#30 - Reinventing the Energy Drink

we were at like a party and i'm handing out five h http milk this b vitamins because you know we're up for basically two and a half days dancing quite a good time you know my business partner now ryan and i started talking the the day after taking on supplements he's was like hey we thought we should package these supplements up and instead having gonna buy full bottles of each we thought well let's put all these in a beverage right can we actually pull this off so we go super thin because we burned through all our savings starting the company and i mean we're eating like mac and cheese in tuna every night i've got two kids at the time living in a four hundred square foot trailer we've doing like eight cases a month there yeah so we're like shit or something here we used to ring the bell in the office you know when we get a new gym and it was like oh the first month we got like twelve gyms we were so stoked the next month we got thirty then we got fifty we were hitting like two hundred a month wow right so it starts adding up quid and went from seven around four million one year so where do you think this goes how big does this get over a billion five million is not involved ten million million twenty million dollars hundred million dollar half million hundred and fifty million dollars one or two people in a bedroom actually put threats to these like giant multi dollar companies because you have creativity and you have nothing to lose add another zero to that price buddy had two more zeros first first million every week we sit down with self made millionaires and asked them how did you do it i didn't start a podcast i started my own personal business school and the teachers are the successful entrepreneurs behind the biggest brands and businesses that you find today i wanted to know the real stories where all the details like how did you get your first hundred customers what did it feel like when shit had been i ask them how do you spend your money now that you're rich and what would you do if you're were starting over from scratch again today if you're like me and you wanna own your own business instead of living a nine to five job this is the podcast for you the hustle presents my first million so i i just took a sip of life aids new cbd drink so i'm here with founder life aid aaron life aid is a new sort of energy drink company and do you like me call energy drink phone show beverage yeah that's less catchy it's less catchy but there's a lot of negativity associated with that's what why i pause like i wanna call it but basically if you're like me clean energy would be a better just right like i don't wanna drink red bulls and mon myself right like i'm not gonna put that in my body and so life aid is like an alternative so founder you're based out of santa cruz you came up for the day you got a party to go to tonight so i appreciate you stopping by exciting company you guys are doing thirty five million in revenue i think this year right about so that's you know gotta be a hundred million dollar company not many people have done that in the sort of beverage space and so we're gonna learn ninety nine percent failure rate right we're gonna learn how you did a little bit about you and and what it takes to get something like this off the ground because i think i get a couple different types of guess right you get like the high tech entrepreneur and if you're not a programmer you're not into software those are sort of it's just a different beast altogether sure but this is something where like you know i remember in college when i saw five hour energy and i was like what's the backstory story how do you start one of these and look you fucking you started one of these you did it give me two things i want you to first give me the generic backstory which is you know i was just tired of my options and i wanted make something better then you want the truth and then i want the truth yeah give me both give me both that they're both they're probably related i i don't think they're up is one as more no they've never been asked that question and so i appreciate that because you're right there are kinda two versions see the generic stories is you i was a sports chiropractor for ten years grew up and in santa cruz i i met my business partner of orion at a across gym across it north santa cruz right he's a certified financial planner we both were writing for the paper started hanging out he's a very accomplished dj my wife and i love house music and we both had two young kids our daughters are actually best friends met in kindergarten and our wives became friends we started hanging out for a couple years and brainstorm ideas and you know part we were both very frustrated with the lack of healthy beverages on the market especially marketed to kids you know what our kids are going towards you know the kids weren't reaching back in two thousand eleven for kombucha cheap or coconut water right they're reaching for monsters and rebels it's like i was offended i'm like i can't have my six year old reaching for this garbage because it's a bunch of shit so it's was really out of ignorance and passion we started life aid so that's more the corporate line which is a hundred percent true right the backstory yes is we were at like a pre compression and a pre burning man party called three degrees i've been part of the founding team for that for you know helping throw it for several years so i invited him and his wife we had had recently met and because you i knew he'd didn't enjoy the dj is like twenty two dj and we i'm handing out five h t milk this sole b vitamins because you know we're up for basically two and a half days dancing quite a good time yeah what are those things you just said i've never taken any of those okay so they're all supplements one's for serotonin if you're having serotonin one's good for the liver one's these are more like vitamin and these aren't party you these is all are all all recovery stuff okay yeah recovery stuff right and i had an eye drop business at the time called i eye drops so i saw i drops the stone okay and the most santa cruz thing i've ever retire i it was a good lesson and accurate thinking because stone don't give a shit that their eyes at it actually i actually got pretty good distribution we act we turn the most units in novelty shops not in head shops which is interesting but you know my business partner now ryan and i started talking the the day after taking all these supplements he's like hey we thought we should package these supplements up and set having to buy full bottles of each put it on the counter in seven eleven and call it party pills so anytime you know i have an idea he has an idea or we'd bullshit a lot ideas but most of them were were lame right so i remember my wife coming to me the next day he's like hey that party posting you should you guys should look into that so we started going down that road where were gonna create these party packs and we figured if if supplements in pill form the way to go i'm old enough if somebody out there might remember no was really big before red bull right well that doesn't exist war red bulls you know multi billion dollar company so we thought well let's put all these in a beverage right so the beverage was called rave aid which was a little ray see our friends in the in the scene said no you gotta a tone it down so we didn't called it party eight and then one night on his birthday you know so we register party aid dot com on his birthday and then we're like if we do party we crossfit fit let's do one for fitness called fit and we golf let's do on golf rate even got boner dot com for twelve dollars you're just buying we buy every eighty domain names in one night anything within an aid right k and alright that was available that's available available for the right price we still own it actually right and then it's just like internet google searching like okay what do we wanna put in this and you know i had some background nutrition so i'm back the formulations we started researching flavor houses researching who produces these cans right that you know that's an interesting story in and of itself it's like we call the can manufacturer rex at the time was the largest that that fed the united states west coast sales rep kits on the phone and again you gotta realize ninety five percent failure rate and beverage in the first year ninety nine percent in the first five years right they don't make it so the guy quickly surmise we don't know what we're talking about he says well the minimum runs two hundred and four thousand units well we didn't have that much money right and we said well sometimes we heard that there's these things called silver bullets which are just blank cans these are all made to order they're printed on right when they make them the whole can the production print they're silver bullets which are blank cans you go they those are overrun they barely happen you know that's not really a thing that's available thanks for plan because you're both broke dicks you know what you're talking about so stop wasting my time basically was the the summary of the call hangs up we're like oh god there goes our billion dollar idea you know but then we had this idea well hey let's send him a nice handwritten thank you card this is back in two thousand eleven with a hundred dollar russ kris gift certificate in it said thanks for your time wow i'll let us know if anything becomes available a week later we get a phone call hey i got two pallet of silver bullets for you guys to buy that was the beginning of it we feel failed and was that i like that little life hack you did there so most people wouldn't do that what was the was the thinking you know to to to keep that lead warm when i've been there before when people are like look you don't know what you're doing your way you're way in over your head here look i'm gonna help you out and and just tell you know now so you don't sort of go further down this road but you didn't you didn't take no an answer you didn't get a chip on his shoulder you were like now let's let's warm this guy up and see if you know something comes through well reciprocity anyone who's read like cha work you know reciprocity such a powerful powerful force you know it's undeniable so we knew that if we we were gonna stand out by sending my handwritten no and then the hundred dollar russ chris card it's like well who doesn't like to go to russ chris right okay so so you get this over bullets and now you're in the game a little bit you're like okay we're in like idea is alive the idea is alive so we go down to the flavor house barely makes flavor house can i go to a flavor house it sounds like i can i mean it's basically like a a little food science lab okay yeah so it's just like if you went into you know your your a college chemistry class it's like everyone's in little white smokes when they've got test tubes and scales and shit's getting mixed together great and so we went down i had everything formulated the the the scientists looked at the formulation said wow this is great but if you don't wanna use you know artificial sweeteners and you know this you can't put this level of active ingredients and a drink it's gonna cost too much and you can't do it without art artificial sweeteners and or your sugar level would be too high like okay we'll we'll go somewhere else then so we literally sorry to turn around walk out to the door and she's like why wait let's just give it a shot because we were ignorant and we were just uncompromising like okay we wanna make the cleanest products on the markets and no su no asp team you know low to no sugar and well our was important to you because obviously as a consumer i appreciate that but it seems like that was a part of your lifestyle you weren't just doing it because you thought that's where the opportunity was it was like a fun it seems like it's a fundamental part of you why was that the case yeah i mean look orion grew up on goat milk in the santa cruz bounds i live completely off the grid currently you know i i live off the grid i've got chicken and solar batteries you know it's it's just so how does live what does it mean to live off the grid i don't even know anyone who's myself means you're not connected to pg and so i have my own well i own septic tank and i create my own power holy shit yeah so when all these rolling blackouts and everything i'm just kinda laughing right and so you you do that does that take up like a massive amount of your time to maintain all of those sort of life utilities for yourself yeah it's it's it could be a full time job just taking care of the property which is eventually what i wanna get to but i'm balancing here and now taking care of the property we i had my chiropractic practice still because that's paying the bills and you know after we started getting a little bit attraction so we bought this property it was just a deer trail i went through with my wife we hiked down this deer trail i had a little chainsaw i'm like shit i think you can see the ocean from here and she climbed up this tree and we're like yeah we could see the so we had this idea let's buy this property it's off the grid we're gonna we have two kids at the time two small kids or one kid we had the other kid there actually we're gonna move in on a little trailer little four hundred square foot trailer and we'll live in a trailer and then we'll build our tree so on tacos because a cairo i'll make a good money it's all referrals you know fairly easy practice only working like twenty six hours a week and so that was a plan well then life aid comes along and we're doing this thing on the side and after about a year we started getting a little traction in my business partner i like shit we gotta sell our our practices burn the ships to the shore and go all in right it's time to do that like if this thing has some life to it it has legs so we both sell our practices and then the guy i sold it too i sell him my my my golden goose and he kills it in six months goes b bk so i literally have no income right life is not paying me money the practice is not now now paying money he was supposed to continually pay you for yeah time yes so any entrepreneurs out there take the cash up upfront do not finance it right take so we go super thin like super thin because we burn through all our savings starting the company and i mean we're eating like mac and cheese in tuna every night which is like a dollar meal for anyone out there the ice totally broke you know where got two kids at the time we're living in a four hundred square foot trailer off the grid eating out of ice chest like heating water up on the stove in the beginning before we got our solar panels to to pour in the bathtub like two inches of hot water like shit it was like little house on the prairie shit and your wife is she's she's down for the calls or she's like hey we need to get back into like mainstream side oh my wife my wife was from the city here so she was full city slick she had never done anything i'm like chainsaw saw was like okay this is how you do don't tie your arm off with she's my hero yeah they be the trooper he is a trooper okay so that sounds tough that how long was that period of like so that cold rock bottom but like definitely like a tougher time challenging yeah that lasted like six months and then we were starting to be able to draw a thousand dollars a month from from life aid and then it was like oh that was such a relief yeah you know because it's like a little bit of income coming in and then it got to like three thousand a month and then i was like we were in heaven like oh three grand a we can actually you know rent a movie once in while right and then it you know it just continued to grow and grow and grow from there and unfortunately we've made our mistakes off broadway and we're both ignorant in the industry which i think helped us out quite a bit i mean we used like old school direct marketing to get our initial traction not trying to go into you know every grocery store out there right okay so let's lizzie rewind you're back at the food scientist lab she tells you this thing's not gonna taste good and let you add all the sweeteners because you have so much so much on the sort of supplement side right how did you guys resolve that you guys almost walk out she's like she said don't know wait and we just went into the lab and started pounding it out and our first rendition tasted horrible horrible but we kept working at it and as anything you know after a couple years now now this is a first is great right know i'm if it's coming on the microphone but because i keep drinking this thing it's actually taste good yeah yeah so all of our drinks are great now but i mean it there's alternative sweeteners out there like monk fruit which is all natural zero calorie you know better forms of stevia and i i mean the longer you stand in the game it's just like anything you learned bring it down figure out yeah and so you guys kept working with the flavor house get the flavor to where after a few iterations it's like palatable right and how do you get the first hundred customers you said something about direct marketing yeah what were you where did you how'd you go from zero to your first kinda hundred or thousand customers yeah good question so we started out just like every beverage company it's like we wanna get in stores and that kind of thing you know that model was flawed because consumers in in a grocery store in a convenience store especially for thirty seconds i know exactly what kind of drink they want you know it's not a great place for trial maybe whole foods is okay trial so we started with our golf product and selling at alright let's take a second to talk about howard stern that's right howard stern the king of audio you see i think he might be getting ripped off by sirius app if he was to turn his show into a paid subscription product he could nearly triple the ninety million dollars he's making a year as a salary and how would he do it super cast that's right super cast is a sponsor for this week's episode what super cast does is build and maintain paid subscription audiences while allowing you to retain complete control over your content your business and your creative output if you wanna earn a media king's ransom use super cast visit super cast dot com for more alright back to the show this right right so we were sampling in golf courses where people need it most drink one at when you tee off one at the turn we started getting traction there we were able to raise a little bit of money and then we started selling to fit a gym or to cross the gyms because we were you know in the cross community from the very early days and basically we use direct mail so you own across a gym yep i don't know you from adam i force upon you i send you four cans of product you have the this drink just sent it to you right inside of it had copy that that we wrote that just said hey drink this ice cold after your nurse next workout here's why it's so great here's why it's so good for you and by the way if you buy ten cases from us we'll give you a free refrigerator right okay and this is back in the day when cross gyms maybe had water and they didn't even have a refrigerator so it was a very appealing offer was basically doing what red bull did in bars but we were doing to cross the gym right and were you looking were you did you go back and try to figure the red book play red bull playbook from their beginnings or did you did you not do that type of research no no definitely looked at at their model and what made them so successful in street sampling and dominating the bar market and and that type of thing and applied of that and then put our own twist on it right and you guys and when did you tell the crossfit gyms like like we're in the community we've been doing crossfit for x amount of use absolutely yeah absolutely we pulled on our cross background our you know my my background is sports chiropractor and treating cross at hq in santa cruz that's all i even got into cross it we we signed one fit guy is a podcast so people can't see but you're a fit guy it feels like you know if you made a product i would i would sort of believe okay this guy lives a healthy lifestyle yeah i think that's key right we got one of the athletes and influencers in the space that was influential to help kinda put a stamp of validity on it and then we started a direct to consumer marketing you know we started building our instagram following marketing direct to consumer and basically creating irresistible offers you know like this is such a no brainer offer to to to come into the top of our funnel and we know our conversion rate so just having confidence in your math and your funnel and knowing that you have a great product and great follow ups and we built out our customer service team as a very first team that we built out before any salespeople we had robust customer service what are the issues going on you know one on one with our customers how can we over deliver constantly and just providing a ton of value and did you have any mentors from that sort of cp g or or or food beverage space not from cp g more on the marketing side okay my one of my really good friends and he's on our advisory board now ben alta who's a brilliant marketer he he basically told me in the early early days this is back when when i was on the zero income train yeah he's like hey there's this marketing group i'm part of it's a lot of sharp markers i think you'll learn a lot it's twenty five grand a year to join i know you don't got the money but i'll pay for it and just pay me back whenever you can wow and no comp paperwork no contract nothing you just paid for it and then going to that it was like we are in person events yeah this was in person event and then it was in arizona and what i heard was we had three products in the market we had golf fit aid and party eight so party eight kind of our you know more burner community five h drink fit eight crossing golf freight obviously golf so we're doing events i mean you're we're up in the city doing a fire festival or something then we're changing clothes going to a golf event with polo shirt and then you know changing into our lulu gear and re box to go to a cross event i mean it was just chaos they each had separate websites separate social everything and he's like you gotta choose a single target market or else you're gonna burn yourself out you're gonna run out of all your cash and get nowhere no traction with any of the community so even though golf was bringing in about seven hundred grand at the time we looked at the the trajectory the sell in and the sell through of fit aid in the crossfit market and said you know what they're doing better volumes are are we're we're getting you know greater adoption quicker adoption so we went all in on the small fit on the smaller one it went from seven hundred grand to four million in one year and so what's a good what what's a good adoption rate what's a good repurchase rate that that you were guy you guys were looking at and you're like that's promising this even though it's small today i believe these rates are are are like where we need to be yeah we were doing with some of our early gyms we were doing like eight cases a month there eight twenty four packs so sixteen cases we've pack twelve packs an now but so you know sixteen cases a month which was really good volume that's more volume than you do in a grocery store typically so we're like shit or something here and then we started this direct marketing and forcing these four packs on something and we used to ring the bell in the office you know when we get a new gym and it was like oh the first month we got like twelve gyms we were so stoked the next month we got thirty then we got fifty that were hitting like two hundred a month wow and these things are each like twenty five hundred dollars a year in revenue right right it it starts adding up quick sweet and so and so you guys you guys found that playbook that you start milk on the cross side yep and and today you actually do have the multiple brands so did you go sort of narrow and then go back out broad again or how how did that happen yeah so we went you know continue to go deep with fit aid and we we'd love crossover we're still you know official recovery drink at the across games spartan race we got are heavy in that community as well and then started really creating products around our lifestyle you know i was like i'm really big in the the nat tropics and and brain health so then we created focus aid with our ne drink and you know we're traveling we're were traveling all the time like fifty two flights a couple years ago a few years ago now you know just constantly every weekend on the road it's was like oh we need immunity aid for immune system when we're traveling and right just creating products that we would use ourselves and that we'd feel good about giving our kit it's a give people or give the people a a sense of the hustle it takes to get this going like you mentioned you know we're doing a golf event quick change clothes you're at to at the ear in the city for a party change clothes you're going to this crossfit gym what was it like getting this thing off the ground tell me some more stories about like how what it took to get the thing going on the hustle side well you can see my hair i was completely black hair ten years ago from fairly gray enough i i got some grades on the side here i mean what's it take it takes resilience to a level that you can't even imagine it takes checking your ego at the door you know in a very very big way i mean there's so many things that can sync a money right it takes a hundred things all aligning to have success it takes one thing to completely sink you did you guys ever face that sort of oh shit this might this might you know this thing might fall through once you got a little bit momentum but did you ever have like a daily yeah daily what were some of the big disasters i came up i mean financial is a big big one you know like having three grand four grand and payroll do do and having two grand in the bank account like oh shit we're supposed to pay these people tomorrow and we only had a couple employees was like we literally don't have the mind of pan you know from hiring the wrong people out of desperation like oh we really need to hire people and then it just crushing culture and right you know from building a culture becoming a a manager and a boss where my biggest team was four people prior to this and now we have seventy you know it's just there's to having blow out arguments with my business partner we but because we both felt felt so passionately it could've have been easily like f fu f you were done right i mean that could happened a hundred times right yeah to to having you know product not run on the line one time they ran our product it was under carbonated so we couldn't sell any of it that sucked up all our cash flow like there's so many challenges you know an entrepreneur but that's also what makes it so fun yeah you know i mean you're like constantly living on the edge like oh shit you know can we make can we actually pull this off and you know sometimes things just continue to align and i have you know really deep faith that this company just was meant to be because there's so many times we would've have completely got out of business and it's something just worked out at the last second so you guys got from you know obviously the zero to one stage where you got this thing off the ground you're starting to pay yourself through grand month or whatever and at what point were you like okay this this might be big when we finally got our first p round from like a very respectable private equity firm partners which was how far how far into the business or where were you guys out year let me think we were right year between your four and five i believe okay yeah we're doing about we're doing like eight nine million so something like that and you approached them they approached you we were out kinda testing the waters dipping our toes in we got a an introduction from a mutual friend and they flew out to our office and and santa cruz and we met met him and just like super cool guys like all their money long horizons it was just a lot of alignment compared to a lot of the other companies we're meeting with that was just more like her and burn like okay we got five years seven years and you know you gotta you gotta execute in that time these guys were like hey let's continue to grow something that's built to last a a durable brand here and it you approach business from a different perspective when you're like okay what's in the best long term benefit for this community versus how do we maximize profits to flip this thing in two years for sure so so where do you think this goes how big does this get over a billion what what does it take to get there about two two hundred and fifty million in sales will we'll put us over a billion what does that take i mean it's just keep keep it on keep on keeping it on i mean we're just continuing to execute heads down executing here's the thing it doesn't matter what your anticipated exit is or even if you're building a company just a cash flow as long as you execute all doors remain open don't care if it's a recession if economy is booming ipo your bought out whatever merger execute yeah you execute on key metrics and all doors remain open yeah i get a lot of questions i'm sure you do too which is like you know how do i raise money how do you sell and it's like well if wanna raise money build a great company people wanna give you money yeah if you wanna sell build a great company people wanna buy your company right and so that is the most foolproof way to do it you can still sometimes sort of like raise money even if have a bad company or sell even if you'd have done have great prospects but if you wanna know the best strategy is a really damn good company and then everybody wants to get involved it's you you have a great time hiring people and so on and so forth a hundred percent and so so you've you've you've you've grown this thing now and how do the big competitors respond i mean has have you seen a change from the sort of red bulls of the world where they look at this and they say this is a a competitive threat have they turned their attention yet absolutely absolutely i mean they're not dumb they see their numbers you know which are much bigger than our numbers but even you know little one percent shift in their numbers is is a big number so i mean we flew out nestle had us out the other day to give a presentation on on food is medicine yep like all the big companies are paying attention they're they're most of them aren't good at you know creating their own better for you you know in in house they just for whatever reason they can't do it but they've been on acquisitions you know they'll take minority share and in different companies and and so i like it because it's changing the trajectory and as long as we continue to change the health trajectory in this company in a positive direction then over time the expectations change and then people are just healthier like the fact that diabetes rates are higher than they've ever been in the history of this country is ridiculous right you know it's ridiculous so and not just that it's everything you know like health is not improving so the current model's is broken a big part of that is you know food and beverage we've been poisoning people with sugar and artificial ingredients for you know a hundred years now how do you build that trust right because i'll be honest with you when i first looked up the company i was like okay it's a drink company i've seen so many of these that are either just straight up their bad for you or they say they're good you but they're actually bad for you but because just changed the profile and it's like it's no sugar okay but it's something else instead yep like i know in the in the gaming community because come at twitch right now the gaming community has g fuel which is like some you know bullshit to me right like so so how do you build that trust or or am i just mister skeptical and everybody else is like kinda down you know everybody else sort of bison in right away you should be skeptical right acceptable and and more and more people are i it's like sixty five percent of people now read labels prior to making a new purchase which is great i love label readers i love nutrition i love doctors you know i love people in the no because they're looking at this can and they're going okay let me see the sugar content oh let me see that oh there's must be two servings per container like companies like to play that non transparent bullshit oh they're gonna use some artificial sweeteners like or asp team or how much adding caffeine is in here them and then they buy it and they call it right in they're like hey trust by the review like i'm a selling and so and this product is actually really damn clean and delivers like it tastes great like you know these guys are legit yeah that's great and what do you do business wise now so you we were talking on our way in you said you know once you're you know quote was once you're a made man it becomes easier to make money right because as you taste some success and you get a reputation now opportunities deals differently start to talk a little bit about that that phenomenon and what you're doing how how you're how you're thinking about approaching that yeah i mean one we continually work with young entrepreneurs all the time they're reaching out with you know mainly cp but have some idea some stage of growth because you know that always comes back full circle so we're working you know with companies we're making some small investments in in other companies just personally that we see traction but you know my point before we started was once you've had that successful checkout out you have that reputation you've been there done that you've kinda you know taken all the the jab and bruises and and gotten beaten up and come out the other side you have the knowledge you have the reputation and you got a little bit of money hopefully a little money in your pocket then you can really go okay what you know what can i do now i now i can take ten entrepreneurs ten different businesses that are all in a space that i truly believe in and at all showing four signs of life and and increasing velocities and doing well on the shelf can give a me you know a half million bucks or a million bucks and let them run with it and then be you know sit back and be more of a mentor coach advisory board board of directors that type of and i think that's where real wealth as as i observe it that's where real wealth is created and what what has been a a a splurge that you've done now that you know because you went from mac and cheese and tuna yeah so now you you know you guys doing well yep where have you sort of how have you been able to celebrate that what what what's your use of this money because i i the last podcast today the guy had a great phrase it's not rocket science but he just said you know i just view money as a tool to enable a better quality life so how are you using money as a tool for you to have a you know more interesting more adventurous more fun well the first part is when we could we're able to take a couple chips off the table which wasn't a ton of money but i was two hundred and forty six thousand dollars in student loans mh and i paid them all off in one stroke of the and it was it was the biggest weight lifted to my chest like i don't know the government anything it felt so good to be debt free right and then you know as i was able to save up a little bit of money i had on my vision board that i looked at every day when i brush my teeth you on the mirror there it like spend a month or more in hawaii so for the last two years now i was able to go in on it just a a little condo in po in south shore of a kauai with a couple friends and we bought a condo beautiful little too bedroom close to the beach and now we're doing you know at least a month year in quiet that's amazing yeah i love that i i tried to do a similar thing myself where i said to my wife i said let's spend one month out of every year just living somewhere else and so we did buenos aires the fur the first year we had a baby this year so i don't know if we're gonna be able to to pull it off necessarily but but i highly recommend that and and in fact it the the easy excuse is like i'm too busy or you know my work won't let me do it or whatever and i i'd say if you think you wanna do that you should be just go for it just go ask and say hey i wanna work out of this other country i'll work i'm not necessarily taking you know full month off but i wanna go experience something something else and it's a buenos aires is on my shortlist for sure that in croatia that's amazing and so what what about you strike me as somebody who is like the when you said you live off the grid and you you know you're into and all that stuff i think you have you're thinking for yourself right so you have a that's those are contra things right now those not like society's not spoon feeding those to you mh i was asked this question not long ago and it's not kind of a hard question so you so you could take a second to think about it but question was this it's like a dinner party conversation which is if you if you could change three things and and could do one two or three whatever you if could change three things about the way that society works so things that societal norms today yep but that you know don't fit your world view what three would you change if you could snap a finger and then society sort of changes in that way what would you change i'd eliminate all television so tv gone like cnbc fox news cnn it's all via like it drives said i haven't had tv in my house for seventeen years don't miss a thing right you know so i get rid of it tv be honest i would have public funding for for politicians as long as they got a certain amount of signatures there'd be here's your whatever hundred grand million dollars whatever it is you can't spend a penny more than that everything has to be accounted four go put everybody on level playing for take them special interest of money out of politics yeah and then third i i would you know all these artificial ingredients that you know are in food and beverage you know those need to go by and it's like we don't put letting in our pain anymore we don't have a asbestos in our ceilings like you it's just a matter of time when we look back at this era and go we'll no wondered you know cancer rates are high end diabetes and all these chronic diseases and alzheimer's you on the ups wing look at what we were doing to our body so i think there's those a aha things that are out there right now that we need to just get past oh and i fourth thing i would eliminate single use plastic mh big on that like it's gotta go right it's gotta go come on it's awesome so give me a as we sort of sign off how should people who are listening to this who are like you know what this guy's awesome i wanna get in touch with them i wanna send them you know my business that i'm working on have him take a look or i wanna ask a question i just wanna say thanks how do how do how should people get a ahold of you where should they follow you and who are you looking for to reach out to you like because a lot of people are gonna listen this and so who should reach out to you i think my my specialty our specialty is cp g so yeah i could give some things on team building and stuff of people in tech but if anyone's really looking in to consumer packaged goods you know feel free to reach out to me it's basically my name a a r o n hi h i n d e mainly on instagram linkedin facebook or you know go to our website life at bev c dot com you can check us out alright brother thank you for coming awesome thank you for the drink i i love it welcome