MadeGood: Salma and Nima Fotovat Lost Their First Business. They Grew Their Next One Into a Snack Giant.

29:08Yeah, I guess we got fired. But I think my dad being so just, you know, fierce and determined, he's like, okay, let's go. Literally the next day, we ended up going to Ikea, buying furniture, going to get cell phones. And we set up makeshift offices in the basement because he was like, we're moving forward. We're not going to stalk. This happened. What's next? He was literally like, we're going to start a new business right away. Well, he was just like, you guys, I think that was his vision. But he's like, you guys will still need to come here every day. And after a few weeks, I think we realized that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity where you actually get a forced blank slate.

30:03And we're like, this is a time where if you want to go our separate ways, we can go our separate ways. If you want to go start a restaurant or do whatever. So we kind of started very broad. Like right now, before we jump in and try to do the same thing, let's go very wide and say, okay, where do we want to go? So what were you, you You mentioned a restaurant, for example. What were other ideas that you guys batted around? I wanted to buy an organic farm. Okay. I was really rooting for that, but that got shut down. And to sell the produce from the farm? And start to, yeah, cultivate different crops or it could be, yeah, commodities actually start to grow.

30:42Not an easy business. No. Glad you passed on that one. What else? What other ideas? I mean, don't think that we had some grand idea. It was like, what is coming to us and let's explore. Yeah. But quickly, options started to get eliminated because everything required risk and resources and experience, which we did not have. Whereas if we started doing the same thing, we brought with ourselves the most valuable thing, which was a decade or a decade and a half of experience. And there's no point in throwing that away. Forget about the money. The money was the least important thing we got from there.

31:24The most important thing was experience and the people we knew, the network, the reputation we had built. If we did anything else, we would sacrifice those two important assets. So we was a bit reactive until we settled down. We kind of accepted the reality. We went through the stages of grief and we're like, okay. Then I think it was in January. It was in January of 2013 that we're like, okay, now it's time to get serious about what we want to do next. Why don't we come back in just a moment. The Photovats make hundreds of thousands of granola bars, but have to scramble when they're accidentally stamped with the wrong date.

32:09Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

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37:22Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2013, about a year after the Photovats had to walk away from their previous business. And they're starting to get serious about launching their next venture. And for Nima, the inspiration begins with his kids. My kids were growing up and we were sending them to school. We were packing lunches. And because what we got from schools or daycares was that, hey, there is a kid that has a nut allergy. Please make sure you don't send anything to school that has nut allergies or may contain nuts. So much sunflower butter in my pantry at that time.

38:01Yes, exactly. But I'm like, it doesn't really matter to us because our kids are going to grow up ultra healthy and they're never going to even know what's in a package. that lasted I would say Guy for only a couple of weeks because as they went to school they got exposed to all sorts of snacks that were not say to our standard of healthy whether it was the Quaker chewy bars or different cookies and and snacks that were not free but not healthy and not organic and so this is where we're like we started to notice a tension point There is this three dimensions of tension. There is the tension with the parent, us wanting to do the best.

38:48There is the tension within society to want to be inclusive and keep everyone safe. And then it's ultimately the child, the kid, the tension of a treat, something tasty. So if we could solve that tension between those three stakeholders, we could have something there. Yeah, so we also enlisted a marketing firm that actually went out and did research around this white space and coming back with the fact that there is actually an opportunity of having a product that is allergen-free, but also healthier, better ingredients, organic. That's the missing space. So that was something that Nima felt tangibly, but then when we actually took it out into the market, we also saw the void in the market as well.

39:36All right. So this is 2013. It's not that long ago, but it was really there was a lot of focus on and had been for a while on gluten free, peanut free, soy free, nut free. Right. I mean, because just an explosion of kids with with particularly peanut allergies and gluten allergies and all kinds of things. So you thought that was interesting. You saw an opportunity to kind of get into that space, but also to kind of recreate the classic Quaker chewy chocolate chip granola bar. Yes, so I think there were some nuggets of insights that went beyond just making a peanut-free product. One of them was the fact that we realized when we did the research that it's not just the child that eats snacks.

40:26Snacks are bought by the parents, and it's a family consumption. It's not a child consumption thing. And a lot of brands had launched products that were kid forward. So that was an insight for us. So we did not, Made Good is not a kid forward brand. It's an all family and 50 % of our households actually don't have kids. And so there is a cross section of making it small for kids, but also 100 calories so that it's portion control for the adults. The other layer of insight that we had was that the allergen-free should not be a prominent call-out. It's something that is a background. Yes, we're allergen-free, but first and foremost, we taste great.

41:15You didn't want people to think, oh, this is not for me. Exactly. If you call something for diabetics, people think it's just for diabetics, but it could just be a healthy, low-sugar, no-sugar product. And was the first product going to be granola bars? No, it was bites. Our bites is where we knew we wanted to disrupt the category. So these like little round granola chocolate chip or fruit bites, basically. Yes, they're sphere like a ball. Tell me about the name because the name is amazing, Made Good. Yes. So the name, funny story is that when we launched Made Good, many people called us and said, Do you know that made good is grammarly incorrect?

42:01That you should say made well. Made well, yeah. Which exists as a clothing brand. Yeah, yeah. So I think the name was really important. And then we went to a design firm that was not actually a food forward design firm. They were a cosmetic forward design firm because we wanted a design that stood out on shelf, bringing in lots of bright colors. And no CPG company would say you should make half your front panel your logo. Made Good takes up 50 % of the front panel. And so this was all design disruption that we did to stand out on shelf. Okay. So 2013, you start to really set this up. And from what I understand, it sounds like it's a similar model to what you had earlier, which was you were going to have your own production facility, right?

42:53Because nor because nor I should say normally, but oftentimes, when when people want to build a food brand, and they don't have a lot of money, they work with a co manufacturer, because that is a more efficient way to do business, you find a co manufacturer, you give them your recipe, they package it up, they send you the finished product, and then you distribute it, you get a distribution deal, and you put it in stores, right? And by By the way, this is the model, as you know, with many brands that we see at Whole Foods and elsewhere. You guys decide to build your own production facility. That's going to cost a lot of money.

43:26I mean, imagine, and, you know, where was that money going to come from? Yes, that was going to cost a lot more than working with a co-packer. We knew that was what we wanted to do because that's where we bring experience. and being vertically integrated helps us with our cost model, but also making a claim such as allergen-free. I wanted to be able to sleep at night. You had to control the entire, it had to be like a pharmaceutically clean factory. Yeah, and this way we control that full supply chain, we control the manufacturing. And by nature, we're manufacturers, not marketers, right? So that was, I think, what we felt most comfortable that we could succeed in first.

44:13Okay. Let's talk about the factory because you're going to build a 20 ,000 square foot factory. Sounds huge. It's not actually, right? But it is pretty significant. How did you finance that? Well, the bank of parents' retirement funds. Also, we went to an actual bank and got a loan. we securitized it with the homes that we had and we went and it's rare to get pre-revenue loans from a bank yeah but because they knew us and they saw what we did before in the previous business they agreed before making a dollar in sales to give us a loan of two million dollars but yes You can't build 20 ,000 square feet of manufacturing with$100 ,000.

45:05That just doesn't work. And you've got to pay rent every month. You have to hire employees. You've got to certify the plant. There's just a lot of things to do from zero to manufacture. And you knew right away from the beginning, you guys did not want to go seek outside funding, that you wanted to figure out how to do this yourselves without any outside funding or partners. Yeah, we didn't want to get into partnerships again. Yeah. Okay, so you secure the financing against your homes and you get your parents help you out a bit. You get the money to build this factory. And how long does it take before it's online, before you can actually start to feed it the ingredients and make this product?

45:54I want to say it was really quick. From when we got keys to the site to when we started to manufacture our first order. Our first order was actually for Costco for a contract manufacturing brand. And it was 300 ,000 bars. And so it wasn't your brand. It was for somebody else. It was for another brand. Okay. And they were going to go to Costco. And so the contract manufacturing was going to be a part of your business that was going to enable you to fund the brand, essentially. Absolutely. You knew that you had to make products from potentially competitors in order for you to have the capital to launch Made Good as a Brand.

46:34Yeah, if you think about it, we use the same model as we did at Taste of Nature, private label, contract manufacturing to fund the brand. So that's essentially what we knew worked and we started with that. It's interesting because that, again, that could be risky, right? I mean, if you're making a product that is similar to the one that you want to build, that can kind of cannibalize your product if you want to start a brand. I mean, there's always a risk in doing that. There is. This particular order when we first started out was actually making fruit and nut bars. So it was distinctly separate than the brand that we ended up with under Made Good.

47:13But this order was, yeah, fruit and nut bars. And it was two flavors that we had to produce. And it really sped everything up because we had a tight timeline. I think we had to deliver within like three to four weeks. We had very manual equipment. We had a very small team because really we just had to get people in, hired, trained. We needed to create processes. We had to get our organic certification, food safety certification. All of that happened in the four weeks. And we had to turn around 300 ,000 units of bars. And it was not without its heartache because three quarters into that order, we realized that we made a mistake on the date code.

47:59On the date code? On the date code. So it has a best before day. Oh, yeah. Should have been 2014, right? Because it's a year after. Yeah. But it was dated 2013. So we're like just about done this order with blood, scent, and tears. And here we are. We had to rework a significant amount of it. You had to unpack them and the bars literally like. So we had to figure out what to do. And we weren't going to make them again. We didn't have time for that or the money or the resources. So we found alcohol wipes. I kid you not. Okay. This is creativity at its best. alcohol wipes to wipe out the date code and run the bars through the equipment again with the right best before date.

48:47How many bars did you have to do that to? Oh my god, Neema, I don't remember. I know Sapa caught it and she was just beside herself. 200 ,000 bars. I think more than half the order had to be repurposed. I don't even know how humans could do that. You have to get a bunch of people and to just carefully wipe that off. Yeah. The story here is it just looks easy, but we walked through fire to get this thing up and running. Yeah. We used to call it, you dig a hole and then you figure out a way to get out of it. We're like, we're going to take this order. We're going to figure out a way to make it because that's who we are.

49:27We will deliver. When we come back in just a moment, the family business finally begins to roll out its own branded products, starting with granola bites and eventually expanding to dog treats. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

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52:11Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's late 2013, and until now, the photo vets have been funding their business by contract manufacturing granola bars for Costco. And at this point, they haven't sold made good under its own name. But early the next year, they're ready to roll out their own granola snacks for the first time. And the first retailer we went to is Loblaw in Canada, which is the largest grocery store in Canada. and the buyer had a son who had a peanut allergy. And so he's like, everything that's peanut free is garbage. I haven't tasted anything that tastes good.

52:53That's organic. And so I can see why parents would buy it. I'm willing to give it a shot. So they listed four items on it. You know how you get in, you get to the top of the shelf. And the top of the shelf is not a great place to be. because it's not at eye level. No, but we were able to sell in because the value proposition, the way it was positioned back in 2014, 15, was strong enough for the retailers in the natural aisle, not in the conventional aisle, not sitting beside the conventional players, but sitting in the natural aisle. We were able to sell in pretty quickly. Then the second part was that the packaging worked really well for us because it would pop.

53:37That kind of created that no disability and picking up the shopper, the consumer, picking it off the shelf. And then the product delivered. Ultimately, when consumers took it home, kids liked it, and they came back, and the repeat was there. Okay, here's a question. Because, I mean, this is where the story kind of, to me, becomes kind of crazy. And I say that in both a good way and a bad way because I love it when we have episodes where it's like, okay, we launched in 2014 and nobody's buying it and it's like dead and we're just not – and then it slowly grows and then it becomes – this is different.

54:15Like you launched this thing and it really took off quickly. And so I'm wondering what explains that because you didn't really have a lot of money for promotion, right, or for marketing costs. So, because, you know, you really kind of – you start to distribute this in 2014. Yes. And you debut this at Expo West in the U.S. in 2015. But initially, you're really just in Canada. Yes. You're not going to break into the U.S. for another year or so. No. But how did you get – I mean, if it's carried in, you know, grocery stores in Canada on the top shelf, how did you get people to notice it and to try it and to buy it?

54:56so i believe in the 100 mile radius marketing strategy so when we started we're like let's make sure we own where we are so because we can drive there if i can drive there and if my team can drive there we can merchandise store we can demo and on the with the help of my wife she did a ton of events, farmer's markets. Every weekend, she was at a farmer's market. And today, I would say our brand awareness in Toronto is incredibly high. Maybe 90 % of the people know. Yeah. And we built proof of concept and that you could take to the rest of the regions. And we didn't have a marketing team or even a marketing manager for many years after that.

55:46And you were, Selma, you really began to focus on procurement, on sourcing of ingredients. Yeah, I did end-to-end supply chain. So called up the same vendor partners, started to build those relationships. The only difference was that instead of, you know, buying pallets of products, I would be picking up, you know, boxes of raisins, putting it in my car, like bringing it in. And so it was just that different scale. But it was incredible how much also that community trusted and believed in us. That, again, not a lot of sales, not a lot of proof of concept, but really willing to lean in and forget about credit apps.

56:26Like, what do you need? How can we help? That really helped us to kind of get things going to make sure we have materials. Okay, so you are, by 2015, it sounds like you are distributed across Canada, right? Is that fair to say? Yeah, yeah. By 2015, we're pretty much across Canada. I'm curious. When you take the loan out, how long to pay back that bank loan? How long did it take? I don't know if we've ever paid anything back because you just grow and you borrow more. So I don't know if we ever, we're never out of debt where we have a much bigger debt today because we keep, manufacturing is a capital intensive business.

57:08So every time we double the business, we essentially have to double our footprint, double the output. And so I guess my question is, did you know you were not going to be profitable for a while? Yeah. So it took us a couple of years, but I think we got into profitability pretty quickly because I am a great believer in a healthy gross margin. You've got to build whatever one designs, whether it's co-packing, whether it's private label, which is for a retailer, or whether you're doing your own brand, having a strong P &L, a good knowledge of your gross margin, and when you can grow into it is really important.

57:50And we were, as the volume came in, we were able to get to break even and profitability by maybe 2015. I got to go look back, but it was pretty early. So, all right. So you are, and when do you get into the U.S. market and how? Interesting. The U.S., we get in just into the Northeast, one region of Whole Foods, the Northeast region of Whole Foods. So we kind of do a little test first in 2015. With 10 top stores in Manhattan, I hire a merchandiser, I hire a demo crew, and I made sure that when we're listed there, We have great numbers. And so we launched nationally in Whole Foods in 2016. I saw that by 2017, so a little over three years in.

58:41You guys were doing about$50 million in sales. So at that point, you were doing much more business than Taste of Nature had been doing when you left. Mm-hmm. It's crazy. That was not part of the plan. Another enabler for us was getting into Costco. I remember I did a road show in the U.S. and we went to see five or six regions. And one of the regions, the Northwest, said, okay, I like these bites are really cool, but can you put these bites, these pillow packs in a pouch? I don't want it in a box. And so when you're us, when you're able to make 300 ,000 bars by hand, like this is a piece of cake, of course I can put it in a pouch.

59:35So I'm like, yes, of course I can put it in a pouch. And then I pick up the phone and call Sahba and Salma and say, hey, we got to put these in a pouch, okay? There's the sibling dynamic right there. So Lima says yes to opportunities, and then Sahba and I are left figuring it out. So it took a lot. Like some of the things we said yes to, I think probably retailers went to many other suppliers first and they said no. And they're like, OK, I guess Riverside or Made Good will say yes. And it was just, you know, value packs, six flavors. We had one thing called a pizza box where it had probably 13 different products in it.

1:00:16You know what a nightmare it is in manufacturing to make one SKU that has 13 different products in it? But we did it. We said yes to things, not because it was easy, but because we had to do it. It was the only way. Okay. I want to just be clear. Riverside, of course, is the parent company. Made Good is the main brand. But Riverside would also, I mean, through Riverside, you could also launch other brands, right, under that parent company. and you decided to, I don't know if it was a separate brand or if it was under Made Good, but a new brand called Good2Go, which you launched in 2018. This was the sort of like, it was a part of the keto, I shouldn't say craze, because it never became a craze, but I think there was always this assumption.

1:01:07I was keto for a year and I always assumed that this was going to blow up. And it just hasn't. It's really hard. You got to eat a lot of fat, a lot of protein. Tell me about this experiment. That idea was a totally separate brand that was for people who are keto. Yeah. And another one of the challenges with an entrepreneur, I think that I am, is the shiny object syndrome. It's like, oh, there's an opportunity here. Let's run after it. We can do it. And I think one lesson that I've learned, and it's taken a number of these examples, that we got to be really careful on how we deploy our resources and against, but Riverside is here so that we can become one day a house of brands.

1:02:01And we are looking for creating that next brand that we want to house under Riverside. And that is intentional. Got it. Okay, so the good to go brand didn't quite take off. I mean, I guess you discontinued it not that long ago, right? And I mean, this was out there for, I don't know, six years or so or a little bit more. What was the kind of the signal that told you it's time to kind of sunset this product? Well, I think we had several signals. Maybe we didn't listen to some of them, if I'm going to be perfectly honest. Yeah, tell me, yeah. Because I think we had earlier on, we had some quality issues with the product.

1:02:44So we had to reformulate the product in turn. I don't think we put enough marketing behind it. It wasn't growing. So the product wasn't growing. And it's an opportunity cost. Anytime you are distracted doing something, you're not, we weren't focusing on growing made good. Which brings me to another product that you put out, Cookie Pal, which is for pets. I mean, to me, it's really interesting because I love just trying different things. But some other people might say, well, you really want to stay disciplined, like focus on the core thing and really go deep and build out the brand and the things coming out of that.

1:03:24So tell me about the cookie, about the dog treats. I didn't go to business school, as you can see. I'm learning everything. They didn't tell me about the focus part or I skipped it. You've got your pet and you love your dog and you're like, let's make something for the dog. Actually, he didn't have a pet at that time. It's funny. It's interesting. But Cookie Pal is still alive. So that's a different kind of story. It's a good business. Yeah. What we did is we separated it. So it's got its own team and it's operating independently. so it's not distracting us. That's right. Part of the story of Cookie Pal, it connects to the saying yes to customers.

1:04:08So at a Costco bar out of Western Canada, she moved her desk from Department 12, which was the bar, to the pet side. And she called me and she said, Nima, I see a great opportunity. There aren't any human-grade pet treats. If you can get me something, I will list it here for you. Human grade. In other words, something that humans could also eat. Yes. So right now, Cookie Pal, you can eat Cookie Pal yourself or you can give it and you can give it to your dog. I've heard that about like other dog food, that it's human grade. You know, you can eat this dog food. I just I have two dogs. I love them.

1:04:41I even if it's human grade, I'm just not going to eat it. Well, you haven't tried Cookie Pal yet. That's why. I haven't. All right. So you've got you've got that going. And I'm also just kind of curious about, you know, some of the – just the – as you grow, right, and as you get more sort of awareness around made good products, how do you start to think about other SKUs, other things, right? You've got granola bars and then you've got the bites. And then eventually you're going to move to like muffins and cookies and, you know, even now like snacks like not goldfish, but goldfish-like puffed snacks.

1:05:30So tell me how you start to think about developing new products. So early on, we didn't have the discipline of marketing and insights and research. So innovation was done primarily by me. And my thesis was, oh, goldfish. Wouldn't it be nice if we did what we did for chewy granola bars for goldfish, right? So that was the... It was literally, that was it. There was no like market research, no like a consulting group that came in. It was just a thought. Yes. Okay, I like it. And then I love equipment. I love machinery. I'm manufacturing guys. I'm like, oh, I go to Europe. I see this cracker line.

1:06:20It looks so good. I'm like, we'll buy it. Machinery that can make crackers. Yes, because you need the machine. We have to make it. We're not co-packing it. That's the thing that makes it difficult. Like every time we have an idea, we have to build the capability from ground up. So that's how it used to be, right? Now we have much smarter, more capable people that are looking at these decisions and like, who made these decisions? Uh-huh. Cleaning up the mess. How much time do you give something before you decide? Is there a formula or is it more just intuition? Or do you really now use data? I mean, let's say the, you know, the, the, the, the puffs, the pizza puffs or the cheddar puffs, uh, you know, you put them out there and, and how, how long before you're like, okay, we're good.

1:07:12This is working. Well, there is the emotional barometer. Yes. And then there's the factual data barometer. Which is the one that matters. Really? Okay. Yeah. Okay. We've been going on the latter one for a while. So, so yes, we are moving from the emotional. to the data barometer to make these decisions. So you heard Salma describe the reformulations that we did on the good-to-go product. I'm like, no, we cannot give, we got to make it better. What can we do? Like, it's just like, I'm not letting go. But again, it's another, is it worth the fight? And is the energy that I'm putting against it, Can I deploy it against something else that has more potential?

1:08:02And I need to move myself or remove myself and allow others to make those calls. Yeah. And I know that there are a couple of things that some challenges you guys had run into. There was a drought in 2023, which affected supply chain. But I want to jump into something that happened in 2024, which happens to a lot of brands. It's not uncommon. you've got product on the line and some tiny you know piece of machinery breaks off at some point and somebody discovers a little metallic piece in a product it's a nightmare happened to you guys a tiny little bristle from a brush had gone into a product and this really help us understand You have to recall like two and a half million cases.

1:08:55Help us understand the effects of that on the business. Like what, that's like a huge hit, right? It was such an incredible learning experience. I am today sitting here, I'm grateful it happened. A few things. One is nobody got hurt. And sometimes I wonder, did we overreact? But that's okay because I'd rather be on the safe side. and recall as much product as I'm just, if there's a little bit of a chance of it not being safe, then we should just call it, right? So that's a hard decision. It's not a cheap decision and it could have a lasting impact on the organization. But when you put principles in place, the decision becomes really a black and white decision.

1:09:45Just make the call. But I think, not that it was easy, But I think once we made that decision, it kind of was, I know for me, it was a bit of a relief as well that, okay, we're owning this. Everybody showed up. Again, our values at play. I think it was remarkable to see how much everybody cared to show up. It was over Christmas. Christmas was canceled. I bet. For most of us. No vacations. And you got a lot of press attention, which you probably didn't want at the time. around this. Absolutely. Now, there was a lot of turbulence inside Riverside because we were scrambling. We hadn't done this before.

1:10:27Yeah, I think the silver lining is that our relationship with our customers is so much better because every time we go there, they're like, this was a best-in-class recall. If you want to have a recall, this is the way you do it. We call Riverside. if you want to have a recall called Riverside. Let me ask you about, you know, just kind of overall. I mean, you've built this business now, hundreds of millions of dollars in sales a year. This is a big brand now. And what, I mean, what's your sense? It's still privately owned. I think you guys own most of it. You did bring in some, I think, one strategic investor at a certain point, if I'm not wrong about that, right?

1:11:09Correct, yeah. But privately owned. And so what's the game plan? I mean, what do you think? Is it, do you think your kids are going to take over it? Do you think you're going to go public with this? Do you think that one day you're going to sell this to, I don't know, a bigger, like a General Mills or a Unilever or whoever, Mondelez or something like that? for the last decade, we've been so focused on growing the business that we have not had the luxury to contemplate, okay, what are we doing? Why are we here? What's going to happen? What do we want to do next? I think we're just, I'm speaking for myself, really starting to reflect on what is it?

1:11:48How do I bring value? What is my purpose? Why are we in this business together? And we don't get calls. Yeah, Nima gets calls all the time. He has a lot of suitors. Right. Who want to put in money, maybe private equity or other companies who want to buy you out. Yes. Yes. And I'm polite. I like to listen because I say to myself, I don't know what the future is. The way I'm trying to reframe this is that we are caretakers of this business. As long as I don't get distracted with Cookie Pal and Good to Go and stuff like that, I'm getting better. You're getting a little bit better. Keep up the good work.

1:12:32Can you give a rough say? I mean, it's a privately held company, so I can't verify it. But I mean, how much do you do a year roughly? We're not a billion dollar brand. We're in the hundreds. Pretty great? Yeah, it's amazing. And it's Canada, U.S. In Canada, we're the number two brand. in the U.S. we are number six and the fastest growing brand in the category whereas you know we have ambition to get to number two I didn't go to business school but I think I am experiencing the big the most incredible education one could ever have to be in my seat or for Salma and for us to be in our seats even for our leadership team like everyone's here because this experience is very unique.

1:13:20It's unique. Yeah. So when you think about the journey you took and where you got to today, right, and it all kind of collapsed in 2012 and then you kind of rebirthed this idea, new idea, how much of where you got to now do you attribute to the work and the grind and how much do you think had to do with being lucky? First to you, Nima. I am a little bit of a believer that it's more than luck. I think it's karma or universe. I don't know. It's God. It's not me. Whatever it is, it's not me. But I don't know. Luck sounds a little bit. We were blessed with this opportunity. Half of it is that. And then half of it is we showed up and took advantage of this opportunity that was thrown on our lap.

1:14:12I'm a believer that everything happens for a reason. In 2012, I didn't know what that reason was. and it was scary and it was angry and there was all the emotions, but everything happens for a reason. And I think we're here today. Again, not just the three of us, it's everybody else that is either here with us today, not here with us today, that helped us to get to where we are. That's Salma and Nima Fotovat, who along with their sister Saba are co-founders of Made Good and its parent company, Riverside Foods. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week, please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show.

1:14:53And if you're interested in ideas, insights, and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, please do sign up for my newsletter at gyros.com or on Substack. This episode was produced by Catherine Seifer with music composed by Ramtina Arablui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Chris Messini. Our audio engineer was Jimmy Keeley. Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, JC Howard, Alex Chung, Carrie Thompson, Carla Estevez, Sam Paulson, John Isabella, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.