- Speaker #0
The biggest thing I hear is retail is dying, but retail is still big. It's a much bigger market than online sales.
- Speaker #1
Over 85% of the purchases that happen across the country are done in person. And the higher the dollar amount, the more likely they're to be bought in person. So with COVID being in our rearview mirror, that number is almost up to 90%. So retail, it's the place to be.
- Speaker #2
So is Kevin O'Leary still involved?
- Speaker #3
We signed our deal with Kevin O'Leary the day of our airing of our show, and he wired us the money like an hour after we signed it. the deal. He's still involved. You know, when we launched in the big retail with Lowe's Ace, we've talked to him. He's going to help us make some TV commercials and things like that.
- Speaker #4
I'm a novelist and I've sold a lot of books on Amazon. I thought by selling books, oh, I'm on Amazon. This is going to be easy. Selling a book on Amazon is nothing compared to selling anything else on Amazon.
- Speaker #3
Your watch.
- Speaker #2
Hey, Norm, I got a question for you.
- Speaker #0
What?
- Speaker #2
Well, will you just go ahead? Will you say that?
- Speaker #1
What?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, because I know your questions. Go ahead.
- Speaker #2
Have you ever bought anything in a store?
- Speaker #0
No, I don't go into stores. Connie, Connie does. Connie.
- Speaker #2
So, up in Canada, I didn't know if they had stores still or if you had to like... Yeah,
- Speaker #0
outdoor toilets too.
- Speaker #4
Or indoor,
- Speaker #0
indoor plumbing. Indoor plumbing. But,
- Speaker #4
yeah, we still have these yards.
- Speaker #2
That's what you said in the last episode. keep you in the yard yeah that's right so you have both you're like you're like ambidextrous up there well you know i got i got a top cabin you know it's i can do it indoors or outdoors so i mean retail i mean i know you do a lot in retail a lot of people don't know the whole range of all the stuff you do but you've helped a lot of people get into retail you've done a lot of retail so what's your take right now and where what retail how important retail is for people that are maybe thinking about it or maybe they're already in e-com and they're wanting to get over into it.
- Speaker #0
The biggest thing I hear is retail is dying and usually I'll tell the person it's not dying it might smell funny but retail is still big it's it's a much bigger market than online sales and I think a lot of people turn away from retail because they don't understand retail they think it's way too complicated and they have no idea they have only been you know taking these old courses from YouTube that are giving them a lot of bad information. And that's why their, you know, online shop is failing. But yeah, retail is here and it's not going anywhere.
- Speaker #2
Yeah, I agree with you. And you can get into retail on your own. I mean, you can do the leg work and if you've got a good product and you can try to knock down some doors. But it's a lot easier if you were on Shark Tank, for example, to get into retail. Or it's a lot easier. If you partner with someone who has all the connections, has all the relationships, and that's, I think those are two, well you don't have to be on Shark Tank, but partnering with someone that has the relationships is super, super important, but being on Shark Tank or something like that is also helpful, and that's what we have today, is we have three guests, you have three buttons you have to hit today, Norm, three buttons, you got this, you need some help, you need me to call Connie in, or you need to call in Dallas, or anybody to help you out?
- Speaker #0
I just get paid a little bit more.
- Speaker #4
Oh,
- Speaker #2
that's right. Yeah,
- Speaker #0
three people is the most I can handle.
- Speaker #2
You're like, I'm out of here. As soon as I get a paid bonus, you're like, I'm out of here. I see how it is. So we've got three guys in today. This is going to be a cool talk. We've never had three people on the pod before. We've had two, I think. So this will be cool. A lot of good information comes. I'm excited about today.
- Speaker #0
Can I do my job?
- Speaker #2
Yeah, let's do your job and bring them in because it's kind of hot back there in the green room. You know, it's hot back there. Probably sweating under the lights. I know Doug's sweating under those intense lights.
- Speaker #4
GC. How are you?
- Speaker #0
Welcome, GC. Thank you. And now I don't want to sign out again like I just did. Here we go. And here's Doug.
- Speaker #2
What's up, guys? How are you doing?
- Speaker #4
Great. How are you guys?
- Speaker #2
Good.
- Speaker #1
It was hot back here.
- Speaker #2
So you guys, the reason we're all gathered today is to talk about retail and launching products and why people need to actually be paying attention to retail, especially if they're coming from the e-com world. So, Doug, I guess, why don't you maybe start us off and tell us what's the state of retail right now? What's going on out there in retail and what are you seeing? I know you help a lot of Amazon sellers. Tell us a little bit of background and then. Give us a little quick overview of what's going on.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, retail. It's different today than it was, you know, six months ago. It's a lot different than it was six years ago. But one thing that hasn't changed is over 85% of the purchases that happen across the country are done in person. And the higher the dollar amount, the more likely they're to be bought in person. So with COVID being in our rearview mirror, That number is almost up to 90%. So retail, it's the place to be. Almost anybody could launch on e-commerce nowadays just from your backyard or your garage, and you could start an Amazon store. But retail, if you're a consumer products brand, if you have something that's patented, proprietary niche, it's still the place you want to be. Still the place where you're going to get in front of all the most customers. Retail's booming right now.
- Speaker #0
You know, remember, Kev, just the other week, two weeks ago, I think, we had Amora on. Or a Megay. Or a Megay. There we go. Amora or a Megay. And she was talking about her new investment, that going in, getting into strip malls that have been abandoned, and putting in incredibly high-end retail stores. She said everybody's trying to abandon certain types of strip malls. And she's just turning them into high-end retail. And she's finding it extremely easy. And there's a specific niche.
- Speaker #2
Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. I mean, there's still a lot going on when it comes to retail. And there's a lot of brands that are retail only. They're not even on e-com. And then there's some that start on e-com. They kind of prove the model. And then they go on to retail. So, Kirk, what's a little bit about... What you do, what's your background, what's your story? Well,
- Speaker #3
I'm here as one of two. I have a co-founder, Brian Halicinski, but we're the inventors of the Turbo Trusser. It's a rapid cooking trussing device. Instead of using butcher's twine, you actually use our device. And instead of the mess, it's a lot easier. It's made of stainless steel. It's made in the USA. We were on Shark Tank a couple of years ago. We got a deal with Kevin O'Leary. and You know, right now, most of our sales are on Amazon. We're going to be in Lowe's coming up this fourth quarter. And we started working with Doug here a few months ago to help us get into retail because it is a tough nut to crack.
- Speaker #2
So are you in retail yet or you're in the process and you have some POs coming in or you're still in the process of like getting that established?
- Speaker #3
We are in some mom and pops, but not big chains. Not yet. We have a PO for Lowe's, but that's it. But we're trying to get a lot more stores lined up, a lot more companies that will take on the TurboTresser. We have other products, too, but right now we're focusing on the TurboTresser.
- Speaker #2
Cool. And GC, just introduce yourself and let everybody know what you got going on.
- Speaker #4
Sure. So Gregory Brown, I go by GC Brown. I am one of the co-founders of Up Cup Coffee, a functional mushroom coffee. There's multiple ones on the market. There's only a couple of us that are brewed. I thought as a brand owner, a brand creator with no retail experience, I thought the process was pretty easy. I thought the hard part was going to be getting it invented or created, getting the chemists involved and coming up with the blend, a mushroom coffee that was actually tolerable. I thought that was the hard part. I figure once the... bag and the packaging and all the pretty bows are on it and everything's ready to go. I thought that retailers would line up at the door to stock me on their shelves. I ran into Doug and obviously he told me the reality of that, which was basically in a couple of words. He looked at me and said, there's no chance. That's not the way it works. So we went down the road. We're on Amazon. Doug has done a tremendous job of getting us out there through WRD. It's in front of lots of retailers now. I've been self-employed since I was 17 years old. I've done everything from diamond mines in Africa, flower companies in Quito, Ecuador, software companies, restaurants, real estate, you name it. I've done it, did pretty well at all of it. Like I said, never really in the retail space, but I understood sales is sales. Doug and I kind of are kindred spirits. I always say he's just a younger version of me, just a go-getter. It's a couple of bulls in a China shop that understand what the cash cow is. I asked to get a little bit more familiar with it. Doug was gracious enough to bring me on to WRD. I've been there a couple of months and I'm learning retail. I actually love it. It's one of the it's the first time I've actually been employed with a group or a team of people. And frankly, I realized that I've missed out on a lot of cool opportunities throughout my life to be part of a team. But yeah, WRD, the retail space is definitely, it's an experience that I'm actually falling in love with.
- Speaker #0
Probably the most important thing that you left out, GC, is that you love cigars.
- Speaker #4
I do love cigars. I started, like I told you, as part of the fad. You know, in college and stuff, you think it's cool. You're in front of the girls. Everybody grabs a cigar. You can't hardly stomach the taste. You're smoking it wrong. You're inhaling. You're choking all over yourself. but that turned into a love affair. That and boats. Neither one are cheap, so I have to sell coffee.
- Speaker #2
If you like cigars and boats, you ought to be at that. Norm and I do an event called Collective Mind Society.
- Speaker #4
Yes, he made me wear it.
- Speaker #2
Yeah, we're doing it in Tampa, and we got cigars and boats, smoking cigars on boats, too, as part of it. It's going to be an awesome time.
- Speaker #4
Yeah, I'm going to check it out.
- Speaker #2
So the mushroom, for those that don't understand, people that aren't into the current trends, What? What is exactly mushroom coffee and what's it do for you? And did you actually get into retail or and now you're helping out Doug or tell me a little bit more there.
- Speaker #4
Sure. So it's a functional food. Lions has lion's mane mushroom, not the funny mushrooms. It's the health mushrooms. It has a shalajit and NAD in it also. It's cognitive function, cognitive function, anti-aging energy. They're natural substances. Lions Mane's been around since 206 before error. Shalaj has been around for 4,000 years. NAD is making a huge splash now. So I was taking these things and adding them to my normal morning coffee. And a light bulb went off one day. Hey, why don't I just make my own? Or why don't we, my partners and I, make our own functional mushroom coffee? So that's what we did. We're on our way into retail now. We haven't we have a lot of people. It's in front of a lot of people, a lot of different retailers that have agreed that it's the it's the thing to do. Now, it's just a matter of lining up. Doug's talking numbers. We're getting we're getting a lot closer, a lot closer than we we believed we would be this quick.
- Speaker #0
What what was your aha moment when you knew you're not going to it's not going to be an easy road to get into retail?
- Speaker #4
I'd have to say when Doug looked over at me and said, pardon the French, but actually I won't use the French, but he said, absolutely no way. Just doesn't work like that.
- Speaker #0
Was it because the brand didn't have exposure, the packaging, you didn't have a catalog?
- Speaker #4
Well, it's just at that time we were kind of introduced and the whole schematic of the coffee wasn't really laid out for him. He just heard coffee at $40 a bag or $36 a bag. and just said it wouldn't work. He has some coffee background. And so we leave that meeting where everybody's in suits and it's fancy. It's at a big place. And we leave that and we go back to Doug's Hotel there in Beverly Hills, just on the rooftop terrace to discuss further ventures to see if we can make it work. And the aha moment came when... The suits and the ties were loosened up. Doug, when we meet Doug at the elevator, he walks out in a pair of orange flip-flops, socks pulled to the knee, a sleeveless shirt. We go to eat up on the terrace of beautiful Beverly Hills, and I realized this is the guy. That was our aha moment when I knew that we could actually get to where we were headed.
- Speaker #2
Hey, Norm, you'll love this, man. I talked to a seller the other day doing 50K a month. But when I asked them what their actual profit was, they just kind of stared at me.
- Speaker #0
Are you serious? That's kind of like driving blindfolded.
- Speaker #2
Exactly, man. I told them, you got to check out Sellerboard, this cool profit tool that's built just for Amazon sellers. It tracks everything like fees, PPC, refunds, promos, even changing cogs using FIFO.
- Speaker #4
Aha.
- Speaker #0
But does it do FBM shipping costs too?
- Speaker #2
Sure does. That way you can keep your quarter for... chaos, totally under control and know your numbers because not only does it do that, but it makes your PPC bids, it forecasts inventory, it sends review requests, and even helps you get reimbursements from Amazon.
- Speaker #0
Now that's like having a CFO in your back pocket.
- Speaker #2
You know what? It's just $15 a month, but you got to go to sellerboard.com forward slash misfits, sellerboard.com forward slash misfits. And if you do that, they'll even throw in a free two month trial.
- Speaker #0
So you want me to say go to sellerboard.com misfits and get your number straight before your accountant loses it?
- Speaker #2
Exactly.
- Speaker #0
All right.
- Speaker #2
So, Doug, why would you instantly, when he said it, without really even diving deep, you're like, that ain't going to work. Is it the price point's too high? Or is it because there's expensive things, just like Norm just said, with these malls are getting taken over and putting in expensive stuff. What is it? that you knew this was not retail ready or just like, we need to make some changes here just from your experience. How did you know?
- Speaker #4
Well,
- Speaker #1
the other part of the story is what are we like 10 months in? I don't think we had a bag, a coffee maker. It was just an idea when I met them. And so we're, we're yet 10 months away or 10 months since launch. And we're looking at. you know, hopefully launching into somewhere like, you know, Sprouts, Earwand. We have some really good opportunities at some other retailers out there, Rouses, Publix. But the first thing I knew was price point. I heard, you know, how much is your MSRP? You know, you ask the basic questions. I heard $36.99. I've been doing coffee for six years. I haven't seen a bag of coffee for $36.99 in a store ever. And what they actually ended up bringing to me was something that interest me, something that I've never seen before. And the aha moment went from, these guys are dressed in suits with an idea. They have no idea what's about to hit them. They're going to waste money and bang your head against the wall for 18 months and figure out it's really tough to get into retail unless you know what you're doing. Or what they had was an actual product that's proprietary. It tastes good. It works. It delivers the functionality that it says on the bag. And more importantly, we were able to get the price down. get it to something where the market accepts it. And basically, it's just based on experience. Coffee is one of the hardest things to get on the shelf. And it's dominated by a few major players. So the no's are, I think that's my first answer to everything. But they came and they sold me. So if they're selling me, I have to help bring them to retail. And it's been a fun journey. We're the only ones out there with K-Cups. So that takes... hey, I have a super expensive product that nobody's ever seen before. And now you're bringing in taste, you're bringing in functionality, and you're bringing in convenience. And that starts driving customers to your brand. And that's where we're at right now, 10 months away. We might be on a shelf store in 12 months, which is kind of unheard of when it comes to retail. No bag, no package. I don't even think they had a website. No, you had a website, right? You had a website.
- Speaker #4
We actually, so we tell them all the plans that we have. And I said, hey, listen, we've got a cool website coming up. We've got some cool ideas. We've got business cards being made. The blend was already done. I'd already spent all the money at the chemist. I hadn't even brought in a financier at that time. But the blend was done. I knew what we had. We just didn't have packaging, any of that. So I'm telling them all the stuff we have. Stop everything. Stop the presses. Don't do another thing. So we literally stopped. We stopped the website. We stopped. everything went back to the drawing board blend forward uh started with the bags the bags absolutely there's not a bag as far as looks we best every bag out there the bag and the packaging is just a top notch and like doug said what the outside of the bag says the inside of the bag does and it's really a uh we plan on and this was before doug uh We plan on becoming the industry standard for the functional mushroom coffee. I know we have that blend. We're the only guys that have the K-Cups. We're the one of two guys that make it brewed. And we're the only one that actually tastes like a cup of coffee. The rest of them taste like you licked the back of a wet tree.
- Speaker #0
It's mushroom. I know with cigars. Let's talk cigars for a second. Let's swing it back. I know a blend in a cigar. It really is a perfectionist. like somebody who knows tobacco to really do the blending, right? Every manufacturer has their own blends and sub blends for your, for your coffee. I drink mushroom coffee and I don't know if you have Kev, but it's a completely different feel than regular coffee. Is it a master blender that, that does this or is it a fairly easy blend?
- Speaker #4
No, it's a, let me back up. We hired a team of chemists. We thought that we could do it right out the gate. And we, and we did, we made it taste like everybody else's, which was like licking the back of it. It did not taste like coffee. And it just, that wasn't our goal. That was my goal. I'm a business guy. Immediately when we came up with the idea to make mushroom coffee, let's go. I started the very next day, taking the steps to get it done. Two weeks into that, one of the partners, Alex, says we should make the coffee taste good. And I'm like, why? Nobody else's tastes good. Why should ours taste good? Let's just get this out there and let's plan on it. And my plan was to sell one bag and then two bags and three bags and pretty soon we're making it out of the garage. And then after that, we're in a small little office and then eventually in a store. And then I would fast forward and skipped all that and went to Doug. But we didn't. We set out to make a. To be different than the rest. The rest of them, like I said, it's a, you've had mushroom coffee. I don't know which one you have, but, uh, I, I can bet. I can bet everything that it doesn't taste like coffee and it doesn't know good. It's a, uh, for me, it was a hold your nose. Uh, I'd make it the night before I'd put it, mix my shellac it in with it. I'd mix my NAD in with it. Uh, the shellac is super hard compound to work with. It's a tar had to melt. I'd make it the night before, uh, set it on my bathroom sink. Let it finish melting, all of that. First thing in the morning, I'd slam it in front of the mirror, brush my teeth, and I'm done with coffee for the day until the afternoon cup. And that's how I was stomaching it. It wasn't for taste. It wasn't to drink. It wasn't a good cigar. It wasn't a good blend. It was just for the health benefits. And we decided we wanted to make something that we don't want to change your morning routine. We want to add to it. And that's what Up Cups has done.
- Speaker #0
So I just want to, Kirk, I swear we're going to get to you. Oh,
- Speaker #1
no worries.
- Speaker #3
No worries.
- Speaker #0
But I just want to, because this is the Marketing Misfits, you had to take something like, I drink this mushroom coffee that tastes like mushrooms. And you've done something completely different. So how did you market your coffee to make it stand out from all of these other coffees? Or sorry, mushroom coffees?
- Speaker #4
So that was mostly Doug's idea, to be honest with you. He wanted the mushroom on the front of the bag, but he wanted in big lettering. We probably can't see from there, but it says, tastes like a great cup of coffee. And that's what we tell people going in that how we market it and how I personally have approached retailers is, hey, guys, listen, this is not your typical mushroom coffee. This actually tastes good. It actually tastes just like a regular. Cup of coffee. And by the way, no jitters, no stomach issues, no caffeine crash, all natural energy that you're going to feel from your first cup. We give you the, what you're supposed to take. A lot of guys put stuff on the outside of the bag. It's got this, it's got that. And really, is there enough in there to make a difference? Is there enough that you can tell with us that was important to us? Our backgrounds, the three of us for All intents and purposes, we all are ex-cons. I went to prison for white-collar taxes, met a couple, a doctor that wasn't supposed to be there. By the way, I wasn't supposed to be there either, but that's our government. That's another discussion. But we met there and we all come from the same background. We do what we say. We're going to live and die by our word. And that's a fact in prison for sure, especially federal prison. So when we made the outside of that bag or when we made this blend, it was important to us that... you got, the consumer got exactly what we said you would get. You get 250 milligrams of the Shilajit, you get 250 milligrams of the Lion's Mane, and you get 100 milligrams of the NAD per cup. And it's just, it's been great.
- Speaker #2
So Doug, when you saw this price point, so you, were you, what's it sell for now? What's the retail price right now? Oh,
- Speaker #3
it's $36.99.
- Speaker #2
Oh, so you're at the $36.99, but you changed it from a bag to K-cup.
- Speaker #4
Well, we have three different SKUs because we have a nine-serving bag. Because what happened was, and this happened to me, I was buying multiple. I had multiple bags of these mushroom coffees in my pantry that I take one cup out of, and I just couldn't stomach it. So it just didn't taste good. So I went on to the next one and on to the next one. So what happened was a lot of these people. In fact, we were at a breakfast with Doug in Tucson, and we asked the waitress, hey, have you ever tried mushroom coffee? I have the bag still in my pantry. We had one cup and just couldn't stomach it. So I believe it was Doug's idea that come up with, hey, let's do a $9 or $11, $11.99 trial size bag. So people aren't spending $40 to find out they don't like the brand. So let's spend $11, $12, or let them spend $11, $12. get hooked, and then come back and buy the 30-serving bag, which is the $36.99. And then, oh, by the way, if you have a Keurig press, we also offer the K-Cups. So we have three different SKUs now. Thanks to Doug.
- Speaker #2
That's repositioning. So, Kirk, why Shark Tank? Why did you go on Shark Tank? Was it for the some people go on Shark Tank and they don't need the money. They don't need the partnership. They just want the publicity because sales blow up, whether you make the main show or you get put on one of the CNB shows and reruns. or you get cut to the CMB show as your debut, which is not as good as being on ABC. But why Shark Tank? And people, what was that experience like?
- Speaker #3
Well, Shark Tank, it's kind of a crazy, my co-inventor and I and co-founder, Brian, we're like serial inventors. We've invented quite a few products. I'll get to the Shark Tank thing in a second, but just a little background of how we got to where we're at. We normally would we were at first inventing products to license them so we could get royalties. And we licensed two products before COVID and to come to large companies. And what happened was is because of COVID, we lost the two licensing agreements and the two products that. were supposed to be in all the major big box stores. We lost them because they said, we can't even keep up with our supply now. So we were dead in the water with those two products. So we had another few products, but we came up with this one. Brian texted me one day, he was trying to trust a chicken and we invent barbecue products mostly. So he texted me and he was just like, we got to have a better idea for this. And so I'm a chef by trade in my previous life. And I hated truss and chickens. When you use the butcher's twine, you tie them up. So what happened was we're just like, OK, let's start working on this. So we started working on it. And we said, instead of licensing this one, we're going to venture it. We're going to launch it ourselves if we can make it in the United States. So what happened was from conception to the market, it took us about 10 months to get to the market. Once we got to the market, and then speaking of marketing misfits, the way that we did it, it's pretty crazy how we did. We did $50,000 in our first month when we were selling online. So we found distributor or manufacturers in Ohio. Every piece of our product is made within an hour of our house. So we didn't have to fill a container. We, you know, stamp metal, mostly some bent wires. So we didn't have to fill a container. We could go and we went to the manufacturers and they did low quantities for us and got us going. But once we launched, we did $50,000 in our first month by what Brian was doing. He's the marketing. He's the Facebook guru. Our products are so unique. What he would do is post in all these barbecue groups of pictures of our food being cooked with our products. And they're so unique. Everybody's like, what is that thing? And then instead of saying what it is, and he would put it in the lower comments. And we got a lot of traction just off of doing that. So we did that. We did 50,000 in sales. We, as soon as we launched the product, we applied to Shark Tank. It was online. It was during COVID. And we didn't hear anything. And then once we had 50,000 in the first month, Brian went back, resubmitted to Shark Tank. We got a call back. We needed the exposure and we needed the money because when we went on the show, we had 600 bucks in our business bank account with about 4,500 receivables. So we were almost dead in the water. And then Kevin invested in our company and then it started really picking up. Most of our sales now are on Amazon. And then that's when we met Doug. And because just being on Shark Tank is not going to get you into big retail. I mean, it is difficult. And, you know, and my business partner, Brian, is a sales guy. He's a salesman, but that's a whole different what he's selling is a totally different thing than getting in the big retail. So you start to work.
- Speaker #2
They always say that they can get you in retail. That's one of their lines is like, oh, don't worry. I got the connections and they argue amongst themselves. But that's just just talking out there beside their mouth.
- Speaker #3
Yeah, sometimes he did get us on QVC. We did quite well on QVC. We've we've been on QVC four times. Kevin helped us get on QVC. So. I mean, our first show we did, I think it was $111,000 in sales in seven and a half minutes. So it was pretty good. And our product is $21.99, but it's $19.99 back then. But now it's $21.99 on Amazon. But when we go retail, Doug, we're going to be at $19.99. And then we're working with some other, maybe some other big retailers that it might even be less than that for a dual pack. But that's something that we're working on. Yeah.
- Speaker #0
My wife came home the other day and something that you just said at retail, it'll be $19.99 on Amazon is $29.99. $21. $21. She came back. We were looking. I needed some shampoo. And I said, I'll just go to Amazon and get it. And she came back and she goes, oh, I went to Shoppers Drug Mart. It's CVC or CVS. What is it? CVS?
- Speaker #1
CVS.
- Speaker #0
So Shoppers Drug Mart up here. She goes, oh, I found this $4 cheaper. And... She goes, you can't always just trust Amazon for having the cheapest price. And you just, you know, back that up. So my wife was right once. She's out of the house right now.
- Speaker #1
She probably had a coupon too that made it like half off.
- Speaker #0
You know my wife.
- Speaker #1
You know my wife. Yeah, that's the thing about it. That's why retail is not dead is because you're like, I can order on Amazon. You're north of Toronto, like an hour and a half. So I'm in the middle of Austin. So a lot of times I can order it right now and it's here in three hours. Or it'll say, you know, delivery tonight before 10 or definitely first thing in the morning. You're a day or two probably in most cases.
- Speaker #0
Yeah.
- Speaker #1
For your stuff versus she can just go down to the store. Now, there is a, you know, for us entrepreneurs going down to the store to save $4 and spending an hour doing that. We might be able to make a lot more money than $4 in an hour doing something.
- Speaker #0
She was already out there shopping. Okay. You shouldn't even go there to save that.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, so, but that's the point is people still, and they need things now. They want to touch it. They want to hold it in their hand. They want to see it. But online, there's unlimited shelf space virtually, primarily. But in the stores, there's not. So, Doug, I mean, we talked on the AM PM podcast a lot about this, but how do you actually, if you're going to go in, you got to take space from somebody else. And are there, a lot of times, or something's got to get shifted around a little bit. And then. Do you see that where you got to come in and justify like what Kirk said? Like, look, we get this 50,000 in sales. That's why Shark Tank probably were a little bit more interested. Do you need that? Does GC need that for his stuff to actually show the retailers that this is good? Or do they sometimes just come to you and say, hey, do you know anybody that's got some mushroom coffee? Because people keep coming to our stores and asking about it.
- Speaker #2
I wish. I wish it was the latter. I wish. Yeah. No. It just. Totally opposite. We're taking, say, the Turbo Truster. Kirk, I don't know, we actually are getting launched, going to have an initial launch of the Ace as well. I don't know if you got that message, Ace and Lowe's. But what we do with the brands is we find out where they should go, Turbo Truster, Ace, Lowe's, Home Depot. But the goal is taking as many shots on goal as possible, getting feedback from the buyer. and listening to the buyer and what is needed. It's just like anything, you never know. So you want to have a full plan. You want to have good Amazon reviews. You want to have a nice meta. You want to have a good TikTok. You want to have a nice website. You want to have all of those things buttoned up because a buyer may be really focused at Whole Foods on your Amazon. And we know why, obviously, because they own it. At Ace, they're going to be really focused on how long you've been around and And you get that knowledge just from being in the industry. I don't even know where it comes from. It just comes from decades. Our team has people who have been doing this for a long time. And the goal is just to be ready for anything. There's shots on goal, good reviews, nice Amazon presence, good price point, good sales team, good social, internet presence. All of those things matter. Certain buyers, depending on what stages you're in. It could be holidays. There's just so many variables. It's just the more you are willing to beat your head against the wall and knock on the doors and get noticed, the more doors you're going to get open. So all variables based on how you're going to get into those stores. You just never know. Just be prepared.
- Speaker #0
Were you drawn to Kirk or was Kirk drawn to you? And if so, how?
- Speaker #2
You know, we actually met at a Shark Tank convention. I think it was just Kevin O'Leary's, one of his conventions. And I was already working with another brand of Kevin's at Shark Tank. And we started talking at Bertello Pizza Oven up the same alley. Loved the product, knew about it, met the guys. We had some beers. And I said, you know, I'd love to work with you guys. And, you know, we just kind of hit it off. I obviously sell in their field, in retail, whether it's Big Box Club or grocers. and they were looking to expand from... you know, Amazon and basic DTC. And, uh, yeah, been with us 60 days, two major launches coming up in Q4, which is way out of the norm, right. Which is what I told, uh, you know, GC would never happen, but, um, we've had some, again, success to patented product. It's a very well known. Everybody knows Thanksgiving. Everybody knows butcher's twine when you're talking about putting around the turkey. So it's an excellent, excellent retail product that could go almost anywhere from ACE to sprouts to Publix. Shoot, we even tried to get in the Honey Baked Ham store, but they precooked everything.
- Speaker #3
Yeah, they do.
- Speaker #2
They precook everything, yeah. I love that place, though. It's a good spot, but we got no products there.
- Speaker #1
So, Kirk and GC, what are you guys doing? So, you're getting into retail, but what are you doing to build an audience or a customer list off of retail? Are you doing some sort of warranty card or are you doing some sort of insert or anything in your packaging to try to get people to get onto a list that you can add onto a Facebook group or you can? re-market to them when you come out with your next invention. What are you guys doing in those regards? Are you just like retail? That's all we care about right now. We're just going to sell some stuff to the stores.
- Speaker #3
Well, Amazon, we put cards in our products on Amazon because, you know, collecting emails, you can't collect emails off Amazon. So we came up with a new strategy and actually we put cards in there, but now we're putting a card in there with, you have to download a recipe guide for The Turbo Trusser and another one of our products is really good. We sell this really well on Amazon. It's the cream cheese platter. And what we do is we put a QR code on there, and then people download the QR code, and then to download it, you have to put your email in. So right now, I think we have about 15,000 emails, but we're trying to build that email list up. So to capture that off of Amazon, since we can't do it when they order, we're trying to catch it when they get the product. And our new packaging has the QR code right on it. Um, but you know, we're on our third, we're on our third set of packaging right now. I mean, even when we met Doug, he's like, you know, we even, we spruced it up since then. We, you know, made it more retail instead of barbecue. It's more of a retail look. Um, cause before it had flames and everything and we're timing that all down, we tamed our website down and now we're looking at more of like a retail feel than just, you know, going after the guys in barbecue. Now it's going after, you know, the, you know, the women, the guys and anybody who actually cooks. Because you can use it in an oven or you can use it on the grill. You can use it in a deep fryer. So, yeah, we're trying to capture emails that way. You know, we run sales on Amazon. Most of our sales right now are through Amazon. And hopefully that's going to change here soon. Well, this fourth quarter is going to be really nice for us. But, you know, we're kind of just, you know, we're growing constantly on Amazon, but not like, hey, we got 250 stores. We're going to have 500 stores. You know, that's what we're looking at. That's why we. teamed up with WRD and Doug just because, you know, they got the expertise to take us to that next level, which we don't have. I mean, we're inventors. We can, we, you know, we do TikTok videos. I just started making more videos. It's I'm the chef part of the, of the, of the, of the team. So I've been making more videos, more content. And that's another way just, you know, our social channels. We want to have a lot out on social media before we do our launches into these big retails. So that way people are like, they have seen it, you know, they can kind of relate to us. And that's what we're, that's what we're working on right now.
- Speaker #1
What's up everybody, your good old buddies, Norm and Kevin here. And I've got an Amazon creative team that I want to introduce you to.
- Speaker #0
That's right, Kevin. It's called the House of AMZ. And it's the leading provider in combining marketing and branding. with laser focus on Amazon.
- Speaker #1
Hey, Norm, they do a lot of really cool stuff if you haven't seen what they do, like full listing graphics, premium A-plus content, storefront design, branding, photography, renderings, packaging design, and a whole lot of other stuff that Amazon sellers need.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, and guess what? They have nine years active in this space. So you can skip the guesswork, trust the experts. There's no fees. There's no retainers. You pay per project.
- Speaker #1
So if you want to take your product to the next level, check out House of AMZ. That's HouseofAMZ.com. House of AMZ. You know what would be cool on that is if you switch that to an app instead of a and in the app, you had your demos and recipes and all this stuff, but you also can integrate that in with some AI through it, guys, and people could actually ask questions like hey, I'm cooking a 20-pound turkey or whatever. They can interact with it, and it'll spit back suggestions on the fly based on their specific needs, and you get a lot of really cool interaction, and that might be cool. That's a good idea. But GC, what about you? What are you doing to actually try to build an audience that you can control?
- Speaker #4
Sure. We're doing a lot of mostly social media, to be honest. We're doing we're sticking a lot of money, time and effort into videos. Doug got us hooked up with a pretty good media company. So we're spending I think we're up to like 80 influencers now that are all getting ready to drop videos. They're different videos all at the same time. That's coming up pretty quick. Right, Doug? I believe in the next couple of weeks.
- Speaker #2
Yeah. Yeah. August the latest. Yeah.
- Speaker #4
so we're doing a lot of the social media stuff. We too have the QR code. I didn't realize that you could. I'm not a computer guy and I'm not a, Doug, I'll tell you, I'm not one of those guys. I'm old school, pick up the phone and just call. Email list, that kind of stuff I understand. The whole QR code that hooks to an app, we could do kind of the same thing with recipes to different iced coffees and tell more about the company. But I'm going to check into that immediately and maybe have an email. Like Kirk has, we have to fill out your email address in order to get into the QR code. So we're experimenting with a lot of things. I'm lucky that I've written some novels that have gone pretty well. There's a Netflix deal in the works along with a documentary about my life. So we're going to definitely use WRD and Up Cup Coffee as all part of that. So we're hoping to get a lot of action off of that. it's not Shark Tank, but We're getting closer.
- Speaker #0
Hey, Doug. Yeah. Financing. There's a lot of sellers out there that don't have the cash flow. What would you suggest? If somebody's coming to you with this great idea, but they don't have cash flow, what do you say to them?
- Speaker #2
I just had the question today. We have a new brand coming on, and they're worried about large POs, right? They're already in some mom and pops. We luckily have connections in-house where we're able to help factor POs. And, you know, we can factor up to X amount of dollars just depending on your history. But if you're working with us, if you're distributing the product through us and our program, I hate to say it. I hate to be cocky with it, but money's not going to be an issue if we have a PO from a bigger place. When it comes down to being a smaller brand, you're going to have to get a loan. You're going to have to go to the bank. You're going to have to put your house on the line. And that's what it takes for almost every brand to go from the two, three million dollar brand to the twenty, thirty million dollar brand. We had another, we had a Shark Tank company come in, tell us a story. His wife, two kids, they went, moved into a campground for almost two and a half years so they could launch the product and save money for retail and retail Poland. There was 30 months of stopping your life to get there. So when it comes to financing, you better have a good credit score, good friends, or a good plan to save a bunch of money because that's what kills people in the end. But what we're also able to do on our side is help. If you get a big rollout and you're confident, you know the buyers, you know how the system works, you can negotiate rollouts. You can tether them down to where you can afford them, and you can do it responsibly, and a lot of buyers like that. So the money thing is tricky. If you're working with WRD, here's my sales pitch. We can help you out with the big top Fortune 500 retailers and the people who pay their bills, right? If you're not, just make sure that you're keeping your credit tight. You have somebody to reach out for the bank and know that the retailers don't wait for the long terms to come through. And you just got to get ahead of everything. So financing is tough and it's the biggest, besides just being impatient. We all know money kills or grows with businesses. And if you're not ready for the big order. You can be out of every store pretty quick. And I've been with brands like that, and we wanted to expand and grow, and we just weren't able to keep up, whether it was money, inventory, processes, or something. And those are the most painful because it takes a long time to get there.
- Speaker #0
Do you suggest mom and pops or independents, spa salons? Let's say you have a beauty product. I know it takes a lot longer. They might just have one case, you know, minimum, but they pay with a credit card. Is that something that you would suggest?
- Speaker #2
Absolutely. Again, shots on goal from processes to, you know, making sure you can deliver on time to, you know, just running the business. That's a thing that we try to do. We want to get people, take brands that are brand new or just have a little bit of, you know, Amazon business. We want to get on a couple of drop shippers. We want to get a couple of mom and pops, one or two people stores. It's not our focus, but it's a warm-up exercise, and it also puts a little bit of money in the bank. As long as we're doing it profitably, no one's going to walk away from it, right, as long as it's not taking weight from the big picture. So shots on goal. Definitely mom and pops. I think every, even when we launched into ACE, we launched into seven, 15, 30 different chains at a time, maybe two. Those are the safest bets. Fewer mistakes that can be made.
- Speaker #1
So Kirk and GC, you said that a lot of your sales right now on Amazon as you're ramping up. How are you doing that? Amazon is a beast. And a lot of people think Amazon's a field of dreams. You just put it up there and you're going to start selling. And if you've got some other traffic, some influencers talking about it or some other things happening, you're on Shark Tank, yeah, people are going to go look for it and find it. But how are you handling that? Do you have an agency doing that? Is that something that Doug's company helps you with? Because there's a lot of moving parts on Amazon. It's gotten a lot more complicated over the last 10 years.
- Speaker #3
Yeah, we're working with an agency. We've been working with them for about a year now, close to a year. We're on our third agency on Amazon. You're right. It's crazy. It's a crazy world, but yeah, we're doing well. They're doing really well for us. You know, they're working on commission, which is really good. The previous two, they were working on like a monthly basis and we didn't see any results. And we advertise a lot on Amazon. But yeah, we have a company that we work with that we're happy with. And yeah, even like you just get the A-plus content and all that. It is so tricky. Amazon, if you try to do it yourself, it's nearly impossible. I mean, if somebody says, OK, I'm going to manage my own store, unless you know the back end of Amazon, it's hard. I mean, even when we were on Shark Tank, we ended up suing like 150 companies. Our Amazon account got hijacked a couple of years ago. We ended up suing 150 companies. And they figured they stole about $238,000 in sales off of us because we didn't know what we're doing. The brand registry was new. We didn't, you know, we were just, we were brand new. We were only in business for eight months when we were on Shark Tank. So, you know, one just popped up recently. They've been gone for almost two years. One popped up and I think they're already gone as of this morning they were. But yeah, they handled that. You have brand registry once you have the trademark, the brand registry. The most important thing for Amazon is, you know, you got to protect your brand. They don't, you know, I don't know if everybody knows this, like the audience, but, you know, Amazon really does. They don't care about patents. They care about trademarks, you know, and because it's a lot easier enforced on there, you know, but, you know, we do have full patents. We have utility patents and stuff, but yeah, we have an agency do it. It's a lot easier.
- Speaker #1
So is Kevin Leary still involved at this point? Because a lot of people don't realize that There's a big disclaimer on Shark Tank that says this is not an offer. This is blah, blah, blah. And all deals are subject to final due diligence and all that. A lot of deals that get made on there don't actually happen.
- Speaker #3
Only 25% of the deals you see on TV actually close.
- Speaker #0
Really?
- Speaker #3
Yeah.
- Speaker #1
And then those are shot like a year in advance too.
- Speaker #3
Yeah. We signed our deal the day that we signed our deal with Kevin O'Leary. the day of our airing of our show, and he wired us the money like an hour after we signed the deal. So we shook hands on, was it July 17th? Our show aired September 31st of the same year.
- Speaker #1
Oh,
- Speaker #3
that's cool. Yeah, the due diligence, but we're such a small company. We didn't have a ton of paper, a ton of stuff to go through for those guys to do their due diligence. So we signed the deal and yeah, he's still involved and he's going to, you know, when we launch in the big retail with, with Lowe's Ace, we've talked to him. He's going to help us make some TV commercials and things like that. And, you know, with, cause with his, you know, he's on TV every day. I see him almost every day somewhere. So, you know, everybody knows who he is. So he's going to help us with some TV commercials and some other, you know, some social media posts and things like that. But yeah, he's involved. One thing about Kevin O'Leary, he really cares about small business. I mean, You know, we don't talk to him a lot, but his team, if we ask a question, they're like literally they answer within within a day, within hours most of the time. So his team's really responsive. He's a really great partner. I mean, to do it all over again, we would still we would do it again.
- Speaker #1
So he basically just gave you the money and then passed you to his team and then you did some stuff with your team. And that's basically the relationship now is you work with a team. So they they wanting like monthly reports or. weekly reports? Are they getting involved? Like, Hey, we think you should do this marketing. We want to introduce you to these people. I guess I'm what I'm saying. Are they very active? Are they more passive?
- Speaker #3
Well, he's as active as we need him to be. He's passive, but if we ask him for something, they do it. Like he, he lets us run the business. He does, you know, he has his own thing going on. I mean, he's, you know, he's has multimillion dollar business in our little business, but we ask him for support. He's there. Um, you know, as far as, um, is his team. Yeah. we deal with this team a lot. He has a really good responsive team. But, you know, some other sharks that I've heard aren't as responsive as Kevin. Um, but one thing that I can say is he's an honest guy and he really cares about small business.
- Speaker #1
Now, GC, how did you, how'd you, uh, to handle Amazon? What are you doing to make Amazon work?
- Speaker #4
Very carefully. We, uh, I spent, uh, with, uh, two of our partners, we spent about four hours on there and realized right then this is not something we can do. Uh, so we too went down a couple of different roads with, uh, a couple of different guys, agencies, and we're with one now that. we're doing it. We're doing it. Sales have increased. Everything is checking out. We're actually making money from Amazon. The first time around on Amazon, they sell $1,900 worth of stuff today. And great, we made $8. There was a lot of mistakes made in the beginning, a lot of buttons not checked. That has turned around and we're actually, we're pleased with Amazon. And everybody should know, the listeners anyway, that Mushroom coffee has not made it to the shelves yet. There's only one out there. I think Four Sigmatic is the only one that's out there that's actually hit the shelves.
- Speaker #0
That's what I drink, guys.
- Speaker #2
Oh,
- Speaker #4
that's what you want? Yeah. So just so you have some figures, last year, I think it was 2023, almost $3 billion done in functional mushroom coffee. That's expected to grow to over five and a half for the next few years. Pretty good growth rate.
- Speaker #1
Is it retail or online or total?
- Speaker #4
It's only e-commerce. There's nobody in retail yet.
- Speaker #1
There's one in retail.
- Speaker #4
There's one. Four Sigmatic, they busted through the doors. We'll be the second one. And they're doing those kind of numbers on e-commerce. So I recognize as one of the partners or the co-founders that e-commerce is important to us. There's a lot of money being made right now on e-commerce. So we wanted to make sure that we had the right outfit that was doing that for us. And we were lucky enough to have Doug introduce us to that team. And like I said, we're pretty happy with them.
- Speaker #0
You know, I want to just say something about Amazon. Like a lot of people, they might have a product. They go onto Amazon. They think they can just list it. You are spending just good money after bad. Or I think that's the saying. You need to have somebody to guide you through and navigate Amazon. Anybody who thinks that they can just go on there nowadays and make a buck, it's a unicorn. You know, you really do need to have guidance. And that's where I think of a photographer. You'll need a photographer on it for Amazon for the slide deck. You don't do it yourself. You hire a professional. And that's the same thing with your copy. Why wouldn't you not get somebody that knows the ins and outs, pay them a little bit? A lot of people are afraid of just, oh, they're going to take my profit. Well, a good consultant or a good agency, a good one, that's hard to find. They're not taking your money. They're building your brand. And they're not only building up your product and sales, it's your brand. You're getting brand awareness through that. So I just wanted to... I talk to so many people that think it's just so easy to go onto Amazon and it's just not the truth.
- Speaker #4
No, it wasn't for us. I fell underneath. So as you know, I'm a novelist and I've sold a lot of books on Amazon. So you think that by selling books or I thought by selling books, oh, I'm on Amazon, this is going to be easy. Selling a book on Amazon is nothing compared to selling anything else on Amazon. Books are easy. There's nothing to it. And you actually... You see what you're going to make per book. It's laid out. You're going to get 70% of the royalties as long as your price lands between this point and this point. It's pretty cut and dry. Amazon's pretty easy with that. So, like I said, I thought it would be pretty easy for this space. And absolutely, you have to have somebody that is willing to take punches for you and knows what they're doing. They know how to dodge some of those punches.
- Speaker #0
Punch, Kevin, would you? Even virtually, just punch them.
- Speaker #4
A virtual punch?
- Speaker #2
Yeah.
- Speaker #4
I can probably buy that on Amazon these days.
- Speaker #1
Probably can. I think I saw that on Shark Tank. That's one of the deals that didn't go through. But you know, the mushroom coffee, you got to be careful too with making claims about stuff on Amazon. There's a whole science to the backside of the keywords and where you phrase things, what goes in the title, what doesn't, what goes in a picture, what doesn't. Yes. It's very data-driven and very scientific. And now in the world of AI, that's evolving into a whole nother game that's complicating it even further. It's massive opportunity, but and it can also be if you don't do it right, you're not going to have success. And we hear that a lot. Doug, what do these guys do right and what do they do wrong?
- Speaker #2
What did they do right? They took a chance on themselves. That's first, right? Like, you know, just being an entrepreneur, right? What did you do wrong? Shoot.
- Speaker #1
Let's see. You corrected it, but what did they come in like? They've mentioned a few things that the way they thought about it and how easy it would be and stuff. But what are some things that you like? Oh, they made the same mistakes a lot of people that want to get into retail make. And just to use an example, just to make this real for people.
- Speaker #2
Yeah. Yeah. So you take let's just say, you know, if you think you're going to do good on Amazon, you guys, I think, made the point earlier. We're going to do good on Amazon. The coffee tastes great. I just have to get it to a buyer's hand. It's better than Four Sigmatic. This is going to be a breeze. And I think every founder that I deal with deals I deal with, I forget what it's called. that's out there. What is it?
- Speaker #1
Hubris.
- Speaker #2
Yeah. That's a good one. That just cut right to it. Every single person just has the best product. It's been good. Kirk's a serial entrepreneur, so he's not so focused on one. I have three products right now where they're pretty dang good, but the owners swear they're the best in the universe and nothing else will ever be invented as good as this. So you have to deal with that, just balancing it with reality. These guys. Since they came so early, I'd have to tell myself for mistakes. We just made normal, simple ones. The big thing about taking into retail, it's also like if you do it the right way with us, we're going to give you R&D from buyers, from people who are actually going to put your stuff on the shelf. So we're not just going out there 40K a year, you know, 5% and we're just the sales team. We're going to get out 40, 50 samples. We're going to get feedback. And most likely we're going to change almost every product that comes to me. I change the packaging. I change the price point. You change how it looks. We go from shelf ready to pallet ready. You know, you're paying for with us, at least, you know, we're not brokers. We're brand management. We're bringing sales. We're bringing back R&D. So when it comes to what did they do wrong? I would say right now, nothing. What'd you do right? Again, back to just taking a chance when you got something patented and proprietary and, you know, you live in America or Canada, right, Norm? I'm taking notes, right? let's go yeah yeah yeah so it's just you know hubris is the biggest thing with with founders but if you get people that actually listen say yeah we have all had hubris just like we we do in our own business we're the best retail sales team in the country um you just have to go back to what works what doesn't work being honest and taking feedback and making it actionable like if you get feedback from buyers that your price is too high what do you do quit No, repackage. Go from 16-ounce bag to 11.5. Go from 12K cups to 10. There's so many different things that you can do to help overcome those objections that stop most people from getting on the shelf. And working with a team like us, you're able to get sales and that R&D that a lot of people forget about.
- Speaker #1
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- Speaker #0
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- Speaker #1
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- Speaker #0
At the beginning, at the beginning, almost an hour ago now, time is flying. You said that retails change even over the last six months. Where do you see the trend going in the next six months? predictive buying run by AI instead of buyers so pretty much taking everything I just said and throwing out the window there's predictive buying that puts us in certain grocery stores now predictive buying that you know algorithms are gonna make the decision on what comes into the you know what comes into the stores now more than buyers five years ago totally different now things are starting to be built off of algorithms and it's not built off of predictive buying and algorithms they're gonna throw you on the dot-com site Just to see if you can make it. You know, if you're not a powerhouse with a big bank roll behind your big name, they try to slide you online first to cover their selves because the buyers are incentivized off of bringing out products that are going to move and make the retailer money. So predictive buying, you know, using dot coms as, you know, litmus tests before bringing people in. And overall, it just makes it tougher, right, for the small businesses to get in.
- Speaker #1
So you're saying like for GC's coffee. They're going to use AI to see where all the biohackers are. And that's where you're going to probably go. The store is going to say, all right, we'll take it in here because we got a high density of biohackers in this little neighborhood in Austin. So let's put his coffee on the shelf. So rather than. Yeah,
- Speaker #0
you already know it's it's it's going to get that micro soon. You use. Yeah, it is like, you know, just like Amazon knows where to ship, you know, to, you know, based on the locations that their orders are coming from. That's going to triple right down into, OK, Turbo Trusted belongs in these areas, but not these regions. It's already been happening, but it's going to just be more precise, make it a little bit tougher for the small brands to keep up because a lot of people don't understand. Oh, you know, they'll say, again, hubris. People in Missouri love, you know, barbecuing. Right. You know, there's just the non-reality statements. And yeah, predictive. I think AI is going to make a lot of decisions for us.
- Speaker #1
It's a $2 billion market. Come on, Doug. It's a $2 billion market in Missouri. Yeah. We got to be there. Well, if I just had 1% of the market, I'd be fine. I agree. We'll be good. Come on now. Come on.
- Speaker #0
The
- Speaker #1
1% of the market. GC and Kirk, on the flip side, why did you plunk down 40 Gs and give up a little Scooby Snack to Doug? I mean, why? Why not? Why? I mean, yeah, he bought you some beers and had a good dinner. But but but why? Why should someone that's coming from your side, the inventor or the creator side of products consider someone like Doug? And what's the what are the advantages, really?
- Speaker #2
Well, because we need them. I mean, you know, I mean, you know, inventing a product, putting it on Amazon, taking it to market that way, getting on Shark Tank. That's easy compared to cracking the code of the big retail market. I mean, because there are so many variables. There are so many things that we don't know. And a lot of times you have to hire a professional to do it. And, you know, we tried to do it ourself. We were on range me. We were doing all these things and weren't getting anything. I mean, we've sent out a lot of samples so far right now. And, you know, we're in lows. You know, we're going to be an ace. We have a lot of samples out to buyers all across grocery, retail, like retail, grocery. And, like, it's, you know, you just have to do it, but you have to bite the bullet because without paying a professional, it's just like using Amazon. If you don't hire an agency to help you navigate it, you're never going to figure it out.
- Speaker #1
So the patience that it takes, does that ever, you're like, man, is this thing ever going to take off? I know sometimes you just got to do a gut check. Like, I know I got something here. We sold $50,000 before. It's doing okay on Amazon. It's going to happen. I just got to be patient. And does it take like just... a different mindset?
- Speaker #2
For sure. I mean, you know, we've had last November, we passed a million dollars in lifetime sales, not obviously not profit, but you know, we, that's the only thing that's keeping us going is it keeps selling. I mean, we're not selling, you know, millions a month or anything, not like we want to, but we know we have something, our reviews are good. The people really love our products and, you know, but we need, we needed help to get us to that next level. And we weren't capable of doing it by ourselves. We just couldn't do it. We tried. And, you know, you got it. You got to pay the piper and you got to pay a professional to help you do it. That's that's the you know, when we decided to work with Doug and W.R.D., it's like, you know, and we knew him. We met him in person, which was really which was really nice. But, you know, he gets results and, you know, that's what we need where, you know, we can be in, I don't know, thousands of retailers because we can go across grocery. We could be you know, we could be it. Home Depot, Lowe's, Costco, we can be in just about every place. But to get there, to find those buyers and to stay on them and to follow up all these people, you need a team behind you to do it. And, you know, my business partner and I, it's just him and I. I mean, you know, we run everything. Like today, I just sent a bunch of stuff to Amazon this morning, you know. So, you know, it's us, you know. And we needed a sales professional like Doug to help us get to that next level.
- Speaker #1
And G-Seed?
- Speaker #3
Yeah, so ours was the same thing. we wasted a bunch of money. Well, let me back up. So I learned a valuable lesson. When I wrote these books, when I first started writing, I immediately knew pretty quick, pretty quick that like with 120 pages that I was going to get to these bestseller lists. But I assumed because I had no experience in this that, hey, you write a book, that's the hard part. Let's put it on Amazon and everybody's going to come by it the next day. So I learned that that was not the case. I learned that you had to have a team to get that done. So then came the coffee. I didn't know anything. That's a different kind of retail market. We quickly hired some professionals that we thought that they had our best interest. We dropped $50,000 on a PR company before we basically had a bag. We just made mistakes that we fell for the whole, I can get you, I can do this, I'm going to do all these big fancy things for you and you're going to love life. You fall for those guys, and there's a lot of them out there that do it. And then along came Doug that sat us down and gave us a no. Everybody else said, oh, yeah, we can do that. Pay here. Sign here. And we did it, not knowing. And like I said, we wasted 50 grand just on one PR company before we even had a bag complete. And we didn't tell Doug about it. And when we did tell Doug about it, crap hit the fan. So we quickly learned that we knew we needed somebody. We didn't know who we needed at that time. And luckily enough, that PR company happened to have the in to Doug's, maybe big brother, we'll call him, the distributor. We sat there. We did the tours. And man, how great would it be in a situation like this? And then in walks Doug, tells us we can't do it. We sit down. We explain this is what we're thinking. It's not regular coffee. And he goes to work immediately. And we spent less with him to get all of these. And we're in the, like, like Kirk said, we have samples out to real people. I mean, what's the chances of me being able to get out a sample to, to Sprouts or to Whole Foods or to Publix or State of Bro, all these without having a guy that they're not picking up the phone to me. They're not. I seen that. So. When I started to realize that I got impatient, I'm like, man, he's had it. This is the way it works. Why don't we have a PO the next day? And then I was lucky enough to be able to go to work for WORD and I now understand how it works. The building your product or building your brand or getting it to the point to be ready to go somewhere, that's not the hard part. The hard part is cracking the retail nut. If that's what you want to be, if that's where you want to get to, that's not an easy... There's... hundreds and maybe thousands of people calling these same buyers to get on the same shelf that I'm trying to get on. The shelf may be six inches by six feet deep. There's a thousand people calling for that same space. And if you don't have the guy, you don't have the team and you don't have the distributor and the sales force that can take you to that, you're really just spinning your wheels and wasting time and money. I've been an entrepreneur, like I said, since 17 years old. My time is valuable. So for me to sit on a phone nonstop all day long and nobody take my call and nobody, I'm just wasting my time and money. Forget the 50 grand we blew to a PR company. We, we needed a guy like a WRD. You have to have somebody that's going to shake your hand. They're going to look you in the eyes. They're going to pick up that phone. They're going to return the text. Even if it's the next morning, uh, he's gonna, this guy's gonna get back to you. He's going to, and he's going to tell you straight, listen, you can't do that. Or no, we're not doing that. Or hey Listen, that bag, we had completely different ideas on where our bag should look like and well, not so much look like, but what it should contain the different SKUs. And he sat us down and said, listen, those won't work. This is what will work. And like I said, we're out in front of, we have a phone call at least twice a day with somebody that's asking the right questions in order to get us to the point of appeal.
- Speaker #4
Hey, Doug.
- Speaker #0
Yeah.
- Speaker #4
Last word. Is there anything we missed? Is there anything? And I'm sure it's only, you know, it might be 30 seconds, right? We covered everything. Everything that anybody knows about retail. Now, is there anything?
- Speaker #1
You're good. You're good. Listen to this podcast and you're ready to go. You're great.
- Speaker #4
Exactly. It's just like that.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. The only thing is, yeah, the biggest thing you can have in this game is patience, right? A lot of people. They'll go spend 40, 50 grand every quarter on Amazon, and they'll spend 100 hours a week trying to get it right. and end up with a two to 3% profit or maybe a loss. If you could put that into something with long-term with patients that you don't have to touch, that you say, okay, I'm gonna go back to the old analogy, .com and online is cryptocurrency. Over here, we have Berkshire Hathaway, something that works. If you put a small amount of money behind it for a very long time and let the process take place, take place, you're gonna come out on a better end. The only thing that you miss is no matter what everybody's saying, you have to have patience. And when you have patience, then you just have to have more. Because right before you're about to make it, something is going to happen that set you back. And you just got to have more patience. And if the right agency picks you up, if the right sales manager comes on your team, if you get a chance to work with people who actually care, the difference between our team and other teams is we care. And you have a product that the price point works, you're good. going to get there. You just, just like anything, you got to just keep grinding, keep calling. You got to find the one person that wants to take you to the prom. And once you get there, you build your brand from there. And it could be Sprouts. It could be Target. You can build your brand off of 150 stores. So it's just be patient, be consistent, be persistent and be positive and things will work out.
- Speaker #1
Hey, Kevin King and Norm Farrar here. If you've been enjoying this episode of Marketing Misfits, thanks for listening this far. Continue listening. We've got some more valuable stuff coming up. Be sure to hit that subscribe button if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast player. Or if you're watching this on YouTube or Spotify, make sure you subscribe to our channel because you don't want to miss a single episode of the Marketing Misfits. Have you subscribed yet, Norm?
- Speaker #4
Well, this is an old guy alert. Should I subscribe to my own podcast?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, but what if you forget to show up one time? It's just me on here. You're not going to know what I say.
- Speaker #4
I'll buy you a beard and you can sit in my chair too. And we'll just, you can go back and forth with one another.
- Speaker #2
Yikes.
- Speaker #4
But that being said, don't forget to subscribe, share it. Oh, and if you really like this content, somewhere up there, there's a banner. Click on it and you'll go to another episode of the Marketing Misfits.
- Speaker #1
Make sure you don't miss a single episode because you don't want to be like Norm.
- Speaker #4
Perfect. Kevin?
- Speaker #1
I think this has been good. If you want to go deeper on some stuff, Doug and I did. I know you've done some stuff on your podcast, too. Check out Lunch with Norm. You'll have covered some retail stuff from a different angle. And then Doug and I, this podcast will probably come out first because the one we recorded. It won't be out till early fall. But you check that one out because it'll have a lot more detail in the weeds and some number breakdowns and stuff in there. So that'll help you out, too. That's an AM, PM podcast.
- Speaker #4
All right. This will be interesting. At the end of every podcast, I always ask our guests, do they know a misfit?
- Speaker #0
Oh, yeah, of course. I know lots of misfits. Definitely. Absolutely.
- Speaker #4
Well, perfect. If, and I guess this will be a little bit later on, but our assistant Mary's going to reach out to you and get that information.
- Speaker #0
Love it. Yeah. Send her my way. We'll definitely get her linked up with somebody to actually help build my business as well. And I think you guys have a good conversation.
- Speaker #4
Fantastic.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
Well, appreciate you guys having us on. Yeah.
- Speaker #4
Thank you. Thank you. All right,
- Speaker #1
guys. Thank you, guys. Thanks, GC, Kirk, and Doug. This has been great.
- Speaker #4
And I'm going to remove you. Don't go away. Okay.
- Speaker #2
All right.
- Speaker #4
I'll see if I can do this. One. I don't want to. My computer is so sensitive. Sensitive. Just like Kevin. Where's Kevin?
- Speaker #1
You kicked me out. Kicking me out. All right. You're just going to take it from here. All right.
- Speaker #4
You piss me off a little,
- Speaker #1
Kevin. You go. You go, boy. I just want to know the mushroom coffee. You need to switch brands because this one's not working. It's supposed to be anti-aging.
- Speaker #4
Does your voice get on your nerves, too?
- Speaker #1
It's supposed to be anti-aging. And you may need to switch to GC's brand because something's wrong with their coffee.
- Speaker #4
It's called natural.
- Speaker #1
Hey, but no, that was good. A different take on retail than a lot of times what you hear. And some people that are actually in there doing it day to day. And, you know, a couple of brands that are ones right on the cusp with a PO already. He didn't mention here, but I think they actually won a contest at Lowe's, too. Like, I forget what he says. some sort of contest that got them into 250 stores. Yeah,
- Speaker #4
that Platinum Award.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, which is cool. And then GC, I think, like you said, there's only one brand out there. I'm sure they're going to break through and have some great success. So retail is something, just like when I asked them that Amazon question, I said, hey, who's handling Amazon? Amazon ain't easy. Just like they said, they said it many, many times, hey, retail is not easy either. It's a great opportunity. It's a whole different animal, but it's something that's definitely worth pursuing.
- Speaker #4
And patience.
- Speaker #1
and patience yeah i think that's the other key is just be patient uh and um good thing well they say good things come to those who wait and that right norm you've been waiting a while for something for me i get stuck with you you've been waiting on something from me uh these are good things come to those who wait patience patience i heard that i've heard that
- Speaker #4
Oh man. Okay. So we have a YouTube channel and we've got two actually. One is for our long form videos and that is a marketing misfits podcast. Pretty simple marketing misfits podcast for shorter clips, three minutes and under we have the marketing misfits clips and we have a new TikTok channel. So we've just opened that up. And by the way, Uh, our website, if you want to check it out is marketingmisfits.co, not.com, right, Kev?
- Speaker #1
Uh, it took me a while to get that. Yeah. It's .co, .co, .co.
- Speaker #4
That's it. All right. I think that's it.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, I think so. So if you liked this episode, feel free to share it, uh, with someone you think might benefit from hearing this. Someone's getting into one to get into retail would be great. Uh, leave us a comment down below or follow us, subscribe on, uh, whether you're watching this on YouTube or Tik TOK or, uh. or any of the other channels, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, whatever, be sure to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss a single episode because we're back here every single Tuesday with a brand new episode from the world of marketing.
- Speaker #4
And that's it.
- Speaker #1
That's it.
- Speaker #4
We'll see you later.
- Speaker #1
See you next time. Bye-bye.
