Premium Isn’t About Price - It’s About Positioning

I'm obsessed with learning. I'll stay up in the middle of the night watching podcasts, reading books, studying analysts notes, and understanding what went wrong. Listen, we're not going to win on capital. We're not going to win on resources. We're going to win on speed. That's Ross McKay, founder of Cadence, a brand that's building the world's first $2 luxury product. But Ross' real advantage isn't product, it's Positioning. Strong brands remove confusion from a category. They don't add noise. Our first caner was just like the minimal DDC can, but it didn't work on shelf. We saw that

data when we launched a new cannon. same liquid sales were three times. It was literally a packaging decision. I have an extremely high tolerance for discipline. So, I don't like get inspired or motivated by external pressures too much anymore. I don't need you all to believe in me. I Just need people to buy this at Target. You've done just under $10 million in 600 days and the cat's out the bag. You're going to do 40 million next year. We're going to share that playbook today. I personally think a big reason is the branding positioning. We

were talking about it off camera. Let's start there. So, how do you make a $2 product luxury? >> Yeah, we use that tagline. We're like the only thing in consumer good that's Under $2 or at least under $3 depending where you buy it that's luxury. >> I actually put that in chat GBT and I could not find anything under $3. So, that's that's factual. >> You know what? You know, I think premium as it stands doesn't need to exist through price point. It comes to positioning, comes to content, it comes to brand partnerships, it comes

to where you sell the product, where you show up. You can look at brands in the space, and I'm obsessed with this saying of premium at scale. And it's very hard to build something that's ultra premium and build scale at the same time. Very few brands have done it. On running is a good example. My dentist where on yet the best athletes in the world were on. They have the best stores on Bond Street, New York. How do you juggle both? That's something that we are constantly striving for. But internally and now externally, people are

saying it's $2 Luxury or like the champagne of electrolytes. >> And how did it start? Did it start with just an obsessive research at looking at the aisle and what is everybody else in the market doing? >> Yeah, I am that individual that will spend a ridiculous amount of time in an aisle watching consumers, how fast they pick up something, how we can differentiate, what's the white space, what's the price point. I think price Point is often a determining factor based on category. So, it's hard to price outside of the category when you're essentially selling

to a consumer that is used to this brand, this brand, this brand. You can't generally give them something that's twice or three times as much. And it's been done before, for sure, but under $3, it doesn't really exist. So, you have to align your price point to the consumer, what they're used to, I believe. But it Was an obsessive deep dive into what we felt was missing in the category. And everyone will say there's no room for another beverage brand, but we believe there was. So, >> so you started with price and again we were

talking a lot off camerara. We'll get way more into product deeper in the into the episode, but I think also the branding. What went into the branding kind of inspiration? >> Honestly, it was a true reflection of What I would be proud of to represent. When I built my first business, it was purely because it was a gap in the market. This business, I naively said, if I'm going to do anything for the next 5, 10, 15, whatever, however many years, I want to be super proud of it. I want to be proud of the

branding. I want to bring you a can right now. And you're like, "Wow, that's impressive." And I want it to light me up. So, I think as naive as it was, I built the brand on What I wanted to see, also the liquid, what I felt was missing in the category. And then through, you know, ideation with George, who's, you know, a co-founder of the business, we felt like we had something that one we loved and then two, we felt that would differentiate on shelf. I think you have to also design the architecture of the

brand to where you want it to sit. And for us, 2026 is about retail. Where do consumers going to buy this product? And It has to work on shelf. So there's been some iterations. This is the third rebrand we've had since 300 days almost. So it's been a constant evolvement for sure. >> Yeah. I mean, I love it. Just super minimalist, super sleek. What have you learned in that rebrand with three different iterations now going into retail? Where are you sitting at now as far as how and why was that can designed how it is?

>> You know, I think strong brands remove confusion from a category. They don't add noise. And that's what we wanted to do with this can and this design. We wanted to remove confusion from what is a very confusing category of sports nutrition, sports hydration, sports drinks, beverage. We wanted to be super simple. wanted to ideulate on unique selling points, flavor, etc. But our first can to this can is to some extent would look the same, but it's wildly Different. It's positioning, especially as we've moved into more stores. People have milliseconds to pull it off the

shelf. What flavor is it? What is it not? Now we have a huge, you know, half-inch colored rim. We have unique selling points like no sugar, no caffeine. And before it was just like the minimal DDC can, but it didn't work on shelf. We saw that data when we launched into our first two stores, Vitamin Shop and GNC. We could see the Feedback that it wasn't turning at the velocity we wanted. When we launched a new Canon, same liquid, sales were three times. So, it was literally a packaging decision. And I think for any founder

that's out there building a brand, like build the design for where you want the product to sit. So it's almost like especially for the people from an ecom perspective formally you were very kind of like top of the funnel cool and now it's like almost like direct response. Yeah. Like this is what is in the can. >> Yeah. To some extent marrying the premium and the scale factor always. So there's just general things on a can you cannot change. We have battles internally like no joke my team will laugh at this where my QA guy

wants to change the call out of carbonated drink and the 12 flu ounce bigger because FDA regulation will say it needs to be this size minute I'm like no it doesn't look good so we always juggle that line of Like what you're allowed to do and what looks good and often they're in complete polar opposites like genuinely speaking like pretty much for 35% of this can we cannot touch it the barcode the UPC the call outs etc where it's made you know like if If you're optimizing for design, half that can wouldn't be on it.

But you're optimizing for what's allowed and what's not allowed. So it's been an evolving, you know, discussion, but data informs design as well. >> So specifically from a product perspective in relation to the branding and positioning, obviously the words on it, the visual identity, the colors. What about like you know how many milligrams are in it? >> In terms of can size, you know, it's a fairly standard 355 ml. That's what you know a Celsius or a Bloom Energy or you know other you know new lollipop cans would be. I think when you're building a

category and you're building within a Category you really only have to change one or two%. I talked about this recently. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. I think for us we didn't want to change size can because consumers are so used to what they're used to. Give them something they're familiar with and just make it that little bit better. For us better was design better was positioning and better was liquid. I think so many brands have come and go within the sports drinks category because Ultimately why they haven't worked is they haven't delivered on

a great product and all of the design and everything makes sense but what first thing you do is you crack it open you drink it and it has to be delicious has to be cravable and that allows for repeat purchase both DTOC and in retail so we've spent a lot of time on design but we spent a lot more time on the liquid itself >> makes a lot of sense from a a branding Perspective what are some of like the big brands that have inspired you Obviously George is a co-founder. I think represent it's like

a we joke sometime it's like a represent liquid in a can. What are some of those other like big brands that you've looked to? Because I do think you know when we speak I don't look at you guys as like a CPG or like a drink company. It's way more of like a lifestyle brand almost like a fashion or apparel company. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> It's going to sound cliche. I think from a lifestyle perspective when I look at brands like a Red Bull, they have a Formula 1 team. Someone's surfing a 40 foot

wave out there in the world right now with a Red Bull cap on and a Red Bull board. Someone's back flipping off the Alps in a Red Bull, you know, parachute. Like, but yet they sell 10 billion dollars of carbonated beverage Every every year. So, I I'm inspired by brands that and I think a lot of brands will say we're a lifestyle brand and you're like, really? You do a run club? Are you really a rat lifestyle brand? But like we really want to fuel the goal oriented athlete and our innovation is the means to

allow that individual to do that. So whether it's someone running across Australia like they did a few months ago when Will did the same, we fueled his ambitions. Whether it's Herk And he's running across Cypress or Greece or Montenegro, we're fueling those individuals. So we do see oursel as a lifestyle brand for consumers who want to achieve things within the sport of running, cycling or whatever it may be eventually. There's brands like on who are premium at scale that have built a multi-billion dollar business maintaining a premium positioning but yet achieving scale which is wildly

once a brand becomes a victim of its own Success right everyone's wearing it you don't want it anymore very few brands have been able to do that and continue to evolve I'm a sucker for if I keep seeing the same t-shirt from a running brand or a clothing brand I don't want to wear it anymore I think that's the issue which people have within apparel Yet within beverage, it's almost seen the more people are drinking it, the more I want it. So I think on Red Bull, Obviously George and Representative 247, you know, brands like

Bandit and Satisfy have done something great in the running scene, but it's honestly obscure brands like Nespresso. Nespresso is such a premium content brand, such beautiful education, >> great coffee guy. Completely agree. >> But yeah, the machine arguably is is it's great, but the coffee is pretty terrible. It's not like a lamaraka beautiful crafted yet. It's premium at Scale. The shops are insane. The content's insane. The packaging is beautiful. But you can get one for 90 bucks, which relatively is is mass America. So, I think about that. I'm really inspired by brands that can achieve

hundreds and hundreds of millions, if not billions of revenue, but yet maintain a premium positioning. >> Yeah, I think you've done a great job of that thus far. The fact that you're scaling and I still It's almost like You want to look like you're small. Yeah, you guys look like smaller than you are. Like when you told me how much revenue you were doing, I was very, very surprised to be completely frank with you. I thought you guys were doing two, three, four million dollars. You guys were super super small and you were waiting to

take that big swing, but I was surprised that you were you were already at where you were to be completely Frank. >> You know what? I think the category scales so quickly within Beverage. When I look at the brands and I'm seeing they did 50 to 500 in two years. Now being on the other side of beverage and understanding because I'm I'm I'm doing sales. I mean, I'm just off a Walmart call like 30 minutes before I came in here. here. I'm flying Austin tomorrow to meet a big retailer. When I see the velocity of

retail and I see the data Within the category of beverage grocery, I'm like now I understand why brands are doing $100 million a month because they've a lot 86% of people roughly in this country today will buy a cold carbonated beverage. >> Wow. >> It's insane. It the category turns an insane rate. And when I moved into a new business, I wanted to do a couple things. One was be a category that had that velocity. Expectations are higher Because buyers are saying, "Well, that space is moving so quickly. If you're going to take that shelf

space, you have to turn at that rate, which is the scariest part of my business. How do we do that?" But once you do that, this is where three, four, $5 million days exist. So, we really look at two things. I think, you know, retail is distribution, marketing. That's all it is. But units per store per week is how you measure success. Distribution Doesn't matter. If someone comes on here and says, "We're in 10,000 doors." You're like, "Great, but how are you doing in those 10,000 doors? Are you winning?" So, dollars per store per week

are another KPI that a retailer is going to look for. How much do how many dollars are you bringing into my store on my shelf a week? And you basically win in retail every 30 days. 30 after 30 days, you get your data, you make changes, you might drop price, you might Add promotion, you might do two for four, etc. But we're priced so fairly in the category that we think success to us is driving trial and then winning consumers over that way because we have such great supply chain and uni economics that we're able

to compete like that. I think we live in LA where $7 matches are normal. But like once you scale Mass America like $2 is expensive. So we have to compete with the biggest drinks businesses in the world. Gatorade Is a is a monster and it's like sub $1 for a bottle of you know crap. >> Yeah. Yeah, I want to dive a little bit deeper into retail. We talk about all the time in all the episodes. I think you know better than anybody. It's about the sell through, not the sell in. If someone tells me

they're in 10,000 stores, that means absolutely nothing to me. >> Nothing. >> How has that been for you? Have you been Approaching these retailers? Have they been approaching you? What does that look like? >> It's been a mixture. My last business, we were in Not that it matters. We were in about 60,000 TDPs. Starbucks, Walmart, Costco, >> pretty much every every retailer in the country other than Sam's Club. We were pretty much in BJ's and Sam's Club. >> So, I've come at this from as a second time founder with the pattern Recognition, what it takes

to win in retail and what it looks like to lose in retail because there was retailers we didn't win in, but I have some relationships in the game, whether it's direct relationships with retailers or with brokers that we utilize to to access distribution. At the same time, we have friends in the world which are selling beverage into retailers that just the way your phone book and your network is built, you're going to have Them help you as well. So, it's a combination. We're going at people that we've done business with in the past. We're also

utilizing our network and our investors to help us access distribution. But it's been amazing to help retailers build the category of sports hydration and sports nutrition because a lot of retailers are seeing this emerging trend of run clubs and run groups and cycling competitions and marathons and half marathons. When you Turn around to the retail and you say, "What are you doing to support that customer on their journey?" Like I was just in Chicago. I go into a local CVS. There's literally thousands of runners the day before Chicago marathon with no choices. I call CVS

and say, "Let us be that choice for a consumer. Here's what we're doing. Here's all the cool events we've done. Here's the collage of all the run clubs we've done. Here's the sizzle reel. Let us be that brand for You." So, being a thought partner and then that's what they've been really excited about. Now, we have to prove it out. >> Makes a lot of sense. What does that retail pitch actually look like for people that are going into their first pitch? >> Yeah. >> What is in that deck? And what is kind of that

that leverage that you can bring in and show them? The best pitches are Always informed by data. The first pitch, you're going to have no data. So, ideally, pitch two is we are selling this much in this store. This could be you. Retailers going to be like, "Wow, I'm missing out on that." If I look at what else I'm selling, okay, if I take that away and I get that, I'm going to get incrementality. Great. That's pitch two. Pitch one is much harder because you're not able to turn around to a retailer and say, "We're

performing at these numbers. This could be you." So pitch one is essentially here's how we differentiate in the category. Here's the incrementality we can bring you. Here's our large DTOC audience potentially that we have that we're now going to shove into retail. Look at brand like Bloom. Greg, huge DTOC business. The minute it launches to Target, turn that off. Go to Target, guys. Go to Target. Go to Target. Go to Target. So you're taking that and we've kind of played that playbook. We had a pretty solid DTOC business. I think right now we're about 65

66% subscription on our website. We're now turning that off and saying go to Target and buy in February >> because ultimately that's where the unlimited scale is. >> That's where the unlimited scale is. That's where you can achieve $100 million quarters, $100 million months, Which we're seeing in beverage today because we're able to drive our consumer into that space, add incrementality, drive trial. So that's where it is at today. The pitches so far have been we can bring our community, which is ridiculous. It's becoming very very strong, and drive them into your retail doors. What

about from an economics perspective? What type of margin profile are they looking for? What type of profile do you need on your side? Take Genuinely, you're going to give a recommended retail price. So for us in you take a Target, we're $279 on shelf. Generally speaking, they'll be middle of the ground. You're going to have people in like an Air1 at like $5, but like eradicate that from the conversation. Walmart is going to be lower than Target. They're probably going to be your lowest. Everyone's looking for 45 to 50%. So you take 279, you subtract

50% from that. that is your selling Price to the retailer. Then you have to subtract distribution cost, shipping cost, etc. And then that gives you your margin from cost of goods into your selling price. So anyone in CPG today, you really want to be building off like a 50 plus% gross margin because of the cost of doing business. The biggest line item on most brands that no one talks about is trade spend 20 to 30% in order to activate and work with that retailer. So we've built this business ultimately With the most very very strong

unit economics understanding the cost of doing business in retail. So retail price minus 50% that's your sellin price retailers are going to want 50% margin generally for for getting in. >> And for promotional marketing you mean like end caps or maybe like street teams coming in any type of event anything. >> Yeah. And it could be even trade promotion. So when you go into a Walmart and you see two for four the brand often Is paying for that. If everyday price is 250 and now you're down for two for four, so a dollar off, you're

generally paying for that dollar as a brand, 50% maybe 100%. So that over 60 days, 120 days a year, potentially 12 weeks of the year, the brand is paying for that promotion. So it drives trial and what you're going to expect is after that trial, your velocity base jumps. So drive trial, drive trial, drive trial. Make sure you're building a b a business That allows for that because if not, you're going to be losing money, but you have to be making money, too. And then after that promotion goes back to an EDLP everyday low price

maybe of 279 instead of two bucks when consumers come back you've driven enough trial for that velocity at base price to jump up. That's kind of the game of retail but again you have to build the foundations of supply chain and unique economics to allow for this game. So I am radically Confident that you're going to have great sell through and you're going to scale in a big way. I I I never think it's too late to go into retail, but some people think it's too early. For people out there listening that have any CPG

brand, where do you think you need to be to be radically confident that you can go into retail? And obviously in retail, like you want to hit a home run on your first swing. It's very, very tough to have not a good sell through, Get taken out, and then be put back in. How and why were you comfortable going into retail when you were? >> Good question. We talk about a lot. I talk to my I guess advisors about this question a lot and I think it comes down to how much do you the risk

you want to take to make the business as big as you want it and and people will give you a different answer for that and there'll be people who Listen to this and say oh well you got to be achieving this and the two questions one is do you have the unit economics to allow you to scale so if everything else is true and velocity is incredible and it pumps on shelf and blah blah blah. Could you build a business that is ready for that scale? So don't go into retail till you're ready for that

scale. >> From a production perspective, Production perspective and a supply chain unit economics perspective. Can I sell this into Walmart and Target and still make money uh while while building that supply chain out wholesale? At a worst case, you would maybe say break even from a marketing distribution and just to to live another day now, but then maybe later you're obviously gonna >> Yeah, you're gonna find efficiencies over time. >> But, you know, eventually, you know, Cost will come down as you order more, of course. But generally speaking, you should not be aiming and going

into retail until you've built the visibility into the supply chain that if this happens and we achieve this scale, we will be achieving this gross margin, contribution margin, etc. The second question I just asked this I asked this exact thing because we have an opportunity with CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, Target this year. This is the Distribution very obscure new brand would go farmers market sprouts, Whole Foods, Bristol Farms. That's what you would see in this city. You've seen it happen dozens of times. It's the natural route. Co screwed that differentiator between natural and conventional. Now anyone

only what what everyone cares about is convenience. We want something in 20 minutes. I don't care if you're in that retail, that retailer. I'm probably going to order off Instacart, Amazon or Wherever else I shop and I want it in 25 minutes. So the only thing really h ma matters to us is accessibility. So I want to go after Gatorade. Gatorade don't sell in Sprouts and A1. They sell in Walmart, Target and Costco. That's what I'm going after. And I'm very inspired by the founder of David Bar where they were like why not going the

traditional CPG route, Farmers Market, Airwan, Bristol Farm. Like you've seen that pattern happen so many times. He's Like I don't care about them. I care about Marsbar. I don't care about the healthy snack bar that your mom and pop made in their village kitchen. Like that's >> so ironic because I walk to get a David Protein bar from CVS like every other day because it's right there and just super convenient. >> That's I'm unapolog 1520 million business. I want to build the next Gatorade. And how do we do That? We make accessible to Mass America.

So that's that's great feedback. Just understanding and knowing that from a price and a production perspective, you can handle scale if and when it comes. We only talked about it once and I want to dive a little bit deeper because you're like right in this mix right now about you briefly touched on it about going direct versus using distributors. The pluses, the minuses, the margin Profile. Obviously you have a little bit less control if you go through a third party. What have you learned through daring and now cadence with retailers versus distributors pluses and minuses?

>> Well, ultimately the end is you always have to win over the retailer and then they're going to determine your supply chain in they're going to ask for us to be direct distribution or they're going to ask us to go through a distributor which may be like one or of five guys or Or whatever. Direct distribution allows you to maintain margin, potentially pass it on to the customer and make it cheaper, which drives velocity and that's amazing or have that money in your own pocket to spend on marketing, etc. The issue with that is you're

delivering a lot of trucks, a lot of cans into different, it's a big supply chain risk. When you work through a distributor, you're generally deploying your cans or beverages into one location And they're handling all of that. The con is less margin, potentially more expensive cost to do business. Is there less margin though under the notion that you're going to have to incur on the direct side, you know, that 3PL, the warehouse, like you're going to have heavy SGNA and humans managing as well. And we outsource all of that regardless. Generally speaking, direct distribution is,

you know, better for the P&L. Yep. >> From our perspective, what we've seen And distributor margins can work on anywhere between 15 to 25%. So, it's still very expensive cost to doing business. However, it's kind of a nest or evil because they also have other customers that you might not be talking to that they can unlock for you because you're doing well and it's a whole game. You can't have one without the other and you probably want to have both. So, I'm learning this world. I didn't deal with any direct distribution before. We only Worked

through Cisco, Unifi, Khe, like the big mafia guys. And now we're understanding the DSD network of like the Dr. Peppers of the world. And it's a it's a crazy landscape, but it gets me super excited. I want to really really educate. There's a guy out there listening. I actually I know a bunch of them that follow and they wanted you on the podcast that are doing one two million dollars in protein cookies or something like that. Tell them a little Bit more about this distributor game because from my understanding you you mentioned mafia. There's a

finite amount of people that are controlling all the distribution and they could basically block you from getting in anywhere versus this distribution is basically for people out there listening. It's almost like a marketing agency where they have x amount of clients and whichever client is bringing them the most amount of Money, they're going to push that as much as possible. So, if you could just speak on that >> a little bit. >> Yeah, I would say let's underwrite distributors to be box movers. That's all they are. They're never going to sell your product for them.

Brokers, on the other hand, are sales agents on behalf of your brand. The issue with a sales agent is they've got other brands that are their favorite Child and they're more willing to spend time with them until you prove it out and successful. So, I think some individuals right now with a cookie business doing one $2 million a year, they want to get into Target. You have to be the one I would say to win over the end customer. Once you do that, a distributor, a broker will be happy to take your business. But until

you went over that anchor customer, it's very hard for you To turn up and knock on the door of a distributor and say, "Hey, take inventory. Good luck selling it." They're going to be, "Well, what's your sales team look like? How you going to underwrite the stock? Are you going to buy it back if it doesn't sell? Because I've got six other protein cookies that are selling really, really well. Why would I take yours? You have no customers for me." What we've always been focused on is let's win the end Customer. Let's turn around to

a distributor or a broker and say, "We'll give you that business. I want you to manage it. You can take your margin profile on it, but here are some expectations for us. So, anyone out there that's building that, go over the anchor customer yourself, do whatever it takes to get that product to that customer. Once you want to optimize, turn around to said party and say, "We have this customer. Now you can have Them." >> So, yeah, thank you for clarifying that. difference between the actual distributor which is just shipping the product versus the sales

broker which is a guy that was probably formerly a buyer of Walmart that says if any CPG brand wants to get into Walmart come to me and I'm going to take a face something like that >> I know the buyer really well used to say and then you turn around and you're like Don't go to sleep at night thinking that this guy girl is doing anything on your behalf that's one of the biggest mistakes I've ever learned is like oh we've got all these brokers out there like wait for my phone no one's calling like

build your own sales team. I'm my own sales guy. Carl, it is so crazy that you say that because in the Mark Manson episode, he talked about the importance of not outsourcing your zone of genius to someone else. And I was outsourcing our sponsorships and partners to somebody else, i.e. a sales broker almost like an agency. And they weren't asking the questions like what does success look like? And really, really caring. And I feel like for me and for the people out there listening like I can just imagine sales broker in a meeting with Walmart

versus Ross in a meeting. It's a [ __ ] different universe. You cannot allow anyone else to speak on your behalf as the brand Owner. >> No. And obviously over time that's hard to scale. But my job as a founder is to sell. Sell to my team to join me on the mission. Sell to the customer. Sell to the buyer. Sell to the investor. You're I'm a salesman. Believe in the mission. Believe in the product. Come and join us on the journey. Until you achieve, you can't be in two places at once. Only then do

you unlock a sales and distribution team. But tomorrow I will Be in Austin selling to a retailer. We have a sales team, but I'm the one going because I want to meet the buy. I want to build the relationship. I want to understand what success looks like and that is what's key and that's what I've seen from the best brands in the world. The founder is still out there selling. >> Yeah. We're going to I I want to jump into founder content because you've done a great job with that and that I think That goes

hand inhand with being in the sales meeting and filming it. You got a bunch of people here. To tie a bow on retail though, what do you think has been like the biggest surprise, good or bad, when scaling retail for Cadence under the notion this is this is your second ride here. I mean you went into what was it 50,000 plus stores with your last company. biggest surprise I talked about scale a little bit and When we sell into we're we're loading into Target in two weeks loading into Walmart. We just got the order from

Walmart just prior to this call and I continue to be amazed at the demand planning data and sell through of the grocery beverage category. And when you see brands like Lollipop and Poppy doing 800 million, 500 million, I'm like, "Sure, really?" And then when I look at 10 to 20 units a Week per store in 3,000 stores and you model back from that, you do a top down build, you're like, "That's $20 million for this melonberry can in one account. We have three flavors going in and we have all these." I'm like, "That's how brands

get to a billion dollars." I continue to be amazed by that because in the business before, my category turned so slow. So you can be in 10,000 doors, but you're turning one unit a week. This category can turn at 20 units a week. Same amount of doors at 20 is is is an incredible business. So I'm just continuously amazed about how many people buy beverages every single day. So it's a race to grocery. That's where the velocity is. Listen, you ever bought a drink online? Cadence. Other than Cadence Blate Milk on Instacart. I love Slate

Milk. >> Great guy. Shout out Manny. I love you, Baby. 86% of people a day will buy a drink. Almost none of them are buying them online. So, to answer your question is be where your customer is. People buy drinks not online generally. They buy them in stores. They buy them in convenience on the way here. It might have been a 7-Eleven, might be a CVS, maybe Air1, maybe a Walgreens, might be a Starbucks. I don't know where it is. But for the most of the people out there, you buy your drinks in a grocery.

Therefore, I need to put my drinks in grocery. I need to put my drinks in the aisle beside water, beside Red Bull, beside Celsius, beside whatever else it may be in as many stores as possible. That's the game of beverage. Now, I have a whole other range of innovation that is largely focused on TTOC and on Amazon because people don't go and buy running gels in Walmart. They buy them on the feed. They buy them on Amazon. They buy them on cadence.com. So, we always Position our innovation for where the customer is today. Don't try

and drive a new customer into Walmart to buy a running gel. They're not going there to buy running gels. They're going there to buy water, eggs, and cadence. It's really important. >> How did you learn and understand about all of this? >> No idea, honestly. I don't know. Obsessive. I jumped in. I I I got an incredible learning curve because my Business grew so quickly the first time around daring. And I was surrounded by such excellence specifically around team and investors that I had no option. And Zach saying sink or swim. I I I was

kind of sinking and maybe surviving at the same time because we grew so quickly. We had so much capital. We had so many great people around us with so much pattern recognition of excellent businesses that I figured out a lot of mistakes, some good stuff, some bad Stuff. This time I'm taking all of that into the next business. I'm also surrounded by some really great thought partners, people that have done this before. And I think I'm I'm I'm the type of individual that is obsessed with learning. Like I'll stay up in the middle of the

night watching podcasts, reading books, studying, you know, analyst notes from the public offering of Beyond Meat and understanding what went wrong. Like I'm an obsessive Founder. >> I say it all the time. The most dangerous founders. I'm with you. I'm on the same boat as those second time founders that didn't hit a big home run on the first one and have a chip on their shoulder. >> Chip on their shoulder. >> Dude, I could tell the first time I spoke to you, I'm like, "This dude is angry and focused." And when I tell people I'm

angry and focused, my wife Was like, "You should chill with that." I'm like, "No, no, no. That is the exact type of weapon that I want to associate with and invest. Angry and focused and you are literally the poster child. >> Yeah. I build this I built my first business with a chip on my shoulder for sure. More personal stuff. Family, you know, people not believing in me and that stuff doesn't bother anymore. I'm like, I need you all to believe in me. I just need people to buy this at Target. But this time is

a different positioning where it's a chip on my shoulder but less angry more methodical more sniper underwritten how I've taken capital onto this business a little bit more a bit more like [ __ ] yeah you know watch this grow not saying yes to so many people but I agree I'll make bets on founders that have got a bit of a lesson to teach you something very subtly there I think it's one of George's superpowers as well and it's something that I've learned the Hard way that I'm just getting better at is the power of

no. You most definitely are a guy that's saying no 20 times before you say yes to one thing, which I love that. One of the reasons why I would imagine the first business was hard and it's might be the same kind of hurdle that you might have in retail period is just like the education on the product because you're so methodical like dude I got a package of yours this like race recovery. It was a bunch of Products. I actually sent it to the Mad Rabbit guy. came with this beautiful illustration outlining how many milligrams

were in each thing when you take it and I was like I have never seen a product be so informative and educational and telling me how and why and when I should take product that obsession is I think is is a huge moment that you have let's talk about product so if you are only building on social you do not own your audience you are Borrowing it the algorithm decides who sees it that is a bad business beehive changed that for It's where Open Residency runs our newsletter. And growing our newsletter is the number one

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your audience. Start owning it. You've launched how many SKs in in under two years? >> 13. >> 13 SKs. Just walk me through that kind of innovation cadence. How do you look at product? Yeah, I think my general consensus on on on product is fewer SKs are better than bloated ranges and that's like kind of the punch line. Go really narrow and deep on what's working. Generally speaking, our mission always has been to fuel the goal oriented athlete. So let's take like the highest level approach. What does that athlete need in and around their workout

To achieve their goals? For us, the runner, the cyclist, they need pre, during, and post carbohydrate and hydration. We're a sports nutrition company. We just believe that proper nutrition starts with proper hydration. You can optimize your gut, your cognitive health, your skin, your bone density, whatever it may be. But if you're not hydrated, we believe that none of that really matters as much. So first thing you do in the morning, you Drink a glass of water. Then you understand water is not enough. You add minerals. Hopefully it's electrolytes through cadence. So like we underwrite the

customer journey from 24 hours of the day. And we built a system of core, race, and recover. Race is energy, recover is sleep. We take those three pillars and we launch assets under each of those pillars depending on channel strategy or whatever it may be. So can for example ready to mix sashy gel bar 90% of the focus is on the beverage because that allows us to scale the most into B2B and the other innovation is high margin subscription channel focus distribution and innovation. It's been a year and a half. We've launched 13 SKUs. The

main focus being on the beverage and then the other innovation just keeps us grounded in who our customer and who built the brand. I'm very inspired by brands like RX Bar who continue to build the brand within the CrossFit community And stayed there. They always built the innovation for that customer even when they got widespread distribution. Cliff Bar, very good friends with the XCO there who sat on my board previously, same thing. They built that for the trail runner, the guy on the bike with his family hiking. Even when they built mass distribution, they continue

continue to innovate for that customer. So we'll never lose sight of that customer, even when we get more Widespread distribution. >> Yeah. Like for me, I do feel like you guys were like early on like the Hierax train. I think running is obviously a big one. I'm so so bullish on Hierrox. So for anybody out there listening, you have these three kind of core pillars as far as when in the 24 hours of a day you would take it and then these are my ICPS and then it's fitting in this distribution and you're just building

products based around let's just call There's some core products i.e. the gel, the protein bar, the red. So you're starting there and then what? Because I know that you're a savage and you're definitely testing all these out when you're working out. What does that process look like where like okay I want to create a bar. Where do you start? >> We have a very in the beginning it's different. It was like I want to create a bar. Let's do it. Find a manufacturer, run samples, make sure we can make money And launch it. We're very

different now. We have a stage gate. It's tightly run. We have to understand size of the prize. So, let's take a new flavor. Let's take a let's take an orange can. It's not a net new category. So, if it's a net new category, which could be what do we not do? I mean, we don't do like a powder in a tub. We have to understand like okay where are we going to manufacture it what are the margin requirements required what is the moq What is the cost to do business what's the lead time what's the

channel strategy and then we have try and underwrite that with an anchor customer so for us we're printing millions of these cans now we have to unlock that press go with an anchor customer otherwise it's a financial risk to the business so we won't press yes on our orange flavor until the retailer has said we will launch orange in June I go back to the manufacturer and say press Go so we're underwriting some of our risk now with a guaranteed customer. In the beginning, it was basically like very inventory heavy sitting on inventory hoping we

can sell it DTOC or B2B which obviously is a scary game because inventory is cash and cash you need to run a business. But we have a very rigorous stage gate where we underwrite every innovation unless I veto it which is like once a year. If there's an innovation I truly believe is A yes must go which pulls back to one or two things. One is it's a company changing innovation. I think no one is paying attention to or two it grounds us back to our mission even when this high as a prize is small.

An example would be a carbohydrate powder. Very small business, very small category. Most people won't consume it but it grounds us back in performance and I truly believe my core customer needs it from us yet it's not going to be $100 million Skew. almost like an 8020 feed your core ICP, elevate the brand, cement the positioning versus let's sell a [ __ ] [ __ ] ton of cans% >> makes a lot of sense. So for anybody out there, and you kind of you touched it on it earlier like this RTD drink, which I'm sure

you'll end up doing 90% of your business with this is just take something tried and true and then win on something differentiated. And for you guys, it's I would say the liquid is Great, but brand and positioning. >> Yeah, 100%. Sports hydration is not new. It's been around for a long time. Look at every single category in beverage. Alcohol disrupted by non-alcohol or better for you alcohol, low ABV, whatever it may be. Take soda, two big brands completely disrupted that category were acquired. You look at energy, you look at Celsius, even Alani, disrupted Red Bull

and Monster acquired. Who's disrupted sports drinks at scale? It's been some cute little brands. No disrespect to them, but like no one has achieved mass distribution and taken shelf space from Gatorade. And that's really what our mission is. >> You mentionedQS for some of the newbies out there. MOQs, minimum order quantities. It's the PO that you have to put in to get the ball rolling on the production side. >> I mean, when you start, you don't have that built-in PO from distribution. You Have no leverage. >> What do you say out there to people that

are starting? What are the best things you can do to kind of chop thoseq down? >> With beverage is harder because not to get into the specifics, we have a printed can. Printing cans are higher than sleeve cans. Like there's specific things you could do to maybe derisk the business and not go for the $2 luxury off the bat. Like you could do a sleeve can, which is a a tenth of the moq of a Printed can. So understand what's nice to have and what's must have. Printed cans are not must have. Most startup beverages

will do a sleeve can for example. But within any any category, whether it's protein, cookies, beverage, pizzas, whatever it is you want to do, it's your job as the founder to go to the manufacturer and say, "I'm a new business. I am going to get Target in Walmart. I'm going to achieve this scale. I need you to work with me. Helps That I'm a second time founder. So, when I called my beverage manufacturer, they were like, "Oh, okay. That's exciting." And we got very warm introductions. But the first time I called my manufacturer, I genuinely

just told them I had a Walmart pee. I didn't have a Walmart peel. I just told them, "Oh, I've got a meeting with Starbucks. I need I'm going to change your business. I'm moving my product away from my other manufacturer. I'm rfping this over." It's the first Time I've told this. I just lied. I just told the manufacturer that I was way bigger than I was and I was in stealth mode and were about to launch here and all these exciting customers. So then they trusted me and they made me innovation. They made me samples

and they were willing to work with me knowing that I was going to bet on myself that one day I would get these customers and buy time. But as a founder, it's your job just to win over That manufacturer because they're getting dozens of calls a day from the next cadence to say, "Hey, I want to launch this." And like if they invest your time into everyone, they're never going to have time for their core audience. So honestly, you just have to be a really good salesman. >> I mean, you said something very profound and

very simple. And I remember the day almost 10 years ago when I just showed up in Austin, Texas at my productions Door. >> Yeah. >> There I can't say enough about face to face showing how serious you are and meeting people in person, having a cup of coffee with them, seeing them for an hour. You can get crazy benefit just doing that. >> 15 minutes in person. help them know who you are, what your goals are, and this kind of a conversation, and you're going to hope they're going to make a bet on You. So,

people buy from people. >> I wouldn't say that was a lie either. It was like a white lie, too. You know, you're getting some leverage in this picture. You're painting a big picture. I don't say that's a lie. >> You think that um there's a level of delus, you know, we're delusion >> for sure >> because you you do believe it. I said some wild [ __ ] when I went into Austin And then I just remember like a year later having dinner with them and they're like everything you said has happened and then that's

where you get you get even more rope because you know it's the Conor McGregor say you're going to knock him out in the second round. Knock him out in the second round. >> You're going to get you're going to get big bucks. You're always sold out. So demand plan. You've been sold out 200 plus days. Good problem or bad problem? And how are you solving for that? >> Terrible problem. We sell a product that we promote as a daily consumption. When you can't consume it every day, it's not aligned to your mission. So like if

you're doing a clothing drop, I think it's quite cool to be sold out. And don't get me wrong, in the beginning it's great because it shows that product market fit exists. But ultimately, it's a problem because one, we're not doing a Good enough job of supplying our customers with product they want, i.e. we're not demand planning. We come back to that. And then two, when you're building a brand based on daily hydration and daily pattern recognition and daily discipline and you can't have it every day, again, there's a problem. And if people love it, they're

going to get it from somewhere else. Don't think anyone's loyal. I think that's a massive mistake brands make is they believe that Brands are loyal. I mean, I try new brands all the time. I subscribe to a few brands, but I'm willing to switch and if I can't get it, I'll definitely switch. So, that's one thing I think about all the time. At the same time, we bought enough cans to last us a year. They last us a month. Like yesterday, I think >> first of all, problems. We back. >> That's true. And then we

made an order on Friday for a million of each flavor. It's wild. I'm making those big bets to launch into one retailer. So, we have a demand planning team now. We have an operations team now that are looking at data and informing with our retail team. What's coming in the pipeline? What's our current velocity? Let's measure it up. Let's balance that against cash and inventory. how much we can support lead times. It's a whole puzzle. But demand planning is ultimately the most important thing in your business, Especially when you're in B2B. You can't call Walmart

and say, "Give me another couple weeks that they're going to say absolutely not. That's two weeks of 4,000 doors selling that many. I'm missing millions of dollars a week if you're not on. And if you're not on, I'll put Celsius on. That's it." Again, no one's loyal to your brand. So, I think supply chain demand planning is one of the hardest things to do, but it's one Of the most important things for your business. >> You dropped a subtle gem there and I just want to put a pin and really really point it out. It's

very very dependent on the category. >> Totally. >> Because from a clothing perspective, you know, obviously you're not wearing it every single day. You know, Seagleman stable is a great example. My buddy Max is just like I mean, he started in the Beginning. He was doing like 20 hats a run and you just went on the website and you know, there's there's 22 hats sold out and one available. Human psychology gets to you at that point. >> Totally. How many how many things you seen? This brand sold out five times in 20. I'm like, >>

I get that ad all the time. This brand sold out five times this year. I'm like, what does that what does that even mean? >> I'm looking at them like they ordered a Hundred every time, which is great. Then 500 people bought bought it and kudos to them, but >> I don't believe sold out. I guarantee you B2B sold out is a massive issue. >> Yeah. >> It's a problem that you should be focused on. And then DOC sold out is nice on a limited time offering. Like we're doing a drop with 247 selling out

is cool. If that product goes into Walmart, which it's not, sold out is not Good. That's disruptive for your company. Visuals go crazy in that 247. He just showed it to me. Looks amazing. What's the biggest kind of mistake or learning that you could share with someone based on supply chain and production? I think a great call out that you said as well too was your business is about inventory planning. Yeah. What are some other big key mistakes or learnings that you would share with someone? >> I think launching too many products. I'm obsessed around

businesses that can build a several hundred million dollar business with one skew. How great is that? Putting all your wood behind one arrow. What that means is if I can give this can manufacturer all my capital, the more cans he can buy, the more salt he can buy, the more water, more flavor, whatever they can do, the more packaging. Like if I just keep funneling My capital into this skew, the more cost is going to come down. If I take some of that and some of that and some of that and some of that, different

manufacturers, different terms, different like volume, it starts to spread you too thin. So even though it's cute and nice to launch something else because it tickles your fancy, I would generally say until this skew has reached $10 million, don't worry about the next skew. Don't worry about the Next one and the next one, next one. Retailers do want to see two or three options. That's why we launched with a few different flavors. But we started the business with one skew, one flavor. And then we spent a year building one skew, one flavor. Then when retailers

said, "Okay, we like citrus. What other flavors have you got?" We earned the right to get more horizontally ambitious. So earn the right. Don't just do it because that one's not working and You want to do more because you want it as a customer. You have to put as much capital and efficiency behind the one skew till it reaches a certain KPI. And for us, it's like until that's doing 10 million, there's no point of doing the next flavor. >> Yeah. And you get all the compound effect. I mean, from a relationship perspective, communication and

SGNA perspective, a big thing to touch on there too for people out there Listening, I've made this mistake before. You talked about, let's just say one product that can one flavor and then you're iterating to more flavors. It's so important that if you do do these tertiary kind of ones to hit that, you know, core ICP to build brand, try and find a way to keep it with that same production facility because the second you deal with Johnny in Germany and Mark and Austin, >> it's just two completely different Things that you have to manage

>> different 100%. The issue you're going to have within different categories is some manufacturers are just the best at doing one thing. >> Yeah. You know, but you know, everything has pros and cons, but I would agree with you. Stay focused. >> What about the cans, the satchets, the bars? What's been harder than you expected? And where have you been Pleasantly surprised as far as looking at at the category mix? I think everyone said you're going to launch a beverage business. That's crazy. How much capital that needs? Like, you know, how much money you're going

to have to raise, how expensive that is, you know, how bad the unit economics are. Like, I'm wildly surprised about how profitable the the the channel and B2B, B TOC, and beverage is. I think we've nailed it on a formulation standpoint. You know, it's Water and salt at a premium price pointish. So, we've allowed to build we've built a formula that has has allowed us to make really really really solid gross margins that when I speak to an investor, they're like surely not. Like, that's incredible. So, I'm I'm I'm pretty I'm pretty amazed by how

many people told me don't do beverage. At the same time as we've leveraged or derisked the business to some extent by saying we're not only a canned electrolyte. We Also have ready to mix sachets that are again 65% subscription our website. We have gel innovation for the runner that is number one selling on the feed and on our website and we have other innovation that is extremely high subscription very high volume and very high margin that is feeding the rest of the business. So they kind of work in tandem as like a halo effect. Chances

are someone's tried my gel at Brooklyn half marathon at the Bandit store. They pop into Target, they Buy my can. Same thing. So, they're kind of married against each other and we feel like we're hitting a really good sweet spot there. >> You can upsell and cross-ell across all of those. What about the actual liquid? Cuz when I drink this cola, it literally tastes like Coca-Cola to me. And we joked off camera like Coca-Cola and Gatorade to me is like dessert at this point. this is like the actual premium fuel that I want to drink

for people out There that don't want to do the white label and just do some cool branding, stick a random product everybody does. How should they approach making their own custom product? Uh, I can give you it from my perspective and what I've seen to work. We've contacted and work with a formulator. I think one of the things that 90% of brands will go to a manufacturer and say, "I want to launch your hydration brand. Give me your three or four options. I'll bottle it. I'll Sticker it and we'll go. And there's nothing wrong with

that. Allows you to get to market. Again, the mo in CPG is brand. So like ultimately, why are you focused on investing all your capital into formulation? For us, it was different. We were formulation first and brand very very very very close second. And we cared about a formulation because we went out and said we are the best. We're unique. We're in form sport approved or NSF approved. We're the best In the world. We're the best innovation in hydration beverage. Most founders, if you want to build something unique, you go to a formulator. There's a

bunch of them out there. And you say projectbased, I want you to build me this. They'll build you samples. You pay for their time. You pay for samples. Then you take those samples to a manufacturer. Chances are that developer knows someone. And you say, I want you to scale this up. The pros are you own Your IP. I own the cadence cola formula. I take that formula to my manufacturer now and say, run this. They don't need to worry about it. They didn't develop it. They don't own it. So when it comes to that big

payday from Coca-Cola or Pepsi or Dr. Pepper or whoever it may be, you have IP and you have protection. So there's a way for us to transfer that technology to a co-man and they run it for us rather than the co-man white labeling for you and you really own Nothing other than your logo. We've looked at it that way. Every formulation we have has been custom formulated. We actually have full-time developers now internal. I've always been very curious and I know you run an absurd amount of miles so you would have like a bigger sample

set than others. Like if you're making this drink and you're trying to figure out how much magnesium to put in it, how does that go? Are you doing a run with 400 milligrams and then doing a Run with 500 milligrams? Like almost like a a split test on ecom. Is that what you're doing? >> We've always approached it from a data perspective. So when we looked at CAM, it's funny. I had this conversation yesterday. We have a head of innovation nutrition called Matt Jones. He's the head of sport science, nutrition for the Boston Celtics championship

winning team. So, he's got deep, deep understanding of sports nutrition, Sports science, and everything we do has been informed from studies out there in hydration or from sweat testing or from other data points that are clinically proven. And we've taken that data and we've built a formulation. So, for example, this can has 500 milligrams of sodium. Why 500? Gatorade has 100. Barcode has 60. I'm using those example numbers. I don't actually know. But generally speaking, we're overindexed in sodium. The reason why is because the Average sweat loss, if me and you both go for a

1 hour run right now. The average we will both lose, it's genetical based, not genetics and climate, etc. is will probably lose around 800 to 1,000 milligrams of sweat. >> Wow. >> You didn't know that. This is half of your run. This is 30 minutes. What is the average run club in America? Three miles. What's the average time it takes? 30 to 40 minutes. Therefore, you need 500 milligrams of sodium based on 30 to 40 minutes of high to moderate activity. So, that's pulled back from data and we're able to go to a retailer and

say, "We're different because all your other drinks are using 50 to 60 milligrams." That's like me coming to you and say, "I have a 5 g protein shake." You're going to say, "Five grams. I need 50 grams now. I need 40 grams now. I need 15 grams of creatine, not five grams of creatine." So, we're never going to dumb Ourselves down in innovation. We just expect over time, the next one to two years, consumers and retailers and buyers to eventually evolve to the point and say, "Why was I stocking a 50 gram sodium drink? That's

pathetic. That's like a 5 g protein shake." So, we're the best in class there. And yeah, it's all informed by data. >> Outside of the people that are running one hour a day, just the average human being, how many milligrams should they Have a day? Should they be drinking one of these a day regardless? >> It's very Yes, 100%. I think so. Salt is such a has such a negative connotation. I tell my mom and dad I'm launching a brand around sodium like oh sodium's bad for you right >> and you've probably heard the same

thing again our positioning is not for the average it's for the goal oriented it's the person running hyroxy activity and then over time we scale that however the General population massively underestimate how dehydrated they are and I think whether it's through food now becoming you know potentially over time more cleaner less sodium less seed oils you're seeing that movement pretty aggressively. We're generally indexing that people will start to consume less sodium in their food and they're going to need that sodium from other things, sachets, cans, etc. supplements, minerals. So, we truly Believe that over time

we'll be able to educate consumers on how much sodium they actually need. Specifically within the world of sport, because I think poor hydration can affect resting heart rate. It makes threshold sessions harder. Like now with the adoption of people pushing their bodies even further within sport, amateur sport, they're going to need more education around sodium, sweat intake, sweat loss, etc. And goes back to the fact that if you can make that an Enjoyable experience, they're more likely to come back time and time again. But mass America today probably don't need more sodium. Generally, they have

enough through their diet. But in certain key pockets, we have a big enough demographic that we can scale a business to where we want to get to. >> Radical transparency. He's saying some people don't need it in in some context. I love that. >> Honestly, don't. Some people don't. >> I can imagine with some of these foods, how much salt this all backs into, for me content. I think that's one of the key drivers and how you've solidified your brand positioning. How do you look at content into your overall kind of positioning strategy? I mean,

ultimately, it's just storytelling. You know, we talked about the brands that were inspired by. I'm not inspired by their liquid. I'm inspired by their brand, their Storytelling, the romantic short form content they do about that individual who's achieving like it's just like I'm so encapsulated by it and now we're consuming more and more content from brands all the time. Like it look what it's like just constant evolving podcast, media, you YouTube, whatever it may be. So we see oursel and we see our positioning in marketing and storytelling as inspirational yet achievable. And I Think we're

doing a pretty good job of that. Honestly, I think if we're doing one thing really, really well, it's our it's our positioning within the world of running and endurance sport right now and the storytelling our brand are doing. Again, it's hard when you want to scale that to the masses. But we see it as a very very big lever and a high importance in the business. Your CMO may or may not have said that you're involved in all the details down to the Instagram carousel posts, the copy. Why do you think it's necessary to be

that involved in all of the small minutia in relation to the brand? I think I don't believe that that is required over time. It's just that that everyone in the company is relatively new and it takes time for them to see the world how you see the world. It's a big comes back to the hiring process and people and your culture etc. But it's so so important that you maintain your Brand equity for as long as you can hopefully forever. And a lot of what goes on on our feed, on our page, our design, on

our campaigns is a brain dump from what's in my head along with the team, but a lot of it does come from like the inspiration that I have for how I want the brand to be portrayed. So, I care a lot about those minute details and I think for as long as I can, I will. But I think again, it helps my team to understand how I'm thinking and Eventually you can let them run with it. But right now, we're not in that position yet. >> Makes a lot of sense. Yeah. your YouTube, George's, Dom,

Nick Bear. I actually just sank this morning with with Greg from Bloom. He's putting some great content out as well, too. I think that there's a very, very small amount of people that are putting out both entertaining, but also very educational content and inspirational content. You've done an absolutely great job. What does that look like for people out there that want to do this YouTube, this day in the life type content? We have our own process on the podcast side, but what does that look like? Is this an ideation day? a guy comes over one

time a week. For people out there that want to get started, what's the simplest way to get started? >> Um, my one of my biggest requests in my last Company was I didn't document anything. You know, I got a incredible journey and some incredible moments, some pinch me moments that will live in my brain forever and my photo album and I didn't get to share with the world. >> Guys, we're getting to that at the end of this episode. Raised 100 plus million dollars, check from Peter T on an airplane. We're getting to that. Don't

worry about it. Keep going though. And the point of that is, you know, I didn't Post it, not for any reason other than I just wasn't focused on it and it wasn't a priority. And I truly believe that impact is really important. And I think that one, it helps the business and the brand evolve for a very low cost of capital. I mean, ultimately, I can build a YouTube almost for free on my iPhone when over 10 customers. Like the ROI is really, really high other than time. Now, it's got to point where we have

people dedicated towards content and Media and how can I position myself to bring in new customers? How am I involved in launches, campaigns? I think there's incredible founders where you could actually turn off the brand's Instagram and the brand would still exist. I look at Ronnie at Kith. >> Yeah. >> Ultimately, he's the one 10 days out from every launch who's posting before Kith is. And he's you can build demand. You can start to measure what we think The drop's going to be and George obviously does it. And there's a number of other founders. I

will say this brand is bigger than me. This brand could survive with me operationally out. No. But with me not as the face of the brand, absolutely. I never wanted to be the, you know, you talked about one brand, a nutrition brand, like I don't want to have the name of the company my name. It's not Mai Nutrition. It's not Ross supplements. It's Cadence and it Can exist without me, but I add fuel to the fire. I help to bring in new customers, new audience, new subscribers, and I help to educate because I think people

nowadays want to understand what happened and how we got here. It's not just this faceless brand. But it's it's a big time suck. It costs a lot of money now. Oh, it's a big a big cost in my time, but we're seeing the ROI for sure. >> Great YouTube channel. Definitely check It out. And you said something and we also talked about it a bit off camera. For everybody out there, I think the ultimate goal, I've talked about a little bit with George as well, too, is in the beginning, we called it like a hedge.

you guys got to double down with you and George out the gates is definitely utilize the personal brand in the beginning to get you off the ground, but then it should be a race to be removing yourself forward facing so the Brand can live past you forever. That should be the goal in my opinion. >> I'm not on the Instagram page. There's one picture of me and George. That's it. >> Wow. >> Yeah. >> Did not know that. >> Yeah, it was one picture and we posted it 29 30th of December. It was a recap

of the year. It's the only picture of me and him sitting there whiteboarding. So I think you know we see the data how Many people come in through me, how many people come in through other influencers, how many people come in through word of mouth, whatever it may be, podcast, etc. There's a high percentage that come in through my following. I have a rel relatively small modest following, but it's a very sticky engaged consumer because I'm really talking about one or three things, business, brand, training, or my family. I don't have like a widespread Distribution

in terms of what I'm educating on. And I think that's a reflection of like what the my customer and our customer today want to be fed. They want to learn about how to build a brand, how to stay fit and balance a family at the same time. And there's very few people doing that. So at the same time as building this positioning and brand, we're also thinking about how can I position myself to add you know an how can I advantage and how can I move This business forward. But I agree with you fully like

you don't want the two and two to be inseparable. >> I agree. H how do you decide what is on brand versus what is a distraction from both a personal perspective and a brand perspective? I know you guys have done, you know, a bunch of collabs. Is there any type of kind of like mental model or rubric that you say we should do this, we shouldn't do this? >> No, it's got it's got it's feeling It's purely feeling. Honestly, I think that's something that is a superpower. You can just feel if it makes sense for

the brand. There is obviously an underwriting of allocation of time, capital, size of the prize, etc. But doesn't get to there until I know it just feels right for us. >> Makes sense. I know you guys have done collaborations with like RAW, you do stuff with Bandit. What do you think makes a good collaboration for you guys? >> Non-competitive categories that add advantage to each other. Bandit is a good example. Bandit have one of the strongest run communities in the world. Tim and Nick and Ardith have done an incredible job there. We're proud to be

a partner of that and I would say that they've helped us tremendously in elevating access into the consumer category specifically in the world of New York City. They will never do supplements. We'll never do apparel. We'll never do a run club. We'll fuel run clubs. We'll fuel apparel brands, but we're never going to go out there and try and stomp on their will be hard to they're one of the best. But we're not going to drop clothing for a quick million dollars. Like we have very fundamentally said we will not do that. If you want

to collaborate and we will collaborate with Bandit in the summer, then let us do what we do best. We'll let you do what you do best and that is What makes a good partnership. RAW was the obscure one where we both do supplements, but my relationship with the team there is like family and they have a very different audience than us and we wanted to win over some of that bodybuilding hybrid consumer and they wanted to tap into endurance. So, we had very different demographics and it was actually just friends sitting across the table saying,

"Fuck it, let's do it." But I think non-competitive categories That you will never step into without the collab make a lot of sense >> with the same ICP. >> With the same ICP. >> Yeah. I think Bandit's a perfect example. And I think like positioning from a quote unquote like cool perspective. You guys are both very elevated in your category. So I think that was an absolute home run. Any other, you know, dream collaborations or someone that you want to collaborate With that you guys haven't yet? I know it's still early in the game. >>

We're gonna manifest it now. It's on camera. absolute dream is I would like to do a sleep capsule with an espresso. So we have a sleep product that's best served in my opinion hot. So if you were to capsulate it, run it through an espress espresso machine, it would be like a warm soon to be chocolate flavor hot cocoa. That would be incredible. Like an espresso cadence. It seems very Different. And I bet you weren't expecting that. I dropped them at the beginning, but I think that would be amazing cuz we'd reach mass America potentially

and we still achieve our mission of hydrating performance sport and there's probably a few brands right now that we're in discussions with for some stuff that's outside of clothing and maybe footwear or something like that. 2030 espresso times cadence coming to your home. Guys, quick break. This Episode is sponsored by Universal Ads, a division of Comcast. I have spent tens of millions of dollars on meta ads. At one point, it was 95% of my marketing spend. That is super dangerous. With one algorithm shift, your whole entire business can stall. A great option is layering in

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free creative and measurement services. If you're running CTV or Spending six figures plus a month on paid, email us at [email protected] with subjectline universal. Platform dependency is dangerous. Don't make that mistake. Link below for more. If somebody wanted to be on this quote unquote cadence team, how would they come on? Same question that I asked George. What would you say? What makes someone a quote unquote cadence athlete? It's funny because we we positioned away from our initial thesis on athletes was We don't do ambassadors, we do athletes. The difference of an ambassador and athlete is

an an athlete is a full-time athlete. They are in the world of running probably achieving Olympic qualification. they're training to compete at an Olympics for example within the sport of track and field marathon iron man you know world championship level and we did that and what we saw from that is the cost of business is Relatively high and the return of investment outside of credibility and awareness is very low we'll take one of the best US marathon runners an incredible individual one of the best athletes potentially in the country yet he wouldn't sell one of

these Because like who's >> oh man >> like how does that work? He runs a 20110 27 marathon. Like surely it's not because of Melonberry cadence, right? >> It's so f I already know. You know why? Cuz he's got 8,000 followers, not 80,000 followers. It's [ __ ] up, bro. >> It's it's messed up. And that's like a reflection of the category now. Yet we'll take individual. >> I think that's a reflection of the world right now that like obviously you know you could have a smaller audience and it could be super super sticky. But

the reality is if you don't have distribution >> Yeah. distribution >> product can only go so far. It can go far if you have superior product, but I think distribution just amplifies everything. >> Totally agree. So, we build basically like the dumb down version as a tier like most brands would do. Like we have a few select tier one athletes that ground us in who the brand is, the authenticity, the performance. We'll compete at the highest level of sport Within their realm. Olympics, Iron Man, you know, Tour to France, whatever it may be, tennis world

championships, etc. And then we have a more volume base where it's tier two and three where we're more focused on codes influencer content ads which drive 99% of the revenue of DTOC rather than these top tier expensive customers. So we've juggled with it. we've just brought in a head of influencer and a head of social to manage that department because I was Always scared about moving away from that top tier and what that would do to the brand and sacrifices we'd have to make on like brand authority to have no offense to running influencer Bob

who's running a 4-hour marathon but has 400,000 followers like really feels so unauthentic but yet when I look at the Shopify and he's doing 20 grand on a swipe up I'm like well let's have 20 of him I'm here to make money you It's definitely a tough balance. And when I I Actually know too because I looked at your your Facebook ad account and I'm in your funnel. What I like about you guys too and again you'll be able to do this for only so long andor you can scale at retail. You guys don't seem

like an ad company. The ads I get are basically from you. It's very organic. It's very authentic. It doesn't surprise me that a lot of your business is through affiliate. What's the strategy behind that of just like not doing quote Unquote direct response ads? It's it's a reflection of where we are in a life cycle. It's a brand. I can get away with it right now. I also you know what it is. I just it goes back to the first question you had. I want to be proud of the brand I build and I'm I

cringe when I turn on and I see some stuff and I'm like that I me and George went for a run on Sunday. We talked about like when is the time? What's the inflection point when you're like [ __ ] It like turn on the gas, turn on the water? >> Kids still does not have direct response ads. Yeah. You know what? Supplements are a bit different. I find a little bit like I don't want to see an influencer like show me their outfit the day. I don't know. I just It's interesting and it's a

reflection of like what's working our category. We will go harder on influencer. But yet there is a very strict guideline on the type of Influencer we will have. I don't care how high the ROI is on Bob, but if Bob doesn't look and feel and touch how I want it, I want to be I want to be Bob. If I don't want to be Bob, then I'm not working with Bob. So I have a big big cringe factor and if I don't think that individual represents the brand or at least represents where we want to

position the brand, we will not work with that individual. And then to go back to your question, how do you become An athlete? You know, it's building within the pillar of performance, aspiration, quality content. And then generally what we do is we send in our team and we shoot content with them. Like we're going to sign a new athlete who's in Austin tomorrow. We're flying to Austin. We're going to shoot him, but we're bringing the team. So, we're going to bring that person along with us, we're going to give them a huge amount of content

on Our books and then hopefully they have like the ability to distribute that and it still looks and feels like how we want to position the brand. >> Something to take out of that for for brand owners out there, if you develop a great brand and a great visual identity, the fact that you're putting it on your books is such a huge value ad to these athletes where they get the distribution, the branding, the costs to create the content. It's the same thing With this podcast. like we're literally giving you $100,000 worth of agency content

via content and distribution. So building that internal content engine gives you a lot of leverage in the marketplace to get I would imagine really good deals and the higher you are positioned in the market obviously the better deals. People want to be cadence athletes. >> It's very hard to measure the ROI on the stuff that we do right now. But I am not Hacking my way to this. I mean if you talk to Greg it's the same thing. He's big on brand. like >> he has done a great job of keeping brand and community and

I mean they're doing incredible numbers, wild numbers. But what I say to you is like I don't care how much Rand X and X is doing on D to see. It's not cool. >> I don't I wouldn't trade that for the world for what we're doing what we're building. I think we're building a Generational defining brand that can be as big as Gatorade. Yet we're going to make it as sick possible. Maddie, your CMO said Ross quote unquote [ __ ] hates meta ads. That's what he said about you. So, that's a that's a good

tie. He also had a lot of other great stuff to say about you, which I I want to get into that. A little bit of like hiring and talent development. You went from zero to 100 people at Daring. I know you still have a small company Now, but what did that teach you about hiring and what are you doing differently with Cadence from a hiring perspective? And I think again, I appreciate that, Maddie. I don't hate ads. I just, you know, time time will tell. I think in the beginning you hire for pace, you hire

more generalists, you hire people that are willing to do just about anything to you know get you from 0.1 to 10 potentially maybe that's 1 to 10 Million I think one of the best founders in the world right now is Eric Glimman he's a founder of ramp been fortunate enough to spend some time with him in my prior life he's now hiring you're hiring for spikes so in the beginning you take a generalist marketer who can do social media who can do paid who can maybe shoot content who can do just about everything because you're

so small you need one person as a generalist. Then as you evolve into 10, 20, 30, 50 million, You're hiring spikes. I need the best content team. I need the best paid media team. I need the best creative director. I need the like, it's not a generalist anymore in operations. It's a demand planner. It's supply chain. It's contract manufacturing. So generalists evolve into spikes. spikes being like one major skill set, the best in the world at that one or two things rather than being pretty good at a lot of things. So, in the beginning, we

hired Four generalists and now we're moving into this much more spiked approach because we're about 30 people now roughly at the company. I'm sure we'll grow to 50 60 people this year. And that's what I've done. And then the same thing, the culture starts with me. I mean, I appreciate what Marty said, but like I am generally on 3 4 a.m. calls. Not saying that's the way to do it, but I'm also up to late. I set the pace. I set the intensity. I raise the bar. I Read an amazing book. It's called Amp It

Up. It's by Frank Slutman. >> Slutman. I've read that four days ago randomly. Again, >> you can go faster than you believe. Keep pushing the P. I mean, that's the general thesis of the book. >> Yeah. And I think top performers want pressure. >> You know, leadership sets the pace. Amp it up. I can get it in a week. What does three days look like? Let's settle at Four days. But if you compound that over 100 decisions in a month, that's an extreme competitive advantage when you're this small. We're not going to win on capital.

We're not going to win on resources. We're gonna win on speed. That's how we're going to win this game to a certain point to 100 million. Like other than that, it doesn't matter. >> And people will crack. If they say it's in two weeks and you need to buy Wednesday and they can't do it, then Those are the people you want on the bus. Anyway, we're going to pop up that book. Amp it up. Light blue and white bookman snowflake. >> Got like a Dutch accent. Great. He's got some great interviews as well, too. I've

gone super deep down that rabbit. It's one of my favorite books. I literally just reread it like four or five days ago. Best book I I was at I went to Founders Fund at D1 Capital who where led my series B at my last company. They Gifted Experience in Florida when money was free and they said I was all there and Frank Slimman talked to the prior co of Instacart and they and Stripe and they had a conference and it was 100 people in a room and we got to ask questions and I got to

spend some time with him and it was one of the most incredible experiences. I read that book I think four times. I gift it to everyone who joins the company because I'm like this is there's one thing I say I'm going to financially change your position in life. Just give me the best you got. That's all I want from you. Just give me the best you got. >> Sounds like Slutman on that. I love that. And it's a short book, too. It's like 200 250 pages. >> You can watch on YouTube, honestly. He talks about

read. I want to point out something, too, just for people out there listening that are earlier in the journey. You talked about kind of the Generalists and the spikes. A huge thing and I've had I've had this conversation with multiple people on my team is obviously there's going to be what is their core competency but then also like what are they deeply passionate about where you can identify early that if they are doing six things and you're going to bring on someone to take three off their plate. You're going to want to allow them to

have the decision to do the three things that they're passionate About so you can elevate them but also put them in a position where they enjoy their life and their future. That's just a great conversation that I've had early and often with a lot of people and that definitely pays dividends. People appreciate that too. Giving them the insight into this person is coming next. How do you want to be positioned forward >> and how do you think you can create the most impact? Because I think ultimately like clarity creates velocity from Individuals. If you if

you help that individual understand the goal that we have whether it's 2026 or 2030 and they understand how they can tangibly move the ball forward then it's going to create velocity. So I think that's a big big big role. I think any founder their job is really three things. One is to set the vision, hire the best people in the world, and if you need it, raise money. That's all you really have to do as a founder. >> I agree. When people are coming on, what is that interview question that you always ask? You're going

to get the job today. Going to hire you. I'm going to hire you. You're going to start on Monday. I'm hired, guys. You call me in 3 months and you say, Ross, I'm leaving. I'm shocked. Why is you you're crushing? Like what? What do you mean you're leaving? You I gave you the money you wanted and I gave you the equity package and we're crushing. Dude, your stock's worth 5 million bucks. Why are you leaving? Why you leaving? Your decision. What does that reveal to you? Here's an answer I've had because Ross, you know, I

worry that I won't be able to get involved in certain areas of the business that I'm really passionate about. I'm like, I don't need you to be involved in that. I need you in that like or you know I Worry that like this work life balance thing is very important for me like sorry we're scaling from 10 to 50 this year like there's a time and place for that so a lot of times their answer will underwrite the type of >> person that they are the type of person they are and it's a very hard

question to dodge and if they dodge it I'm also red flag just tell me straight up answer I had the other day was you know I'm I'm in sales but I really love branding and Marketing I really want to sit in on those calls. I'm like, if you're sitting in on those calls, you're not selling product. If you're going to call me and say, I'm really not involved in the brand campaign for the orange. I'm like, well, we got 15 people worried on that. I need you worried on this thing. >> So, it's a great

question. I always ask, you call me to leave. Why did you leave? >> Clarity, expectations, good Communication up front. I completely agree. I'm gonna steal that one. You read this book, The Who, about hiring. So many people have come out and talked about it. I'm going to do a whole entire thing on I got to read it this weekend. >> No, Ken from Nurogum and Jeff from Momentous talk about it. I got to check that one out. You know what the problem is with this is we live in a in a really interesting work culture

where it's like deemed Psychotic now to be a very aggressive CEO. >> I think it's coming back. It's coming back. >> It is. I love that. >> And it's coming back a little bit and you're seeing that. But like >> you know what's so funny is the revenue and ibida dot curve of iconic the art company the last 10 years is directly in proportion to the general macro statement on like hustle culture >> like from like 16 to 21 and then like co and like we're not in work we got to be nice and then

now it's three day work weeks and like don't get me wrong like you know pros and cons but like all in. It's so funny that you say that because we uh [ __ ] it. I could say it on here. It'll be announced by them. We just signed a partnership with Beehive, a guy named Tyler Denk. >> Congrats. >> I invested too. I mean, they are Crushing it. But for me, I was talking to someone else in their space. He was in Colombia. He is in Colombia. His his girlfriend is in Colombia and he was

at a wedding. The back and forth cadence, how fast he was and the aggressiveness what he was sending me. I went I had my first touch point with him >> and I within four days we had a whole entire deal closed while it took 10 days for the other person to even respond to me. >> Yeah. >> And I was just like the speed and psychotic has like a a negative connotation but just the speed and aggression to get stuff done. >> The most successful people I know reply to me the fastest, >> the busiest

people because they have such a high ability to prioritize. >> Makes a lot of sense. I would love to know this answer because I actually spoke to to someone on your team about This. How would you how would your team describe working for you? How do you think they would describe that? >> I would say that it's a very fastpac yet disciplined workplace. >> One to one. He's got a perfect match. That's basically what they said. So that's great that you have that that that awareness. What do you think has been like the biggest hiring

mistake that you've made over the years that you could share with the people listening? Hiring based on experience. I've been here before. Brown shoes, square toe sales guy who X and Y sold this. Hiring people because they have the experience doesn't mean that they have the intensity, the velocity, and are willing to deal with the pressure. They might just want to hire more people and sit at the top. So I've hired people more green and more earlier in their career with a very high appetite For pressure and velocity and scale and then try to add

experience through the ability to use things like mentor pass or book calls with cons like consultants or experts like we were on a call the other day my whole marketing team with Greg talking about target. We paid for that call in Mentor Pass, you know, like that's what I'm trying to do. So, bringing patent recognition to these young hungry guns, not just guys who sold Celsius into Walmart 10 years ago. I always ask the people who I'm interviewing, when did you join that company? Because I think pre50 to 100 million is very different than joining

at like 200 million. You know >> that's a very direct specific question that can unlock >> head of sales at Celsius from zero to to 500 million is very different from head of sales at Celsius at 500 and like where do we need that individual? How Big was that team they had? Because often our teams are one people. Like my sales team other than me is one individual. So like are they used to having seven other people do the work for them and fill out onboarding forms at Target or are they like Like that's that's

how I think about it a lot. >> And everything you're saying is 100% mimicking the conversation with Maddie. He said one of your superpower powers Was he was someone that was fairly junior and you brought him upstream to be a generalist and do a lot of things. He said your ability to pick people and give them a sandbox to figure it out themselves and really empower them to take the next step in their career. He was very thankful for it and he said, "You've done that with a ton of people." >> I think your job

as a founder is to make people feel 13t tall. You know, I was made to feel 13t tall by my father. And I think that you only really need one person to really believe in you and then I'll give them the tools. Like trust me, I'll give you the capital or the resources or the access like just go build it and watch how it lights people up. People don't leave jobs because you're not going to pay them enough. We'll always be able to support them financially, but like people leave because you're not making it a

great place to work. A great place to work is Like impact. >> They don't leave the company, they leave the founder. 100%. >> I'm gonna fire away a million questions here. I got a I got a ton. I guess let's first start with you've raised over hund00 million in your career. What's your best piece of advice on raising money? >> Hire a good lawyer. Never skimp on two things. One is an accountant. One is a lawyer. Hire a good early stage funded Lawyer. I have one if you need one. >> I got a good one,

too. His name's Goody Agahi. I gave him a shout out already. >> Jason Cornfield Presidio. >> Basing Cornfield versus Goody Agahi. We're going to pop them up. >> I'm going to call them up. We need some stats. You know, >> my guy's good and I love him too. He's a former he's a former tax guy turned corporate lawyer. >> Work with both of them, you know, we'll Figure it out. The reason I say that is because and it's I can say that from the position of I'm able to afford >> Yeah. >> a good lawyer

and understand like you're not. But if you can never skimp on it because that term sheet, the I and the T not being crossed and dotted is a difference between you controlling your business and you not. Term sheets are wildly like they can be so detrimental to your Business. >> Yeah, >> we've talked about it on a couple past episodes. I think that one of a topic that I am most surprised that some of the highest level entrepreneurs know the least about is legal. Like not even knowing what strike price means >> is absolute. Not

knowing what a waterfall means, meaning whose money who gets the money first. That's something that at this point I've learned a lot Actually from Goody. Everybody has to learn that that's out there. >> It might be a reflection of the fact that you built such a good business, you didn't need capital. Like I talked to Dom this morning or yesterday and I was like talking about preferred nations and safe notes and he was like, "What are you talking about?" And I was like, "You know what that means is you're just such a great founder. You

didn't need anyone else's money." >> We raised a million. That was I've only I've only raised a million in my career. Never more. >> How much money have you raised with Cadence? >> Four and a half million. >> Four and a half million. What did you learn from that process? It was all from people I would say in my immediate network. I didn't learn anything I didn't learn from before to be honest with you. It was relatively Easy. Second time founder, good founders, great brand, good early velocity, good early signals, relatively affordable price, not overpricing

the business, making it fair, making sure we can get people great upside in the future rounds. And we're exploring a potential capital raise right now. >> Would you share the valuation potentially with the audience here? It was, you know, 10 times what I raised. >> 10 times what you raised? >> We raised 4 and a half million. >> Wow. >> Safe note or regular? >> Safe note. >> Discount on future equity? >> No. >> Fair enough. For guys listening. Safe note is just like a simple agreement under the notion that you're going to get the

equity valuation at a a future round, >> which is a discount on tomorrow Ultimately. It's it's an interesting stage because the early stage you're basically betting on a little bit of what's working with yet where do we think we're going to be in 12 months. The good news is in my business is we have such builtout distribution that if we do this if we [ __ ] this up we'll be at 40 next year. You know like it's incredible. And also like quite frankly we don't need the money. You know like we're in a position

Now where demand is very high and supply is very low. And thankfully I have friends and co-founders and people in my network that are willing to like help out if we need it. >> I think supply is non-existent. We talked about this off camera. The marriage of the actual liquid and the branding. I love the liquid and the branding. I think you guys are literally in in a league on your own. You know, if I could get one point across, I raised 140 million of primary 65 of secondary in the last four years, five years.

And I'm not proud of it. I'm proud of the secondary because the only thing that matters is you create a great business. Great business creates optionality, allows you to raise capital as you sell a business. But I have been guilty in the past in priding myself on how much capital I have raised and that is not a key indicator of how successful a founder or Company is. So that is something that I do not take for granted and do not bring into this business. I'll raise capital to grow the business because the business makes sense

with or without your money. Unfortunately, consumer packaged goods is so >> capital >> capital intensive. >> Yeah. You said something too very very subtly. I forgot who I heard it from, but it's it's brilliant. And for people Out there, I highly recommend you take this when you're raising money. It wasn't even about your quote unquote valuation. It was about you're giving them a discount on the future valuation. >> So, it's not about X times EBIDA, X revenue. It's, hey, I'm giving it to you at 40 or 50, but this thing is going to be at

120 in 12 months. >> Yeah. And how do we get there? Let's look at Let's do a build. Okay. this many doors, this many SKs, here's the POS. If we do right, and if we build that base velocity and our website DDC continues to grow at the current rate, here's what it shows. Maybe we don't get there. Let's go here. Oh, that valuation makes sense. It's also stage of where you're at. Like we're raising 20 months into a business where it's still so early and growth rates are so so crazy that you kind of want

to create this feeling of like getting in before but we're building a great business. Like The business fundamentals are are very solid >> with a super lean team with a lot of generalists which makes it even more impressive. >> Super lean team, lot of generalists. No one really has seen greatness before and yeah the the I always invite investors to come down and see it. So our last round was Steven Bartlett. He's a friend of mine. George introduced us. He's we've done some work together. Great individual. But one of the other investors is I invited

them down to our London event. Pop up Run. Come and see it. Come and feel it. Don't just believe me. come and see the 800 people that want to get tattooed of our speak to the store that sells our product, how it compares against the competitor. Like, I want you to come and see it and feel it. And it was really important to me and they did. They came and s they felt it in the city New York and Marathon Week And they were like, "Wow, like this is incredible." Ross knows how to sell. I

love that. That's a that's a great vision. Let Let them see it for themselves. >> Yeah. What's Stephen Bartlett's superpower? That was my next question. um similar to you, his level of his level of um inform the informative conversation, the questions he asks and the ability to seem to know just about A relatively solid understanding of just about any topic is incredible and not feel like it's fluff. I mean, he's obviously surrounded by greatness. He's interviewing great people. Great team. He has too. >> Great team. >> You know, Alex and I, we spent some time

with him a day in New York together and we he didn't touch his phone. He looked at me in the eye the whole time. For a gentleman, his phone's probably going Like, I >> worry about my phone right now. >> It's going crazy right now. >> And this guy would look you in the eye, have a conversation, not talk about himself for someone that's just he's on an obscene scale right now. generally feel interested in what I had to say, what my office manager had to say, what my assistant had to say, what Alex had

to say. Like, it was very, very amazing and humble to See how much he seemed to care and how much he genuinely seemed to be interested in what we were talking about. And it was being around enough people who were like, "Yeah, bro, that's Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, Zuckerberg's on the phone, you know, like, you know, name dropping any none of that." It was incredible. I thought his superpower was his ability to engage with people. It's so funny that you say that because I most definitely have ADD. I'm not clinically diagnosed, but what

this podcast has done for me is like, >> how often do you get to sit with someone and have a deep conversation for two hours? >> Never. >> Very very. >> My wife would love this. >> Yeah, I know. It's it's it's absolutely amazing. And what this has done for me, it's so crazy, is my wife sees it now because I do it on weekends. I do like Like I had a this past weekend, I had like basically a podcast episode with someone, but it was just I obviously wasn't filming. So, I'm taking this exact

kind of format and bringing it into my real life and doing the no phone. Like when I sit down and have dinner with someone, like when I have dinner with like one other guy, like it's basically like a podcast. So, I'm basically just duplicating this format in my life and it's helping me create Deeper relationships and getting smarter faster. Yeah. >> So, all Stephen is doing I know I'm just I'm doing what he's doing, but he's obviously a bit further ahead. I would say a bit more than a bit further ahead. Um he's just duplicating

what he's doing on Crammo offline at scale. This is why this is this is a superpower this podcast thing. It's >> it's incredible and I think yeah getting smarter faster is actually I never Thought about that but it's true. >> That's like my number one KPI for happiness in life. >> Getting smarter faster. That is why I started doing this again is I looked back me and Jake spoke about it and I was the happiness because I was getting because a lot of your intelligence is going to come through third parties. I was just meeting

more people and this forces you to do deep research on the guest. So all of your superpowers are Now baked into my brain through the research on the conversation. So what about George? What's George Heaton's superpower? >> Work rate, ability to endure stress. He's Kevlar. >> You know, I've never heard this guy complain. Never. He went for a run on Sunday and it was a pretty tough run. I was panting and I didn't even I didn't even realize he was were hard for him and he Afterwards was I was so hard. I was like he

never complained the whole way and that's George. He never complains. 15 years no complaints. His ability to endure stress is incredible. I've never seen anything like it. Those are the type of friends you need in life. Complaining for losers. I love that. To give people context, too. Do a little flex. What type of pace were you on? I know you're a specimen, bro. Flex on them. >> You know what? >> I was talking to the camera. Flex on them. I know. >> You just can't You're just randomly doing triathlons and [ __ ] What are

you doing here? Tell them. >> I'm not fast. I just enjoy the sport and it was it was a fast run cuz George is training for LA Marathon and I was hobbling and keeping up with him. It was it was a tough run. >> Guys, I'm going to pop up some Screenshots on here. He's being super humble right now. He's a machine by himself. If you could only focus on one metric for the next six months, what would it be? >> Sales. Sales cures all. Savage. We're going to keep it super simple there. What did

Peter Teal teach you that you still use today? Focus on the areas where no one else is looking. Go to markets and things that are so small and no one's focused on them. >> Tell us more. He invested in your past company. Tell us more about TL. TL is one of the absolute legends early investor in Facebook. If you're living underneath a rock, >> anything else that really struck you from him? There is like this general aura that you get when you're around people that you if you were to remove their name from it, there's

just like an Aura and a feeling of like an obscene level of intelligence. I've had it around him and Keith and Dan Sunheim. I was fortunate my last company to raise money from some of the best investors in the world. I don't take it for granted. Very obscure equity financing path when I went from like venture into hedge fund in this very short period of time. Uh, I met Peter Teal in LA and then he flew me to San Francisco and he wrote me a $45 million check in the space of a 30-minute flight. Met

his whole team and it was an incredible experience. But again, similar to Stephen, just an obscene level of detail about things that you would most people would regard to be non non-important detail oriented individual asking questions, asking more questions about the answer and the question, the question, the question. Not to trip you up, but he seemed like he really wanted to know. Like, why does Peter Teal want to know about the Packaging machine that we pack out on? It's almost like he just obsesses over details. >> What is the best question that you've ever gotten

from an investor? Could be from Tio, could be from someone else. >> It's a really good question. Ultimately, the most common slash best question is, you know, I think where do you want to take business? I think underwrites the founders's ambition. Best question. Not sure. Seems like I've had so many of Them. They're all a blur right now. But probably a bit of a a detail into the ambition that underwriting the ambition of the founder is always something that I think is really hard to shy away from. Yeah. For me, you know, I've invested in

a couple companies and I like almost all my bets outside of one. And it's a direct correlation between what I think about the individual driving the ship. If you don't have an insane belief on the individual driving the ship, I don't Care how good the opportunity is. >> It's a no. Nearly all of my investors now have sat with my family for dinner because it's a genuine I'll spend just as much time with my investors if they are continue to back us through the the life cycle of the company to the point where like I'll

talk about them so much in my home that I have to bring them into my home. It's a very obscure dichconomy, potentially a relationship, But I've rejected a number of investors in the last few months because I've taken them out and I've exposed them to my network and there's been red flags that have occurred that I couldn't underwrite because I was so focused on cost of capital and the check. >> Not all Not all money is good money. >> Not all money is good money. Very very very little is. Need is need and want is

want. That's the difference. Need is need. need and want is different and They don't have the same outcome always. >> Looking back at any and all of those kind of daring investors, Peter Teal was a big one. Is there anyone else that you can look back at and kind of point out and draw one or two lessons or learnings from them? I know those were some impressive names. You had Drake on there as well too. >> Yeah, Drake. Howard Schult Howard Schultz wrote my series A through his venture fund. Raised a lot of money from

A lot of fancy names. You know, the biggest lessons come from the negatives to be honest with you, like the board, like the board dynamic and the structure and listening to investors who are not operators. I've had a tough time this time around taking capital from people that haven't done what we've done, built what we've built, hired what we've hired, like lost sleep over the fact that like this is there's no plan B. Whereas to a lot of capital Allocators, it's just capital allocation, right? that fits in this box because they are 10 million in

sales and the subscription rate is this and their CAC is this and it fits the puzzle and unlock $5 million. There you go. But like to me it's much more than that and we've avoided you know institutional capital because I wanted to raise in the beginning from capital allocators that have been in the war room not in the boardroom in the war room like actually Been and built something. And that's harder to find because not a lot of operators are leading funds, but I'm finding the ones that have. >> Yeah. For people out there listening,

if it's your first time listening to this podcast, I only am sitting across the table from people that are currently in the arena. Not even people formally because I think the game is changing so much that being in it right in the here and the now, we're going to be able to Give you guys the most amount of valuable possible. >> The worst investors and I can one day I will talk about this. I think it's my duty to share more light on that. Not everything I did was great, but some of the worst investors

are investors only and they make big decisions with an information inch of information. They take an hour a quarter and they make these massive decisions in a boardroom where you've just done 80 Hours a week. No one knows more than you about the business ultimately, but that's the cost of raising capital sometimes. >> Yeah. Yeah, I feel like sometimes it would just be like what are the unit economics? What's the TAM? Is is the general direction going in this way? And that's way less soft skills. >> We got to hire we got to hire my

friend. He was at Albert's for four years leading. You're like, "Wow, selling Cats. What are you talking about?" >> Yeah, that's a that's a hard no. What's the next big trend in CBG? >> Male testosterone, sperm health. >> Are influencers overrated or underrated in 2026? depends how you manage them. Like anything in any third party, influencer, broker, whatever it may be, it's how you manage them. They need managed. They need accountability. They need KPIs. >> Last four questions that I ask everybody, favorite book or podcast and why? >> Amp it up without a doubt. We

talked about it. It's a change my leadership skill in in running a business. Amp it up by Frank Slipman. Favorite book. And I actually just read Being a Man by Scott Galloway. I think it's called life of being a man or I need to check. >> He's got some good takes >> and it talks a little bit about the Evolution of men not being men anymore and how we've kind of shrunk into this landscape of lowest testosterone levels and I'm not setting a good example and you know the on one end you have like the

Andrew Tates who are so extreme but you know your opinion is your opinion and the other end you have you know men and b women sharing the same bathroom and like where do men fit into that? they've lost their way in life. And I think, you know, make men great again is A little bit I I'm proud to be a father and I want to do like things that inspire my daughter through how I show up and what I build, not just, you know, so that's that that's one of my favorite books. Scott Galloway's recent

book, I need to get the name and then amp it up from a business perspective. >> Love that. Entrepreneur or brand that you want to give flowers to and why? two founders specifically within my last year of experience. One is Dom, the Founder of RAW, who has shared his phone book to me like it was his own, walked me into a number of the accounts that we we will launch into, walked me into a lot of my manufacturers, helped me with agreements, helped me with trade terms. So, thank you, Dom. And someone I'm seeing tomorrow

who I think is also becoming slowly a similar mentor is Greg from Bloom. I love finding mentors that have built and scaled within specific categories that I I am in today. So, Don't get me wrong, I want to speak to a tech founder who has raised a gazillion dollars, but very different categories. So, I'm I'm enjoying my time with those individuals and brands. Obviously, George and 247 have just been, you know, catalyst for this whole thing. So, his community is very much our community and we wouldn't be here without him. >> Love that. Yeah, those

are two really, really impressive guys that eventually will be on the pod for sure. What about A creator that you want to give flowers to and why? I want to ask you that. Is there any any creators that you see online? Because you now are obviously you're an operator, but you got a great YouTube channel. You know, someone that I respect a lot and it was actually about a year ago in Australia, Alex and me and this gentleman, Herk Hercules, were in Australia and he was like, I might do this content thing. He was Working

another job. He had his own sort of smaller business and he went all in on it and he devoted time and discipline and now he's if not one of the most influential creators for our business. He also works full-time at the company in the UK leading brand and community. But is he the biggest? No. But his consistency and his discipline and his impact that he's had on our business directly has been like remarkable. So I think just the conversation from might Do this to you should do it and now him actually saying you know what

I'm going to do it because how many people have you met like if I have just done that back in the day I would have like you know I wish I'd have done that he just did it. He left a pretty solid job and a pretty solid position in life and he backed himself and he constantly put out content over the last 365 days and it's put him in a position now to be able to conduct great paychecks from brands to Be able to add impact to our company and he's been incredible. >> Great ads

as well too. I actually got an Instagram story ad from him sitting on the bleachers yesterday. We'll pop it up. >> You know what? He's like he's actually about it. He does the work, you know, like >> Oh, he's a specimen as well too. >> He's a specimen. He is definitely smarter. >> Yeah. Last question, man. How big can Cadence be? >> Gatorade did about 11 billion dollars in 2025. I think I'll need to check that number. I think there's I believe it's a high highly probable we can achieve similar scale within sports hydration, sports

nutrition, and hopefully I'm there to see it. >> Love it, man. Amazing interview. Where can they find you? Tell us everything. Cadence, you personally. So myself, I'm On Ross Mai on Instagram, Ross Mckai on YouTube, and then Cadence on Instagram. We're very proud we have cadence the word and then use cadence.com. You'll be able to find all of our store locators where we position all of the products in retail and then also everywhere you can buy it on our website, the feed, Amazon as well. So pretty widely distributed. February is Target. March is Walmart. April

CVS and Walgreens. And then hopefully every shelf and fridge you Open and this year will be there. Love it. Appreciate you, bro. Cheers. >> What's up, guys? If you guys got this far in the episode, I would assume that you enjoyed it. If you got any value, it would mean the world if you hit the subscribe button, give it a like, post a comment, tell a friend. We could keep going bigger, bigger guests, bigger locations, more value. See you in the next episode.