How to Scale a Highly Profitable Brand: Innovating and Marketing for Success

Speaker 1 The passion is obvious, and I think it's important, right? Because as the leader of a company, the entrepreneur, I feel like part of our job is to be unrealistically optimistic.

Speaker 1 And like, in spite of things that may be, you may be in a valley right now, right?

Speaker 1 Not in the peak, but you have the vision to look and say, I know where we're going and I know we're going to get there. And that's important for a team, especially in those valleys, right?

Speaker 1 Everybody's feeling a little bit of pressure, celebrating those little wins. Like we had an account that we had presented to

Speaker 1 about a month ago, and we presented like a full boat scenario, right? Take this, take that. It was gonna, it could triple the business.
And they came back and they did a fraction of that.

Speaker 1 They approved a fraction of that. And my teammate was like a little bit bummed out about it.
And I understood, like, I left that meeting thinking we were tripling that business.

Speaker 1 But I also was like, listen, man, like, we're growing, right? This is a big win.

Speaker 1 Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business.

Speaker 1 Now, your host, the Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Mello.

Speaker 1 Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today.

Speaker 1 To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you.
Just text notes, N-O-T-E-S to 888-526-1299.

Speaker 1 That's 888-526-1299. And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode.
Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out.

Speaker 1 I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy.

Speaker 1 Now let's go back into the interview. All right, guys, welcome back to the Home Service Sexpert.
Today I got an awesome guest. It's going to be quite a bit different than usual.

Speaker 1 I got the co-founder of COIA. It's 2016 to present.
He did some stuff in the past with

Speaker 1 Fusion Projects. Founding board member of Naturally San Diego.
And there's some other stuff I found, but we don't even need to go there.

Speaker 1 Chris Hunter Hunter is a Koya, a plant-based beverage company that produces refrigerated vegan protein shakes.

Speaker 1 He previously, fusion projects incorporated the company behind the alcoholic energy drink for Loco, and is the author of Blackout Punch, an entrepreneur's journey from chaos to clarity.

Speaker 1 An active angel investor and advisor in the food and beverage space with expertise. in founding, scaling, and investing in pioneering brands.
Chris, glad to have you here, brother. Quite the bio.

Speaker 1 I appreciate you. I don't know who put that one together, but it's great.
I appreciate it. I'm happy to be here, man.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So why don't we just start a little bit about just talking a little bit about yourself, your entrepreneurial journey, what you're working on today.

Speaker 1 You know, we talked for quite a while the other weekend, and it's quite the quite the journey. Yeah, man, I enjoyed it.
It's been great to meet you and chat with you.

Speaker 1 Look, I mean, I grew up in a small town in Youngstown, Ohio, really blue-collar, like steel mill, like automotive town.

Speaker 1 And I look back and I think that was probably the best upbringing I could have had. It instilled grit.
It made me who I am today. But I didn't have any entrepreneurs around me growing up.

Speaker 1 My uncle owned a construction company. So he was a general contractor.

Speaker 1 I learned that. He put me to work the one summer when I didn't think I wanted to go to college and kicked my ass to make sure I did go to college.
But look, I was always that like born hustler.

Speaker 1 I was always trying to find different ways to make money. And fortunately, I had been instilled with a lot of confidence as a kid.
There's this amazing story.

Speaker 1 My grandmother on my dad's side, she had a near-death experience. She passed away before I was born and came back.

Speaker 1 And she had this story that she spoke at colleges about where she saw the light and then she saw what she thought was my dad's face, right? And that brought her back.

Speaker 1 And when I was born, she told my dad, I didn't see your face, I saw Chris's face. And I knew that story as a kid.

Speaker 1 And there was something about it that gave me this like undeterred confidence that like, I was good. Everything was going to be fine.
Right. And that allowed me to try things right.

Speaker 1 And not have much fear around trying things. So, you know, I had a lot of confidence as a kid.
I started throwing parties at the end of the year.

Speaker 1 I started selling, you know, bootleg apparel at flea markets.

Speaker 1 I was always trying to find a way to make money because having a little bit of money, you know, mattered because we grew up without it, right? Or without much of it.

Speaker 1 And so, yeah, that's where I grew grew up. I moved to Chicago.
I didn't have, I didn't know what I was going to do there. I had no job.
And

Speaker 1 at one point, about six months in, I was wrapped up in credit card debt.

Speaker 1 And my girlfriend, who's now my wife, and you'll know why in a second, you know, I woke up one morning at her house and I was like, man, I don't have money to pay rent.

Speaker 1 And she cut me a check and I paid rent with that. But it was an awakening.
I was like, I got to get my shit together and get going. And I had met these guys who seemed to be rolling in cash.
And

Speaker 1 they were roofers. They were like hail damage.
You know, they were chasing people. Yeah, these storm chasers.
Storm chasers, right? And I said, I'm going to jump on board with you guys.

Speaker 1 I'm going to go do this. The irony there is that I'm afraid of heights.
So here I am out climbing on roofs. But look, man, I mean, that desperation or that drive, I never lost a sales incentive.

Speaker 1 I never lost the contract. All those things kind of led me into the entrepreneurial path.
I think I was pretty unemployable. So I've moved.

Speaker 1 I've lived in Chicago, lived in San Diego, and now live in Miami. But that's kind of my, my journey before starting any official companies.

Speaker 1 And then talk to me a little bit about really getting into it. When was the awakening that you had to kind of do your own thing?

Speaker 1 I think I was rebellious enough that I did not like to be told what to do, right?

Speaker 1 Good or bad. I was, so I was partially unemployable.
I always had a lot of drive. I could always make things happen.
I was always a good, you know, networker.

Speaker 1 In college, I had started a a promotions business. And so I met a lot of people

Speaker 1 in different industries and I kind of collected contacts basically.

Speaker 1 And so after my hill damage storm chaser career in Chicago, I bugged the shit out of this guy who I had met when I was in Columbus at Ohio State in college.

Speaker 1 And he was part of a startup vodka company and it just happened to be in Chicago.

Speaker 1 And so I was just relentless, like calling him, emailing him every day until he finally like deferred and just gave me a job. And so that's how I learned beverage.
I just, I just jumped in.

Speaker 1 I started selling vodka and bars and nightclubs in Chicago, expanded throughout the Midwest. And after a couple of years of that, I felt like I had a good enough understanding.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, I can go do this, right? And ignorance is bliss in the entrepreneurial world. Like if you knew what the journey was going to be, you'd never start, at least I think.

Speaker 1 So I called up my buddy, who I'd started a company with in college.

Speaker 1 And I was like, look, I'm going to start an alcoholic energy drink, which at the time was like, you you know, Red Bull, Jaeger bombs, like huge thing at that time, at least for me, maybe not for everybody.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 he's like, yeah, I'm in. You know, he was going to part-time it.
So it was low risk.

Speaker 1 A couple months in, we realized that neither of us wanted to put together financial models or try to go fundraise or any of that.

Speaker 1 So we called our other buddy who lived at, or who worked at AB and Amro, a bank. And he's like, yeah, I'm in.
And that was it.

Speaker 1 It was really low risk for me because I was going to, I was making $42,000 a year. I was like, can we support $42,000 a year? And they're like, yeah.

Speaker 1 And so I was like, oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 This was in 2005.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 So, you know, and just like many ventures, the first two, three years, we were on the verge of, you know, going out of business every month. I mean, there were times we didn't make payroll.

Speaker 1 You know, it wasn't this sudden rocket ship. Three years in, though, through innovation and,

Speaker 1 you know, kind of listening to the market, we came up with Forloco and then it turned into a rocket ship. And that's what really got me started in the real entrepreneurial world and in beverages.

Speaker 1 I love that story. You know, my president of our company used to be the CFO for 5-Hour Energy.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And that dude apparently, you know, he's a multi-multi-billionaire. And

Speaker 1 he's got a whole shop of everything to build Five Hour Energy duplicated. three miles down the road on a different energy grid.

Speaker 1 So if everything just came to a halt and something happened, a tornado hit,

Speaker 1 you could just re-up it. And I don't know exactly how far away it is, but I guess he's pretty paranoid.
It's just, it's like this energy in a bottle, but it's just

Speaker 1 his life spout of money. And absolutely.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's a monster brand.

Speaker 1 And that redundancy around manufacturing, like, I mean, the number one rule in selling beverages, or I guess in selling everything, is you got to have something to sell. Right.

Speaker 1 And so if his plant goes down and he can't make it, the revenue streams cut off, right?

Speaker 1 100%. And, you know, you've had some stuff

Speaker 1 happen with Forloco. I mean,

Speaker 1 what were some of the struggles? I mean, there was some stuff. I think some people got sick, maybe worse.
What exactly were some of the challenges with that?

Speaker 1 Yeah, just like the, just like the modern media world, you can choose to believe whatever story you want or whatever story gets perpetuated. Here's the reality behind what we did.

Speaker 1 Everything that we created with Forloco was federally and state approved, right? So all the ingredients, the formulas, the labels. So did some people like get drunk?

Speaker 1 Of course, but they do that off of Bud Light or Smirnoff or whatever other product, right? Did some people probably abuse alcohol? Absolutely, but that happens with everything.

Speaker 1 It was really...

Speaker 1 drafted and created to create this media storm around this new quote-unquote drug that was called for loco. But in reality, all it was was caffeine and alcohol, something that's not new.

Speaker 1 But that really created a shitstorm. I mean, it started in Washington state.

Speaker 1 And over the course of a week, we were on every news channel from the West Coast, going to the East Coast, culminating in Chuck Schumer holding up a can of Forloco in New York City and saying, this stuff gets you higher than ecstasy, right?

Speaker 1 And the funny thing about that is.

Speaker 1 Yeah, draw that parallel, right? The funny thing about that is that

Speaker 1 there was really

Speaker 1 nothing unique about it in that respect, but the press just built on itself. And it actually had the inverse effect that they intended, which was to get people to not want to drink it.

Speaker 1 Like, you know how this works. Tell somebody they can't have something.
There's going to be a run on it. Everyone's going to want to go do it.
And so the product was getting cleared out of shelves.

Speaker 1 It was a crazy time. Look, we always knew there was some risk.
There was a little bit of controversy around what we did.

Speaker 1 So much like your buddy who had his redundant facility down the street, we always had our formulas backed up with no stimulants, no caffeine, taurine, or garana in them.

Speaker 1 And so when this unprecedented ruling came down that we could no longer have stimulants in our drink, we reformulated and within two weeks, we had a new product on the shelf. So we were ready for it.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to suggest that it was that easy. There were a lot of things going on, frivolous lawsuits, being sued by government agencies.

Speaker 1 It was a wild time that we learned a lot of lessons. I say that's where I got my PhD in crisis management, but uh, but you know, the high highs and the low lows can bond you, right?

Speaker 1 When you're, when you're fighting through shit like that, there's no time for the softer stuff in partnerships. You're like, well, how do we survive, right?

Speaker 1 And when it's all going good, you're high five and then it doesn't matter. And so

Speaker 1 we survived it as a team. Later on, the cracks got exposed in our partnership, but

Speaker 1 it was it was a wild time.

Speaker 1 I was telling you earlier, I put my first book out, Blackout Punch, and it's really a memoir, but it talks about a lot of this stuff in more detail because you could spend hours talking about Fort Loco in that lawsuit.

Speaker 1 I look at this stuff. I was just listening to a couple of interviews by professional golfers, and they were talking about how great it was to win and go on a winning streak.

Speaker 1 And then you might have a year or two where you don't win at all and nothing's going right. And the interviewer said, what's better? Were the highs better or were the lows worse?

Speaker 1 And they all said the lows are impossible. That they're like, the lows are worse than the high.
Like, I celebrate the wins and I enjoy them, but it's like I flip the page and I go, today's a new day.

Speaker 1 Today's a new week. Today's a new quarter, whatever it might be.
What about for you? I mean, if you go back and think about it, like I'm thinking about that,

Speaker 1 what's his name? The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I don't know if he looks back and goes, man, that was a fun ride, man.
We partied. We lived it up or if he regrets it or where the, and it's nothing of the same.

Speaker 1 I'm just wondering, like, I've had some low, low, lows that I'm like wondering, what am I doing?

Speaker 1 And then, you know, the next week, make a good hire and you're like, man, I'm making more money than I ever thought possible. And it's like sometimes you're just three feet from gold.

Speaker 1 But what is your experience with that? An entrepreneur, you'll ship.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, I think one, that you know this and any aspiring entrepreneur should know this, that the path is never linear, right? It's never up and to the right. It's always ups and downs.

Speaker 1 And you talk about times like we have before loco where we're on top of the world and the next day we're as low as low can get, where literally I'm being told by attorneys, like, don't answer your door because they may serve you papers and arrest you personally, right?

Speaker 1 My wife's freaking out. Those are pretty dramatic highs and pretty dramatic lows.
I think it depends on who you are as a person. Who I know I am, and I learned this through that, is I'm a wartime CEO.

Speaker 1 Chaos is where I thrive. It's part of my upbringing.
It's just how it works. And actually, if it's too steady state and it's too calm, I kind of create shit, right?

Speaker 1 I'll mess it up to create a little bit of chaos. But in the mod, in my current life with Koya, it's a much steadier state in general, in the broader picture.
But my highs and lows are daily.

Speaker 1 I'll wake up and go, oh my God, like the number, we didn't hit the numbers. What's going on? Is there something I don't understand? Or we had a spoiled bottle show up on the shelf.

Speaker 1 This is a sinking ship. And then literally two hours later, I'll have a call with a retailer who will expand us to double facings and they're going national with our brand.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, we're on a rocket ship. It's that extreme for me.
Maybe it sounds like for you too. And I think people have to be, have to be ready for that ride.
It's not for everyone, right? But

Speaker 1 it is extremes. I will say that the high highs give me enough adrenaline to fight through the low lows.

Speaker 1 But I'll also tell you that the biggest mistakes i've ever made in my career is when i jumped into something and i thought it was going to be easy during the pandemic as an example i was we're scaling this company but i had a lot of contacts in the alcohol industry and this was like the this was like the uh heyday of the hard self source, right?

Speaker 1 White, white claw was on top of the world and truly was coming out. And I saw this like kind of gray space angle that I could launch a brand in hard self-serve.

Speaker 1 And I had all the distributor relationships and I knew the retailers and my my mentality is like, oh, this is going to be easy, right? I'll do this real quick. And I won't even hire a team.

Speaker 1 I'll kind of piece it together. And then I'll partner with somebody and they'll take it and go with it.

Speaker 1 And three months in, the world changed, and hard self-stars weren't the biggest thing in the world, or there were a million of them. And the retailer is going, where do I put this stuff?

Speaker 1 And suddenly it became hard. And I was like, oh, shit, I just spent all this money jumping in this category.
I don't have enough. bandwidth to run this thing.

Speaker 1 So I think really knowing what you're getting into is really, really important before you hop into the entrepreneurial world.

Speaker 1 Yeah. A lot of people are like, man, I just want to do it like you did it.
And I'm like, well, I'm on my going on 18th year.

Speaker 1 You don't know

Speaker 1 how much sacrifice, delayed gratification, driving the worst car, literally looking at the menu. I mean, 2012 through two, like literally, if the girl was going to order a steak, I was ordering soup.

Speaker 1 It was like, I mean, I've always made money, but like, I got to make ends meet. And,

Speaker 1 you know, all of a sudden things start to go right, but I've never been on a rocket ship. A1's been every year better than the last year.

Speaker 1 It's been every year a little bit more profitable and a lot more revenue. But I've never been on something like a two-year rocket ship.

Speaker 1 Like, I think about a guy like Elon Musk taking the money from Paylocity and going into these different categories and risking it all. Or even like.

Speaker 1 Mark Cuban and just investing in the Mavericks and sitting and calling every client, like putting his desk by every other salesperson and making phone calls.

Speaker 1 It's just, I've never been on a rocket ship like that. I think about

Speaker 1 another note, I was thinking a lot about controversy about who's the guy, and I know this is controversial, and I'm not talking about politics, but Donald Trump, man, I'll tell you what, he's damn near 80.

Speaker 1 And they put him against the wall, they're going to arrest him, they're going to take away his assets, they're going to seize his properties, and he's just like never back down. I don't know.

Speaker 1 I don't think I could do that. I mean,

Speaker 1 love him or hate him. Like, he doesn't need to do any of that stuff, right? This guy could be sailing around the world enjoying life.
And instead, he's fighting the fight.

Speaker 1 I mean, you have to, again, love him or hate him. You have to admire that like tenacity and grit.
It's like something I couldn't imagine.

Speaker 1 So you're going to come after me, try to throw me in jail for 100 years. You're going to take away my assets.
You're going to threaten my children. You're going to threaten my grandchildren.

Speaker 1 It's crazy to me. And I don't think there's a, I can't think of anybody else that persevere that, you know, I'm 41 and he's 77.

Speaker 1 i don't think i could do it i can't even imagine being that old and like just imagine playing all day every day no i can't imagine doing that now at my age i'm 45 let alone in my my 70s right

Speaker 1 yeah it's crazy i uh you know you talk a little bit about these highs and lows and we were talking about that but i think there's something to be said about the mindset of just an optimistic, we're going to fail, we're going to go the wrong direction sometimes, but we run at things, we fall forward and we've got a positive outlook you know if somebody tells me hey man i hate to tell you this but uh this happens to me on a weekly basis like something bad was happening the last year like maybe

Speaker 1 i don't know something with payroll we were paying an extra two percent i'm like good did we find did we figure it out that means every week and month going on we're going to get that extra two percent Right.

Speaker 1 So now that's newfound money. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Son of a bitch. What are we going to do? How did this happen? It's like finding things.
Like, this is what, like, feel free to come to me. If there's a problem, let's just figure it out.

Speaker 1 I'm not as like loose cannon as I used to be. I used to get so upset.
I couldn't even talk to people. I remember one day I screamed as loud as I could for an hour.
I lost my voice screaming to my COO.

Speaker 1 Literally, he's like, why are you yelling at me? And I'm like, let's meet right now. We're going to fight.
And I'm like, just so pissed off. And he's like, I don't want to fight.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, I'm just like, I've had it. And I'm like, man, I'm glad I don't know.
I'm glad I'm not that guy anymore. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, but it's growth, right?

Speaker 1 I mean, you, whether it's age, whether it's experience, whatever.

Speaker 1 And I can relate to that because I'm an Italian guy who grew up in a family that thought they were talking and they were always yelling.

Speaker 1 And when I first started dating my wife, she's like, why are you yelling at me? I'm like, I'm not yelling. I'm just talking.
This is how we talk. Right.
Now I understand the impact of my words.

Speaker 1 I had a business coach who did this like personality behavioral assessment called a disc profiling. And

Speaker 1 he came,

Speaker 1 what's that?

Speaker 1 Everybody in the home service space knows disc. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I loved it, right? It was, it was eye-opening to me because I looked at this paper and I read this output and I was like,

Speaker 1 man, this is all me, the stuff I want to admit and that I love to like hang my hat on and all the stuff I don't want to admit, right? And I was like, you know, the report, so you'll get this.

Speaker 1 I was like a 98D. And he's like, this isn't like a test where 100 is good.
He's like, this is like overly dominant. Right.

Speaker 1 And he was like, you need to understand the power of your words and that you kind of have an atomic bomb in your pocket. And the real power is not pulling it out and blowing the world up.

Speaker 1 And that was like game changing to me. My wife looked at me and she's like, I've been trying to tell you this for 10 years.

Speaker 1 But, you know, somebody like that that didn't know me telling me it was game changing.

Speaker 1 So, I mean, I think, you know, learning how to work with people, you know, you talked a lot about like training and building culture and things like that.

Speaker 1 Like back in those days at Fusion, we didn't have the time to do that. We didn't have the ability to do that.

Speaker 1 I don't think we have the expertise to do it either, but we literally 200x the company in two years. It was just like, just, you know, talk about fixing the plane in flight.

Speaker 1 You're just strapping stuff on to make sure it doesn't explode. You know, Akoya, we did it different.

Speaker 1 I was able to bring in a partner and a president of our company who that is one of his strong points is like that soft skills, like team building, culture building. And it's, it's really important.

Speaker 1 I mean, the best people don't want to be yelled at for an hour, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, 100%. And it's like, you, I've learned to hire for my weaknesses and focus on my strengths.
I'm not going to ever try to be well-rounded. I never want to be.
I'm a high DI.

Speaker 1 I'm way higher D than I. I'm zero C, zero S.

Speaker 1 Not zero, but very low. And we're similar.
I just, you know, for me, it's like, listen, I know where my strengths are. I want to be the master, the top, the elite, the best.

Speaker 1 And I want to be, if I hate doing something, I'm going to delegate it. I'm going to find somebody that loves that.
Yes. And, you know, not everybody, can it work for you? It might not work.

Speaker 1 Just like if Tom Brady gets traded to another team, it might not work. It's like, who's the coach? What's the players like? What are they used to? What kind of atmosphere?

Speaker 1 And just, a lot of people think I'm just going to build the dream team. But if there's not that, that buy-in from everybody and that whatever it is, like I'm entrepreneurial.

Speaker 1 Everybody says you're such an entrepreneurial guy. I'm not a corporate guy.
I work all night. I called Adrian last night at 9.30, my CFO.
So my COO and CFO, I work weekends. I'll work on holidays.

Speaker 1 And that's just who I am. If you don't like that, yeah.
Yeah. And if you want privacy and you want to work nine to five, yeah, go get, go get a corporate job.
It's just not for you, right?

Speaker 1 And I also think there's something about, I was dealing with this this week, where to your point, you hire to your,

Speaker 1 to compliment you and to fill those gaps, right? Because I'm not going to, I'm not going to suddenly be very structured or very compliant, right?

Speaker 1 But there's also something about, and this is the test for me, to make sure that I'm respecting those that are structured and compliant and following their process.

Speaker 1 So we were just doing some hiring and I'm directly overseeing sales. And I just sent an email with, here's the people we're hiring, here's what we're paying, here's what we're doing.

Speaker 1 And the woman emailed me back very tentatively, like, would you mind following the process of filling out this paper? And I was like, yeah, that's fine. You know, it's fine.

Speaker 1 It's just not, I don't have that on my desktop because I don't really care, but I understand it matters to you. And so I will follow it, you know?

Speaker 1 Yeah, we've got to follow systems. And I like to go out of town to leave my team.
You know, I think they kind of rejoice when I go out of town, but I used to be the guy to walk in the room anytime.

Speaker 1 literally pull people away from what they were doing. And now I've realized that my best value is supporting my my team and bringing them, you know, I'm on podcasts all the time.

Speaker 1 I go to seminars all the time. I've got coaches.

Speaker 1 When I started having them come to these, putting a book on their desk with a $100 bill on it to read it, when I started getting them involved in podcasts and getting them on podcasts, then they started to go, dude, now I know where you're coming from.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I had no idea this other world existed.
Now I know where you get your energy. Now I know where you get your passion.
Like, this is fun. We're learning.

Speaker 1 I think a lot of times the owner goes, or the founder, we go, what's wrong with you guys like just follow like i just read a new book you got to read it you got to apply it and we get we're these idea guys

Speaker 1 and i've had a skula with a lot of the ideas now i pick like four major things a year and i said this is what i want to drive i want to go 100 at this and i've got to really like how great is this idea are we ready for this because we're idea guys we're visionaries and then we need integrators around us absolutely yeah and and um i had that same mistake where i'd go to a conference or go to a continued education or something.

Speaker 1 I'd come back and want to change everything. And I went to one of them and they said, listen,

Speaker 1 here's the job. When you go back, don't change anything.
Wait a month and see what you're still excited about and what's still sticking, right? But you said something I want to get your opinion on.

Speaker 1 I was thinking about this the other day. For me, like you probably have the same mentality.
I'm like, look, nobody's going to outwork me.

Speaker 1 I will hustle and make it happen by sheer will if I need to, brute force, whatever it takes, it's going to work. Right.

Speaker 1 And I put that level of effort and focus and optimism and enthusiasm into these things.

Speaker 1 But what I, what I realized over the past few years is when I get all those seeds planted and all that momentum going, when I actually take a break, go on vacation with my family, I have three young kids, go on vacation with them, you know, go do something fun.

Speaker 1 It seems like that's always when the magic happens. Like we were, there's a couple examples that are top of mind.
We were, I was out with my kids on a Saturday at a fair when we lived in San Diego.

Speaker 1 And I get this text all of a sudden. They're like, Kim Kardashian just posted on Koya, which is, it's like a Super Bowl commercial, right? In terms of reach.
And she did it for free.

Speaker 1 And it was like, I was out enjoying life with my kid, or we were on spring break last year and we're on a boat. My son's wakeboarding.

Speaker 1 And I get a call from this investor that's helping us to vertically integrate. We bought our own manufacturing facility.

Speaker 1 And it was like two weeks ago by the bankers, they had said, look, it's not going to happen. I was like modeling out letting 80% of the company go to keep it alive.
And I'm out boating with my son.

Speaker 1 And I get the call that, hey, we're investing in making this happen. So that space sometimes seems like it just lets the magic happen.
But you mentioned getting away from the company.

Speaker 1 Do you have that kind of experience? Yeah, I think, you know, for me, it's usually I give my COO, we're very close, and I give him a list of things I want for the month.

Speaker 1 And I always ask them, one of the old tricks I learned is, what's the date you're going to get this done by? And they know what I'm going to say. If I gave you a million dollars and

Speaker 1 10 people to get it done, or sometimes I say 10 million and 100 people, could you get it done? And they say, well, yeah, if I had $10 million and 100 people.

Speaker 1 So what exact resources would it take to get this done in my timeline? Yeah. Because listen, there's one thing I do have a lot of, and that's resources.

Speaker 1 And instead of trying to hire people to do everything, now I find the boutique, the best of the best, the specialists. And I network and I knock their door.
I email them. I go on wherever they are.

Speaker 1 I read their book and I ask for help because what a lot of people do is they try to hire these great people to do these things when they're not really specialists. They don't have a team behind them.

Speaker 1 And like even this Facebook ad stuff, which we don't do a ton, we're getting heavy into it because we mastered Google. It's like,

Speaker 1 My buddy is one of the top 10 in the world. He spent billions of dollars on Facebook.
And I said, just look at our campaign. Go with my VP.
He goes, Tommy, I'm not kidding you.

Speaker 1 You're the worst account I've ever looked at. It's so bad.

Speaker 1 And I said, will you do me a favor and take it over? He goes, yeah, I'm just going to charge you 10%. We'll move it down to three as the spend goes up.

Speaker 1 And then there's the, and I said, I don't want any favors. Just take it over, do what you do best.
Yeah. And, you know, he does Post Malone's account.
He does Will Smith's account.

Speaker 1 Like he, he does a lot of celebrities. Usually he owns a piece of what he's doing.
So I said, just work this out for me. So I tend to go to specialists.

Speaker 1 And I will say, I do, I think every entrepreneur has a touch of ADHD. And these people just want, they want systems.

Speaker 1 My mentor told me, the guy that wrote the seven power contractor, he goes, Tommy, when I get done working with you, you're going to hate it because there's going to be no problems.

Speaker 1 There's no more firefighting. There's going to be systems.
It's going to be so vanilla. You're going to go into work and everything's going to be working right.

Speaker 1 You're going to be like, what in the F is going on? He goes, you put out problems. You could go here, you could go here, you could go here.

Speaker 1 And man, when he put all the problems out, all the fires were out, I was like, okay, I guess the only thing to do is 10x the company. So I grew.
And then there was a whole new set of challenges.

Speaker 1 So I brought him back in and he helped me put out the fires again. They grew again.
And that's kind of how it's been like, we kind of hit these peaks and valleys where we go

Speaker 1 and then we kind of peak out and then we got to retool. And then we

Speaker 1 rise again. And that's, I think, how most businesses grow, but some people end up in the peak forever.
They just can't figure out how to move.

Speaker 1 I mean, if they, if they're continuing to hockey stick, good for them.

Speaker 1 I haven't heard people that don't face some valleys, but you just like sparked an exact situation I'm going through right now, where, you know, you talk about having the experts, right?

Speaker 1 The, the, the group that is our latest and largest investor, they're the founders of a brand called Vital Proteins. It was the.
the largest collagen brand that sold to Nestle a couple of years ago.

Speaker 1 So they know supplements, powders, you know, all that kind of space.

Speaker 1 What we do at koya right now our plant-based protein drink it's delicious it's it like all the things you wouldn't expect it's healthy and delicious but it's all refrigerated so that makes it complex to actually you have to buy a bottle at a time you have to keep it cold all these things and they came in and they were like look you need to offer a shelf-stable version so people can load their pantry, right?

Speaker 1 Take it on a hike with them. You need to offer powders because a lot of people make their own smoothies at home.
And I was like, you know what, you're right. We knew knew that.

Speaker 1 We just didn't know when the right time to do it was. I literally today was meeting with a guy from that group who's going to come and support us because he knows all those buyers.

Speaker 1 He's done this before. And I'm like, hey, just join us temporarily.
You'll focus exclusively on this innovation and let's blow this thing up to take it to the next peak as you were talking about.

Speaker 1 So we're super excited to launch this thing on Amazon and in retail.

Speaker 1 But like bringing those best in class on board makes total sense because the other route I could take is go to my existing sales force who's dealing with different buyers and a different type of product and say, hey, learn this.

Speaker 1 And that's just going to distract our

Speaker 1 core business. They're going to get frustrated.
It's going to be, you know, what's my priorities. And so I love that approach of finding the best and just asking them to help you scale it.

Speaker 1 It is. And it's being very humble.
It's going with an open mind. It's buying them lunch.
It's buying their whole staff lunch. It's getting through the gatekeeper.

Speaker 1 And then going in super humble, but they got to know you're hungry.

Speaker 1 They're going to know your implementer they're going to know that you're going to pay it forward and give them the credit if those things are aligned you could get anything you want yeah i feel like i used to bartend i've was helping out managing several bars i mean inventory i remember the different liquor reps would come they'd give us stuff to try and i watched these liquor companies some of them blow up very very quickly usually usually they got a good endorsement like someone big is behind it this is like a whole new world i don't know much about like what are some of how did you blow up up so quickly?

Speaker 1 Like, how did you, did you just go to the biggest? I forget the names of them because we were buying a ton. We were buying Smearnov at seven bucks a bottle, and we were selling more than anybody.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, at 4Loco, look, the distribution game in CPG, consumer packaged goods, is huge, right? If you don't have the product available, you can't buy it, period, right?

Speaker 1 And alcohol is very structured. It's a three-tier system.
It's changing now, but you couldn't sell it online before.

Speaker 1 And so the distributor distributor and the distributor partnership were really, really important.

Speaker 1 But what we understood is like, look, this distributor is going to sell a hundred other products, all of which are much bigger than us, probably with better margins and a lot of people supporting.

Speaker 1 And so why do they care about us, you know, our little product?

Speaker 1 We would get our share, right? We get our occasion where we would be the priority.

Speaker 1 But what we learned is we got to go do the work for them, make it successful, and then we can like try to manage the distributor to manage our brand. So that was, that was it in that world.

Speaker 1 What I would say with Koya is the saying in beverages is liquid to lips is what wins, right? It was an old Red Bull strategy. It's why they'd give out all the free cans.

Speaker 1 It's like, you got to experience it. And I remember I had a guy in kind of a mentor in the beverage space that told me, like, if you really believe in your product, give it away for free.

Speaker 1 And that was baffling to me. I'm like, give it away.
What I learned and what I realized though is if it's good, people are going to go buy it more. It's not about that first sale, sale, right?

Speaker 1 It's about the repeat sales. The number one metric in beverage is velocity.
How many turns does that beverage have in that store per day, per week, whatever it may be?

Speaker 1 And so, you know, for us, it was initially about liquid to lips. How do we get people to try it?

Speaker 1 Because you may hear plant protein drink and go, I don't drink plant protein or I don't drink protein or whatever, right? But if you taste it and you're like, man, this is really good.

Speaker 1 It suddenly can fit into

Speaker 1 your lifestyle.

Speaker 1 We're at a place now, we're out in 30 000 locations across the country everything from whole foods to starbucks you know we're at a place now where it's really about awareness so we're we're kind of evolving as a company we're saying how do we gain the most awareness and what we're doing a lot of is is like you digital and social media uh pushing that out but we're we're branching out we were heavy into instagram we actually got into tick tock which is which has moved the needle um but we just recently started doing some stuff on on youtube and google and And so it's really how do we build the most awareness?

Speaker 1 Because then when somebody goes into the store and sees it, they're likely going to try it and then we're going to win.

Speaker 1 You know, with a whole process like this, I'm just curious because my whole philosophy in life after I took chips off the table now is I'm never going to hold a company for more than five years without taking chips off the table.

Speaker 1 My mentality is build to sell, built to sell. Hey, I hope you're enjoying today's podcast.
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Just make sure you do it before the prices go up on June 3rd.

Speaker 1 Now let's get back to today's episode. You know, literally,

Speaker 1 I think the way that I've learned about how arbitrage works and how multiples go up, and the fun is building it. I'm a builder.
The fun to me is when it gets to 200 million of EBITDA, you IPO.

Speaker 1 That's not fun sitting in a room of a board meeting talking about some nonsense about Sarbanes Oxley and whatever else. That's not where I'm going to live.
That's not where I enjoy.

Speaker 1 For you, are you trying to build a brand that maybe IPO, or do you think it's something you like to sell? Like you said, like Hershey's or like a big brand? Yeah. I mean,

Speaker 1 I, with this company, plan to build it to sell, but I will say that one of the dangers in that is that you can start doing some things that aren't necessarily best for the business, but they might be best for the potential suitor.

Speaker 1 Right. And the example for us is like, we're

Speaker 1 a refrigerated beverage as we show up in the world now. That's a very niche kind of approach and distribution channel.

Speaker 1 And so we had a lot of people, bankers, investors, you know, just the industry saying, hey, you're refrigerated.

Speaker 1 Everything you do needs to be refrigerated or you're going to like lessen your buyer universe. And we followed that theory for five, six, seven years.

Speaker 1 And as we understood our brand and listened to our customers, we realized that there was actually demand for something else.

Speaker 1 What Koya actually stood for was delicious plant protein that's good for you, right? And good for you. For us means low sugar.
And with that lens, that means we should have shelf-stable drinks.

Speaker 1 We should have protein bars. We should have protein powders.
But we were being told, hey, that's going to like screw up the potential acquirer.

Speaker 1 Well, we finally pulled that, you know, ripped that bandaid off. And we said, well, then the acquirer is going to have to figure it out, right?

Speaker 1 We're going to do what's best to build the best business for the long run. And would we one day like to be acquired? Yeah,

Speaker 1 do I? I have learned that I do not get to control that timeline always, right?

Speaker 1 If you have a lot of inbound interests, which we've had, that's great, but sometimes it might not be the right price, or sometimes it might not be the right structure.

Speaker 1 Like, what I don't want to do, and it sounds like similar to you, I don't want to go sell part to some company that I suddenly become an employee of this big public corporation.

Speaker 1 That's going to last about three days, right? So, I got to find the right situation.

Speaker 1 And so my point in all that is, yes, ultimately that would be great, but I have to do what's best to build the biggest and best and most profitable and sustaining company I can.

Speaker 1 And sometimes that may be counter to what at least we're being told. I will say that's kind of like old school thinking.

Speaker 1 And you see a lot of brands now who are actually doing a great job expanding categories. There's this brand called Ghost.
I don't know if you know about it. It's in the supplement space.

Speaker 1 They do a great job with pre-workouts and things like that. They launched an energy drink.
So that's outside of their, you know, quote unquote wheelhouse or bullseye.

Speaker 1 They just today launched a cereal. That theoretically makes no sense.
But these guys are great at communicating with their community and customer base. And I'm sure they'll be successful in it.

Speaker 1 That's the kind of stuff I think that we look at now to make sure we're building the best company. I think that's really smart.
I like to know what the buyer universe is looking. for and why.

Speaker 1 And I do think at the same time that you're right. I think it's good that sometimes people see money in a different lane.

Speaker 1 And I know a lot of entrepreneurs that they're like, oh, that guy's flipping houses. Why don't I flip houses? That guy bought a bar.
Let's buy a bar. And they just focus on the one thing.

Speaker 1 But there's also this opportunity when you have a brand is like, we're trying to go into storage. We failed at it the first time.
We didn't have the right manufacturer.

Speaker 1 And just because you fail, like I'm in the garage, I want to own the garage, right? It just makes sense. There's three ways to make money.

Speaker 1 Get more customers, charge your current customers more money, or keep them coming back more frequently. Those are the only three ways.
Right. And, you know, we try to do all three of those.

Speaker 1 And if you own a customer, but do I want to go into roofing and then sell them solar and then their hot water heater, then their carpets? No, I don't think that's the right mentality.

Speaker 1 I think if I'm the garage guy, own the garage and be known as the garage guy. And then that's a compelling case that I could talk to whatever.
you know, the next investor may be.

Speaker 1 And really, what does an investor care about? ROI. They care about EBITDA.
They care about the return on investment. I mean, that's everything.
At the end of the day, that's all it's about.

Speaker 1 And I think to your point, like for us with innovation, like there's always got to be some red thread that holds the innovation together, right?

Speaker 1 So for us in the early days, it's like, okay, we're this refrigerated plant-based protein drink. We're going to try these refrigerated, like lower sugar smoothies.

Speaker 1 And we tried it and it was fine, but it really didn't set the world on fire. And we, it served its purpose.
It expanded our shelf space.

Speaker 1 We tried this like coffee line that was like functional coffee and it did okay. And, but, but what we ultimately realized is the red thread for us is protein, right? Plant protein.

Speaker 1 For you guys, the red thread is garages, right? And anything that falls in that red thread then can make sense.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's smart. That's really smart.
I want to go into Blackout Punch, an entrepreneur's junior journey from chaos to clarity.

Speaker 1 We've already talked a little bit about it, but obviously, you know, your upbringing. But really, what were some of the highlights of the book that why people should get this book?

Speaker 1 I mean, I think the reason I wrote it, I have no, no like aspiration to try to be some best-selling author or that's going to be my new career. I just, I knew I had a story to share, right?

Speaker 1 And it's not really a how-to book on how to build a beverage brand or a company. There are, of course, those stories in it.

Speaker 1 But when I was thinking about writing it, I had been probably like you, I'd been told over the years, like, oh, you should write a book. You should write very casually, right?

Speaker 1 But I remember specifically at the beginning, like in early 2020, I was having a conversation with somebody and they were sharing a story with me.

Speaker 1 And I'm pretty candid and I'm pretty comfortable being vulnerable. And I shared a story back with them.
And they said, man, you should really write a book. That really helped me out.

Speaker 1 And that was the spark I needed to write the book. And so I started writing it almost four years ago.
And I wrote it really for my younger self because I didn't have any

Speaker 1 mentorship or anyone to look at and say, like, this is how it could go or will go or how to deal with these situations, right?

Speaker 1 And so, my only goal was to write a book that would share stories vulnerably enough that you would understand the high highs, the low lows, how I dealt with them.

Speaker 1 Those may be right, or they may have been mistakes. That's okay.
I'm sharing it all because I believe, like, I'm somebody who does not love to be told what to do.

Speaker 1 But I can, when you share a story, I can relate to it and I can come up with my own decision. And so, that's the whole point of the book.
I mean, it's ranging, right?

Speaker 1 It's from my upbringing to what made me who I am to, you know, my early hustles, some of which were legal, some of which weren't, to, you know, my entrepreneurial journeys later on, to my

Speaker 1 relationship issues with my wife and where we landed since then, to my view of being a dad and a family man.

Speaker 1 and to my now kind of like where I am now centered in health and wellness and and you know longevity and prioritizing family and and all those kind of things that's really what the book's about.

Speaker 1 And that was really the point. I can tell you that I was going to this big trade show that we have.
It's called Expo West. It's out in Anaheim.
They call it like the Super Bowl of CPG.

Speaker 1 And I got a text from a guy who read it. And he said, man, I have never read a book that fast.
He's like, I didn't, I couldn't put it down.

Speaker 1 And he shared a story with me about his family and related to a story I share about my mom. My mom struggled with addiction for much of my life.

Speaker 1 And he's like, I haven't talked to my dad in seven years.

Speaker 1 He's like, the way you approached it with with your mom and the relationship you have with her now, like, I'm reconsidering how I approach this. And I was like, check mark success, right?

Speaker 1 This was worth it. There's going to be people who are going to hate on it, and that's fine too.
But the point is, mission accomplished. There was one person who said that they found some value in it.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I think others will too. I've gotten a lot of feedback since then.
It's really fresh. We just launched it like three weeks ago.
So is it on Audible?

Speaker 1 It's, I'm going to record the audio version at the end of the day.

Speaker 1 Get that shit done. I'm telling you.
Most of the listeners love Audible that are on here. There's, I'll tell you this.
The first book is like, you're just like, it's never done. You're like, well,

Speaker 1 it's so hard to complete. The next book, it'll be like this.
I'm writing my third book. It's like that.
And then I got my next book.

Speaker 1 After my ADHD book, the next book's all about pay them what they're worth. It's going to be along the lines of that.

Speaker 1 Did you end up doing the audio version of it or did you have somebody else? You did it. Yeah.
I think you got to do it. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So I had somebody do it because the people I was working with said, hey, it doesn't necessarily matter. And when I listened to it, it was done.

Speaker 1 When I was listening to it, I was like having this visceral reaction. I was starting to sweat.
I told my wife, I was like, I don't even like the book anymore.

Speaker 1 And then I realized it was because somebody else was verbalizing my story. So I go to record it in New York at the end of this month.
That's great. You're actually going to enjoy it.

Speaker 1 Here's the hard part when you're reading your own book is like, the best thing I could tell you is like, what I did is I didn't read it word for word.

Speaker 1 I paraphrase and I wrote it and I tell a little story. And then I told people, listen, when you read my audible book, you're going to hear a little bit.

Speaker 1 Like, because what they do is they make sure there's the periods and the commas are right and everything's perfect and it's written, the grammar is perfect. And I'm like, I just don't like it.

Speaker 1 It was my words, my stories, my everything. But when I'm reading it, I'm just like, guys, to give you a gist of what I'm talking about here.
And like, that's what I did.

Speaker 1 So when you're reading it, just as you're going through the paragraphs, just say, guys, if you wanted to really hear, and then, like, I'd even mention, guys, I'm telling the story right now because my goosebumps still to this day, because I'll never forget my grandma hearing this story, how she saw me.

Speaker 1 Like, that's like good stuff. I mean, I think the more you could be,

Speaker 1 you don't need to read perfectly because they're great editors, like, they're going to be able to make it sound great, but you really want to just make sure it's your words.

Speaker 1 Because as you're reading, I've gotten better at reading. Like, I'm doing a doing an audible book after this.

Speaker 1 It's a short book that we've we've just put out but it's not like a one that's going to come out on amazon or audible but uh you know yeah i like that i mean i listened to um to david goggins i think it was his second book and and he had something similar where at the end of each uh chapter he had a conversation and kind of like uh reflected back and i thought that was cool it's something extra right for the yeah the readers or listeners so

Speaker 1 And I fly, like, I listen to two and a half speed, man. I'm just like,

Speaker 1 like, I like listening to those way faster. And I can't read as fast fast as I can listen to Audible, but I like doing both.

Speaker 1 And a lot of times I like marking up the book a lot and writing the page number on the back of the book. So I go back and summarize it.

Speaker 1 Audible, that's harder to do, but I like listening to it because I get a lot. It's just, I'm more visual learner, but audio works for books.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Let me see here.

Speaker 1 What shouldn't you do when launching a business or when you're early days of business? Well, you shouldn't expect it to be easy. That's the first one.
I think we kind of talked a little bit about it.

Speaker 1 I mean, you shouldn't, you, you said something that like resonated with me, which is like that shiny object syndrome that like he's doing this or she's doing that. So I should do this.
Right.

Speaker 1 And I think that is one thing you should not do because what I've found is unless you're really passionate, unless you're really ingrained to accomplish whatever you've set out to accomplish in whatever industry, business, whatever it is,

Speaker 1 those difficulties are just going to, they're just going to be too big for you to overcome. You're just going to give up, right? So I don't think you should take it lightly.

Speaker 1 I don't think you should do it just for money. I think you really have to be like passionate about what you want to do.

Speaker 1 Now, with that being said, none of us are in this for, you know, we're not UNICEF. No one's in this for charity.
You got to make money.

Speaker 1 But I think if that's the sole motivation, there's a million ways to make money.

Speaker 1 You know, one of the things that I learned through my entrepreneurial journey is like, there are more opportunities than I can ever take advantage of. And growing up, I didn't think that.

Speaker 1 It was like, this thing came up. I got to take it.
I got to win it. I got to do it.
Because if I don't, I'm going to miss it. That's not reality.
There's so many ways to make money.

Speaker 1 So I think just really spending a lot of time thinking about what you're going to, what you're going to get into is good. Creating a plan is good.

Speaker 1 Just take the damn first step and you got to figure it out along the way, right? Your plan is wrong the minute you finalize it. So.
yeah, I guess, I guess don't strive for perfection.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think I just want to add to that is most of us started out as a great worker in whatever field we got into.

Speaker 1 You were doing liquor sales for a couple of years before you started to start your own thing. One of the things they didn't tell us were a buddy of mine has had an HVAC company for 30 years.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 the year was like 2009. And he took out a quarter, a couple of dimes, a couple nickels, and a bunch of pennies.

Speaker 1 Then he asked his employees one day, he said, hey guys, how much do you think I make out of every dollar you sell? Like, go ahead and you guys figure it out.

Speaker 1 And there was a lot of guys there, a lot of the frontline workers doing the work. And they put out like a quarter and a couple of dimes.

Speaker 1 And he goes, he grabs three pennies and he puts it. He goes, this, and let me show you guys how this looks on the balance sheet.

Speaker 1 Did we add up, you know, our CSRs need air conditioning in the building? We got to pay rent. We've got trucks.
We've got insurance. We've got workers' comp.
We've got employment taxes.

Speaker 1 We've got a phone system. And he goes through all everything.
He goes, so here's the 3%, the three pennies I make to take all the risk. By the way, there's a lawsuit going on right now.
Right.

Speaker 1 A lot of times as workers, we don't realize the deep cost of doing business, that you need to supply people good things.

Speaker 1 And when somebody quits that you poured everything into, you know, I figure we lose about $50,000 every time a technician quits.

Speaker 1 That's the cost of recruiting and training and doing everything we need to do. Just to have that truck sitting there is $1,500 a month vacant.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I remember when I was starting in the vodka industry, I remember thinking about the executives in the company. And I was like, what do these guys even do?

Speaker 1 Like when one of them came to ride with me in the market, I was like, I'm going to put this guy through the grinder. And I had this like idea of like, oh, I know I'm the one building the company.

Speaker 1 And of course, on the front line, you are building the company, right?

Speaker 1 But until you, or until I got into the different levels and understood what that meant, much like what you were saying, when you're doing, you know, courses or seminars or whatever, and you're learning and you're bringing that back to the company, like I couldn't appreciate that at that time, right?

Speaker 1 And you know, as the entrepreneur, you're taking all the risk and you're usually the last one to get paid, as I mentioned.

Speaker 1 I'm on performance pay, I'm 100% on performance pay. We do not perform, I don't get paid.

Speaker 1 In fact, if we perform badly,

Speaker 1 you know, there was a time that my house was riding on the line. I saw it sign over my mortgage as the backup for the loan.
Yeah. We risked everything.

Speaker 1 I they drew my blood for life insurance policy against the loan on the the building. Yeah.
I mean, these are some of the risks.

Speaker 1 And it's like, and that's one thing I'll warn everybody is a lot of people think they're justified equity, but you didn't take any of the risk.

Speaker 1 The problem is with most people is, hey, I should, I was a big part of the success, but you didn't lay anything on the line. You only wanted the upside.
You didn't want any of the bottom line.

Speaker 1 You never risked anything. You didn't put your family at risk.
You didn't drink

Speaker 1 ramen soup for a week. You didn't do any of this stuff.
So until you're ready to take all the risk, if everything fails, you go bankrupt.

Speaker 1 Until you're ready for that and to lose everything, then you don't deserve all the upside. You got to take it.
You got to take the bottom if you're going to take the top. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 Because otherwise it's called a job, right?

Speaker 1 A no risk, I want guaranteed this amount of money or this position. That's a job, right? And that's not even risk-free.

Speaker 1 People choose to ignore the risk associated with putting your career in somebody else's hands.

Speaker 1 They have to have a great boss like you or a great founder or entrepreneur that's going to drive the company.

Speaker 1 I have a separate company, a partner and a buddy from college. It's in commercial real estate development.
We built a building in Minneapolis.

Speaker 1 We ended up operating that building and we brought in an operating partner and we looked at the market and what's the market pay for this and market was like 20% of the profit.

Speaker 1 And you know, I was just sharing with him.

Speaker 1 Now, my buddy, this is his first time in the entrepreneurial world and he's bearing a lot of the brunt of the operation and it was getting stressful and stuff.

Speaker 1 And he had a guy that he wanted to bring in. We were promoting from within and he said, well, I think we should give them 40%.

Speaker 1 And I was like, man, that is, that's double market. And they're taking literally no risk.
And it was the exact scenario you just laid out. We had signed guarantees on the loan.

Speaker 1 We were the ones who had to pay for the building if this all went bust. We were the ones.
taking all that risk.

Speaker 1 And this guy was going to take 40%, which is, again, if that's what market is, like, hey, the market dictates, right? But it wasn't. It was double.

Speaker 1 It took him two years and he came back to me and he's like, man, we were overpaying those people. And I was like, absolutely, we were.
But sometimes you got to let people go through that, right?

Speaker 1 They're not going to listen to me. They're not going to listen to you.
You got to experience it firsthand.

Speaker 1 When I think about team and employees, we had some of that, especially like 21, where it seemed like everybody was getting obscene offers to move companies.

Speaker 1 And, you know, a couple of them got caught in this grass is always greener.

Speaker 1 Like, it's easy to give away away equity when it's worth zero.

Speaker 1 It's easy to think you're going to go to this new job with this new title and it's going to be great until you go there and your boss is a total jerk and you're not even aligned with what you're doing, you know.

Speaker 1 And I think that's that's sometimes the short-sightedness of you know, of people in general. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 I've got three guys in the last six months that were given equity to a company that never that vaporized and never really got documented, and they're all back. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And of course, listen, the people that I work with, my coworkers, they need this foundation. They need the TLC.
They need to know where they stand. They need daily uplifts.
They go to another company.

Speaker 1 They're just a number and they might be the MVP, but they don't have any. Like, listen, when I was playing sportsman, like we had a regimen.

Speaker 1 We showed up. And that's what when you get traded and you're at a different team, it's like.

Speaker 1 Where's the structure?

Speaker 1 Where's my numbers? I don't even know what I'm getting paid this week. Like,

Speaker 1 who's my competition? Where's my accountability? Like, we create this.

Speaker 1 Like, this is your job. You spend more time at work than you do sleeping or with family.
Yep. So you should enjoy it.
Like,

Speaker 1 we create a lot of accountability. We make guys and gals do a lot more here, but then we reward them.

Speaker 1 And it's so easy to take a guy that's green and show them this is how it is where they don't know anything different. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I can tell. I love it.
I mean, the passion is obvious. And I think it's, it's important, right?

Speaker 1 Because as the leader of a company, the entrepreneur, I feel like part of our job is to be unrealistically optimistic.

Speaker 1 And like, in spite of things that may be, you may be in a valley right now, right?

Speaker 1 Not in the peak, but you have the vision to look and say, I know where we're going and I know we're going to get there. And that's important for a team, especially in those valleys, right?

Speaker 1 Everybody's feeling a little bit of pressure, celebrating those little wins. Like we had an account that we had presented to

Speaker 1 about a month ago and we presented like a full boat scenario, right? Take this, take that. It was going to, it could triple the business.
And they came back and they did a fraction of that.

Speaker 1 They approved a fraction of that. And my teammate was like a little bit bummed out about it.
And I understood, like I left that meeting thinking we were we were tripling that business.

Speaker 1 But I also was like, listen, man, like.

Speaker 1 We're growing, right? This is a big win. Let's not miss that because we expected, you know, X, Y, and Z.
We got X. You know, we're still progressing.

Speaker 1 And I think a lot of people need somebody to point that out to and they can get in their own head and down on themselves. Well, I got to show up.
There are days that I don't feel like coming in.

Speaker 1 There are days that I'm not having a great day because something happened at home or just my niece is sick or something's going on.

Speaker 1 And I've learned to kind of zip it up and just come in because I'll walk in.

Speaker 1 If I don't, if I'm not talking to people and I'm not loud and they don't hear me in my office and I'm not laughing, people are like, are you okay?

Speaker 1 And I'm like, I'm just not having an off day. I'm tired today.
They're like, What's wrong? And like, I got, I'm like their parent, like, literally like, Dad, is everything okay?

Speaker 1 Because like, you're always, you're always good. You're always excited.
You're always passionate. And I'm like, yeah, but it's cloudy today.
Like, right. You know, that's why I'm in Arizona.

Speaker 1 Because I'm like, I need the sun. I'm from Michigan.
And man, I can't live in that environment anymore.

Speaker 1 But yeah,

Speaker 1 we have such a fun job, man. It's like, I embrace where where I'm at today.
I'm fortunate. And,

Speaker 1 you know, the hard part is, I'll tell you, there'll come a day when you do sell. And a guy like you and me, we'll probably just pick it back up.
But A1, 17 years has gone by.

Speaker 1 And no matter what, it'll always be my DNA. And I've seen, I was just talking to

Speaker 1 EOS, Gino Wickman, and he's like, when I sold EOS, he still owns like 15%, but he's like, I felt this huge void, a loss of purpose. Like, I didn't feel like I had anywhere to go this week.

Speaker 1 And he's like,

Speaker 1 so he wrote a book called Shine. Like, he went through 10 years of therapy and like had to figure out.

Speaker 1 He said, I've always had something like this driver, like this, like I'm going to lose it all. And he goes, I've always figured if I, if I lost that, I would lose my hustle.
I would lose the

Speaker 1 thing I had above my competitors. And he goes, when I, when I let go of that and I became content and I enjoyed it, he goes, man, you're afraid to lose that piece of you.

Speaker 1 But when you become content and you forgive and you forgive your parents and you let it go and he goes, and you really wake up. He goes, that's what everything changed for me.
And I think.

Speaker 1 That's so true. I mean, I had, so my partnership at Fusion Projects, these were buddies from college.
I was the best man in one's wedding. And it just over the years, over 10 years, fell apart, right?

Speaker 1 And it got really contentious to where we were, you know, talking through lawyers and stuff.

Speaker 1 And one day I woke up in the company that I had, you know, brought together, I mean, I'm not discrediting their role in it, but, and, um, and I was fired.

Speaker 1 And it was like, oh my God, what, like, I'm a guy who grew up like you are what you do, right?

Speaker 1 Like, and fortunately, we were in a position where we weren't going to not eat that week because I didn't have a salary, but it felt that way. My identity was attached to it.

Speaker 1 And I was really exploring: like, what, what do I,

Speaker 1 what do I go do next?

Speaker 1 And the amazing thing was the blinders were off. I was so ingrained in the company.
I didn't see anything else in the world. So the blinders were off.
That was amazing. I started talking to people.

Speaker 1 I realized this is a very common thing. I ended up going to Peru and doing ayahuasca, if you've ever heard of that.
That's one of the 40 ways he said to open up your brain. It's exactly what he said.

Speaker 1 It was amazing. I mean, my biggest fear going into that was that I was going to lose my edge, though.
I was like, I'm going to come out of this and not be aggressive and sharp.

Speaker 1 And but it was transformative. I came out, I was gone for 14 days.
At the time, we had a two-year-old in an infant at home. So my wife was home with them alone.
The house had flooded.

Speaker 1 Like, it wasn't an easy time for her. And I came back and she picked me up at the airport.

Speaker 1 And within five minutes, she's like, I don't know what happened down there, but you go to Peru whenever you need to, right? So that

Speaker 1 space and flexibility and

Speaker 1 time to reflect and realize, you know, what it's all about was really valuable.

Speaker 1 The other thing that was really valuable along the lines you were talking about was when I did my disc profile, the guy told me, listen, man, if you have this vision of retiring and living on a boat and drinking your margarita, get rid of it now because you'll be unhappy, addicted, and divorced.

Speaker 1 That it's never going to work for you. And I think that was really important because growing up,

Speaker 1 that was the sign that you made it, right? When you could retire, when you could take it easy, but that will never be me. Now, do I want to be really deep in day-to-day operation? At some point, no.

Speaker 1 Right now, I'm loving it, but I will need to have some outlet, some purpose, some activity, or I'll lose my mind. And that's just who I am.
Well, my mom said, well, how much money is enough enough?

Speaker 1 I go, mom, it was never about the money. And the best analogy I gave her is I go, Tiger Woods won four majors in a row.
Did he quit golfing? Right.

Speaker 1 I said, if I get to 10% body fat, then, you know, the six packs, eight packs all the way out. Does that mean I'm done working out? I'm like, for me, I'm the Tiger Woods of business, home service.

Speaker 1 I'm not comparing myself as like good as Tiger Woods, but this is my passion. And yes, I'm trying to be intentional with my future.
Right. Like reverse engineer.
So Dan Martell and I worked together.

Speaker 1 He said, you're 75 years old, Tommy.

Speaker 1 I i want to know what you did the last 34 years when you went on a trip who'd you go with where'd you go why'd you go there when you bought a plane what the plane looked like what kind of model was it i want you to be intentional i want you to manifest these things what does your monday look like what is your tuesday do you hate mondays because if you do take mondays off like yeah you build the life you want be intentional get as descriptive as possible what do you like to do when you work out do you like to jog 20 miles hell no so let's make sure you do the things you love doing and so i'm getting very intentional And what do I love to do?

Speaker 1 I love to golf. I love to fish, but I'm not golfing five days a week.
I'm not fishing five days a week. I'd like to work a four-hour work week for six hours a day.

Speaker 1 And I know exactly what it'll consist of. And there'll be days I put in 12-hour days, but you got to stay.
Otherwise, like a guy like me and you, man, we would be very depressed within six weeks.

Speaker 1 Even I can't leave home for more than a week and a half without getting like anxiety. And like, I still, even if I'm connected, you know, I've got dogs at home and I don't have kids yet.

Speaker 1 When I do, that's, they're going with me. But that's, that's, it's hard because I just, I like it home.
I want to be back home. I want to be in my own bed.

Speaker 1 I want, and even though we're building the house in Idaho,

Speaker 1 she's like, are you going to be able to leave for three months? I'm like, no, I'm going to be back with my family here at least one week out of the month.

Speaker 1 But I'll dip back in and dip back out. And I just, it's like my energy source.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, access to, and, and we're a remote company.
We've always been. And so it's a little bit different.
I don't have this place where we go and like you, you, you get the energy.

Speaker 1 We need to create it online. But I was just in Telluride last week with my family.
I had never been. It's beautiful.
We loved it.

Speaker 1 But work follows me, not only in terms of calls and things like that, but like in my industry, store checks are essential. So wherever I am, there's a grocery store.
I'm popping in.

Speaker 1 I'm looking at the shelf. I'm always tapping in some way.
And

Speaker 1 it's invigorating. If I were trying to ignore it and disconnect that much, I wouldn't be having fun.

Speaker 1 Is there any books that really changed your life that you've read in the past decade or two that like just like for me, it was E-Myth, the ultimate sales machine recently.

Speaker 1 I've read They Ask You Answer by Marcus Sheridan years ago.

Speaker 1 Dan Martel's book, Buy Back Your Time. Is there anything that's like this epiphany book that really changed the way you look at things?

Speaker 1 Yeah, some of them are cliche, but I started a list for for my sons as like required reading as they, as they grow older. And they're not at the age where any of them are appropriate yet.

Speaker 1 But the first one that I remember reading, there was this book called Celestine Prophecies.

Speaker 1 And it's not about business, but it was really just mind-opening in terms of how you view the world and religions and dogmas and all these interesting things. That was a really interesting one.

Speaker 1 I read, there were three of them. I read those.
Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich was transformative.

Speaker 1 I mean, i followed it to a t i wrote down my things i wrote i read it out loud in the mirror every day every night and this was at a time where i was mentioning earlier where i couldn't pay rent right so i didn't have anything else to do i was i was really following it rich dad poor dad was a great one for me really understanding money there's a newer book called um i think it's called the emotions of money It was an easy read, but it was really interesting as well, because money is this thing, at least where I grew up, that was was taboo to talk about you don't tell people what you make you don't tell people how you spend your money or save your money or invest your money but that's wrong like in the right settings you need to have people that you talk about how to make your money grow and how to make your money work for you trying to think of another there's a book called the alchemist that was a really good one for me as well those would be the top ones i talk about money all the time i talk about it no nonchalant like like i'm like there's no secret we've done well and i'm like people are like shocked they're like like, you can't tell people that.

Speaker 1 I'm like, I don't give two shits. Like, people are like, people are going to look at you so much differently.
They're going to start treating you differently. And I'm like, good.
I am different. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And guess what? I don't care if it's about money. Yes, my life has changed.
Yes, there's certain people that are not as close to me anymore. And that's okay.

Speaker 1 And I believe you are who you hang out with. And I'm like, first thing I talk about in my orientations is money.
And money is not the root of all evil. The love of money is the root of all evil.

Speaker 1 That's right. And money is a tool.
And if you use it correctly, it could change everything for you and your family. Yeah.
It provides you freedom and options, right?

Speaker 1 One of the people that I've appreciated is Grant Cardone with his approach to it. He's like, he's always talks about why would I not talk about money and success and share this with you?

Speaker 1 I'm almost doing you a disservice if I don't tell you how I made it or how much I'm doing or what I'm creating. And I love that mentality.
It's still a changing,

Speaker 1 at least in my world, a changing kind of like

Speaker 1 image of it. But I agree with you.
It's important to talk about it and to understand it as a tool. Yeah, I hang out.
You know, I was on Grant Cornel's podcast and

Speaker 1 I was, Brandon Dawson invited me in to teach a class for all the home service guys. And the one thing is,

Speaker 1 I don't know, I don't look up to money. I'm not like, man, after like after a billion, I need to get enough is never enough.
Like we always want to continue to grow, but

Speaker 1 I just don't see money.

Speaker 1 in the context of IB 70 and like, man, I need that extra billion. Like it's not like at some point it's a learn, it turns into philanthropy and how much change and what kind of legacy could I live?

Speaker 1 I see these people that give their life up to homeless and they can't see their family for 10 years, like the Mother Teresa type people.

Speaker 1 And it's like, I haven't found necessarily my calling because I've got LPs and I promise them a great delivery. When I shake somebody's hand, I will deliver on what I promised.

Speaker 1 And if it takes years of dedication, I'm going to deliver. That's why I'm being very careful with what I do on this next process because I'm not going to grind like this forever.
I want more freedom.

Speaker 1 I want to travel, but also I do want to be a piece of it, the piece I love the most that I get my energy from. And I've been very thoughtful.
I haven't done ayahuasca yet or

Speaker 1 major shroom trip. And when I do do that stuff, I'm going to go in with certain things I'm looking for.
I'm not just going to let my mind wander and say, go wherever it finds.

Speaker 1 Like you go in intentional and it's controlled or otherwise I've heard especially, and I don't have really any mental health issues in my family, but I heard sometimes when you untangle that web, there's certain things that come out that you can't put back in.

Speaker 1 And part of that's scary because I know there's certain things that they're living in here that happened to me that I buried for a reason.

Speaker 1 Once you unbury them, they're out. Right.
And that's the scary part for me is like, I don't know what's in there because.

Speaker 1 I mean, I got in a car accident when I was 17 and I almost, somebody almost died. And I buried that away so deep.
And he's fine. He ended up living and it was fine.

Speaker 1 But I had a way to shut these things out. I'm very good at turning stuff off.
I could turn off anything. And I don't dwell on it.
I don't get anxiety. I don't get stressed, not like most people do.

Speaker 1 I have a high tolerance for pain. And I know how to bury stuff very quickly.
I know how to make these Jedi mind tricks on myself. And I'm afraid of what's going to come out, to be honest with you.

Speaker 1 Well, I can relate to you on that.

Speaker 1 I think growing up in a house that had addiction, you know, and family that was riddled with addiction and seeing some of the stuff I did and going through some of it, I was really, I was really good at compartmentalizing.

Speaker 1 And then I heard

Speaker 1 and shutting things off and forgetting about them, never thinking about them again. And I heard somebody at one of the conferences I was at talk about how emotions are like a pipeline.

Speaker 1 And if you block any of it off, and so that you don't feel the bad stuff, you ultimately don't get to feel as much of the good stuff either. Right.
And I love that analogy. I totally agree with you.

Speaker 1 There is, uh,

Speaker 1 there was a lot of concern with me about what's going to come up. Like when I was,

Speaker 1 when I was in college, I went back to, you know, Youngstown was known as a pretty rough, rough place for multiple reasons. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And when I went back to Ohio, when I was in college, we went out to a bar and one of my friends got shot and murdered right in front of me. And, you know, that's a traumatic thing.

Speaker 1 And I remember that night, I write about it in the book, but I remember that night we left that bar and went to another party.

Speaker 1 And my buddy, who was actually my partner at Fusion, he said, somebody just got shot in front of, we didn't know he died at the time, but somebody just got shot in front of us. How are you okay?

Speaker 1 And I said, I don't know. I guess I'm just good at shutting things off.
Right. And I don't know if that's good.
I don't know. I mean, it's gotten me through.
So I'm not going to say it's bad.

Speaker 1 But, you know, now as, as I try to relate to my wife or try to relate to other people or have a relationship with my kids, I'm actually happy it got cracked open a little bit.

Speaker 1 And sometimes I'm like, man, I wish I didn't feel the shitty stuff, but I get to feel the good stuff too. I'm going to do it.

Speaker 1 I mean, that night that I got in that car accident, I went to a movie because it's the only thing I knew what to do. I told my sister, we got to go.
We got to go block this. And I blocked it.

Speaker 1 And I just. But listen, I want to close out.
First of all, if somebody wants to reach out to you, Chris, what's the best way to get a hold of you or check you out? Or where do you hang out online?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm not too active on social. I mean, I'm I'm on LinkedIn, Christopher Hunter on LinkedIn.
I'm somewhat active on Instagram.

Speaker 1 You can always check out drinkcoya.com and email me through that. That's probably the best way.
So listeners, you got to try Koya today.

Speaker 1 They're coming out with a product that does not need to be refrigerated. And you got to get the book, Blackout Punch, an Entrepreneur's Journey from Chaos to Clarity.

Speaker 1 And the last thing I do, Chris, is just give you an opportunity to close us out. Maybe we didn't hit upon something.

Speaker 1 Maybe you just wanted, whatever you want to tell the listeners, I'm going to give the floor to you to close us out. I mean, we hit on a lot of stuff.
I appreciated the range of topics.

Speaker 1 Look, I think I echoed it before, or I said it before, and I'll echo it now, which is just that if you're considering the entrepreneurial journey, I think, you know, think long and hard about it, but don't be afraid to just take the first step.

Speaker 1 Just jump in. I love it, man.
Great work today. Looking forward to meeting you in person.
You're always welcome out here in Phoenix or Scottsdale.

Speaker 1 And I'll catch you on the next trip I go to Miami after this little Rilla voice. Yeah.

Speaker 1 This

Speaker 1 yacht thing we're doing this weekend. Yeah.
Sorry I missed you this weekend, but I look forward to hanging soon. All right, my man.
Great podcast. Appreciate you.
All right, brother. Thanks.
See ya.

Speaker 1 Hey there, thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy.

Speaker 1 I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization.

Speaker 1 It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service.

Speaker 1 So, if you want to learn the secrets to help me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700-plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book.

Speaker 1 Thanks again for listening, and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.