Healthy Hustle & Smart Investing: Ariana Korman on instinct, burn out and better for you brands

0:15Hello and welcome to the Tomorrow Brands podcast where we explore what it takes to build a brand of tomorrow. I'm your host, Ruth Vitock, and this week I'm joined by Arianna Corman, registered dietitian turned operator, investor and host of the Healthy Hustle podcast. Arianna's built her career at the intersection of wellness, food and business, and she's developed a sharp instinct for what separates a good idea from a great founder. We talk about what investors really look for beyond the deck, how founders can check their egos without losing conviction, and the fine line between healthy hustle and burnout.

0:44Let's get into it. I would love to hear your background and how you got to where you are. So my formal education is in nutrition and I'm actually a registered dietitian and I have my master's in clinical nutrition as well. And then after grad school, I started my career at Juice Press, which is a QSR chain that's based in New York City. In the Northeast, it has about 90 units. It's about half CPG and half made to order their revenue base. So I started there in product development and innovation through that launched over 200 products across several categories, moved into various roles like business development and strategy.

1:24And ultimately, I was a chief operating officer at the time that I left about six and a half years later. And that was really where my passion for Better For You CPG began. And I loved collaborating with the mission driven founders that we were working with and innovating with. And I brought hundreds of emerging brands onto our platform and selling them in our stores and really worked with the founders one-on-one and advised a lot of them on their innovation and growth and new product development and things like that. And then about two years ago, I moved into a role at an investment firm that specialized in hospitality and restaurants.

1:55But I wanted to stay connected to CPG and my love for CPG. And I wanted to leverage my experience to stay involved and help emerging brands. So I launched a podcast focusing on food and beverage CPG called Healthy Hustle Spotlight, interviewing founders and investors and other industry experts, and then got involved with angel investing with the angel group and now I do a lot of angel investing on my own as well as with the group. So I wanted to talk to you about investing like say you're an angel investor what are the key things you look for when you decide whether to invest in a brand? The founder is the most important piece more important than the product more important than the brand you could have a great product but if it's not the right team and the right founder are running it, it really will struggle to go anywhere.

2:40Do they admit what they don't know? Do they ask questions and hire and look for other resources when they don't have the answers and recognize that they can't have all the answers? So as their company grows and evolves and their product grows and evolves, they're going to run into situations where they might need to pivot, or they might need to lean on an advisor or even an investor or hire out consultants. And you really want to be working with someone who is able to check their ego and know what they don't know and be able to ask those questions. And one way to test that is, do they take feedback when you have feedback on their product or some of the things they're presenting in their deck?

3:15What's their response? How realistic are they when you ask questions about competitors or challenges that they'll face? Are they like eyes in the sky? Everything is going to be amazing and there are no competitors and we're so different. And also their ability to actually rely on like legitimate customer data, not just, hey, this is an amazing product and I know it's going to work, but what is the true data? Have you tested it? What has the market said? Have you done focus groups? What have you looked at to really prove that market is there? And I would say the final piece is they need to know their numbers like the back of their hand, even if they aren't a finance person historically, they need to know everything.

3:53And when you ask them very specific questions about costs and margins and what does scale look like, they need to have those answers and they need to be very confident and have a lot of conviction in answering that question. A lot of the aspect of angel investing and evaluating a product and a brand and a founder is really reading people and just how comfortable do you feel talking to them? Do you think that they're authentic? Do you believe that you can trust what they're saying and that they're going to continue to operate in a way that is aligned with what they're presenting now? I'm just trying to read that.

4:25And I would say for anyone who's just starting to get into investing or thinking about it, it's really about trusting your gut. And if you get a weird feeling from someone, it's just better to not be involved. And just looking at the way they answer other questions, like where has the money so far come from? Have they put their own capital in? If this is their second raise and they have some of it committed, is it people who have already committed from their first raise or are they bringing in new investors? Do they have any institutional VCs on board? what does that look like? Yeah, I think there's some good advice for life there.

4:57If your gut says, no, don't go there. Exactly. And honestly, I think angel investing in a lot of ways, in my opinion, you really can't rely on early sales numbers or projections or things like that much because there's just not a long enough historical period for it to be meaningful. And to your point about just like trusting your gut and how much that emulates life, I think that's so much of what angel investing really is because the projections are frankly somewhat meaningless. Who do you think should or shouldn't think about getting into angel investing? I really think anyone can get involved.

5:36I will say you do have to be an accredited angel investor. But if you do meet that, I think that it's a very common misconception that you need to have a really crazy amount of capital to be able to angel invest. And that's just not the case. There are many ways to get involved through SPVs or syndicates or angel groups, like the angel group, crowdfunding, getting in really early with founders who are maybe taking lower check sizes. You can really get involved with anything from 5K to 25K. So I think that it's something that people can really test the waters on. I think the only people who really shouldn't get involved are people who are going to feel like every investment needs to pan out because that's definitely not going to happen.

6:16It's a very high risk investment. So you need to really have the mindset that every time you invest in an early round, you just have to assume that money is gone. You can't bank on the fact that anything is going to come back to you. So you just need to say goodbye and hope for the best and give your advice to the founder and help however you can. But you just, it's a toss up in a lot of ways. Yeah. And I guess the other thing is it's a lot of the time, especially if you're early stages, it's a very slow burn, right? So you're talking years and years so to have that patience the average timeline especially for something like cpg is like five to seven or even up to ten years for any sort of exit so it's definitely a slow burn you need to understand that money isn't coming back to you anytime soon if it comes back at all and why has it been a good thing for you personally i'd say the first thing and that was the reason that i got involved is because i was am able to stay really close to the innovation and the cpg ecosystem, which I love.

7:14And even as I continue to develop my career in other categories, I get to really stay connected. I also really love seeing countless pitches and always sharpening my ability to spot patterns and consumer behavior or challenges that different people are facing and different funding dynamics. And I would also say the investing in addition to my podcast has been a great way to just be involved in the community and have that purpose as well. And being able to support founders who are really solving problems and being able to help mentor them. Even if I'm not operating the brand myself, as I work to offer connections and whatever makes sense to various founders or investors or industry experts that I know through my network, I really love being able to connect those people and hopefully have it be a fruitful connection that both of them can really learn something from and be valuable.

7:58There's a big pay it forward mindset, especially in CPG. So I think it's really great when I talk to someone who's really early on in their process, and maybe they're creating a product that has a lot of parallels to someone that I know who is several years down the road and I'm like, oh, they would be a great pair to link up. And I think that there could be a lot learned there. So that's something that's been really rewarding. I think it's great for network, isn't it? From the people that you meet and people you connect with. Absolutely. And it's a very small network, angel investing in general, and especially food and beverage, CPG investing and startups and emerging brands, very small ecosystems.

8:33So it really does become like an everyone knows everyone. And there's always someone that you can roll down the road and say oh I know this person and I know that person and then it just keeps as I said paying it forward. I think it's with the angel group which is how we met as well I think the really nice thing about that is that everybody who's part of it has been involved in CPG as an operator or has worked within a brand or has been in there has built something and it gives you a different perspective versus coming from a fund potentially or it's a fresh take on it, which I think is really powerful as well.

9:06I completely agree with that. And I also think the unique thing about CPG as opposed to something like tech investing or some of these other types of investing categories is that because CPG is so hard, I think you're only involved in it if you love it. It's easily one of the hardest industries to have success in. So I think that makes it so that anyone that you really talk to in that industry is so excited about it and just wants to network with people, wants to have those conversations, and wants to be involved however they can. And I think that just creates this whole energy and community that you don't necessarily see in a lot of other categories.

9:45And it's funny, because you say it's a small world. And I think that the CPG or FMCG, as we call it here in the UK, industry is small here, but it is also small in the US and it's small between the two countries as well. A lot of people just seem to know each other and move around and it's really cozy. Very cozy, but it's nice. That's, I think, one of the reasons that all the networks grow and people just know each other and are able to pass along different information. If founders could only send one slide before a first call, what would you ask for? I think personally, I would probably ask for a slide that showed their strategic advisors that might not be what a lot of people would answer.

10:30But I think that what I've learned is that those are really the people that the founders are talking to on a daily or weekly basis. And their experience really tells me a lot about how the brand is going to be shaped and what advice they might be getting. Obviously, VCs and angels can add a lot of value, but depending on the round and the allocation, you'll have very different levels of access to the founder. and if they already have a long list of strategic advisors who have already maybe put in a decent amount of money, those are really going to be the people that they're going to. And they're going to turn to them when there's a problem and you want to make sure that you are aligned with who might be solving some of those problems.

11:10Do you believe in the products that they've built? Are you happy with the products that they built and how their exit may have been? Or do you believe that when they built their products and exited, it was because of them or was it because of timing? and what were the different factors and how much do you believe in that success? And then I guess if I were to cheat and say one other thing I would ask for, just going back to what I said earlier, is some sort of snapshot of traction, some sort of customer data, proof of adoption, nothing can really substitute for signals that the market actually cares and is compelled to make a purchase.

11:43And I think that's the biggest thing is the problem might be there, but if the problem isn't compelling enough or monetizable, then nothing else matters. Is it a problem that's a big enough problem that some will actually pay money to solve on a consistent basis. I think that's such a great point. It wasn't what I thought you were going to say about the strategic advisors, but actually, I think it's a really good point. And when I look at Investodex, you're right now, I think about it, that is where I spend the most time. And it has put me off quite a few brands, probably more than anything else.

12:14And especially when you see a sort of lack of diversity of opinion, those advisors, I think that is a problem. And like people, I have said this, and it's good to hear that like people do care, like it does matter is important. Completely. Yeah, I completely agree. And I think lack of diversity is a big piece. And then also, what are the actual brands and the categories that they were in? Because I think sometimes I've seen founders have a lot of advisors who are in just like the broader startup worlds, but maybe they don't have anyone on their advisory team that was actually in food and beverage.

12:51And it's great to have these. Sometimes people just rely on these big name brands and it's great to have big name brands, but you need people who had the experience with very specific and category specific challenges that you are going to face. And I think that gets missed sometimes, or maybe it'll just be one person or it'll be in food and beverage, but it'll be completely different category. Like maybe the founder has a frozen product and all of their advisors had like shelf stable products. So different. Not that there aren't overlaps, but you really need some people who are so aligned with something that you're doing that they've already done before and know how to advise you.

13:26I think that's a really good point about size of business and the type of brands that we get blinded by these big name brands. but actually someone who's been there to build and scale something and gone through that rapid growth, that's what you really want. Even if it hasn't actually succeeded in the end, but it got some good for whatever reason, because there's so many reasons that might happen, that's probably going to be more valuable than someone from a big corporate because it's just completely different. Yeah, I completely agree with that. And I think that's why thinking about the brands in their context matters so much because that brand for that founder that's on your advisory network may have had a successful exit but what was that due to was it because the timing was so different and the ecosystem and the market was so different and it's really hard to compare to what's going on right now in the ecosystem and how do you pull all that together so you mentioned before you've got a podcast called healthy hustle where you talk to founders and you've worked and obviously invested in founders, what makes a good founder?

14:31I would say the good founder is someone who's able to check their ego and know what they don't know. I think that's the most important thing in any founder. Knowing what you don't know, knowing how to ask for help, knowing when to hire out, rely on someone else, hire an expert. Maybe you're not a super strong ops person, hire a COO. Maybe you're not a super strong finance person, hire a CFO or a fractional CFO. I think that's really the most important. Knowing your weak spots. Exactly. So let's talk a bit about hustle as it's in the title of your podcast. How do founders stay genuinely healthy while running brands that preach wellness?

15:09I've seen such a variety, but I think the biggest piece is picking the one or two boundaries that you really need to protect, but then also recognizing that you can't do everything. Your time is one of the most valuable resources that you have as a founder because there is a finite amount of it. There's obviously a finite amount of money, but you can always raise more. There's always another way to get more of the other resources, but time is finite and you need to make sure that you're dedicating it to the things that will move the needle the most and not spreading yourself so thin that nothing matters and actually nothing got done.

15:46And I think that's something that I hear really often is when you launch in say a region and going deep instead of going wide and making sure that you're allocating your time to having a really successful launch with that one specific retailer in that one region, as opposed to necessarily trying to get into as many doors as you can. And then it just ends up not really going that far because you weren't able to dedicate the time necessary. And a lot of the time in the beginning of your brand, it's the founder who's doing the sampling. It's the founder who has the relationships with the retailer.

16:15You don't have a built out sales team yet. And so recognizing what is actually going to move the needle the most and dedicating your time solely to that. That's another life lesson, isn't it? Time is the only finite thing. A lot of overlap. and what's you mentioned boundaries what's one boundary you've learned to protect personally I would say I've learned to protect my morning workout I used to take calls in the middle of a run or answer email as well as on the peloton or the treadmill and I've learned over the years that that sacred time in the morning where everything is on do not disturb is so much more productive and energizing and makes my day so much better if I'm able to have that hour and a half in the morning that's uninterrupted.

17:02I think it's so hard with phones, isn't it? It's just that nothing is going to go wrong in that hour and a half. I say this to myself more than anything. You really have to tell yourself that because everything is urgent. And that's, I think, like you're saying, the challenge with phones, everything is urgent and everything has to be answered immediately. But recognizing that someone can wait an hour before you respond is okay. Yeah. When does hustle tip from motivating to corrosive? And how do you spot that line early? Unfortunately, I think it's very hard to spot early because I think it's gradual.

17:37And I don't think you necessarily realize the impact until it's hit a very significant point. But I would say when what you're doing becomes a source of dread and stress and overwhelm, and that outweighs the excitement, especially as a founder or something like angel investing, where you're really doing it because you're excited about it. You're not founding a company because you're being paid to do so because frankly, most founders aren't getting paid until they're several years in and have more capital, but you're doing it because you love it. And as soon as you're dreading it and you don't have that excitement, you've clearly gone to the point of burnout.

18:16I think you're right as well, though, that you have to, a bit like protecting that morning time you've got to do the good things when things feel good because you won't notice the slip so it's almost like the you don't just use the healthy habits to kick in when you're really stressed and burnt out it's about maintenance and ongoing and even when you feel like everything's great keep going with the boundaries and the good stuff because you just don't see the slip until it's too late. And it's so easy to be like, oh, just this one time or I'll do it for now because it's really busy. And then I'll go and then all of a sudden, it's been like two years and you've been in chaos and you haven't taken any time for yourself or had any sort of balance.

18:59And so to your point, like, it's not just about, oh, I need stress relief. I'm going to do this. It's about having that really constant maintenance of how you protect your own energy. And also because your earlier point about it's your time is the most important thing and your time and your energy are linked right so your time is going to be more optimal if you're feeling right and so doing those things are important it's not like self-indulgent or lazy it's actually protecting your energy levels so that then you can use your time better you can give more what sounds I always hate when I hear like fitness instructors say fill your own cup first but it's true if you don't give your let yourself have that energy you won't be able to dedicate your full self to what you need to do to be successful and that's it really it is true yeah so your background is in nutrition let's talk a little bit about kind of health and wellness and healthy shifts in the market in terms of health trends in the u.s at the moment what are you seeing i think we're seeing this transition from premium and everything needing to be overly healthy with like protein packed everything fiber packed everything zero sugar to just better versions of things that people actually enjoy and I think people are now realizing that they'd rather have a small amount of cane sugar than zero grams of sugar and all this artificial sugar or would rather actually enjoy what they're eating and eat healthfully the majority of the time than trying to optimize every single thing that goes into our body and that also ends up being a mental drain and then an unhealthy obsession.

20:36And people are realizing that mental health is such a big piece of health as well, that it's not just about obsessing over everything you're putting into your body. And just like a focus on simpler ingredients instead of just headline numbers. And I think one really good example that was in the news this week is Ben Stiller's new soda. I don't know if you saw that Stiller soda, which is basically focused on just a better version of the soda that you love. It's just trying to serve this huge group of people who just want a better alternative to traditional soda. I do think that there's this really big group of people out there who actually aren't looking for these like crazy health products, but are just looking for something that tastes good.

21:14That's like a little better than what the traditional product is. I do wonder if that has been the case all along that some of the brands I can think of here that have got functional claims, but actually they just taste really good in their low sugar. And that's what, that is the reason why people pick them up taste is king in this category anyway and i think people are actually starting to take their like some of these claims off of the front of the label because people will see some of the claims and assume oh i'm not going to want that oh it's going to taste bad whatever it is i was talking to a founder who all of his products are gluten-free but he actually took gluten-free off of the label because he didn't want to be placed in the gluten-free category of the grocery store and like he felt like there's so much more access to people in the main part of the grocery store where that product should live.

22:04And it's great that it happens to be gluten-free, but he didn't want it to be a turnoff for someone who maybe isn't looking for gluten-free that they assume that they wouldn't want that product. Yeah. It's good news because in the UK, you can't really make any claims compared to the US. Yeah. The US is like claim central. I think there's a happy medium. And I think the challenge with some of the claims also is that they can create this halo effect that maybe isn't real. So like by being able to put all these different claims on your package, someone just assumes that it's healthy. But then if you actually flipped over the package, it's highly processed.

22:42There's all of these sugar alcohols and different things in the product that maybe aren't as good for you. And I think that also just gets back to, especially in the US, like the short attention span and being inundated like 24 seven by information and product and consumerism. And people just want a quick answer and they don't want to take the time to read. So they just rely on these claims. I think as well, there's just so much confusing, conflicting advice that for an average consumer, even when you work in the industry, it's like hard to keep up with. So it's really difficult to navigate. And yeah, it's a bit like greenwashing, isn't it?

23:16Health washing is... Absolutely. Completely. What excites you about how health trends are shifting in the US? I really like that the conversation has been now so much more focused on real food, less processing, fewer additives and chemicals moving away from low fat, low sugar, unsatiating foods. And that treat culture is coming back and is the thing like, I think it's so much better to have this like permissible ability to have an indulgent treat versus five or 10 years ago when everything was just pumped with chemicals, because you had to always be optimizing. And I think that it's so much healthier, both for your body and for your mental health to just be able to indulge, but also be making healthier choices in general that are just, I think better for you is not just hitting specific claims.

24:03It's more to do with what the ingredients are and are they less processed ingredients? Are they healthful? Are they sourced well? Things like that, as opposed to just are minimizing your sugar intake and things that are more numerical. Where do you think there's still a long way to go? I think like you were saying, education in general, who to listen to, there's so much misinformation and people claiming to be experts on social media. And like all these like what I eat in a day and skinny talk and all these people giving advice that just frankly, inaccurate, and potentially harmful and people calling ingredients bad without even knowing what they are.

24:42One thing comes to mind of people like calling out ingredient names on video on social media, and it's like riboflavin. And that's B2, like that's a vitamin, but there's no education around that. And I think the old phrase of if you can't pronounce it on the ingredient label, it's bad has merit. But I think there needs to be a little bit more education than that, because there are plenty of things that maybe you can't pronounce that are not necessarily bad for you. It's just the scientific name for something that has name that's like layperson name, and you just don't recognize it. And demonizing some of these foods based on some of these ingredients that just really don't have education.

25:24Which nutrition claim do you think US shoppers grasp the least? And how would storytelling fix it? I think there's still a long way to go on understanding sugar. I know I feel like we keep talking about sugar. But I think, you know, the differences between added sugar versus fruit sugar and not all sugar being equal, like yogurt having sugar, but it's plain yogurt. That's because yogurt is sugar, because lactose is a type of sugar. So you can't have yogurt that's dairy yogurt without sugar. And I think there've been a lot of advancements in labeling with the FDA and requiring added sugars to be called out and sugar alcohols being called out and things like that, which have been helpful.

26:01But I do think that there still needs to be more understanding about healthful sugar and that your sugar, your body really does need sugar to survive. It's the main source of energy for the brain. And not all sugar is bad. Eating a banana isn't bad just because are sugar in a banana. That sugar is a very different type of sugar than the cane sugar that you might have in candy. And there needs to be a conversation about that and not demonizing this like broad term sugar. Great. I love sugar. So it's good news. Me too. So we've had gut health, brain health, metabolic health, which is emerging here in the UK at the moment is there any white space left that no one's cracked yet i think i would say that the white space is what we were talking about earlier with some of these like everyday enjoyable foods that help regulate energy and satiety and are more healthful without necessarily being this functional product so think delicious snacks that are like naturally moderating your glucose levels and have some fiber so they're more satiating but they're not packed with all of these other things and not necessarily try to biohack everything and i think that like you said that that market was probably always there and it's just been ignored and it's been like either you're with the incumbents or you're with the extreme health products and there isn't a lot in between right now and i think that's the huge white space currently still to just have these like more healthful versions of things that people like that is where it's crazy isn't it when you stay in an industry long enough like you see the pendulum swing just back and forth and it seems now to be going I definitely noticed it in the US before but it's coming here like full fat dairy sugar like we've talked about but those like real food again which sounds crazy but it hasn't been that way for years now yeah and I I wish that more people realized how much so many of these claims and things that were told in media about what's quote unquote healthy.

28:10If you actually went back over the last 30 years and tracked it, you would see that it's changed so much. And it's like one period of seven years. This is really bad for you. And then all of a sudden it's really good. It's like that should be the obvious kind of like that should be showing you that any of these all or nothing claims are not real because how could something be so demonized and all of a sudden be good for you and then all of a sudden be bad for you. That's just not science. And like you're talking about like healthy fats and full fat dairy. Several years ago, everything was nonfat.