The Startup CPG Podcast

Seth Goldman
The first one is this empowerment. So, meaning you have to be empowered. You have to be able to take action to affect those goals. Right? If you're. No one wants to be an automaton or just a cog in a machine. So you have to be empowered to make decisions and take actions that shape those goals. You have to have the information, the transparency to understand whether you're hitting them or not. So if you're doing things every day but you don't see how your work manifests, and then you're not really empowered.

00:40
Daniel Scharff
Welcome to the Startup CPG podcast. You're going to love today's episode. You know how when you read some of those billionaire biographies like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, it's very inspiring. They've done incredible things. But also, although they come off as brilliant, they also come off as kind of ruthless when it comes to managing their teams. Just cutthroat, getting so much out of people, it's kind of crazy. So you, as an aspiring titan of industry with your dream, could think that's the only path I should be that way. But actually, there's another way, and I wanted to explore that because Seth Goldman, he co founded Honest T. He's now on this crazy rise with justice tea. Having surpassed 30 million in sales, he's chair of the board for Beyond Meat.

01:20
Daniel Scharff
He is known as a hugely successful company builder, but he's also a genuinely nice guy and everybody who knows him holds him in such high esteem. So I wanted to explore this topic with him and talk about that balance, about being liked but also very effective and, you know, really showing up and being transparent with people. So on today's podcast, we get into just that, his approach to managing people at work, starting with hiring and goal setting, handling performance issues, and also a lot of tips for people earlier on in their career. Thank you so much to Seth for joining us for this episode. I know you're gonna love it. All right, here we go. All right, Seth, my friend, welcome back to the podcast.

02:02
Daniel Scharff
We had an amazing series with you a few years back where you were sharing your reflections on entrepreneurship while your current company, Justice Tea, was really starting to take off. So it was super cool to hear that kind of in the moment lessons as you guys were just exploding. So for anyone who missed those episodes, though, can you give us real quick The Seth Goldman 101, your background, how you got to be where you are today and what you're up to?

02:26
Seth Goldman
Sure. What? Well, first, it's great to be with you as always, Daniel and It's been fun to share this journey. This is kind of a second stage journey. The first 10 years, 15 years were pre our collaboration. But yeah, I had launched Honest Tea out of my house in Bethesda, Maryland back in 1998 and grew it the hard way, not the slow way, but the old fashioned way. Just sort of, you know, bottle by bottle, we became the best selling tea in the natural foods industry. We ended up selling the Coca Cola in 2011 and I continued with the business through 2019. But along the way I also got involved with Beyond Meat, where I became executive chairman and then now chairman and helped scale that business internationally and the IPO.

03:06
Seth Goldman
And then I also got involved PLNT Burger Plant Burger, a 13 store chain in the mid Atlantic and up into the Northeast. And then I also have a role with Tony's Chocolonely, the chocolate company based in Amsterdam where I'm chair of the Mission Guardians. So I guess I think of myself as a activist entrepreneur in the food space where we have the chance to improve people's diets, improve our environmental impact, and improve the way the communities we source from are treated.

03:33
Daniel Scharff
Amazing. And can you just also give everybody a little bit of what's going on with Just Iced Tea? Because I know you guys started with Eat the Change and you started with the mushroom jerky product and then caught it like, then just start decided to do the Just iced tea and it just caught fire. I saw it day, everywhere, all at once, immediately and just flying off shelves.

03:54
Seth Goldman
Thank you. So yeah, in 2020, I started Eat the Change with my co founder, Chef Spike Mendelsohn. And were initially focused on planet friendly snacking. We had mushroom jerky, we had a carrot snack that was amazing. But I got this unsolicited call from Coca Cola in 2022 where they informed me that they were going to be discontinuing Honest Tea. And there was a moment of just sadness and then there was a moment of inspiration like we got to go do this. And so we pivoted the whole business and got behind Just Iced Tea. And it is now, you know, the fastest growing tea in the country where we, you know, sort of captured the natural channel. And now we're expanding beyond that in a very fast and aggressive way. And we're just three years in, but it's.

04:33
Seth Goldman
We do, we'll do about $30 million this year in sales. And it's really, I think, a great lesson in karma. The folks who we treated right all along the way building honesty were right there for us. When we wanted to go out and launch Justice Tea, and we've all had so much. This is more fun. But we've had a lot of fun together building it, because it has. We were all. We knew who were working with. We were ready to go. We knew the wiring, we knew what to do. So it's happened very quickly. And as all I'm sure many of your listeners can appreciate that is you can skip some of those painful stages. That's a blessing.

05:07
Daniel Scharff
It's pretty amazing. I remember seeing you at, like, I don't know, Expo east or something, even like a year and a half, two years ago, and I was like, it was just starting to take off. I was like, whoa. It's basically like you already laid all these tracks down years ago and now you're just going to run over all of them.

05:21
Seth Goldman
Yeah. So we say it wasn't really a startup, it was more of a jumpstart. Right. We had all the wiring, and in this case, we kind of had this opportunity where the shelf space was opening up, you know, so, yeah, earn it. We still had to prove that we deserved it. But what's really striking, we just got data this week. Our velocities this time around are so much faster than honesty. And I think part of that is that Honest Tea was always a little bit ahead of its time. And my feeling is that Justice Tea has met its moment. So it's really. This is the drink, you know, the less sweet, organic fair trade. And then even just the glass bottle, it's clear people are moving away from plastic. And so what we're offering is just a really refreshing, different product. Yeah.

06:01
Daniel Scharff
And I remember seeing it on the Sprouts innovation set in the early days. And I'm going. And I think I was checking my product, other people's product, and yours was just gone. Like, people had just ripped it off the set. And I was just looking at it, and I think I use this example a bunch on the podcast, where it just, for me is such a great example of really clear branding, because you just. You look at it and it's like, oh, this is iced tea. And it looks good and it's simple. There's no education really required. Even if you're not looking for the, like, right level of sweetness or analyzing it, you're just like, that looks healthy, it looks good. I'm going to get that.

06:36
Seth Goldman
That's just nice to hear. That's certainly what we hope for. So that. I appreciate you saying that. It's funny because I Used to hear that about honesty as well. They said, I, I didn't, you know, created the expectation that was the drink inside. So it sort of delivered on the expectation created by the packaging.

06:52
Daniel Scharff
It's great and that. So that doesn't surprise me at all about the velocity. And I'm sure that'll really continue into conventional where it's even more important that a product can just speak for itself that way. So I love it. All right, now let's get to the reason that I asked you to come on today, which is I really admire people in our industry who are just so well regarded, respected, liked and have been super successful, but are just, you know, like really nice people. Like nice guys who you never will hear a bad word about them from anybody. And they are still managing to be really successful because you read these legendary entrepreneur biographies, Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, and a lot of ambitious people want to emulate a lot of things about them.

07:32
Daniel Scharff
But then you also read in a lot of those biographies just stories of how ruthless they are and how much pressure they put on people, how they drive people and like probably ruin a lot of people's lives. You know, just people who want to be part of that dream and work hard as well. And so I'm really interested just to talk to you a little bit about like, how do you really manage to, you know, be a nice guy and treat people well and also be this successful and be able to grow brands in this way and have a high performing team that is aligned to your mission and you know, really loves doing this stuff for you. So let's just jump right into this.

08:04
Seth Goldman
That's very kind of you, thank you.

08:06
Daniel Scharff
So, like, I guess my first question is, do you think that being liked and being effective are ever in conflict? Like, how do you reconcile those two as a leader?

08:17
Seth Goldman
I used to think that, but I had gotten much better. I would say being effective and being transparent, I don't know, you know, like, I don't know if it's liked. That's. Other people have made that judgment. But in the beginning I really struggled giving people bad news or even pushing people on performance. I would dance around it. And so now it's one of the things I always say. No one should ever be surprised when they have are fired and they should never be surprised when they get a bonus. Like, if you're being transparent all along the way, they have to. You're sending signals throughout like, this is exactly what I'm looking for. This isn't so being as transparent as you can be about what's happening really helps. You know, light is a, as I can say, that's a judgment call.

09:00
Seth Goldman
But, but being effective I think is directly connected to being able to be transparent.

09:05
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so overall it sounds like you also have been on a bit of a journey like learning how you show up as a leader and how you get the most out of people. Do you feel like in those early days then when you were having trouble being really transparent with people, you just, you're like, okay, yeah, well let's just keep trying, you know, and just like not actually telling them when they're underperforming or being able point specific behavior.

09:25
Seth Goldman
Yeah, like so many entrepreneurs, I'm an optimist and so, and my wife tells me this all the time. I'll often see that the good in people maybe more than they deserve. And so I may have a blind spot for where someone isn't effective. And so that's all the more reason to try to be just transparent about what the expectations are. And so when someone understands if they're addressing it. And so part of that is, you know, frequent check ins and communication, but it's also sharing the vision for the company. You know, no one, if we understand as a company, I'll just pick a number. You know, we have to hit 25% gross margin and we're not, you know, there's a few determinants of that. One is your trade spend, obviously what is your cost of goods?

10:05
Seth Goldman
But if we have a trade spend number we know we need to hit and we're not hitting it. I, I need to communicate that. If people don't know that, I can't blame them. But if I'm saying this is our goal and this is what we're doing, how do we get to a better number? I mean just, you know, being that transparent is just really critical. And I think in the past I may have danced around it, said guys, you know, we're not hitting our gross margin number. But I didn't necessarily break out why weren't right. So the salesperson would say, oh well that's going to be somewhat an operations ball. So an operations, oh, there's too much of a trade spend. But instead being really specific as much as they can be, it helps empower people too. Right. It helps them understand.

10:43
Seth Goldman
Here's my role in achieving this goal. So we have the company, we always have five objectives and key results. Five okrs. And each okr I want someone to look at and understand their role in achieving. Right. I don't want everyone to say, okay, well here's the okrs, but those four are for someone else to do. You know, everybody can play a role in us achieving those goals and then they'll they have an understanding of what's expected of them.

11:08
Daniel Scharff
Can you give me an example of what your current. Okay, you don't have to give us a specific numbers but like give me some examples of what these okrs are right now or what they would have been in the early days.

11:16
Seth Goldman
Sure. Well, what is always related to just growth? Right. So the first one, you know, this year was expanding into mainstream channels, right. So you know, we started the natural channel. How can we get beyond love natural channels? And certainly one of the okrs has continued to lead as a natural channel. But you know, our top one this year was expand beyond natural into mainstream. So for us, going into Target was a big deal. Going into CVS was a big deal. And so how do we execute that? And so part of that is obviously we got the account approval, that was the first step. But then the distributors getting into those accounts. But it's not just getting in, it's you know, showing up in those accounts right away. So do we have the point of sale right in those stores where possible.

11:56
Seth Goldman
Are we doing the right marketing and promotion and programs? Are we doing the right social media? So everybody has run obviously from our team. Are we anticipating the orders? What's our on time delivery percentage to the target warehouses? You know, and so operations understands we have to get a rating of 95% or higher on delivery. So everybody really has an accountability for that goal. Like I say, I don't want anybody to just think, oh, that's for someone else to worry about. Like they need to understand how what their work plays a role in us.

12:25
Daniel Scharff
Achieving that goal and any others that you would suggest for early stage brands to think about.

12:31
Seth Goldman
Well, certainly gross margin has to be in there, right? For us that's always a top, usually top two. So for us that was one when we started in our first year, you know, the top one was succeed in the natural channel. And so what does that mean? Top selling tea in whole foods, top selling tea in sprouts, getting a certain mark, becoming the fastest growing major tea in spins channel in every region, gaining leadership in different spins regions. So we just saw the most recent spins data and we now have top T brand across the entire east coast as well as the Midwest. So like that was a goal we had for this year and it's great to see, you know, we've achieved that.

13:04
Daniel Scharff
Okay, let me ask you kind of a dumb question, which I'm like, yeah, that sounds right. Like. But wait a minute. That, that would feel so impossible for so many people. But you said it and then you did it so well.

13:15
Seth Goldman
And I admit that we have a maybe unfair advantage because we've talked as we talked about, but going back to the Honest Tea days, it was become the fastest growing tea, you know, so that's the first goal and that if you're the fastest growing tea year after year, soon you start to get up into the rankings, you know, so.

13:30
Daniel Scharff
All right. I love it.

13:30
Seth Goldman
Yeah, you got to pick your. I mean, going back to the Honesty 1998 launch, were only in 17 whole food stores. And so the only goal we had that first summer was succeed in those 17 whole food stores. And we did. We did six demos per store. And by the end of that summer, were the top selling tea in those 17 stores. And that was our launchpad. So you gotta sort of pick your pond and then start with a small pond and make yourself a big fish in it.

13:56
Daniel Scharff
I love it. And when you're setting those kind of early stage ones, like, we're going to hit these 17 stores, be top selling there. Yeah, it is. With that long term vision though in mind, like, that's what we're going to do this year. Then later, that's going to knock down the region for us and then we're going to hit the region and then we're going to dominate the whole world.

14:11
Seth Goldman
But you know, to be Honest, back in 1998, that goal was. That was a survival goal. Like if we can succeed in these 17 stores, we renew our license to operate, we'll be able to raise money to expand and we should be able to get authorization to go into other Whole Foods regions. So I don't want to make it sound like in 1998 I had that roadmap all laid out with this with Joe.

14:32
Daniel Scharff
This time you might.

14:32
Seth Goldman
Yeah, this I see. I knew. Yeah. Okay. First thing we got to do, we got to succeed in natural. If we don't succeed in natural, then, you know, we don't get that license to go beyond natural.

14:42
Daniel Scharff
I love it. I just keep thinking about like, oh, getting to play a video game that you've already played and beat before and just everything that you can do faster and better this time.

14:50
Seth Goldman
It's a lot of the same team. I mean, that's the beauty of it. And actually the context, we're talking about managing people. Right. No one is. There's no indentured servitude. So, you know, the fact that most of the major leadership from Honest Tea is with me on my side with Justice Tea is something I'm really just gratified by. They're great people, but they also felt this was, you know, attracted to this opportunity and to work with me again.

15:14
Daniel Scharff
That's beautiful. It doesn't surprise me at all. And so getting back to the topic a little bit. So now we've talked about setting these goals and you mentioned, like, I want to talk a little bit about your overall perspective on managing people at work, but it sounds like it really starts with this. Like we need to have goals set and for everybody to understand what those goals are, how they play a role in them, and then like what else? How do you think about it?

15:34
Seth Goldman
Holistically, it's so it's. There's really three things, right? It's. The first one is this empowerment. So meaning you have to be empowered. You have to be able to take action to affect those goals. Right. If you're. And no one wants to be an automaton or just a cog in a machine. So you have to have the, you have to be empowered to make decisions and take actions that shape those goals. You have to have the information, the transparency to understand whether you're hitting them or not. You know, so if you're doing things every day but you don't see how your work manifests and then you're not really empowered. And then, yeah, accountability is the third one. So you have to have the information, you have to have the power, and then you have to be held accountable for the results.

16:15
Seth Goldman
Meaning if you over deliver, then you should be rewarded for that. And if you under deliver, you have to own the results. And you know, may not mean firing, but it may mean more supervision. I would say who get the least supervision in our company are the people who are just out there killing it on their own. And they'll check in with me and I'm like, yes, more and more.

16:35
Daniel Scharff
Yes. The greatest gift is that we don't actually have to spend a lot of time together.

16:39
Seth Goldman
Right, Right. And then, and then the other pieces that come with that part of empowerment for means equity ownership. Right? So if you're the people who are most empowered are people who feel like they own the business. And in my case I want them to literally own the business. So anyone who's been with this company for more than 12 months has stock options. And you know, for the honesty people, it turned into real, meaningful wealth creation. I certainly hope that will be the case here as well.

17:04
Daniel Scharff
That's wonderful. And then with some of those people, like, whether it's giving them more supervision, like, how do you help? Like, step in and help when things aren't going great or when it's going slow, like, how much do you really want to get in and do that versus the point where you're like, all right, maybe this isn't going to work.

17:21
Seth Goldman
You know, one thing that's important to recognize, and I think, especially today, where we're not all in the office, just as people learn differently, different people work differently. And so, you know, some people are really good at spreadsheets and filling in things that other people don't, you know, just don't want to be near it. And we have to find ways to work with people on both. I remember with honesty, we had a. A guy who's just incredible at building displays and getting loyalty with accounts and getting us in the right place in the cooler. But he was terrible with paperwork. And I remember his supervisor told me once, I can't get this guy to do paperwork. I said, but look at what he's doing.

17:57
Seth Goldman
And I said, rather than having him send in, you know, forms, have him just take pictures and send you pictures. Like, you know, we know he's doing the work. We shouldn't be, you know, dinging him. We shouldn't be penalizing him because he's not delivering the reports on his work the right way. If he's not doing the work, that's a different thing. Then we have to address it. But part of it is just recognizing everybody learns and works differently.

18:21
Daniel Scharff
So he wasn't doing the TPS reports, right?

18:23
Seth Goldman
Yeah.

18:24
Daniel Scharff
For any office fans out there.

18:26
Seth Goldman
Yeah. But he was doing the work that was the important work, which, you know, if I have a choice, I'm going to choose that every time.

18:31
Daniel Scharff
All right, all right. There's this movie Office Space, where they just talk about the TPS reports all the time. Like, why didn't you send in the report? He's like, the frigging reports. All right, so. But, yeah, I totally agree with you. Of just, like, I don't know. It doesn't make sense. Sometimes when you have someone who just. They're so good at a bunch of things, but they don't do the thing that they're supposed to do that everybody else does, you're like, well, I don't know. Let's figure something out so that they can flourish where they flourish.

18:53
Seth Goldman
Exactly. Check the job description. And the tasks. And is that, you know, is the paperwork the most important part or is it the, you know, the sales that this person has made happening? Yeah, of course. In our view, it's the sales.

19:04
Daniel Scharff
Okay, great. So let me ask you another question here, which is especially in the startup world, I mean, we all work hard, we spend a lot of time at work. People form real friendships with people that they work with. And like, I think also as managers and like company leaders like you will genuinely start to care about the people that you work with. Like, you know, you're traveling together and stuff. How do you sort of separate the two when you also just like start to get to know people on a personal level?

19:31
Seth Goldman
Yeah, well, one thing that's a real contrast from when were starting honesty is the workplace is not just the 9 to 5 office. So I think the pandemic really accelerated that transition. So we are dealing with people in their whole lives. You know, there's not an office personality versus a home personality. Because for a lot of people, when I speak to them, they're in their home, they're in their bedroom. I mean, I'm in their bedroom, you know, by extension. And so recognizing that we have to deal with the whole human, not just the person 9 to 5 who sort of, you know, I look at on a screen. And so part of that means embracing all their diversity or quirks or differences, their lifestyle and understanding it. And, you know, again, doesn't change my expectations about delivering their work roles.

20:19
Seth Goldman
But, you know, if somebody needs to be with family for, you know, a sick relative or a different event, as long as they're getting the work done, I'm. So as a result, we have no PTO restrictions in our company, which can scare some bosses. Like, wait, what? But if you go back to what I said about empowerment and accountability, I don't generally have worries about people sort of just running off and going on a street. We do try to. We have found we need to create some guardrails. But for the most part, we've got to embrace the whole person and support them, not just in their work but in their lives. So, you know, when someone is either personally sick or someone in the family sick, we don't ask questions. We just, how can we help? That's how you.

20:59
Seth Goldman
I think you really have to embrace the whole person.

21:02
Daniel Scharff
So can you take me a little bit more back to kind of the earlier Seth Goldman, like, building honesty? I think you hadn't done a lot of CPG before that, right? I know you had some pretty interesting jobs before then. How did you really start learning about how to most effectively manage people? Are there any resources or people you looked up to?

21:21
Seth Goldman
Well, you know, it's also situations where I said, oh boy, this doesn't feel right. So my first real office job, I was working in a Senate office. I was working for a senator from Texas. And he had an old. I was a press secretary and the deputy press secretary. The press secretary was an old school, you know, belton suspender, cigar chomping guy named Jack Daboer, who was an amazing person to learn from. Talented, smart, funny. But he was also a very tough boss and demanding in the right way. And I learned to write well and certainly present ideas well. So I feel invented. But he was. He did not have that lens of sort of embracing the whole employee. I remember one time I wanted to take off when the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

22:08
Seth Goldman
I wanted to take off in the afternoon to travel up to Boston, do with my family. And he gave me a really hard time about taking that off. This is the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, you know, and it just made an impression on me that the time away from the office was, you know, de minimis. It was really not a lot. But that it should be so hard for me or I should feel guilty or nervous about asking for it is just silly. And so it was a good lesson just about how to treat people. And I think now, especially with my own sons out of the workforce, you know, every person is someone else's child. And if you can think about treating them as kindly as you would want your child treated, it helps.

22:49
Daniel Scharff
I like that. I like that a lot. And you just reminded me of all the times I've been in that situation. I remember in my day I worked at Deloitte Consulting and I was. I remember one week I was in Mexico City and I was running this team and were just, were working our butts off and one night it was like 6:30 and I was like, all right, why don't we all go back to the hotel, get into workout and then, you know, if you guys have work you need to keep doing, then go on. And then I got chewed out by the partner. She was like, if you feel like it's appropriate to take a half day, then okay, like in a, in a real crafty way. I was like, 6:30 is a half.

23:24
Daniel Scharff
Oh my gosh, I'll never forget, but I really like that approach. And that's definitely something we do on our team is like, the expectation is if you want to take tomorrow off because you got invited up to. There's fresh snow on the mountain. Like, do it, like, get your stuff done if you know what you have to do, you know.

23:39
Seth Goldman
But by the same token, like, last weekend, you know, we had people. We had some. Our New York team went to a Costco roadshow in the Midwest for the weekend. Right. And they didn't ask for, you know, extra time off. And then we had other people who were at a trade show on Saturday, back at work on Monday. So. And I will admit there's times when I call someone over the weekend just looking for information, and it's. Again, it's. The lines are a lot more blurry. I certainly will tell people. I'll say, is this. You know, do you have a second? I'm not expecting them to respond right away, but when the lines are blurry, it goes. It cuts both ways.

24:13
Daniel Scharff
Yeah. And I really like the example or just the what. What you said about trying to, you know, if you think about, like, if you were like that person is somebody's child and somebody's partner, somebody's parent, and, like, just, you know, making sure you're treating them the right way. But you all you, like, you have to decide that you care about that in the first place because that senator that you worked or might have, one, not cared about that or two. And like, no, I am actually doing the right thing for Seth by pushing him to absolutely work hard all the time. That's what's important, is just to work, right? If you're one of us, you'll work here all the time.

24:46
Seth Goldman
Yeah. So, look, I still benefit from the things I learned in that office, but, you know, some of the things I learned, I'll do it differently when I have the.

24:54
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, same for me at Deloitte. Oh, I learned a lot. I was working my butt off all the time. You definitely learned, but it was very painful. Okay, so let's talk a little more tactically. So, like, how do you actually structure your time with your team? I know there are some leaders out there that famously are like, I don't do any one ones. It's not a good use of my time. You know how, like, do you try to set up systemic checkpoints or you just let people kind of do their thing?

25:19
Seth Goldman
So we always have a weekly team call, and I want to use that for. To give people the chance to share what's going on in the company. I want everyone sort of current on latest developments. I want them to know where the sales are what the major marketing initiatives are. If there's production runs or if there's product shorts, we need to sort of understand where those are risks of shorts. We need to be all in the loop on that. And so those are usually an hour long call. I always want to make sure I'm giving and people who are doing the work, especially the sales leaders, the chance to share, you know, the things they're doing. So that's a Monday. Then on Wednesday I'll have a call with just the directors in the company to try to make sure they're.

25:58
Seth Goldman
Maybe we're talking a little more strategically or we're looking ahead to a board meeting or presentation and just make sure we're all aligned, prepared for that. And then I have check ins with each with a sales team, with a marketing team, with the ops team over the course of the week. Each, each of those are usually a half hour. And then I'll often, but not always just check in with the leader of a team because then maybe there's some things we need to talk about in terms of individuals on the team or you know, coordinating with another leader. So it is, I don't think anyone would say I'm a micromanager, but I also, no one would say I'm sort of phoning it in partially because, and this is I think really important for entrepreneurs.

26:40
Seth Goldman
Over the course of time I've done every part of the business, right? I've done sales, I've done marketing, I've done the operations and finance. I can ask informed questions, you know, and so these aren't, we aren't starting from ground zero with these questions. When we check in, it's sort of like we're just tracking different situations and how are we handling it. And sometimes they're very short calls because it's like, okay, here's this what I need to know and let's keep going.

27:02
Daniel Scharff
And that's probably true of almost anybody who did this from scratch, right? Like it's, you probably had to do most of the things and then hopefully you grew and got to hire people. So that makes a lot of sense. You say you spend, I mean you to me on the outside you seem like a really sales pro kind of CEO. Like you're going to get like that's a great use of your time to be out there building relationships, opening up accounts, like having the people trust you. Would you say you're more sales forward or.

27:29
Seth Goldman
I love that part of the business. It's, it is, it's Fun and it's rewarding and I do believe in what I'm selling, so I love to sell it. But the marketing as well is a form of selling. Right. You know, marketing is selling to whether it's to media or social influencers or thinking about how we position and communicate the brand that's selling. And then the ops piece, you know, especially with my tenure, I have a lot to add there. I have a lot of the relationships sort of and you know, this was of course a great lesson when we launched. Even though Coca Cola was the steward of the honesty supply chain relationships, ultimately they were my, you know, my relationships.

28:06
Seth Goldman
And so when we came back in, I had a direct line to all of the key decision makers for the tea supplier, the bottle supplier, the co packing plants. And so, you know, staying in touch with those people and you know, whether meeting them in person or talking to them, just staying in touch with what's going on. And then the other part of my job that I think uniquely mine is making sure our financing strategic needs are being met. So I need to make sure I'm continuing to cultivate relationships with potential investors, potential distribution partners, potential other companies we may want to work with. And so, you know, that's, I would say another just part of my job that probably not is that is one sort of, I would say uniquely suited to me.

28:47
Daniel Scharff
Okay, cool. So speaking of other jobs that you do also. So I know you're chair of the board for beyond and you've worked with tons of founders and helped them over the years. So what do you see about their leadership styles? And is that something that you help them with or are you more focused just on the kind of business performance? What's the journey been like for them?

29:06
Seth Goldman
So you know, I actually see that work as a lot of my own professional development. You know, seeing other companies and seeing different scenarios and seeing different leadership models, I really gain a lot that I can bring back to justice T. So even though I don't ask just it to, you know, cover sort of the travel associated with those events, I those to me are as effective as me going to some professional, you know, management course. And there are different models and I, you know, I love seeing, I've certainly seen the and been, you know, involved in boards with very intense leaders who push in a different way. And you know, and I try to provide coaching where I can. I've in some cases had to intervene with sticky situations with management.

29:49
Seth Goldman
And so those are challenging and interesting as well that for me those are really, I gain insights and Just, you know, different team structure, different approaches even to, you know, R and D. Very different ways of thinking about innovation. So there's a lot to be learned by getting exposure to other companies.

30:10
Daniel Scharff
And just with some of the other companies that you've gotten a lot of experience with in that way, would you say that they have a similar kind of approach to managing people at work as you do, or is that something you try to work with them on?

30:22
Seth Goldman
It varies at Cherry's. You know, one company that I've more recent is my connection with Tony's Chocolonely. And they have a really fun, empowered culture. And it's that for me, that was great to learn. And, you know, in every room there was sort of a quote about sort of the mindsets they have. And I brought a lot of those that those back here to share. And the other thing that's really neat to see is beyond meat. The innovation work entered to really. To all the different ways to think about innovation. You know, for us, it's fairly simple. It's tea. So how many different recipes can you make? But then you start thinking about packaging and then you think about other ingredients. And so, you know, it widens the lens of what you can think about as innovation.

31:04
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, I like hearing that about Tony's Chocolonely. Sounds like a cool place. Everybody seems to love that brand and that team.

31:11
Seth Goldman
When you walk into their main office, they have this big thing called the Choco Vault, and it's this huge safe and there's chocolate on the walls. And then right next to the sign, it says hint. It's not even locked, you know, so it's.

31:25
Daniel Scharff
That sounds like a good time field trip. So, okay, so they're doing a lot of work just to really permeate their culture with everybody, remind people of the values of the company. And I've seen that a lot of big companies. How do you think about trying to preserve and grow your company culture as you scale? Right, because people will be further from you, have less time, you know, with you and the leadership, and it'll trickle down and, you know, like huge CPG companies really struggle with that to even like have a company culture at that point.

31:54
Seth Goldman
So one way we do it is keeping it really lean. We have almost half the employees that Honesty had at this point, and it's just in its sales size. So we've been able to operate in a much more lean way. And everyone knows why. It's because, first of all, don't want to run out of business. We don't want to lay anyone off. And we're really trying to scale this business in a capital efficient way. And that permeates, you know, whether it's, you know, my dumpster dive desk that I use or just the very simple office that we have, like it's mindset we have. And so, you know, and we report on just when we go over all expenses. We're also looking at travel and I'll sort of say like we're above or below.

32:34
Seth Goldman
And again, no one should be surprised when they see where we are. And so if we're doing it right, and I think we are, so far, we're hiring people who embrace those values and when they hire, they're looking that's for that same lamp. And so I would say someone who doesn't sort of understand that will stick out pretty quickly as not the right fit. When we go on a crew drive and we're in a Hampton Inn now, I always joke because back in the day at Honesty, we used to share rooms and my board won't let me force people to share rooms anymore. So I, I've evolved, but we're still keeping it lean, you know, so part of that is just, you know, making sure people are on board with the way we're going to build this enterprise.

33:15
Daniel Scharff
That's great. And I just keep thinking about like, okay, you guys are setting targets and you know, you've done this before, so you know what those targets could be. What kind of lessons do you think an early founder may be hiring their first, second, third person where they, like, they don't even really know enough to set those targets. Like, what can they do in that situation?

33:31
Seth Goldman
So it's great to ask the person coming in what they think is achievable and not let them sandbag it. You know, I mean, they've got to be able to put out something that's achievable, but that is going to make business sense, you know. So if they say, hey, I, I think I can get us into five new stores, and you're like, well, okay, but we're going to need you to get us into at least 100 stores for this to make sense. Like, don't let them get away with five or you know, maybe you got the wrong person. Like, help set the right vision of where you need to go. But don't prescribe. Let them own, you know, own the goals. And so that for that reason I'm always really careful.

34:08
Seth Goldman
I try to be careful and I say, I try to get better at it. Is to make sure we're not putting out an unrealistic goal because that demotivates people and it's bad when you have an unrealistic goal. And then the first, after the first quarter of the year, you're not going to hit it. Then you're not helping anybody. So push as much as you can, but try to create and identify attainable stretch goals.

34:34
Daniel Scharff
And congrats on just being able to be so efficient with the business, especially this time around with half the size of the team. Any insights or tips for people on how to do something like that? I mean, obviously on the expense side you mentioned.

34:46
Seth Goldman
So first of all, it is, you know, a tribute to the fact that we'd hire great people who knew what to do. Right. So the learning, they were up the learning curve. And basically what I was doing at Honesty was I was paying for the learning curve, including my own learning curve as well. But, you know, every aspect of it now we can be more efficient. We used to have a person who did ar, we have a person did ap and sort of person beneath each of them. We have one person doing AR and AP now all of it. So that some of that is technology helps, but also just, you know, someone who's just got more capabilities. And then with sales, you know, we still want to support our distributors in their markets. That's labor intensive, but we gotta do it smarter.

35:24
Seth Goldman
And frankly, the whole, at least in the beverage world, it shifted because there used to be everybody was throwing money at these things. No one's throwing money around that way. Which makes it takes off some of the pressure. Like I don't need to have four people working in this market and the DMV to be able to support the brand.

35:40
Daniel Scharff
Oh. Because other brands aren't throwing as much money around at things. So the competition's not quite as fierce at this moment. Okay, interesting. And, and just, you know, on the overall topic of kind of doing things again the second time, are there, I don't know, two or three things that you can point to of like, you learned this the last time around this time you're like, oh yeah, we're shortcutting this time. Whether it's your channel, strategy, retailers, you know, to focus on certain ways you want to promote or, you know, like drive velocity. Any. A couple like shortcut tips.

36:10
Seth Goldman
Sure. Well, first, the one I mentioned that I don't want to overlook is just embracing the whole person. You gotta, that's a critical thing that I probably didn't do as much of it honesty. But this time around I do. The second is understanding what is the priority channel in a market. And so in New York, we work with big guys with a beverage distributor. And then during the Honest Tea days, we used to have Big Geyser, but we'd also have Unfi and Kagi going into that market. And it was always a conflict channel. This time went into New York, we said it's all Big Geyser's market and delivered much clearer results and guidance for Big Geyser. And they're delivering and we haven't had the flare ups with invasions.

36:48
Seth Goldman
So that has spared both big guys and me a lot of the headaches that would come if we hadn't given that clarity.

36:56
Daniel Scharff
And I imagine also it's probably a little bit easier for you to navigate a lot of the DSD contracts just having done this before, knowing the trajectory of the company a little bit better.

37:05
Seth Goldman
But the other thing is were able to start at the top, you know, with Honesty. We worked our way up. And again that learning curve was expensive and time consuming and painful. We started because the big distributors didn't want to work with Honesty in the beginning. They didn't know who were this time around because partially because of Honesty success, you know, they took my calls and we started with the top distributors in the markets right away. And that's just a huge difference.

37:29
Daniel Scharff
I gotcha. Okay, so let me ask you kind of a cheeky question. And we can cut this if we don't like it, but let me just fire it away, which is who had on their bingo card or has it on their bingo card or what are the odds of. Seth Goldman builds Honesty, sells to Coca Cola shuts down Honesty. Seth Goldman basically rebuilds Honesty and then sells it back to Coca Cola, who's betting along on that one.

37:53
Seth Goldman
I'll tell you that. You know, obviously the first thing wasn't on my bingo card was I'd be back in the beverage business. I thought I was done. And so that alone is sort of the unexpected gift. And it's been so fun and gratifying and you know, I, I honestly don't know where it goes. But as was with Honesty, I just knew we've just got to build something valuable, build a meaningful brand, something that means something to consumers, that has a point of difference in to retailers and you know, has the ability to grow faster than its category. And so that we're doing, and as long as we keep doing it, I'M sure there'll be good things that open themselves up to us.

38:31
Daniel Scharff
All right, so maybe last question for you here. So your son's, I think, really probably hoping that they're going to have a career that's as fulfilling as yours. I know one of your sons pretty well, Isaac, from having just been around the industry with him, I know he's a super hardworking guy. What would you tell them? Like, here are the experiences you really should be going after. Here's what you should be trying to deliver at work so that you really, like, learn and grow and can be successful. Just, I mean, I guess broadly, these will be tips for anybody early on in their career. But, yeah, hit us with it.

39:00
Seth Goldman
Well, and just as I said, you know, you gotta embrace the whole employee when you ask a question like that. I think, you know, it goes beyond professional for me, obviously, I'm proud and thankful I've had the chance to build honest tea and beyond meat and not just iced tea. But the thing my wife and I are proudest of by far, is our three sons. The people they are, the work they do, the values they have are just, you know, give us joy every day. And so I hope my example has shown that, you know, do things that matter to you.

39:28
Seth Goldman
And I believe it has, because I see them doing that, you know, do that work that where it's meaningful, where you feel like you can have an impact, where you can move the world more in the direction that aligns with your values. And I see them doing that. And I would also say, and I, again, I see them doing this take on challenges, like. Like, if it's. If it's easy, someone else can do it. If it's hard, it's something you should be doing. And so doing the hard work, not giving up, and again, trying to be as transparent as they can. So if there's concerns they have or challenges, be open about it. Talk to your supervisor, find a way to address it, or talk to the people who are creating those challenges.

40:08
Seth Goldman
And so it's really been fun to see the work they're doing and they all are doing, you know, different work, but in a lot of ways, it's very much in the same swim lane, but each with their own unique imprint on it.

40:21
Daniel Scharff
I love it. That really resonates with me also. And I think I've found I consider myself a pretty curious person at work and will always, like, see things like, oh, like, we're not doing that. Could I do that? Maybe I'll just start doing that. And that actually is the thing that has always led to the biggest leaps forward in my career of just like, hey, like, I'll just start doing that. Like, usually if you propose to your manager or whoever, like, can I do some of the extra work that I think will be good for us? They're usually going to say yes. And then often that becomes your next job.

40:47
Seth Goldman
Yeah, we talk about that all the time. Taking initiative, showing up. Like, it's so funny how basic it is, but, like, showing up is the first thing, like, being dependable, doing what you say you're going to do, not just what you're expected to do, but, you know, that's the minimum. But then sort of coming up and taking that extra step, really, it's. It's just surprising how far you can go. And if you're doing that as a.

41:08
Daniel Scharff
Starting point, isn't it amazing when people who work for you do that? Like, not just take care of what they're supposed to be doing, but come to you with like, hey, I had this idea for the business, and I'm just going to do, like, I'm so filled with gratitude when people do that. I'm like, thank you for caring enough to that you're really, like, spending your extra time thinking about this and coming with good ideas. Now you're going to do it. It's incredible. All right, Seth, thank you so much. I know how valuable your time is. You're in the middle of this epic rise of the business, and you've taken some time out just to share these incredible lessons with all of the founders and all of the early stage employees at all of these brands. So I really appreciate it, everybody.

41:47
Daniel Scharff
If somehow you have gotten away with not trying just iced tea, definitely Check it out. What are the best places for. Obviously your website. I'm sure people can get it from, but what are the top accounts?

41:56
Seth Goldman
Well, certainly Whole Foods and Sprouts, and then regionally, we're in. Whether it's Stop and Shop Giant or Safeway, Albertsons Out West, Target nationally, and now CVS is also a great place to buy.

42:08
Daniel Scharff
That's so good. All right, everybody, check it out. Seth, thank you again, and we will look forward to seeing you soon.

42:15
Seth Goldman
Great to be with you.

42:18
Daniel Scharff
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@partnershipstartupcpg.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 superfantastics.com thank you everybody. See you next time.

43:01
Seth Goldman
Time.