I built a $2,000,000,000 business on vibes

first time we do super bowl let me lay like this down for you we bought the super bowl five days before the super bowl yeah literally early i feel like i could rule world i know i could be what i want to from at all in in like a days off on a goal less travel same you don't do like a intro real quick yeah so your and your husband are one of the photos of poppy which is sold for two billion dollars and i would have to say you probably win the award for brand glow up because one of my favorite things to watches is this old the shark tank video of you guys okay and the way that it started and the where you are now that gap is huge yeah what what was that called origin mothers or something oh so embarrassing you had to say it out loud mother beverage and yes i think it was a glove of the century the best of all time what was the story it was just one of those beautiful entrepreneurial american dream stories where you start in your kitchen because of a personal problem i had like tummy problems with drinking apple cider vinegar you know hated the taste and i was like hi i have an idea i make this taste better little did i know how intense beverages is looking back i don't think if i knew what i knew now i would have done it and it's not knowing is just such a beautiful thing but you basically like we're we're selling something at a farmers market that was kinda carrying your own problem and i think you did that for more than a couple years and then you hooked up with the guy who kinda like was like hey this is amazing but why don't we tinker her with the packaging a little bit and then you raised a little bit of money and it was like off the races it was like zero to like twenty million to like sixty million to like a hundred and twenty or something like crazy like that was that moving crazy sure i have to kinda ground you just to like in timeline so we did do like two year farmers market nick went on to shark tank got a deal on shark tank went through a whole re brand and then we decided to launch poppy march the third twenty twenty the first week of covid and it was like the first time everyone's thinking about their hell health and wellness it's the first time people are looking at labels and wanting to let understand what they're putting your into your body and how can i boost my immune system and all of these things of the conversation and so that first year room remark but i think we did about three million in revenue and then the get next year is twenty two fifty and then the big jump was from fifty to two hundred million and then five hundred plus to then be sold so it's like four and half years to almost five hundred fifty million dollars which is crazy growth did you ever feel impostor syndrome doing that because like you know whenever i have a little bit of success i'm like oh man is this real does this this is wild but our success was a lot slower than yours we were just going so quick it was hard even sit back and and even realize or fathom than what was happening because it was so not normal like if people don't understand like what we had and what growth we had is not normal it was truly lightning in a bottle and so i don't know if there's impostor syndrome because like i'm very confident we're confident in what we were building but it wasn't a guarantee right and so it's this thing of like do i celebrate well it's too soon to celebrate so when we finally sold it definitely was like wait what just happened that was four and half years five years of this crazy growth and i don't think ever stopped and smelled the roses did you you know when when there's like a movie and there always have like act one of the movie is the main character and they're just sort of stumbling and fumbling and they're they're they're they're struggling and then they finally start to figure something out act two is always the montage where things start happening sort of fast and furious and that's kind of the growth phase that you're describing but they usually you know they they sort of figure some one or two things out right one or two things start to really work and then they lean in and double down into those and it's like the the things that makes all the other domino's fall so for you guys you're saying timing was obviously beneficial but what were you guys doing as entrepreneurs founders but what were the key domino's that started to fall yes we were one of the first founder led brands to really lean in to tiktok back then it was the wild wild west and you were doing dances you're doing rest of videos you're just like let doing all these like fun transition videos just like almost making a fool of yourself to try to go viral because i i had this like personal obsession with tiktok and it's funny know you guys have had rohan hon on and i remember him being like allison and that's for like young kids and dancers and don't don't try he was like against it by any means do you like no one really got that platform so i was like okay i'll my nights to weekends and i'll play around on it until we finally the went viral and we had a lot of success on the platform and i think it was a really big key driver and why we grew so fast because typically if you're a better for you brand you pull up in la new york miami these like major hubs and then you kinda grow inward but when you grow up with a digital first mindset within the business from core day one we had people like isaac think at one point one of our top targets was like fargo north dakota and all of these like cincinnati ohio houston texas and so when you're a true digital first brand you can really break through and go to more places quicker it's like a modern fill day marketing type tactic right do you wanna stand in a whole foods and giveaway thirty samples or do you wanna do something and educate and put paid behind it and push your ads out organically to the fy page and get three hundred thousand people to see it and so i think that was a really big thing that really just made us different than other brands now everyone's doing it right it's it's part of everyone's marketing mix but i think another really big one is we were brand first so our number one kpi was brand awareness how do we truly build a long lasting generational brand with every ounce of every decision that we've did down to if we were like what should be our variety packet costco and the data was saying you know it should be root beer this cream soda and colon and i'd be like well those colors don't look good together and our virus should be like wait why and i'm like no it has to be vibrant on the shelf it has to jump and people have to write every decision that we had was brand first digital first and it's easier said than done i say this like it's it's common sense but a lot of people still don't do these things you sort of have this energy that so i've seen with a lot of my very successful friends particularly the women where they basically are like a bold china shop which both men and women are but you've like wrapped it in a much more like appealing package where like a lot of my friends who are bold in the china shops they like i look at them i'm like you're a you're kind of a rack but like you'll probably gonna figure it out but when i watched your stuff on instagram you're very relatable even though that even though you're crazy successful and yet you still have this like attribute where it's like a is here b is here the straight line and just go and run as fast as you can yeah well i think it's confidence so people ask about the time like else and how are you so confident i'm confident because i failed and made a total full of myself for so many years to kinda figure out what works and how how to be confident like for example everyone sees this one point nine five billion dollar exit but they don't see or remember me standing at a farmer's market at a folding table saying it try this apple cider vinegar drink like that's so embarrassing and so it's disability of like i have lived the american dream i was raised by a single mother kids myself like end of the day even post exit i still have soccer practice tonight i have to go to and we're in texas and it's a hundred degree weather like i'm just living life and i think within it it was relatable with people online because they saw themselves to me and then that confidence piece is like i wasn't always that confident but i think that i've just allowed myself to share so openly and authentically the entire journey and so people have kinda seen the journey of me becoming confident as well how'd did you get on shark tank what was the story i think the best way to become successful is to see how other people did it whether you're gonna to copy them or just use it as inspiration because then now you know what's possible so starting at the age of twenty four i did this relentlessly and i was very methodical about it and i created a spreadsheet where i tracked roughly fifty people who were uber successful and i looked at the year that they were born the year that they started their apprenticeship and then the year that they started the first thing that made them successful finally the year that they broke through and i aggregated all this data along with the stories of what they did to be an apprentice and what they did to finally break through and i put it together in a database in hubspot went and found this thing that i frankly even forgot about but it did change my life and they resurfaced it they made it even better and they put it into a thing that you can download for free right now so if you click the link in the description or click the qr code right here you can see this database that i made when i was twenty four and it changed my life and so if you're looking to become successful or you're already successful and just want some more inspiration check it out shark tank we love shark tank it's just such a beautiful literally because i've also been on the show but i've also been a judge on it and seen both sides of the show and they absolutely want people to get deals they want people to be successful and they have set good intention and so the whole process of it is if you have a good idea and you actually have some kind of proof of concept you will probably have quite a bit of success on the show and so for us it was one of those things that like we've been doing it for a bit mother beverage of the time we had done about five hundred thousand in revenue and it was that point of like if we don't get investment we can't sustain this right we were working eighty hours a week week we had a kid a kid on the way steven was working a second job just to pair mortgage and you can only be in that rat race for so long and so shark tank was just this beautiful opportunity so we stood in line porter hearts out and you know the producers fell in love with us and then going on and we were so blessed to have gotten a deal with someone that's so good in beverage right like it's the things that have happened to us over the years these doors that have opened it's it's just kinda crazy so we gotta deal with bra he had a great history and beverage and so working with him and building it but shark tank you know i don't think in any other shark to given us a deal what was the you know sean's in the e commerce space we've had a bunch of people in e commerce so i've not been in it personally but i've been able to like live holistically through these folks and what it seems is like the fastest you the faster you grow the more cash flow sucks in terms of in inventory management and there's like a lot like issues where like the top line number is amazing but some of the other stuff is kinda of breaking personally were you cash flow positive the entire time and what was that like i don't think we were profitable until like right the before we sold but it was intentional i think we could have starved the business and really focused on conversion and how do we really be profitable but if you're are brand building it's expensive it's it's expensive to do a beverage so every step of the way with the board the senior leadership the founders we were intentionally reinvest back in the brand and raising the entire time right was it forty total i think it was closer to like in the seventies and do you you spent all of it yeah absolutely we bought multiple super bowl ads we're running tv we are marketing with creators we were doing pop ups the fifth percent rate like all of these big brain building activities are so different we are in a traditional d company we're actually not b2c company we were a hundred percent on amazon from day one which was a decision we made as a board to do that and it was such a good decision but you you don't make a lot of money on amazon as a beverage and so we saw it as a great marketing tactic for awareness because it's in so many households across america so all of these decisions were intentional and i think people don't get if you wanna be successful you have to put your money where mouth you you mentioned in ro rohan he came on the pot i was kinda blown away i thought i think that guy's is awesome i've heard about him from a few other people that he's invested with and he i think he's kind of a like bit of a sa with marketing or beverage i don't know what i don't know way to describe it but this is just me from the outside i'm curious from in side what was something very useful or insightful that he did or or taught you guys about or helped guide you guys towards you know i think it's in in different stages of the business in the early days it was the money in the connections right i think that if you are taking on capital any kind of investment and you can't get that network that's actually meaningful network it's pointless because now you have all this money and you spend it and you don't have you what am i doing here so he helped us get our first like five hires within his network that were incredible and with us to tell the exit right that was a huge impact on the business on top of it he has this women's man stevie he's worked with for fifteen years and he might have mentioned her on the podcast but she is just brilliant and brand positioning and and messaging and she's one that did all the re brand with us from mother to poppy so being able to bring that to life really early on allowed us to then focus on the brand so what i mean is we're and mother we were so focused on putting caps on bottles i i couldn't even have thought about what the marketing strategy was but when we got a deal on shark tank we took nine months off we went through we did a re brand and we asked ourselves who is this product for who is our consumer we stepped back what are we doing here then we went out and started selling so that when we were selling we knew who we were a lot of brands don't do that work they're just constantly con concerned with how do i get the next sale how do get the next account not why am i here why am i doing this what is my cam like you're not they're not asking these questions and so i think we allowed herself up time with this and then i think as the stage of the business grew rohan started really trusting the team we brought an incredible senior leadership so it moved over to like more of a board like role he was always heavily involved throughout great in the brainstorming conversations and as the business grew we hired on really smart people people smarter than me to come in and like really advice hey what's the economics of a super bowl commercial oh you guys did did you guys do two or one we've done a few to well people don't realize about a super bowl commercial is sure there's the media buy but then there's the production by and then there's the sustaining after the super bowl it depends on if you do a thirty or sixty they're anywhere from six to eleven million dollars is a standard price for everybody but what is the cost if you're gonna hire to do it a a director of film crew and then how do you sustain that after so you hit people at the at the super bowl with the super bowl ad you gotta hit them about seven more times with more linear ads right and so that you have to also invest in so i think you also have to have distribution it's pointless to do it if you're in five stores at the time that we did our first super bowl ad we were finally in almost every grocery store in the them we were really focused on our awareness goals and how do we you know up the awareness while super bowl i remember we did it and the day after we tripled our awareness overnight and no one had really seen this as a soda they were like oh they're sparkling water or better for you this after the super bowl we said we were soda seventeen times in that super bowl ad afterwards everyone follows a soda so there was a lot of intentional motion behind why we did that and it was breakthrough for us well do you remember the all in costs and then was there like analytics live and like looking at your website traffic what was that like first time would just super bowl let me late like this down for you we bought the super bowl five days before the super bowl literally so that must have been stressful so that's not normal most people buy it a year ahead of time and so what happened is we've done a bunch of bread work we put together a creative campaign on how we're the future of the soda or future of soda is now and called poppy and we brought the creative to life and we saw it and it was just gonna be an evergreen brain campaign that we're gonna run across all of our linear media channels and streaming and we saw this piece of content and it was very it was beautiful it just like told the the story of soda the evolution of it i really like wait this is a super bowl ad we were to go buy one you couldn't you can't just like buy super that ad right before but is what big companies do is they'll buy a bunch of super bowl ads say like for a bunch of their brands and sometimes end up not using them at the end and they'll go on the market for like secondary by on the real network market and we found one i was like at a dinner with someone at a tiktok of event and they're were like i one his has i was like oh my gosh can get him on with our cmo and our cmo at the time andy judd went back with them back and forth and we bought it and we're like kinda now how do we activate because we can't activate in store so it's really hard to talk about the all in cost because typically there's store activation there's creator activation there's you know the media of it all there's website there's production we didn't get do any of that honestly with our first super bowl and then the second time around we did it with charlie x x and it was one of these moments where we wanted to just have like a fun time with it so it was like all about the vibes within it it wasn't this like it was just like vibes early like she said that was like the tagline that was just like poppy vibes and so we're just different like we're not super concerned with all of those like little aspects that you're asking and i i honestly don't even know the full number i'm sure if i asked our cmo he would sean how does that make you feel because a bunch of our friends who are in e commerce and probably many of the ones that are like significantly less successful than the greats are so like c driven and so metrics driven and she's sort of saying the exact opposite well look that's my that's why we do the podcast because there's a thousand different ways to win and so we like invited people want to understand how how did you win what did you do what are how does your brain work that's part of the the beauty of it but also they're not in e commerce they're cp g they're in retail and so like i was just looking at the super bowl ad the the first one you were talking about it starts with like you're a human on earth and in all of human human existence but things have been done a certain way and so has been done a certain way this is poppy poppy looks like soda it tastes like soda but and and then it has the differentiator at the end of it and so like i kinda dig that like the i think positioning is super underrated i don't think most founders know how to do positioning at all i think the they jumped straight into trying to go sell cell sell but they haven't done the upfront work of figuring out well how is this gonna live in someone's mind why would anybody wanna buy this because they don't care about you and you have to sort of fit into their worldview view in some unique way to break through to make them all the selling more effective and so what i really like is like the name the brand the packaging the positioning you know you guys kinda did a master class on that and i think that's a pretty underrated founder skill i don't think many people do that well who do you do you think people do that well or do you think people screw that up like when you walk through the stores are you just like oh god that's wrong wrong wrong wrong most people do it wrong unfortunately i teach like master classes and i go all over and i speak on brand and how you can break through on tiktok and all of these things that are inherently so first experience for me just like second nature and it's blowing their minds and then they'll go in their mind is blown and they're still not doing it and i just like actually don't get it so when it comes to brand positioning it is so core to what we've always done that is always an ever breathing document so when you we revolution sort of a next generation we knew we were giving everyone the freedom to love soda again it's at its best without all the baggage cool north star that is never gonna change but what does changes how culture changes look can i i pause you real quick because you're saying we knew we were revolution revolutionized soda but the shark tank thing is a really interesting thing because you were on there with a brand that was not that great packaging that was not that great not talking about soda so something happened in that nine months after the shu deal where you guys had some sort of like you know rebirth and some conversation in a meeting room somewhere where somebody asks some good questions and somebody had some good answers so can you describe what was happening in those meetings are like what was the useful either question or exercise or consultant or whatever you did that helps you kinda get that level of clarity you know and and i think it's it's this ever bra document so when we first launched it was apple cider vinegar pre like super simple gut health we knew we were going after soda no it goes back to nobody believed us we didn't even know but hey we're gonna try this is a huge category and kombucha was on the declines sparkling water wasn't giving everyone that full flavor like so fulfilling it they wanted it so we knew all those things are the facts that we know and what we knew is once we launched people were starting to have this use occasion where they were drinking poppy in the same occasion as soda and so it was we've got more data points along the so i i sit here on my joke with like we're brand forward we're actually incredibly incredibly you know sophisticated in our platforms and our processes as well which made us i think such a strong company but i do think then we learned oh wait this occasion okay so on the front of our packaging our tagline used to be be got happy we got healthy we're like wait people don't really care about that that much we changed it to sodas back than ever we were constantly tweaking and changing as the consumer was changing in the use occasion of what people were saying out us online what we were listening to our consumers so and that's what i mean within building a good brand is focusing on what you know what's your north star but then you can change you can change and it's really hard for entrepreneurs to change right the way hey let's take a quick break you know that feeling when strategy is done the brief is written everyone's aligned and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content that someone is usually you and it's due tomorrow well the breeze assistant from hubspot can help it works right inside hubspot you can draft campaign copy blog posts emails all in your brand voice all using your actual customer data so you don't create just content you create content that converts check out hubspot dot com the agent customer platform for growing businesses what i've noticed is that like heavy read peter teal zero to one okay so he he like it has this whole chapter chapters on like mo and he's like one mo is i forget what he says network effects this or that and then he gets to the last chapter he's like there is one more mo it's called brand i know it's important and i also know i don't know much about it so i'm not gonna write about it but if you can figure it out you're gonna be amazing and it's like it's like kinda funny because it's like kind of a stereotypical silicon valley thing where it's like tech and product is number one and like all the other stuff like brand is number two and sean has talked sean loves comedian and like the creative process and we talk about this idea being sensitive and how you have to be sensitive in order to find like good stories yeah you gotta see like you have to be sensitive when when you see what resonates and something that i've learned about branding and and i'm not good at it i'm trying to learn is that you do have to be very sensitive and so like you're talking about these things i've noticed and you're making like very small observations or they they feel small like you're talking to like maybe let's say fifty people over the course of a day at a farmers market or whatever and you're noticing like actually people care about x y and z and those small changes appear to have in some created this massive outcome along with a bunch of other stuff and i think that's what's interesting is there like an eighty twenty rule where it's like if you focus on these handful of things it won't make a meaningful difference i think it goes back to it i've said this before but it's this ability or this thing around embarrassment i think embarrassment is the most underscored emotion when it comes to being successful in life i think a lot of people saving them themselves like oh i wanna go push this the idea on meeting but what fight sounds due to stupid or i wanna start a business but what if no one cares well i wanna make a tiktok but what maybe i'll look ridiculous and i'm like people will think rid of me but i think with it to your point of like all of these little moments i hear like what if i am successful what if i am viral what what what can i learn about my product and then how how okay you hate it tell me why you hate it okay well so like for example we had a flavor root beer that we launched and we'd never really loved because we were a really bright company across like right like basically the rainbow effect of like all these colors and we had rub and brown and i was like ugh but such a core soda to flavor and so i was like okay we gotta figure out how to do this and our consumers tennis it tasted horrible and we were like maybe we should listen to them and we changed the packaging of we changed the entire flavor and then we put up online all the bad comments and like confronted it and we're like hey you guys made us do this because we listened and i think a lot of people just aren't willing to do that or like put the bills out there or acknowledge when they were wrong and it's it's hard as entrepreneurs like we have egos like you don't wanna do those things was there any book or resource that you read that change your perspective when it came to branding no so fun facts help me i'm like severely d i'm you could not like pay me to read a book i'll listen to a book i'll listen to a podcast i'm obsessed with doing that but i think it's so funny i think there's this like theory that you have to like read all these like self health books and you have to like be on this train of like and like i think all that is bullshit like that's not how i live my life i i i like wake up you know as my child are hitting me in the head ask you for his ipad code and me like you i took ipads away you know and i'm like trying to get coffee and my kids out the door like i don't have time for that stuff it was what i do know is i listen to culture and i was saying that we moved at the speed of culture what is culturally relevant in society from social speak to not only social sweep like what are people talk about meme culture to tent poles within society that are culture relevant so you look at the calendar coachella is a tent poll grammy how do you break through hampton as a hot right the people that are at during the summer so for me i was like with brand it's so tied to culture and that was my obsession and and my team's obsession we hire people really young we love to hire gen z smart people that are living the moment with thin culture and we trust them which is also hard for i think some people to do you you sent us a a list of ideas because we one thing we like to do is we like to brainstorm with other founders and how lucky are we that we get to sit with somebody who's built a multi billion dollar cp g brand and be like hey well what else is interesting maybe something maybe you you know you guys are doing a new thing now but something you won't do something you don't plan to do but you hey there's an opportunity there because once you start to win you see all kinds of opportunities in adjacent spaces that you're never gonna have the time or energy to go do what what's on your mind what do you see as opportunities whites spaces things that you're you think you know somebody like you could go you know the younger version you could go and attack kinds you know i always love this type of question of like what could you do or what do you wanna do next or like what's the hottest thing the beauty of poppy is we figured it out before everybody else so for example protein is so hot right now everyone's trying to figure out how to put protein in from ice cream to drinks to you know you see what how what david is doing with the protein bar and all of this eighth and it is really hot but for me i'm like okay cool if it's hot i'm not gonna now go create it someone is already first to market on that and usually winners are the first a second to market it's really hard for like even a third to market to be successful unless you do it different so you take like the ag g one craze the the green craze right i don't know if you guys remember maybe it was like six years ago where were getting hit it was like three hundred ag g one as you what you're talking out yeah well pod pod podcasting was just an age a one long continuous ag one ad for a while yeah it started with me on these and then it went to athletic greens athletic green yeah and you're just like oh my gosh it's everywhere but i actually feel like they've failed to like innovate you know then ruins comes along and doesn't na gum and they exit ag does not exited so i i'm not here to say you can't be late to the game and still went it's just way harder and you almost have to do it better smarter and different if you wanna be successful so for me i protein hot good luck breaking through the market it's very crowded right now i think everyone is also trying to figure out the cr teen craze the gum it do put a powder or going how do we get women on it right everyone's talking about these things but it's almost like you need to have been the first cr gummy so i'm not here to say like i don't even know what's next other than i am starting in another company and i can't tell you guys what it is and i do think it's what's next so it's hard for me to like speak to it well maybe a different question on that okay can keep it a mystery but tell us your mindset on it so are you like i wanna run it back i know so much i'm gonna go kinda same same genre of business or you know sometimes people are like my god so much scar tissue from that now i wanna go do real i wanna go do something so different over here how are you just thinking about it because i every entrepreneur on their second act their third act they get to decide so what's crazy is obviously we exited the company my and then pepsi gave everybody jobs that were popping poised but you don't sell your company and then they're like hey here's your employee badge so me and steven stayed on as advisors but as a event you have to take a step back from the day to day of the business and i still like adore poppy and i'm just so happy for everything that's happening there but i had a lot more time on my hands and i'm just really intense i'm i'm really hyper i love chaos step and we went like six months i played golf and like we on vacation and like hung off with my kids and it was just this whole thing where you're just like wait i missed the team i missed the build so we always knew like we had something else in it but i i do think to your point it's very important to like whatever we do next i want it to be successful and it to be something i do because i love it and it's a good idea not just to duty so with it we came up with like a really good idea but it was another like personal need where i think a lot of good ideas come from personal needs right that passion within versus i read the data and there's a gap in the market and the white space is this and you're like ugh boring so so for me it was very personal and it's also mass so i think a lot of people was starting a company they try to get a little bit too niche and apple cider vinegar mother beverage was really niche that's a great example it was for people that you know my grandma told me i should drink that or like can i i that does help my tummy but the second we switched basically this exact same liquid over between positioning and the and the needs state and the occasion to soda it blew up and so i think that whatever we do will be mass and really catered to all demographics will hone you in on a particular creative demographic what's okay so we asked you for some like we we asked you about this topic in advance and you wrote down a word that i keep seeing i don't entirely know what it means but you said lymph fat massage i follow guy on instagram and every morning at four thirty he posts these videos of him doing lip lymph fat you're jumping you you follow a guy i'm doing this i'm laying there with my legs on the wall yeah i'm tell me about my body i'm like i don't know if this does anything somebody told me is the word i keep saying they go you might feel a little sick at first that that's how you know it's working which is the ultimate marketing sales it's like you weren't trying to get healthier you might feel you might feel sick at first that's how powerful this is do you know and i've never been sick from it but is what happened is you know i worked for ten years at poppy i think i to the doctor like once you know you're just like on this build mode but i was like oh wait okay i need to like get my life together on like the wellness front and i started doing all sorts of things doing longevity doctors and you know getting all the the function health and like under and then you get all this daddy and you're like what do i do with this and so for me i just recently had a surgery with the whole mommy makeover had like a tummy tuck and i'm like living my best life and the doctors like the number one thing you can do lymph synthetic massage i started doing it after surgery three times a week i still do it twice a week but what's like limp it is that a body i don't even know attic it's the system that helps flush out all the toxins and get everything out of your system and so the idea behind lymph fat massage is you are slowly working those fluids to your lymph fat system for detox flesh you so you feel lighter you feel you know not as bloated more energy you're just getting like all of that bad stuff out of your system but i gotta scale woo woo to proven with woo being totally fine that's out an insult where does it rank like where is it on that spectrum i don't think that it's something that there's like a lot of science behind it by any means for me personally i always think like personal recommendations are always better it's like it's been life changing for me through i mean there's like you say you're like running a marathon like students running in the new york city marathon and he's been having knee pain i was get lymph fat massage and was like for three weeks he was like oh my gosh like my pain is gone and so just helps to sore just all that stuff built on your body it gets it out so i challenge you to go do it and one of the best people in the space it's it's really comes from brazilian lymph fact massage so this is really big in brazil her name is josie and she lives here austin and she's like does all the stars from miley cyrus to katy perry to all these people so like test out might not work for you then just go to the spot and ask for a brazilian and see what happens think i think that'll work yeah i don't know if about that so you talked about your you're you can't announce your company but can we guess can we just take five blind guesses in a year we just come back and see if we we had it right sure i mean i won't say anything you you don't have to confirm or deny you could just say that's interesting i'm just thinking i'm like i'm thinking where you go into let me ask you one question we had eric ryan come on he created ollie gum and methods soap open a bunch of well band aids he had this great line where he goes i walk through the aisle and i look at i look for a sea of same ness so basically i'm looking for these sleepy categories where everything looks the same in the aisle and i wanna come and be different he said even with the gummy brand he was like all of the vitamins look the same they were all round jars he's so i just knew right away first note okay we're doing a like a rectangular jar he's like it's is it better no but it's completely different so like it's better there therefore do you have a similar approach do you kinda walk looking for sort of sleepy aisle or a see of same this is that a is that a a heuristic for you or no you think about other things no for me it's personal need so it's like i think there's this whole new wave of this like gl one era that people are sleeping on and not catering to and thinking that it's gonna go away and so i lost sixty pounds on gl ones it's absolutely changed my life and like there was just like a personal need there and and i think that people it's not that deep either i think that we make the best brands the best businesses are ten percent to fifteen percent better than the established norm it's not the niche products like i said can you explain that because what what i hear all the thomas in san francisco goes the you gotta be ten times better is the kind of like the thing and and who can argue with that help might as well say a hundred times better right like you know who doesn't want that but you have a you're saying something a little bit different you're saying actually a small kind angle difference ten to fifteen percent can be enough can you explain that i think was like food and beverage in particular or beauty products like hardcore cp g i can only speak to that that's what i know and i think it's true for in that space in the way of you take soda for example everyone grew on soda and usually when you say the word soda you have a memory like movies late night family burger and soda it invoke motion because there's that long and ingrained nostalgia something you grew up with so every marketer sculpt how do you get to the consumer and you move the buying power from the head to the heart they're emotionally connected with your brand that's what you're always wanna do with brand building how do you get someone who's obsessed so you'd tap into a emotion and you make something that they with just a little bit better right that's what we did at poppy we have cola we have root beer we have cream soda we have all of these flavors of people grew and we're just we're better right and so instead of being like hey we're poppy we also have ash uganda in lion's mane and we have thirty eight other ingredients that nobody actually cares about versus hey we're gonna make this eighty nine percent less sugar you're gonna get all the same flavors you grew up with and we're really yeah sure we your pre box we're not gonna talk about it that much and that's what i mean that ten to fifteen for better by the way i started drinking poppy so much more when the pre buy or probiotic messaging was a little bit different before when i used to see i used to see at a royal blue grocery store and i was like is this supposed to be like a health a health drink i was like what is this and there was a evolution of that b got happy but get healthy to soda we we found people didn't care and you're like that's a perfect example and we got that from the consumer and so we just started to leaning into our consumer journey was we wanted someone to pick up the can and say this is so cute we wanted them to drink it and be like holy crap just tastes amazing and then to flip it over and be like wait this is so good for me too and it was intentional and it's an easier journey in versus that niche health consumer what's this thing that you listed called ne oh mellow they're so good so magnesium anything i think all around sleep health is really important as well i think i would say if you're stressed odor having a bad day or you wanna blow up on an employee your friend or your coworker and you're just like oh nothing a good night's sleep can't cure but what is nell nell is a powder within the calming face so it's magnesium and there's a lot of studies around magnesium and helping you sleep we're also i'm obsessed with like my orion sleep system i don't know if you've seen these but like what's that temperature mature at night and so like my side of the bed is different than stephen's side of the bed and you can sleep and then auto changes throughout the night and tracks your temperature so that you know like those night three like wake up you're like sweating or you're freezing it tracks that before how happens so it keeps you in rim it keeps you in your deep sleep state and so it's all of these things that i feel like these calming powder all of these things to bring you more sleep has been like a game changer for me personally and they're blowing up there everywhere they're killing it what are some other little gadgets or drinks like that that you're playing around with or you're like you know nerd out even as as a health consumer or like a business woman who like cares about seeing the latest and greatest i think another big movement that i purchased for my household is called preston lame cleaning products and it's clean like the ingredients are clean so you're spraying it on your table where your kids are and you have all these other ones with all these like harsh harsh chemicals in well i switched whole household over to preston lame and not only does it smell amazing the ingredients are safe but they also make like candles and they make dish soaps and so it all also looks really aesthetically pleasing in your house and it matches versus you have that ultimate really cl bottle right you're like oh how do i hide all this they're the dawn so how do i hide all this under the cabinet and they've done a really good job also with the spray scent so that like your house smells good at the same time versus that lemon pledge doesn't that sort of go against one of the points you made about like how protein is played out and so it's gonna be a lot more challenging because when i thought about like clean first of all like yeah like better for you like soaps or cl rocks or whatever i would have thought that there's one called like blue blue lamp i forget forgot what it's called blue something and yep blue ant yeah like it's and and then there's like you know we reached about eric ryan his whole thing was how do i create a bottle so like cool or pretty that you'd keep it on your countertop instead of hiding it away but it seems like there's still like some pretty cool emerging brands that are popping up because of that yeah i think blue is an incredible brand it's more around like how do they reduce plastic and their receipt still you got it putting in so they're like taking on the oceans and they're killing it so that's a whole use occasion where it's like i want clean ingredients that make my house smell good that look cute on my counter sure you could argue maybe like a method but i still don't think they're that cute they look they're not like high end florence on ford type look whereas as i think press lane is so and it's an affordable price and so definitely not anymore like i remember when it came out originally it was awesome now it's like it is definitely it's it's old now you know it's probably like twenty years old it is and so i think that there's still innovation within categories and they're doing it just ten percent to fifteen percent better right and if you really look at it no one else is really doing it in this space right now and they're pretty new that's kind of a good gas on for what she's gonna do nasa i i think cleaning supplies cleaning cleaning is one guess i think like something like toothpaste oral care stuff like that i mean she kinda said the gl one thing maybe she just kinda gave us the hint there of like there's a whole like ecosystem of hey if a hundred million americans are gonna be taking gl ones and they go to the store and there's a product they can buy to like support boost or minimize downsides obviously that's like a mega mega market that's getting created that today like the incumbent products just don't speak to even if they could help they don't they're not like positioned to be that that assistant the wing man for you if you're on gl one so i've definitely i've thought about that i it sounds like issues she's thinking about that i i think that's a huge category right all these things are great and i can't wait for you guys to find out in the fall but you haven't guessed it yet so stay tuned okay the thrilling podcast where we just simply guessed things up the guest i really well tell us about making money because one thing i like about you is you're not one of these people who's just kind of like at at least you don't come across this way where you like pretend that you didn't care about money when you became a business person like this this really weird taboo that a lot of business people who obviously care about six succeeding and they want to be wealthy they want to be financially successful but then they kinda have to they feel like they have to pretend that they're not and our podcast it's called my first knowing we we sort of we're pretty blunt about like hey look like one of the main reasons we got into entrepreneurship yeah we like the creativity we like the autonomy the independents but like the prize is also really fun and you know you guys did fantastically well can you tell us like what it was like to get rich yeah and i think the number one thing with entrepreneurs if you can get to like that twenty million mark within your business you should be having this conversation maybe even at the five million of you probably need to start getting some financial advice you need to to start thinking through your estate planning your gifting exemptions and having these conversations really earlier because the earlier you do it and you move your shares into trusts and all these this it's just better in the long run for use but just putting that out there if you're anywhere between the five to twenty million range of revenue for your company you should be having these conversations and i think for us we were blessed to have really good advice early on and so when you're having these conversations years after years waiting for this one moment this exit that may never happen it's tough place to be so for me i'm like okay i'm great we're there but i can't think about that but to your point absolutely like we wanted to x exit i i love that i can have generational wealth for me and my family and it was always the goal right and though i think that we also like halfway and took some chips off the table where we like sold some of our shares so that we could upgrade our lifestyle a little bit before and also have a nest egg just in case we don't sell and i know a lot of founders that haven't done that and i i implore them to do it because i've also heard of people going out of business and they're left with nothing well would you say it kinda works both ways right so there's one side is insurance in case in case it all fell over you know you have the safety internet but the other side like maybe you experienced this i i did for sure which is you take a little bit off the table you you sort of satisfied that first level and then you're almost free to swing bigger because you're not all or nothing now what did you feel that way when you guys did it i did and our financial advisor at the time told us he's like you're never gonna regret living the life that you want earlier say you say i don't know make numbers it's worth five million dollars and in five years it's gonna be worth twenty million you're never in regret have buying the nicer house going on the extra vacation with your kids getting the upgraded car having the nicer phone you're never gonna regret having those experiences and i agree and i wholeheartedly agree with that that allowed us to then sit back and like work harder for like wait i want more of this and like dig your pills in and like this is this upgrade in lifestyle is everything so i for us it was really important and then the day you actually get the money it realize your life is doesn't change overnight i think that's another thing that happens is the the money hits the bank account i'll never it because you know steven has his shares that i have mine and we were like refreshed for refresh on day of and then like my half hit at like ten and it was still like two and his hadn't hit and i was like i'm jersey you and if i get finally me like went to the account and then we were like hey let's go celebrate let's go to lunch sure go to dinner for forgot what it was but we had calls and it was a good whole thing we ended up doing nothing i sat on zoom call the rest of the day you know and the next day we'll woke up we still have to be on zoom calls so it it it was this thing of my life didn't change just overnight is where it does changes where you're spending a year of like actually making real change with your life like how do i make my life easier how do i get more time with my kids you you know person usually do like hire house and have maybe a chef wants or twice a weeks you're not cooking or you know how do you get help on executive level or ina nanny like we never been nanny before right before we sold so it was a lot of these things of like this upgraded lifestyle but knowing i want my kids to be spoiled kids so like it's a balance within the lifestyle we're still kind of figuring it out it's still pretty new yeah what type of conversations i how i think you said her oldest this was fourteen oh it's he's nine so we've not nine four eight nine yeah it's crazy well nine is is just getting to the age where you can start having some observations and like questioning certain things have you do you have regular conversations with them the thing is they are still little but the differences is our exit was very public so we're and every headline every single one of his teachers friends are for everybody knows that it was two billion and everyone obviously thinks we took all the million which is not true our two billion excuse me so i i remember like one time i think it was like two days after once again i'm dropping my kids off at school and cro and socks and like my hair and a pony tell my life hasn't like you know you're just living life and a little girl she was in kindergarten her and she walked out she's like are you a billionaire and i'm like oh we gotta have some conversations with our kids like i i didn't realize like how big it was so we sat them down and we were basically like hey ours is not yours our lives aren't gonna change we're gonna need to be good people we're gonna continue to be kind and give back and and do all that and then not shy away from it so we got them all fidelity investment accounts and put a little bit of money in so that they can start learning how to invest so they have quarterly meetings with our financial advisers and we're continually having these conversations because we're not naive to think that they don't know what are they investing and they're like micron stock right now and what what are they be doing they're like tesla at think at the time they're like we're gonna do tesla you know the open eye ai and like apple nike they even wanted of pepsi because they wanted poppy like all this stuff mean those all sound like great buys they're they were great but we have five thousand dollars to invest you know and you come back and somewhere were down somewhere up depending out what they're were doing it it's it's just more of a learning thing for them to like work through it versus like going really big which i love he's gonna have like q sbs at his fifteenth birthday thanks podcast is brought you by my friends at mercury they make the world's best banking product i think you know this already i used mercury for all of my businesses i think i have like maybe seven or eight businesses we use mercury as our business banking across all of them and now they actually just launched a personal banking account so i have my personal account there i moved off of wells fargo and chase i'm just all in on mercury why i like products that are easy to use i like products that get me and the problems that have so like very easy to make a joint account with my wife very easy to spin up virtual cards one click and i get savings yield it just has all the stuff that i need in one place so if you're looking for the best banking product on the market it's definitely mercury i will fist fight anyway to who me on that go to mercury dot com slash personal and learn more mercury is a fintech not an fdic insured bank banking services are provided through choice financial group and call them an a members fdic okay see you so you you do all that tell us about the sale because i feel like the m and a process is one of the most important parts of any company you as a founder you get yeah you might do many businesses you might work on business for years but you you really only do m and a like one percent of your honor entrepreneurial journey so you don't get a lot of reps at it but it's super important like the value can swing thirty percent fifty percent based on how you approach that when you go to market how you go to market how you do all that was it a easy process what is the super stressful process was there any great moments and the high stakes negotiations going on like what can you tell about the story so there's that fine line within especially beverage bridge because once again it's like experience in it is you can get too big to be bought and then you're forced to go ipo and within a beverage that's not great because then you don't have a distribution partner and so you're looking at who can be a great distribution partner there's only three people that can buy you which is keurig doctor pepper pepsi and coke and so you're you're you're you're kind of like okay y you to do what celsius did and they were able to go public but pepsi distributes them and has a small speak in the cup company so there are other ways around it but traditionally that's how it works so can you can you explain the distributor part it's you need the actual retail entry you need a manufacturing plant what do you mean by you need a distribution partner because you're obviously doing so well what is it that they bring at that point that you need yeah so for us we were a direct distribution model where it's called ds we had a hundred and eighty different distributors pieced together across us get pretty basically putting us on our truck and putting this on the shelf you know so all of that would move over to one person doing it so we call it the red or the blue truck right or the purple truck so your purple is keurig dr pepper blue is pepsi or red truck and so our goal is like great we can now be on this blue truck it's one person you're talking due versus the hundred and eighty or whatever the number was and now we have access to so many more things than we did before for example we were the official photo of the lakers and could not be sold in the stadium because it was a coat contract we can't be at madison square garden we can't be at taco bell subway you can't be you can't be at any this places so if you really wanna grow you have to have that distribution because of all of those contracts place think the marriott of the world the international of it all right we'd have to build out different international team so if you really wanna to have growth you need a partner to do this and so for us we talked to all three it depends on timing what their priorities are within and the bd is pepsi they're really prioritizing better for you they're taking their dies out it's like a lot of their trips that we're having the conversation you're seeing know what's happening with gatorade they're taking stuff out of the ingredients out of that so i think that they saw the vision they saw the data and they saw a great story and a great team and a great brand and so they approached us one year earlier before we sold kinda we were in talks with them and they kinda gave us a little bit of an offer was like hey no i think we can keep going so we completely stopped talking to them didn't talk them not even an email for like over a year and then we kinda opened up the conversations where we hit about five hundred thousand in revenue and we're like okay if we keep going this is and get rough five hundred million mh yeah we hit that like we're we had just surpassed the five hundred million mark and we're like okay if we keep going like this say we doubled the business and we keep going we should we should probably reign some of these conversations because it's a lot easier to you know buy five hundred million dollar company than a billion dollar company and there's less buyers and that's the whole thing and look we're having conversations and it's always about timing and pepsi came to us and now like hey we see what's happening here this is incredible i know we haven't talked in a year but we wanna re engage the conversation and after that it just was really simple because they offered by a hundred percent of the company a lot of times they'll do a two step deal where you buy thirty percent and you have to hit certain markers and then they'll buy a hundred percent and it's just it's a tougher thing to work through from a founder because you're like okay well i'm forth like if i don't hit this then you can't sell it but they offered a hundred percent of the company so it was a great deal they offered to give all of the pop people that won a jobs job so we we knew that that was gonna be incredible for the workforce ninety nine point nine percent of every employee had equity so it could be generational money for a lot of these families had worked so hard with us and they give us a great offer and a great multiple and so once we said yes we work through dd in about six weeks and then there's this wait period where the you know they have to get approval with fcc to make sure like a minnesota company minnesota company and there's no monopoly there and we passed the thirty day mark and we signed the paperwork so it was actually a shorter process than most people go through when rohan was on is it ro or rohan when he rohan sorry when he was on he told some crazy stories because i think you know he's now industry veteran but he kinda came up i believe it was under smart water or vitamin water maybe that's the same guy and he like told the story when they were wanting to sell where he was like my mentor the you know the guy who actually ran the company he had some like swag where like they made offers that he just like said no and he stood up and he just walked out the room and they like grabbed him and they like said alright come here here we'll we'll we'll renegotiate like like he had some crazy energy was there any stories like that when you were negotiating because you were with him on like did you learn anything about negotiating you know we were happy with the pepsi situation and we didn't have to do any of that dramatic stuff at one point there was a company trying to buy us in rohan like they offered us one point six he had two and he would like threaten to get up in the room at like blew up the whole thing but it was kind of like we were we were in talks with pepsi at the time so it was like there's like no harm no fell i i would say it was i it was weirdly easy i i'm not to say like to sell the company but like the negotiations like pepsi just got it i don't know how to explain it and they still are doing such a good job because i think that even post exit it's like the scary thing in the world is like hand off your baby and hope they don't mess it up and it's like i'm seeing all the cool stuff that they're still doing so it's not happened yet i'm still watching i face right before i had sold my my last company i used whichever i forget which personal finance app i was using but like you can track all of your bank accounts whatever ever and you can manually enter a like a bank account if you own something that can't be linked and i remember i put in like my dream number like twelve months before i sold did you do anything crazy like that leading up to it where you were like laying in bed like try to manifest like two billion dollars or did you have a number in your head where you were like one day i think we can become the this and it became true or were you just along for the ride i remember when we first started to really like if we could just sell for five hundred million dollars like wow and i think vital proteins had just sold it was any i forgot the numbers i anywhere from five hundred up to a billion i i know i was like well i mean what if we went for eight hundred million and it was just and then every year in the business you're like oh well that number seems so small like we did that in revenue like what is happening so you had big aspirations early on i mean yeah i mean five hundred million is a very big number well you look at beverage historically like it it's big exits and there's very few that do it if you can get to that hundred million to a hundred million mark and and revenue you're in this like playing filled that only like fifteen other brands have been at and so it's just one of those things that like when we started hitting these thresholds is really easy to start believing in that dream and as an entrepreneur sky's limit the way you thinking you guys know like you're it's this thing of like you know the ceiling you know you can be there why can't i do it it's like we're fearless within it and so i think for me it was more the you know you get there at the exit and then it's the life change afterwards i don't know did you guys have the post exit blues or like were you're just like nope so glad done bye yes yeah yeah heard i had heard a lot about that and i was like oh i wonder nope i felt amazing and i was like well this actually underrated most people don't well i i was say one thing i felt relieved more than i felt excited when it happened because m and a is like pretty grueling and you don't know and it could like it could always die the deal could always die and until anything can happen in the bank in fact i just sold a company recently and five days after we closed like there was like a announcement and by you know a law change that would have like we're probably wouldn't affected us that much but it definitely would have spooked a buyer to say like well let's just like think about it a little bit more and like think god you know just like you five in five days and and you never even know that's not something we were thinking about necessarily but like we just knew there's a million possibilities of how like this could fall apart we don't even know which one so i'd say definitely felt relief more than excitement which was surprising then felt little clueless on like great so now i'm gonna it's like well i don't really i kind of already living pretty well don't really need any you know like you can upgrade certain things but it's surprising how little your day to day will actually change that was also a little bit of a surprise but i didn't feel the blues in terms of i think people feel a sense of last loss of purpose or like they go from high action with a team in an office to like a lot like a lot of silence and a lot of nothing going on each day for me that wasn't so so big of a of a change but the thing i do feel is like you know if you if you spend so much of your life wired to chase one thing once you get it you do have to sort of redefine like what am i doing this for what do i want now and i think that i do feel that like i i think picking a new mountain climb that has some meaning behind it is take some work versus just doing this like you know because it was very obvious at the beginning like i got nothing i want something that was very clear i didn't really have to think about it too much but now i find myself thinking about a lot more but and and also have you guys heard the phrase they refer to boxer when they get successful they say it's a lot harder to wake up at four am to go for a run when you're getting out of bed and silk sheets and it's basically like you know it's hard to like go and get punch in the face figuratively or physically when you don't particularly have to i've noticed post exit on one on one side you definitely do think grander and you do have more resources to turn ideas into reality but it could go either way it could be like well because i have resources or because i have time i can be starting ten different things at once which tip which typically does not end well that use that like a focus doesn't do good or you just don't grind as hard and and i i i always have that fear i'm like oh am i just soft now allison did do what we just said resonate with you or you you're like no i don't get that i'm the opposite of that yeah i think it's i think the purpose driven piece is huge you know you i think purpose is more important than money but i think if you have purpose money will come and for me i had a ten year purpose and then overnight it was gone it was a lot of lost for me for sure like what you're speaking to but i think that that's normal you look at these like limp athletes that retire and then they're like wait now what like i think a lot of people deal with it in different ways throughout their life and for for us was just like while this is over and it was really hard but then once i work through that and found out like wait there's more purpose to life than working and like this right i have a incredible you know friend group i'm my wellness is a huge piece of purpose for me now and it's like so it changed a little bit and i think that that's been really nice for me and i feel like i'm happy i've ever been in my life personally with me because of that but i am excited to build again and i am excited i missed the chaos i missed the team i missed the drive so i think book could probably be true but what about with kids i sold my company before i had a kid now that i've got i've got two kids sean's got kids you guys each have three i definitely like i wanna be home by a certain time whereas before i didn't have that but you have an interesting perspective your come up was with babies it's like all i know and it's something i want them to see us to continue to work hard i think through example of us doing it again even though we have to i love that they can see that but i agree with you this time i think it'll be easier in having more help they're older i can take them with me to new york if i'm doing a trip for a press tour or something like that then it just allows for more experiences hey can i ask you you probably get ten times more of this than we do but you know you're at an event you're speaking somewhere people come up to you and they're like oh hey i have this idea or like hey i'd just love to tell you about my thing and you wanna be nice and you wanna be helpful but also the reality of the the world is that ninety nine out of a hundred of those people are not serious enough to actually do the thing and i often have this urge which is just like i feel like i i wish i could just shake them and just give them some real talk i don't even know if they would want it or they would like it or they would into it but there's a there's this deep like sense me that like i really there's some real talk i wish i could just give more people so that maybe that ninety nine out of a hundred would change to eighty four out of a hundred only would would would not actually you know make it happen but now sixty now now sixteen of the hundred would make it happen and so what i wonder what that is for for you like what do you think is the real talk that people need when you know when people come up to you after an event what do you wish they actually like if only you knew if only you understood what this is actually gonna what you actually need to do or what this is actually gonna take would you say to that person so my biggest piece of advice if you're looking enough to be in a room with someone like you or me or anyone that can give actual advice listen most people come up to you and they wanna tell you everything about their business and they never ask a question there's one validation i don't know what it is they're like i'm starting this and we've done this and we have this manufacturer and we launch a target and the the this is position positioning and this is what i'm thinking there and i'm like okay like i don't know what to i don't want to tell you because you haven't asked a question and so i'm always willing to give advice i'm not willing to do the work for you and i think that's another thing that people get the line blurred hey you've done this before can i get ten minutes of your time well what are you doing well i wanna be an entrepreneur i think this space could be interested do not come to me with that figure it out come me with real questions that i can add value and give back and actually move the needle for your life in your business and that's why i think my biggest asset that i don't think a lot of people realize if you're lucky enough to run into a mark cuban or a rohan hon army me ask real questions and i think like if people can actually hear that it be actually helpful to them yeah i i feel that i feel ever sure i have this a slightly different take on it which is i think you're right that like you gotta ask for a question or most people just wanna be validated like it's the end of the event and they have their parking ticket and they just want you to validate it for them so they get free parking and get out of here it's like i have this idea of a lot and that i just kinda want you to like say yes so that i feel good and it's like did you wanna feel good or did you wanna actually move the ball forward here by like kinda maybe unblock something that was blocked but i would say even more than that is most people just are decidedly serious about the things that they're doing in life and it's the problem is not their strategy it's not their circumstances it's that they are just not serious enough to like make it happen and you know when you meet somebody who's serious because they don't they don't have it all figured out but you can feel in somebody when they're very serious about like just kinda know this person seems like they have this energy that they're gonna make this happen even if they know nothing right now even if they're on the wrong actively on the wrong track and they've got mother's beverage in it's apple cider vinegar and they're selling it at farmer's market but you can tell well i don't care where you start the slope of that line is gonna be crazy if the person is actually like what i call a serious person and i just think there's most people are not serious people about the things that they're even the things that they say they wanna do yeah and i think that they also everyone asked for my time and my money they want investment or ten to fifteen minutes to jump on it i i just i don't have that time time is luxury now and so to your point i wanna spend more time with my kids i wanna like be present with my friends and live my best life i can't be on zooms for forty hours a week right giving you guys advice with you to point you just want that affirmation versus really getting down in and and like understanding how i can help them so i choose who i invest in and who i spend my with very wisely and i i hope that doesn't hurt people's feelings because people give me advice and time over the years and building poppy and mother but it's just it it's just reality that we're in as well but i think if i can't you just frame moment at the right thing you asked the right question like i will help you i'm not mean it's like you know i wanna give back with be all these things but it's just it's a tough position that the that people are put in i have an embarrassing story of myself doing it wrong i emailed the head of yc so yc is like kind of like our mecca it's our church here in silicon valley it's like okay they're the best at inc inconvenience companies a president yc i got his email i email hey michael it's michael si at the time and i was like michael i would love to you know you could do this live streaming i'm doing this live streaming thing i would love to just kind of oh no pick your brain i said it i love to pick your brain you i wanted to take him out to lunch as if he can't afford lunch and i'm asking him for his time and then he just replied like five seconds later he goes what's the question like what you you know okay just ask your question right here if you want the if you're asking me for advice or for help like just ask it right here and i maybe i could do it even faster for you and i realized in that moment hey i didn't actually have a crisp question i think i just generally wanted like a good feeling and to feel like i wasn't like a loser who was off in the wrong direction secondly like i wanted his time more than i actually wanted to help because what he was saying was true is he's like if you want the help i could give it to you right now or we could try to schedule something four weeks from now and so i remember realizing that and i kinda never did that again like i took that whipping once and i was like cool if i'm ever gonna ask somebody for time let me just ask them the questions straight away let's see if that solves the problem because yeah i would love to feel like i met you and i'm associated with you but that's for me that's not help my business nor is it gonna help that person on the other side of it either the amount of times i responded back me like if okay what's the question and then they they never there's nothing silence nothing i think i saw did i i think i saw somewhere or maybe as wall street journal you did did you say you do a million dollar vacation post exit is that right good yes it was a long one what was the vacation so i took like twenty of my family members and you know for my mom and dad and my sister and their kids and my dad and steven's parents and sisters so like it was a lot of people and we went to four different places over a period of over a month and it was just like our one big like f trip post exit and i think a lot of people are like what items you buy like i still don't even have a broken like they're like what piece of this did you buy you know i'm like i want experiences this i want memories i want all these things and so have you done that sense now are we renew do that every year no was it even fun or was that like planning a wedding he don't yeah twenty people think i would enjoy that t ptsd on it but i don't wanna sound like i'm grateful but yes because then we're on there and you don't have like it it's so new with and it's your stuff of a little uncomfortable spending money too and so you haven't worked through those emotions and i know i karen run this spa and then seven people raise their hands and they wanna go then i want call making seven people's swap boy so yes it was and then you're like the reservations and the food and the travel of it all so yeah i would not recommend it even though it was a once in lifetime thing and it was not marvelous december blessed where'd you go oh we went to but a tuscany late como montenegro on scotland there you go well you actually this sounds almost a little like silly but you're you're a very you and steven are both very fun follows on instagram you guys have a lot of fun do you have this is the silly part but how do you think about like having fun like do you frame fun well let me explain why like my my wife and i just started doing like a the very simple date night but it's like on the calendar and i'm like oh we had to schedule this i didn't i thought we could be in impromptu but we couldn't we had to schedule this but you've all you've amped it up like you guys look like you have a ton of fun tell me it sounds like sean was making it in fun of me but you actually might have that so i think somewhere along the way we were taught the being serious equals being successful and then we've we were kinda taught that like fun is a distraction and that if you're serious you should look serious and act serious and all these things and i'm so here to like throw that theory out the window and i think it isn't a distraction i think it's fuel i think it's fuel for like not burning out in life i think it's the ability to like you should be having fun at work should be having fun in your life and it actually fuels that success and so like that's actually been something like me to even talk about all the time is like the second we're not having fun whether you're working hard shouldn't be doing that so it's like all these people to talk about hating their jobs and the stuff like oh that's such a toxic environment i think it's like how we operated even at poppy was it was fun you know the the ability to put myself out there fully awkward authentically like online and and crazy dances like it it was the culture within poppy too we were having fun and so you know the other day someone was like why do you talk like that and your voice is annoying and like you are doing fit checks and like all stuff and i was like because i want to and i'm a confident queen and i'm obsessed and like why does it bother you like you're not one and so i think it's this ability to live life not take it so serious that's like i don't know don't you guys feel that too preach yeah you will the the part that i i don't know if sean s was with this the part that i got sucked into was like to be successful you have to be serious and so like i i just started doing instagram as well and i feel it's very uncomfortable i'm not used to have i'm not this this motion i don't love still and it definitely is rooted in like don't wanna look too silly but also in terms of non social media it's running a business there is like a b series b successful type of energy and i think the bigger you get the more like if you look at what sean i used to say like six years ago when no one watched this thing it was a little bit different than now and i think that like there you do fall in the trap of like if be more serious as you get bigger and you get more confident than more you do it you know you don't just become confident the start you start and confident catches up later and so i think that it's funny i pushed steven to be online when we were post to x exit i think you have like a thousand one followers and i was like you gotta get out there people need to hear from you he is so smart we we did very different things that poppy are in our creative brand like all the fun stuff that you've gotta see and get he our entire innovation team and supply chain and all of this stuff and like the hardcore business items why we make so many such a good partnership and i was like your stories are so different than mine and entrepreneurs need to hear them and i hired him a social team to run him and like help him get up and running and to take that lift off so that all did do is sit down and talk to the camera and at first he hated it now it's he's honestly he's better at making the time for the me if anything so you just gotta start well we appreciate you doing this you're awesome thanks for coming on story we've we've been buying your product for years and it's nice to have you as a friend well have you come back when you launch your new thing and we'll see if our predictions were we're close steven blown away you're like oh my goodness why has no one done it done it like this well now i must now understand yes well now i can we appreciate too alright that's it that's the pod i feel like i could rule the world and i know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a day's off on a road less travel never looking back alright let's take a quick break i wanna tell you about marketing school it is a podcast that's part of the hubspot podcast network and it is run by neil patel and eric sue these guys are both marketers who are running businesses and so if you want real world tactics from practitioners who are actually out there in the field doing it this is the podcast for you check it out wherever you get your podcast and