Latest / Ready To Drink Podcast / You Can't Stop The Will Of The Consumer | Paulo Sobral, General Manager at Chuck It! Beverages

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You Can't Stop The Will Of The Consumer | Paulo Sobral, General Manager at Chuck It! Beverages · Ready To Drink Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Paulo Silbral, I'm general manager of Chuck It Beverages.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: So, Paulo, give me a little uh give me a little overview on uh on Chuck It Beverages.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: When did you when did you found it?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then what is it that you guys do?
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we got started a little bit earlier this year.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: So Chuck It is just simply an LLC.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: And currently we have two hemp beverage brands in market.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: One is Nine Loco and the other one is uh Mamitas.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And we launched those in a very unusual time to launch hemp beverages.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, you and your audience know what's going down there, but uh, we're being very methodical about which markets we enter.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're optimistic, we're gonna get some clarity.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I firmly believe, and I've invested my career into this category the last 10 years, that it's only inevitable that this beverage is a huge part of adult beverages, this category I'm saying.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we have contingency plans in place for every possible scenario, whether it's an extension, a proper bill being passed that regulates this, like a real adult beverage category, or if we go on a pause on anything above 0.4 milligrams in November, which is probably the likely scenario because Congress moves at the speed of Congress.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: But but yeah, right now we we are in uh Florida, Florida, uh South Carolina, which I'm sitting in right now, Illinois and Texas, uh, with two the two brands and excited to launch more cool things.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: But first and foremost, we're looking for some clarity on hemp beverages.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: So you said uh you've been in this category for 10 years.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: What were you doing prior to founding Chuck It this year?
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well man, well, 10 years I'm talking about cannabis industry.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I joined the medical cannabis industry in California in 2016.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Prior to that, I was at PepsiCo for almost six years.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Very nice.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and we can get into this, but the medical cannabis industry was an experience I'll probably never have again in my life that I'm really grateful for.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: I have yet to I have yet to interview anyone that like comes out of the medical cannabis and is like, I'm going back.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, I I don't want to go back necessarily, but it was a thrill and every day felt like an adventure.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas Pepsi, you know, you put on your polo and you walk into Walmart and the wall you have the same conversation kind of day in, day out, and you drop like 10 pallets without even sweating, you know, because of the first of the month is coming around.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: It was a lot different than now I'm selling to a 21-year-old cannabis enthusiast who's never had a different job in their life, and they want to smoke joints in the parking lot and to break bread.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you're you don't never know if you're more afraid of the cops, your customers, and but yeah, it's and it's quasi-legal, and people were getting too high on their own supply during work.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And but it's what was really cool about it is back then everybody was super passionate about cannabis for a lot of different reasons.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Even if it was, they just thought I they make a ton of money off of it.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: So every conversation was engaging, every conversation was different.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: But no, I don't want to go back because it's I I I do I crave some level of professionalism in my day-to-day.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And we couldn't even call it an industry back then.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: We had to call it a collective, and customers were patients, and it was just confusing, but it was ways to get people things they deserve or they want, right?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: You kind of had to use the permission you're given, and that was medical only back then.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: But let's be honest.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, let's I and I I was a I'm a patient and everything like that.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: It was ex it was an exploit a necessary exploitation.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that that is a proper word because you literally, when this was created, when these everybody had to be like, we're focused on the patients only, we're focused on health, when really at the end of the day, it was a gateway to break through the wall to then eventually lead to recreational.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: So the intention, while the intention was for the patient, there was a back-end secondary intention, which was eventually to serve the public at large.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, it was it was a bit of tweaking and and word massaging to to get the things going that needed to happen.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that you being on the outside, I can I can comfortably say this to you as well as I've said this to others in the medical space.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like the hypocrisy of them then fighting to suppress the hemp beverages is the biggest irony of the world.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's you you don't even know.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've been called a traitor somehow, but my mission, like when I entered industry, so I I was a late user to cannabis, like two years before I entered the industry, and I went down this rabbit hole and researched the history of prohibition, and really like that's what got me passionate about it.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, people deserve access to this plant, whether they have cancer or whether they just want to hang out with their friends on the weekend, their adults.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: But that's like, how do we get more cannabis to more people?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I was in this heavily, I was in California as a transition to the heavily regulated, unprofitable business that exists there today.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Hemp was not the enemy if your your goal was to serve people cannabis.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Hemp was a vehicle to do that.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Hemp and cannabis are the same plant, it's just a regulatory distinction.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, you use the word exploitative, but like look at Uber and Airbnb, right?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like Uber said they're not a taxi service, they're ride hailing, and that's the way they got people a better experience from getting point A to point B is not having to pay those taxi lab uh cab permits and whatnot.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and eventually the consumers became the advocates.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Same thing with hemp, right?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was, I would have bet a lot of money that Texas was going to go through with that ban last year.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then consumers, in my opinion, is what won over the governor.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: We did do some private lobbying, mainly the collective industry, but when you get hundreds of thousands of letters in Texas saying how cannabis changes your life or hemp or whatever the hell you call it, like, yeah, that's what it's about.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I think it's inevitable.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like Mitch McConnell and the vocal minority might might have uh created a ton of friction.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: But it's only inevitable that we serve people.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And anyone who's on the cannabis side that's anti-hemp, if they're being honest, is they're just protecting all this money they've paid for a license that now isn't as valuable because people can buy hemp in a gas station here in South Carolina where I sit today.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's also it's it's the I'm gonna say it, and I sit I I'm fine with it being in public, is it's it's the immaturity or the short-sightedness of greed.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: And and that and that sounds heavy, but when you really think about it, like in Kraft Beer, I that's my my history prior to all this was in craft beer.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: We dealt with this where craft breweries hated Miller Coors or Kraft Breweries hated Anheuser Bush.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: But yet, I would sit down with dozens of my brands that I manage in the wholesale space in Pennsylvania and have to sit down and explain to them if you don't have Blue Moon and Shock Top on the shelf, nobody's ever gonna learn about your IPA.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't have hemp beverages on liquor store shelves and in retail, publicly accessed outside of the dispensary channel, you're never gonna get that extra audience that you need to grow your dispensary business.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: The fact that and that is a lack and immaturity of understanding business and how consumers work, which is the biggest irony of what these the dispensary channels are doing and fighting against them, is you don't actually know your fucking consumer if you're gonna suppress your consumer's choice.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you don't actually understand how a consumer continues their journey.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is they come into it thinking everybody's a lifelong cannabis user and understands everything, and they're just gonna walk right in and sign up.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not the case.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: They don't understand how to convert non-users.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you hit the nail on the head.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: So one of my early clients, so when I started focusing on beverages, it was 2019.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: I was a founding salesperson at a company called Vertosa that supplies the liquid emulsions that go into a lot of these drinks.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And and can CANN, a brand you know, I'm sure most of your audience does.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: When they walked into my office, our office, and they brought in their cases, it was the first time where I saw a drink that was positioned as a drink with cannabis in it.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And they launched in California and they spent a lot of time building a cannabis beverage market, low-dose cannabis beverage market in California dispensaries.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I joined them only when they weren't went to Minnesota and wanted to expand to hemp, but I was still helping them in California get their contribution margin up.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And when I had a we gave California dispensaries a chance, and what you just said there is if you go into dispensaries in uh in California back then, uh I bet you it's still true today, they're all selling to people who are consuming a lot of cannabis throughout the day, and they're looking to get the cheapest possible cannabis.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: So you can get the and so that's how they promote.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the largest selection of vape pens at the lowest prices.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: But to what you were saying, like the person who's looking for a drink is looking for a drink, not necessarily cannabis.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I like I have a ton of relatives that are anti-cannabis that are now drinking the cannabis drinks and having gummies.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because it looks like something that they're used to.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't look like even a cannabis product.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like you the you hold it up and it looks like a liquor bottle or sometimes uh uh an FMB or something, RTD or something like that, right?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: So it's more approachable and more accessible, and that person's not gonna walk into dispensary.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Some will graduate to like wanting to smoke flowered and whatnot.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it opens up the addressable market for cannabis to people that are never gonna do it.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And in California, we've tried to do some initiatives where we pass that tax savings into the pool that the dispensaries hold a burden to.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: So so we've tried.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the one thing I'll push back on that you said is there is some greed, but it's not all greed.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Some of it's just like small mom and pop operators that unfortunately have bet their life savings on California cannabis retail making a difference in their life.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so I feel some empathy for them, but I'll rephrase, I'll rephrase actually, and I'll do this, I'll leave this in here.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'll take greed out and I will rephrase.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: I hear you on that.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'll say protectionism.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Protectionism, yeah, but what I say, it's unfortunately it's a sunk cost, as callous as that sounds.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you're not gonna be.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: I hate the word gateway, but it is.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you're not giving that entry-level consumer a product that they normalize and understand.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: You're hitting the nail on the head.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what is making things.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, yes, we can say it's taxes, we can say it's all these things, but at the end of the day, you can always, I mean, in the alcohol industry, you overcome taxes, you overcome hurdles by volume.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's what everybody wants to point at the different regulatory external factors, but really it's a volume game, and you're not achieving volume by not expanding audio.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: So like if I'm at a sporting event, right, and I want a TC drink, like it's not like I was gonna go to the dispensary later on that day and buy the same drink.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's just different occasions where you can hit people with the drinks, and that like it's not even my favorite way to medicate necessarily.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I like smoke smoking, grinding my own flour, all that.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: But I I got into it because I did see the potential to hit the mass audience.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: And coming from Pepsi, I know how much people love their drinks and how it's a part of our identities, where you know, like uh uh flowers to me is like whole coffee beans.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like you get the whole coffee bean, you grind it, and you put it in your French press.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're kind of agnostic to what brand it is, like you just are judging the quality of the beans.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's how it is with the flower, where the drinks, it's part of our identity, it's a branding opportunity.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: So it was really a way for me to bridge my passion for the plant and then my background in and sales and marketing and large beverage CPG execution to see how the drinks themselves can change the world if the regulations allow it to.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it's also like when you step out of, I'm the same way on the personal level.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that's why like my my statements are because I care about the industry as a whole, and this infighting is just suppressing everything and holding everything back.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the other thing is you just nailed it too, like from a branding aspect.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: Let's say like I'm a consumer, I go to the dispensary, I you grab this can.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: That can, let's say, let's use can, for example, or Pepsi.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: That can, that literal can, has a branding on it, has a story on it, on the actual vessel.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: That vessel sits in your fridge, it sits on your shelf, it goes to your trash can, it's in your hand during the whole process.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: You go to a dispensary, I've been, I've been a lifelong, lifelong advocate, user, everything like that in the marijuana industry.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't tell you how many times, in its majority, more often than not, that I'm buying something, and then all of a sudden later I'm like, because I'm, you know, when it comes to flour, it goes into a jar, it goes into a humidor, it goes into the different things to preserve it, because I'm not going to drink or s or you know, use the entire thing in one sitting.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: On the same time, if I'm using a vape or anything like that from the dispensary world, majority of these brands don't even put their brands on the carts.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: So what you're doing is you're taking the bag, you're taking it out of the bag, you're putting it in your own personal inventory or collection or whatever you use, and then that brand's lost.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then what happens is you go to smoke it and a month or two in and you're sharing it with somebody and they're like, man, I really love this.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: Which one is it?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: 90% of the time, I have no clue.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I and there's different times where I'm manually creating Excel files like with dates and everything like that to try to remember, okay, the yellow one's this.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: There's other things I came up with the most genius idea ever, and I'll give it to anybody that wants to run with it.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: If it already exists, that's great.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: Where it was like creating vape label makers where like literally you could take the take it and then know, and you could put tasting notes on it so you remember what brand it is.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because I mean, admit it, how many times have you bought a vape and everybody's like, that's a fantastic thing?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, I don't know which one it is.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so that was my start was vapes, and honestly, I don't vape anymore, but but we did put our brand on it.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: So not many do though.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: So compliments to that, yeah.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: No, so that's how we got ahead is uh our brand's name was Bloom Farms, and we gave meals back to the needy.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: We called ourselves a one-for-one company, so we donated the food banks and donated our time and money.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, we we were uh we were trying to brand vapes back in 2016 in the medical days where there was some branding going on, like there was another brand called Brass Knuckles that was doing well.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: And but it was about like, you know, it was all catering to like that heavy 20-year-old dude consumer.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: 80% up, and what's the what's the buy of the BOGO and the 25% off today?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but even you're saying it, right?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like like our branding outside the box and the packaging, which was beautiful, was a tiny logo on that.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that that's exactly the funniest part is I I was always impressed.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm still impressed to this day, like the quality of the external packaging.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, that is such a temporary, it's a one-day thing.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: You buy it and it goes right in the trash for a majority of people.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but it was such a good margin business because we were all buying our, I don't think I'm disclosing any secrets here, but we were all buying our hardware from China.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: We did our own extraction, which was a point of differentiation.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we did do some single origin productions where we uh we sourced from one farm, one strain, and then put it on the outside packaging, but not on the cartridge itself.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: So we need your label maker and connoisseurs like you that really did care about it.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: But that gave me a talking point to the bud tenders because the bud tenders were the geek keepers to the retail uh to the consumers.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because to your point, like consumers don't know any brand.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: I had this great thing last time.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, we're out of stock, which was another thing that drove me crazy.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: So the the stores didn't even keep consistent supply, we're coming from Pepsi.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like Walmart was out of uh stock on one skew at 2 a.m.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: and they're blowing up my phone.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's that basic foundational out of sight, out of mind, and nobody really knows it.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that's like what I don't miss about the medical days.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, come on, look, I know cannabis is medicine and all of that, but we gotta put some CPG rigor around this thing, or it's when none of us are gonna ever make money, or we're just gonna be little hobby, hobby business people.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: And but it's it's come a long way since then, but um, but yeah, to back to the broader topic.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: The enemy right now is bad regulations all around.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: The stigmas are erasing.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: So bad regulations for the most part is what's making it hard for be people to be unprofitable.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's what's keeping the access away from the consumers.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: If we get good regulation, that sensical regulation where people can make money and consumers are protected and integrity is protected, then this thing is just gonna take over the world.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: I fully agree.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I I think it's it's a lot of conversations that I have as well.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm I know I'm picking on the recreational and medical industry when make fun of this, but I'm having the same conversations with alcohol distributors, retailers, and manufacturers.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: The fact that there are some, the wine and spirits of America and different ones that are getting behind everything and helping support this regulation.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: But I just had an interview yesterday with uh with two distributors out of North Carolina who are who are kind of just blown away that their trade that their entire organization or industry as a whole did not does not currently see this as the bolt-on opportunity to save their own industry and to think that a year or two from now, let's say this, like if I'm a I'm a I'm in the alcohol business and I'm a distributor, brand, whatever, if like if I'm spending this year blaming hemp beverages as the death of alcohol, which is what a lot of them are doing, or or they're not, or they're not, or they're abs abstaining from the advocacy and they're choosing to be silent and watching everything play out.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Those are both the same to me.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Suppressing it as well as being silent right now are the same in this moment in time.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: What the problem is, and I'm I'm trying to explain this to them, is a year from now and two years from now, let's say the hemp ban goes through and it's all gone.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody's going back to drinking the way that they drank five, 10 years ago.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: So what are you when a year from now and two years from now and three years from now, you're gonna have to lay off your employees and start to pare down your business?
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because guess what?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: They're gonna go find it somewhere else, they're gonna DTC it somewhere, they're gonna find they're not going back to drinking.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm three and a half years sober from alcohol and I've been working in the industry for 22 years.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm never leaving the industry for the same as you.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: I love it, I love the people, I love the culture.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: But if hemp beverages go away, I'm not going back to drinking again.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's you know, because then what are you gonna blame then in two years?
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: You what you're gonna blame GLP ones, you're gonna blame online gambling, you're gonna blame because actually, in actuality, it's all of those things that are contributing to the decrease of alcohol.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's not hemp beverages, it's a myriad of societal changes.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: And like we talked about in the very beginning, it's the consumer.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And if we're if you're not following the consumer and you're following your own business plan and you're ignoring the consumer change, it's inevitably the demise of what's going on.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: 100% agree with you there.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's no stop in the world of the consumer.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: The the analogy I like to use is uh, you know, that when I was in high school, Napster came out.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, man.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was the coolest thing ever, right?
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like we're the same age then.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's exactly the same.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Lime wire and Napster, man.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, like what so I obviously I like the free music aspect of it back then because I was a broke 17-year-old or however old I was.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: And but what I also liked was like all my music was on my computer and organized, and I can like type in three words and then that pops up versus having to shuffle through all my laser discs and CDs looking for a certain song.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: So like I just like the experience of it, and I think more consumers like me were like, we'll pay for them the superior experience.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: This gives us access to it.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: But the record industry initially, like Dr.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Dre and the Metallica guy, I think, was fighting against it.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Lars Aldrich, yeah.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, but like you can't stop the will of the consumers.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Same thing with the hemp beverage.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I the one thing I want to ask you, because you have a lot of conversations, I have a lot of conversations.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think the people suppressing it are just making sure that the rules are gonna be in their favor versus the wild west that it is right now?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's two two philosophy, two schools of thought in those people.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: There's some that are suppressing it because they're afraid, and this happened during Kraft Beer.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like everybody fought, like there, the amount of regulations that came up and different laws, like there used to be laws in certain states that came up after Kraft Beer was like, oh, you can't sell beer over 8%, or you can't sell beer over six.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like I we forget about all those nuances that craft we dealt with in craft beer.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: And also from a competitive standpoint, you know, Anne Eiser Busch, Miller Coors, and I was the one selling both.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: I had Miller Coors and I had all the Kraft guys.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: So like all the line extensions that came up, where it was like Blue Moon Lime, Shock Top Line, Shop Top Orange, well, everybody was like, oh, they're being creative.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: No, they're taking up the real estate so that they because they know that they just like you know in Pepsi, if Pepsi comes in and says to the grocery store, hey, we got a new Pepsi lime, well, the grocery store is going to automatically say, all right, here's 17 slots of the same skew.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: What it was was we pay for it.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: It was back to the protectionism part.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it was like it was block and tackle.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what it was.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it was like we they weren't overtly trying to suppress craft beer, but they were overtly trying to keep the door closed on certain shelves.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that there's another piece to it, though, that I think is more nefarious.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I really think that nefarious part is I firmly believe from a venture capital investment, mergers acquisition standpoint, I believe that some people are doing this to drive down the value of these brands, let the great framework be grown so that they can then acquire those brands at a cheaper price and then restart the infrastructure that's already built.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's two schools of thought there, and both are working obviously against us as a greater good.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I probably subscribe to a lot of that.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I haven't fully developed my thoughts, but I do think it's inevitable that every big alcohol company is going to be in this category.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: I have some intimate knowledge, like some had me under NDA when I was a full-time consultant five years ago that haven't entered the category yet, but they were kicking the tires back then.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: So then some have told me explicitly, we will enter when we get federal clarity to do so.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone says that, and I'm always laughing because I'm like, you look at like constellation brands, they did like a four and a half billion dollar investment in Canada to Canopy Growth Corporation.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's a lot of money.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: And and Constellation is, you know, for anybody that doesn't know, that's Corona, Modello, like all those different things.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yet in the in the United States, you would think that they would be standing right next to this barbell.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: You think that and then and then you look at Sam Adams, you know, Boston Beer Company, a publicly traded company.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: You've not heard a peep out of them about craft beer about hemp hemp beverages in the United States.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: What do they have?
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: They have teapot in Canada.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: And what are they doing?
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: They're sitting back waiting for everybody to do the work so they can slide right in when it's all ready and and blow the dust off.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I've I've had some conversations with these companies that are aren't against it, but they're being passive.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I if you know, if it's me and my business and my passion around it, like I think when you see what's inevitable, the earlier you get behind it, the better it is for your greed your business if you want to be greedy.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: But they also don't want to distract from staying flat or growing while beer's declining.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I get that aspect of it too.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I I think like if we think about think about what the distributor's primary goal is, just boil it down to one sentence.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: I say it's profit per stop.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you get that by liquid delivery or you know, whatever's on your truck.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: The retailer's incentive is profit per square inch.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: So what gets what's turning?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: At a certain margin.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I the brands are probably the ones that on the alcohol side that are feeling the most threatened because it's hard for you to pivot from how you build your business when consumer trends are showing declines.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, it's again, we got to take care of the consumers because consumers are the ones that pay the tax money that the politicians should be serving.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the way I've always thought about it.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's why I haven't gone deep into launching my own business in this category until we do get some solid ground.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I feel for again, like everyone who's invested into whether it's cannabis, hemp, and you know, I hate to say I might agree with some of your nefarious takes there, but they're in a everyone's vulnerable that's in this category.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it's and it sucks because they've built awareness around it.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to become mainstream, it's going to become legitimate.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: When and how, I s we don't know.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: But that's going to be off their work, and whether their company or not makes it, that that's hard to determine right now, or whether their effort was worth it on a personal financial gain level is yet to be determined as well.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: But it it's it's uh it's God's work, at least, you know.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's it is, and it's it's it's something that like I'm a very big, obviously in sobriety.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I do a lot of control what we what you can control type stuff.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so I would be lying if I didn't say that there are very dark moments during every day of every week, and then there's very bright moments.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: And at the end of the day, to get me out of these dark moments is it's control what you can control.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it's what you're doing right now, and you're doing exactly that.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: You're not going it necessarily full board to like you're mitigating your risk in a very smart way while still participating.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of people struggle, and that's kind of what we're talking about, is how do you participate while also maintaining your forward momentum of your business?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: Because essentially it can be overwhelming.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because in that sense, you're really you're juggling balls at the same time, you're spinning plates on your head.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's what you that's what we're doing right now.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like, and that's that's never sustainable.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the piece that frightens me for myself as well as everybody else, to be very honest, is how long can you spin the plate and juggle the balls?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe at the same time, you might even add, let's throw a unicycle in there while we're riding at the same time.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and the fact that it's so hard is one of the things that keeps me going, because I have friends that have left and now they're in more mainstream beverage companies or back in back in alcohol or whatever.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: And like their jobs feel easy relative to what they've experienced.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: So they built those muscles.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: But again, it's easy for me to say because I haven't put my money behind it.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: I've just put my time behind it, my time invested is positive because one, I'm advancing cannabis awareness.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: And like I think like I I kind of got burnt out of doing government level advocacy years ago.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: And now my advocacy is talking to normal consumers.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's like I like I get a lot of inspiration by the gay rights movement because we they did it a lot of different ways.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I to me, I think the m the best momentum they got is when they're just out and open, being normal with their significant other.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like at a restaurant, holding hands, whatever it is, like just normalizing it versus being in the face of the the minority that's gonna go to their grave thinking you're evil, right?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: So that like I just again I got I go to parties, I bring the drinks, I don't put it in anyone's faces, I wait for them to approach me and ask me questions.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: And my wife, like, she's she's been around me while I've been doing this for 10 years and have thought I've been annoying or way too passionate about it multiple times.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: But she's come very much around like just this past year, because now some of her close mom friends have gotten into the low dose drinks that I have around and ask me questions.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: And she's like, oh, well, he's not just a weird stoner, like my friends are drinking less wine and drinking this.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: So that's how I think we destigmatize it, and at least that's my role in doing this now.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm grateful for people like you, uh, friends at Kaba and Beverage Alliance, uh, farmer advocacy groups and the alcohol groups that have gone behind it because they they know that game of playing politics, and you can do that and not get worn out.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: But to me, it's just about making cool things, selling it to normal people, and that's the role I play.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I know, like on a business standpoint, like I might lose my job if this is all illegal.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I I'm confident I'll find a way to be of service to the brother CPG beverage industry from the skills I've gained fighting to build this category.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's the thing, is like I I want everybody that's listening as well.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna speak to the audience while we're talking here.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: That that right there, what you just said, is the biggest thing for everybody to understand.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: I've been I've been through this, I've been solopreneur for 18 years.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: I started my business in 08.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: And being a solopreneur, you know, I mean, I'm so I'm assuming you're you don't have like 50 people working for you right now.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it is lonely and it is it can be dark sometimes and it can be an echo chamber of your own inside thoughts.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: But the thing everybody I'm gonna connect with you on that.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: And but I I got what I can tell you is it doesn't get better.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: You only learn how to understand it over time.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's what everybody thinks that oh, if I just make more money, it'll stop.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't ever stop.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: And and and uh I've been nearly bankrupt multiple times and I've I've had biggest successes in my life at different times.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's all the same.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: You're your thoughts are still your thoughts, and you're still a solopreneur.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, I love being a solopreneur for what you just said.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: These skills, everybody needs to understand, if you're a founder that's scared today or you're wondering what the hell's gonna happen in November, if you can survive mental health and stay grounded for the next few months as well as you did in the past to moving forward, you are an asset to any other industry when you go forward in the CPG space.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: If you can build a brand and make money, even if you're not being profitable, but just getting people to purchase your product.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's the other thing.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: We're focused on profitability more so than we're focused on the success of the buy-in.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because exactly like you just said, you didn't walk around and sell your my your wife's friends, uh, you know, selling them stuff and pushing them all that you did the different model, which is what I do.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: I show I don't sell.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: People are like, oh, you're a salesman.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, no.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: I I communicate and I broadcast, and those that want to buy in, I welcome them.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: Those that don't, maybe the next thing that I broadcast out will be theirs.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: I don't stress about it.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now, 10 years ago and eight and 15 years ago in the beginning of my business, 100%.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: I stressed out about it all the time.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh, they don't like me, they don't love me, they don't this, they don't that.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: But now I'm I'm a broadcast king and I'm like, hey, if it if it if it connects with you, let's talk.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: If not, moving on to the next time.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'll broadcast out a couple weeks from now.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and that's that's the that's the way that I I think that too many times, and and you can speak to this, and this is not a a dig on Pepsi or any large thing, but sometimes you just said it too.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot different than you know, going down the Pepsi route where you can jam 10 pallets in at the end of the month and you know there's guaranteed things.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: This is fighting for every case.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: If you can fight for every case and keep your sanity and still continue to grow your audience, even if you're not profitable, that concept alone makes you a valuable asset to anybody else afterwards.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like I always say, if you can take somebody from who are you and what what does your company do till you have a deal, then you can work for yourself the rest of your life.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: And like at Pepsi, I was you're the Pepsi guy.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: I walk in with my branded shirt and they stop what they're doing to talk to you.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: I was the beer guy, yeah.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: We had a brand called the beer ace, and they were like, hey ace, that's what it was.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's it's way more fulfilling to me because I wanted to feel like I built something.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so I like this knife fight in the street aspect of it.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like, but it is like I I found out about myself.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: I hate losing more than I like winning, and you lose more often than you win when you're starting something out.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I also say strength is an ad adaptation to discomfort, so it's uncomfortable to keep losing.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: And when you sit there in that sucking suckage of it, like what would I do differently to like to your point?
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: What do you control?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Control what you can control.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then you use that as learnings for future opportunities.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: But that that's also where cannabis helps me is like sometimes when I do get dark, are probably sometimes where I gravitate towards it.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: I hate to say I depend on it because I don't, but it helps me sort it out to see things for what they are and not what they appear to be.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, I'll go down this rabbit hole of like, oh, you screw that up, you could have done this better.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: And like I'm my worst critic in those scenarios, but instead cannabis kind of strips away the emotion of it because I'm also like people don't notice about myself because I try to keep this stoic exterior as an adaptation.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm a really sensitive person and in tune to everything that's going on and a pretty emotional person on top of that.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: So cannabis helps me like strip all that away and again see things for what the facts are.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like this person said no for things out of your control.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like right now, trying to sell single hemp drinks, and almost all the stores I went into in Florida yesterday are only selling four packs, and they have their objections, and even if I overcome their objections, they're still saying no just because they haven't stuck in their head that they don't sell singles.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're telling me it's theft.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: But somebody walk and then they use an example of somebody walking out a case with 175 ml Patron bottles.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, well, they walked out of a case, so I don't think they walked out of the case because it's singles, they just ripped you off.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: And but so but then like, uh well, this person just doesn't want to give me a win right now and then have to move on with your day.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: But but yeah, it's it's it I I I I do miss uh going to work and then going home and not thinking about work.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I do miss that aspect of it.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: You don't like the 1 a.m.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: sweats at it, you know.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's like when you would when you wake up in these hotel rooms, you're like, where am I again?
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, this is what I gotta accomplish tomorrow.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, I gotta do that because the yesterday was a net negative, you know.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: And but but yeah, Pepsi, like the my main job was to be better in the cocaine, and that's not hard to do, you know.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: So it it got to be pretty boring.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: So it's I'm I might be a lunatic, but I I love this life, you know, and I love building things.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: The just the still the only thing I can't overcome on what it what drives me crazy doing this work is how much the government controls our state.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's the it's the bane of my existence right now, is like is the fact that here's the thing we can control what we can control, but then when the uncontrollables are number one, uneducated, number two, misaligned in uh I will throw the greed out there on this conversation, the the greediness of what's goes on in there, where it's like, okay, I'll help your industry, but you got to do this over here.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, why are we not?
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: I thought we lived in America.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: I thought I grew up with Inc.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: magazine and entrepreneur magazine where it was the American dream, and you would support growth and you would support regulation, not wait for, you know, special projects lobbying funding in order to make it happen for some other project that serves your person.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like if that is the that is the most the the corruption, I don't want to get on the soapbox, but I will just say it.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the corruption that exists has always existed.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: Let me make this very clear.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: But the overt, performative corruption that is now just in your face because of the lack of care of repercussions and accountability makes my stomach turn daily and keeps me up till three, four in the morning on most nights in the past couple weeks for sure.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I've changed my stance on government working in this industry and you know, being based in California, I was working for Sierra Nevada Brewing and I was I was doing business development for their Copac Center that they just opened up.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: So we we were I obviously with my connections, I wanted to produce a lot of hemp beverages um for promising brands.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: And we actually had a production run lined up in August of 2023 for a third-party brand that I won't name who they were, but uh Governor Newsom banned uh hemp in September of 2023, a couple weeks before that production.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: He declared it an emergency.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I watched a press conference, and me being super deep into the space, he pretty much is up there lying to me as a taxpayer, which pretty which made me question what else I've been lied to about.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I I saw a really, really skilled speaker, and you would almost believe everything he's saying if you didn't know any better.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: And they were using fear tactics about kids buying the products when they bought a bunch of products at a a a retailer that only sells to 21 plus.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: So and and then he uh he would post on his Instagram pictures of of the drinks saying intoxicating drinks shouldn't be available to kids as it's next to some wine products.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, any anyways, it's that kind of a Meanwhile, like let's be clear.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I I sat in I'm not gonna share his name, uh Congressman's office a couple months ago, and I brought up what you just said right there.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: And he said that exact same thing to me.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, you know, you're marketing to kids and this and this, and I was ready.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I pull up my phone, I'm like, listen, I'm 20 years in the alcohol business, and I started pulling up Welch's hard grape juice, uh, Arizona hard.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm pulling up all the things.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, let me tell you what, this summer, and this is back in the spring, I said, this summer, that's being sold on the shelf.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now he's like, well, they wouldn't, a kid wouldn't go into the liquor store, so it's not confusing.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: I said, yeah, but that's the point in where you don't understand the logic and lifestyle and psychology of your own constituents.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: I said, it's not about the liquor store.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, a 12-year-old's not gonna buy that off the shelf in a liquor store because the liquor store is not gonna do it.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: What's gonna happen is it's gonna be at a barbecue, and either number one, the 12-year-old's gonna grab it out of the cooler at their friend friend's barbecue, or the reverse where it's not intentional, and that kid is gonna grab the Welch's hard thinking it's his Welchess, because if you're buying Welch's hard or Arizona hard or whatever uh Sunday, Sunny D hard, you're buying that because you're also buying the regular for your your your the regular is probably in your fridge.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like nobody's an IPA drinker and then all of a sudden it's gonna be like I'm drinking sunny D hard.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like you're already a Sunny D fan when you're going to the Sunny D hard.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's just the psychology of consumers.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: So to act like them being together, or the fact that you want to say that, like, oh, Skittles, it's the Skittles that are covered in hemp.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you guys have publicly traded and national conglomerate companies that are doing it right now, and you are not even caring.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: He was he had no clue when I showed him those photos that that even existed.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, you gotta be kidding me right now.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I'm a parent, so I get it.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, so I I don't I don't need I'm not gonna count on the government to keep my kids safe from drugs, I'll put it that way.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: I I have to do that as a parent, and I have to then guess what?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: They'll be at a friend's house where I have no control over anything, right?
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just like we did.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: We all hated gin growing up because that was what we stole out of the liquor cabinet.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like I didn't I didn't drink until I was 19.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't smoke weed, tobacco, none of it, and never did any kind of hard drug in my life.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: I did MDMA like five years ago, maybe first time, but it wasn't because I was worried I'd get arrested or any of that.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was playing basketball in high school and I thought that would all be bad for my health, right?
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: And like the only reason I started drinking is because I wanted more confidence around women.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, and I was my parents weren't the ones really that talked me into it out of it, but I want to educate my kids on the harms of things and the decisions they make.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what you were saying earlier.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: Anytime you regulate and restrict things at a certain level, you're you're hurting small business.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: I firmly believe that.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: Look at the banking crisis of 2008, where all those big banks failed and then the government bailed them out.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: So then the government's response was to uh make put more regulations around opening up a bank.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I've I've put up these studies on my LinkedIn newsletter before on an article I wrote.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: But after those regulations went on, you need an army of consultants and lawyers to open up a bank now.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: So now you have less banks opening up than before the banking crisis.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: So now there's more consolidation around big banks.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not the only scenario where we see it repeatedly.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: The more government gets involved, the more it hurts small business.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because now you have all these arduous regulations that only make make it harder to be profitable.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: But again, you need a lot of people that are legal counsel advising you on those regulations as a result.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's reasonable consumer safety standards for drinks, it's super simple.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: Microbial contamination, making sure the label says what it is, proper warning labels, age gating.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's already solved.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's a ton of bills out there already on it, and then tax us appropriately.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: How hard is it beyond that?
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we already have people in place to regulate adult beverages.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, and to your point, there's more adult beverages that are more attractive to kids.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: So there's no logical reason why we can't figure this out.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I mean as innocent as it is, I mean, the craft beer industry, majority of those things are cartoons and stuff like that anyway, too, you know?
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, so so what I want to know though is like, how do you how do you still have so much enthusiasm for keeping up with the politics when I've and a lot of my friends do, and I've kind of burned out from it.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: Again, for me, I think it's like how do I put my energy best?
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's making cool stuff that normal people like.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: But how do you keep yourself going when you're talking to these politicians?
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'll be honest with you.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's draining, and it's it is draining, and I don't mean this lightly.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean this as like uh going for like hill climbs with the HBA a couple months ago.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's hard for me, it's hard for me to put the facade on.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm not I used to be the corporate Nate and then personal Nate.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I took that away a couple years ago.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: And like it was, and if you go back five years ago into this, even the sh uh these episodes and all the, not this show specifically, but I had other shows prior.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: You can hear me differently.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like I used to do cheesy intros and I did the template-based stuff that you had to do, and I like had questions in advance and I read them through, and you could tell I was reading and all these things.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: And now a couple years ago, like mine was a mine was uh a mushroom journey.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I did a hero's dose one night in the beginning of my sobriety.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: I was six months in and I was freaking out that I wasn't gonna make it.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I always got to 10 months, I tried four or five times.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: I would get to 10 months and then I would fall back, and then it would be a couple years before I'd pick back up again and get sober.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I was uh I was at a uh I was at a lecture by Paul Stamitz, who is like one of the leading researchers in silos.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: And he, yeah.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so he uh he did this lecture series and and uh it was all you know, tons of slides, very data-centric, very academic, and that gets me in.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to speak like debates, you want to give me facts, you want to talk about non-opinions, give me evidence, I'm in.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a very academic person.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: And when he said that, he he said a point where he was like, the the probabilities of uh suppressing smoking and drinking and opiate addiction through a hero's dose, and he puts it up on the screen and he's literally like, here's what you got to do.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: You stack the, it's called a stamina, it was, I think it was like stacking, stamina stacking or something like that, he called it.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, man, that's amazing.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, I've been wanting to quit, I quit drinking for six months, but I'm here at this at this lecture.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm on the brink of like I knew I was on the brink of breaking my sobriety.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden he puts this up, and my buddy's sitting next to me, my buddy Jordan, and he reaches in the inside of his coat jacket and he pulls out a gallon Ziploc bag of mushrooms in the middle of this lecture.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: And my buddy Jordan is a forager, like he knows what to go in the woods, what to grab, and he had all of the elements because he had, unlike me, I went to learn.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: He already knew about Paul and he came with the with the materials.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so he goes and he looks at me and he's like, Do you wanna do you wanna finally quit drinking and and pills?
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Yes.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, All right, so we finish up the lecture.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: We go back to this farm where we had an Airbnb and lit a fire, and he left, and I stayed there for nine hours sitting in front of the fire.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm talking the hero's dose of like, it was like the size of a baseball, this one mushroom I was eating.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it it was it was the most amazing experience that was unlike any other uh mushroom experience I'd ever had.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I have not had a scary moment of craving since then, and that was three years ago.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people want to say, Oh, it's magic, it's this.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, no, I've taken mushrooms multiple times in my life, you know what I mean?
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like, and but always it was like always drinking at the same time, always marijuana at the same time, always like messing it up with all the other elements.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: But this time was just that.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like it was only that, and it was my intention, and it was my brain was in the right spot, and I was I was alone.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think all of that, it also taught me a lot about my personality.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I I have another show where I talked about this as well, but my visualization that happened during it wasn't little gremlins and it wasn't anything psychoactive in the sense of it was me learning, and it goes back to the corporate Nate versus personal Nate.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: All I saw for like nine hours was this black silhouette that was me.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then all of a sudden it was these other silhouettes that were coming up to this black silhouette in different times and different from different angles.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: And every time the other silhouette walked away, my silhouette became more and more transparent.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: So they were taking away pieces of me.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: And what I learned was it was because in being in sales and business development most of my career, I walk into a room, I have a mission.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: I need to adapt to that room immediately based on what the room's gonna receive.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I would change my personality, I would change my nomenclature, I would change how I carried myself.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: I might untuck my shirt or I would tuck my shirt in, or I would wear jeans and a t-shirt to fit in better and not a suit, or I'd wear a suit.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now, ever since that night, that visualization is all I needed to be like, stop.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: Stop giving everybody else everything and just be who I am.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: And if they want that, it's back to the showing, not selling.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's the same thing as the products.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: Present myself as myself and be okay if it doesn't match everybody's needs and wants.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: The easiest job in the world is to be yourself.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's powerful to learn that lesson.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it's so funny because in the years, in the years where I did the corporate stuff and I did all that, the all that time I would look back through therapy that I did and everything like that.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: Those moments were there.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: Those thoughts were always there where everybody'd be like, man, you're so down to earth.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd be in this corporate setting, and like people would be like different with me than they were with other people.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd be like, Why are you more casual with me?
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, you're just easier to talk to and stuff like that.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then that was when I and then I would just change and I keep changing, and I was trying to be who I wanted, who I thought they wanted me to be, instead of just being me.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it's such a cheesy thing because we get told that all the time growing up.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: Just be yourself, just be yourself.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, yeah, whatever.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: But it is so damn true that like you, every single person on this earth is a magnet that has other magnets that'll come.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: We need the patience to understand that not everybody's your cup of tea and you're not everybody's cup of tea.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, well, we will wind down this here.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to before we h uh before we close down, I do, I I have to being from the alcohol world, how did the how did the licensing deal with Nine Loco come out?
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: And uh kind of if you can kind of put that in here as well.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can't I can't talk about a lot of details, but it's okay.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, whatever you can share.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sorry, yeah.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so the the hemp beverage category obviously has a ton of uh brand products.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Out there, I'll put just put it that way.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: So when we wanted to go to market, we thought about what's gonna already have some draw.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: So we wanted to pers and we will continue to pursue licensing deals where it makes sense.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because as we know, it's not it's not necessarily that I think all consumers are switching from alcohol to cannabis.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same consumer as touching both.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the the best brands in the world don't even talk about the ingredients, right?
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: Red Bull gives you wings and nobody can tell you what's in Red Bull outside of caffeine for the most part, or somebody's or like Poppy is a good example, right?
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like Poppy's good for my gut.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no, now we're a lifestyle brand.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: So most brands are a lifestyle.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: So we saw an opportunity to uh license a couple brands that fit the lifestyle of the type of consumer we want to, so that we don't have to establish a brand identity.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: They already kind of have an idea of what it's saying and who we're talking to.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: So luckily I found some partners that were willing to do some licensing deals and went to market with things that we think our distributors are gonna be able to position easily in a crowded, noisy environment.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we are initially going to market with right now.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, excited to see what else we can put out there once we get some solid ground under us.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I really I I gotta give you credit.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: I really I like that strategy of like uh of grabbing transition and bridges.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's really it's a it's a different so so the mission then of the business is a portfolio of licensed bridges like that.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't I don't want to say though that like we just want to go wide with our portfolio.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see opportunities.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: It has to be the right partners, right brand.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: It could be something original, but really excited about the first two we launched.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: We just need to do right by our distributor partners, retail partners that bring us on in those limited markets, make sure we're doing the right things, we're getting the right sell through we want.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: And before we then we probably look to expand that once we get some federal clarity on hemp.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we might do some things that are not hemp related as well.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: But it's more about meeting consumer trends early.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: And luckily, I have some partners involved in this that have a lot of CPG experience.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: So we we we get extensive resources and the the ability to be agile at the same time, so it's the best of the both worlds.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, right now our first four A is into hemp, but we we're really excited about these first two brands and want to make sure that we're executing right in these first two markets before we build out too big of a portfolio.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: Have you, I don't want to say, I don't like the word easy, but I don't know what else to say this.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like when you launch a licensed brand like like what you're doing with Nine Loco, is it is it smoother?
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: Let's use the word smoother.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: Is it a smoother path to distribution because the four loco distributors want to carry it when all this like for those areas, or is it is that unrelated to like their interest and stuff?
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's it's uh it's a different business.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: So uh obviously for locals business, it's heavy on distribution, convenience stores.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but a lot of times with hemp, you're seeing like the buyer isn't the same.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's the non-alk buyer versus the malt buyer.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_00: And in a lot of markets, the wine and spirit wholesalers, the startup functional alternative distributors have gone to this category.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: So we are our own LLC.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, it's it's people know that based off of the positioning, um, what the potential is of it.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: But the other challenge is people just have a flat mandate of no more hemp expansion right now with the specific route.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's what that's what I meant.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: Was it's not yeah, not as much as it it you can have access now, as much as when it when and if we get federal clarity.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: No, I think with our with our brands, like everyone sees the potential and the pull.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's just again, retailers don't want to add anything, which I get from their perspective, until they get federal clarity and distributors already sitting on of a lot of product that they're vulnerable to because if it becomes illegal, even though they might have contractual protections, if the company's just flat out of money, their supplier, how are you gonna collect that inventory back for uh sell that inventory back to the supplier?
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: They're completely insolvent and no longer able, you're not able to get a hold of it.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, it's it's uh just gotta get the government's permission, then we hit the strategy.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'll uh I'll give you one more piece and you ask me how I keep my head straight.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's also it's also believing believing that let me just say it this way.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: I became a year or two ago, I became an unaffiliated voter.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: And and that was a big deal for me.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: And what happens is when I meet with these lawmakers, I'm very upfront about that.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that changes the conversation because there's no partisan, there's I'm not on, I'm not on an aisle.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I am I am the middle of the pea of the pews.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like I am the walkway.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: And and what happens is lawmakers pay attention to me because they don't give if you come in and they're they're a Democratic lawmaker and you're like, yeah, I'm Republican, or you they can tell you're Republican, they don't really listen to you.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then if you're a Democrat, they just like be like, oh, he's in my he's in the bag.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: I got this guy.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: But I walk in and I lead with, hey, I'm Nate Fodgman with the Free Mind Group, started in 2008, proud Pennsylvania resident, and I'm an unaffiliated voter.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: As soon as you say that, the visceral, there's a factual physical reaction when you introduce yourself as an unaffiliated voter because they're like, I can't manipulate this guy.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, exactly.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then it forces them to listen to what I have to say from a grounded and logical standpoint.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I find that my conversations are smooth because of that.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: Now, are they are they illogical sometimes because they're uneducated?
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: And and I don't mean uneducated in an unintelligent way.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I'm gonna give empathy to lawmakers.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_01: You sit at your desk all day long and you have every industry under the sun walking in your door.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's not, it's impossible to be educated about everything you have to pass bills on.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: So let me just give them all grace when I say that.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_01: At the same time, you know, you'd have your issues there.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, hey, as we're winding down here, Paulo, I want to thank you, man, for coming on.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_01: I want to remind the audience there's we've never met each other, we've never shared a beer, never shared a coffee together, and never shaking hands.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: But that's the whole point of this.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, this is the Ready to Drink podcast, and it's about ROIs and brands and business.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, we're talking about beverages.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_01: And what are beverages?
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: Beverages are the social bridge.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's social connection, it's about human connection.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, Paulo, thank you for having the courage to come on without any script, without any questions, and without any prep, man.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's a it takes a lot of courage and makes a lot of sense uh why you're doing what you're doing and paving your new path, man.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of course.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: No, thank you for having me and thanks for what you do.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: I we really need more people like you that are speaking openly and honest about how these compounds improve your quality of life.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's fun to talk about the business aspect of it, but it's helping real people and being genuine with your story, I think, is gonna do a lot more for awareness than probably even your conversations with politicians, unfortunately.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh I'm I'm right there with all the consumers.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm living proof that I walk this earth and uh I've had very dark moments in my life, and I'm walking this earth because of products like non-alcoholic beer and hemp beverages.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I as much as it is my my mental health and and my perseverance in life, it's also those those tools.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: And like we said, every once in a while you got a tool and a crutch you need.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_01: And uh those things are there and they're accessible, and I want those to be accessible to every American that that exists in this earth right now.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_01: So as we're closing out here, I want to remind everybody, you know, like I said, this is about human connection and the challenge for everybody is five minutes of kindness to a stranger every single week, 20 minutes a month.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: You're walking down the street, put your phone in your pocket, look at every person while you're walking down the street.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_01: Say hi to people.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: Don't be weird and creepy, but at when you're at the gas station filling up your cup of coffee, look at the person next to you, ask them how they're doing, shut your mouth and actually listen to their story.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_01: Focus on them, not yourself.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: 20 minutes a month of selfless gratitude and appreciation and focus on kindness to strangers.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you, Paulo, so much for uh for coming on the show today.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate it, man.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_01: Likewise, thanks for having me.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_01: You take it, you have a good rest of your day, buddy.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: We'll talk again soon.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm looking forward to seeing how everything goes, man.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: All right, see you, Nate.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: Take care, buddy.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: Bye.