 3: realize to him, that's not even retirement, that's just life.
50:12
Speaker 1: Yeah.
50:13
Speaker 3: Life is going through and inspiring people and sharing what
50:16
Speaker 3: you've learned over the years.
50:17
Speaker 1: I love that. Okay, so we're winding down here.
50:20
Speaker 2: What I love to ask my guests, kind of as
50:24
Speaker 2: a closer of sorts, is if you had the opportunity
50:27
Speaker 2: to offer yourself a piece of advice back in nineteen
50:30
Speaker 2: ninety five, your brother just passed away, You're obviously going
50:33
Speaker 2: through a lot emotionally, and you're kind of re evaluating
50:35
Speaker 2: your entire career path.
50:37
Speaker 1: What advice would you offer Patty?
50:40
Speaker 3: Then I would tell myself that find the craziest risks
50:47
Speaker 3: that you can take and go after those. Yeah, And
50:51
Speaker 3: unfortunately I think I did end up there, but I
50:54
Speaker 3: might have done some other things differently in the meantime
50:57
Speaker 3: because I did, I think follow to some extent what
51:00
Speaker 3: people thought I should do versus what was really in
51:03
Speaker 3: my heart at times. And so you know, I would
51:06
Speaker 3: tell people to follow what's in your heart. And as
51:08
Speaker 3: long as you're doing that with all of your energy
51:10
Speaker 3: and all of your commitment, it's probably gonna work out well.
51:13
Speaker 1: I love it, Patti, Thanks so much for sitting down
51:15
Speaker 1: with me.
51:15
Speaker 3: Absolutely, thank you for having me amazing.
51:18
Speaker 2: Please take a moment to leave a quick review by
51:20
Speaker 2: clicking the link with the description to this episode. We
51:23
Speaker 2: all face multiple hurdles in life. I want to hear
51:25
Speaker 2: about yours. Reach out to me at Emily at Hurdle
51:28
Speaker 2: dot us. Connect with the podcast on Instagram and Twitter
51:31
Speaker 2: at Hurdle Podcast Patty. Where do they find you? Where
51:34
Speaker 2: do they find ZVA? Give me all the deeds.
51:37
Speaker 3: So they can go to any local grocery store, natural
51:40
Speaker 3: products store, ZVA dot com, ze Va dot com or
51:45
Speaker 3: Amazon dot com.
51:46
Speaker 1: And are you active on social media?
51:48
Speaker 3: Yes? Go to our Instagram at zvia.
51:50
Speaker 2: Perfect, Perfect, Awesome. I am at Emily Abadi, another hurdle conquered.
51:56
Speaker 2: Catch you guys next time.