The Startup CPG Podcast

**Jessi:** So let’s start our countdown at #10 with our most frequent returning guest, Seth Goldman. Seth is the co-founder of Honest Tea and between 2 episodes, started Just Ice Tea as another brand within his latest venture, Eat The Change. Seth’s episodes were called the Pure Gold Series and we had such a great time with him on the show talking about Expo tips, innovation, demos, and more. This story is Seth recalling a dangerous but pivotal moment in his entrepreneurial journey.

**Seth:** Yeah. So first of all the one thing to just have as a, as an overall mindset is just resilience and you just can't get too, you can't get too mired in the low points, but we had so many, we had this bottling plant that we owned for six years and those were the six longest years of my life and it was just brutal.

Every, it was in Pittsburgh, which is about four hours away from Bethesda, where I live. And so I'd be doing these just. Brutal drives there and back and the plant was never really successful from a business perspective and there were always problems and it got to the point where like I was, it was compromising my ability to grow honesty.

it was a totally different business. Honesty was about branding and innovation and a bottling plant is about change parts of labor shifts and water issues. None of which we're adding value to honesty. And eventually we recognize that and we're able to, basically sell off the assets of the Bali planet and move away from it.

But that was a challenging one. Another time in our first year was brutal where, we were doing a early production run and it was in a blizzard and I, up in Buffalo. And so I had to try to get back from Buffalo to DC and a blizzard, driving in a snowstorm and, Came out of the tunnel, hit some black ice and, the car flipped off the road, that was a low point for sure.

I had in fact, on the, in the car, because I had to get to a trade show, I had tons of bottles and so there's just broken glass everywhere. Yeah, it was not a, it was not a good appointment and, my wife was angry at me for being, too risky with my behavior, but I had also put the business over my safety and that wasn't a good decision.

and then of course, I didn't win any fans on the home front with that decision either. I see, with these types of things, you just got to have a short memory and you got to just get back and try to keep your eye on the big picture. And, we've talked before about resilience and why it's so important.

And so you just got to tap those reserves when you get into those types of situations and move on.

**Jessi:** Speaking of pretty wild stories, there are a couple “unlikely” meeting stories that make up our #9. The first is from Saphira at Nowhere Bakery. Nowhere Bakery was a Shelfie Award winner and a backpack brand and when Saphira was on the show, they had just announced a collaboration with the Gwyneth Paltrow - I was super curious how that happened and wasn’t disappointed:

**Saphira:** it was a interesting chain of events that led to this. Essentially, we had done a collaboration with, Ariel Lori and she had been working out with the same trainer that Gwyneth Paltrow was working out with.

And so when we did the collaboration with her, she was like, I'd love to gift her a box of these cookies. So I made the box. I carried it to her trainer. And a trainer gave it to Gwyneth, and we heard nothing from it. Months went by, not a word. And then one day I get a text from Gwyneth Paltrow, and she's like Hi, I hope you don't mind I got your number from my trainer.

I loved those cookies that you gave me. can I order some more? And so that was like how it started. And then I suggested to her a few months ago, I was like, Hey, would you like to do a collaboration? And she was like, Yeah, I'd love to. Anything for you guys.

**Jessi:** Our other unlikely meeting story to make up #9 is from Alexiou Gibson (am I adding a second part to #9? Yes. It’s more like 9 categories) - Alexiou’s episode is one of my favorites in general - his Shark Tank episode was incredible and he landed a $600,000 deal from Mark Cuban and Kevin Hart. He’s a former NASA scientist who created The Sea Moss Transformation Factory, which has continued to grow like wild since we had him on the show, but one of my favorite parts of his story was the extremely unlikely way that he met his marketing expert:

**Alexiou:** I love this story. We're so close now and we tell this story all the time But I had gotten frustrated with trying to find an ad agency or a marketing agency that can do the work for me It was like hey, I know i'm sitting on gold Our reviews and our social proof are out of this world.

And at the time I had another company buying our product and relabeling it, they were selling our product for twice the amount. And there was, they had 800 orders in the same time that we had 50. So I told myself right then and there, it's the same product, same formula, even same packaging at the time, because it was very generically packaged, didn't have a logo or a name or anything back then.

It's a thank you tag made with love. So it could be, it could have been anyone's brand. And when I realized another company was selling 800 orders at twice the amount to our 50, I said, I don't have a product issue. I have a marketing issue. So I went back to the classroom in a sense. And I started to take on running ads myself after trying a few agencies and not really getting the results that I wanted.

So I want to take things into my own hands. while I was on Instagram, looking up gurus and watching videos, I got a direct message from a bot, it was a random bot account with one follower following one account. And it said, Hey, this guy is giving away free e commerce classes. It's teaching how to run ads.

And because I was in the mood of, in the mode of, really extracting as much information as I could to make myself more knowledgeable in that niche, I was open for any information. So I was so hungry that I actually paid attention to a bot, something I would normally just delete

to not get myself in trouble. But I was like, it's not a website link, it's just an Instagram page. Let me just check it out. Checked it out. This guy had maybe a thousand followers, but he had these loom videos explaining very complex things in the ad space. And I thought he did such a great job at explaining it so detailed.

There was a confidence that came from him that just said, man, this guy really knows what he's doing. And he was doing a raffle, one of those raffles where tag three friends in this post and we'll select a random winner and you will win a free education course. So I literally messaged him, I said, Hey, I really don't want to lose this chance because of a raffle.

Can we please get on a call? And I would just love to see if we can work together. And, he sent me a DM within 10 minutes with his calendar link. And he said, book a call with me, and we got on a call the very next day. I did a screen share with him, showing him our analytics, our sales, our reviews.

And he said, Oh my goodness. He said, you have no idea, but you're sitting on gold. He was like, the data that you've collected, the reviews, the social proofing you have, you literally check every single box, for someone that could be massively successful. He said, I'll prove it to you. He said, I'll work for you for free for three weeks, just to show you that I'm serious.

Within 48 hours, our sales was. Four times the normal rate within 48 hours. And I said, okay, three week trial is over. I said, let's get to work. wasn't my intentions to like really use him for the full three weeks and knowing that he just did that 48 hours. I was so ready to work. And even though I was at the point where I was learning it myself and I was taking it into my own hands.

Obviously having somebody that was way more qualified to do it for me, allowed me to do and be where I needed to be

**Jessi:** Speaking of Shark Tank, #8 is our other favorite Shark Tank episode moments. Rosa Li from wildwonder came on the pod to talk about her Season 14, Episode 11 Shark Tank episode where she makes a $500,000 deal with Tony Xu, guest Shark and Founder of Door Dash, and drops some insider knowledge.

**Rosa:** Yeah, so I would say, they only Shark Tank and the producers really prepared me for the pitch itself. they didn't really prepare me or any candidates for the actual Q& A process.

so I would say there was a lot of time spent on The actual two minute pitch, which was at the beginning, every single word had to be approved, basically, and if I made any claims, especially given this a functional beverage, I had to have backup to support it. And, there's a lot of like legal process involved with anything that's, aired, on national TV, I would say, there's a lot of.

prep with getting the booth ready. There's, just prep in general, like getting the entire display, getting everything approved. the Q& A was actually more just, me watching Shark Tank and previous episodes. I, like I mentioned earlier, I actually didn't grow up watching Shark Tank and I didn't really know, what the show entailed.

So I, the producers basically told me, hey, go watch all the beverage episodes, which was what I did. And just to figure out, what kind of questions are asked. Most of them are business related, which I do know. if someone were to ask me, Hey, how much does it take to, to produce your products?

Obviously I would know the answer. and usually the typical questions are pretty basic, it's like costs. price. What's your distribution like? why did you start the company? I can't actually remember everything they asked me, but it's, I was, I would say it's nothing unexpected.

**Jessi:** Just a week later on national TV, Sandra Velasquez, the CEO & Founder of Nopalera appeared on Shark Tank and gracefully received and ultimately turned down two offers from the Sharks. Sandra’s episode is packed with fundraising knowledge in general, but I love this moment of insight into what it’s like on the Shark Tank set:

**Sandra:** But what no one prepared me for was how quiet it was. And I was like, why did no one tell me this?

like I'm trying to tell everyone now because I just actually had a call last night with some other founders who are CPG founders who, are like contenders for next season. And I was like, the first thing you need to know is that it's really quiet. That sounds so eerie. I know, but it is eerie.

And that's, it's only eerie because, You have to over emote like you have to bring the energy like you have to pretend like there's music playing because it is a dead silent soundstage, and that's why they that's why you know, you always see the sharks like cutting each other off and like creating drama because they have you have to create the drama.

It's not in the room like there's no Agitation in the room. It's a soundstage, so that I was like, okay, no one warned me about this. I need to go yell at all my friends, but, that it was a little awkward.

**Jessi:** For #7, I feel like I would be remiss if we didn’t talk about the reoccurrence of marriage and dating as metaphors for fundraising. Wayne Wu from VMG started the trend that just kept going. Our episode with Wayne about Venture Capital 101 was one of our most popular episodes of all time - he gives some of the best breakdowns of tricky fundraising knowledge, including some useful metaphors.

**Wayne:** don't wait until you need to raise capital to know potential investment partners It's the same thing of getting married, a loping is generally a low probability exercise. So make sure that you date now, get to know a lot of different potential investment partners, get to know them over time before you make one of the most permanent marriage decisions an entrepreneur will ever make, which is to bring on an investment partner. if our relationship needs and should be more than just a quarterly board meeting. But really think about a successful marriage and friendship. It's a very casual, interactive dynamic of, calling each other in good times and in bad sending that. Yeah. sending that email or no, it's not a, some of the best partnerships are the ones where it's not just a highlight reel of, oh, I'm just going to call you and share all the great things that are happening. I'd say the, our best partnerships are the ones where there's a very interactive, proactive dialogue, like a good friendship, like a good marriage would have.

Really having alignment around what a win looks like and what we're all trying to build and how do we define success is really important because otherwise.

like how to think about resources along the way, how to think about strategy. You get into, it's hard enough to build a great brand or business, but when you can't, when you don't agree on what you're building towards, it's nearly impossible. And then it's a divorce as a spouse and it is an investment partner.

So both the investment partner and the entrepreneur and company need to choose wisely because you're permanently married.

**Jessi:** And then shortly after, Paul Voge from Aura Bora was on the show, he leaned in on Wayne’s metphors.

**Paul:** And it's a little like a marriage where you're finding someone that you don't mind talking to, every week for the next three to five years.

Yep. The, and I'll say similar to the marriage analogies is I would almost say that it's more intense than a marriage because there's not, at least with marriage, there is a formal process for divorce in this country. There's not really a formal process for splitting up with your big investment firm.

So long way of saying like it's it might even be more intense than a marriage. But I really love working with Citi. To Wayne's point, we've known Citi for two years. So if you're thinking a year from now, you might want an institutional fundraise, but you don't know any institutional investors. Like you better get moving because sometimes it takes a year of updates, calls, decks to get to that point.

**Jessi:** Let’s go back in time for #6 to a couple early moments of the show. First, my very first guest when I took over the show at episode 24 with Kirk Visola back in August 2021. I didn’t know Kirk really when I first interviewed him but looking back, there’s no one else I’d rather have as my first guest. Kirk is an incredible designer and owns the agency Mind the Font. He also co-hosts the Kirk & Kurtts Podcast with Andy Kurtts from Buttermilk Creative and we’ve had them back on the show as a duo. I’m grateful to now call Kirk a friend and wanted to share one of the many moments of wisdom from that first episode:

**Kirk**: Organization, trust, and collaboration. You need to be organized. You need to have all your ducks in a row before you go to anybody who specializes in something.

Whether it be going to like someone like Brandon. Who's a copack, anything that goes in the package wizard, you have to go to him with all the, all your ducks in a row because you don't want to waste his time. And you also don't want to look, like you don't know what you're doing. You have to have, you have to be willing to be trustworthy, like trusting of the person you're going to also like, you don't want to pull that stuff together and you don't want to go to someone and then already have your mind made up.

What you have to do if you're going to the person that knows more than you trust them to do their job Like trust them to tell you the right thing to do make sure that you know You're not getting the wool pulled over your eyes, right? You're not being bullshit But you're not going to go to someone who's like renowned for doing something just to be bullshit Hopefully right and the other thing is be collaborative be willing to interject Be willing to ask questions, but not from a standpoint of disagreement, but understanding, so I'm just wondering what did you think about why did you do this design this way?

Because I see what you're saying, but, so you can have a conversation and be collaborative, be ready to push and pull and give a little someone, but also take stuff from someone too. So that's the other thing, that, those are the things that I think would be an ideal client. And also, last but not least, don't be a fucking asshole.

That's a major factor. There's nothing. That's serious in the food and beverage industry to where you have to be mean about it. basically any walk of life unless you're like a drill sergeant in the army or something But I don't think you need to be mean about the stuff. It's just it's food at the day It's food.

It's it should be fun and it should be the those things organized trustworthy and collaborative

**Jessi:** Another early moment was with Kun Yang, the CEO of Pricklee - Kun leads our Boston chapter of Startup CPG and since being on the pod, has been on Shark Tank and been able to go full time working on Pricklee - here’s a fun moment from the early days of Pricklee:

**Kun:** And so I think I remember talking to, my partner and pitching, pitching him the idea of we need to just be cactuses. That's what we are. It's, when you think about a cactus, it already, I think by default has an unapproachable aura to it. in which case a lot of the new customers where 99% of the people in the world know what a cactus is, I think getting people to really side with it and fall in love with the cactus, the whole different story.

And we realized in one of the early conversations that we had with one of our advisors to was that we had to really. Make people fall in love with the cactus and make it approachable. And so we had this crazy idea of putting on these cactus suits, running around the city of New York, Boston, but also even going to stores with, our cactus suits on.

And it was definitely a moment where we felt really uncomfortable. we never envisioned that this was going to at all be a part of our life, but we realized that if we didn't do it and we didn't believe in it enough ourselves to do something like this, that who else would? how could we really build the culture of really living the life that everyone's a cactus?

So we put it on and we took a deep breath and we said this could go one of two ways. either we could go out there, bring energy, be confident, spread smiles and happiness, health and hydration, as we said, or we could be super unconfident, super awkward, and it would just fall flat in its face. And so we chose the, the former.

And fortunately It was a game changer for us. It really boosted the confidence in the team and it really gave us an identity and belief in ourselves and what we could accomplish that we didn't know we had within ourselves either.

**Jessi:** Alright, we’re halfway through, and #5 is what I’m calling “best advice.” There’s been so much good advice on the show but these 3 moments really standout as so actionable. First, from 3 time guest and Startup CPG resident sales expert ,Jake Huber, who was also the very first guest on the whole show in April 2020. Jake also was part of our “First Hire Series”, which is another highlight of the show. This snippet is from Jake’s Promotions 101 episode:

**Jake:** it's really funny. I was literally just on LinkedIn and that guy was making a comment or made a post about we gave all this funding, we even paid ad fees to be on. And then lo and behold, the promotion didn't even happen.

There was no shelf tags. There was no nothing, but better believe you paid the ad fee and they are going to deduct because there's a contract in there. And he was like, what are we supposed to do here? And the only comment I could give him was look. It's important to understand the sales plan cycle.

that's the term, like what's the sales plan cycle or what's the timing of sales planning at this specific retailer. So the broker should know this or even startup CBG. There's people who know this. I can tell you how Kroger works. Hey, I know that about, 10 to 12 weeks prior to execution, everything on their end is actually loaded.

That means the tags, I can confirm whether my allocation to support because we want them to order product. Oftentimes that's called an allocation. Hey, we're going to promote it two for six. Can you allocate a case per store to make sure we have inventory? These are perfectly acceptable asks in exchange for a big promotion that you're trying to do.

And it guarantees that they're invested in buying it and supporting it. But I have a check in. At some point before that I then go to the retailer or the broker and say, Hey, confirm that tags are loaded allocations going out and everything's going to happen if we find out that it's not happening or it didn't happen and the retailer can't do anything about it, then I will put requests in to cancel the contract and start saving email so that when the deductions do come, we can I don't want to say fight it, but fight it because Transcription It didn't get executed and you have enough time to react as opposed to then assuming it all executes and then finding yourself out money with no promotion.

**Jessi:** In-Store Demos 101 was one of our most popular episodes ever with Bridget Aragon & David Heiser, Co-founders of Grassroots Demos. David’s advice here is so tactical:

**David:** It's a couple of things, really just a couple. It's how many people are you reaching at every demo? and you can do this without any fancy software or anything. if you're a startup and let's say you're going to your local independent, the number one thing you can do is buy a cheap golf tally clicker off of Amazon or for a couple of dollars.

And just for every person that you pass out a sample to just click it once, twice. And if you do this at a farmer's market anywhere, that's a really important KPI. If you think about how many people are you reaching. You'll be surprised both for good and for bad. Sometimes you'll think you sampled to more people than you did.

And sometimes you'll think you won't really keep track of it. And you'll be surprised at the end by how many people you really reached. At any, at a given event. So that's one thing I would definitely say, track the number of people you're engaging with, just like with any form of marketing, that's really important.

**Jessi:** And finally, another fan-favorite episode “Meet the Press” with Monica Watrous, Managing Editor of Food Business News and Food Entrepreneur, where she demystifies getting press coverage as an early brand. Monica has also graced multiple Expo recaps which are always listener favorites. I love Monica’s advice here:

**Monica:** Send decks, send, folders to assets. send, any kind of collateral. that's really helpful. have a media kit or like a press kit on your website. I know that's a lot of work, but that could go a long way. and also I've worked with several founders, who just write their own press releases and that's super helpful.

Like you're more likely to get a really quick turnaround from me. If you provide a press release, we don't run press releases as is, but we will draw from them and paraphrase and use quotes from press releases and in stories. And so it's super helpful to, to provide something like that, or even, your own emailed quotes, if you can do like a.

A self Q and a, you know where you provide information that's quotable that we can then turn into a story. yeah, I guess having traditional press materials available, and in however way you can provide them is super helpful.

**Jessi:** Speaking of fan favorites, #4 is dedicated to a couple of absolute fan favorite episodes. First is from Kim Biddle’s Influencer & Affiliate Marketing 101 episode - this is one of our most downloaded episodes and is packed with practical tips from Kim like this:

**Kim:** I think that the more you're engaged with your affiliates, the more they're going to do for you, the more people feel appreciated and seen and supported, the more they're going to do for you.

So what you put into it is what you're going to get out of it. If you set up a share a sale account and just sit back, you're going to get exactly what you put into that. And it's probably not going to be much. It has to be nurtured. It's a team. It's a team of people that you're relying on to bring in revenue.

So when you think about that again, I'm going to go back to the sales team. You need to think of them as your sales team as you would a sales team. How do they stay incentivized? How do I keep out in front of them with new products with, disc, most brands will provide a very nice discount to affiliates so that they continue buying the product.

Obviously they need to be consumers of your brand as well. So there's a, there's that. There's that too. I think that's, I think in my opinion what you put into it is what you will get out of it the more you put into it. And everyone has different philosophies about it. and also you only have so much time, but a lot of these platforms can also automate some of these things.

**Jessi:** This next episode was so popular we actually just re-aired it - Angel Investing 101 with my delightful friend Marcia Dawood. While the fundraising landscape continues to shift and evolve, Marcia’s advice continues to ring true as a seasoned angel investor and an important member of the investing landscape. She’s actually wrapping up her tenure as the chair of the board of the Angel Capital Association because she’s been appointed to the US SEC, Securities & Exchange Commission, as a member of the Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee, where she’ll continue to support entrepreneurs and how fundraising works. I love this idea from Marcia:

**Marcia:** it's, there's a couple things that are, you're gonna want to have in that pitch deck, and what I always, Have been telling entrepreneurs, at least lately is you want to make it as easy for the investor as possible, especially if you're if you want to pitch to an angel group, they get inundated with a lot of information.

Usually you have to go through their, whatever their upload processes where you upload their. Upload your information as a company to potentially get funding, but I'm telling you, I really think that short videos, if people haven't used loom yet, I would, I love that, application. It's fantastic.

You can literally make a five minute video. It's free. You can make a five up to a five minute video. And then you just. can give people a link, you could walk somebody through your pitch deck in five minutes and at least give them enough information so that it's like a teaser. You're never going to give them all the information in five minutes and that's not the point.

The point is to give people enough information to want to sit down and learn more because if you're going out initially and you're just trying to get people's attention, trying to get their attention with 60 minutes worth of content and 35 slide deck is not going to get their attention. What could get their attention, though, is a three to four minute video of you explaining what your company does and why you're doing it.

**Jessi:** Okay, we’re down to the top #3 - has your favorite moment been mentioned yet or is it coming up? I love cold outreach and the magic that can come from shooting your shot. So this was a favorite moment from our episode with Ali Bonar, Co-Founder, CEO, and Chief Vibes Officer of Oat Haus:

**Ali:** Jamila is amazing.

she's such a bad ass. so she tweeted about our product in October of 2020, I believe. so about two years ago and that was before we rebranded. and she just. posted a picture of our chocolate flavor and was basically like, I forget exactly what she said, but like this stuff is amazing. And it was totally organic.

We didn't even send her product. Like it was out of the blue. Wow. Yeah. And I've, Oh, I've been obsessed with her since I saw her on the good place. yeah, with Eric and I like binged during the pandemic and I knew she also had a history of an eating disorder. She's super. as an advocate for body acceptance and radical inclusivity and food freedom and just everything that we stand for as a brand as well.

So I saw that and I was like, Oh my gosh, this is so exciting. We also were raising our first round of funding. As I mentioned that small friends and family round. And so I was like, you know what, I'm going to shoot my shot. Like I'm going to find her manager on LinkedIn or Google. And I'm just going to reach out and be like, Hey, Is she interested in investing?

I saw this tweet. and so that's exactly what I did. And the stars aligned, she was interested in investing. And, so she came on and she is our social impact advisor, investor. And then we pretty immediately started talking about doing a collab flavor with her and the chocolate was her favorite flavor of ours.

**Jessi:** This episode is just a few months old but already shaping up to be a favorite all about Partake Foods collaboration with Ben & Jerry’s. Marlo Giudice, Partake’s Vice President of Sales, Strategic Channels came on the show to share what it took to bring this collab to life, including my favorite cold outreach moment:

**Marlo:** Yeah. I mean so nobody ever forgets 2020 for a myriad of reasons, but we were. Really in the throes of the pandemic, we were all working remotely or our team of three, with just, trying to think of let's get creative. Let's, brainstorm some alternative sales segments or channels.

what have we not, what's the stone we have an unturned because as you may recall, the necessities we're getting, the essentials we're getting restocked and prioritized both by retailers and distributors. And as much as cookies are a necessity in my house, they are not necessarily in everyone's home.

And it just wasn't a priority for our distributor partners to, to think about restocking us as much, or for the retailers to be dedicating space to us. or the category as a whole and so we started thinking about categories that are a little bit more, essential or like like recession proof, if you will, or crisis proof and we thought about ice cream and how people eat ice cream and in good times in celebrations and also in bat, right?

You turn to your. favorite pint, to just find comfort when you may be upset. And and then we thought about, okay, who are the, dream ice cream brands that we would love to work with? And Ben and Jerry's was number one on that list. And I did some LinkedIn stalking, which I think every salesperson has to hone that skill and some, email naming convention guesses.

I probably had like several incorrect. I was like, first dot last first initial dot last name, just tested all of them. and one went out and didn't bounce back. And I just positioned it as we are an allergy friendly, inclusive brand that makes delicious cookies. Would you like to try some, so not a heavy, not a big ask, certainly not a long email, no deck attached, just can we send you some cookies?

because my hope was that who's going to say no to some free samples and worst case scenario, we send them and they don't like them. And okay, no big deal. but my contact answered and, he was, graciously accepted the free samples. And I think so much of the opportunities and the great partnerships we've had at partake is it's a timing thing.

And, and it was just good timing for them and thinking about their non dairy line and how they can expand on offerings because big organizations like that with their innovation pipeline, they're working 12 to 18 months out in terms of how long it will take to commercialize and bring to market.

So they were seeing, I think, some initial success in that line and wanting to expand the flavor profiles. and we just reached out at the right time. And so if it had been a no, I still would have probably followed up three months later and then six months later. And I generally. I'm pleasantly persistent and just take it as a not right now until I get a until I get a pretty hard now.

So yeah, that's how it kicked off. And then we just continue the conversations. The Unilever team came in, which is their parent company. And we talked a little bit about supply chain and sourcing requirements. that was 2020 and the flavor released in 2023. So it's a long process for sure.

**Jessi:** #2 is partially moments on the show and partially moments behind the show. All our guests have been incredible but these two moments felt very full circle and just delightful and authentic. First up was Miguel Leal, Co-Founder and CEO of SOMOS. Miguel co-founded SOMOS alongside two former co-workers and KIND Snacks executives, Daniel Lubetzky and Rodrigo Zuloaga. Miguel came on the show over a year ago to share about Authenticity 101 and developing a brand identity. At Expo West earlier this year, I went by the SOMOS booth and wanted to just say a quick hi to Miguel, knowing he was incredibly busy. He gave me the warmest welcome and personally walked me through building walking tacos at their booth, telling me stories and just overall being incredibly kind. Later that day I got to meet Rodrigo and he was also so kind and told me stories about his family and the history behind their new salsa macha (which is now available and is life changing!). It was just one of those moments where the people behind the brand were just as kind and authentic as I hoped, so this is a moment from the show with Miguel.

**Miguel:** Yeah, actually, that is, one of my favorite stories to tell. First of all, I do have a lot of experience. I spent most of my career. working in marketing and working with beautiful brands.

You mentioned kind, but also I have the benefit of having Daniel kind founder as my partner in this endeavor. And he is, among other things, just a genius or connecting brands with mission. specifically for some, it really started with the idea that we. Wanted to share the best of Mexico with the world and the best of Mexico is the best recipes and the best ingredients, but also the best stories.

brands are really stories. And there are a lot of great Mexican stories that haven't been told. So we started with the brand. we had a list of names. And Somos really caught our eye for a few reasons. it's very easy to pronounce. I think on the mission side for Daniel.

Somos literally means we are, and part of doing this endeavor was to bring cultures together. And for me, it's a brand that is very symmetrical. it's written the same way forward as background. so I thought it would look very beautiful on the packaging. So once we settled on Somos, then came the art on the package.

And that is really the story that, that I think you're reacting to. We fell in love with this form of art called Alebrijes. It comes from the west part of Mexico, and it's a turn of the century, modern Art form. And it's beautiful. I think another story that has used this form of art is the movie Coco. I don't know if you've seen it, but when you look at those animals, the beauty of Alebrijes is you bring different colors and different shapes together than when they It's beautiful.

get together, they create something even more beautiful, even though they are all different. And what a prettier way to communicate our mission of bringing cultures together than doing it with the packages. All these packages, are made by hand. They are made by a Mexican artist. They are not made You're not drawn in a computer, so they show a lot of care.

And then, even though they are all different colors, different shapes, when you put them together, they just look gorgeous, like the outside of the box that we sent you. And I think it, it's a very graphic way. Of telling what the brand is about.

**Jessi:** This next moment was similarly special in that I have been a GT Dave and Synergy Kombucha fan for years and years and 1) having GT on the show was a dream come true, and 2) he was just as kind and calm and wise as I hoped, so this is a fun moment from our episode.

**GT:** first of all, I love Halloween because it's close to my birthday. And then I also love it because, I think it's, I think it's really impressive when humanity takes on a different identity and allows that temporarily, that temporary new identity to allow them to change their perspective, even if it's just for one evening.

So that, that's why I really love like the dressing up process. wow, of a costume that I hope I get to be, it's funny, I dictate the costumes with the two costumes that you referenced, Two Face and then Pinhead. They were part of the theme of an event that I host every year that we've dubbed Fright Night.

So it's a Halloween party that I host for, 800 of my closest friends and, and I like to establish a general theme. It's not a mandatory theme, it's somewhat directional. But like I did like the superheroes, super villains, which is the two faced one. And then I did, the Adams family one, which was just more goblins and ghouls where I did pinhead.

So this upcoming party, I'm doing like a crazy killer clown slash haunted circus type vibe. so I guess, I don't know if I'm answering your question, but I'm trying to actually think of what my costume is going to be. I haven't decided. I just like things that allow you to be. to allow you to disappear and to take on again that identity for that night.

**Jessi:** Alright, you made it to #1 and if you’ve been around a while, you may have been able to guess it, let me give you a clue:

Welcome to the Startup CPG Podcast. I'm your host, Jessi Freitag. Today we're going to talk about murdering your thirst. Sorry, it's like there's something in my throat. This keeps happening ever since I got my hydrate or die t shirt from Liquid Death.

What do those terms say when I signed up for text messages? Just let me see. You agree to be brainwashed by Liquid Death Marketing, ah. I figured it was worth putting my soul on the line to bring you some behind the scenes content from one of the hottest brands in CPG.

Yep. Our episode with Liquid Death. This has been our most popular episode of all time and the episode that I had the most fun with the Dark Lord filter on my own voice. I loved everything about this episode with Hamid Saify, but here’s a clip:

**Hamid:** We cursed our water with a witch doctor. and we were like, okay, if you want to remove the curse, you have to buy this curse reversal spell on our website. And it was actually a actual spell that the witch doctor created for us. And we sold it for 99 cents. And then we sold free green screen footage where you could do anything with our executioner mascot through the green screen footage that we had and make whatever you wanted to make from we gave that away for free.

And then on the country club membership thing. Yeah. When we were retuning country club, we were like, all right, country clubs are like exclusive and expensive. it costs a lot of money to get into a country club, do application processes and interviews and all that stuff. All right. If you don't want to sell your soul to us, we'll let you buy it for 125, 000.

And the little nugget of an insight in that was like, we would have people sell their soul to us. And this is a very small percentage, but then sometimes they'll email us back and be regretful that they did it. And they're like, can I get my soul back? And we'd be like, no, you've given it to us for a lifetime, for eternity.

So you, you can't have it back. so that's like the formula or like kind of process that we would follow of just like selling things at weird prices and very obscure kind of. Oddball items.

**Jessi:** So that’s a wrap! Thanks for joining our top 10-ish countdown and here’s to the next 100 episodes!