318. Your biggest retail mistake (it's not what you think) With Hank Watt, Nature's Wild Berry

33:29But I started giving people the option of trying this berry because I would have this liter of green juice out on the counter as I'm going through my day. And they're like, what are you drinking? I'm like, I'm drinking my green juice. and they're like gross and I'm like actually it tastes like a jolly rancher candy and they're like no way and I'm like and next to me was a Jersey Mike's that always had its citrus next to the you know the fountain drinks and so you know I had they would be very happy to give me some lemons and so I'd go next door and give them the berry demo with the citrus and then blow their minds away.

34:07And I noticed that it happened on every single person, every single person. And then they would bring in friends who have never tried it before. And then I, you know, this is how I'm not wasting my frozen berries. And it's so predictable. And they would all say the same thing, like very encouraging feedback, like, please make this a thing. So I did that for about three years and I set up the Google alerts to find out if anyone was working with this miracle berry, this miracle fruit, and no one would. I think that they looked at it as a huge liability. Like if they were to go into this miracle berry world, this universe, you know, they're looking at decades of, or, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of education.

34:57and a lot of people don't want to take that time because something needs to sell itself on the shelf within like what two seconds three seconds if you're lucky you have that time and I looked at it as instead of a liability I looked at as an opportunity because I can talk for a long time I like talking about things that are, you know, impressive and novel and things, especially things that have transformed my life that I have personal experience with. And so these two hour conversations, usually about phones and plans, ended up being like 30 minutes. They would pick a phone and pick a plan real fast.

35:40And as I'm setting up the activation and swapping over info from one phone to another, they're asking me questions about the berries. I was like, you know, talking about the berry for over an hour, hour and a half with these people. And my bosses, the districts and the regionals and the owners of the company, when I put in my two weeks notice, they were like, no, no, no, no. Today could be your last day. Go run and chase your dream with the business. you don't need to work here for your two weeks because you know they had heard this spiel so often and they knew that I was onto something and we did not know that I couldn't put in my two weeks until I knew we had a product and the farmer told us that this was not a new concept of trying to preserve the berry that it had been failed for over three decades people had tried and failed.

36:35And he wasn't going to discourage us and say, no, don't, don't do it if you're using my berries, but he wasn't going to encourage us either. He wanted us to remember that it was going to be a waste of time and money. And, you know, timing is such a funny thing because if I had tried to rush this right away, you know, people often ask you like, what's the regret or what would you do differently? And in the beginning, I thought, you know, it would be great if I didn't wait three years to start the company because I'd be three years ahead, you know, and you know, how, you know, what does that mean in terms of revenue and blah, blah, blah.

37:12But the year that we started was the year that Harvest Right made its first affordable home freeze dryer. And so freeze dryers are very, very expensive. Traditionally, they're, you know, in the high to about tens of thousands or low hundreds of thousands of dollars. And we didn't have that kind of money to experiment. We knew that it would take a long time to experiment because with so many people trying and failing, obviously if it was easy, it would have been done by now. But a few things happened to work in our favor that I couldn't predict. Harvest Right making its freeze dryer affordable like$3 ,000.

37:56I can afford$3 ,000 for a freeze dryer, but it was still too big for my apartment. And these things are not, they're loud. So like when people call it a home freeze dryer, it's like, yeah, but you have to kind of like keep it away from your family because these things are much louder than a washing machine and they take 30 plus hours to run a cycle. So I knew I needed to put it somewhere. and being in this restaurant scene so connected to Giuliano in his restaurant world and having friends in the restaurant, seeing other food servers, friends of mine. I got introduced to the owner of Slice Truck Pizza, a very popular pizza place in West LA.

38:45And I pitched him on the idea after giving him a demo and he was just floored by it just loved loved the experience and asked him you know would you let us use your restaurant after you close to do our experiments with the freeze dryer and he said you know funny thing about our business model being a pizza place is that we wait for everybody else to close and that's when we make our money like we make all lot of money at night. And, but he said, I do have ownership of the place next door and it's vacant right now. So if you make me an offer, I will, you know, consider that and you can put your freeze dry in there.

39:26And just because I didn't know what to say, I just threw something out and I was like, how about 250 a month? We could afford that. And he said, you know, if you write me a check for$750. You can have it for the next three months. And that was such a blessing, Dan. We were able to move it in there and start testing right away. And that's all Giuliano and I did. All we did was, you know, stay on the phone with Harvest Right, making sure that we knew how to tweak and, you know, fix. Sometimes we would break the machine and they would need to teach us how to fix it over the phone. And, you know, the settings, there's almost a countless number of ways you could run a freeze dryer.

40:08So, you know, we tried out a lot of settings. And I remember the first time that we got it to work after very close to three months, I was like, holy shnikes, Tommy boy, we have a product, we have something that, you know, we didn't have to worry because it was consistently working and we were still getting berries flown out overnighted from the farm in Miami and we the hypothesis was that if we moved the freeze dryer to Miami within two hours of it being picked we can get that fresh berry into the freeze dryer and that would give us like a closer product to peak potency. And that's what it became.

40:57It became something we didn't have to use in, you know, chemical free preservation at peak potency. And our farmer, you know, was absolutely floored that we were able to kind of crack the code. And I remember that first flight out to Miami, we stayed there like 10 days and we brought back, you know, a lot. of product. We brought back a lot of berries. It was a funny experience, but yeah, that was the first time that I knew that we had something very special, could not sell it for the life of us. We took it to every single restaurant around and we learned a lot of valuable lessons there about not bragging that you're the first.

41:41People don't like taking extra risk than they have to. Their business is already risky enough. You know, if you want to be first to anything, focus on being first to mind, because you are the best at what you're doing. And I had to learn that the hard way for like six or seven months, we couldn't make a sale. And then we figured out Amazon. I remember our first sale on Amazon, like it was yesterday, it was March 23, 2017. And I was like, wow, we have a customer here built in. And if it wasn't for Amazon, you have to give credit where credit is due. Obviously no system is perfect, but there's absolutely no way nature's wild berry would be alive today if it wasn't for Amazon, the way the market was in 2017 and since.

42:33So yeah, they are still our number one channel. Target has become number two only recently. And then, you know, Walmart Marketplace is picking up. It's competing with our Shopify store. So we've gotten to be kind of successful across marketplaces. We're on places that you wouldn't expect us as a gift option, like even party favors. but we have the best product for a fulfillment center and that's kind of what I'm most I geek out the most right now that we have five fulfillment centers that allow us to have a sub two-day transit time for delivery so we've kind of you know it took us 10 years to do it but we have this kind of like prime-esque like delivery in two days or less because the product is perfect for ambient storage.

43:31We don't have to have a cold chain. It's small and it's very lightweight. And so the economics of transportation just work out really well for us. And we can do this drop shipping thing that a lot of these marketplaces love to do. And they love that, you know, it's not any longer than two days and our customers freaking come back and order when they realize, oh, I could get it next day or two days and not have to pay like a lot on shipping. Hank, this is a powerful point. Sometimes the first real channel tells you what the business wants to become. You were trying restaurants, but Amazon revealed where people were already searching, already curious, and already willing to buy.

44:13That's a lesson every founder should pay attention to. So how long did it take you to get to that point where, like you said, you had a business on Amazon? Then how long did it take you to scale to the point where you knew you had reoccurring sales where you saw right away okay right away as soon as we got it on amazon um the we had enough to pay our bills and and to turn a profit yeah yeah we hadn't we had a lot we were we never stopped producing inventory even though we weren't um selling so we had a lot of inventory and we were sitting on quite a lot and um and luckily that was the one channel that everybody was going to to search for the keyword Miracle Berry.

44:58Almost nobody finds the Miracle Berry by typing in sweetener or artificial sweetener or natural sweetener or anything to do with sweeteners because technically it's not a sweetener. And the one keyword is the Miracle Berry. And thankfully, we didn't have to develop that keyword. We were second mover in the Miracle Berry market. Also, credit where credit is due. M. Berry started in 2006, and they're the huge, enormous gorilla in the Miracle Berry world. They're obviously now on their 20th year, and they specialize in tablets. And they've been doing social media 10 years longer than we were. So we took a page right out of their playbook, And we decided that social media slash these marketplaces were the best way to go because, you know, they had been doing a great job of educating.

45:52But, you know, we also needed to educate because our products were about, you know, similar but very different. The red berry is in its red berry form, as you just showed our audience that, you know, it looks like a berry because it's preserved as a berry. But the tablet, you, you know, has additives and other things in there to preserve it as a tablet. But I noticed that when I was going out to events, or the bar or the restaurant or whatever, and sharing the berry, you know, I could only imagine if I was trying to share a tablet, what people would think of me like, why are you trying to give me this tablet?

46:32You know, what's in this thing? But when it's a berry, people can see, oh, you know, it's still Mother Nature. And there's kind of this nature bias because we have a millennia of wondering, you know, how delicious can a red berry be, you know, in the back of our animal mind. But it also the tablet takes about 10 minutes to dissolve on your tongue if, you know, you're doing it the right way. And the berry is a 30 second process. So that's a 20 times faster experience. And, you know, I've never had somebody say that the tablet tastes better than the berry. It's just not how it works. Like the berry is like, and it kind of explodes and it's mother nature flavor as it's preserved, like right after getting picked.

47:12So, you know, that's always been kind of like, in my mind, I was like, I always want to taste the berry and I'll pass on the tablet. And then, you know, it just became a matter of price also because that's the third thing or fourth thing that people care about. and the tablet is about$2 a tablet. So I priced this berry at a dollar or less per serving. So, and our servings are one half of a berry. So technically one berry is the same price as one tablet, but people always told us that, you know, after I figured out how to do the whole coating thing, the half of a berry was plenty enough because it will last 15 to 20 minutes.

47:54And typically that's all I needed to do if I'm having a sweet snack or a breakfast or, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So a lot more scalable, a lot more approachable. And because we're trying to put it as many places as we can online right now, it's a lot more available. How do you compete against a company now? Do you know how they're doing relative to you? I want to ask this because most founders often treat competitors like enemies. But often a competitor validates the category, educates the shopper, and proves there's a demand. them how do you think about competing without turning this into a race to the bottom oh there's yeah yeah yeah they they have um a lot better marketing they pay for their marketing um so i don't know like obviously i can't tell you what their internal numbers are how profitable they are but are they a threat i'm sorry are they a threat oh they're not a no they're uh they're not a threat but they they make more than us but they're not a threat um uh i would never consider a competitor, a threat.

48:55We have so much respect between our companies. They welcomed us when we first launched. They let us know, like, you have an open channel of communication and vice versa. You know, we do talk to them occasionally. I kind of think that we have a future where we can do kind of like a Coke Pepsi challenge and, you know, kind of see, like, what people prefer out of the two of us um but you know it's it's nothing that i would ever consider ever consider a competitor a threat we have um like i don't know we separate ourselves quite a lot like we went with the non-gmo verified project early on we felt like that kind of gave us a little bit of validation also we this year we became non-ufp uh verified um so we have that second certification.

49:55We're looking at getting some more, but Shark Tank was a huge differentiator. You know, like the 18 months after Shark Tank, I think that we were out selling in Barry. You know, of course, there's always going to be a correction after Shark Tank, you're going to come back down to earth. And that's why 2004 into 2005 was kind of an adjustment for me and I'm like I mentioned in the very beginning of this interview being a lean team has helped us not have to worry about letting people go honestly I don't think that we if we had a huge organization that we would be where we are today that's my way of saying like we would have had to fire some of the people that we had hired for sure because just the volatility in the market and having like a slow burn is not conducive to having large teams or even, you know, I think almost the biggest impact that Shark Tank has had for us is that we've gotten access to the teams of the Sharks.

51:04So our payroll and our cash flow has gotten to, you know, be very predictable and affordable for us. You know, the teams that they have given us and allotted to us that we would normally have to pay for have helped us collapse timeframes, like in a huge, huge unimaginable or unexplainable way. That's fantastic. Let's talk about Shark Tank because this is important. A lot of founders see it as exposure. But for you, it sounds like it became validation, access, credibility, and speed. what made you decide this is the right path were you looking at other paths and what was the plan if they didn't call you what caused you to choose that route versus something else i knew we needed help from day one like we we were going to need help for sure uh so that was that wasn't like a light bulb moment for us in fact i applied to shark tank um after our first year in 2017 i applied to it in 2018.

52:09Not surprising that I didn't hear back because 40 ,000 companies on average a year applied to Shark Tank. But I was just a huge stinking fan ever since 2009. My friend showed me episodes in the first season and I started watching every single one and then became a personal dream of mine to be on the show after we launched in 2016. And so I would continuously, religiously watch and bite my nails, be nervous that M. Barry or a competitor of ours would beat us to the show because it is millions of dollars in advertising that you're not paying for. It's hard to quantify exactly how much, but it's in the millions for sure.

53:01And just being a fan of the show, I was always, I always had my favorite sharks. And so when we got the callback, actually how we got the callback was interesting. In 2017 and 2018, I decided, you know, I'm going to get to know the people who are making the decisions to be on the show. And I did that by becoming first connections with them on LinkedIn. And, you know, I got to comment and read their posts and stuff like that. And so when it came time for the casting call, quite frankly, we were too busy during the pandemic to apply. Our numbers skyrocketed. We grew four and a half times during the pandemic.

53:44Anyway, so yeah, we did, we did, you know, Jennifer Garner was the first one who really popped off as an A-list celebrity. And she gave kind of this permission, I put it in quotes because, you know, she's just so well-known and people love her so much. But that was because Ari Raz became a mentor to me. And, you know, LinkedIn is such a powerful place that I would highly suggest, especially if you're a founder or you make decisions in your company because you're in a position of being a decision maker. You get on LinkedIn and you get to know people who are posting regularly or have interesting things to say in your field.

54:23It sounds a little cliche because you probably have heard that a couple of times by now, but I can't really underscore the importance of it because almost every positive thing in the business in one way or another kind of started because of a relationship built on LinkedIn. So, and that includes all the trade shows that you go to and all the people that you ended up becoming really close friends with. I don't want to put friends in quotes because some of these people I really consider friends now. But Shark Tank happened because I didn't want my application to get lost amidst the 40 ,000 applicants.

55:03So I just DM'd them and said, no special treatment. Just want to make sure that my application was received. And in two weeks we got the call to be a guest on the show. And, you know, they end every conversation with, you know, the next step is not guaranteed. You made it this far and congratulations, but, you know, there's no guarantees of moving after this step. And so you get used to hearing that, but it was about a year process from the time that we applied to the time that we aired, is May to May, actually, that it took us and it was a stack of paperwork. And you had to, you know, like if you are not accurate with any of those sheets, it could lead to you not having your deal completed during due diligence.

55:52And I have to tell you another thing that Giuliano is responsible for is making sure that, you know, we replied so fast, like within 24 hours of any ask. And our numbers were spot on because he was on top of all that paperwork game. so um yeah couldn't do it without him and i feel like we we did need this external validation from the sharks um you know they're as we grow into retail they're instrumental in opening doors the buyers care about having a story that um you know is is um something that people want to listen to and they care about the re-airing and um that's a real thing like that's built-in marketing all the time and um and countless other ways that they're helping us like there's a movie coming out about shark tank uh next month um it's called breadwinner starring mandy moore and um because they're executive producers on the show they're producers on this movie and laurie was able to secure some product placements so i can't wait to watch this in the theater and see nature's wild Barry right there in the grocery store.

57:04But you know, I can't like so many different ways I'll, you know, I can't talk about it all the time. You know, I'd be talking about all day, like all the ways to help us, but we needed help for sure. We needed to make sure that the company was the last mover instead of known to being the first mover. Cause no one cares about the first, but people care about the last man standing and so that's um that was our strategy and throughout the process i knew that we would need to have protection ip patent protection and um but we ended up getting it so now that we have that and we have a pretty good plan to demo constantly in retail and we have executed on our plan with Shark Tank and education online, I think that we're about ready for retail.

58:00And we're going to go slow, of course. And, you know, just one person at a time demoing and one location at a time demoing. And I know that that's way too slow for most people. But thank goodness we have a business that does e-commerce well. And that's going to help us grow where people kind of relate to food the most in the grocery store. Fantastic. I introduce you to Andrew Therian of Samplers. In fact, he was on podcast episode 317. He's going to help you a lot. He is a demo expert. He can help you scale a lot faster if you want. This is where your story connects directly to retail strategy.

58:40Your product does not just sit on a shelf and explain itself. It needs education. It needs a demonstration. It needs the shopper to experience the difference. That changes how you You have to think about retail expansion. So let's talk about that for a minute. How do you make those connections? Well, thankfully, over 10 years through LinkedIn, through our connections out of Los Angeles, we have people that really believe in the brand. And they have seen the Barry work firsthand, not just on them, but their friends and their family. And they love, just like me, kind of feeding off people's reactions.

59:16And so they have agreed like a week or two ago, Alison Kane, who you probably know from LinkedIn, if anyone anyway, she did a huge event at Columbia Business School. And so one of my favorite people to ever do demos for us decided that, you know, she was available that night. And so we were able to pay her to show up and give us a presence. And we do the same thing in Chicago and Miami and Dallas-Fort Worth. So we have these one-off kind of ambassadors that are instrumental in just being there where Giuliano and I can't physically be there. But if it's in Los Angeles, like last week, I did the SoCal VegFest.

1:00:12And so this was about 2 ,000 people almost in Hollywood that showed up for basically a free event. And they were just buying from vendors who they enjoyed the products of. And so those are the exact type of events that we do very well at. Um, you know, we get the health certificate, we, you know, show up there with minimal amount of, uh, overhead and we have a lot of product and, you know, it's just about like, can you sustain the energy? And the way I do that is because I love watching people. I genuinely love watching people's reactions and it genuinely never gets old for me after 13, 14 years of doing demos, um, you know, to watch somebody new, try the berry and, you know, see how are they going to react, you know, cause it's, it's predictable, but everyone, you know, you usually fall into a certain categories of reactions.

1:01:09And, um, I, you know, even with kids, you know, I, I kneel down and get on their level, their eye level, and I walk them through it. And parents have told me over and over, like, we've never seen kid, our kids love fruit or react this way around fruit ever. And, you know, if I do have help, like my chef will slice the fruit super thin because the kids will eat six hundred dollars worth of fruit other different kind of niches around uh this type of space where you wouldn't expect a food brand to show up and do demos but uh yeah well it's experience i mean that's what we were talking about the first time is that you're you love being able to help people with that help people walk through it so thank you and then of course if i hadn't had your help i i'm sure i would have done it wrong too because most of us aren't patient enough to chew for 30 minutes 30 seconds and then and try but it worked out real well so thank you do that or just read instructions you know like it is very few people like reading but um i've noticed that this does well when people explain it on a video or it does well when a doctor explains it to a patient.

1:02:28That's another cool thing I'm really excited about. We just got HSA approval to sell through our website so health savings accounts can make payments. Before we go any further, I want to frame this carefully. We're not giving medical advice here. What is powerful about your story is that real customers are sharing personal experiences around taste, food enjoyment, and quality of life. That is inspiring. And it also shows you why you have to be disciplined about how you communicate the mission. And we're also approved to be marketing it for people who have lost their appetites. So the more we educate people about that, the more I think that we'll kind of get to stuff that has driven me for a long time.

1:03:12I open up and I share about, you know, the main reason why I became a emotional eater was in my twenties, in the late twenties, my mom and my dad were diagnosed with cancer 18 months apart. So my mom got diagnosed earlier and then my dad got diagnosed and I, I don't, you know, I, I know what it's like to have, lose a parent because of cancer. My dad passed in 2011 and And I know what it's like to have a survivor as a parent because my mom has been a survivor throughout the process, a two-time survivor now. And so I speak about it very personally. And I've always felt like, oh, man, this would be really awesome to have an impact in this area.

1:03:57I think it's just the beginning of Miracle Berries as medical food. And so I'm very excited about the future there. Did you ever anticipate that when you were starting? Well, so many people wrote about it. The journalists were writing about that before we got involved in 2012, 2011.

1:04:25Journalists don't have a problem writing about it because there's no liability on their end. The brands have the – you can't talk about it unless you can prove it from a brand standpoint. So we're kind of handcuffed with what we could talk about. I help a lot of people already who are tapped into that world improve their quality of life too. That's encouraging. Thank you for sharing that. Hank, I wanted to bring this back to the founder lesson. What I hear in your story is patience, proof, and discipline. You did not rush into every channel. You kept learning from real shoppers, real feedback, and real behavior.

1:05:02This is exactly how brands earn the right to scale. So thank you for sharing that. What else would you like to share? You know, I think that because the economy is the way it is, there haven't been a lot of people feeling like they want to be stuck in a job that feels like it's going nowhere. A lot of people I've noticed in customer service roles or retail roles or even some sales roles have been opening up businesses of their own. I think if you take a look at the number of business applications, it's never been higher than right now. And so I know what it feels like to make$2 ,500 or$3 ,000 a month in a place like LA and feel like I'm in my 30s.

1:06:10What's the next 10 years or 15 or 20 years going to look like? And it can get a little bit discouraging when you kind of look at it through that lens. But I would actually argue that if you're in customer service or sales or retail in your 20s or your 30s or any age, really, what you're doing is you're staying really sharp because everything that you do in your own business is going to revolve around communicating with people. And I think that you only lose that when you stop being around a lot of people. And you never know what is going to come into your world. So what I do know is that if I followed a lot of my friends who got finance degrees, because I got a finance degree too, it would have been extremely difficult for me to give that up and start a business, especially one that's as risky and time consuming as this.

1:07:11So I actually think that if you change your perspective and don't look at it like it's a negative but a positive if you're in a role like that, that you're actually positioned really well as long as you have the patience and the fortitude to see it through. so once you you know you're one amazing product away from you know your what can kind of define your life for your career and uh the world is such a huge place this is definitely an example of how reality is stranger than fiction like you know there are magic berries there are like willy wonka is in a product like mother nature gave it to us like it's pretty crazy so um that kind of thing can happen to you.

1:08:00Like I'm learning about these fruits that have been written about for hundreds of years that no one knows about that are just ready to go to market, you know? So, you know, it doesn't have to be in the food world or anything like that. But I think that you're in a very good spot. If you're, you know, in a retail sales or customer service position, I think that you just might not, might not see it that way, but I think that you're in a really great spot. Yeah, I really appreciate you sharing that. Well, this has been a great conversation. What I appreciate most is that this is not about a product story.

1:08:34This is a founder story. It's about resilience, education, curiosity, and building a brand one experience at a time. For founders listening, that's the real key takeaway. Build something people can feel, understand, and repeat. Thank you so much for coming on, and thanks for connecting with me on Lincoln. I appreciate it. It's been great to get to know you and I love your positive energy. So thank you for that. Oh man, Dan, I've been watching just to give you some feedback, man. I've been watching you for years and what you have talked about, I let just kind of soak in like a sponge. And it's definitely become a part of my pitch that I need to focus on somebody else's perspective and not my own when I'm going into retail specifically.

1:09:24And a lot of people just think, you know, you can walk into a meeting and say, oh, I've got the best tasting this and that. And, you know, you need us and we're going to blow up sales and all that. But really, the important part is considering what they want. And they want a product that's a premium product because that's going to, you know, give them better margins. But it's not enough to be an expensive fill in the blank. Like you need to drive in a premium buyer to buy that product. And, you know, that needs to, you know, initiate some sort of curiosity that can, you know, sell the velocity goes up across categories.

1:10:07That way, when they're checkout, they have a fuller basket at checkout. And this is like me being like an, like, I'm like one of your disciples because you've been saying this forever, but that's exactly how, you know, when I, when I look at our product, that's exactly the points that I want to make to buyers out there. So thank you for being the, the, the guiding light, I would like to say. Well, I appreciate your saying that. You're too kind. Thank you. I appreciate that. It's, It's been a lot of fun, and I could see you being a tremendous basket builder for any retailer. So I wish you all the luck in that space when you get in.

1:10:46You'll have to let me know how things go. I sure will. I think this is a part one. Maybe we'll do a part two. No, I would like that. Thanks. I'd like that. Yes, sir. Well, I appreciate your coming on. Thanks. You don't have a sales problem. You have a visibility problem. Most brands rely on reports to understand their business. but those reports don't show you what actually happened in store. The Retail Audit Checklist helps you quickly identify gaps in execution, placement, pricing, and promotion so you can fix what's costing you sales. This is one of the fastest ways to improve performance without spending more.

1:11:21If you want to see what others miss and act faster, download the Retail Audit Checklist in the show notes. Thanks again for joining us today. Please reach out and share your most pressing questions and I'll do my best to get you the answers that you need on future episodes, including with expert advice from CEOs and industry thought leaders. Comment, leave your questions and get this week's free downloadable guide and the show notes at retailsolve.com session 318.