🍛 VICTORIA HO // KHALO CO-FOUNDER

0:00I'm Sam Rose, and this is Commerce is Chaos, the podcast for consumer brand founders who know that building a business is messier than the highlight reel shows. Your supplier just missed their deadline, your top product is out of stock, and your competitors somehow just launched the same thing at half the price. Sound familiar? Every week, we dive into the real problems that keep founders up at night, from inventory disasters to supply chain nightmares, because surviving the chaos is what separates brands that fail from brands that scale. well thank you for joining me let's yeah we'll jump right into it but I think we can talk about manufacturing and fashion in the same breath so this is gonna be amazing I love it already and

0:39Victoria Ho:that is truly like again like when you do I think what we do where you have entrepreneurial like you're bitten by the bug like the whole work-life balance thing was a struggle for like a decade for me of just like how to do it how to do it better and then at some point you realize like the superpower we have is that if you find the right purpose like there it's a different species of balance than everyone else and yeah like work and life intermingle like fashion and work gear is the same breath like it is all the same big ball and we can embrace it or we can like keep trying to compare ourselves to you know others and that is never what the shape of it was supposed to be according to whoever we learned that from when we were becoming right you're so right but you and I were talking earlier about evolution and like lateral evolution and that seems like a version of lateral evolution like it really works in this context like curious out about whether or not it's like an actual advancement for the individuals to whom it happens it works like the use of me it's I mean it works I don't know but I've been definitely moved in a direction yeah like a movement is occurring like I just don't know if I'm like a dog like like a dog chasing its tail thinking that I'm like you know really making things happen out here yeah on these streets but yeah you by the way I've like slightly internet stalked you because I'm like very good at that that's like a that's like a skill set of mine just to say yeah I'm Yeah, just so excited to chat with you.

2:18Victoria Ho:And like, beyond this, like, learn more about everything that you do. It's I get very inspired by humans who lock into a purpose, but don't pigeonhole themselves to one lane. Because I think the society tries to do that a lot. Like, what do you do? And it's supposed to be like a forward pivot, you know, like, I'm an astronaut, I'm a whatever teacher. and you definitely have not done that do not do that in your career and I think it's really beautiful and fascinating and like yeah just like your brain like the lives you've lived you know like the things in a brain um and to hold that like left brain right brain balance is again like I think it's it's so neat and rare so yeah I'm very excited and in meeting Zaynam she's so cool So I was just like, yeah, like, let's do all the things.

3:11Victoria Ho:Oh, I'm so, so glad to hear. This is a treat in the day, in the week. This is a bright point. We're going to get ourselves over it. So, you know, sometimes I call it galaxy, right? It's just a lot spinning. And I see that and admire that so much in you, too. And I'm really curious how that has changed for you and how your relationship with your ideas and your life really have changed as you've transformed from effectively helping other people bring their ideas to life to like really championing an idea of your own and putting it on the map. And I'm really excited to talk about Kahlo and particularly excited to enter that conversation from the perspective of like, how has your life changed as a result of starting this business?

3:55Victoria Ho:Yeah, well, so a mini story time is before I had my consulting practice, which is Sherpa CPG, I started as a founder. So this was like 2010, had a popcorn brand. And it was kind of like the last of the Mohicans, like back in the day when if you remember that era of CPG, which you're probably one of the few that do like it was very much like Whole Foods. Let's just take that because it's a national kind of like pacesetter for that channel. Every store was like, very like regionally coded and buyers were very personable and had long careers there. So you could walk in with like your cute little glassine bag tied with a bow of like artisanal popcorn.

4:41Victoria Ho:And you'd be like, this is clean and like super cute. Like, don't you want to carry it? And they'd be like, oh my, it is quite cute. Like we absolutely will. So you could get a lot of business done that way. I remember that. And so regionally coded that, I mean, that was the four wall strategy too, was for that. I remember our, every Whole Foods was like decorated, painted with like local, locally inspired murals. And, and there were always like artisanal local folks. Carolyn's Cookies comes to mind. Carolyn, if you have one. Yeah, you actually nailed it. And that's a great brand that kind of kind of still is like grandfathered in through there but absolutely it was like a little discovery zone um and there was a lot of like adventure around there and yeah the murals I remember them like it was it was an experience to shop there that's different than the experience now which is a lot more corporate it hasn't lost all its flavor but you know when it comes to relationships with vendors that era you know we were in a started as a cottage industry And my partner in that company lived in Los Angeles.

5:51Victoria Ho:I was finishing school at that time in Berkeley. So we actually met at a fancy food show back when it was in San Francisco. And in Berkeley, like that's the farmer's market epicenter of the world. And like, if you're in college, your food group absolutely is kettle corn. So I was like, okay, like a bag that's as big as probably both of us. Yeah. So, you know, and being Chinese, like food has always just been the love language. And I don't even mean that in a cheesy way. I mean, if I like walk around saying I love you to my parents, it's awkward. Like that is like, I have to like gear myself up for it.

6:30Victoria Ho:Like, it's like a decision. I got to say it with confidence, like say it with my chest and then let it like lie, like they might not respond. So it's just, it's not a verbally expressive culture when it comes to affection, but like we say it through our food always. Ironically, food is like maybe the least appropriate career path for a child raised in a traditional Chinese family. Like you can be a doctor, lawyer, maybe an engineer. And like, since I have always been a storyteller and knew I was going to major in English, it was like, okay, well then obviously you're going to be like a tenured professor.

7:08Victoria Ho:or somewhere and or like have a side gig as a lawyer, right? Because just get your law degree. But I did none of those things. I really, really fell in love with this idea of how to build something and share really like the joy of artisanally crafted like flavors and experiences like with the world. Because that's the interesting thing about CPG, food and beverage, right? It's like it feels cold. It sits on a shelf. It's not like owning like a restaurant or being like a baker where you get to see, you know, a couple eat your wedding cake, which is like always there's an element of hospitality.

7:48Victoria Ho:Yeah. Like you nailed it. Yeah. I'd always dreamed of if I had a career in food, like it would be like only a little cafe or something like that. But something in my brain clicked that like, wow, if you really could bottle up the power of food as like a way to celebrate others and help others grieve and help, you know, it's just. emotions are trapped in food and memories are trapped in food. So when you share them, it's like an unlock. But yeah, if you could capture that through storytelling and flavor and ingredients, all of that in an actual package, like bottle that magic, like, wow, what an amazing world to be in.

8:24Victoria Ho:So yeah. So anyway, that was commercial kitchen or cottage industry to commercial kitchen, also in LA. And then when popcorn started to come out of the walls because we were right it's like you grow bigger than you grow that was also happened to be the um phase in our like food culture as america where popcorn started to become a category and like people were suddenly interested in gluten-free so like timing right the like severely underrated success factor in cpg we were just at the right time where it was like there was a company called like degrees popcorn if you remember that guinea pop was just launching like oogie's you had popcorn indiana like angie's popcorn was huge so it was like becoming a category yeah and that that company grew beyond commercial kitchen so we bought a factory because 10 years ago nobody was taught the cpg community is not in any way whatsoever what it is now yeah nobody wanted to talk to a little beta fish about co-packing or like we weren't even a small fish we were like a plankton like it was like not you know it was like you're like a non-factor but you know we were real when they're eating you they just float through and then all of a sudden you're dead yeah they're like yeah uh just there's no antagonism it's completely possible um you know the at the height of that that company you had 25 full-time employees were nationally distributed were um exporting to japan was our biggest export partner but we were exporting into like nine different countries around the world.

10:06Victoria Ho:Own this manufacturing facility. The company is still, you know, alive and running. I left that company in 2014. And, you know, the nutshell reasoning why is, you know, over drinks later, we can go through that. But I think really it's you realize like if you realize that you need a why to really be an entrepreneur, a long term entrepreneur and for me like profitability is important is vital to obviously running a business but it wasn't my why like I needed a deeper purpose there yeah and that was kind of like not in alignment with my partner and it's right it's like trust and vision have to be in sync very tightly so I left that brand and I was like in a spiral for a minute because I was like wait I was like the owner of this company and we were growing and I had like I as a first-time entrepreneur like you intertwine your whole identity with the thing that you're building and you're like well I guess I'm just like a loser now and like unemployed it's like never gonna work in this town again what do I do and it was a real blessing that through human relationships I realized like, hey, actually, like I have real friends in this industry.

11:27Victoria Ho:And also I have insight into what people need to succeed from zero to one, because the gift of having built something from scratch is that like I was the formulator. So, right. So like I learned how to scale flavor, like chef driven flavor, like into actual recipes that worked at commercial scale, learn how to actually manage and operate an entire factory, do the marketing, learn the lexicon of sales and write like really build out things like a supply chain and understanding certifications. and just true like commercialization from zero to one, which is a very opaque piece of food entrepreneurship.

12:11Victoria Ho:It's like, we don't really talk about it. We just think, oh, when I get into a co-packer, my dreams are going to be answered. And suddenly I'm going to have a bunch of inventory. And I learned or I taught myself graphic design through that experience of that first brand, because, well, quite honestly, at the time I was like, I'm not paying 80 bucks an hour to some rando to like draw me a square and I'm like hey give me a blue square and he's like here's four yellow triangles and I'm like are you aggravating so right it's like learning the skill sets because of desperation and frugality and I mean and that can happen yeah desperation and frugality right like that can happen at almost any point at almost any scale and across You're sorry.

12:57Such a variety of disciplines. At some point, you're like, oh, man, I just have to figure this out myself. Like, there's no other answer. And the figuring it out of it today is like so, so gentle, right? Like you can ask ChatGPT literally anything. And I mean, it'll walk you through like step by step exactly what to do. But 10 years ago, it was not so luxurious. I mean, you really had to go to the end of a much smaller internet to find those answers or dislike. I love how you phrase that.

13:29Victoria Ho:I love how you phrase that. It was a much smaller internet and source. It was much more clear which sources were reasonable or trustworthy versus which ones were like just some, you know, keyboard warrior, like in a corner of the world, like, you know, raging out on knowledge equity. but yeah these skills that I'm very thankful now to have learned from the bottom um because I've always had I think confidence in my ability to shape a narrative for an objective so I call that storytelling now from like a culinary lens but because food and cooking really is and I call it a love language really because it's about like everything I've realized now in my whole career at the end of the day is about human connection.

14:20Victoria Ho:And I don't just mean human to human. I mean, human to self, human to nature, like human to spirituality. So right, like food is that beautiful gift that we have where without the barrier of spoken language, like there's certain ingredients or certain textures or certain aromas that just is like, triggers something that makes us feel that we have like a baseline of humanity that we all engage on regardless of our differences and I think it is the most powerful way that you can honor your like physical self as well as really like your um your holistic right it's like this binary of I'm gonna eat this thing it's gonna make me feel guilty versus not guilty it's like I I don't subscribe to that because food should just make you feel strong or bring you joy or if it makes you sad like maybe don't eat it yeah or as much of it but yeah so you know I was very I thought that once I left my first brand I was like okay well I know how to do the packaging I'm the formulator like I know how to scale things obviously I'm just gonna start another brand obviously like and I'm gonna do it my way and I going to do it right?

15:36Yeah.

15:37Victoria Ho:And then like, it took like about two months of me thinking through the right trillion ideas that I had. That was like, you know, something doesn't feel right about this, actually. Like it's, it's exactly like it's a lateral move. It's like, if I start a new brand right away, I'm just going to be mired in figuring out how I'm going to afford it, how to scale it like is that really the best use of my desire to impact the world and like whatever grab a bag of weird skills you gain as an entrepreneur and at the same time like i think just slowly putting it out into the world that i was like a free bird yeah right which takes a little bit of like getting over the shame of being like again like an unemployed loser for like a minute, right?

16:26Victoria Ho:Like people in the industry were like, like, shit, like, we've been waiting for you, right? It's like, you have things that can apply here and add value. And I was like, oh, I didn't know that was a thing. Like, I didn't know that money could be exchanged for these things that I find to be really challenging and fun to solve. Yeah. Well, and yeah, I think to build on that too, because I had, I have a similar narrative of sort of having started a brand and then started an agency and then going back into back into brand um you get it yeah uh when you're building your own brand especially bootstrap i mean i work i work for free my joke is i make money once every 10 years like totally worked for free and had to learn all of these things for free and effectively like i don't know this is sort of a twisted concept but like consulted for myself for free just like how do i do this thing well let me go ask myself and we'll figure it out and the shift from doing that effectively for free or just as a service to like the business and the team to trying to figure out how to like put a number on that and monetize it was really interesting when i started manifest i'm like okay i'm doing all of the same things that i did yesterday but now i'm well with a layer the layer is education and then i suppose monetization in a much much different way but if i was like developing a product strategy or doing industrial design or like working on whatever it was brand identity logistics planning I mean it was all all that stuff was stuff I just had to do before and the way that I monetized that was through selling spatulas and then you fast forward to building around an agency around and you're like okay well I'm actually doing like pretty much the same thing but I'm I have to educate people and I have to put a value on that time now because it's it's just a whole different model you really know that was I think the hardest part of my journey like is because even when I left my first grant right there's a whole pocket of time the black hole of time where I was like I have zero value negative value right it's like clearly I'm I'm I'm worthless and then there is so much power in being a generalist that also go knows how to go very deep into both strategy and execution which it sounds like I'm like loving learning like more little tidbits about how we align because I do think it's a very rare like leapfrog like from lily pad to lily pad the mental work that you do to go through kind of how we navigated yeah where we are now because with the consultancy um it's even I think just articulating the value of how a generalist in any industry is actually able to outperform some subject matter experts because of efficiencies right and it's like time is money and the idea like you brought up putting a price on it is like I I'm sorry like I can't charge hourly because then I'm punished for like kind of being badass at what I do like right like I don't know how to like work slower for you I only have one mode yeah I don't hurt like a Victoria light mode.

19:45Victoria Ho:So you're not really paying for my time, you're paying for my experience. And like, we will get this thing done in three months versus a year and a half. It's very difficult for emerging brands to no fault of their own. Because I put myself in their shoes all the time is like, yeah, like that would be a tough proposal to swallow. So it's being able to really have confidence in yourself too that like we do have limited bandwidth like the right projects will come and then having the grace I think the second lesson in um agency journey is like you're not gonna win every project and that's okay but also some of the projects that you do gravitate towards like they're not going to rocket ship right like they may not ever even launch and you still put a lot of effort and a lot of work into it.

20:44Victoria Ho:And like, can you all be proud of yourselves at the end of the day that like you did something meaningful for that pocket of your life? It's like, you know, that's like a lesson in progress daily. But yeah, so I, and on the agency side, like I had the incredible opportunity to work with brands like Tara Fertil, which was supported by the whole Nestle Foods arm. So really seeing how big food operates, which gave me insight into like, okay, maybe I don't want to put my superpowers towards that, like really getting closer and closer to what makes the most impact. I'm curious, what are like the, just in memory, what's kind of like the most, I don't know, touching or impactful difference that you experienced between big food to, well, I guess we'll call it small food um that's such a good one we can all guess like a little bit big ships move slowly but yeah like what what was your biggest takeaway such a great question i guess if i can cheat and put two on it one it's oh yeah put 10 there there are a couple one it's that they had some really incredible human beings in their system and it hurt me to see them in a system where their genius hit a ceiling of the ship, like you said.

22:05Victoria Ho:And it's just right. It was like, what's crazy is when they're able to hook in, let's say like an ex-entrepreneur or someone with that hustle because they're so valuable and bring them in. It's like you kind of see over time the aggregate pressure of big food, like kind of buffing away just like their joy in the hustle. Yeah. Because it's all about meeting a timeline. That was fascinating to watch because it's right. You can almost see them like they were in a slightly different team or had a direct line of communication with someone higher up like they would be like they should be the senior VP of some something.

22:44Victoria Ho:That was fascinating. Also, hilariously, like even big food has supply chain challenges. And you would think that like if you were formulating for big food, like you would have all the resources in the world, which technically you do. But it's almost ironically like the budget is smaller because they have such a clear idea of what they need their margins to be. That kind of everything and maybe the biggest takeaway is, you know, this industry now. Let me just talk about the industry for a minute because a lot of it is still run by big food. and all of the, I think, people who are eyeing food and beverage now because it's gotten a little reputation for being like a little bit sexy.

23:32Victoria Ho:You know, like in the 80s when we were coming, it was not sexy to be a food entrepreneur. Now it's like, oh, that's a cool side quest that I'm going to go on for a couple years. And I see a lot of people doing what is common in Big Food, which is you build a product by spec to hit a white space. Most emerging brands, a lot of the founders that I work with, or even if you look across the landscape of which brands are the most exciting to consumers, like they're not chasing white space. They're honoring a heritage or like translating a childhood memory into something that is more wellness focused.

24:14Victoria Ho:Like there's a purpose behind it besides like this algorithm is not filled of this product that people demand. We're going to pour marketing dollars on it to like build a brand and it's going to do ABC for this demographic and we're going to launch it and it's going to be a blast. And like sometimes those products work because they're just a more cost effective version of something else that's happening. Right. Like these Me Too products. And because they have such distribution power, like why do most people buy most things? Because they found it like right. It's like access to it. Whereas the most incredible products made by emerging brands like have to figure out how to grow beyond their neighborhood and then their region and their state.

25:07Victoria Ho:So that was fascinating, like just the white space innovation strategy versus like purpose driven or human driven innovation and how those different pipelines work. Yeah. And then I guess the most fascinating thing was like, I always wondered, like, why me? Like, why am I here? Like, right. It's like you guys, like whether it's Nestle or Unilever or Tyson or any of these arguments, like you guys have the network and the financial runway to like build the most epic squad of like, right. You have like 20 well-trained food scientists like in your like armada of humans, right? You have all the things.

25:49Victoria Ho:And I would say like you can see the impacts of my point here, which is like, oh, right. The acquisitions that have been happening lately. Lately, I mean, the past, you know, six to 10 years or five to six years maybe is because they're such, you put it so well, like because like they're such a lumbering beast, right? Such a big ship. Like they can't move at a pace that's scrappy enough to keep up with the innovative emerging brands. So they can either acquire them or they have to bring in human talent that has a brain that hasn't been like, you know, washed out by working in big food, which is, I think there's more of us out there now that have like been in this zone of true hands-on innovation which is really building things that improve upon the current and again not just like oh you make strawberry prebiotic soda well i'm gonna make like orange prebiotic soda and now it's like an innovation it's like no who made that first prebiotic soda right like how do you find your categories in honor of like human wellness or again human connection so yeah like I think about that every day because I'm very thankful for all of those experiences because there are like little glimmers of really great things that I saw that I can borrow and import into my work with emerging brands and a lot of that I'll give it to them is like systems right just like having clear systems and honestly like accountability like for documenting everything like really clear hierarchies of communication for how things are going to be launched like there's a lot of strategy that they've baked into like templates of process yeah and also just really developing like my own sense of how to commercialize towards a process and, you know, not get mired in feelings, you know, like on factory floor in a team.

28:00Victoria Ho:It's like, we are all great people. We will have our feelings conversations later. Later. We're going to have feelings later. Exactly. Like right now, everyone buckle down and like move together and like make this thing. And I will say that I really fell in love with like the I don't know if you've ever worked like in a restaurant growing up like or a bar restaurant and service industry. But yeah, I used to love like, when on certain nights, like you just are dancing, right? It's just like a choreography of have like, yeah, like you have like, your nods and your hand signals with the line cooks and your fellow servers.

28:40Victoria Ho:And it just everything is like, so beautifully choreographed, because you know each other. So in a factory, like I sometimes get like little deja vu moments of that same feeling of just like yeah like this machine of human is I like get shivers when I think about that because yeah like everyone has to be locked in and you just kind of like it's having a vision that is like time stamped towards a goal of the day but yeah and like nothing breaks down and like people are just like moving that was really cool to experience like i got to work at a plant in mexico and as well as one in canada over the years it was just interesting to see again like there's a language of production as well right it's like language of food language of production it's like in any factory around the world if you get it um and you can like speak co-packers speak production manager like y 'all just fall into the choreography and that is a beautiful beautiful thing um and it makes shit happen.

29:46Victoria Ho:Like things happen when people share that same vein of like efficiency and integrity in their work. So yeah, it all comes back. So, okay. So, so I have a few rapid fire questions about this. So you've been inside this machine, like all, all sorts of shapes of the machine actually. And you've got, you know, playbooks that you're extracting from that and lessons that you're learning from how to work big and how to work small. But then, then you start, you know, your own business again and you've got to execute. So what did you do wrong in your first year that if you had been consulting for someone else, you would have been like, no, no, no, no, no.

30:23But since you were doing it for yourself, it was like it happened to you.

30:26Victoria Ho:That question is so good that I'm like triggered. Well, I'll say this is I would have looked at myself and been like, you know better than to allow like your team to chase fireflies. And I think again this is a personal flaw or just the way that i was built is right and we're all just a we're all just a reflection of the traumas that we're healing from and building from is like i have historically and i think particularly with my first experience in a brand like i've historically been the one that um get so excited to be building and solving and giving that sometimes i don't recognize when I'm not being like, it's not reciprocal, right?

31:10Victoria Ho:It's like, I'm not getting the healing time I need or the fulfillment that I need or X, Y, Z. Um, and so you overextend, I think your empathy and you cross into the border of being an enabler, right? It's like, you go from empathetic leader to enabler quickly. Um, and it's, yeah, right. It's like, and it's not even other people at that point, it's to yourself. You're like this, you know, it's like, you know, you're going to get this done, but you only know you're going to get this done because you've never failed before. And that's a really hard standard to keep up because you've never even given the people around you an opportunity to say like, Hey, it's actually okay.

31:53Victoria Ho:If you like chill for a day, because you're right. Set in your own mind, what you want to achieve for your team. And especially when your team is like truly wonderful brilliant humans that may just not be that well versed in cpg i would say is um i learning patience for i love what you said earlier about education being such a big component of like the transition to being a consultant because yeah it's like everything when it's in your own brain you're like talking yourself you know your own language like you can shorthand it and they're like oh I have to like make this make sense and communicate it to people who may not have the lexicon or you know like just like the equity knowledge equity to catch up to this um and to have patience for that but yeah I I would say that I um in the first year um is really just having a stronger voice for how to be, I guess, more financially, I wouldn't even say financially responsible.

33:00Victoria Ho:It's just advocating more for like, what my experience absolutely played out in, right? And so spending a lot more time on the strategy and I realize why too it's because again as a consultant right it's like people are on a waiting list to work with me because I'm a tough I have a reputation for being like a tough love but it's all love like leader yeah and they want me to be the no man right versus the yes man and to play devil's advocate and really just to like be a thorn in their side so that we actually don't have to go down the rabbit hole of recovering from the lessons that it is healthy for a lot of entrepreneurs to learn.

33:52Victoria Ho:Right. It's like, OK, like maybe you'll never believe me that the stove is hot until you put your hand on it. Right. But right. It's like you get rewarded for that. Like that is why people want to work with Sam is because she'll tell me X, Y, Z. So then suddenly like when it's your team and like your co-founders and like your skin in the game for whatever reason, at least up until now, right? It's like, oh, like, well, maybe it's not. No, like maybe I can find a way to make this red flag into a pink flag and then like into a green flag. Right. It's so the kind of I wouldn't even say second guessing of what you know, but almost the intentional silencing of your business acumen because you really respect and admire your team and like want them to feel loved and respected and admired because they are brilliant and beautiful and truly trustworthy humans that like I think yeah like you get too human um and yeah then I think at some point is you know with Kahlo specifically one thing that I do really love about both my co-founders, Ankita and Jaisal, is that we made a pact early on that we're going to try to build the infrastructure of our team in a way that actually reflects our vision and mission as a brand, which means we're going to actually work on being real friends and trusting each other as real humans and having sticky conversations when we need to.

35:29Victoria Ho:And it's like, yeah. I think that a lot of brands do put in the work to have relationships independently of their business relationships but um not to the extent where i think they're realizing from day one that like no this is going to be a part of our lives for the long term like this there has to be a trust yeah that is you're intertwined basically yeah um and you have to track it yeah i'm gonna make what's going to sound like a radical leap, but it's not. Between what we're talking about in terms of the translation layer between how to do something for yourself and internally and then how to share it with the world or maybe mentor someone, whether it's a teammate or a client, into kind of getting to the conclusion.

36:20And I'm going to tie it directly into your product, I call it. Because Ayurveda, it's a 5 ,000-year-old system and you're selling in the U.S. and you know there's some folks that are like turmeric's really exotic ginger's cool but turmeric wait like on the pantheon of roots carrot's totally great oh my pantheon of roots somebody making that t-shirt right now what you're doing with the product you're doing the same thing because you're honoring the traditional wisdom uh of ayurveda and you're also making it approachable for someone who's never heard of that before that's like a form of consulting you're just putting it in a beautiful jar and then you're kind of walking the line of making sure that you're not dumbing it down too much like you right you have to respect your customer your client and and you want them to celebrate or at least tap into the authenticity of what you're selling but you can't make it too scary or too unfamiliar there's there's this concept in industrial design

37:19Victoria Ho:called most advanced yet acceptable my oh i like that and it's it's sort of how you define what cool is it's the most advanced yet acceptable so something that's like too advanced is just it becomes scary weird yeah or weird or whatever but right on right on the edge there is like oh wow I've never I can relate but I've never seen anything like this before yeah and I feel like Kalo is really beautifully walking that line and and I love just tying kind of like your two paths to this present and recognizing that like you're you're bottling you through the thing no you're kind of a genius like i can immediately apply that to like the music world right music industry especially pop culture music and fashion but yes with food absolutely like does it become esoteric and again with timing something's hit too soon like maybe we're not ready for like cricket wing elderberry twig seltzer even though someone's going to make that and be like this is the next big thing that's going to change all our lives drop a note in the comments if that's a thing that you want us to go right someone's like oh you stole my idea i'm like no i won't it's not not the thing but i really loved how you framed that because one of the tenets of Kahlo is right is to truly meet people where they are.