The Emotional Secret Behind Billion-Dollar Brands ft. Craig Dubitsky

29:10Craig Dubitsky:But then you asked, that was the starting point. Well, actually, I have a question about that. I have a question about that, though, in college. You know, it's really interesting. A lot of, and I know that, you know, there's a lot of changes when you were in college and when I was in college versus, you know, Gen Z. Yes. What is a lot of brands, of course, that are trying to access the college market, trying to access Gen Z. From your experience selling to college students, what are what were some of what do you think about that kind of customer set in terms of colleges? What were some of the things that that were quite interesting of that dynamic?

29:49Craig Dubitsky:Well, for one, I was I was of the set. So it wasn't sort of selling to it was providing for. as an insider but as a little bit of a corollary i i think the the meta version of your question is uh like how do you find your audience and sell to them to some degree right like how do you yeah how do you figure out who that is and i think what's been really important and powerful and exciting uh for me has been this idea that you create things that people don't buy you don't sell to them you create something that they join and it's very different than this like transactional nature that i think a lot of folks go for uh you want to create something that they feel like has been needed and you crack the code and where's this been my whole life and if you do that right people again they don't just like your thing they join your thing and then they tell everybody about it they go wow like someone figured out that at 1 30 after domino's stops taking orders i'm going to be hungry and oh yeah the product's really good you have to come through with the goods like the product has to be amazing but it's this idea of being hyper thoughtful and once you you know once you deliver on those things you're sold you know it's it's and it's and it's not that fungible and i get really excited when i think about brands or opportunities which to me are kind of one of the same in a lot of ways.

31:21Craig Dubitsky:If you can create something that people feel is durable and what I like to think of as endearing and enduring, you know, if you do it right, again, people fall in love with it and they find it hard to replace. Like if Method went away tomorrow, I think there would be people that would be very sad and upset. If my Pixel phone went away, I'd get a Samsung Galaxy, you know, like big deal. If my Lenovo laptop went away, I'd get a Dell. If my Dell went away, I'd get an HP. If my HP went away, I'd get an Acer. I'd get a Chromebook. Like it wouldn't be as big a deal, but man, if my MacBook went away, oh man, all bets are off.

31:59Craig Dubitsky:You know, like, so how did they do that? Like I can't, like Chrome works on all these devices, right? So if you're using Chrome, like we happen to be right now. So why do I want to run Chrome on my MacBook? Why do I want to have a MacBook? Like, oh, it's the ecosystem of Apple. 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. Powered by deep agency insider knowledge, they provide founders and brand operators with only brand beloved, highly vetted boutique agencies at preferred rates.

32:38Agencies 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. And here's the best part. David Drexler, the founder, is offering his service free forever to anyone in the ConsiderBC 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.

33:07Craig Dubitsky:Yeah, that's kind of an excuse, but the reality is it's an ecosystem because so many people have joined it and not just bought it, but have joined it and use these products in a way where they're not using them. They're fully integrated into their lives. And that's the magic, creating things that people want to self-select to integrate into their lives. And people write their narratives through their stuff. So we as shepherds of providing stuff, because that's our quote unquote business, we have to be hyper mindful of that. And that all feeds back to what I was talking about before around emotion.

33:44Craig Dubitsky:It's emotion. so you don't join something you don't want people joining something out of obligation you want them joining it out of a positive emotion it's why we're seeing a lot of changes culturally in this country um positive emotion is is in short supply and i think as we get into this wacky world of of ai everything this idea of authenticity and authentic emotion is going to become this scarce and very important i'll use the word commodity it's it's uh it's really interesting times. For sure. For sure. Yeah. Certainly times are very, very interesting. Going back a little bit, what did you see in Adam and Eric when they started Method?

34:26What were you drawn to?

34:27Craig Dubitsky:Well, my first conversation ever with Eric, we had someone in common. I'd started a company. My old CFO said, you have to meet this guy. He likes all the same stuff you do. Brand, culture, design, packaging. And back then, this is 25 years ago or so, packaging like no one like packaging was not really high on a lot of people's like dance card bingo card list of important things and i really had this thing for packaging and it's funny you'd ask me before about college stuff and like how did i get into packaging or sorry how did i get into design and products and cpg um and sorry i i add my way out of no i actually add from that because then i went into the college stuff and then i just yeah no no it's all good i had i i you know i've always loved products and i remember i went to the uk for a summer trip as a college kid or maybe before going off to college i can't remember and i remember going to a boots and i bought all i can't believe the stuff that pops back into my head i bought a shampoo as one does like people go and they buy like souvenirs whatever my souvenirs shampoo why the hell did i buy shampoo i saw this bottle and i was like look at this cool bottle it was called charles worthington it was cheap it was like the i don't want to keep dating myself with brands most people that are listening will have no memory of but you know like i was a kid like my shampoo is whatever cheap crap my parents bought it was like perk plus it was like you know like a dollar a bottle kind of thing and at a relatively equal price in the uk there was this beautiful thing called Charles Worthington.

36:06Craig Dubitsky:And it was this great like elliptical shape and it had this really cool flip tab and the fragrances were amazing. And it was very, it sounded very British and proper. It was Charles Worthington. And I saw this other product that I had bought. I promise I'm going to get back to your question about Adam and Eric. I bought this other product at another trip to the UK, probably some years later, and it was called Physio Sport. And PhysioSport was a product that was, you know, Unilever product that predated Lynx. Lynx then became Axe in America. And this product, PhysioSport, was, I believe, the first ever men's three-in-one shampoo conditioner body wash.

36:49Craig Dubitsky:And it came in this really cool pack that if you were a dude and you were like, you know, in your locker room or on, you know, like a trip with your girlfriend, you pulled that out of your dop kit, you know, people would be like, whoa, what's that? It was very cool. And it had a soft touch sort of feeling and a valve on the top so it wouldn't leak. And it was just like this badass little thing. So fast forward, Vizio Sport package, empty, is probably sitting in a closet or under like my childhood bed for like, I don't know, 25, 30 years. But I never forgot it. I just always thought it was cool.

37:23Craig Dubitsky:And I kept an empty bottle. I have thousands of empty bottles. So I get connected to Adam and Eric. I meet Eric for dinner. and we're talking and something came up about packaging it's like yeah i really love packaging he's like well i like really love packaging and design i'm like yeah i kind of do too and he's like no no like i really do and i said i kind of do too what's your favorite oh you're not gonna know it no one in america knows it i'm like that's funny me too what's yours he's like oh it's this brand called physio sport i go physio sport the first men's three-in-one shampoo conditioner body wash from the uk that predated links the backs and he's like get the fuck out of here like nobody knows that i'm like dude i have it i i want it's like seafoam green has olympic rings on it i think it's from like 1984 it's like oh my god so we had this wild bonding moment over a freaking pack of a men's personal care product that never made it to america didn't make it really in general but was like a thing so it went from there to like hey i heard you have some idea that's keeping you up at night?

38:25Craig Dubitsky:And he said, yeah, I'll never forget. He said, yeah, I think cleaning products suck. It was very eloquent. And I said, well, why do you say that? And he said, because the stuff you use to take care of your house, the biggest, most expensive purchase you make is so ugly, you hide it. And so toxic, you lock it up. And I thought that was the most brilliant thing I'd ever heard. It just made so much sense. There was such clarity there. And I said, you know, I've never really thought about cleaning products before. And now that you say that, that's really interesting. And now that you say that, I think the brands are all terrible.

38:58Craig Dubitsky:I probably said, I think the brands all suck because he said, you know, I think these products suck. And I'm like, I think the names all suck. He goes, well, why do you say that? And I said, because culturally all these brands were created when women were supposed to stay at home and smoke cigarettes and deep clean the house every day and have a hot meal waiting on the table and leave a martini glass by the door where the man would walk in and put his folded sports page of the newspaper there and eat his hot meal. And, you know, the wife would, you know, like pine over the fact that she hadn't married an astronaut because that was, I had a celebrity back then.

39:30Craig Dubitsky:You were either like Jackie O in the White House or you were married to an astronaut and everything else was like, you know, not that exciting for women in the fifties and sixties. And all these brands had X's in the name because it sounded like the space race, you know, the, the wild world of the future was being demystified and the mysteries of the periodic table were being brought to you in a bottle with brands like Windex, Ajax, Borax, Oxidol. Comet kept the space race theme going but didn't have an X in it. Mr. Clean was patterned after, I think, Yul Brynner, who was a sex symbol at the time where American men were like, that dude's bald and I could kick his ass.

40:08Craig Dubitsky:And American women were like, Mr. Clean can come help me in other places around the house, if you know what I mean. Tight white t-shirt and an earring. Like, let's go, big boy. So it was a very different cultural time. And the brands had not caught up with the fact that, oh, that's right. Women have careers that don't involve, quote unquote, homemaking. Like everything had changed culturally. And by the way, we still have a long way to go as far as women's rights are concerned, at least I think. But these brands were asleep at the switch for the most part because they had missed the fact that culturally we had moved.

40:39Craig Dubitsky:So this is the stuff that, again, like gets me really worked up. And I look at all these categories. I'm like, well, what's changed culturally and what hasn't changed in terms of the offerings? And if you can marry up, like sort of shrink that delta, you know, and bring things in that are a little more culturally relevant and resonant into these mainstream categories that are missing culture and do it in a way that has scale and thoughtfulness brought to it from the beginning, there's some real value to be created and unlocked, I think. Totally. Totally. Thanks so much for sharing that story. That's amazing.

41:11It's amazing.

41:12Craig Dubitsky:Yeah, it was my lucky day to meet Adam and Eric. And by the way, they were mixing product in their bathroom. Like, they're incredible guys. I feel like I just talked a lot about Eric, who's really, you know, just a genius, right? Between Method, Welly, Ollie. I mean, he's got an incredible list of unbelievably powerful brands and accomplishments. And by the way, same with Adam. Adam's got incredible history, too. And really, that marriage, that was like Simon Garfunkel, Lennon McCartney. Like, those two are incredible. So I feel very lucky to have met them in their earliest days. And really, I didn't start Method.

41:45Craig Dubitsky:I was just lucky to meet them early and appreciate the vision of what could be there. And nobody else seemed to get it at the time, which is kind of interesting looking back on it because so many people said no as an investor. Right. Yeah. No, it's it's I I would imagine. I mean, that's yeah, that's that's so I mean, I sometimes I feel like some of the most successful companies, you know, there are a lot of investors. I say no. I remember reading about, I remember listening to, I think it was how I built this on Peloton and how Peloton had a really hard time fundraising back in the day. And yet, you know, here they are today, right?

42:20Yeah.

42:21Craig Dubitsky:And they've had some moments, but it's not going away. You know, there were people who discounted it and said, like, it's an exercise bike with an iPad strapped on it. And it was like, no, you're missing what it really is. What it really is, is building a physical at a digital community in a unique way while it's getting people to participate in physical activity. It's hopefully going to improve their health long term, make it kind of fun and interesting and competitive all at once and connected in a way where typically the only connection you had was, you know, going into the locker room at the gym or waiting for someone to get off the machine you wanted to use.

42:59Craig Dubitsky:It was, it was really incredible. And obviously COVID, you hate to think of COVID helping things, but when COVID, you know, did its thing and people were like, I, I need something. The fact that it offered not just an exercise regimen at your fingertips, but that it offered connectivity to other human beings as you were doing that, like that was, that was a bigger, like a higher ordeal, like a higher order of thinking beyond, oh, it's a bicycle with an iPad strapped to it. Like, no, you're missing what it really is. It's a bigger thing. Like method was a bigger thing. Like hello, hopefully, you know, people think of one day and be like, oh yeah, they weren't in the oral care business.

43:37Craig Dubitsky:I used to say we're in the friendly business with happy. I don't say we're in the coffee business. We're in the happy business. Coffee is a delivery system for happiness and we're not stopping there. It's we're in the happy business. So yeah, that's if you do that right, you know, again, in a thoughtful way and you build it that way and you have a vision, you can really extend your offerings and your purview and hopefully your likelihood of meaning more to more people. Totally. I'm so glad you talked about happy because I would love to actually transition there. So what were some of the inspiration?

44:11I mean, I know that you talk about when you're even thinking about starting something, you start with a name, which makes total sense based off of what you said about hello. Why would you, why you would

44:23Craig Dubitsky:choose happy yeah my wife it's my wife my wife it all started with my wife by the way everything for me comes from this at the risk of sounding cheesy i feel like i'm caveating all these things before i say them you know i'm going to sound old or cliched or cheesy but my wife loves coffee coffee makes her really happy and i thought what if happy could make her coffee that was it like one of the ways that eos got started you know this spherical lip balm yeah my my wife all of friends they all had this purse at the time this giant cavernous black hole purse this long shawl purse and we watched the woman stick her hand in there and pull out what she thought was a mascara and it was a tampon and she was really like you know very upset that she was embarrassed she shouldn't have been i think but you know she was and the idea was like well you have two eyes and you have 10 fingers what if you just stick your hand in that cavernous black purse and know exactly what you were feeling this doesn't feel like anything else not just because of the soft touch outer, but the shape, right?

45:20Craig Dubitsky:So there's a fiddle factor. It's fun to click. It's fun to hold. It's, you know, it's a little stress toy for some people, but it was this idea that we could, you know, appeal to other senses. That was a big reason why that happened. And it never would have come to all that had my wife not have been also like addicted to lip balms. And the average woman was ingesting five pounds of petrochemicals from, from lip product. So it was sort of a combination of things, but it all started really like thinking about what goes on at home, thinking about what was happening with someone I love. And that's where Happy came from.

45:52Craig Dubitsky:Literally, I was asked by a big retailer if I would look at a category with them having nothing to do with coffee. They were just like, we like you as a thought partner. Would you be willing to walk stores with our merchants? And which to me was the biggest thrill because just to be thought of as a thought partner by anybody is a treat. so i wasn't you know i'm not a hired consultant or anything i was so happy so uh to use a word so i'm walking around the store yeah i walk around the store with like 40 different merchants or something and all these different categories of the store and at one point we walked by the coffee aisle and i'd not have a sip of coffee my whole life i had not ever had coffee ever why and like i um i'm a high energy kind of person on my own and you don't need it you don't need it yeah I just didn't like it.

46:43Craig Dubitsky:And I think my theory, and theory is probably a big word for really what this is. I believe that as a kid, I was given something that I thought was chocolate ice cream, and it turns out it was coffee. And I was like, yuck, if that's coffee, I'll have none of it. And I just was like, I'm not having coffee. So I just didn't grow up with coffee. My parents drank coffee, but I just never, it was never a thing in my life. So - You are truly naturally caffeinated. 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.

47:16You 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. And here's the best part. David Drexler, the founder, is offering his service free forever to anyone in the Consumer VC community who mentions the show.

47:52So 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.

48:01Craig Dubitsky:I am nationally caffeinated. My daughter, I'm married, two kids, son and a daughter. And one day my daughter said to me, I'll never forget, I was driving her to school a day. She goes, dad, you don't really like the idea of like cleaning up so much. And, you know, you were involved with method and that was, you know, that's pretty cool. And you don't like lip balm and you don't like to shave. And you did this Eos thing and that kind of, you know, like worked out and you really don't love going to the dentist and you did this hello thing and that worked out. So it makes complete sense to me that you would start a coffee company.

48:33Craig Dubitsky:Makes complete sense. And I was like, wow, from the mouths of babes. So yeah, sometimes something has to annoy you. And that is a motivator. You're like, you know, if this annoys me, chances are, because again, we're more alike than we're dissimilar as human beings. Going back to this theme of common and uncommon. If it annoys me, it might annoy a lot of other people too. So fast forward, I'm back in, you know, this story of being in the coffee aisle and I had an audience, you know, like they wanted me to say things and I'm trying to be, I guess, insightful slash entertaining. And I just started making fun of other brands, not to be malicious, just because I had no, I had no thoughts that I was going to ever do anything in coffee.

49:14Craig Dubitsky:And I was just kind of picking apart things kind of like I was with extracting teeth and oral care or, you know, bad petrochemicals and lip products or cleaning products with X's in the names. You know, I was just picking out things that to me were kind of obvious in coffee. And they were like, well, what would you do? I didn't have any bees in that bonnet. I didn't have any dogs in that hunt or fight or whatever. Pick your euphemism that I'm maligning right there. And I just didn't think much about it. I said, I don't know. I'll get back to you. And I went about my business with them and I got on a plane to go home.

49:44Craig Dubitsky:And I started to think a little bit about coffee and how much my wife loves coffee. And I said, you know, coffee makes her really happy. What if happy could make her coffee? That was it. And I knew I was all in because I love to write. I love, you know, wordplay. I wake up at 3.02 in the morning and do the New York Times spelling bee. Like I just love words and i had this moment it was my first flight after covid kind of loosened up a little bit you know you could like get on a plane not worry too much you still were masked up and i had a family wedding to go to get on a plane and i put on my headphones and i started to think about happy nothing was launched yet it was still like just thinking about it and i wrote this one line i wrote brew and improved and i'm like okay i'm good i'm in like that was it literally like that line made me go like, okay, I can do this.

50:30Craig Dubitsky:I can think of some marketing angles. I could think of some copy. I could start to think of a language, a tone of voice, a visual vocabulary. And I started sketching things out and writing a lot. And I did this with hello. I had a keynote deck with a tag line of some sort on just each slide was just one line of copy. And I had this like 800 page deck that was just lines about using the word hello in different ways and oral care and every other aspect of personal care i would just go wild with copy and tone of voice and i started to do the same thing with happy and i trademarked the word happy uh with not just coffee but you know adjacent things that are important and now we're an r with a circle which is the highest degree of trademark protection you can have to have a registered mark not just a trademark but a registered trademark and that took some time and what happened was i was back down visiting this retailer and someone pinged me and said hey i'm the new coffee buyer and i heard you blew my predecessor's mind can we meet and i said of course and i started showing them pictures of things on my ipad that i was playing around with and they said what this is great when could you ship like when could i ship what my ipad like no like we we sell things we know you you're an approved vendor like we we we know you do this kind of thing i want it when could you when could you ship it i was like well how many how many doors would you want to test they're like we're not testing like we want it for all doors it's amazing when could you ship there was nothing to taste right i didn't have anything i've never even had a cup of coffee so i was like well how many skews would you want they're like you're not paying attention we want all the skews when could you ship so i said i better get back to you and i started to think about it and i was incredulous you know like Like, that just doesn't happen.

52:16Doesn't happen. Yeah.

52:17Craig Dubitsky:No. And I really mean this. It's not like I had any expectations. I was as shocked as anybody. So I'm talking with a friend of mine the next day or something, telling him this, like, crazy story, right? Like, how could this be? And he says, you know, and he has a fun. And he goes, you know, we're investors in the largest vertically integrated coffee roaster in the world, right? I forgot. stop. So now I'm like, hmm, so I guess I could figure out how to source coffee. And that sort of all jump-started, but it was really a combination of, even before thinking about that, it was, what could it be?

52:55What, what, what could we call it?

52:57Craig Dubitsky:What would it sound like? If it were a person, who would it be or close to? And, you know, like give, give this concept a voice and a personality. Cause I think it's all about that. You know, the idea that we can make personal care, personal again, make coffee a little more human. You know, a lot of things in cleaning products, like I described were, you know, about like your job as a happy homemaker was to kill, eliminate, and destroy odors, germs, and bacteria around your house. In oral care, it was the same narrative, right? You have to kill, eliminate, destroy odors, germs, and bacteria in your mouth.

53:26Craig Dubitsky:Whiter whites and brighter brights for your laundry. That was a big thing. Same thing in your mouth for your teeth. Like these stories, these weird ways of describing things and setting expectations for people were very brilliantly manipulated so trying to think of a different vibe around coffee which typically was like fuel the best part of waking up you know good to the last drop like there were certain expectations and euphemisms and ways at looking at that category or it was like super crafty you know it was like i'm a roaster and i handpick each bean i wear a velvet glove and you know i have this proprietary roasting thing there was a lot of pomp and circumstance and, you know, and ritual that maybe was a little too much.

54:13Craig Dubitsky:So it was sort of figuring out like, well, how do we approach it a little bit differently? And that was all like, you know, kind of in the thinking, you know, how do we think about it differently from the packaging to the copy to, you know, the UPC code? I mean, like everything communicates, everything's got a little a little touch to it like if i open this thing up even the you know even the the cover and there's a valve in it to help with freshness but there's like a little step and repeat when you open it up you know and it doesn't say like start your day it says let's coffee like it's joyful it's fun it's easy and yeah the product itself is amazing but the most i think important thing about it, about this as a brand, and as hopefully what goes beyond this idea of what we think of when we think about brands and branding, is I was on a FaceTime with Downey.

55:08Craig Dubitsky:We can talk about Downey too. So Robert Downey Jr. is my co-founder, which is a pretty amazing story. We can get to that if you want. But anyway, he and I are on this video chat. So we're FaceTiming and we're talking about Happy. And my bride is sitting behind me at the time and she's a PhD in clinical psychology. And Downey says, you know, like, I get it, but like, not everybody's happy. What can we do about that? And I turn around, I look at my, my wife and I'm like, honey, who's doing anything amazing at scale around mental health? And she goes, oh, NAMI, like point flies, like NAMI. I'm like, what's NAMI?

55:42Craig Dubitsky:She goes, oh, National Alliance on Mental Illness. So I Google NAMI and I go on LinkedIn and I weasel my way into finding someone that I can talk with at NAMI. And I eventually get to somebody and sort of tell my story a little bit and say, look, I'm really interested in what you do and we're going to start this brand. And I sort of qualify myself a little bit by talking about other things I've been lucky enough to be around. And the person's like, oh, I brush my teeth with hello and my kids brush my teeth with hello. And oh my God, I use Method and EOS. So that was very helpful, obviously. So I got invited down to Washington, DC.

56:19Craig Dubitsky:I had this amazing session with NAMI and they tell me the number one thing they hear from people is if only I'd known about you sooner and I said well that's really interesting tell me more and they said well the number one killer of teens when I was a teenager were car accidents and number two is leukemia which I'm glad we've made great strides against childhood cancers you know obviously um and cars certainly get safer and safer these days but things have changed now the number one killer of teens is handguns and number two is suicide and often one and two go together and for adults the suicide rate this by the way isn't all about suicide but the suicide rate in adults has gone up 30 in the past two decades and 80 are men and depending on which study look at let's go with the the sort of softer one in terms of there was the the protocols behind the study but a number that is a little easier to digest.

57:13Craig Dubitsky:One in five, there's another study that says one in four, but let's go with one in five adults in the U.S. have some form of mental illness as clinically defined as mental illness. It's not like, oh man, my team didn't get to the playoffs, I'm sad, and then my team didn't get to the Super Bowl, I'm sad. I don't mean to discount anyone's feelings about that, but I mean like clinical grade mental health. And the numbers are staggering. and you know hearing that and hearing how nami had all these people that were saying i wish i know about you sooner um knowing that was an awareness issue we were like what if we what if we were to put information about nami on every package and they're like you would do that and we said of course we do that and on every pack of product no matter what it is we have a qr code a toll-free number information about nami it's not preachy it's not it's subtle but it's there and there's contact information and there's real help.

58:09Craig Dubitsky:It's not, this is real help and it's important that people know that. And it's obviously confidential. And NAMI started 988, which is the 911 for mental health. And it's only a few years old, but the other year it had over 2 million calls. 2 million calls. And no one calls that because, you know, they want to know like, you know, time and date, like they're calling because there's something really happening. So it's an important thing. and what has really changed my world, my life, my, my view on things. And I was hand on heart, not expecting this because I'm a, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a builder.

58:46Craig Dubitsky:I'm, I'm a thinker, dreamer type. I, I thought, you know, we're going to make this business and here's how it's going to operate. We're going to, it's called happy. We're going to get coffee and we're going to get our retailers and we're going to ship it. And I'm going to write copy and we have tone of voice. this could be really great. This is the part that I never in a million years could have expected. So every single day, today no different, since starting this, I hear from someone who I've either just met or someone who I thought I knew really well for a long period of time that tells me a mental health story that to say it's sobering and also hopeful in many cases because we're making great strides around being able to talk about mental health, but there's a lot of very sorrow-laden stories out there.

59:30Craig Dubitsky:So every day I hear something unexpected from an unexpected place all around mental health. And someone even on our team, the day we launched, we were so excited we launched. And someone who I've known for a very long time told me about losing someone in their family to suicide, you know, a sibling, when they were a young teenager. And I had known this person for 18 years and didn't know that story. And it came out the day we launched. They said, the reason I'm so excited to be here is because of this that was part of my family's life. And I was blown away because I'd known this person for so long and never knew that.

1:00:04Craig Dubitsky:And I was talking with a friend of mine that night, a very, very close friend, because I was so kind of shaken up by this story. And he said to me, you know, we had to pull our daughter out of school last week. She's on a team and two of her teammates went into their dorm room and hang themselves. And it hasn't, it hasn't stopped. Now, all the stories I hear are not about suicide. I want to be really clear about that but they're they're incredible and i've had people come over well i'll be at the natural products expo i've had people come over to our booth and just start to cry and hug me and say oh nami saved my family member's life um i was thinking about some things last year and i got in touch with nami and they saved my life i'm part of this group now and that group now it's incredible what i told their team was a lot of brands to their credit i don't mean this again to sound negative at all i really really mean this you know they talk about their purpose and their mission.

1:00:53Craig Dubitsky:And it's really important to have a purpose and a mission because we're here for as long as we are, right? It's great to feel part of something bigger. And again, going back to the notion, I keep going back to this about what we share in common. Having a mission and purpose is great. And a lot of mission and purpose, when I spend time with entrepreneurs, startups, other founder types, it's our purpose, our mission. It's all like me, me, me, very insular, like pointing back at the company and our mission, our purpose. And what I share with our team after hearing this couple of stories early on was this isn't about our purpose and our mission.

1:01:27Craig Dubitsky:This is about our responsibility. It's outward facing. This impacts everybody. Mental health does not care where you were born, what your native tongue is, how many commas you do or do not have in your bank account. It impacts everybody. 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. Powered by deep agency insider knowledge, they provide founders and brand operators with only brand beloved, highly vetted, boutique agencies at preferred rates.

1:02:04Agencies 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. 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. It's free service, biggest bang for your buck. You simply can't lose. Link in the show notes.

1:02:33Craig Dubitsky:So we're taking this like very, to say we're trying to remove stigma and do it in a very meaningful and in a serious way is an understatement. But with the wink of being a brand called Happy and appreciating the tension between happy and the fact that not everybody is, much to Daryl's credit for that comment he had made. So we wanted to do something with NAMI apart from just putting information on our product. And we didn't want to be performative about anything. So we had this idea, what if we could reimagine the relationship between philanthropy and entrepreneurship? And we literally gave NAMI a piece of the company.

1:03:07Craig Dubitsky:So like NAMI is on our cap table. They own a piece of our company. And it's not about, oh, we're giving them some profits. Oh, you know what? We're a startup. We're not profitable. You know, oh, we made money, but we've owned Macase Tuesday. And, you know, we take everybody because we've got to build our team culture. So it's omakase. And, you know, we tell stories about where we're going on vacation. Sorry, we don't have any profits because, you know, we're building culture. You know, we're all for building culture. Don't get me wrong. And I love me some omakase. But we want to do something, again, that was a little bit different and not about window dressing or how can we leverage all the cultural and social and moral goodwill of another entity to inure to our benefit and then just use that as fodder to build our brand.

1:03:51Craig Dubitsky:It just didn't feel right, just, authentic, fill in the blank with whatever word you can think of. But I think hopefully people get the meaning I'm going for. It just, you know, people have a bullshit meter and they can tell. So we're trying to really walk the walk and talk the talk. And not everything's on our website, but we do some really amazing things. We gave a million pods, you know, K-Cups awaited school teachers a couple of months ago all over the country because like they're filling everybody else's cup. Who's filling their cup, right? That's a cute way of saying it, but it's true. We want to do things that are going to be helpful to people.

1:04:27Craig Dubitsky:We created posters for teachers' lounges and for businesses. Literally, we had this moment where we were like, you know, there are these choking hazard posters all over the place. Like, what to do if someone's choking? You know how many people die from choking in a public place versus die by suicide or have a mental health crisis? It's not even close, right? But there's no poster for that. So we made a poster. And we have information about how to identify when someone might be in crisis, what questions to ask them. and we have these for a certain set that's for schools and a certain set that's for anywhere else.

1:05:00Craig Dubitsky:By the way, anyone can go to our website and see it and download it for free. We'll mail it to you for free. I think we might ask you to pay like$2 because we have to put in a tube. It's a big, really nice poster. But yeah, we're trying to like walk the walk and talk the talk and oh yeah, I have awesome product. So this stuff is challenging, but that's the point. If it were easy, everybody would be doing it. And if you do it like everybody else, you're gonna you know like people don't need another just like everybody else thing they need something that's for them that they again that they they feel like where has that been my whole life and that's for me and i'm joining that because i believe in that totally that's incredibly powerful and amazing that you're that you're partners with with nami and also that you put them on your cap table that's really really cool yeah i'm the luckiest guy you just met for real for real i i love this stuff how did you meet robert downey jr well i'm often mistaken for him so i just got sick of this whole doppelganger thing and i was like i just gotta meet this guy so it turns out the world is much smaller and and magical than i think most people realize and the idea that i would know somebody who would know robert downey jr or that would want to connect me to Robert D 'Angelo is hard for me to fathom, but that is the truth.

1:06:19Craig Dubitsky:So years ago, I got introduced to somebody in Hollywood. His name's Ari Emanuel. I didn't know him or anything about Hollywood. And we had a conversation and we had multiple conversations. This is many years ago. And ultimately, when I started up Hello, Endeavor, his company, made an investment in Hello, which I don't know that I've ever really shared that out loud, but it's no no big deal at this point anyway and Ari has many superpowers and one of those superpowers is he remembers everything that guy remembers everything and he is a super connector and you know we were talking about something and I guess I must have said something about coffee and however many months later my phone rings and it's Ari and he's saying hey are you still thinking about doing coffee and I tell him all these things you know yeah I was with this retailer and I trademarked the word happy and you know all this stuff and I got my vertically integrated coffee roasting partner that's huge he's like well one of our people is really serious about when he started a coffee company he didn't even use gender he just kept a very high level and he asked me he's like would you be you know can you can you talk to their people because i told them they can't do anything until they speak with you you just speak with them and i'm just listen no joke i'm just pleased as punch somebody calls me right let alone him it doesn't matter i'm not that picky i'm just like, wow.

1:07:38Craig Dubitsky:So he asked me a favor and like, I'm in the S business, right? So it's the extent I can be. So I'm like, of course, and I always want to be helpful. So sure, of course, if I can be helpful, I'm there. So I got on a video chat with a bunch of folks and I was kind of expecting it to be, you know, not the call that it was. I started getting asked these really intense questions about how are you handling potential mold growth in containers that are moving across borders in South America. How are you dealing with soil density issues in Sumatra, given the, you know, impact on humidity changes and how that's affecting the outer casing and the honey of the coffee cherry?

1:08:15Craig Dubitsky:I'm like, what is this? So I do my best to answer these questions. And they said, well, you know, Ari said you have something, you know, you're working on. And, you know, I have history with them. They were investors of mine. It wasn't like I was trying to be cagey. And I started showing them like, yeah, I said, yeah, that's called happy. and it was there was nothing right they didn't have coffee yet there was like these were just ideas and i showed them a a comp of a 3d model i printed out of packaging and they all start yelling at each other i don't give an f if he's with you know spielberg get him on here i don't you know i'm like if who what like what's happening and so i go oh robert downey jr i'm like wait what and all of a sudden like downy pops on this video chat and he's all the things he's lovely and charming i i don't want to start cursing um because i like i like an f-bomb here and there but like i don't know if this is an edited or g-rated podcast this is this is r you're down is smart as off get out man he is funny and he is he's amazing and i say this it's i don't want to sound disrespectful i wasn't a fanboy i was like oh robert dandy jr i didn't know anything about robert nanny jr but i certainly knew his name and i have kids have i seen a marvel movie of course i've seen a marvel movie so i it's like i didn't know who robert nanny jr was but i wasn't like i'm not fanboying robert jr i just you know i'm being a gazillion times honest i had no preconceived notion i didn't know anything about him but i certainly knew his name and he comes on the call and he is charming funny smart he's all the things right i'm like wow he's a cool he's a cool cat and then go show him the thing and tell him what it's called and and you know it's this lovely nice little chat and at this point i have to go i think i had a i think i had to pick up my daughter for mock trial practice so i'm like hey listen really great to meet you good luck with your coffee company you i answered some questions about coffee and brand and stuff and i was like good luck with your coffee company and really great to meet you like you know peace out and i i had to go and he stayed on the line with all his peeps and uh and i left and i got a call like an hour later or something.

1:10:23Craig Dubitsky:He's all in. I'm like, all in on what? It's like, no, he wants to do this with you. I'm like, do what with me? Pick up my daughter at mock trial. Like, I don't even know what you're talking. And I said, thanks very much. And I'm sorry, I got to go. Like her thing is over and I got to go pick her up or I have to go get my son or whatever it was. I had to go. You know, I wasn't, there's like no game. I was like, I got to go. Like, good luck. It was great. You know, great to meet him. And then Ard calls me and goes, listen, I know you as a person. I know him as a person. And I know you don't really know Hollywood stuff and that's not your thing and but you two i know you both and i'm telling you if you get to know him like you you you need to talk with him because i think if you guys do this together it's going to be incredible and just do me a favor just like i want to set up a call and i want you to just to talk the two of you so i'm like all right so this call gets set up a video chat for like you know 45 minutes or something and i don't want to bore your listeners to death but it went it went for over three and a half hours me and daddy and i told him right up front i said no disrespect i didn't google you wiki you tmz you new york post page six you like i don't know anything so like because i didn't want to know anything unless you told it to me so i and i said that like again not to be disrespectful i was trying to be extra respectful like i only want to know what you want to tell me so i'm kind of pure here i don't know anything and i think that was probably an interesting way to start the conversation and he saw next to me i had this weird guitar and he's like is that a steinberger guitar next to you and i was like you know what kind of guitar this is and he's like dude how old are you it turns out you know he's maybe six months old and i'm five months old and i he's like where are you i said i'm in the third floor of my house in montclair new jersey he's like i you know i lived in montclair new jersey and i was really little it's like no way he's like yeah my parents moved there for like i think like two years or something i was like two like wow that's wild so we start talking about music and next thing you know we're singing some deep cut elvis costello track to one another which is like deep cut you couldn't fake knowing this it was like physio sport with eric ryan like you could not fake right like you either knew it or you didn't like you either had that shit under your bed from 30 years ago or you didn't so we're having these wild moments and i i was like to like give me your give me your story like what's the story so i basically hear his story and his life story i didn't know i really truly didn't know anything and by the end of uh you know us sharing stories about how our wives had played major impacts in our lives for a whole bunch of different reasons but the impacts were no less wildly meaningful by the end of this conversation i heard a lot about his bride i shared a lot about my bride are you know different different lives and different trajectories clearly but just again like the importance of having good partners in your life and and i heard a lot in his case coffee playing a very important role in his life and he's really really into coffee like i mean like not like a normal person like my wife loves coffee this is next level like you can give down he's like i have a pre-cup before my first cup i'm like you're kidding he's like no that's like my just like i gotta get going cup but no he's really serious he has a lot of coffee hardware he has if there's a coffee that's been able to be ingested by a human he's probably had like two or three if you give him five coffees from different elevations like literally harvested from different elevations he could rank order them like at like elevation highest to lowest he's he's really really really passionate and really serious about coffee so i hear a lot about his his life i hear a lot the will of coffee in his life.

1:14:01Craig Dubitsky:And by the end of this amazing three and a half hour conversation, I said, I'd really like to meet your wife and have you meet my wife and the four of us to chat. And he was like, okay, like you sound kind of serious. And I said, yeah, in life, you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family. When you start a company, it's like being able to choose your family. So I want to meet your family and I want you to be my family. And we set up this call for the four of us. My wife was really mad because she's, you know, just she's, she's an academic. She's never seen a Marvel movie. She is American, but you grew up all over the world you know her father was a career diplomat i mean she has an amazing background and she's all about just like helping animals helping people she's a you know clinical psychologist hollywood stuff in her mind was like i have to talk to a hollywood superstar superhero and his wife i was like honey it'll be 10 minutes they're in malibu they probably have red carpets to walk down like it's just it'll be really short and it went on for over two and a half hours and it was amazing and my wife who never says she's like that was amazing they're incredible that call was incredible.

1:14:58Craig Dubitsky:Everyone was interacting. She's like, do not pass code. You need to do this. And she never does that. And we did all the things and the secret handshakes. And the Downies are incredible. Susan's incredible. Robert's incredible. All the people around them are incredible. His team and Endeavor that we work with are amazing. It's a very special thing. It's not been, oh, I give you four Instagram posts a year. It's like, no, he's a co-founder. Dude's been with me to Walmart in Bentonville. He's been with me to Minneapolis to Target. We've had calls with Kroger together. We like we, he is in it. He is in it.

1:15:34Craig Dubitsky:We would have launched 10 months earlier, but he was so involved with the blending process for our blends that it took an extra 10 months to get it right. Like this is not a casual thing. He's not a spokesperson. He's my co-founder, my partner. Like we're in it. We are in it. So it's very cool. It's very different. There's no, again, like, you know, spokesperson contractual, I'll show up three times a year. I'll give you four Instagram posts. It's 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.

1:16:07You truly don't know who's good until you engage. And by then it's too late. That's what the hidden gem solves for power 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 ConsiderVC community who mentions the show.

1:16:44So 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 it's the real thing it's

1:16:53Craig Dubitsky:great so and he's a dude so i've i he's he's he's the best i'm i'm really really you know i'm blushing over here it's great yeah i i know you talked a little bit about first of all incredible how you met and as well as just how you both just hit it all hit it off with uh with a headless guitar and everything and the guitar yeah exactly how do you think about since robert is a is a true co-founder how do you think about you know the responsibility the responsibilities that kind of robert does or brings the table of of happy his involvement overall i know it's not just like a four instagram posts a year something like that yeah how do you how do you kind of think about his involvement because of course he also has a another busy schedule not that you don't have a busy schedule don't get me wrong but no also is you know has movies in and and kind of other other uh well other commitments yeah i'll give you an example because when you look it's like when you when you love something you find a way to make it work right yes like there's 24 hours in a day you know death gravity taxes all those things when we were working on the blends he was in vietnam shooting a show called the sympathizer which was on hbo and we were literally it's pretty funny we were overnighting him he had scales timers uh thermometers chemex pour over stuff and we were literally on video in real time.

1:18:15Craig Dubitsky:I was in a cupping room with a whole bunch of Q graders, which are like the sommeliers of coffee. And we were tweaking, perfecting individual blends, roast levels. We'd get it, you know, dialed in. We'd overnight it to him. We'd be on video together and we'd be tasting the same time with the same, like the coffee had to be heated. The water, sorry, had to be heated to 212 degrees for at least X number of minutes. The exact amount by weight of coffee had to be put in the Chemex. The pour over had to be completed in a certain amount of time. It had to steep for four minutes. Like everything was like for like.

1:18:50Craig Dubitsky:And he's trying it in Vietnam. And I'm in a cupping room like these giant round tables with people that just like spit and drink and sip coffee all day long. They're like coffee geniuses. And we're literally adjusting the blends based on notes that he's providing in real time. He's on the set. It's like shoot a movie. And dude makes time to do all this stuff. And then guess what? 12 hours later the same thing or 24 hours later we'd ship the stuff over he'd have the new versions based on tasting us we'd do it again and then we do it again and then we do it again and like you know that's what you do he was shooting you know avenger stuff and we were like hey we're doing this partnership with tates we partnered with mondelez and tates if you don't know tates yeah yeah yeah it's but killer cookies right so we made we made coffee uh we made rtd ready to drink coffee with tates tates made a cookie this is really cool tates wanted because they had a a vanilla latte cookie and they wanted our brand for the for their cookies oh and but here's the best part and then on the back like there's all this stuff and we launched this together and anyway it was amazing so we're working on this and we're like downy we're doing this thing man and you know he he knows tates like he loves tates yeah so we send him all the stuff he's in the uk filming and like he shot you know he shot videos and social posts and did it he's like he's shooting you know like these are major major films releases yeah um and you know so i guess to answer your question you know when you love it you find time and he's he's found time um and he's made the time because i think this is something i don't want to speak for him but you know he's he he cares about it he doesn't you know he doesn't just do stuff like this he's not you know you don't see him on tv commercials for other products or brands he doesn't shill you know he doesn't he doesn't i don't want to say he doesn't have to because that's kind of snooty sounding you know he can do whatever he wants.

1:20:37Craig Dubitsky:He's particular. That's the better way to put it. He's a discerning guy. And like I said, to say he's brilliant is really kind of a ridiculous understatement. So he picks and chooses. And coffee is really meaningful. And I think happy means something to him, as it does to me. And we're committed to make it great. How do you think it's incredible, incredible how involved he is. And it's also incredible that But you actually don't need to be in the same room for Rior to kind of push the product forward, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we do, you know, we get together. I haven't seen him a little bit in person just because he's been shooting stuff.

1:21:16Craig Dubitsky:And he's abroad. But, you know, he comes out to Montclair. I mean, he's amazing, you know? It's really fun when people are surprised, you know, like you're out walking around with him somewhere. It's like, what? Yeah. And he's very approachable and he's lovely. How did you approach retail with, oh, first of all, I want to be respectful for your time. I know we're four minutes over. Do you have a, I'm good. You're good? I'm good. Yeah, I'm good. Cool. But thank you. You're kind. How did you think about retail expansion? Because it seemed like even when you first started, you were kind of off the races in terms of expanding store accounts and kind of, yeah, we went to 10 ,000 stores within six months or something like that.

1:21:56So how did you, how did you think about it and the opportunity?

1:22:00Craig Dubitsky:well it's a fortunate position to be in when there are retailers that are appreciating what you're up to and want to carry your product and we're fortunate because the product itself is is really really good like to try it is to love it there's a reason why like we have high repeat rates and it's the product itself is really good so that that certainly helps but i think it was a combination in the beginning we didn't we didn't say like anything about robert danny jr like we would surprise people and show up on calls together and people would be like wait what just happened like wait what like who's on this call or who's in the room like wait what you know we'd either like sneak him in he's like i mean we had this one meeting at walmart where the meeting had already started and he just like came in it was like wait what we had another meeting with a retailer on video and we didn't tell her anything she'd know anything about downy what we were doing you know she literally said well i'm taking this meeting because the subject line said happy you you know, coffee.

1:22:56Craig Dubitsky:And I thought, well, that's an interesting name. And, you know, I, I know you Tubitski because, you know, so I know these other brands and the meeting starts at Downey's in the meeting. You know, it was over video and it's like, you know, she's a senior person. She has her team with her that are a little, you know, junior to her and she's just keeping it together. And she goes, so wasn't expecting to start my team's meeting this morning with Robert Downey Jr. And he's the best. And he goes, you know, that's really amazing. You say that I have this like tooth that I just, you know, chipped. And like right after this meeting, I have to go get it, you know, fixed.

1:23:28Craig Dubitsky:How amazing that we're both having these unexpected mornings together. And it was just like the funniest thing. And everyone starts cracking up and it was magical. You know, she was like, well, you know, this, I wasn't like, I wasn't expecting this. And the fact that he's approachable, real kind, there's a lot of thoughtfulness behind why and how we're doing what we're doing, where and how our sourcing takes place. You know, the coffee, We source our coffee from two to five acre farms. They're literally, these farms are less than one half of 1 % of all available commercial coffee growers. Like the coffee is great.

1:24:01Craig Dubitsky:So you have a lot of substance to the story. And then you think about NAMI and mental health and all the other things that are part and parcel of what we're doing. I mean, even this thing is cubed. This whole thing is curbside recyclable. Even the label is a custom substrate. You don't have to take this off. You can recycle this thing. I reuse these. I keep my USB drives in here. I'm hopeful that one day I'll find one with a lot of Bitcoin on it. But you know, these things you can do a lot with them. And again, it was like, when you explain all the thinking that's been in play, why we're doing what we're doing and how we're doing it, retailers have been very responsive.

1:24:36Craig Dubitsky:So we're in a lot of doors. You know, Walmart at one point had asked us, they said, we really like your brand. Do you think you could do RTD? And I said, like any good entrepreneur would, let me think about it. Yes. And we went from nothing didn't exist to in under four months shipping product and getting it on the shelves and you know now that rtd has really expanded a lot in fact we just opened up the convenience channel about two weeks ago sheets took our product they took five skews in and all doors i think it's about 815 doors they have but it's our first entrance into convenience we're expanding with a lot of retailers you know we've got product in walmart target uh albertson's kroger HEB, you know, it just keeps going like a lot of major, major doors.

1:25:19Craig Dubitsky:And obviously Amazon and now TikTok shop we've launched. So you can find it. Amazon.com slash happy. Go check it out. There's some fun videos actually downing out there too. If you, if you go visit. How I appreciate that. That's amazing. How do you think about expanding number of balancing that kind of balancing act of expanding the number of SKUs? Yeah. Well, we, we've, we've learned a lot, you know, we've learned a lot in the beginning, in the very beginning, we want to do some really esoteric, funky coffees in them. And we were, you know, suggested to us that we sort of go a little bit more mainstream, that a lot of things were a little fringy, were a little too fringy and they weren't selling so well.

1:25:59Craig Dubitsky:So we started out, you know, light, medium, dark coffee, and it turned out great. The coffee turns out, you know, we know how to make really good coffee, right? We have two Q graders on our staff. I don't know if you know about Q graders, but if you're a sommelier, you You have to be able to discern, I think it's 200 unique attributes or whatever it is you're handed. You know, you swish it around, you spit it out, and you have to be able to, you know, sort of wax with authority about everything that's in that cup or glass, I should say. And if you're a Q grader, letter Q, which is the coffee equivalent, you have to be able to discern over 400 different attributes.

1:26:33Craig Dubitsky:There's only about 1 ,500 or 1 ,600 in the world. So we have someone on our team from day zero who is one of the first five American Q graders ever, one of the first 300 in the world. And he's brilliant. He's a coffee genius. And now our head of R &D actually went and got Q certified as well. So we have two Q graders. So making sure the coffee's great is important. And we then added whole bean coffee. And it turns out whole bean coffee is really taking off because during COVID, first of all, people were staying home. People wanted to brew their own stuff and they wanted to grind their own beans.

1:27:05Craig Dubitsky:The hardware cost has come down a lot. It used to be a really good machine that would grind beans. It was much more expensive than it is now. So now it's looking like whole bean is really starting to pick up. We launched with K-Cups originally. K-Cups are still very, very important and growing, but we're watching whole bean really start to take off. And there were a lot of people who didn't understand what this cube was. It looks so different for the category that nobody knew what it was. so we started to play around with with bags we just launched bags so they're really pretty looking bags um with whole beam sort of whole beams back and cranking on amazon.com it's going to be launching more retail doors in the next couple of months and then rtd kept growing so what we've learned is you like test and measure a little bit but because we're playing at scale our test market ends up being very big um and we learn i like to say we move at the speed of thought So when it became clear that whole beam was really starting to grow, we're like, well, how fast can we do that?

1:28:04Craig Dubitsky:Like, let's go. So we move really fast. And what's great about e-commerce is you can launch some things on e-commerce first before they go into retail. So we have another product that we made as a limited edition. I don't know if I have one here. I do have one. It's a blueberry coffee. And this sold out online really fast. It's amazing. Like I literally, you know, I'm not a huge coffee drinker, right? I sit here and squeeze the bags and inhale it. It's, it's epic. And this sold out. Well, guess what? It sold out a lot and really fast because that's how we launched it. It was a limited edition.

1:28:39Craig Dubitsky:Well, guess what? It's going to major retail in a, you know, in a very short amount of time. Maybe, maybe when you're listening to this podcast, it'll be there. And then we have other new things. So what we're doing is we're moving really fast. Like we made this super esoteric micro lot coffee where we've literally bought every single bean this guy could grow and it's super sophisticated super high end but we bought it all and right now that only exists on our website and i'm sure it's going to sell out really really fast and it got you know a super high rating from the coffee rating geniuses at coffee review.com it got a wildly high score of a 92 which is like outrageous believe it or not um so it'll sell out fast but the other really amazing thing about that product apart from their two guys who grew it on this tiny you know it's like i think it's a one acre or less than one acre farm in nicaragua um apart from the care that goes into it the beans are extra large so everything about it's like super funky and esoteric but the other thing that's amazing about is we partnered with the mental health coalition which is this incredible group started by kenneth cole and he's basically brought together nami and all these other incredible mental health organizations and we're giving 100 percent of all the proceeds go to mental health coalition it's not like a portion or the profit a hundred percent of the of the proceeds go there so get it while it's hot get it while you can i know you'll be helping some people but you know the way we figure this stuff out is we try we move fast people invented fun terms like pivot that's great it's not the word pivoting we're expanding growing trying to be smart and i used to be a trader in a prior life it's like you gotta let your winners run and know when to kill your losers.

1:30:16Craig Dubitsky:And that keeps you lean and profitable and moving forward. So we don't stop. We have so much more innovation to come. And it's happy products, not happy coffee. And there's just more to come. So it's momentum. And I think more positivity begets more positivity all around. So we're being just positive and focused and executing and smiling a lot. And that stuff is contagious. And retailers want to do more with you. your product sells, you market, you go on a podcast. I hope everybody listening will give this a try. By the way, I always try to avail myself to everybody, especially entrepreneurs. So if you're listening, you know, my cell phone number's readily, you know, easily recalled.

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1:31:57Craig Dubitsky:Yeah, you can call me. I love people. Yeah, I love people. People are the best. I've never had anybody ever be anything other than lovely and helpful. and so many people have been so helpful to me and like you know i i want to be helpful to as many people as i can if i can be helpful you know you let me know and it's amazing what happens if you open yourself up to other people people are the best plants are great too don't get me wrong coffee beans are great but like you know people are the magic so i agree with you people are that's it people are the magic yeah yeah absolutely look how long we've been talking for we had that first call the other night and it was like i think it was like a 10 minute or something yeah yeah yeah we ended up talking for 90 it was uh it was great it was great and you were like apart from being just like wonderful kind you're like what can i help you with is there someone i know that i can be able to like that's like that's the whole point you know you help somebody someone else helps you you make a connection somewhere i don't mean just like i have your phone number connection i mean like that a real emotional, like you click again, we're going full circle and, and more, you know, we have more like than we have, you know, that we are not alike about, right.

1:33:07Craig Dubitsky:We more similarities and dissimilar. So if we can tap into that and, um, you know, turn out really cool products. Yes. Really good ideas. Yes. Really cool relationships. Yes. Helping people to help other people. Yes. Like check all these boxes. It's great. What can't we do? We're lucky to be alive life is pretty freaking awesome for sure for sure absolutely absolutely what's my final question that i asked everyone and this has been so in hearing about happy um what's one book that you believe that kind of has inspired you personally and one book oh my god hold on i'm gonna get up and show it to you hold on so it's not gonna believe this you're not gonna do this i keep this by my desk you ready you're not gonna believe this you're not gonna believe this i have to get them and show it to you oh i love that book i love that book oh the places you'll go amazing yeah it's an uh it's you know it's amazing i actually believe it or not i have a a digital version of this book on my phone and it's semi-animated it's great um you know it's really hard to do simple and people use this word simple like it's a negative term because back to what we're saying.

1:34:18Craig Dubitsky:It's not simple. It's magical because it immediately connects because it's devoid of pretense and noise. So to keep things simple is actually quite hard. Google looks simple, right? There's a, just as Google, there's a dialogue box and type whatever you want. Looks pretty easy. What's going on behind the scenes is anything but easy. So, you know, we're called happy. Everything going on behind the scenes is much more evolved than just saying, we're called happy. Let's smile a lot. You know, it's, it's hard to do simple. So I love a book like this because it kind of puts things in perspective. If you want, we can talk about Kierkegaard.

1:34:50Craig Dubitsky:I can talk to you about Althazar Gratian who wrote about the Jesuits and all these great, amazing aphorisms and things. I love that stuff too. I love philosophy. I love design. I'm looking at a whole bunch of David Byrne books, Arboretum over there, which is really amazing. American Utopia, incredible. I have Strunk in White, The Elements of Style. And of course, I have to also not only have that regular version, but I have the Kalman illustrated version, which is amazing. If you haven't seen that, you should go get it. I mean, I love, you know, I love the simple magic of something like this and I literally keep it next to my desk.

1:35:29Craig Dubitsky:So there you go. What a great question. No one's ever asked me that. Amazing. Amazing. Well, I love, honestly, that you picked that book. I read that to my daughter quite often. So it's just great. It's great. So yeah, and there's some great stuff in here, especially for entrepreneurs, by the way, because it talks about like, you know, there's going to be walls and there's going to be dark days and there's going to be all sorts of obstacles that you face and it's all part of life and it's, it's, it's great. So yeah, we're in it. We're in it. We're in it together. For sure. For sure. Craig, thank you so much for your time.

1:36:00Thanks for again going over just as you did a few days ago. I really do appreciate it. It's been so great getting to know you over these past few days.

1:36:08Craig Dubitsky:I can't wait. I'm going to see you at Expo, I'm sure. and um those of you that aren't going to expo i'm so sorry but for those of you who are just remember wear sensible shoes um come by and say hello if you're going and um don't forget to hydrate man you gotta you know and and listen you know i'm just saying the pro tip like it's okay to to walk around with a box of tic-tacs making noise no one's gonna hear it and people will love that you have a tic-tac so share it and use it yourself anyway i'm happy to see everybody there if you're come in come by we'll have some coffee cold or hot and uh we'll schmooze it up and shrink the world a little bit more it's gonna be great what great expo west tips that was that was fabulous that was that's little shoes baby all the way yeah i always say make sure you eat lunch that's like that's not time for that right well i know i know you don't have time for that but but the thing is that i feel like there's so you're not gonna have enough products with protein in it at expo well i'm saying there's just so many snacks you know there's so many snacks and at least in my stomach it's it's really easy to go overboard if you know what i mean so it's pacing pacing pacing maybe that's a better way to say pacing pacing yeah just just yeah take you don't have to try everything as soon as you see it yeah yeah but also do try everything try everything that's right correct wash it down with some happy this is going to be great i'll see you in the hall e we're in the you know the lower level where the magic happens i love that hall love it i cannot wait right at the base of the escalator yes and then we'll also see you at the uh consumer vc rise and roast on thursday absolutely uh we'll definitely be having some happy there so uh yes please that'd be great that'd be great um craig thank you so much for this this is this is fabulous thank you thank you for having me congrats on all your success and uh thanks again everybody i'm just lucky to be around really brilliant people so like yourself so thank you thank you thank you edit away by the way because i know i went on it was far too long so um thank you for indulging me and letting me have the verbal diarrhea that i'm afflicted with on on your podcast so thank you amazing thank you so much for your time thank you so much for your time