The Startup CPG Podcast

Sara Schor
I love getting those juicy insights that can have a real, meaningful impact on decisions made for brands. It is always amazing to hear the voice of the customer, especially as a founder. You know folks who create something from scratch, they have a vision, they have an idea. Oftentimes it's this amazing thing, and they get quite far just based on their own gut instinct. And that's where I might be able to help out or the work. Getting insight is really where you can tap into those broader perspectives that will help you grow your brand and scale.

00:43
Daniel Scharff
Hello, my dear CPG ers. Today's topic nerds out into one of my favorite areas of CPG, which is consumer insights. Not everybody knows you don't need to be a billion dollar brand to do great research. There are plenty of ways to do it that are cheap and cheerful, as told by today's guests, Sarah Shore, who has tons of experience running qualitative studies both in person as a focus group facilitator and also online through bulletin boards that you'll learn all about in today's episode. We talk a lot about the different research methods, how to set your objectives, and we even get pretty in depth talking about sample questions and ways you can interpret the data. It's truly a diy consumer insights dream.

01:25
Daniel Scharff
But if you want to also get in touch with Sarah for some help, you can email her at Sara that's sara@shoreinsights.com sure, which is scho rinsights.com. Enjoy. Welcome to the Startup CPG podcast. I've got a really cool guest for you today. It's Sarah Shore. Sarah is the principal of Shure insights and strategy, which is a boutique agency specializing in consumer insights and brand strategy. I've worked with Sarah before. Interesting. Her expertise. So she works with big and small companies, startups, nonprofit agencies, kind of whatever. Anybody who is interested in learning more about consumers and their consumers. I wanted to bring Sarah on the podcast today because I consider myself a consumer insights expert, but she knows a million more than I do about consumer insights. So for example, how to actually run your own focus group and really go deep, especially on qualitative insights.

02:24
Daniel Scharff
So Sarah, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. I appreciate you taking the time and sharing all your knowledge with us.

02:30
Sara Schor
Fantastic. Thanks, Daniel. Good to see you.

02:32
Daniel Scharff
Yes, likewise. So the last time you and I talked, I think it was because I was trying to figure out for a beverage brand that I was launching how to just get some insights kind of on the cheap. I've run plenty of quantitative studies like just trying to run surveys online and get info that way. But actually, so it was in the energy category and I was never an energy drinker. Like, I just had been kind of always coffee. And so I, like, I didn't know the first thing about who drinks energy drinks and why. And I was just so interested in really trying to get a bit of a baseline in maybe not a method that would be peer reviewed, scientific journal level, but at least good enough where I could feel like I was getting high confidence, accurate feedback from people.

03:13
Daniel Scharff
And so I just, I was so impressed when I reached out and asked you for some tips on how to do it myself and some of the resources that you knew about that I feel like every founder just starting the journey should have the same chance to hear about that stuff from you. So maybe just to start the journey, can you tell us a little bit about what it is that you do?

03:32
Sara Schor
Sure. Yeah. So I've spent a career in marketing and I've spent about the last 20 years in consumer insights and brand strategy. About seven years ago, seven and a half years ago now, I founded shore insights and strategy with a real focus on consumer insights. I love getting those juicy insights that can have a real meaningful impact on decisions made for brands. It is always amazing to hear the voice of the customer, especially as a founder. You know, folks who create something from scratch, they have a vision, they have an idea. Oftentimes it's this amazing thing and they get quite far just based on their own gut instinct. But then there comes this point where they start to scale and it needs to go beyond niche audience, it needs to speak to larger retailers, for example.

04:20
Sara Schor
And sometimes at that point, you need to start making decisions, whether it's around packaging or around messaging, or around flavor expansion, around prioritization of benefits that your gut no longer is enough. Especially as you're starting to reach people who may not necessarily be like you and have the same needs as you. And that's where I might be able to help out or the work. Getting insights is really where you can tap into those broader perspectives that will help you grow your brand and scale.

04:48
Daniel Scharff
Okay, awesome. Maybe just before we kind of get into all of the overview of it in theory, could you give just a quick example of like one project that you've done that you thought was particularly helpful for an early brand, and you don't have to give the name, but you can, I mean, at least describe it and talk about the impact?

05:04
Sara Schor
Oh, sure. So I was working on a coffee based energy drink and we're doing really well at first. And they got to this point that they needed. Their packaging wasn't terribly good, their naming wasn't terribly good. And they, while they knew what their product was and they knew what their intention was, they weren't really sure how to package it and message it for a broader audience. And so we did some research at that point. They had gotten just a little bit of funding, so they were able to do, you know, what I would call a proper research study where we recruited people who they felt might be their potential audience and went out of our way to understand what is it about the product that's appealing? How do we think about prioritizing the benefits?

05:44
Sara Schor
And interestingly so with this one, it was really more of a messaging exercise. And we worked with consumers and also internally talking to the stakeholders and really understanding what is it about their vision? What is it about what they believe, what is it about the way that they're approaching the category that's really differentiate? And based on all of those inputs, we've created a brand strategy that has pretty much defined not just their marketing, but really defined their entire, their investor storytelling and their entire point of view around the category.

06:17
Daniel Scharff
That's super cool. And so were you showing it to consumers in person? Was it all done online? How did that happen?

06:24
Sara Schor
Yeah, you know, I mean, a lot of research happens online now, and that was a huge shift that happened after the, or during and after the pandemic. But I think what people have realized is that you can do online research in a way that's really effective and on a way that doesn't make you have to fly somewhere. And in person research is pretty expensive, and it's also really inefficient. There is a time and a place and a reason to be in person, but this was an online bulletin board, which is a methodology that I use a lot. It is this amazing asynchronous methodology where we post some questions and consumers come in at their convenience and they ask, answer the questions, and of course, you always get more participation if people find it convenient, and then you can go in and probe them.

07:08
Daniel Scharff
So it's like an online survey that they're going to fill out.

07:11
Sara Schor
I wouldn't call it a survey because it is still a qualitative methodology, and we can back up and talk a little bit about qualitative versus quantitative, you know, when we get into it. But it's more of what I would call more of a discussion board, because people are coming in, they're asking open ended questions, they're answering open ended questions. They might be responding to visuals that we post. We can even have them go onto the Internet and like pull pictures that remind them of a brand that talk about the benefits and then we can go and improve.

07:38
Daniel Scharff
Okay. And they sounds like obviously you would have space for them to give video responses and watch stuff. So maybe like a way more interactive and qualitative than version of a survey.

07:48
Sara Schor
Absolutely. I'm a big believer in the online bulletin board. The methodology, the platform that I use is called recollective but you also have one called fall board, you have one called discout. There's a whole bunch of them out there but they're quite easy and sort of on the more cheap and cheerful side. I think if you're being very scrappy you absolutely could use like a Google forms for something like this. Obviously you don't get that back and forth but there are opportunities to do more open ended insight based studies that don't involve a focus.

08:18
Daniel Scharff
Okay cool. So yeah maybe so that's very helpful. Now let's back it up and go from okay, what is qualitative versus quantitative research and you know what might each be good for an early brand?

08:31
Sara Schor
Yeah absolutely. Thanks. So I'm actually even a backup one more because qualitative and quantitative are primary research but there are lots of ways, you know you talked about Daniel, some of your needs when you were in the energy category is people all of a sudden like oh my God I need to do some research and there's lots of different types of research so there's primary researches which is qualitative and quantitative. Let's park that for a second. There also are a ton of companies that actually do secondary research. Mintel is a really good one that keep comes to mind where you can get just amazing input on who the consumers are of the category, who the key competitors are. They have so much data and that is a great way to get really quickly up to speed.

09:12
Sara Schor
The other thing is don't discount the power of observation. I mean I remember gosh this was years and years ago but I spent three days standing in a Nike store just watching people shop. And besides the fact that it was unbelievably boring and my feet were really hurting, it was just an amazing way you could get so many insights around how people shop a store, how they're making decisions without ever talking to a single person and especially in the CPG world is just standing in the aisle.

09:43
Daniel Scharff
I love shopper stalking. Like if someone buys a product like hello, why'd you buy that? Do you mind telling me? I'm a stranger, but I'd like to talk to you. I'm a big fan. Usually people are happy to talk to you about themselves, so that often goes pretty well. I like also that you mentioned Mintel. Yeah, those reports are pretty good. I always wish that they actually tied them to sales data, because they'll talk a lot about, like, what, new products and stuff, but they never really tell you which ones are being successful. But it is cool to just see all the stuff that's out there in different categories. Those reports can be a little expensive, I think, like, kind of 4k range, last time I heard.

10:16
Daniel Scharff
But I also heard once upon a time, somebody had an intern that was a student, and they had access to all of them, so.

10:24
Sara Schor
Right. You have friends, for example, that work on a larger company. So larger companies oftentimes have access. I don't imagine they're willing to make a deal with someone who is in the business. And then the thing I would say is also, you know, Google Analytics are a thing. I find it can be helpful for that first start for a question that you asked Daniel, like, oh, who's buying energy drinks for you to do primary research to try and learn that? That's just a huge study. That's definitely where a secondary research, you know, and I know it sounds crazy, but, like, Internet stalking, there is so much data out there.

10:56
Daniel Scharff
Oh, yeah, for sure. You know what's not bad also is statista, where you can get a subscription statistic. The stuff will always be a year or two old, but sometimes that's going to be totally fine to get you up to speed. And I've used plenty of stuff from there and investor decks and, yeah, the in person stuff. Totally agree. Also, that would be kind of my first step is go and take a bunch of pictures in stores and then, like, you know, draw insights, like, different channels. And it even, you know, in energy, it was so interesting to me because I was not really an energy drinker of just, like, I mean, obviously, you know, Red Bull and monster, like, number one and two in that category.

11:29
Daniel Scharff
And just some of the assumptions you might make when you're considering your own ingredients about, like, things like caffeine. But, you know, for me, I would see somebody drinking a red bull, and I would turn to them and say, like, why do you drink fat? And they might say, like, oh, you know, like, energy or charge, I don't know, something. And then you'd say, why do you think it gives you energy? And I was floored. How many of them didn't know that it had caffeine in it, even? They're like, I don't know, maybe sugar or. I don't know. There's, like, the bull stuff in there or whatever. But even, like, you're like, no, that's a caffeine based energy drink. Like, actually, a lot of people don't know that. They just know it's the thing that keeps them up or gives them energy.

12:04
Sara Schor
Yeah, I would definitely. The advice, I like one piece of advice, and of course I'll be full of advice because that's just how I roll. But if you are a founder in a CPG business and you want to have interactions like that, whether it's in the store, even though store managers don't quite love it, you can get away with it. Have, like, $10 gift cards on you or even like a $5, I mean, a Starbucks card or a $5 doordashy thing or just something of value to be like, hey, I have this $5 gift card. Would you give me five minutes of your time? That's great when you're in a store. It's great when you're out in the world and people are generous with their time. They're even more generous when they're being incentivized.

12:40
Daniel Scharff
That makes sense. I've never tried that. I've just tried giving them the awkward smile, like, can I ask you a couple questions? I'm sorry, but I don't know. People always think it's kind of cool if you're like, I actually am starting a brand. People love shark Tank. They don't always get to meet founders. But I love that idea about the gift cards also. So, yeah, I love all those methods that you're suggesting for getting familiar with the category and consumers and just, like, really taking the time to just ask people questions with no assumptions at all and understand, like, okay, where do you buy stuff? Why do you buy it? When do you drink it? Why do you drink it? What do you drink it with? What do you write? What else? If you don't have it, what are you drinking then?

13:16
Daniel Scharff
It's so interesting. Okay, so you brought up a really.

13:19
Sara Schor
Important point, is that if you are going to do something like that, as the sort of quote unquote facilitator of the conversation, you need to come at it from a very uninformed perspective and from unbelievable curiosity. No one cares about your category in the same way that you do. No one understands your category in the same way that you do. And you really need to start. I, like, you know, when I do moderator training, I always say, you need to. Just uncommonly curious about even the most obvious things in the world.

13:47
Daniel Scharff
Yeah. One thing that always stuck with me, I remember, is you were giving me some advice on how to ask a question to get to what someone would really say. And I think what you said is ask it this way. Say, suppose an alien came down to earth and had never seen anything in this world or product category before. How would you describe this product that I'm showing you to them?

14:07
Sara Schor
I love that you remember that. I mean, I will tell you, almost every research project I do, I always include Zoe from Mars. So Zoe is my new friend from Mars. She just arrived here. I mean, like, I've done it as weird. Like, tell her what an olive is. I've done it as weird as that. Or, you know, hey, you're a big NCIS watcher. Talk to tell Zoe why she would want to watch this show. And it really just gets people down to sort of the things that. That no one thinks you need to explain, but really helps people think about. Okay, what exactly is an olive? Why exactly do I. How would I describe the taste of an olive to someone who's never even heard of an olive before? And it's.

14:43
Sara Schor
You know, and you think, especially in some of the categories like energy drinks or protein bars, where there's just so much innovation, there's this sort of unspoken language around it. And I think when you get people to speak to that language is really where the more motivational insights are going to come out.

14:58
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, I just. I'm remembering all sorts of things where if you don't get to that level, there are a lot of assumptions you don't unpack. I remember, like, when I worked at just egg at Campden Creek, it had been called before we had a vegan mayo product, and they had been sued at one point by Unilever for saying, you can't call it mayo because it doesn't have eggs. And doesn't everyone know that Mayo has eggs? Just for me, then it's such an interesting question of, like, if you ask somebody what mayo is, do they say eggs or not? And then I think, similarly, I was talking to somebody about, like, when you have a drink and it says zero, what does that mean? And some people be like, zero sugar. Like, no, no. It means zero calories.

15:32
Daniel Scharff
Well, those are two different things that sometimes intersect, but more often don't. So, pretty interesting. Just when you start digging in like that. So, okay. So to back up, were talking about, like, what are the kind of things you should understand about consumers and, like, how they interact with products, what's going on in your category? So I think those were some awesome initial sources and ways to think about it. And then now are we getting into, like, okay, let's say you want to go a little bit deeper into thinking about, like, qualitative and quantitative stuff.

16:00
Sara Schor
Yeah, sure. Let's talk about that. So what I'm going to say is, when you start with research, you always need to start thinking about, what are my business objectives and what am I going to do with the information that comes out of it? You should start with that. A lot of people start with, I want to learn blank. When you say, I want to learn blank, that kind of just sort of sets you up for a bunch of questions that aren't necessarily going to drive action. So I would always start with, what are the business objectives and what are you going to do with the data? And then you have the challenging task of figuring out, okay, what is the right methodology? And there are lots and lots of ways to go about it.

16:38
Sara Schor
So let's start about the basic methodologies, and that's qualitative versus quantitative. And if people don't know the difference, the thing I would say is quantitative has an n in it and is for numbers. So quantitative is when you get data. It is what we would commonly call a survey. So that is when to know about. Quantitative is. Quantitative tends to be closed ended, meaning on a scale of one to five, where five is. This is very appealing one, this isn't appealing. How appealing do you find this idea? Or, you know, here are five flavors. Rank them in the order that you find interesting. For you. Quantitative is about larger sample sizes. It is about validation. It is about finding data, and it's about finding proof. Quantitative is not for the why and the tell me about your life and the help me understand. Right.

17:31
Sara Schor
Your discussion, if you will, within quantitative is about very much closed ended. You might put a verbatim there. Where? Oh, you know, you chose concept b as your favorite. Tell me why. Yes, you can get those. In general, verbatims seem to be pretty bad. People don't write terribly thoughtful statements with verbatims. And also, people tend to do quantitative surveys on their phone. And as you know, when people are writing something on their phone, it tends.

17:58
Daniel Scharff
To be quite shorthand, maybe qualitative, like, I don't know. I'm just remembering watching on Mad Men, and they would do, like a focus group. So then like, I don't know, you would see some aha moment where the insight came out because it's like, oh, she uses the product this way, or this is the need that she has that you wouldn't maybe uncover through a survey. Does that happen a lot?

18:18
Sara Schor
Yeah, that's exactly right. So I would say qualitative, which is much more smaller sample size, more open ended. It's more about probing. That's more about getting those juicy ahas, those big insights. That's, you know. Oh, that's interesting. You know, you shop at Costco. Tell me why Costco is the right choice for you. Or what about Costco makes it the right, you know, what about Costco is good for your family? Or, hey, so let's imagine you were going to go shopping for snack food. Tell me all the things that you would be buying, putting in your cart. Okay, great. Now talk to me a little bit. Great. That's interesting. You chose Doritos and Oreos. That's interesting. They feel really different. Tell me about how those fit into your snacking routine. That is a very qualitative conversation.

19:04
Sara Schor
Now, you could get some of those quantitatively, what you could say, listen, below is a list of 15 snack items. Which one of them would go into your cart? But again, that's much more about validation. And my question would be like, well, what would you do with that? And how might that form at the end of the day, what you're doing if you're trying to launch a CPG project?

19:25
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, I've done quantitative stuff myself on, like, pricing studies where I wanted to create a digital shelf and then change the price without people really understanding what was happening and have them tell me their purchase intent. And, you know, that's. Quantitative was pretty cool for that because I could just run it to a thousand people. I could filter it by what shops they typically go to, how aggressively they shop the category in general. So, like, I needed that numerical output to then try to quantify price elasticity of demand, that kind of stuff. I don't know. I think I just never really had the knowledge of how to do a qualitative one in the same way I wish that I had. So I'm glad we're having this conversation.

20:03
Sara Schor
To the cheer point. Danielle, I want to mention that you talked about 1000 people, and the thing with quantitative is the whole idea of quantitative is getting a percentage. 42% of people agree or 67% of people pick strawberry. It is important that you have a larger sample size because you may have heard words, and if you had to take a statistics class in your life, or if you watched anything terribly geeky, you might hear about statistical significance. Otherwise we might call it projectibility. So, meaning if I were to look at the world, this is how the world would act. You do. If you're going to do quantitative, you do need a robust sample size. So my rule of thumb on that one is you kind of want at least 75 people. That's like your absolute minimum to be able to feel good about that.

20:49
Sara Schor
42% is like a number that could be projectible rather than just sort of a random result coming from a smaller group of people. I prefer 100. I think 125 is even better. But what I see people sometimes doing quantitative and, like, the sample size is like 48, and it's like, sure, you can use that directionally, but I wouldn't spend money against it, is what I like to tell my clients.

21:13
Daniel Scharff
Especially if you're trying to decide between two options, then, I mean, yeah, if they, like, one could come up as, I don't know, 10% greater than the other, but at a small sample size, it wouldn't be statistically significant, the difference. So I think that's a great point. So then qualitative, kind of like the opposite of that. I mean, yeah, you're not trying to get that kind of hard number to make a decision on, but you're really interested in the details and the why and what and the words they're choosing and how they're interacting. And so, like with that bulletin board you mentioned, then, so you can record the responses and everybody can kind of go in and watch them. Like different people on the team could go and rewatch them.

21:46
Sara Schor
Yeah. So if we think about the different methodologies for qualitative, right. There's what everybody would heard. You know, there's the online bulletin board, which I mentioned. There's also focus groups, which of course, everyone's heard of or at least seen in a television show. You know that when you go in person in some, like, sort of sad little room and there's like a mirror and there's people behind it, there's also online focus groups. I think that online focus groups are a necessary evil. You know, my experience with them is you kind of get the worst of online and the worst of focus groups, but they're an inexpensive way to get perspective from a number of people. And you could just use your Zoom account or your meet account.

22:22
Daniel Scharff
The worst of focus groups, meaning like, just people who want to make some money and they don't care about what it is that they're talking about, or would it be.

22:29
Sara Schor
Yeah, no, good question. The worst of focus group. Meaning groupthink is real. So, meaning, if I say so, Daniel, talk to me about whether or not this product would be relevant for your life. And you say, this product sucks, and I would never use this, and I don't get it. And. And if someone else was thinking, oh, God, it was pretty darn good, their perspective might be colored. Now, there are ways to moderate around that, but at the end of the day, you do still have a number of people listening to each other. People are naturally not wanting to create waves, especially when they're getting paid. So you get the problems of groupthink, and then there's also sort of the problems of focus groups.

23:05
Sara Schor
It's, you know, people are like, well, I signed up for two to 330, but I can no longer do it. So you've got no show issues. And then also, it's just like a fundamentally unnatural process to sit around and, like, look at real world things outside of a real world context. And then at the end of the day, like, even though those of us who use the computer for a living, like, we all have really good Internet speeds, most people don't. Most people have really bad lighting. Most people have noisy dogs or noisy children, and it just makes it hard to do it, you know, and then there's sort of, you know, shop alongs, going shopping with people, and then one one interviews, which is really important, I think.

23:41
Sara Schor
You know, if you're doing, let's say, like a pharmaceutical or if you're doing something that's very, you know, there's a lot of initiation right now in feminine hygiene, right? That might not be something you want to do in a large group setting. That might be more of a one one or a more anonymous online setting. So you have to choose, obviously, the methodology. My rule of thumb is I like to use groups when it's a really difficult strategic proposition that people would have a lot of questions about. So you have that synchronous back and forth. I like to do one ones if it's, you know, something really intimate or you really need to get to know that particular human and focus groups are also really good for, like, let's say you're testing packaging.

24:21
Sara Schor
You know, that's kind of a great way because you can really understand what it is and what it doesn't. That resonates. And then I kind of think online bulletin boards can do almost everything else, and they're so efficient and they're so inexpensive with a lowercase I, obviously, if you're on a startup budget, it's everything costs money, but compared to conducting a focus group.

24:41
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so those are some of the like, hows. And then can you remind me then just to summarize, what are all the kinds of projects or questions or deliverables that you would be? What are all the different kinds of qualitative then that one can do or that you typically are doing for brands?

24:59
Sara Schor
Yeah, so, I mean, I use all of those platforms and I tend to use qualitative, everything from, hey, you know, from a product perspective, we are thinking, I'll give you a great example of this one. So I spent a lot of time working with ESPN on their women's properties. I mean, it's almost 18 years ago. And then the client said, hey, we think there's something for women. And so went into the marketplace and we did some one ones, we did some focus groups, really understanding the different ways that women fan and the different ways that women relate to sports. And, you know, the output of something like that would be, hey, here are all of the opportunities, you know, here are all attitudes women have around sports. Here's the way women is fan. Here's how fandom exists within women's lives.

25:40
Sara Schor
And then I was working on a, I guess this was a be a baked good CPG brand, and they were looking to change their packaging and they were looking to do some innovation. So we did an online bulletin board and we actually sent them the product. And we had people sort of, and it was an unbranded box. We had people unpack it and talk about what it looked like and what they expected the product to taste like. Then we had them taste it and we had them talk about what it was, what it reminded of them. When would they use it? Then we asked them to use it over the course of several days, and we wanted to understand what occasions it existed in. So you can really do anything. It again, it comes, always comes back to what are your business objectives?

26:18
Sara Schor
And what do you need this input to help you decide? I am a very big believer that there is no reason ever to do research unless you're going to act on the insights that you get from it. And so the real, the question is, what are you looking to define flavors? Are you looking to figure out how to message your product? Are you looking to figure out what consumers see? The benefits are you always have to start with that.

26:42
Daniel Scharff
Okay, got it. So then back to the example for the coffee based energy one, for example. So how did you actually conduct it? Like, how many people were you getting? How did you recruit them? How did you actually set the thing up? Let's, let's get into it.

26:58
Sara Schor
Yeah. And keep in mind, I'm going to talk at the sort of not startup level now, and then we can talk about ways to make it more cheap and cheerful.

27:05
Daniel Scharff
Perfect. All right, so I love cheap and cheerful is great.

27:08
Sara Schor
Yeah, cheap and cheerful. Absolutely. You know, so we started, we had decided on the platform and the reason we started on the online bulletin boards, I think actually the client even came and said, I want to do some focus groups. And I'm like, okay, let's talk about really what you need. Because I always, I want people to spend their money. Well, no matter how big of a client they are, let's not spend money just for the sake of spending it. So we decided to do an online bulletin board, and we determined who the audience was and what I mean by who they are. We talked about their demographics, age, gender, affluence, ethnicity. Sometimes you need people with kids. Sometimes you need people without kids. Then we looked at what other attitudes were.

27:43
Sara Schor
So were looking at people who felt like they, who used energy products, who had energy based needs. And then we also looked at behaviors. These are people who purchased sea stores. These are people who can't remember exactly what all they, what they were. But you want to think about your audience, that you, for qualitative and even for quantitative as well as you want to think about it from a demographic perspective, from an attitudinal perspective, and from a behavioral perspective. You don't want to get too narrow, because obviously you don't want to market to a teeny, tiny, narrow audience. And also the more narrow the specifications are, the more expensive your sample will be. But we've created a screener, worked with a recruiter. Recruiters are folks who have annals of people who have signed up to do research.

28:24
Sara Schor
We give them our screener, they send it out in the form of a quantitative survey to their sample. Then they find people, and the people get qualified, and then they get invited in to participate in the research. I'm a big believer if you're going to spend the money to do it. Now, granted, it is expensive to get people, but if you're going to spend the money on the platform and if you're going to kind of bother doing it, my sort of rule of thumb is a minimum of 15, I think 15 and 25. And I'm talking with an online bulletin board that feels right to me. You could also do focus groups, four groups recruit six people or six groups recruit five or six people.

28:59
Sara Schor
You definitely with qualitative kind of get sort of the one, probably the only things I remember from college, from an economics class, the law of declining returns. There comes to a point where you just start to hear the same things over and over. On the other hand, I would never say do like two focus groups because the people that you get in there just you want to make the whole idea of qualitative and insight work is to hear pattern, is to see themes, is to connect the dots. And if you don't give yourself the opportunity to sort of get a greater volume of inputs to help you see those themes, you'll be making decisions based on just some people who may or may not be your target audience. The way to do something like that.

29:37
Sara Schor
So recruiting is expensive, there are more cheap and cheerful ways to do it. There are some companies, one that comes to mind is called respondent IO. There's another one called D Scout. Those are plate people, organizations that have panels, digital panels, and you can recruit people in a very DIY manner, and then you use their platform to actually conduct the research. It is a great way to do it if you're cut wanting to cut costs and wanting to cut time. The one thing I will say in general is that sample for qualitative and quantitative is becoming more and more problematic. You have bot issues, you have AI issues, you have people who just are kind of doing it for the money. So you do lose a little bit of that quality control. But it is a great way to get sample.

30:24
Sara Schor
Another way to get sample, which I use very frequently when I work with startups, is friends of friends. So example, I was working with a client that was coming out with a new compression sock. So we sent myself and a bunch of the folks that we sent out emails. We put together a little survey, a little 1 minute survey using my personal question pro. You could use SurveyMonkey, use Qualtrics, you can use Google forms if you want to say, hey, we're doing some research and I want to see if you can participate. If you are someone who is qualifies, and then you ask questions like age, you know, all of the demographic stuff. And then in this particular one, I asked people, which of the following products would you never buy?

31:05
Sara Schor
And I included compression socks in there because I wanted to make sure I had non rejectors. And then you get that data and you manually recruit people. It's a lot of work, but it saves a ton of time. A ton of money and a ton of time. I would not suggest, even though it's really easy, I would not suggest using social. I did once where I tried to do this and I said you could participate in paid research. And I got, I was like, wow, I'm getting thousands of responses. And I was getting thousands of responses because they were all fake responses.

31:31
Daniel Scharff
Oh, interesting. Like when you post a job on LinkedIn without putting any kind of criteria in there, you just get like, whatever. Just like an on spot.

31:39
Sara Schor
Yeah. And the other way to do it that's a little bit more cheap and cheerful is that if you happen to have a database, you can also send out this kind of recruiting survey to your database. Like, hey, we're thinking about doing some research. Can you fill out these questions to see if you can participate? Those are sort of the more scrappy ways to find respondents. One thing I would say is you can always use your friends. Just make sure your friends are reflective of the target audience that you're creating for. So obviously, if you're creating a product that is for parents with lower middle class parents with young kids, don't talk to your friends in New York City.

32:13
Daniel Scharff
Okay. It makes sense. So, and then when you were creating the bulletin board, for example, then, like, what does it actually look like? What are you loading in there?

32:22
Sara Schor
Yeah, so the discussion guide. And so we can talk a little bit about some rules of thumb around moderating. The most important thing in qualitative research is to ask good questions. Well, and then I would say also is to listen superbly. And what I mean by listening superbly is you have to get rid of everything that you think. You have to get rid of any judgment. You have to get rid of looking for the answer because people are very good at being people who buy products. They're not good at being marketers or entrepreneurs of CPG products. And as when, I mean, when I talk about asking good questions, well, if you ask a yes no question, you will get a yes no answer. If you ask somebody three questions at a time. When you think about health food, what comes to mind?

33:05
Sara Schor
Do you consider salads? Do you consider this? You will confuse the hell out of people. And I always say, stay as unaided as you possibly can. What I mean by that is, what does it mean to you to have a healthy diet? Then you could say, or what does it mean to you to live a healthy lifestyle? Great. Talk to me about what it means to have a healthy diet. Then you can start getting more narrow. To what degree, if at all, do smoothies play a part of their healthy diet. Okay. And then you can say, if I had a smoothie that had probiotics and kale in it, would that be part? You know, so you want to get as unaided as possible to get those insights.

33:42
Sara Schor
And while it might be frustrating because you want to get to your product right away and your idea right away, it's those more general, bigger, more unaided perspectives that, first of all, put people into context, but also give you insights beyond. What do people think of my product? So I always start that in terms of writing a discussion guide, sort of rule of thumb is start with welcome and introduction. You so want to get into your questions right away, but let people introduce themselves, you know? And this is particularly important when you're doing it. One, one. But even with an online bulletin board, have them introduce themselves. Give them a fun warm up. That is like, I always love a motto, right? I want to introduce the idea of a motto.

34:24
Sara Schor
If you were to say your sort of food motto, what would be your motto? Just something fun, something light, that lets people sort of ease their way into a category that you spend 80 hours a week thinking about, and they spend about 12 seconds a week thinking about, then you want to sort of create. So that's part one is sort of, I like to call it establish human connection. Part two would be setting context. Give yourself a moment to ease people into the category more deeply, and also give yourself the opportunity to get some really juicy insights. That's like some of those questions I talked about. Then you can get into, hey, I want to introduce an idea for a new product for you. Tell me, you know, what is your perspective on this? Start broad again. Always start broad. Always start unaided.

35:06
Sara Schor
Okay, great. That's interesting. This concept included these five ideas. Which of these ideas is most compelling for you? And then let's say you have a question. Do people understand what McT oil is? Right. Let's say you have that question. Wait for do unaided. Unaided. And then lead. Hey, this concept talks about MCT oil. Please tell me what you know about. Really? So the way I like to think about a discussion guide is an inverted triangle. Broad, broad, unaided, narrow, and then very pointy about what you want to get across.

35:36
Daniel Scharff
And can you just explain again what aided versus unaided is?

35:39
Sara Schor
Sure. Aided is when I say what's important for me to know about feeding a toddler, and then that's unaided. Aided might be, to what degree is milk an important part of feeding a toddler? So that's being very specific, you know, being specific about what you're asking. But what I would say is be very careful about giving consumers examples. What's important for you about feeding a toddler, for example, milk, vitamins, nutrients, low sugar. If you give people examples, they will choose one of those examples and read it back to you.

36:16
Daniel Scharff
Let's do a hypothetical example, and then let's do a live design for a study. Does that sound like fun?

36:22
Sara Schor
Yeah, that sounds great.

36:23
Daniel Scharff
Okay, perfect. So let's say. So right now, I'm drinking like a hydration drink. It's like a mix. Let's say I want to launch my own product in that category. I don't really know a lot about it, but I've been excited about it. I've been drinking it. Okay, so let's say I've done some of that research online. I snuck my way in, mint dell report now, okay. I have a decent understanding of who consumers are. So now, if I'm lucky enough to work with Sarah. Sure. On this project. Now we're getting to the point where we're designing qualitative study. So I go in and I've created my discussion guide with you. That warm sequel up. I've put in a little warm up question that is around. Yes.

37:02
Daniel Scharff
What's your, I don't know, favorite sports team, I don't know who, like something kind of loosely related to the category to warm people up, maybe around your favorite color of Gatorade to get drenched onto a coach after they win. I don't know. Then we start getting into some of the questions. So we would start really broadly then with the first kind of questions. And so then it could be like, what would be a good opening question?

37:23
Sara Schor
Yeah. Well, of course, Daniel, I'm going to sort of come back to you and say, what is your objective of the study and what will you do with the results?

37:29
Daniel Scharff
My objective from this would be to give me insights to come up with good branding, basically to appeal to people who are interested, let's say, in hydration, low sugar products.

37:44
Sara Schor
Great. I love it. So what I might do is. So I think one thing is really interesting is what does hydration mean to people? Maybe start off with is, hey, I'd like to introduce you to my new friend Zoe from Mars, and she's, you know, learning English for the first time, and she hears people use the word hydration. How would you define the word hydration? Great. Now tell me about three different occasions in your life where you might need hydration. Right. Because hydration could be I'm so thirsty, I'm quenching thirst. Hydration could be replenishment. Hydration could also be like, I'm hot and I'm using it to cool down. Right. So, again, you are so embedded in the category that I think we want to understand. What do people mean by that? Then I might say, talk to me about brands that provide hydration. Great.

38:30
Sara Schor
Give me three different brands. And for each of these brands, what about them? What do you know about these brands or these products that are hydrating? So I might ask that. And then I might say, I want you to imagine you're creating an ad, or even better, I want you to imagine that you are going to create the perfect hydration drink. What would be in it? What would be my experience of consuming it, and then give it a tagline. Now, consumers are clearly not creating the ad, but what we try start to understand is what are the product benefits, what are the functional benefits and what are the emotional benefits. Sometimes I might even have them help draw the ad or say, you're going to get a famous. A famous illustrator to draw the ad. What would the illustrator draw?

39:14
Sara Schor
So the question is, will they draw somebody in the desert or will they draw somebody finishing a marathon? That will give you really amazing insight into what people mean by hydration. Then I take Daniel's drink. Hey, I'd like to introduce you to a concept for a new idea. Oh, I'd probably also talk about. I'd probably do some sort of exploratory around benefits before I. Again, we're still unaided. Right. I still haven't introduced Daniel's famous hydration drink. I might say, hey, here are ten potential benefits that a hydration drink could provide you. I want you to pick the three that are most important to you and your lifestyle, and tell me why. What about this connects to your lifestyle? And importantly, what is it about your lifestyle that makes this important?

39:54
Sara Schor
Because you always want to tie functionality to real lifestyle utility and to the human. Right. This might be someone like, I see myself as a huge high performer. And because I'm a high performer, I want a high performance drink. You know, that's a great insight. And then you get to, you know, once you've done all that, I'd like to introduce you Daniel's amazing hydration drink. It has this and this. It comes in these flavors on a scale of one to ten. Again, not quantitative, but it helps you get some guidance. How interested are you buying this? Tell me about your score. How do you think Daniel's amazing hydration drink is different than the other drinks out there. What was most compelling to you about Danielle's hydration drink? What was the most important thing I told you about Danielle's hydration drink?

40:38
Sara Schor
I want you to imagine you were telling a friend about Danielle's hydration drinking. What would you tell them? If Daniel was looking for you for advice on how to make his hydration drink better? What would you tell them? So there you go. So, you know, going from the human, getting to know the human, talking about just the concept of the product, getting into the category, getting down to your product, and then getting really into the minutiae of the idea.

41:01
Daniel Scharff
That was amazing. I just wanted to be quiet and listen because that was gold. That was so interesting. Okay. And then now I get all that. They'll say, okay, so Sarah has recruited some awesome people on the cheap and cheerful side for me to help us manage our costs. And then now I have the results from 15 people. I have 15 videos and transcripts. What do I do with all that? How do I get to the answer?

41:22
Sara Schor
I love that. And, you know, it's funny, Daniel, I think I mentioned to you that I'm actually creating a moderator, training and to launch this fall. And it's funny that, you know, I've spoken to a lot of my colleagues, because that's something when you've just been doing this for so long that you do naturally, and it's so hard to put in writing, which has been funny. So I've been talking to a lot of colleagues about this, so it's very timely. You know, I think the first thing you need to do is think about all of the facts. And when I say facts, like, what did you hear people say? What did you see? What did you observe? What did you hear? What did you listen to, and what did you hear? The first thing I would say is, look at themes in the pattern.

41:58
Sara Schor
What are themes that you hear a lot? What are themes and the patterns that keep coming up? As you noticed, when I did that faux Daniels hydration drink discussion guide, I kind of asked the same question three different times, three different ways. That is definitely a rule of thumb, because you had one question right. How do we, you know, what do I need to know to create brand strategy around this? And you want to ask your biggest strategic question as many ways as possible, first of all, so you make sure you get the depth and the richness and the dimension, but also so you get what I like to call strongly held beliefs in research.

42:36
Sara Schor
It's very easy for people to give you a weakly held belief, if you ask the question multiple different ways, it requires you can see what really is a strongly held belief versus just a one off comment. And that's the same thing in quantitative. I never want to use one data point. I want to have several data points that lead me toward answer or show me where there might be tensions and contradictions. But so the first thing you want to do is like, look at what. How can you cluster themes and start to connect the dots? One question I always like to say is, what's answering my strategic questions? I like to ask what surprised me. Where do I see attention in people's lives? What does what they're.

43:15
Sara Schor
And this is one, it's a little bit of a tongue twister, but what does what they're saying say? Like, my very favorite example of this in the entire world is I was doing research for a reality show, a network that has a ton of reality shows. And I was listening to people talk in focus groups, and they were saying, you know, they're all really nice people. I was down in the south, and they're all like, oh, we're so pleasant. We're so pleasant. And I remember this woman said, like, she threw an apple at that girl's head, and I can't. There are people in my world I kind of want to throw an apple at their head.

43:43
Sara Schor
And what this said to me was, people in general are taught to be nice and taught to be kind and taught to not throw at, but they have an alter ego where they just want to tell that annoying colleague just to shut up. And experiencing shows like Real Housewives, which wasn't the show, but it allows them to feed their alter ego. And that was a pretty big aha for my clients at the time, and really help them design marketing for their programming. But I think you want to think about what is what people are saying, and what does that mean to you, and what does that mean for your objectives, and what does that mean for your decision making process? One thing I like to say is, try not to get caught up in all of the things you heard.

44:25
Sara Schor
One thing I always tell junior folks when they're going to write a report is tell your grandmother the big ahas you had it will. Or like, here are the top five things I think I should do. Start with the end. If you have experienced this research and if you are coming at it from a very present place, a very sort of curious place, a very place of being mindful and open and letting go of your expectations, if you're listening to it, you will hear themes. You will have these ahas percolating. You will have the blinding glimpse of the obvious, will be very clear to you. And that is what you need to climb onto. Is that so? What? Or that, oh, my gosh, that makes sense now.

45:09
Sara Schor
You will have those ahas if you listen with curiosity and openness in a way that is really respectful and having compassion for the consumer and what their life is like and how your product could fit into it.

45:22
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so that makes sense. So, you know, whether it's you doing it or me trying to do it, basically, like coming back with looking at all the responses, probably making some notes along the way, and then coming back with, what are the big takeaways here? What was surprising? What was different than I thought? What really stood out to people? What did I learn from this?

45:41
Sara Schor
Yeah, it's a juicy aha. And I think aha is a really important way to think about an insight. And what I mean by juicy. And it's like, funny. When I first started my company, I actually wanted to name my company Juicy N sites, but I was talked out of it. But I do love the idea because something a juicy aha has energy to it. It has, it's robust. It has, it's not just a, oh, here's something I learned. It sort of make, it gets you energized, gives you, it has this sort of dimension and inspiration and sort of, once you get this insight, you're like, oh, my God, I know what I need to do. Hold the phone. Stop the presses. This is creating action. And that's really what you want to get.

46:18
Daniel Scharff
That's amazing. I can totally relate to that. Just about anything that has ever piqued my curiosity of just like, whoa. Yeah, let's get into this. What's that all about? I've had that feeling so many times.

46:29
Sara Schor
That's right. And it's hard. And like, I've been doing this for 20 years. It's a learned skill. But again, I came back to that idea of listening superbly. And if you listen, you're not on your phone and you're not multitasking and you're letting go, and you're just being sort of really open to what comes. The opportunity to have that aha is just, it's waiting for you. It's there for the taken.

46:52
Daniel Scharff
Amazing. Okay, so, yeah, maybe just to close out here, I thought it'd be cool. Maybe each of us can try to remember one cool, like, insight anecdote or one aha. That we came up with that really resonated for a client. And I can go first one that I remember where I was running a quantitative survey for a brand, and were testing, they were considering putting a claim or some kind of call out on the front of Pac, and it was super interesting because, you know, we had about five or ten to test, and I forget where this one claim came from, but it was like, oh, yeah, maybe why don't we throw that in there as well and try and test this one? And it was specifically around made in the USA. Really was not obvious that would be important to people.

47:37
Daniel Scharff
And then we ran the test digital shelf with price points, checking different price points. And that study started as a pricing study, but it ended as, oh, my God, you need to put this on your pack for that specific category, this particular product. It made such a bonkers difference in terms of purchase intent and, of course, output of it. You know, they put it on the pack and, I mean, it's a great company and a great brand anyways, but oh, my God, they did so well. They brought in so much incrementality into the set, so many new consumers. People really trusted their product, and then they ended up taking over categories and sections for many retailers and just was a huge success story.

48:16
Daniel Scharff
So, you know, I just think back on, like, gosh, I wonder if, like, I don't remember who added that one made in the USA claim into the study, but, like, gosh, what if it hadn't been in there? So that was a really fun one to work on. Do you have any.

48:28
Sara Schor
Aha.

48:28
Daniel Scharff
Moments like that?

48:29
Sara Schor
Yeah. I mean, yes. I'm going to go back to the one I brought up with, the ESPN one, because this is definitely a favorite one. And were talking to women. And one thing that we talked to a lot of women who played sports, and I want you. This was a long time ago, before peel. You know, it's so funny. Like, the WNBA has got, and women's basketball is just. Women's sports in general are having a renaissance right now. Maybe not renaissance, because renaissance means it's coming back, but, like, it's very exciting to see how women's sports are gaining the respect and the enthusiasm that they deserve. But when we did this 15 years ago, like, no one was talking about women's sports at all. And I remember were talking to a bunch.

49:07
Sara Schor
What we found quantitatively is that women's that fandom, and having participated in sports in high school and college, there was a correlation, which makes a ton of sense. And so went and spoke to a lot of ex athletes, women in their twenties and thirties who had played in college and high school. And when we listened to them, we heard so much about how, you know, when you're in school, sports are so much part of your curriculum and they're so much part of your life and your teammates are your besties and you play every day. And then once you get became an adult, you're working and you're keeping a home and you're dating or you're in a relationship and you're cooking and you're doing all the things that you do when you're adulting.

49:46
Sara Schor
And it's harder to find a pickup volleyball game, right, or a pickup field hockey game or even, you know, even a pickup tennis game is hard in real life. And what we found was though, in their lives and in their careers, they still held those values of being an athlete, of determination, of competition, of hard work, of teamwork. And that as well, their relationship to being a sports spectator also brought out those qualities in them. It brought them back to those qualities. It brought them back to that experience of playing. And so we came up with this soundbite. It's always amazing to have a soundbite. It gets people excited. But we came up with a soundbite called once an athlete, always an athlete, and once an athlete, always a fan. And it was a big actionable insight.

50:29
Sara Schor
And again, I will say if you ever have stakeholders, investors, they love a juicy soundbite. They love a soundbite. So find soundbites.

50:39
Daniel Scharff
I love it. Thats so interesting. Especially I think yeah, now that were seeing such a surge interest in womens sports, just thats a really interesting insight to think about. Ive heard this on a lot of different topics in different ways, but just about like leaning into things that resonate with you for whatever reason. And you know, when you were talking earlier about alter egos, I was thinking about it, too because I was like, I know you were talking more about reality shows. I was thinking more of curb your enthusiasm if you ever have watched that one. Oh, I love it totally because I'm like, I think that's why a lot of us like it is. And like his character is such an alter ego for so many of us. That's like what, you know, that like.

51:16
Sara Schor
He says what's on his mind exactly.

51:19
Daniel Scharff
Like the, oh, you can see yourself in that. And it's fun to imagine what it would be like to just live your life that way. And it was cool. Hearing him on a recent podcast interview, he was on smart lists. And just hearing him talk about that and then also probably that was the first time I'd ever heard him talk at length and, like, experience his personality a little bit differently from how it is on the show. The main thing, actually, that surprised me is hearing him laugh on it, where there's just like a head back, like, you've never heard that on this show. So anyways, not related to consumer insights.

51:51
Sara Schor
You know what I just learned? Did you know that Larry David created the George Costanza character as a mirror of himself?

51:59
Daniel Scharff
Yes, I've heard him say that. Either I heard him or Jerry Seinfeld on I don't know, or watched some show that they were on. And, yeah, I had heard that a little bit. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense, which all of those characters, though, are like people you can just totally relate to.

52:13
Sara Schor
Amazing. You know, I was thinking about insights and how illustrative they could be and how much they can really inspire an idea. Now, there are a lot of agencies that can say that they worked on the Dove real beauty campaign, but I was the agency I worked at, sterling brands, actually did the original real beauty strategy. Again, lots of agencies claim it, but we did a ton of research for that. And I will tell you, the insight that we came out with was I'd rather look happy and healthy than flawless and perfect. And I'm looking for a beauty brand that understands that. And if you think about that, this is when Dove was transitioning from, like a soap and believe it or not, antiperspirant and dish soap brand to being more of a beauty, to be more in the beauty category.

52:53
Sara Schor
The question was that the client smartly asked was, you know, what is our brand of beauty? Which is where we got to real beauty. But this idea of looking like how I feel rather than looking like how I'm supposed to, and respecting the flaws, respecting the reality of my appearance. Obviously ogilvy, which was the agency that took over that campaign, just ran with it and just did amazing things with it. So a juicy insight can also really define your brand point of view.

53:18
Daniel Scharff
I don't know so much about the beauty category, honestly, but I'm trying to remember what the output of that looked like. I remember some ads around dove that were more like really like body positivity. Like they weren't typical models in the ads that you would see, but it was like, just like, but very, like, happy and, you know, wholesome and healthy looking people in the ads.

53:34
Sara Schor
It was just women of real body types. I mean, in underwear, which was like very bold and bossy, very bold and brassy and very much a point of view. But they had a lot of creative with women with freckles. And they were probably one of the first brands to show women with gray hair, not for anti aging. Right. They were very inclusive. They were very inclusive in terms of people of color, in terms of people with flaws, quote unquote flaws. People with, people with who weren't like this perfect size two, five foot nine, blonde, you know, that you were seeing with the L'Oreals and olays of the world way back when. They've really translated that into a beautiful point of view around self esteem and personal body and image positivity.

54:16
Sara Schor
And that is just like such a gorgeous brand that just has a very strong point of view. But brand strategy is a whole nother. Whole nother.

54:24
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, well, yeah, we'll have to do that one again. Well, Sarah, thank you so much. It's always so interesting to talk to you. I think. I mean, certainly for me, as somebody who's really interested in consumer insights, and I would say, like, just the stuff, you know, is stuff that I have no idea about. So it's just really interesting to learn. And just like now, I don't work for a brand now. I have obviously for like ten years in the past, but it just makes me, like, itching, raring to go to like, oh, yeah, we could do this kind of a study and come up with the killer insight and launch the new brand.

54:54
Daniel Scharff
So it's very inspiring to hear about all of that and just, you know, for anyone who wants to connect with you, do you mind just, you know, giving your details out? Is it best to, like, get in touch with you on LinkedIn or your website or to handwrite you or.

55:09
Sara Schor
No, absolutely. So my website is s as in Sam c Charlie, h o r insights. So sureinsights, but spelled s c h o r. Anybody's welcome to email me. It's Sara Noh. Sara@shoreinsights.com. S c h O R. Insights.com.

55:26
Daniel Scharff
And just ballpark range. If someone's trying to.

55:30
Sara Schor
You can't do that.

55:32
Daniel Scharff
Just let just maybe you could give it like, you know, if someone wants to work with you on some kind of an insights study, is it going to cost them like $100,000 is going to cost them $2,000?

55:45
Sara Schor
Like, I would never do that. First of all, I would never do that to someone. If you're in a startup position, you're like, oh, my God, I just did a, you know, $200 million exit. You know, we might develop a program that's more of a robust program, but if someone's coming and like, hey, I have five grand. I have eight grand, what can we do? I'll always work with somebody to make it work. We'll figure out how scrappy, how cheap and cheerful we need to be. But, you know, I think it's hard to do something for under $5,000 because you do have to compensate people.

56:11
Daniel Scharff
Yeah.

56:12
Sara Schor
If you imagine you're going to have 20 people, you're paying them $150 each already. There's money.

56:17
Daniel Scharff
Yeah. Okay, cool. All right. That I always find it just helps people to understand the ball part that they're in. They're like, oh, am I in a six figure ballpark? Am I in? So that's. Thank you for the transparency.

56:26
Sara Schor
I will tell you, before I did the last webinar with you, a gal called me and she was creating a really cool coffee product, and I just gave her a few hours for free coffee. I mean, I am super respectful of entrepreneurs. I am super happy to support people. If someone needs a brain to pick for an hour or two, we could do a food barter.

56:45
Daniel Scharff
You are the best, Sarah. That's amazing. Whenever this goes live, I would get ready for a bunch of emails of people offering their CPG products. So thank you again. Always a delight to chat with you and hope everybody has learned as much as I have today.

57:03
Sara Schor
Great. Thanks so much, Daniel. Have a great day.

57:05
Daniel Scharff
Thank you. All right, everybody, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the podcast today, it would really help us out if you can leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I am Daniel Scharff. I'm the host and founder of Startup CPG. Please feel free to reach out or add me on LinkedIn. If you're a potential sponsor that would like to appear on the podcast, please email partnershipstartupcpg.com. And reminder to all of you out there, we would love to have you join the community. You can sign up at our website, startupcpg.com, to learn about our webinars, events and slack channel. If you enjoyed today's music, you can check out my band at the super fantastics on Spotify music. On behalf of the entire startup CPG team, thank you so much for listening and your support. See you next time.