How a Diabetic Built One of the Fastest-Growing Cereal Brands in America with Krishna Kaliannan

27:17And I quickly realized there I realized that wasn't going to happen. There were a couple of things that happened. One, I had this great advisor early on. I was entering a totally new industry and was very lucky to have found this individual. But he was pushing me to go into retail and to consider retail. And two, I realized D to C, I think, works well when your shipping costs are a low percentage of your total order value. Right. And so, you know, it has that impact where like when we're selling cereal, right, or like a snack, these are things that are not super expensive where the cost of shipping can exceed the cost of the product.

28:02Right. And so you want someone to buy your snack from your website. Either you're losing money on the sale because you're paying for the shipping, which is something you might decide to do because everything's you know, there's no shipping costs on Amazon. And if you want to compete with Amazon, you're going to have to realize that. Right. Or they're paying for the shipping and then they're paying like two or three times what it would cost in a grocery store because they have this big shipping bill. Right. Or you have them buy six units at a time or four at a time or whatever, and then the shipping cost can be taken out of the margin.

28:36But in that case, it's still like now they have a high MOQ effectively. Right. And it's not like you can try this new cereal brand. It's like you've got to try this new cereal brand and buy four of these things at the same time, which adds risk if you don't like it. Right. So doing that math, I quickly saw, hey, it's going to be hard to make a profitable business selling food through the mail. Right. And then I started to think about, well, how can we make it more cost effective? And I started to invent in my head this idea of basically neighbors coming together, creating their own sort of buying groups.

29:13And I would ship them like a pallet of it and then they would all go get some. And I was like, huh, that would actually work really well. And also, huh, that sounds like a grocery store. Right. And so I was like, all right, I just reinvented the concept of a grocery store. It should just go through grocery stores. And so that's how I really focused. I came to realize, OK, retail is going to be a big part of this. And obviously, obviously, you know, retail has been a big part of our journey from there. But at this point, blitzscaling online, that was huge. That was maybe what a lot of brands were doing at the time because ads back then were, your CAC back then was so cheap.

30:02And I'd imagine that your ambassadors were probably pushing for you to go and scale D to C. Yep. So why didn't you? And were you actually ever tempted? And what was it like kind of pushing back? Yeah, yeah. Well, so it goes back to, I think, the composition of our cap table, right? We had many small checks. And so no one investor, I think, really cared all that much. I had one main investor, my friend, who cared, but I don't think that he had many investments, etc. And even for him, it wasn't a big investment. So no one was going to argue with me or add in from an item about what the right way to do it was.

30:47So that was part one. Part two, I'm naturally the type of person where if I don't understand why, you know, the reasoning behind doing something, I'm very unlikely to, I would say, just blindly follow the advice of someone else or do something because they're saying to do it. And I think that's just a part of my personality. I think there are pros and cons to that aspect of my personality. But regardless, I would not just, you know, try to spend a lot of money on D2C and grow that way simply because other brands were successful doing it or because some person told me to do it. I really have to see the logic behind it.

31:25Right. And as I, as I kind of analyze the logic behind it, I felt unless we were going to get to a Amazon like scale, right? Um, which we were not that it was, it was really highly infeasible for that to make sense. So once you realize, okay, grocery, that is our, that's now, and now not our new path, but an additional sales channel that we want to explore and really kind of, kind of go hard on what was, what was the first step with grocery? Was it going to the natural channel or what was kind of that, that route to market? Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I had first actually tried to, um, well, so whole foods, right.

32:10Was probably the grocery store that I went to shop at, um, the most, um, that I liked. Um, and, um, so I had reached out to the buyer at whole foods. Um, this woman was fantastic. Um, you know, I think that the whole foods buyers in general, They're looking for new up and coming stuff, right? I mean, they're not just trying to buy more of stuff from the big CPG companies. She realized the potential in the product, I would say, and really championed it in bringing it into Whole Foods. So that's how I got started in retail. It was definitely, I was very fortunate for that reason because it was an uphill battle otherwise.

32:57to say the least. A lot of the industry coming out of, say, Boulder, Colorado, etc., was very focused on natural and organic and things like that. And so not necessarily looking at what I was doing as in line with that movement, so to speak. But we weren't a mainstream food company either. Right. And we also we also weren't like a gourmet artisanal food company either. Right. So we kind of sat in this this bucket that I don't know that many people knew how to put us into or what to put us into. Furthermore, because I was a diabetic, I think a lot of people immediately associated the cereal with things like ensure shakes or other sorts of things which they perceived as not selling well or not going to sell well or whatever the case may be.

34:00I still don't know what the sales of Insure Shakes are. They could be doing fantastic for all I know. But I kept hearing, I kept getting looped into this, oh, you're like an Insure Shakes guy and no one wants that kind of stuff. So I was really lucky that this buyer, I think she saw the opportunity and she jumped on it. And then from there, it was a bit easier, Because once we got into Whole Foods market and the cereal sold well there, I think we quickly became one of the fastest selling brands in Whole Foods market. Then it was, you know, before you have sales data, you're really trying to sell people on an idea, on a dream and on yourself.

34:42Right. Once you have sales data, you kind of have market validation. You can take it elsewhere. And it's kind of it's quasi incontrovertible evidence. So the data then started to speak for itself. Amazing. What do you think most people misunderstand about how a product actually moves off the shelf in a grocery store?

35:07Many ways that I could go with that question, Mike. I think maybe a couple of things that I would state. I think, and I have no way to prove this, but especially in the early stage, that word of mouth moves more units than anything else does. And so you can spend all day long working on your own advertising and et cetera, et cetera. But I think ultimately, if you have a great product, consumers recommend it to one another. Um, some people love recommending things to other people and will tell, you know, 20 different people about your thing. And then, and then those people will go by it, et cetera.

35:53Um, I think that is the number one kind of force for driving, driving sales, driving growth, basically getting off the shelf, right? Once you're on the shelf. Um, outside of that, I think that the, the basic building blocks of, of marketing are super important, right? Um, basically, um, the four Ps, right? And in particular, obviously you have to be at a price, um, that makes sense both for you and your business, but also for the consumer that you're going after. I think that you have to be in the right place in the first place, right? If you have a really, as we did, kind of premium priced. This episode is brought to you by the Hidden Gems.

36:39Let's be honest. There's a lot of bullshit in the marketing agency world. So much under-delivering, overcharging, and incompetence. You truly don't know who's good until you engage. And by then, it's too late. That's what the Hidden Gems solves for. Powered by deep agency insider knowledge. They provide founders and brand operators with only brand beloved, highly vetted boutique agencies at preferred rates. Agencies across media, creative, dev, design, events, social, and beyond, all well covered. The Hidden Gems serves brands like Dr. Squash, Monster Energy, Gorilla Mind, Figs, and Sadova to achieve some of their biggest growth.

37:12And here's the best part. David Drexler, the founder, is offering his service free forever to anyone in the Consider VC community who mentions the show. So if you're thinking about hiring an agency, talk to the Hidden Gems first. It's free service, biggest bang for your buck. You simply can't lose. Link in the show notes. Cereal, better for you cereal, Catalina Crunch cereal. You know, Whole Foods is a great place to be selling it. You know, there are other stores like a corner liquor store that, you know, in theory, you could convince to put the cereal in there, right? Or like a convenience store.

37:45That may not be the right place for your product to be, right? So I think getting that right is important. I mean, I think getting the packaging right is obviously very important as well. So you're communicating to your target consumer what it is that they should, why they should be buying the product, what's in it for them, what the product is, etc. And so I think those things as well as the product itself are key. And then there's just the selling environment. I definitely am guilty of underestimating how much where you are on the shelf and what part of the shelf you're on and what set you're in, what you stand next to on the shelf.

38:24All those things also have a big impact on how fast you sell. no that's really helpful thank you um and when i mean when did it make sense for you to expand categories beyond cereal yeah yeah um so first went into um we have a line of protein snack mixes um and basically it's like chex mix made high protein um we take our cereal mix it with cashews, almonds, pecans, etc. Some cheese crisps, some chickpea flour based pretzels we make, toss it in seasonings like honey mustard, Parmesan garlic, cheddar, etc. And sell that as a savory snack, right? So that was the first extension we went into. It was simple.

39:15We had found that a lot of people were telling us that they loved our cereal, but they were actually snacking on it. and that's a theme to this day is that more people actually snack on our cereal than eat it out of a bowl with milk and I had not expected that at first because I had mostly started the company to eat it for breakfast but yes yes yeah exactly yep but you know we sell our cereal on a stand-up pouch so it's easy to open it's easy to close it's easy to get you know it's not like a bag in box which is harder to access and but then there were a lot of people that were like hey I'd love to snack on this.

39:50I snack on it sometimes, but I prefer salty snacks. You know, would you consider making like a salty snack version? Um, and people were bringing up other things they were snacking on. And so it made a lot of sense to get into, um, snack mix. Um, the other thing about that, that kind of extension or new category, however you want to put it was, um, it was, you know, it was the consumer was asking for it. Um, but it also runs on the same lines that our existing products run on. So it's not like inventing a whole new production process. It didn't require getting too deep into any sort of new manufacturing technology, et cetera.

40:29So I think it was like relatively close in from a hardness to do perspective. Got it. No, that makes a lot of sense. And that also that just hearing that people were actually snacking on the cereal instead of consuming it traditionally with milk and everything makes sense in terms of being easily able to or seem like easily able to expand to other categories within the snacking within snacking and also introducing salty snacks and everything which yeah that's um that's amazing um personally i mean i for me the the salty snacks are just unbelievable that's uh uh for me um um I understand once you kind of had gone to Whole Foods and that was performing really well, it was easier getting into other retailers.

41:21What was kind of the next steps there? And at what point did you actually introduce like the next SKUs? What did it make sense? Because still, you know, tying up capital, producing new SKUs and also the R &D process. How do you think about sequencing and timing? Yeah, yeah. I think so, you know, it depends on what you're launching, right? I mean, you can divide things into new flavors, which are very close in and can be more simple to execute, right? Versus entirely new categories, which can be very complicated, right? And things in the middle, like new pack sizes and new formats, etc. And so I think that you, you know, a couple of things.

42:05We started out with flavor expansion on Cereal. That was easy and simple from an execution standpoint. But it also made a lot of sense because that's what people, our consumers were asking us for. Right. I mean, the number one request we would always get is and we still get is like, hey, can you make a XYZ flavor of the cereal that we don't have? Right. Right. I had in my head when I started the company, really Cocoa Puffs, and I thought we would just ever make like chocolate cereal. We have a dark chocolate cereal. It's our second most popular. Right. And so I didn't necessarily think about I didn't actually realize, oh, people are going to want all these flavors.

42:46But then I said, you know, people wanted cinnamon and then they wanted, you know, we have blueberry muffin, which sells really well. We have honey graham. Right. We have we have fruity, et cetera. And so we started down the road of making more flavors because that's what consumers were telling us they wanted. Then we got into snack mix because it was like a salty adjacent to cereal. And then from there, I think when you go into new categories, oh, and we'd also gotten into different pack sizes, right? So we started selling into the club channel and the club channel requires or typically is optimized for larger pack sizes, right?

43:22So we got into new pack sizes. We made some single serve pack sizes, et cetera. And then as we started to grow, we started to look at new categories as well. I think new categories are more tricky just because of the executional effort involved, which I think can be more than you first think, right? What I mean by that is like, you can have a new category which dictates the use of a large number of different ingredients because the ingredients that work well to make cereal may not work well to bake dough or something like that. Right. And so you're then looking at, well, so what are the ingredients I need for this specific application?

44:04That then leads you down the rabbit hole of sourcing all sorts of new ingredients, as well as the technical aspect of learning how those ingredients work. You then on the sales side, you have now maybe a new category or a new set of buyers that you're going after as well. Right. And, you know, if this product is the right fit in a different channel instead of your current channels, you have new channels that you're going after and so on and so forth. So, yeah, I think that getting into new categories, it definitely ups the business complexity a lot. And I think is a high, high intensity endeavor.

44:40It can obviously de-risk your business and obviously it can help. I mean, it can reward you if you do a great job. You're helping consumers out in some way, right? And ideally, you have some strategy behind it, right? Where you have your existing consumers, and you're trying to get into a new day part in their life, right? Or you're trying to bring in new consumers that your current product doesn't appeal to. Whatever the strategy is around it, if you execute it well, that obviously can do wonders for you too. But it's not an easy endeavor. Yeah, for sure. I mean, when I talk to some investors and obviously everyone's different, but the idea of building a platform, sometimes it can scare them because it's like, hey, you have like, I really want just like single category products and then exit to, you know, strategic because you have your kind of single category instead of building like a platform, for example, and being in different categories.

45:33uh but i also like i understand that it also is de-risking and i mean i just love your products as well and so um i just think that it's uh it's very makes a lot of sense as well in terms of the in terms of um capturing the consumer at a different time of day where cereal tends to be morning although they're snacking but yeah but but but then you have salty sacks which might be something for more so the afternoon, for example. So that's, that's really cool. Really cool. How, talk to me a little bit about the time that you almost quit Catalina Crunch. There's a couple times you almost quit. Yeah, yeah.

46:13One time due to, due to manufacturing issues. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yep. We had, you know, so when I started the company, I was insistent on putting the product, the cereal into a standup pouch. Um, you know, I'd grown up eating cereals and all the cereals were in a bag in a box. I hated how, when I took the bag out of the box and then open the bag, it could be hard to put the bag back into the box. And then that was annoying and frustrating and the cereal could go stale, et cetera, et cetera. I knew that we were going to have a premium cereal because we're using a lot of protein powder in our, in our cereal.

46:51And that stuff is a lot more expensive than, you know, wheat flour, for example. Right. And so I was, I was, I was thinking, all right, we got to deliver the best experience. It's got to be in a standup pouch. You know, all the companies that were making cereal at the time were putting it into a bag in a box. And so we ended up having to split the manufacturing process into one partner, putting it into, you know, making the cereal squares themselves. And then the second partner that was packaging it and coding it. And what I found there was, is there weren't very many people that could do those last two steps.

47:27And so I ended up finding this co-manufacturer. They were one of the largest in America. They do a lot of the airline snacks. I think the founder was, or the owner was a type one diabetic and he was very, you know, he, he loved what I was doing, but it didn't make business sense for them, right? They were packaging millions of stuff a day. And And here I was asking for 20 ,000 units a month or something like that. Right. At the very early days. So they were having trouble with their machinery and getting it to work. And so that eventually they said, you know what? We can't do this anymore for you.

47:59Sorry. And at that point, I was like, shoot, I they didn't want to do it anymore. I couldn't find anyone else that could do it. And I was like, man, I'm either going to have to go do this myself or stop doing it. Right. Or shut down the business. And so I started looking for space. I didn't know how I was going to do it. I'd never done it before. But, you know, rented 3000 square feet in a in a office park with a, you know, like an office in the front and a warehouse in the back. started. I bought a cot off Amazon. I slept in the office and started, you know, coding and packaging the cereal in the back.

48:44And that was, I think, a blessing in disguise. It was it was incredibly time consuming and challenging. But it it it made us much more nimble. Right. In terms of the flavors we could come out with, how quickly we could do it, et cetera. But that was that was the time when I, when I almost threw in the towel. Wow. Um, yeah, that sounds, that sounds very frustrating, but also the same time, um, as you say, like a great, you know, learning experience, I guess it's easy to say that once it all has happened, but, but how, how do you also think on the R and D side and launch new products, even, even with your current, even with your current catalog of, of, of products.

49:26How do you balance taste versus function? Cause I feel like you were one of in this, you know, last few years, one of those seems like functions everywhere in terms of what a brand needs to be, especially since coming back from Expo West, but it seems like you were, you know, quite early when it came to function. How do you think about function versus taste? Yeah. Yeah. Um, we talk about a lot about this, um, inside Catalina. Um, it is hard, It is hard to know how to get it right. It's hard to get it right. Luckily, I'm not the only one sitting in the kitchen trying to figure out how to make stuff taste good.

50:02We got a great team that can do a better job than I ever could with this kind of stuff. So that has really moved the ball forward for us. I think that to your point, if you start to add too, too much of certain functional ingredients, fibers, proteins, et cetera. It makes it hard to taste good. On the other hand, if you take something that exists on shelf and just add a gram or two of protein, you can make something that still tastes very good, but is not moving the needle on nutritional attributes with really, right? And then you're just asking yourself, like, am I in business really to make people's lives better?

50:44Or am I really just in business to sell this thing, right? And if so, how much of it am I really going to sell? And so you have to balance it. I mean, I think it depends on the category and the eating occasion. First of all, um, there are times when people are much more willing to compromise on taste for function than there are other times where they're much less willing to compromise on taste for function. So I think you need to identify where along that spectrum you sit inside the consumer's mind. And that depends on what consumer you're going after. Um, and when you intend on them eating it, what mindset they're in, et cetera.

51:17Two, I think, is who you're going after. If you're going after type 1 diabetics, as an example, they're going to be much more willing to compromise on taste for function, quote unquote. If you're going after, quote unquote, the 50th percentile American on the question, they're going to be much less willing to compromise, right? So I think that's a balancing act. Um, and, and I think there's no, again, there's no easy answer other than to say the, the thing, your, your, your snack or your product has to be meaningfully better on function to stand out. Otherwise it's going to be hard to stand out.

51:57Um, and if it's not meaningfully better, are you really making people's lives better? Um, at the same time, then you have to make, make it taste at least good enough. Right. And what good enough is depends on, I think, how many people you want to sell it to. And I think if you just can't, if you personally are not going to eat it, then you can't be selling it. Even if you are personally going to eat it, that doesn't mean that it's good enough. And ultimately, if you can't make it taste good enough, maybe it's just not the right time for that product. And you just have to give up on what you're trying to make and do something different.

52:33It seems like function today, which was probably very different when you first started, but it's kind of infiltrating almost every category in consumer goods. Do you think that there's a limit in terms of categories where the functional benefit, it doesn't make sense to have, for example, a functional product in? This episode is brought to you by the Hidden Gems. Let's be honest. There's a lot of bullshit in the marketing agency world. So much under-delivering, overcharging, and incompetence. You truly don't know who's good until you engage. And by then, it's too late. That's what The Hidden Gems solves for.

53:10Powered by deep agency insider knowledge, they provide founders and brand operators with only brand-beloved, highly-vetted boutique agencies at preferred rates. Agencies across media, creative, dev, design, events, social, and beyond. All well-covered. The Hidden Gems serves brands like Dr. Squash, Monster Energy, Gorilla Mind, Figs, and Sattva to achieve some of their biggest growth. And here's the best part. David Drexler, the founder, is offering his service free forever to anyone in the Consider VC community who mentions the show. So if you're thinking about hiring an agency, talk to the hidden gems first.

53:44It's free service, biggest bang for your buck, you simply can't lose. Link in the show notes. I think that, you know, I guess, you know, one thing I was, I was, I was thinking about is like, you know, people buy, they want to be getting the best stuff, right. Whatever that category is that they're buying in. Right. And so in certain categories, like in, like in automobiles, you know, if you have a used car and you go to the dealer wanting to buy a new car, like you're going to be looking for now it's, it's 2026, you bought your car in 2020, what new technology is available in your car, Right. Like, how can my car be more functional for lack of a better word?

54:21Right. Like, can it drive itself? Can it drive itself on the highways? How does it help me avoid getting into accidents? You know, like, can it do its own maintenance? Yada, yada. Right. I think in food, there's kind of a similar aspect that's just less well recognized or well understood. that's also changed, which is now with this interest in health and people realizing that what they eat impacts more than just do I feel good or not, do I feel full or not in the moment, right, but can have longer term impacts or shorter term impacts on how they feel, the quote function. They're now looking for more.

54:57They're looking for more better. I do think that there are situations in which the category might be optimized to deliver one type of functional benefit. and you're trying to deliver a different one, maybe in a way that contradicts a category norm. And that might be challenging. Or you could be doing something where you're trying to deliver that functional benefit when it would be better designed to be delivered through a different category, so to speak, right? Like a different mechanism. So function can definitely be taken too far. Function can definitely be put, the wrong function I think can be put into the wrong category.

55:39Um, but I don't think there's per se a limit on, on, you know, consumer outcomes, for example, right? I mean, they, they always want, um, they always want better. And, and I don't know, I don't know if we're ever going to be, you know, if we ever can say, okay, we have the best possible food and there's nothing to be done. Yeah, no, that's, that's a great point. I mean, Do you think also there are products where it seems like on paper and certainly in their marketing materials that there is functional benefit? However, there actually really maybe isn't as much or it's actually a lot lighter than one would anticipate?

56:28Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I mean, there are examples, you know, not to get into the negative, right? But there are examples of companies that say, hey, we make, you know, protein cereal. Then you look at the amount of protein in it and it's like, you know, again, it's like four grams of protein in a 60 gram serving size. Like it's not really meaningful. Right. There are other examples where like, you know, and again, I don't know much about this. Right. But like fiber based sodas and how is your body benefiting from or processing or digesting the fiber when it comes in soda form. right versus when it comes in the form of food and so are you getting the satiety benefit from fiber in soda that you would get from fiber in an apple as an example right like a food versus a beverage right um so are we actually delivering and i think there's so much unknown about the the gut microbiome and and the different types of fiber there's there's a there's a lot of way to go there um but there could be examples where yeah it's like maybe the fiber soda is delivering you fiber, but it's digested in a different way, which really isn't that meaningful for you.

57:37And so we should rethink whether this is something to be drinking, right? Yeah. Something that I've been thinking about is on the nutritional facts section, are there... To say, if there's something in a true way that you can do to eat or not, is quite as functional. I think he says, kind of the way it's kind of way from getting it, or something had it to be with a new product. That's what I've been doing. It seems like everything, kind of in our world, so to speak,

58:22it's new in our game.

58:35call outs in the marketing when it comes to function and sometimes I get confused and have a hard time understanding if there actually is a functional benefit or not. Got it, got it, got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think like, you know, an example maybe is like Celsius, for example, the energy drink and maybe energy drinks in general but like i think celsius on the front bottom of the can has like three consumer benefits that it talks about if i recall one of them is like helps boost helps burn fat or helps boost metabolism or something like that right and so in that sense they're trying to take um an ingredient i don't know if they're laddering that up from caffeine or some other ingredient right but they're taking some ingredient and and trying to translate it to, okay, how does that help Mike or help Krishna throughout their daily journey, right?

59:23And I think that's a valuable thing to do. Totally. On Catalina, you decided to do a rebrand, I believe last year. Why did you decide to do changing your packaging and changing it? I imagine that was a pretty long process. Yeah, yeah. So when I started the company, because we've done several. So when I started the company, low sugar and low carb were very important as a type 1 diabetic. And so I was very focused in on that messaging. I started to sell the cereal, though, right? And I realized, oh, there's a lot of people that are eating our cereal because it's high in protein and because it's high in fiber.

1:00:13And then there were a lot of people that were getting on keto and they were eating our products because they were keto friendly. And actually, the buyer at Whole Foods is, you know, like strongly encouraged me to add keto friendly to the packaging in big letters as a way of appealing to that kind of growing trend. Right. So the way I would look at it is consumers can change how they talk about something, even though they're really talking about the same thing. And as a brand, you want to be evolving your messaging to keep up with how consumers are talking about it. So the most recent kind of rebrand we did, we went back to focusing on protein, fiber and low sugar is kind of like the three core, you know, kind of functional attributes of the product.

1:00:59and putting those front and center across the middle of our packaging. And then people really, you know, the taste is really important. And so then we made a really big bowl of cereal, looks delicious with a splash of milk, that sort of thing to illustrate the taste, right? And that took us away from the previous packaging, which had keto friendly on the front, you know, as big, it was plastered on there. And the reason we did that was, again, you know, it all goes back to consumers. It all goes back to talking to consumers, understanding how consumers are thinking, and then acting based on that.

1:01:29In this case, we had a number of consumers that I was talking to that were saying, hey, I love your cereal. When I'm on keto, I eat it. And I'm like, well, what do you mean when you're on keto, you eat it? You don't eat it otherwise. And I started to realize that they were thinking of it as something that they would eat while on keto. And that was kind of boxing us out of just being something that was a good fit for them to eat as a snack or as a breakfast, right? And we didn't want to be pigeonholed into that way of thinking. And so that's why we made the packaging change. Do you find that riding a trend, even balancing that when it comes to keto friendly, for example, and talking about a trend versus not, which is right now the current packaging form, it's not talking about a trend.

1:02:21It's call outs in terms of just what you are. And, but do you find that early on when you're starting a business, it's actually really helpful to kind of capitalize on a trend that's happening and then later, um, later not kind of, uh, leave that out because, because you kind of have reached scale or, or a broader audience. This episode is brought to you by the hidden gems. Let's be honest. There's a lot of bullshit in the marketing agency world. So much under delivering overcharging and incompetence. You truly don't know who's good until you engage. And by then, it's too late. That's what The Hidden Gems solves for.

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1:03:32It's free service, biggest bang for your buck you simply can't lose. Link in the show notes. Well, yeah, I definitely think that when you're small, it's likely better to go deep and narrow with who you're going after. and make a great product for a specific group of people because you have very limited resources. And if you focus really tightly on who you're going after, you can make a dramatic improvement for that small group of people. Afterwards, then business gets bigger. You start to build out teams that at least have people that do marketing and sales and operations and finance and supply chain, etc.

1:04:13then you can start to broaden your messaging and you can go after additional groups of consumers, right? Rather than just the one initial group. I think that you should always just talk in the terms that your target consumer is speaking in, because that's the most effective way of communicating towards them. And so to your point, there could be a trend like keto friendly that's going on. that's a great fit or there could not be. Right. I mean, like, I don't, I don't know that there's, I think that these things like keto friendly can grow in popularity so quickly that they can be a great way for you to build the awareness of your brand.

1:04:55Right. And so I think it's, it's good to recognize and, and kind of take advantage of that, but it has to be aligned with what you are at its core, right? Like you can't, in my opinion would not be, it would be ill-advised. you know me as a type one diabetic it makes sense to go from low sugar low carb to keto friendly to now protein fiber and low sugar like it's just it's all the same thing right um it's just talked about differently i don't think we'd be well advised to like now go next to gut health if gut health became popular right or you know start talking about the you know something totally in a or you know or talk about how our cereal helps you sleep or something like that right Like that's in a totally different direction.

1:05:36Yeah, no, for sure. I'm, I'm, I'm always curious about how companies, when you do have a trend that actually is very much aligned in terms of, um, your product, how to think about the relationship between that trend and the company, um, in terms of how to think about, you know, your own positioning for it, because of course, you know, trends come and go, uh, Keto, Keto obviously was, you know, huge 10 years ago, even though I feel like in, as we talk about protein, how about fiber, it's very keto centric, very much alignment there. But I just always kind of find it fascinating how to even think about a trend versus not getting too wrapped up in the trend or, or, or, or pulling back.

1:06:25So, so I, I appreciate that Krishna. A final question. Yeah, I was going to say I was going to say one thing there, actually, real quick, Mike. I think that for me, it's about, you know, it's like it's like trend versus fad. Right. Is two sides of a coin there. And to me, a fad is something that's growing and its growth is being driven by its own growth. In other words, it's becoming popular. People are noticing it's popular, so they want to try it, too. But there's no underlying there there. There's no there's no credible reason to be adopting it or doing it. It's just it's popular and it's becoming more popular because it's popular.

1:07:01That goes up and then it comes back down when when the popular people move on to something else. And then, you know, longer chasing that thing, but you're chasing something else. Right. A trend is something that has a durable cause and effect based reason for being in existence. Right. And so, like, you know, I give a good example of my opinion, like gluten free to folks that have celiac disease or a gluten. intolerance, gluten-free is a great reason for gluten-free products to exist. And it's a trend. For people that do not have gluten intolerance or celiacs and misattribute other symptoms to gluten, that is putting yourself on shaky footing, right?

1:07:47And so I think gluten-free, maybe 15 years ago, grew tremendously in popularity on the backs of this kind of mainstream interest in gluten almost as a fad. Now it's kind of come back down and is growing slowly on the basis of the real, you know, really, I think mostly celiac disease and some people that have a gluten intolerance. So if I were sitting in someone's shoes trying to figure that out, I wouldn't be asking what's like the cause and effect that's driving this. Is it really quote better for a certain group of people or new for a certain group of people? And if so, it's really worth leaning into.

1:08:23Um, if, if, if you can't credibly say that that's happening, I think it's worth, it's probably worth avoiding. So what's keto is keto. Do you think that keto is a fatter a trend? I think that I think with keto, um, I think it has both components again, Right. I think that the underlying fact pattern is that if you eat in that in, you know, in adherence with a keto friendly way of eating, I think you can reset or eliminate your type two diabetes if you have it. I think you can lose a lot of weight if you're in shape. I think it'll help you stay in shape. So I think there are a lot of good reasons to eat that way.

1:09:07It's also very difficult to eat that way. Um, and so I think there's a portion of the population that is able to sustain eating that way. Um, and then I think there's another portion that's not right. So I think it similarly has both a, a, a trend element and a fad element in one. Um, but again, I think that it's a great way of eating. And so I don't feel like, um, there's, there's anything wrong again in, in, in going after it. That's fair. That's fair. I thought a question for you. What's one book that's inspired you personally and one book that's inspired you professionally? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:09:47Yep. That is a hard question. I, as I was giving this some thought, I, I read a lot of books. I don't read any books purely for personal reasons, unfortunately. So I'm going to merge it into one. I really like the book Man's Search for Meaning. It was written by an Auschwitz survivor. Highly recommend it to anyone who has not read it. It talks about meaning and purpose as kind of like a fundamental drive in human behavior. and for me it has two things going for it one is like the story of surviving auschwitz which was fascinating and just frankly incredible um but two it was and it just gets back to purpose right which is if you're operating a business to make money um it's really hard to succeed you have to have in my opinion an underlying purpose in way that you're making the world better that you that that you strongly believe in, um, that I think that it's really important that you, um, truly believe what you're doing is doing that.

1:10:59And then that you're sharing that with your, your employees, your investors, your, your retail partners, your ingredient vendors, everyone else. Right. Um, so I, I took an enormous way amount away from that book, um, and recommend it to, to anyone that has the chance to read it. I thank you so much for, for, for sharing this book. We've had a couple others um i know rishi garb also also uh also shared um this book as well shout out to rishi i think he came back on i think he came on the show in like 2021 um uh yeah i totally agree with you and that's also i appreciate what you said as well in terms of starting a business and the reasons why to start a business as well if it's just for the purposes of making money it's probably going to be pretty hard to be successful.

1:11:49Um, not that there aren't people that aren't, are successful for the, if that's a sole purpose. Um, but if there's meaning behind it, um, trying to make the world a better place, see, see an opportunity that, that isn't there. Um, then, then you have a chance. Um, Krishna, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Mike. It's been great talking with you. So great talking with you. I'm going to stop right there.