The Startup CPG Podcast

Sam Tichnor
I used to have a very high risk tolerance. I think my wrist tolerance is probably a little bit lower now. I would much rather be sitting here saying, I took a swing and it didn't work three, four years down the road where I was and be like, oh, what if I had done that? You know? But it did kind of like push me onto a path that now is like, great because I'm still in, like, early stage ecosystem and working with founders and doing, I think, what I do best, which is more of like the finance ops, like helping brands, like, make good decisions, because I certainly know I haven't made some. And if I can help a couple people make better decisions and keep their dream alive, then maybe that's what I should have been doing the whole time.

00:47
Daniel Scharff
Welcome to the startup CPG podcast Postmortem edition. So we've got Sam Tickner, who is the founder of fups, on to talk about all the lessons learned from the growth and eventual closing down of his business. Pfupps was a puffed snack brand. It wanted to disrupt on flavor, not health claims. You probably saw it. Their branding got a lot of attention. Pastel colored bags featuring a cheese puff with a face that said not healthy. The brand had promising early traction that got distribution in hundreds of independent stores and did well online. But it wasn't enough to survive a cash crunch and a bunch of operational issues to make it beyond 2024. There are a lot of lessons.

01:22
Daniel Scharff
In this episode, we talked about his approach to the market life of a solo founder, the things that tripped up his brand in the early days, and a lot of what he learned when he tried to scale and drive sales in those retail stores. I really appreciate Sam's reflections today. I think that some of these are lessons that every founder really needs to hear. Sam has taken these lessons now to his new role where he's at Pale Blue Dot. They serve as CFO for a bunch of emerging CPG brands. All right, enjoy everybody. Hey, Sam, welcome to the podcast. So can we start off? Could you do a quick intro please? And also just tell us what was going on in the life of Sam pre fups.

02:01
Sam Tichnor
Yeah, well, first, thanks for having me on. So, yeah, I'm Sam. I started a brand called phups, which was puff snack brand, aiming to disrupt the market on flavor rather than health claims. We ran for about three years and then just kind of ran out of gas. But prior to starting the brand, I had worked at Harry's for about six years and prior to that, Capital One. So I'd kind of Come up with, you know, good training and, you know, making Excel models and putting together slide decks, and then worked at highly successful CPG startup, became a nine figure brand and kind of felt like it was maybe my time to give it a shot of my own. It was, you know, 2020, 2021, getting a Covid. You're at home thinking, hey, what kind of brand could I start?

02:46
Sam Tichnor
And that's kind of what led me to throwing my hat in the ring and becoming a founder.

02:50
Daniel Scharff
That makes a lot of sense. I can relate to that. There were just so many digitally native brands absolutely skyrocketing in that era. So I can imagine you being there, being like, why not me? I could do this. Seeing all that's.

03:01
Sam Tichnor
That's exactly what I said to myself.

03:03
Daniel Scharff
And then where did the actual idea start to come from? Did you have a sense like, oh, I want to do food and snacks specifically, or you just thought about the branding or it was more these trends that you were responding to or against?

03:16
Sam Tichnor
Yeah, so my role at the time was in a group called Harry's Labs where were looking to either build, buy or invest in like kind of partner brands to Harry's. That kind of fit corporate mantra of like, create things people like more. And how do you kind of go beyond shaving and personal care? And so I was spending a lot of time looking at consumer trends, understanding like how would you commercialize a product and go from consumer insight all the way to launch? And so I was getting a bunch of reps at that. And so that kind of precluded me from being like, I wasn't going to go start a competitive soap brand to the conglomerate I was already working for and so thought, you know, food and Bev could be interesting.

03:54
Sam Tichnor
I passionate about cooking and you know, it's kind of one of my, you know, hobbies outside of work. So I was always kind of like interested in the space if not working in it. And I sort of have had this thought of, you know, I love categories where there's one big player and then a bunch of people at the tail because that one big player can't meet everybody's needs. And then understanding that consumers shop along a lot of different modalities. So like in snacking it could be they shop on flavor, they shop on texture, they shop on health claims. And just from my assessment of the market, it seemed like, and kind of, to be honest, still seems like a lot of people go after the health claims as their kind of way. And it's, we're the Cheetos, but we're healthier.

04:33
Sam Tichnor
Even though if you compare ingredient panel like they're not so distinguishable, indistinguishable with phups. The modalities I was going after was kind of the insight that there could be someone who loves the salt and vinegar flavor and likes chip but prefers a puff. And they were kind of in that in between of if they wanted the flavor they prefer, they couldn't have it on the texture they prefer or vice versa. So that's kind of my least guiding insight of like, okay, this is interesting. And that was, that person was me where it was like, I love salt and vinegar chips, but like I also love Cheeto puffs and why can't they be the same thing?

05:04
Daniel Scharff
That's pretty interesting to hear because it almost sounds more like the approach to innovation that I would see from big cpg. Like, you know, I used to work in candy and then I always be like, I don't know, they don't do a lot of that new better for you stuff. They'll just be like, what if we put the M and Ms. In the Twix? Hey, you know, that kind of innovation. So. But I see where you're coming from of like, look, there is some low hanging fruit here, some of these proven formats and flavors and maybe we could just iterate on those a little bit more with a new brand. Right there probably. There are probably some other examples of companies that have done that and been successful. Right?

05:38
Sam Tichnor
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, you think about even just seltzer water as a thing. It's, it's sparkling water with flavors and flavor is kind of the differentiator. And there's a. But like spindrift using natural fruit, like things like that were just like looking at the market. I'm like, okay, like, you know, flavor as a way to get shelf space is something that could be interesting.

05:57
Daniel Scharff
Okay, cool. So can see like where that kernel of the idea started coming from. So what made you think about the actual branding? The name, where did that all come from as the idea started to crystallize?

06:10
Sam Tichnor
Yeah. So, you know, there was advice I got early which was, you know, invest a lot in your brand and invest a lot in your operations. Make sure the product's good. And as I reflect on like, you know, things that went well, things that didn't go well. Like, I think I maybe took that a little too literally financially and kind of, you know, you can invest a lot in a brand without spending a lot of money on it. You can invest on your product. That's when you have a lot of money on it. So that's kind of an aside, but you know, coming from a bigger CPG background, knowing and running the budgets, knowing what a branding agency costs, I was like, oh well, if I spend one third of that, you know, that's a good deal.

06:44
Sam Tichnor
Like, when in reality you could probably spend 1/20 of it and get a good brand. But anyway, so like I worked with a branding agency that I absolutely love. So like, I don't regret that aspect of it. It's just, it was expensive. And so we kind of worked on the name and the branding and the ethos of, well, if we're not going to become a healthy brand, if we're the opposite, then we should say so. And so that's kind of where we started thinking about like if we're doing things differently, like fups is kind of puffs backwards but wrong. And we started with this whole like, we're not healthy, we're just delicious as kind of our tagline.

07:15
Sam Tichnor
Because really the point was like, let's be out there, let's be absurd, let's kind of like just be trans radically transparent about who the brand is and what we stand for. And I think at the same time there are probably thousands of brands starting every year. How can you be one of the ones that stands out and catches attention? We thought going a little bit overboard being 11 out of 10 on wacky branding was a way to get there and to a certain extent it worked, at least early on.

07:43
Daniel Scharff
So what is a lot of money by the way to spend on branding? Like how much did that actually cost?

07:48
Sam Tichnor
Verse?

07:48
Daniel Scharff
I mean, I know you come from a big company that can cost many hundreds of thousands or even seven figure investments, but what did you feel like was an appropriate investment?

07:56
Sam Tichnor
Yeah, like I was looking to spend between like 50 and 75 was kind of what I had pegged for my budget. And then knowing that like, okay, that's it. But then all the other things that come on top of that with the, you know, you have to do photo shoots and you have to create, you know, assets for your website and you have to build a website, all that stuff kind of adds up. And especially like even though I, you know, I had an FPA background and I worked at an emerging CPG brand, like I had I a knowledge of those things.

08:22
Sam Tichnor
But until you're really doing it yourself and responsible for launching that brand, knowing especially when you're not a marketer or A brand person, there's all these little hidden expenses that just start to add up and so slowly but surely it creeps up into a bigger expense than you thought. Especially when you stretch the budget on an agency who you kind of just felt like, you know, and I think they built the right brand for me and, but I, I don't know if I allocated the budget in other places appropriately to kind of compensate for that.

08:51
Daniel Scharff
It's funny how, you know, expenses can really escalate where it's like, well now we have this really nice branding. Well then we also need a really nice website and now we need a lot of Instagram followers. Well and then we definitely need a photo shoot. You know, when you sort of like decide to go for it. It's just, I think it's like if you buy a really big house, well now you're going to need like to pay a cleaner a lot of money and you're going to need a lot of furniture and you know, just sort of depends how you want your cost of overall living to be for the brand. Right?

09:19
Sam Tichnor
Yeah. And what I'd always say to people who would listen on the marketing side is like, I have a Ferrari sitting in my garage and I don't have any gas and I want to drive it on the highway but I don't know how to get. And I think we just really kind of never really used it in the right way once the, you know, the branding and original website and all that was done.

09:37
Daniel Scharff
And by the way, where was the money coming from at this point? You still had your full time job so you were just kind of funding it out of savings or had you started working, raising at some point?

09:46
Sam Tichnor
It was kind of like a mix. So I, I left Harry's towards the end of 2020. I was doing independent consulting. I wanted a little bit more flexibility on my time. The NFT craze was fun for me for a little while. So that kind of like helped, you know, give some of the initial seed capital.

10:04
Daniel Scharff
What'd you make money from an nft Digital basketball cards. Like you take a picture of a card or you made a net new card?

10:13
Sam Tichnor
No, like I just like speculating like back in, you know, 2021 early one.

10:17
Daniel Scharff
So that was buying and selling.

10:18
Sam Tichnor
Yeah. So like that helped but it was largely, you know, personal savings and friends and family pre launch. So that probably first half a million to get to market. And I think one of as went on we raised a small amount of institutional capital, you know, continued to bring in a little bit more friends and family capital. So weren't like undercapitalized. We weren't over capitalized. Like, we had money to bring a brand to market and operate it for a few years.

10:45
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so one of the reasons that I wanted you to be on here, Sam, is because I agree with you about the branding. Like, it was cool. It was big branding. Like, that was very polished. It was very interesting. It was, I don't know if like sleek is the right word because I don't think that's what it was supposed to be. But it was evocative. You would see it and it was sort of like interesting kind of, you know, plain colors and then just the, you know, characterization of the puff that was. It just like kind of made you feel weird and it was kind of funny at the same time, but it was really eye catching.

11:17
Sam Tichnor
The goal was not to blend in.

11:19
Daniel Scharff
Yeah. So yes, that was achieved, I think for sure. And then what about the actual product? Can you tell us what skus you were launching with and how you felt about the product quality?

11:30
Sam Tichnor
Yeah, so I think we had some operational issues throughout our entire time as a business. And I think early on, you know, we, you know, wanted to do all the right things and, you know, work with the good formulator and, you know, find the right co packer and all that. And I, I think to launch we did for sure. I think where we were, some of our blind spots were, well, how much demand is there going to be? Like, how do you know if this is the right co packer? And, and moqs were high and line time was scarce and so we kind of had to just go for it. Yeah, like, in terms of flavor development, I marched with five flavors. That was too many. We probably should have had three or four. My thought was develop five.

12:04
Sam Tichnor
And if there's an issue with one or two as we get ready to go to market, then we'll still have three or four. If you kind of try to do three and then you're left with one and you're trying to be a flavor brand that doesn't really work. And I think in hindsight, you know, we had three savory flavors, two sweet flavors, one of them was cheese and kind of have to. A decision we had to make was, if we're going to be a puff brand, are we going to have a cheese skew or are we going to say we're the anti cheese puff brand? And we made decision to stick with cheese because that's what people are used to. I wanted to limit changes in behavior where I could.

12:37
Sam Tichnor
And so if that's the flavor, if we had a really good cheese and that got people in, then they'd be more willing to try our other flavors. But five was too many and I think you know I. There were some that I just. I like. We had a hot chocolate flavor that I personally really liked and it just was a little different than what people would expect. And I think that was like maybe a bridge too far for like okay, like a dessert chocolate flavor puff like that didn't. Which is crazy to me because like Cocoa Puffs is a cereal that exists and people love. And we had a cinnamon toast crunch inspired flavor as our other sweet flavor. And that one was probably our, I think at the end of the day probably our best seller or our most liked flavor.

13:13
Sam Tichnor
But five was too many and it created complexity and we overproduced and we didn't know, you know how much of each to make and. And that led to some decisions post launch around like how much should we make and when and. And what. How do we allocate skus that ultimately less just being over inventoried for. For the first year.

13:30
Daniel Scharff
So overall at launch you were pretty happy then with the actual quality of the product. The ones that you know at the time anyways you were happy with what you were launching. The number of flavors that you had. You felt like had kind of a broad portfolio that covered a lot of ground. And then what were. What was the launch like? What were you focusing on was most? How much of your energy was in retail versus digital channels. What was your goal in those early days?

13:53
Sam Tichnor
Yeah, I mean our launch strategy was launch online and try to get virality or PR or just be different and weird and get people talking about us. And it worked. You know, we had a. For our first year in business like we exceeded six figures in sales. I think it. It was a little bit slower than we bought inventory against. And that's kind of like the constant theme of. Of kind of where the cracks started to emerge in year one. But you know we sold a lot online, had great product reviews, earned a bunch of interesting pr. Definitely you know, was polarizing which was the point. Like people loved us or hated us, but they talked about us. And you can kind of see that with other brand like David the protein bar. Like they are doing that times a million right now.

14:40
Sam Tichnor
And it's. That's. If you inject your brand into the conversation and people are talking about it, you don't need an Ad because people are already talking about your brand. And so I see that strategy happening in real time and I can do nothing but applaud it because it. It works. It just kind of doesn't work for everybody all the time.

14:55
Daniel Scharff
I totally agree with you about the David thing. I see everybody talking about it online and debating the marketing strategies. They, meanwhile, they have an absurd number of facings at every store that I see, and people are cleaning out the product. So. So there. You can't argue with that.

15:09
Sam Tichnor
We may or may not have used the same branding agency, so.

15:12
Daniel Scharff
Oh, interesting.

15:13
Sam Tichnor
Yeah. So I think that, you know, it doesn't always work, but when it does, it really does.

15:18
Daniel Scharff
So. Okay, so you were focused mainly on digital channel, creating a lot of awareness, which I think you did do, was I became aware of it. And I think a lot of people that I know would be like, yeah, I know that brand. I've seen that. And then where did it go from there? Did you eventually try to get some retail doors or was it really all D2C focused all the time?

15:35
Sam Tichnor
Yeah. So early on, we got into Foxtrot and it was one of those, like, I didn't do anything. They DM'd me on Instagram. Were like, dude, do you want to be in Foxtrot? I was like, okay, sure. And didn't think much of it. It's like, okay, great, like, we're going to go into retail. I think I for sure underestimated, like, the complexity and all the things you have to think about going from dtc, where, like, you can kind of get away shipping something with six weeks of shelf life left to retail, where you absolutely cannot. And, you know, a lot of lessons learned. Like, we had good velocities, but again, like, some of those issues started to emerge early on where we just kind of were like, okay, great, we'll say yes and figure it out later.

16:08
Sam Tichnor
Where I think, as anyone you know will tell you, doing retail, like, that's the absolute wrong approach. Like, you gotta be a hundred percent buttoned up and ready and really know your stuff and be ready for the brand to go. But when you're sitting on more inventory than you can sell, you just will say yes to things that move the inventory. So that was kind of like our first foray into retail. And then in 2023, beginning of the year, launched in a bunch of bodegas in New York. And that became very central to our strategy. Again, a lot of lessons learned there, where the pricing that ended up hitting shelves was way too high, way higher than we originally modeled out. Even like knowing like, okay, I'm going to take the pricing down for the distributor. And it just didn't quite work.

16:52
Sam Tichnor
So then again it's like, well, we feel like there's good channel fit. Like people see us in stores and love us and they tag us, you know, on social media and like there's a lot of like that type of hype going on and it's a cool brand but something's happening where it's not moving off shelf. And so what we ended up spending a lot of. So year one was all digital and then all these, you know, retail opportunities are popping up. Like, let's start saying yes. Year two we start figuring out, okay, well the first pass into retail didn't go well. What changes can we make on our end to kind of make that work? And ultimately realized our costs were too high. We needed to find a manufacturer for less, we needed a single serve.

17:26
Sam Tichnor
We only had the multi size and kind of, you know, where we can get into, you know, year three and where things really started to fall off, which was just like that execution of okay, if we're going to make something for less and we're going to switch manufacturers and change our product in a meaningful way and do a smaller size and all those things, like how do you execute that? And that's kind of where things kind of just didn't work out.

17:46
Daniel Scharff
That's pretty interesting to think about. So you got the product, when did it actually first launch online again?

17:52
Sam Tichnor
March 2022.

17:53
Daniel Scharff
Okay, cool. So then even by. So maybe so at some point you launched into that retail with Foxtrot and then kind of had some lessons from that and then went in a more meaningful way in 2023, focused on new York market, which by the way is a very tough market. I think a lot of people are like, great New York, amazing kind of demographic to get in front of, bodega culture, all of that stuff. But I've tried that also and what I found is that there are a lot of people who can help you get quote unquote doors in New York and they will run around and give away free product to the bodegas that they go into who are like, yeah, great, sure, I'll take that free product and sell it and then put that money in my pocket.

18:33
Daniel Scharff
And they don't really have the intention of ordering again. And you also aren't really doing anything to drive the brand or convince them to order again or really have the, I would say, persistent sales strategy that you need in Process to make it happen and drive awareness, you know, unless you're really making a big investment in the market. So I definitely have blown money doing that without having really just a proper overall plan. And it was just expensive. That was an expensive lesson to learn. I know a lot of other people who have done that also. Does any of that sound familiar or did you have a pretty good plan?

19:04
Sam Tichnor
Definitely, like, the first go around. So we kind of took two swings at it. The first go around was exactly that. We're like at a distributor saying, hey, we want, like, we saw your brand. It looks really cool. Like, we want to buy 10,000 units. Yeah, I could certainly use moving 10,000 units. And even then, like, thinking about the shelf life lessons learned, like, I have all these units in my warehouse. I'll give them to you today. And then I send them and they're like, he expires in February, It's October. Like, we can't do much with this, but we had another production ongoing, whatever. Like, were able to service the demand and then kind of see, you know, no investment on my end on, like, feet in the street and, you know, making sure the product's moving.

19:45
Sam Tichnor
And, you know, it's January when the product ends up hitting shelves, which is not a good time for junk food. Everyone's a new year, new me. And we're like, putting not healthy out there. There's some lessons learned on that. And then we. We did take those lessons for our next work with a kind of a different distributor who made bodegas, but a bunch of chains. And again, like, we. We had a good business with Dashmart on. On DoorDash. And so they ended up getting us into one of their distributors. And so I was like, great, we got these first lessons learned. Let's go again. We're going to get, you know, fractional, but still like feet in the street, going to the stores, supporting the distributor. And we changed up our packaging a little bit.

20:21
Sam Tichnor
We got rid of the not healthy, which I go back and forth on whether or not that was the right idea, right thing to do or not. But we did it. Whether or not we changed the packaging enough to optimize for retail, you know, it's a conversation that we could talk all day about, but we made the changes we made and it's still like, it just wasn't quite enough to communicate to a shopper that this was a product they should be taking off the shelf. And so even with the changes we made for that second go around, you know, still priced maybe a Little bit too high and still wasn't moving off the shelf. And, and that was again like a, not every brand can move.

20:53
Sam Tichnor
And the only way you'll learn you can run a million surveys and find the data points that say oh, consumers are, have a high willingness to purchase this but until you're on shelf and real people in the real world see it, you're not going to know if it's going to move.

21:08
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so you had kind of a street sales team, fractional, you know, getting some initial orders done, support the market. How was the product actually getting to them if they reordered?

21:17
Sam Tichnor
Yeah, so we worked with Rainforest Distributors who they were, I mean for emerging brands they're great partners and they, you know, certainly invested their time and effort and energy into helping support the brand get on shelves and allowed for me to do ride alongs and meet with their team at their headquarters and pitch the brand to their sales team. And you know, we kind of all the things you do before hitting shelf, I felt like they helped me do the right way. But at the end of the day, you know, you can be on a bogo deal or you can give a, you know, 25% off case stack deal, but people, consumers will let you know if they want your product by buying it.

21:54
Sam Tichnor
And our velocities weren't good enough to kind of get the attention of the distributor over and over again because if they see products that are moving, that's where they're going to focus because that's where ultimately their business makes money. And so we just didn't have quite the right velocities.

22:11
Daniel Scharff
And what was your strategy to try to get overall consumer interest and awareness, you know, when you're not there. So you obviously had some kind of a digital campaign going. I remember also seeing somebody order this. I think it must have been late 21 or something off thing testing. But what, like, what were your other strategies to try to just educate the consumer about your product and get that pickup and velocity in stores?

22:36
Sam Tichnor
Yeah, and that's an area we used to fall short, which is like one of my. So there's kind of like two things. One, we should have definitely invested more in building awareness and building consumer interest and doing cool things and just being part of the conversations and being visible, which we did a good job probably the first three to six months. But I'm not a marketer and I didn't have anyone full time on the team that was focused on getting people interested, getting eyeballs over and over again and you know, I've worked with a few social media agencies and tried to build a TikTok and those types of things, but it wasn't enough. Like it just didn't hit.

23:11
Sam Tichnor
And so I felt like on the sales side were able to get into doors and were able to work with distributors that a lot of brands dream of. And on the marketing side, just, we didn't hold up our end of the bargain. We didn't do enough to support it. And that's for me, a huge lesson learned of being a solo founder, not having a kind of brand person along for the journey the whole way, fully invested like I was. I think that led to us not like again, we talked about having a really cool brand, but then it's like a Ferrari in a garage that you don't know how to drive. I didn't have a driver of the Ferrari.

23:43
Sam Tichnor
And that especially when were kind of navigating that first big launch with Rainforest and all the doors they helped us get into, we didn't have got on shelf great, now what? And we didn't have enough going on beyond just like the look cool, be a cool brand, you know, have the typical bogo tight discount.

23:59
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, it's a tough one. I'm like you, I don't know a lot about marketing, to be honest. And a lot of times I'm like, I don't know, that just sounds really expensive. Is that going to actually do anything on the shelf? And you know, I think that kind of stuff probably prevents me from being a great person at knowing how to really build a brand where there isn't just such kind of direct ROI on stuff. So I definitely can understand that. Who, by the way, did you really feel like your product was targeting? What kind of demographic do you think was most interested?

24:30
Sam Tichnor
Yeah, so were going after we called them the couch snacker, where it's someone who's, you know, surprisingly, like even though we said not healthy, like they lead an active lifestyle, you know, they are engaged at work, they, you know, exercise, they're part of community events. But when they get home at night on the weekends, they're watching a movie. Like they know that's their time to relax and kick back and have a glass of wine, have a beer, have a snack that tastes good. And they don't want to make sacrifices. Cause they don't make sacrifices on what they want during the day. And so if at night, midday snack, they just want something that tastes really good that meets the flavor profile that they want, like that's who were kind of going after.

25:12
Daniel Scharff
I gotcha. I'm probably one of those. I live in New York. I just came back from the gym. We'll have an active day and then towards the end of the day as I wind down and my will to maintain a good diet sort of fades as my mental energy fades at the end of the day, then I will snack on something for sure.

25:29
Sam Tichnor
I think the sneaky thing about our products, which we again, could have communicated better with consumers was like the actual like nutrition facts and ingredient list was fairly good, fairly clean. Because again, it's like you can put whatever you want on the front of the package, but if you look at the back and you're like, all right, like 140 calories per serving, like, that's not bad. Like ingredients that look relatively pronounceable, like maybe besides one or two, like not bad. And it just, I think we wanted to position ourselves to think of our consumer as a smart person who knew what they wanted and weren't going to get tricked by kind of misleading marketing claims.

26:04
Daniel Scharff
Okay. So it was designed to be, you know, not specifically healthy, but it was also probably, a lot of people would say probably somewhat cleaner than some of the mass market stuff out there.

26:13
Sam Tichnor
Yeah, like, pretty good. Like it's good enough for a snack. Like, it's not going to be like something that you're like, oh, this has this in it. Like, oh, like I really shouldn't be eating that.

26:22
Daniel Scharff
Okay. So just trying to see the velocity in New York. Where did the signs really start coming that like, hey, you know what, this might not work out actually.

26:31
Sam Tichnor
Yeah, I mean it was part of it is like we're sales, marketing ops and finance all moving in the same direction at the same time. And when that doesn't happen, even from day one, it starts to create problems down the road. And I kind of alluded to like, you know, early on being over inventoried. Some of it was just on a decision where, like we did our first production run, like the first one that didn't go to market, where, like there was a miscommunication between us and our co packer where, you know, they weren't putting it in the bags. Like we kind of made it in bulk and then moved it somewhere else. And the amount of time between when they actually made the product and then we put it in the bags was long enough for the entire first run to go stale.

27:10
Sam Tichnor
Which, you know, lesson learned. But like they were great partners about it. Like, that wasn't Necessarily a financial mistake as much as it was just like a. Oh no, like we didn't. We don't have enough raw materials to do the full run that we wanted to do. So were kind of like mismatched on flavors. And early on I was like, oh well, we're getting this box truck interest in like the first couple weeks of DTC were going really well. Like we should do another production run because I don't want to run out of stock and know, two months and so then too much inventory. Right. And we didn't have like the marketing plan to really sell it all.

27:41
Sam Tichnor
So that first year, the big crack that started to emerge was were making decisions so that we could get through this inventory faster rather than decisions that were like what is actually the best for the business. And it at the end of the day would have been less financially burdensome if we just lack of better words like ate the inventory versus like trying to chase. Oh well, now we have to start doing all this. These marketing initiatives that like I probably wasn't the right person to making to be making the decisions on because you know, if I'm saying yes to this like $20,000 investment and it doesn't work, then not only do we still have all the inventory, but we've lost that $20,000 marketing investment. So year one, like that's where a lot of the cracks started to emerge.

28:23
Sam Tichnor
And then, you know, as time passed I think it became like, well, were always kind of playing from behind. We were always thinking about we had working capital problems and you know, we wanted to make sure that, you know, we can move the brand in the direction that it needed to. Whether it's pivoting to more of a single serve approach. Trying to get into convenience stores, which was kind of like the year three strategy. And you know, making sure that the product is still. When we move from co Packer A to Co Packer B, like are we managing that transition in the right way so that, you know, all the. From, you know, eight production runs at the first co Packer it get.

28:56
Sam Tichnor
The product gets successively better each time because you understand, you know, how the machines work and you know, they're kind of fine tuning things and then all of a sudden you're at square one while then you're trying to launch with a rainforest. Like there's a. A lot has to go right and when you are limited on capital, if it doesn't go right, there's no plan B. And that's kind of where we found ourselves.

29:17
Daniel Scharff
Did you ever try to sell any of that expiring inventory through some of the closeout channels, you know, grocery outlet, misfits, Lewis company, anything like that?

29:25
Sam Tichnor
Yeah, we did and you know, had some success doing that I think. You know, early on you don't really, you think oh well, it's a, you know, maybe not right for the brand. And then after you kind of eat through one, you know, bash of expired inventory then you're like well I don't want to do that again. So yeah, we, I mean we definitely when we had to and went through some of the off price channels.

29:46
Daniel Scharff
Cool. Just shout out for everybody. We have an expiry product inventory database on our website under Founder resources. So it's in my opinion much better than paying to throw something away. If you especially can get it to a place like grocery outlet that has tons of outlets in California, it's a good store, you know, gets people product at a really affordable price. I think that can be a really good way to just not bite it so hard. But I definitely know what that's like. I've been there, man, I've been there.

30:13
Daniel Scharff
So, so just kind of listening back on this story, I mean it's very relatable to me because I think you did the thing that is very hard for a lot of brands to do, which is just, you know, come up with a product with cool branding, get attention to it, you know, make it a thing and just, you know, create a lot of intrigue and awareness around a brand that's really hard to do. So congratulations on doing that. And then just over time just not, you know, obviously some operational difficulties and then also just not quite seeing the demand for the product in the store based on the strategy and the packaging and the investments that you were making to really, let's say make the product successful and kind of self sustaining.

30:54
Daniel Scharff
So I've just been logging some of these lessons that you have as we've been talking here today. So let me list some of them and then I want to see if you have any others that you want to add on to this. So yeah, the first one you mentioned about launching with number of SKUs. I think that's a great call out because I think the instinct for everybody is like more, you know, I want to show up and it's like I'm going to look so cool when I have my five big beautiful skus. Also it's a bit of a flex and let me show you all the cool innovative flavors that we come up with.

31:22
Daniel Scharff
My personal instinct is more just to like, study the category, see what the top selling flavors are in that category and probably make something that is like those flavors because, you know, at least I learned that when I've worked in cookie dough. Like just chocolate chip is going to sell the most. So start with the chocolate chip and then after that it might be, you know, the. What the rainbow flavor or whatever. Birthday cake. That's what I mean. Or, you know, you can just kind of like make those ones and you can iterate off it a little bit. But like consumers in dressings, they're. I don't know, ranch is going to come first, something like that. So maybe that's your first skew. Whereas, yeah, really the temptation is to go the other route and be like, look like, voila.

31:59
Daniel Scharff
Look at what I can come up with. Like, the brand is magical.

32:02
Sam Tichnor
And everybody wants a brand block at Whole Foods.

32:04
Daniel Scharff
Yes. And I think everybody thinks that consumers should want the thing that they can make that is, yeah, the flex or just like a really cool thing. And won't we get. Won't everybody then discover this? But like, wow, it's expensive to get consumers to discover new kinds of products and new brands. And, you know, it's tough. So I really like that lesson from you and, you know, obviously related to the amount of inventory because then you're sitting on a bunch of all of them and they're not all getting ordered by retailers, even when you do get that. Right. But I also really understand that because, you know, it goes back to that lesson you learn, or at least we learned in business school, which is the cost of overage versus the cost of underage.

32:41
Daniel Scharff
Like, what is the actual true cost to me of actually running out of inventory versus sitting on the inventory that might expire? I mean, you know, you can learn how to forecast well, but ultimately you're going to make a bet on, hey, I think these orders are definitely coming through, depending on your lead time and, you know, looking at what accounts you really think you're going to close. So definitely going to understand that as well. But I really like the lesson that you draw from that of just fewer skus would have actually been enough for us, even if it wasn't all the ones that you want to launch with, because you can save that and then launch it at expo in a subsequent year and it'll be all the rage. You know, people love seeing that.

33:12
Sam Tichnor
Except three years ago, if you don't me, I would have said, well, we're going to do five more flavors in year one, we're going to add 10 flavors.

33:18
Daniel Scharff
Honestly, I rarely see it done well these days there are a couple of brands that seem to actually even thrive by having a lot of seasonal flavors and, you know, just people who are really ops pros. Okay. And then I also like that third lesson that you mentioned around the single size, like serving sku because you had the big bag, which. Yeah, like maybe that's a big commitment. You're at the bodega or you're checking something out online. Like I want to try this, but just a little bit. I'm not sure I'm ready to, you know, pot commit here my whole evening to this big bag and I haven't even tried it yet. Especially if there aren't like, not a lot of field stuff going on where they might have even been able to check it out before. Especially if the price is high. Right.

33:56
Daniel Scharff
So it sounds like maybe you think you actually could have even launched with some single serving options.

34:01
Sam Tichnor
A hundred percent. And even just thinking about like early on some of the CS interactions we'd have, people thought that they were single serve bags. So they would look at it and be like, I'm getting six of these small bags for 30 bucks. Like that. Like that doesn't feel right. And then it would have to be the COVID No, they're. So we even like change the copy on the website. Like six big bags and things like that.

34:23
Daniel Scharff
Oh, I see. Because they're getting six multi packs for 30 bucks, not six lunchbox size for 30 bucks. So they were. Yeah, I gotcha.

34:32
Sam Tichnor
And that's even. It goes back to like the how are you making your decisions of what your product strategy is go to market? When I was like, well my moq is in pounds. And I was like, I'll just do four ounce bags. Like that's like industry standard. Ish for what I see in the grocery store. So I'll make 40,000 units. That sounds like a lot because it is. But like, hopefully I move through it all. And then when I started thinking about, well if single serve it's 80,000, how am I going to move through 80,000? And so I kind of just like got a little, you know, gun shy around. Okay.

35:00
Sam Tichnor
Like these moqs already high, which, you know, and there's a backstory to that, which is like the first co packer were going to work with had effectively no moq and then they went out of business. So then I was like, oh, well, I'm already like, I've already raised money and I have to launch this by a date that I felt was like a sacred day where it's like, really, nobody cares when you launch your brand. And so I kind of found a co packer that was really good and I liked what they were making from all the samples and whatnot, but they.

35:25
Daniel Scharff
Were too big for me. That's interesting and I think a good argument for why co packers do have MOQs. They're like, oh, look what happened to the guy that didn't like. All right, yeah, we do want you to stay in business. Thank you, co backers. Okay, so that was three. Lesson number four was around really having a strong marketer, somebody who would know how to drive the brand, help you on the other side creating the demand when you were getting placement for the product so that it would move off shelf and make more distributors want to work with you and more stores subsequently.

35:53
Daniel Scharff
And then I think the last one that I noted here so far is just overall about being really good at operations and you know, when you're transitioning co packers or just, you know, really having solid process around everything, knowing what's happening every step of the way because that can, you know, make or break you. Any other lessons that you want to add on to this from stuff we've been talking about or stuff that we haven't?

36:15
Sam Tichnor
Yeah, I mean, I think some of it is really like making sure that if you are doing all the functions of an early stage startup, which a lot of founders, especially solo founders end up finding themselves in that position, or you're relying on contractors who, you know, they'll do what they're told but like, you know, they're not always going to have like the most passionate voice in the room. And if they do keep them, I think just making sure that like, for me, like sales and marketing and ops and finance, like we're all quadrants of my brain and I don't think they were all always in sync at all the time because it's really hard. And so like figuring out ways to whether it's having the right advisors or like having people full time or having trusted, you know, fractional resources.

36:54
Sam Tichnor
Like I didn't really have that. And so that made some of the decisions that I was making the wrong ones.

36:59
Daniel Scharff
In hindsight, yeah, it's interesting to reflect on that. I'm like, yeah, there are some mistakes that I definitely have made along the way because I just didn't know. But like, who is the person that actually could have told me the right way and saved me from learning that the hard way? I don't know. That's a hard one to really, like, take on also, because you just. You kind of do the best. And if you spent your time talking to every single person out there, you'd also get just a whole plethora of different perspectives on stuff.

37:22
Sam Tichnor
That's the thing in my cool, like, in what I do in my work now is like, I try to be that person for the brands I work with, which is, you know, really, especially from the finance lens of, yeah, this sounds like a really great idea. But, like, let's think through, like, you know, what would doing this podcast sponsorship do for the business? Is this because you like the podcast or is it. And I certainly fell into that trap of being like, oh, like, I would love to sponsor this podcast. I listen to it all the time. And then it's like, oh, I drove like 10 sales when I'm out, you know, 15k. So there's a lot of that you can. There's traps to fall into.

37:52
Sam Tichnor
And so just having people in your network or on your team or in your advisor group, and I did have some great advisors, but again, it's just like you need all those voices kind of helping you with. With those decisions.

38:03
Daniel Scharff
And obviously you're not talking about this podcast because sponsoring this podcast is an incredible decision, maybe the best decision anyone could ever make. So definitely reach out to us partnershipstartupcpg.com if you want to find out more about that. But I know what you mean. And, you know, even like, okay, I had a brand where we had a celebrity influencer, ambassador, and, like, I just had no idea what's going to happen the first time this person posts about our product, for example, in a. In a kind of subtle way. Like, all of a sudden, do we get, you know, a million followers? Like, what really happens? And I think at the end of the day, I don't know, maybe we got like 100 followers from it. And it was a very expensive investment. And that's kind of like, whoa, like, what. Where did.

38:45
Daniel Scharff
What is this money actually doing? And that's where, like, going back to our discussion about having marketing people that. I mean, that is the stuff that builds a brand, right? Like, over time, they're going to see it tons of times, and they might not follow your brand or place an order the first time, but it's going to, you know, over time, compound and then crystallize what your brand means to somebody over the long term and get them interested in it. But it's just, it's Hard to be along for that ride and how expensive it is when you don't have all of the resources to build a big brand and your cash goes other places. So that's, that's tough stuff for me too.

39:20
Daniel Scharff
But there are very smart marketers out there who have done incredible things with probably less than I've wasted on some of that. So. Okay, so what, Is there anything that you wish someone had told you before you started?

39:37
Sam Tichnor
Well, plenty of people told me, don't do it. No, I mean, I think it's. There's kind of two things that I kind of think about that maybe I could have done differently. Number one is like, if you're going to solo found a brand and you're trying to make a big business out of it, like, really make sure that all the functions that are going to have to happen are things you're comfortable doing. I was not comfortable in hindsight, making big marketing decisions. I knew we've got this budget to allocate to marketing and branding. I did the best I could, but my background was never in doing that. And so, like, I wish that I had kind of been nudged or told, like, really cool idea.

40:23
Sam Tichnor
Like you came up with an awesome brand concept, like bring someone in or find a partner to own that side of the business so that you can focus on what you are good at, which is finance and ops and kind of like the commercialization side of things. And then second, which is a little bit more tactical, was something that is a thousand bucks a month might seem relatively inexpensive on a monthly basis, but if you do that for a year and then you have five of those, then all of a sudden, if you're trying to think, well, hold on, like we had all this capital invested, like, where's the money actually going? Like you can.

40:59
Sam Tichnor
And with some of the brands I work with, like an exercise I always like to now do is like every three to four months, let's go through our long tail of expenses and you can find things that you are not actively spending on but are getting taken out of the account every month, or, you know, a service that, like you might be spending five grand a month on something that you really should be spending three grand a month on. It's like those little things that I wish I'd, you know, there's so many of those little expenses that like, if I had just not done those, like, it wouldn't have changed the answer.

41:30
Sam Tichnor
Like, maybe we would have run out of money three months later, but at the same time, like, maybe that would have given me enough to kind of go through more of a pivot of the branding and you know, get to a point where like when were shutting down, there were options for us. Like we had, I think where it didn't work out with our current distribution was the fact that like were working with a health food distributor and weren't a health food, but there were like non health food distributors that we felt like maybe there was something going on and maybe if we change the packaging a little bit because clearly like people were not seeing it in store and picking it up. But by and large the product reviews we got, like the stuff in the bag was fine.

42:06
Sam Tichnor
And so like, granted, like, you know, we had make some sweeps over time and you kind of build that muscle again. But you know, we were at a point where like a rebrand, if we had enough capital for that, knowing now like what I knew then like it, we could have, you know, done something. So it's again, it's like, it's just those little like manage the budget better. Like, don't take for granted those small expenses because like when you're going through it and you need a plan B or a plan C, but you don't have the money for it, like you're going to wish you did.

42:36
Daniel Scharff
It's, you know, it's interesting to think about because I, I agree with you. The branding was effective and it was interesting. But I also think at the same time, like there is space for a better for you Cheetos, for example, because you see baked Cheetos and those I think do pretty well also. Like, I think there is also a universe where different branding could have also been really successful. Do you think about it that way also?

42:58
Sam Tichnor
Yeah, I mean I, I think we leaned in very hard into, well, if we're not going to say we're healthy, then we can say we're not healthy. But there was a pat. Like our products were baked, they weren't fried. Like the nutrition facts, like when were formulating it was high quality. It was kind of like no weird stuff. Like things you can like, you can debate maltodextrin as an ingredient. Like, I think it does a good job binding seasoning to snacks. And like it's not, I, I, I don't feel like it causes much harm. But like our ingredient panel, like for the most part, like maybe we needed a tweak or two, but like we would have passed the Whole Foods test. And so it's a question of like, should we have maybe positioned it differently and could we have.

43:40
Sam Tichnor
And I think should we have? Is like, I'm never going to know the answer to that. I think hindsight is 20. I think the answer is like what we didn't work. But if we had rebranded it or changed the packaging up in a meaningful way where it was optimized for retail and we actually, instead of saying no help claims, we actually put a couple on the front of the package, like maybe things would have gone differently.

43:59
Daniel Scharff
Hindsight is not 2020 for me. I'm like, I don't. Yeah, I don't know. These are a lot of interesting questions I think of. I mean, definitely you guys put in a really good effort, I think, but all of these things are things that I'm curious about and I think a lot of those opportunities are probably still out there today. And I just was kind of wondering to myself, like, I wonder if this fell into a bit of a, you know, coke life type trap where it's sort of like it's in the middle, you know, where it's like people either want the diet version with no calories or they want the high octane one that has all the sugar and tastes crappy.

44:29
Daniel Scharff
And putting it in the middle, well, they're like, well, now it's baked, it's not fried, so it doesn't taste as just like overly salty, you know, as what I'm used to. But it also isn't telling me that it's really healthy. So like, is this good for a bad product or bad for a good product? You know, sort of like, I don't know. But yeah, I mean, anyways, I have to assume that you're grateful for the journey overall because for me, I just respect anybody who takes a swing and goes and does something, especially coming from the corporate world where they are sitting with a nice salary. You obviously, to get a job at Harry's, are a very smart person with lots of resolve and good ideas and then to go out and risk all of that and go do something on your own.

45:08
Daniel Scharff
But, you know, I know now you're on a different journey where you're helping a lot of the founders, I think to avoid making a lot of those kind of mistakes. So how would you know how to do that without having probably lived a lot of these decisions yourself?

45:19
Sam Tichnor
Yeah, totally. I mean, I'm not going to lie, like, it's been a painful couple, I guess, like months, year. Like, can I kind of know like when in one of the exercises I did Once I kind of had to tell my investors and kind of be honest with myself about like, hey, this isn't going to work out is just like what happened. And it's tough, like, as you said, like, you know, being in the corporate world and kind of like growing up as a high achiever and all those things to like, you know, get a job. That was my dream job. To kind of then be like, actually, I'm going to do something else. You know, I used to have a very high risk tolerance. I think my risk tolerance is probably a little bit lower now, but it's good.

45:52
Sam Tichnor
Like you, I would much rather be sitting here saying I took a swing and it didn't work and then be three, four years down the road where I was and be like, oh, what if I had done that? You know, it's a blip long term on a career. But it did kind of like push me onto a path that now is like, great because I'm still in like the early stage ecosystem and working with founders and just, you know, doing, I think, what I do best, which is more of like the finance ops, like helping brands, like make good decisions. Because I certainly know I haven't made some. And if I can help a couple people make better decisions and keep their dream alive and then maybe that's what I should have been doing the whole time.

46:29
Daniel Scharff
I really appreciate those reflections and for me, I hope that I would feel the same way of like, but I still got to learn all of that stuff on this journey. And all of this is like, where I am now is way more fun than okay. I started my career in, you know, big management consulting and there's a. There's a lot that I got from that I think, you know, similar to you, I felt like I was just, you know, really busted my tail, just tried to get the best job that I could, work my butt off when I was there and learn all this stuff. But I mean, ultimately for me, what I do now is so much more enjoyable.

47:00
Daniel Scharff
And I really am so grateful that I get to be in this ecosystem with emerging brands and emerging founders and people who are just really passionate working at early stage companies. It just means a lot more to me, honestly, than just kind of being at a bigger company where I think the impact can feel really diluted and people don't have the same passion and don't have the same connection with consumers and the market and, you know, being in stores, it just doesn't feel as meaningful overall. So I hope I would have that same perspective that you Have. And just also, I think the other thing to say is, like, Sam is a young man who knows where. Who knows, like, you know, the serendipity of life.

47:35
Daniel Scharff
Who knows where all of these experiences will lead you in this very long career that you will have as a change maker in the industry.

47:43
Sam Tichnor
Yeah, no, I appreciate that and kind of echo that. It's like, it's, you know, you. You take the lessons and you just have to. The worst thing I could do is just not apply them. And so that's kind of my. My whole thing is like, let's try to document this.

47:55
Daniel Scharff
Why?

47:55
Sam Tichnor
Like, I love the idea of. And I don't think enough people do this, which just like, publicly or even privately just talk about what happened and understand, like, yeah, you know, where people. People make mistakes, like, definitionally, like, not every business and brand that launches is going to be successful.

48:10
Daniel Scharff
So, Sam, I just want, again, I really just want to celebrate you taking the swing. And I just want to end on a positive note on that, which is, can you just tell me some of the things that you're most proud of? There's a lot that I'm really proud of you for accomplishing again, especially around building a brand that was interesting to people and all of the stuff that you learned along the way. But, you know, is there anything. Just please take a minute to brag of just like, yeah, you know what? I did really well. I'm super happy with how these parts went. You know, 1, 2, 3.

48:36
Sam Tichnor
Yeah, I mean, I. I think launching a brand and. And kind of being someone who I err on the side of being a little bit more private and so realizing that, like, all right, I'm launching this brand, this is an extension of me, and really putting myself out there in a way that I'd never really done before, which is like posting on LinkedIn and trying to like, meet people and go to trade shows versus just being like the finance guy behind the computer, like, very, like, personally, like, that's something. And I'm like a. I'm still proud of that. And it's helped me kind of be a more extroverted introvert. It's definitely one of them, I think just getting into hundreds, I mean, over. I guess were in over a thousand doors, never at the same time. So I never.

49:18
Sam Tichnor
I always never know really what to say there. But, like, just winning deals and getting into stores and kind of realizing, like, I can sell, I can do this. Like, to me, like, that was like a huge accomplishment. And I think really just going from hey, here's a kernel of an idea that I had that felt crazy to realizing, wow, like, I feel that passion of wanting to go and kind of like explore this and looking for reasons to say no, but constantly finding things that made me say yes and bring it to market and survive for three years basically, and kind of like make tough decisions that impacted me personally, which you don't really get in a corporate job where it's like, okay, you know, yeah, we should increase the budget by 10%.

50:03
Sam Tichnor
Okay, what happens if we don't like nothing versus, like in this, which is, you know, I have to make this decision and the business is on the line. Like, you just, you feel the pressure and if you make, if you learn how to make these high pressure decisions, like, I think that's just like, for me. Like, I'm kind of proud of the ones I made. I learn lessons from the ones that didn't go the right way. But, you know, I think just learning to make those tough decisions is you're never going to do unless you actually, like, take the risk.

50:31
Daniel Scharff
I love those. Sam, that was amazing. I especially really like the first one that you mentioned of just like, I can put myself out there. I can do this. I can be a founder. I can do the things that a founder needs to do to grow a brand. And I mean, it's fun too, isn't it, to get to be that person. I'm kind of on the forefront. Because no one's going to do it but you.

50:50
Sam Tichnor
Yeah, like, I was the fups guy and I was like, that was fun. Like, I liked, I enjoy it. I still like, enjoy. And even like, you know, some of the clients I, I work with, like, they're like, oh, you're, you were the fups guy. And I'm like, yeah, and now I'm gonna, you know, there's good parts of that, but like, I am no longer the futs guy and here's why. And please don't make those the same mistakes that I did.

51:08
Daniel Scharff
I love it. And it makes me miss also being like, being the leader for a CPG brand. What I love, what I get to do now. It's very nice to highlight everybody and help lift them up and try to share these kind of stories that will help everybody. But there's nothing like the highs are so high when you're running a brand and it's growing. And I think the learning is pretty amazing too, what you learn about yourself along the way and, but also just the Straight skill learning. Cause you, yeah, you have to do everything in your life. It feels like you're Neo in the Matrix where you just all of a sudden get the cartridge and you're like, I, whoa, I know kung fu. Like, wow, now I know regulatory stuff for getting a label out.

51:47
Daniel Scharff
You know, you just learn all this stuff. And so I think I probably miss some of that, what I have now because I'm learning all this stuff vicariously through you guys, through our Slack channel. But I do miss a little bit of the just straight kind of wild west building out there, hopefully tapping people who can help you know, but still just like really figuring stuff out firsthand. You're just drinking through the fire hose the whole time in those early stages, right?

52:11
Sam Tichnor
Yeah. And it's, I think, just the context that I now have with everything else. And if I do another brand one day, like, I'll have that context too of just like, here's all the things that you don't realize. And, and the thing is, it's like not everybody does. And, you know, I've, I know a lot of founders who, similar to me, like, have brands didn't quite make it. And when we talk through, like, oh, like, what happened? Like, there's a lot of those similar themes of like, maybe you were a finance person who came in and, you know, misallocated marketing spend and it, you know, it's.

52:41
Sam Tichnor
I think what I love about, you know, you doing this podcast is like just anyone out there, it's like if you had to wind down a brand or you're thinking about it, like, lots of people do it. It's, it's a rite of passage in a certain way. And I think going into starting something, there is that awareness of, like, it might not work out, but, like, what are the things that you can take along the way if it doesn't?

53:01
Daniel Scharff
I love it. All right, Sam, just to wrap us up here, can you just share with everybody how they can stay in touch with you, Follow along with you maybe a little about Pale Blue Dot, what you guys do?

53:11
Sam Tichnor
Yeah, so, I mean, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm responding to messages. You can email me. Samaleblue NYC and paleblue dot is a finance and ops consulting firm that specializes in kind of working with emerging food and beverage brands and really any brand in the CPG world. We are a collective of former founders and early stage employees. So, like, we've been in the shoes of a founder. We understand, you know, what you're going through and we just kind of help, you know, provide the services that can get you from A to B a little bit better than we did.

53:45
Daniel Scharff
All right, Sam, thank you so much. I really want to thank you for being so open about the journey and just trying to share some lessons for some other founders to hopefully learn from as well. It is brutal out there trying to do a thing and you did it. And I hope that this will really help some other people out there. I know that it will. So thank you so much, Sam. Really enjoyed the discussion today.

54:07
Sam Tichnor
Yeah, definitely. Thanks for having me on.

54:09
Daniel Scharff
All right. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. If you loved it, I would so appreciate it if you could leave us a review. You could do it right now. If you're an Apple podcast, you can scroll to the bottom of our Startup CPG Podcast page and click on Write a review. Leave your company name in there. I will try to read it out. If you're in Spotify, you can click on about and then the star rating icon. If you are a service provider that would like to appear on the Startup CPG podcast, you can email us@partners startupcpg.com lastly, if you found yourself grooving along to the music It Is My Band, you can visit our website and listen to more. It is super fantastics.com thank you. Thank you everybody. See you next time.