Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / 6 quick questions with Jash Mehta, Founder of The Pop & Bottle (Part 2)

Transcript

6 quick questions with Jash Mehta, Founder of The Pop & Bottle (Part 2) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  Welcome back. Here are the six quick questions. So question number one is what's your why? Why do you wake up every day and put your energy into pop and bottle? It's really two reasons. I mean, there's more than two, but there's two that kind of really top the list. One is, you know,
• 0:29
  The North star for this product and this brand is making a moment in your day a little bit better, a little bit healthier, a little bit more intentional, a little bit more mindful, a little bit more enjoyable. And, you know, us kind of cleaning up the coffee routine. That was the challenge.
• 0:47
  the reason we started this and now the goal is really to kind of make it more accessible so we don't want it just to be in available to the small cluster of people that can benefit from it we really believe that access to better healthier products should be wider and broader and so the why really is how do we get this to scale to a point where we can put it in the hands of as many people that choose to choose it so that's kind of one big driver for why we want to grow the brand and
• 1:17
  And the second is, for me, it's genuinely still so exciting to be building a brand that feels authentic to us. You know, it's something that we cooked up literally in our little kitchen, our little brainchild. And it's evolved, it's grown, but it still has the essence of the friendship story that we started with, the problem that we are trying to solve, the community that we are trying to build.
• 1:46
  the experience that we were trying to create in the world that didn't exist. And just spreading that authentic story through our brand and having it, you know, hopefully impact other people in a positive way, in a small moment of joy. You know, we're not solving a huge problem, but we're solving a small thing that you do every day. That is really exciting to me and encouraging to me and something that kind of keeps me going on the journey. I love that. Question number two is what's been your favorite marketing moment so far?
• 2:16
  I think the most substantial for us was just the realization, and I talked about this already, but it was a realization that we could have our product do the work for us and that,
• 2:29
  our sales and marketing could kind of work hand in hand to grow the brand. And so that first Whole Foods launch that I talked about and seeing that, seeing that sales opportunity as a billboard, that was really kind of the piece that helped me understand how powerful that real estate was and is and how focusing on the distribution was really like, was really the monthly moment that we needed to kind of keep us going. It had an organic sell through once we got it on shelf.
• 2:56
  because of the strength of the products and the brand. And those were the marketing moments that we really kind of decided to go deep in. So that one launch, that was meaningful from a sales perspective, but it was really meaningful from a marketing perspective as well. Love that. Question number three is what's your go-to business resource that you can recommend, whether it's a book or a podcast or a newsletter that you're subscribed to?
• 3:24
  There's so much content that I love and I wish I had more time for all of it. But I really do like, so one book I read recently that really resonated for me was Atomic Habits. And this concept that we really are our habits. And the reason I really love it is because it's so everyday. When you think about goal setting and you think about milestones and where you want to be,
• 3:53
  It's so zoomed out, it's almost unachievable. But when you think about your day, you control it, it's your time, and it's just really a collection of habits, a collection of things you do, a collection of tasks. It's just process. And what I loved about this book is really this idea that you are your habits. Who do you want to manifest? Do you see yourself as a healthy person? If you see yourself as a healthy person,
• 4:20
  when you're making that next choice, what would a healthy person do? Choose that habit. And suddenly after doing that habitually or ritualistically for a few days in a row, you're doing the habits of a healthy person. Suddenly you've become a healthy person. I think that's really powerful. I love that book. I loved kind of thinking about it with our business in mind because it's described as habits in the book, but really the other lens of it is rituals. We're in the business of rituals, a coffee ritual, a tea ritual.
• 4:50
  And so there's just something cool about, you know, you are your rituals. So what rituals do you want to manifest? And, you know, how do you make your life a little bit more? How do you go where you want to go by changing the rituals in your life? This is a great segue into question number four, which is how do you win the day? And what are your rituals and habits that keep you feeling happy and successful and motivated?
• 5:19
  And this is, I think this is like the, at this stage of my life, this is kind of the most powerful way of winning the day is by saying no. And sometimes, sometimes the measure of a successful day for me is how many things did I say no to today? And the reason I say that is because our time is just the most valuable resource that we have. And it's...
• 5:43
  there are so many opportunities to say yes to so many things, whether it's a retail opportunity, but maybe it doesn't make sense, whether it's a meeting that you love to do, but it just isn't the right priority for that day. Prioritization and what to say yes to and what to say no to is just so key to getting to where you want to go. And for me, it's really hard. I love to say yes to people. It's really hard to say no. And that's just a culture of,
• 6:12
  training that I've had to build inside of me and I'm still working on today. But yeah, I think a successful day for me is one where I've set some boundaries. I've made some decisions on prioritization and I've said no to a bunch of things that were hard to say no to. God, I really resonate with that. I need to be better at boundaries. Question number five is what's been your worst money mistake in building the business and how much did it cost you?
• 6:40
  Oh, okay. We've had some real doozies, so feel free to share. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, gosh. I probably saw many things. We've definitely done things that just weren't the right time.
• 6:59
  I think we invested in PR at a stage. Yeah. Here's my example. It might not be the most exciting, but we invested in PR expensive PR at one point at stage, which just didn't make any sense for us as a business because we had no distribution. So, um, it was something that we actually should do and would have been fantastic to do, but when you're so tiny and national PR doesn't make sense because nobody in the other part of the country can, can find your product and you don't sell online.
• 7:26
  It was just kind of wrong prioritization at the wrong time. And so while it was very worthwhile at the right time, it's just, it was not worthwhile at the wrong time.
• 7:36
  Yeah, that would be one example. And I think that's such an important one, especially for PR, because PR, you can also get really caught up in the ego of wanting to see yourself. But then if it's not really driving meaningful results, it really can be a money waster. And it can also just be a money waster if you have, you know, you hire the wrong people to help you with that piece as well.
• 7:59
  So yeah, great, great bit of learning there. And question number six, last question. What is just a crazy story you can share from building your business that is good, bad, or ugly? Let's see. There's definitely been some ugly moments. I have a really ugly one, actually, that I can share, which I will never forget. Everyone survived. No one was hurt. Everyone survived. So we live to tell the tale.
• 8:29
  This is probably in the first year or 18 months of our business. We had this beautiful branded, we invested in a branded refrigerated vehicle, a refrigerated van. It had pop and bottle on it. We'd see it drive on the highway. It was exciting. And it was our delivery van. And it would track products up and down California. And I got a call early morning one day.
• 8:55
  from our driver, who, when I asked the call, I thought it was April Fool's, because I just couldn't believe what he was telling me. He gave me a call and he said, hey, I'm just, I'm on the side of the highway. I just pulled up and the van is in flames. And...
• 9:13
  uh i i thought he was joking until he sent me pictures to my phone of our pop and bottle we thought oh my god is this a metaphor for what's gonna happen with our business our beautiful black van with pop and bottle branding up in flames the logo up in flames the brand up in flames all the product inside it up in flames um it was dealt with everyone was safe but we drove out to uh to kind of
• 9:40
  look at our vehicle that we poured money into, that we got branded. And it was just a very low moment. It was all our product for a week of sales. It was this vehicle that we didn't have another one. This was our only one. And suddenly it was a huge setback in the business. We didn't have any product, we'd lost our vehicle. It was like so stabilizing at the time. And it was just one of those moments where
• 10:06
  You're like, well, do we have a business tomorrow? Because we don't, we've just lost a ton of stuff. We had to go through an insurance claim. That was not easy. It was just, it was just a crazy, it was just a crazy time. But it was one of those moments when you realize that you have so much strength inside you, you know, and you, you figure it out. You have phone problems and you figure it out.
• 10:29
  A rental, a late-night production session, calling our retailers to explain what happened, asking for some extra time to deliver, and we figured it out. But, yeah, it was one of the...
• 10:42
  It was an ugly moment. That is full on. Oh, my God. Wow. Yeah, that's a crazy one. That's a crazy story. Oh, my gosh. Josh, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your story with Pop and Bottle and sharing all the learnings and the crazy stories. Gosh, I'm like in awe of what you've built. Thank you so much. Thank you. It's been super fun to talk to you.
• 11:12
  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.
• 11:36
  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.
• 11:59
  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.
• 12:15
  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.
• 12:39
  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.
• 13:02
  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.