The Coconut Water Revolution | CoCo Vinny Digital Social Hour #80

They kind of positioned me as the cocoa clown and this and that.

But at the end of the day, it's about getting your brand exposed.

Every setback's a setup for a comeback.

And if you truly believe in something, and if something's calling you in your heart, don't pay attention to what the noise is.

It doesn't matter who believes.

If you believe and you can see it and you write it down and you put it up there, go get it.

Don't stop.

It doesn't matter how long it takes, if it's worth it to you, then Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.

Go all the way.

Welcome to the Digital Social Hour.

I'm your host, Sean Kelly.

Here are my co-host, Wayne Lewis.

Oh.

What up, what up?

Coconut water.

Getting tapped in.

Yeah.

That's Coco Vinny.

Coco Vinny, what's up, man?

The coconut legend.

Right.

Coconut guy.

I'm about to take my sip right now.

I love coconut water.

Oh, dude, please.

You need a straw?

So this is a real coconut.

That is a fresh coconut from the tree, from the farm, to the fridge.

Which country you think has the best coconuts?

Yeah.

So.

Every different?

Every country?

You know, every region, every

soil, everything tastes a little bit different.

You know, it's like the wines.

They have different wines from all over the world but uh my favorites are um

i like i like thailand i like vietnam uh we've planted trees in puerto rico costa rica um it's all about the type of coconut that you plant as well right there's a lot of factors that go into it also there's different types of coconuts oh yeah like an apple you know you have a a green apple you have you know some sort of uh honey crisp.

It's all different.

So there's there's Fijian talls.

There's dwarfs.

Like we're planting the dwarf trees that don't go 100 feet in the air.

They're right here, six feet, right?

You don't have to climb.

Certain environment.

So you can't plant coconut trees here.

No.

The coconuts will only plant in...

They like the water, the ocean water, the salinity.

They like humidity.

So there's that line on the equator.

It's kind of like the line that hooks Hawaii and Puerto Rico together.

Anything,

they don't like elevation.

They like sunshine and water.

And coconut is considered a fruit, right?

It's actually a fruit, a nut, and a seed.

It's called a droop.

Wow.

It's crazy.

I didn't know that.

I didn't know that.

That's crazy.

In fact, it's called a droop.

It's a droop.

Yep.

It's different.

Wow.

In fact, if you think about it, the tree is actually not even a tree.

It's like prehistoric grass.

It's one of the most evolved

carbon-dated fruits we have.

It's 20 million years carbon dated.

Whoa.

You guys are getting at Cocoa University right here.

Whoa.

Yeah, I didn't know that.

Coconut isn't a fruit.

It's a droop.

Yeah.

I'm going to start telling people that.

Coconut is a droop.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Gosh.

20 million years.

How has it survived that long?

Because most fruits don't last that long.

It's one of the most resilient

plants on earth.

I mean, it can actually grow without soil.

It can go in the ocean for 3,000 miles, roll up on shore, sprout gravel, lava, sand, and plant itself.

Plant itself.

And it's resilient.

Wow.

It's hurricane resistant.

You know, you go to these tropical places and grow in lava.

It's sprouts.

So like you see these beautiful tropical places that have hurricanes annually, there's still coconut trees there.

That's because they bend with the wind.

They let go of the coconuts.

They're resilient.

They're totally different than any other

plant out there.

That's insane.

How did you get into coconuts?

What made you choose coconuts in general?

It's expensive, right?

Well, expensive is all relative to how much money you have.

But at the end of the day, I got into it because I had a problem.

I was doing Iron Man's in Hawaii and I saw all this trash along the shores of Tetra packs, plastic bottles, and people were drinking this coconut water stuff.

I don't want to name names, but I didn't like any of it out there in the package.

And the Tetra packs, it tasted like, I call it the cocoa hate.

It made me think I hated coconuts.

But then when I would crack open a fresh coconut, I was like, I don't hate that.

So I was like, how do I get that?

that fresh, that cocoa love to the people.

And that's why I invented that, the tap.

This is where that inspiration came from.

I broke a knife on a coconut and I said, I got to figure this out.

So this is not plastic.

This is ocean-safe, biodegradable cornflour.

If it ends up in the ground or in the ocean, it will deteriorate.

This is a, we're the first zero-waste certified company in Las Vegas.

So this actually deteriorates.

Can an animal actually eat like a turtle if a turtle...

Well, in that form, it won't totally destroy them.

Shout out to our sponsor today, AG1.

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Every morning I wake up and it's a good start to the day, you know?

Yeah, same thing with me.

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I mean, it just helps and then it supports my immune system also.

Yeah, it's got 75 high-quality vitamins.

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probiotics, and honestly, it's pretty affordable.

Less than $3 a day to use.

Less than $3 a day.

Yeah.

I actually like it way better than taking individual vitamins just because, granted, I mean, who wants to take 20 pills?

Whether just pour this in my water, shake it up, drink it, and get on the go.

Yeah, I used to take like 40 pills a day, but this makes it easy.

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Link will be in the bio thanks guys.

As far as like the microplastics that are out there that are getting into our food and our water supply,

that is what's destroying us as a whole.

That will deteriorate in less than nine months.

And this is just if it's in water, sauce all water.

Water and heat and the environment, oxygen, it'll just break it down.

And if you're in a like a composting bin that's got aeration, it'll be gone in two weeks.

Why don't they make straws out of this stuff?

They do now.

They're

starting to get into that.

But I mean,

it's expensive.

Like you said, if you're doing millions and millions and millions of tons of it, the oil companies are actually subsidized and they create the price of virgin plastic so low that there's no real demand for the recycled plastics.

And you got to make it out of something that actually degrades and and deteriorates entirely.

So, how bad are microplastics for you?

It's the worst thing you can do for yourself, for us as

humanity.

And how do you limit it?

Endocrine disruptors.

I mean,

it's being found.

Microplastics are being found in the air, in the soil, and everywhere.

Wow.

It's basically

acidifying the ocean with too much of that stuff in it.

And so, you know,

the ocean are the lungs of the world.

Right.

So I think

two out of three breaths you take are from the oxygen coming out of the ocean.

So if we acidify that, we're done.

You know, even in the rainforest is one-third.

So two-thirds of our oxygen is

scary.

And that's just from all plastics being thrown in.

It's all chemicals and plastics and all the other terrible things we're doing.

I mean, our whole system is, you know, factoried out.

There's really no way to limit it then if it's in the air

yeah well start to use different materials and start using you know plastics aren't all bad i mean if you think about something that's not single use like your car like certain things like that plastics are very valuable materials right we shouldn't be drinking out of them and we shouldn't be putting them everywhere and in

our food system.

Wow.

So what about plastic forks?

Should be made out of something that's not toxic, that won't destroy the ecosystem.

Right?

So, what were you doing before you started Coco Love?

Like, as for work, were you always an entrepreneur?

So, I've been an entrepreneur my whole life out of necessity.

So, necessity is the mother of invention.

It all started when I didn't want to ask my parents for money.

At 12 years old, I said, I'm going to go out and get a job.

I'm going to go to work.

I want to go to the movies.

I want to go on my terms.

I don't want to ask dad for money.

So, at 15, my dad went to prison.

And we went from riches to rags.

So I was riding in a limo, you know, high on life.

Everything was good, well-fed.

And then when my dad went to prison, it changed everything for me.

It gave me a whole new inspiration of why.

And my mom and sister and I were about to be homeless.

We lost everything.

House, cars, everything gone.

Right.

So that was it.

I

two full-time jobs, went to school, and that wasn't enough.

So I said, I got to start my own business.

I did that.

By the time I was 18, my business was taking off.

And I bought a house at 18 with my mom and little sister.

And they said it couldn't be done.

I met with the top criminal attorney in Las Vegas.

And he said it couldn't be done.

He goes, kid, even if you had a million dollars,

I don't want to take I couldn't take your money because He was caught on camera doing a big high drug trafficking deal.

He said, I don't think you can get out.

They gave him 25 to life, threw the book at him.

Wow.

And I went to bat.

I said, okay, if you can't get it done, then I'm going to get it done.

And it took me eight years.

I lobbied the Supreme Court in Nevada without an attorney, and we got him pardoned.

I got my dad out of prison.

Whoa.

So that was the beginning of learning my power and learning how to manifest what I need to get done.

So it doesn't matter what anybody says.

You know, I tell people every day, it's like every setback's a setup for a comeback.

That's a setup for you.

That's the opportunity.

When you're sitting in shit,

you know that you're planted for success now.

And there's a lemon.

There is a lemonade out there to be made.

So

that's just the way we do it.

And I mean, all the things that I've done before,

after all that, have all given me skills and proved to me my own power of manifestation.

And as long as you have that that faith and that belief it's about going by faith not by sight

everyone wants to see it gotcha but if you can't see it before everyone else does then you don't have nothing if you want to make an opportunity then you got to not only blaze the trail you got to make the trail yeah we're trail makers let the blazers come behind you gotcha so that's what this is about

that's what this is about this is really really really really good are you um working on any other flavors are we going to see some limit lines we have a whole

we have a whole line in our in our product roadmap it's all based and rooted in cocoa love everything we do is gonna is going to be towards something so uh every can sold every coconut sold there's a homeless women and children's shelter that we are aligned with called new life beginnings and also our own non-profit called roots for change and we're planting coconut trees

in the United States.

Wow.

So we're going to be the lot, we're already the largest coconut farm in the United States at the moment.

So we're going to continue.

Well, you guys have your own farm and everything.

Yeah.

We planted 34,000 coconut trees last year.

Wow.

We've got trees in Puerto Rico and Costa Rica and then we're opening escrow on a Hawaiian farm.

Amazing.

So if you think about it, localizing the supply chain is how you're going to get it fresher and also how you're going to build

economies out of ecosystems locally.

Two of the biggest problems in Hawaii and Puerto Rico right now is food food insecurity and there's no jobs.

Like just tourism is their whole industry.

And like they grow coffee in Hawaii, but that is so small scale.

When we bring the coconut and bring that industry to those islands, we can literally create hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in economic development.

That's amazing.

I love your mind.

You're going to be living there too, right?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

We're opening the Coco Shack and we're going to be serving.

Or is that a restaurant?

It's going to be a full-on retail hydration, you know health and happiness with fresh tapped coconuts off the tree um we're going to take cocoa love and make shave ice out of it with ice cream

it's fire in fact i'll be there the chef chef sarah at the um casa playa at win at encore made us a cocoa love shave ice the other day it was the best thing i ever had in my entire life so is it hard because every every fruit obviously doesn't mix well so or Or does it?

Like, is it hard to kind of, what flavors actually go to you and which one's like, nah, that's not it?

Everyone's got their own taste.

She tastes for different strokes for different folks.

But, I mean, coconut is kind of like that universal mixer.

Oh, okay.

And then you can drop in whatever you want.

Chiquita, mango, tequila, vodka, rum.

You know, Puerto Rico, they like the whiskey cocoa.

It's just all different cultures, different tastes.

I mean,

you know, I'm a 6'5 Mexican Jew.

I like what I like there, but it doesn't mean you're gonna like what I like.

And so I make sure that it's highest quality and best flavored profiles possible.

And then, you know, and what are some of the health benefits?

Oh, my gosh.

Like, so look, for people that don't know, like, because you never hear anyone like, oh, yeah, I'm a drinking coconut.

I call it God's Gatorade.

Okay.

So it's got all the electrolytes, magnesium, potassium, calcium, phosphorus, iron, everything that's going to give you energy.

And, you know, without making you spike, it's low-glycemic, so it's got like one-third the sugar of like orange juice and apple juice and all that other stuff, but it's gonna, it's gonna give your body what it needs.

So, I mean, even back in wartimes, Korean war, they ran out of blood plasma, it's got almost the same molecular structure of blood plasma.

They were IVing these into people's arms

to save lives back in the day, and only 14 grams of sugar, and it's not low-glycemic, no added sugar.

I mean, this is from, you know, that's what we're all about.

It's all about how do you meet calories per can?

That's not a lot.

How do you maintain quality and freshness?

Because I went to the Asian grocery market the other day.

I got one.

I had to throw it out.

A lot of the stores that you go to, what's the markets, they'll leave the coconuts on the floor.

Yeah.

They're not in cold chain.

So they're going to spoil.

Like, this needs to be held in cold chain.

From the farm, it goes into a refrigerated container, comes to our warehouse in refrigeration, and then it goes in the truck to deliver the resorts.

Like to MGM Resorts, all the retail.

It's in a cold truck, in a refrigerator truck wow you hold the cold chain you can hold the freshness but they leave them out on the floor and i'm like i wouldn't want to buy those coconuts because they've been out of cold chain for a week two weeks like you know it's just like do you do you eat your fish or do you eat your sushi or what the hell

it's got to be cold even the cans too right those got to be refrigerated no this is pasteurized so this is shelf stable so this will this is out of 24 month shelf life oh wow it can sit in your closet it can sit on the floor of the grocery store store without going bad.

Wow.

That's why we did this so that we could scale and get to the world.

But let's talk scale.

Let's talk distribution.

You're in the biggest retailers in Vegas and throughout the country.

How are you able to pull that off?

Because a lot of people struggle getting their products into big chains.

So

really, it's about distribution.

We're not nationwide yet.

We just launched this six weeks ago, and we will be nationwide within two years.

But we're not in any hurry because we built out the infrastructure and the distribution channels with this.

So we plug that into our trucks, our warehousing,

our teams.

So we do it a little bit different than a traditional drink owner.

They just plug it into a distributor.

But you get lost with a lot of distributors.

They have 10,000 products.

We have five SKUs that we distribute, you know.

Maybe it'll go to 15.

But we love to focus and execute and make sure that every product that we sell is getting the attention it deserves.

And so that's why

I'm going own vegas we'll get to 15 20 million a year in vegas and then we'll go nationwide i'm lighting up hawaii puerto rico texas the other distributors yeah nice cali cali for sure yeah for sure anywhere hot right the shelter so i'm i'm from long beach too and the shelter is in long beach

so we have uh new life beginnings has two shelters that hold up to 80 women and children and we created a job program called project hope so helping others providing experience and a lot of people won't give the moms a shot.

They won't give them an interview.

And we actually give them the experience.

They go out and sell at the Coco Shack.

We go out and teach them how to communicate, how to do some of the skills.

And then

once they get the interview, they're already ready to go.

So that's Project Hope.

How important is legacy to you?

It's the most important thing I have.

I'm 44.

I'm the last Zaldivar of my tribe.

And I'm having baby in six months from now.

Your first bats.

You're my first.

My first.

Wow you waited.

Yeah well you know I was I had to grow up really fast and I took time to make sure that I was ready, that I could provide, that I could do everything that I needed to do for my family.

Gotcha.

I was helping my dad and my sisters and my mom and I was more focused on the immediate family than making my own.

Gotcha.

Do you think putting others first was a good thing for you?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it gave me purpose.

It gave me work ethic.

It allowed me to really

know what I don't want.

You know, seeing, you know, when you witness things when you're growing up and you witness those crazy things and you really just think about like,

do I want this for my life?

So then you can learn a lot.

from someone who makes mistakes like uh what not to do and then sit back and actually write out what do you want to do what do you want?

What's your why?

I call this my wideration.

It's my wideration because I'm going to plant 1 million trees in the United States.

I'm going to help millions and millions of people globally

just do something that they want to do for themselves by that.

why and that wideration.

I mean, teaching people how to farm and teaching people how to do it on their own, not just be stuck in this wheel, you know.

You know,

it's kind of ironic, but it's Memorial Day today.

And people have fought and given their lives for our freedom.

Well, if you're free, then it's your job to fight and free someone else.

And so that's why I'm doing this is so we can drink it all forward.

We can all drink it forward.

We can do better.

We can be better.

Steve Jobs says it the best.

He says, it's about the crazy ones who think they can change the world are the ones that do.

And I truly believe that I'm here for a purpose and a reason to be that cocoa crazy one

to help inspire and change the way things are done.

Just because they're done this way doesn't mean they have to stay this way.

I love that, man.

It's powerful.

I want to talk about your TV appearances.

Oh, okay.

This man is pretty famous.

You've been on some big shows.

What did you learn about Shark Tank going on there?

So, Shark Tank is an amazing platform, an amazing education platform.

It inspires others, and it was the best thing for me to go in there.

Is it hard?

It's hard to get on there, right?

Yeah, it is.

You have to beat out 50 to 75,000 people per season.

Crazy.

And my first time I tried out, I had the callbacks and everything, and then they just ghosted.

So I did it again.

I mean, we're talking about hundreds and hundreds of hours of paperwork and auditions and videos.

And it's a terrible, grueling process.

And I did it twice, and then I finally got on.

So it took me two years, and I had to beat out 100,000 plus people to get on there.

It was insane to be on that show, guys.

And what was your ask on the show?

So back then, it was 2017, I was asking for $150,000 for 10% of my company.

Valuation way higher now.

Pricing went up.

I'm glad to say that when I go back on Shark Tank,

you going back?

I will.

I'll be back.

And it'll definitely be 100 to 1,000 X what we have.

That's funny.

The valuation is going up very fast.

Our company's profitable.

We're growing at a 50% clip a month.

Wow.

Our team is, in just the last three weeks, we've onboarded over 150 new customers in this city, and we're going to keep doing it.

We'll be in the business.

We're going to take over Vegas.

And what does Charting do for your brand?

Because I hear once you go on there, your phone starts ringing.

Non-stop.

Yeah.

Because you got other investors actually watching that.

Yeah, yeah.

I had a lot of tire kickers.

You know, there's a lot of traders.

Okay.

They're not true investors.

There's investors that are in it for the long game and the long haul.

Right.

And then there's traders.

I just read an article about the Stanford professor who invested $100,000 in Sergey Brin and his partner's Google idea.

He was the first check writer at 100 G's and he held, and that 100 grand is worth 10 billion today.

Oh, wow.

That is a long-term holder, right?

And then there's other people that just want to write a $50,000 check and they want to get their $500,000 as fast as they can out of there.

That's a trader.

So you have to think, if you're an investor, think about true equity.

Warren Buffett has got that long game, buy, buy, buy, never sell.

Build the equity, right?

And of course, he flips, he trades and does stuff.

But I mean, to be a true investor, you got to think long game.

Our plan is a hundred-year plan.

I won't be here to see it all execute, but it's there.

It's a long game.

This is not a trade.

I just sold 10% of our company to long-game, long-term investors that understand that we are going to go all the way.

And that was recent?

Yeah.

Congrats.

Congrats on that.

Thank you.

Thank you, guys.

Also, I want to talk about the profit because that's one of my favorite shows.

Have you seen the profit?

I have.

I haven't watched it in a while.

That dude's hilarious.

Marcus Limonis.

Were you intimidated by him at all?

No, he's a lot smaller than me.

So I'm really not,

I wasn't intimidated.

intimidated the reality TV show game that's a whole other story not everything you see on TV is what happens and so they rewrote and re-scripted and voiceovered a lot of stuff but they made their entertainment show it was good it was entertaining as hell they kind of positioned me as the cocoa clown and this and that it was fun but at the end of the day It's about getting your brand exposed and getting it out there.

Brand awareness, for sure.

We out there, man.

We out there.

It's really exciting.

Yeah.

I'm excited to see where you take this for real.

I love your energy.

Thanks, man.

I mean, you got to try this, guys.

I'm going to try.

I already had this and it was probably

what's crazy, even before he was on the show, I had it like I was sitting in the lobby and they had him.

I'm going to try.

I'm GM, right?

Yeah, that's where I hired before I even met him.

You know, there's, you guys know Fight Stars?

Yeah, yeah.

They have a...

They have a promotion.

If you go to cocolovewater.com and you enter in fight stars 10, you get 10% off your whole order and we'll ship you a case right to your door.

And every can sold helps the women and children in need plant trees.

We're all about the wideration, the mission, the vision.

It's everything we do.

Wonderful.

I dress like this every day.

I'm not just for my costume.

This is my vibe.

This is my style.

I love it.

What's next for you after this, or do you want to do this the rest of your life?

This is it.

I mean, when you plant a million trees and you own the coconut commodity in the United States, you're going to make a lot of coconut products because you got a lot of coconuts.

I mean, what other coconut products are there?

Rest chips.

No, no, guys.

There's 360 products you can make from a coconut tree.

Name 10.

All right.

Oils, lotions, soaps, candies, creams, everything you can imagine.

Then you have soil remediation products, activated coconut carbon.

Endless.

Endless.

Can you make a soda?

A coconut soda?

Can you make a carbonate in it?

You can carbonate this.

I would try that.

Vodka?

What about?

Yeah, you can make coconut.

You can can make a coconut rum.

You can make coconut porter beer.

You can make coconut lots.

What about a wine?

Well,

coconut ferments in a different way.

Wine would be a little bit different.

Wine's grapes.

Yeah.

You know, but a cocoa wine, you could make like a cocoa moonshine kind of thing.

You could.

Do you ever eat the coconut like skin?

Huh?

Like inside the coconut, the meat?

No, I'm never rated.

Yeah.

So good.

We could cut this open.

You could try it.

Have you heard of coconut milk?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You take the meat, which has all the fat, and you blend that with water or with coconut water.

That's coconut milk.

Once it's vitamixed in.

And you can eat that with cereal.

Yeah, that's just coconut milk.

You could drink that.

Bro, it can make coconut ice cream with that.

So at the Cocoa Shack, we're going to have...

Oh, yeah.

So you guys are coming up with ice cream, too?

He's doing shaved ice.

Do we do the full Cocoa Love shave ice?

You've never had shaved ice, bro.

It's...

No, I've had shaved.

I have.

But, you know,

like the normal shaved ice, not coconut shaved ice.

That's made out of water.

It ain't made out of the the cocoa water.

You know what I'm saying?

Benny, it's been a blast, man.

Any closing comments?

You know, guys, at the end of the day, all your listeners, they need to learn that every setback's a setup for a comeback.

And if you truly believe in something, and if something's calling you in your heart, don't pay attention to what the noise is.

It doesn't matter who believes.

If you believe and you can see it and you write it down and you put it up there, go get it.

Don't stop.

It doesn't matter how long it takes.

If it's worth it to you, then anything worth doing is worth overdoing.

Go all the way.

Nice.

That's it.

You heard it here, Wayne.

Coco love.

My cocoa love.

That's right.

Coco love, baby.

Thanks for tuning in.

Digital Social Hour.

See you next time.

Peace.