Manny Lubin - How Slate Milk Raised $30M+ by Reinventing Protein Drinks for the Healthy Minded

23:00I think that was surprising for us to hear because we always thought based on who he is, he would care a lot more about ingredients. But I think it just goes to show that even people that founded a company based on one thing doesn't necessarily mean that today they think that that's the most important thing. I love the taste of David Protein. Oh, that's fantastic. I eat his new bars every day. And someone like him, how do you get in touch with him? How did he originally invest? He was, so Nick Rellis, one of the co-founders of Drizzly, is an investor in Slate, became a friend and Nick connected us with Peter.

23:34What's the best piece of advice you got from Nick? We're going to go down every single person. You got murderer's row right here. So we're going to go down each person uh relis is relis is a lunatic but and he he i say that with love i freaking love nick relis the first time one of the first times we met with him he sat us down he said is this your first year last like what do you mean is this your first company or your last company and we were so early like couldn't even comprehend what he was really saying i think and And we're like, yeah. And we're like, I don't know. I'll do this for the rest of my life.

24:11Could be the last, but we're not trying to flip this and it'll buy an island. And he was like, just remember. And there was no context. And Josh and I talk about that a lot, where we are building Slate, but also we're founders. We're entrepreneurs. We think the way that we think. We operate the way that we do. The structure of our team and the things that we think are best for the business might not be how someone did in the past. It's just like, it's kind of building our playbook on how we believe we should operate. I don't even know if that's what Nick pushed us to think about or want to think about, but that was, Nick's given us a lot of advice.

24:45Nick's been great. He's been like an advisor for us. Contextually, so we know how savage he was. Did he just sit down and that was his first thing? Or is that something that he said randomly in communication? No, like in a meeting, that was literally one of the first things that he ever said to us. Interesting. So you got him in and then he introduced you to more investors. I would assume that probably the sequencing is the same elsewhere. what about Drew and Amanda from Yasso? What was the best piece of advice they gave you? So Drew and Amanda are very close. So they're actually observer slash board member.

25:14So they sit on our board meetings and we talk to them like bi-weekly. So they are like, they're part of the core team more or less. I think that, you know, it's funny and we're going full circle here, but Yasso obviously had a lot of success. They recently sold it Unilever. And I think that one thing that they always try to continue to push us on is at the end of the day, which I think we do a good job of remembering, but at the end of the day, a business is all about making money. Where can we, even they had a large company, where can we find nickels and dimes? Where can we cut? Where can we improve?

25:49Like we should always be pushing to improve just because things are going well in the grand scheme of things. How can we make things better? So I think that you can't get that advice enough. That's great advice. And then also them, I think finding ways to perfect taste, like relentlessly pursuing the flavor that we want, I think is something that we get reminded of intermittently. And it's so important. Like you got to have the best products, got to have the best products. What I think is interesting for this podcast, I'm making sure that I'm bringing on people that are currently operators. I think someone that was operating as early as maybe three, four years ago, it's a completely different market for distribution sales, marketing, everything.

26:27How important is it? It seems as though Yasa, when they were on your board, were they operating Yasso and on your board? No, so that was more recently. So yeah, so they recently joined the board, but they are like, Josh and I like to think that we're thoroughbred operators. Like that's what we do is we operate and getting people around the table that are operators is so important because even if they weren't the same type of business and even if they didn't think about the P &L the same way that we do, they can say this number looks a little weird or like, is there something we can do to improve that?

26:57And also just understanding what we should be building towards. Then as you go, you never know what your numbers are going to be. You can predict much better. You can create a process and predict much better. But at the end of the day, it's just setting a plan and achieving that plan. And when you have more information to set the right plan and you have more information on how to achieve that plan, that's business. So I think that's what getting more operators around the table can help with is what should the goal be? And as simple as this is what we think is going to happen? Does this sound reasonable?

27:28And how much data do we have to suggest that we're going to hit this goal? They sound like good board members. How did you go about selecting who was on the board? Some of it has to do with cash investments. And then for Josh and myself, it's people that we think are going to positively contribute to the company in one way or another. We like people that have diverse backgrounds that we think will provide friction, but good friction that can think about the business. We all want the same goal, of course. Everyone's on the board. They're owners of the company. But taking different paths to the same outcome so that they can push us to think differently about, maybe we should be thinking about this differently.

28:07Maybe we should grow faster, slower. Maybe we should pass on that opportunity. Maybe we should go after this one more aggressively. Because we're not a tech brand. We're not built to go from a million in sales to a billion in sales. There's got to be a path. There's got to be a goal. what's the speed, what's the spend, what's the burn, what's the product line, innovation. I think there are a lot of decisions that is what makes business so fun, but making sure that everyone's aligned and knowing what the goal outcome is or the first kind of checkbox if we want to get to there. And then everything after that is just staged.

28:42So are you a slow growth or a fast growth guy? I would say we're somewhere in the middle. I would say if you look at the grand scheme of beverages um again a business like slate in a market that's growing so fast with this much distribution and so much opportunity we're not positioned to grow this for 50 years right like our goal isn't to you know grow 100k every year for the next 100 years but at the same time i think that we see a rapidly growing market we see a hole um but if which you guys have first mover in, quite frankly. Yeah, which I think is great. But if we go too big too fast, there are going to be speed bumps along the way.

29:20I want to go back to the board seat and give all of our listeners a bit more context on understanding the variables and the leverage. So if someone wants a board seat, what are those things that they can trigger? And I would imagine that the more and more you grow, the less and less advisor shares, more just straight equity. Again, it depends on the person, right? If you get an opportunity to have someone that you think could be transformational to the business. I think in that opportunity, you talk about it with your existing board members, your existing advisors, and also the people running the business of how much is this person going to actually contribute to the brand?

29:52If it could be something that you believe will change your life as a founder, or you believe will increase your probability of hitting your goals a certain percentage, I think there's always an opportunity to get more people on the team. It's all about your existing team. And team is founders, it's employees, it's advisors, it's board and then new person. How do they fit? Like, what does the company need? We, Josh and I talk all the time about blind spots. Where are our blind spots? Knowing our goal, knowing the goal outcome, knowing what we want to be right now, what are we missing collectively?

30:23And do we need that today? Is it too late? Is it too early? And is it something where we feel as though the experience level we need for someone to fill that blind spot? Again, it's, is today the right time? And so that's kind of how we make those decisions between the two of us. What do you say is the most common blind spot that a company like yours, originally two people up to now, I don't know, 60 plus. What's a blind spot that you think most people don't see? I think it's truly understanding the right pace of growth for your business. And I don't think there's a right answer. It's a collection of different things.

30:58It's an opportunity. It's cash. It's people behind it and how fast the people behind it want to grow. I think also is what is the true goal? And early on, you don't know. It's just I want to make as much money as possible. I want to have a bunch of sales, but then that usually comes with more burn, right? I think early on, it's what are your actual goals? And I think this is talking about mistakes we made. I think Josh and I, there are definitely some mistakes we made early on where we just, we obviously had goals, but then we always wanted to outpace them. And early on, especially it was, you know, even 2020, 2021, it was sales were still king.

31:31And then obviously with COVID and supply chain flips and whatnot, then, you know, limiting burn became king. It's clearly defining your goals and getting the people involved to help you define those goals. So I think that's a blind spot for a lot of brands. From a team perspective and an investor perspective, we just got to get into this guy, Stu. Because on Shark Tank, I don't know, on the edit, all you guys were talking about was this guy, Stu from Chimani. So shout out, Stu. Why don't you tell us just a little bit about him, why he came in so early, and then ultimately, how did you leverage that to kind of get to the next level?

32:04So Stu is Amanda Klain's father. So Amanda is the co-founder of Yasso. Stu helped us break into the industry. Absolutely. And what do you mean by that? You just said, hey, reach out to your key accounts and get us a meeting? Well, first, he definitely made sure we were prepared. And because Josh and I, we knew that we could scrap, we could grind, and we were mid to late 20s at the time. We felt like if we had a validator, that would be something that would help us break into the industry because we see a lot of brands that kind of like scratch the surface, but it's really hard to break in. I feel like for CPG, since there's limited shelf space, I feel like that's one of the harder ones.

32:38Yes. You need to have some sort of mode. And you could start online, which we were planning on doing, but we wanted to also just learn. So Stu came in, he helped us get two of our first meetings, which we closed, and helped us kind of set up how we should think about the business sales-wise. I think getting someone in that has that experience is so key early on because there's just so much to understand. I didn't know what a UPC was. I'll never forget. Stu and I used to get arguments all the time. I always joke that he's like the grandfather I never wanted, but I love Stu and I didn't mean it.

33:07He would like give me shit because I didn't know some of the lingo. And I'll be like, who the fuck cares like what it's called? And I'll be like, ah, you guys don't know anything. And it was out of love. And we would all push each other. And Stu was key early on. Shout out Uncle Stu. Let's move on to one more and then we'll go into the athletes. Let's talk about Skyview and Riverbank. From a VC perspective, what can people expect from like a cadence perspective? of how often do you talk to them? Always depends, again, on the person on the other side. So it's less about the name on the front of the jersey, more on the back.

33:39So it's Spencer and Danny from River Park are great, right? Versus River Park itself. It's a cool name, but that isn't as important to us and that's not to take anything away. When it comes to Skyview, we speak to Jared Cohen. Jared's been fantastic to work with. I think part of the reason we were excited to work with both firms is because of the individuals that we spoke to and we knew were going to be their contacts, they understood the vision. Someone wants to write you a check, even if it's 10 million bucks, and they don't, when you talk about the vision, they disagree or they don't understand, it's going to be a fuck ton of friction.

34:10The main thing that people can help with is network contacts, helping out, which is making an intro to a sports team here or there, or a family member that knows this person and that's a buyer here. Can we chat with them and get their thoughts on getting in? Things like that. Again, it's scrappy as that. that's how startups work. That's how business works. You guys got scrappy vibes. That's what I'm saying. I freaking love this place. I feel like we're in an octagon. We're going to get to the UFC talk shortly, but yeah, this place is crazy. What do you say is the biggest mistake you guys made when raising money?

34:42I would say always raise more than what you need, at least today. And don't get caught up on the valuation. Get the money in the bank. Get back to work. If people want to give you money, like accept the money. but I would say the amount of time that you will spend on negotiating a couple million dollars in strike price and just get the money in and move on. Just get it and go, man. And it's funny because like, if any of our investors ever hear this, they'll be like, what the fuck are you talking about? But like, still fight for what you think is fair. Fight for what you think is fair. Ultimately, in a category like yours, it's going to win or lose.

35:19It's going to win bigger, it's going to lose. So if it's 83 million or 87 million, And I think that's just going to be a moot point at that point. Let's talk about the athletes. Why don't you pick one of the athletes that invested and just tell us a big learning lesson from them? Max Crosby. He unfortunately just announced he's out for the rest of the season. Raiders obviously having a tough season, but Max has set the precedent of what a great partner is. And so Max invested in the company. He's also a brand partner on the marketing side. and typically people are busy. You know, Max's full-time job isn't being an influencer or marketing partner for Slate and other companies, but Max goes above and beyond to post about Slate on social media to tell his friends about it.

36:05We'll just like text every once in a while. We'll be like, hey, send this person a case. Like FaceTime me like four days before the season to let us know and just like gave the phone to his nutritionist. Like we got to get Slate in here. All those little things and tasks add up. How do you find a Max Crosby? We met Max through Dana White. Dana was just going keto and ended up getting some Slate. And that's kind of how the UFC thing blossomed as well. Let's jump right into that. I'm a huge UFC guy. How did that happen? Dana White started drinking Slate, liked it, and they reached out to us. We started talking UFC and eight months later, a year later, we're a sponsor.

36:41What do you think is like a big misconception about Dana White? He is one of the most loyal people that we've ever met. And because I think as you grow in network, fame, fans, you just don't have a lot of time. And so I think people think that Dana is all about money, all about business. But Dana is so true to the people that helped build EOC and to who he is today and what he's been able to accomplish. And we actually went to a boxing match with him in Boston. One of his fighters was fighting there. and he brought one of his boys from growing up. And like every time he goes to Boston, it's like, Dana does everything.

37:21He can't hang out with me. And he's just like a real one. He seems like a giver. I think that just so many people just have, they just cherry pick individual things. But I think ultimately, you know, he's grown a whole entire sport. And I do think, I feel like you guys are almost positioned in the market as this kind of underdog incumbent. And you're going up against the Cokes and the Pepsis. And I feel like UFC is kind of the same way where they're not the major four sports, but they're like next. I 100 % agree. And that's what we look for in partners. That's why when we could work with UFC, the Max Crosby, the Duncan Robinsons of the world, like Duncan played D3 basketball, right?

37:54He wasn't supposed to be in the NBA. We want trailblazers. We want scrappers. We want the people that weren't born with it. Like Max played at Eastern Michigan, right? So it's, we want people to think of our brand like that. And so that's why we want people around us with those stories. Sounds about right. I want to button up on finalizing all the money raised stuff. I know absolutely nothing about Indiegogo and Kickstarter. Why did you go with Kickstarter? Early on, we were trying to announce to the world what we were doing because we wanted to start to create some buzz. So we launched this Kickstarter campaign.

38:28So for context, you have a final product and no funding and you go to Kickstarter? We have a final formula. We don't have it commercially produced. We go to Kickstarter to raise funds to help us with the first production run. and it was also more marketing like we we felt pretty confident that we were going to have our first production run and how kickstarter works is you get funded but uh if you don't get funded you don't get the money and the idea is you set a goal so that if you get the money then it enables you to take the next step in your business and like create i don't know if it's to create the product but that's i think how most people use it is the idea because it requires you requires capital to create anything right it's ultimately like a bridge to get you to the next level Basically.

39:12Would you recommend Kickstarter to someone? Yes. I think that early on, you got all the time in the world and no money. Now, we got no time and no fucking money. Now, obviously, everyone's doing so many things as the company grows. But early on, it's a way to raise money and build awareness for what you're doing. Makes sense. We're going to go into the fun part now. I'm super excited. We're going to go into marketing. I want to give away a ton of cheat codes. I know that on the marketing and sales side, you're managing that side. So let's just start. What is the overall just marketing mix for Slate?

39:48And then we could just kind of tranche each one out and kind of go into each. So how do you guys market currently? So you mean, where do we spend our funds or how do we think about the funnel? Let's talk about thinking about the funnel and then we can say, hey, I spend X on Meta. So, I mean, we think about it somewhat simply. It's three-tiered funnel. And we kind of have one for e-commerce and one for retail. Let's start with retail. You have brand awareness, You have what we would call geo-targeted or retail-targeted, which is middle funnel. And then bottom funnel will have what we'll call in-store or direct digital.

40:18So brand awareness would be UFC, Max, Cavendish Twins, any awareness-building mechanisms. That you don't directly tie any attribution to? You're just spending X amount and you spend X percent of top-line revenue? That's typically how we think about it. It can kind of push and pull based on the company's goals. But so for this retail funnel in particular, the end goal is to drive retail sales. So the end goal here with the top funnel isn't to necessarily say, and we're going to test Seattle, Houston, Miami, and Chicago and see what our household penetration is or the amount of people that know what slate is.

40:58That's not our goal. Our goal is to actually drive sales at the retail level. So here we'll take, yes, more or less a certain percentage of our overall retail budget and invest it into top funnel, invest it in the middle funnel and bottom funnel. What are you doing on the top funnel? Is the top funnel partnerships? Is it billboards? What does that look like? Today, it's typically all digital partnerships and things like, well, UFC, we obviously have TV placement and stuff like that too. But at this time, part of our strategy isn't investing in like TV commercials or anything like that. Let's go back to UFC really quick and just dive deep into what that looks like.

41:30Yeah, I've seen you guys on the actual fights. So how is that structured? Are you paying X amount for a multi-year deal? What does the deliverables look like? It's a combination of many things. And what's great about the UFC is we basically say, here are our goals. And they say, here are our assets. And then we come together and say, it's fantastic. What we love about the UFC is they, from everyone we've spoken to on their team, they want the same outcome. They want, it's not just like, Hey, we're just trying to sell space or products or, you know, get as much money as possible. It's, we want to help build this brand.

42:08And that's, we genuinely feel their team drinks late. We're actually in the UFC PI, the Performance Institute there. They want long-term games. They want to build a partnership. We felt that more with the UFC than many other large partners that we've spoken to. So you're saying you're giving them the macro goal and they're saying, hey, we have this available, let's just call it distribution. We can push it down here, here, here. You know, we can market and do content through this type of fighter, that type of fighter. They just tell you, Hey, this is everything we can do a la carte menu. We suggest doing this and then they back into the costs.

42:40This is what we would recommend. Correct. Wow. That's amazing. That's like a true, you have like a, an in-house marketing strategist on their team. That's yeah. And it's different for everyone, right? So for slate, again, it's, it just comes down to, this is, this is our goal. These are, I mean, I think most people probably understand what the assets can be. If you've seen UFC marketing anywhere and let's work together to put together a plan that makes sense for both parties and helps you hit your goal what is one thing that surprised you about the partnership with ufc how much i we genuinely feel like everyone on their team cares to the point where when we go to fights or talk to their team people everyone that we've spoken to in the organization even though yeah slate's not the largest partner but everyone knows what's going on with slate and understand slate and talks about the products and even will mention certain flavors, like things that show that they give a fuck.

43:27Like they genuinely want the business to be successful. And we feel it with every single employee we've ever talked to there. And how did you understand and know that from the start? Was it just Dana? And you just felt that him as the leader and it just kind of trickled down? It all started with Dana and then the first call with their partnerships and sales team. Dana obviously brought in people that he trusts and the culture is to help build these brands. Now they're working with Bud Light again. They want to build Bud Light. You can feel it when you talk to the team. They feel passion and protection about their brands.

44:00This sounds like a non-traditional partnership. I feel like you never get that. I've dealt with a lot of the big leagues and you don't get this at all. That's how we've always felt. So let's go back to the top of the funnel. So UFC, and you mentioned digital. Why don't you elaborate on top of the funnel, digital? So thinking about social media posts, thinking about full meta awareness, just kind of evergreen campaigns, things like that. Anything that we usually track, the KPIs are typically impressions and or reach. That's what we would typically call top funnel. And typically you're getting a better CPM than something you would middle funnel.

44:34That is exactly what we're doing right now. That's interesting. So as far as that goes, when you are looking to partner with an influencer, are you guys testing on one post, two posts before you go long-term? What is the strategy? Yeah. Again, it's kind of partner by partner, but I'd say overall, first and foremost, got to love the product. I talked to one NFL player that was thinking about investing that said, I don't know why. I don't know what it is. I freaking love you guys. I love chocolate. I love milk. I don't like chocolate milk or chocolate protein shakes. And I was like, dude, it's all good.

45:09It's not the right partnership. So even if that person wanted to post about us, people can sniff through inauthenticity. And for us, we feel as though we get the best partnerships for us are when the audience can feel that it's real. Because these people are being, their followers are people that know and trust them. And you got some that might work with a ton of brands and maybe they're posting about Walmart, they're posting about Audi and everyone knows they drive a BMW or whatever. But when it comes to the emerging brands, people typically are looking to the people that they follow for true brand recommendations because they want to look like them.

45:48They respect them. They want to be them. They think of them in a high regard. And so for us, it always starts with, does this person love our products or even one product where they're like, I drink that every day. Like the Cavendish Twins drink the French vanilla all the time. And like, that's their favorite flavor. And they always post about it and they'll still drink the other flavors. They'll post about the caramel latte here and there and other flavors, but it all starts with love for the product. So I want to talk about the first step for the people listening to further execute this. We used to do it a lot.

46:18I actually just look at the number. We sent out 6 ,700 free pieces of art as a first-time touchpoint. Are you guys just flooding the market with free product and then seeing if it sticks and they like it and then engage? Like, what's the first part of that? I don't know if we've done 6 ,700 of potential partners, but that's a good strategy. We seed product all the time. It starts with love for the product. We have to believe that their audience are people that could or will or should be customers of our products. If someone's audience at the end of the day is they're drinking full sugar drinks, they just aren't trying to be healthy.

46:50They're probably not the best use of our funds and not the best use of the partner's time. So I think it starts with, is there following part of our target audience? And then the next step is, is there following part of our target audience and someone that we want to attack in the next 12, 24 months, whatever. And so it's kind of this funnel down. And if they love the product, their audience could or should be Slate customers. And it's someone where we're trying to hit that target demo the next year or this year. Then this is kind of getting down into a little bit further in the funnel, but is their audience in our key markets?

47:24As far as that goes, for us, we've found that reels are huge. Where are you guys seeing the big, big wins? If you're talking about backing into CPMs, where are you seeing the big wins? It's so interesting because it all depends on the actual talent partner. We'll typically take a look at where this individual is having success and then just mimic it. So I think one of our investors, and he is also a partner for us, is John Rondy. He runs the TikTok Johnny Drinks with his dad. Do you know Johnny Drinks? Yeah. Yeah. John, he's my boy. I freaking love John. Someone told him a while back, and I don't even know if he remembers telling me this, is, do you know what made Seinfeld so great?

48:04Yeah. It was the same show over and over and over again, just with different words. And it worked. And I think that stuck with me because it's like, if something works for someone, keep doing it. If you want to diversify, that's fine. But Slate can't be the risk with that. So typically, if someone is having success in social media doing something and we want to integrate Slate because Slate is actually part of their life, we'll try to take as much as we can from their authentic brand and posting style and integrate that in Slate because we don't want to be the musical episode of a TV show. That's typically just like your drama or whatever it is.

48:39Yeah. You just want long-term as many authentic touch points as possible, as opposed to the quick hitting out. So big, big partnerships like UFC, influencers, what do you think was the biggest mistake you've made in influencer marketing to date? I mean, it's not only just an influencer marketing, but everything. when something doesn't just feel, when it doesn't feel right. You know, like the numbers are there. Oh man. The partner's there. You got to look at the other brands that they're putting in their bio and there's a couple of brands that we just know if they have that, it's a no-go. So yeah, I mean, you probably know just as well as me.

49:17It's like, I knew it wasn't going to work. I did it anyways. If it doesn't feel right in your gut, just don't fucking do it. Let's go to the middle. So top of the funnel, are settled, middle of the funnel, you said that's based on a geographic basis? So we call it geo-targeted or retail targeted. So thinking about anything that's in our key markets, which again, it could be certain influencers in certain key markets that are maybe not for general awareness, maybe smaller influencers, micro-influencers, seeding product, things like that. Events are there. I think when starting it - And just so I know as well too, you're using the same tactics at the top of the funnel that we discussed, but just making sure that it's super targeted to - Some of them.

49:57So if you think of evergreen med ads, so Facebook, IG, just rolling ads, something we don't invest a ton into. And then putting a pin on every Walmart we're in, taking out an ad within a five mile radius saying now at Walmart, or you have a two for five going at Safeway, putting a pin on every Safeway, five mile radius on deal two for five. And you're advertising through on meta. Correct. This is all on meta. And so that would, any dollar that we spend with the direct goal of driving someone to a retail store. So top funnel everywhere. Then it's, you know, people have maybe heard about it. Maybe they interacted with it.

50:31They didn't buy online. All right. Now they're getting served another ad because, you know, we just launched a new flavor at Wegmans or something. And they're within a five mile radius. Oh shit. Kind of looks good. And I already saw the Dana White private jet video. That's all over Instagram. And then, so that would be middle funnel. Middle funnel would also be events. So anything like, again, within the area or something where, you know, targets hosting some sort of program or something like that. So anything outside of the store. So that would be all middle funnel. And this always is tied back from a geography perspective to the retail.

51:03Because I would imagine over time, if not already now, retail is a bigger part of your business, correct? Correct, correct. So it's all about sell through geographically and whichever retailer is obviously the most important. But it will be middle funnel for us is outside what I call the four walls of each individual store. Because that would be bottom funnel. So this would be like, for example, if there was a radio station that, I'm a Boston guy, 98.5, the sports hub. If we were really trying to blow up Whole Foods, Market Basket, Wegman, Stop and Shop, that would be middle funnel because we're trying to attack a certain area.

51:39And in that ad, we would say, find us at these retailers. We would consider that middle funnel. And then bottom funnel is anything within the four walls of the store. So you think of, we have a 25 person badass field team. like they're driving all day, every day in the stores, case stacks, displays, cooler checkouts, putting up fixtures like metal racks, shippers, cardboard cutouts, whatever we can to build awareness in each individual store. Let's talk about the SG &A and the team behind that. You're talking about 25, are those internal team members? Are those, do they work for the distributors?

52:13All slate. All slate. And that's by a per region basis? Everyone is located strategically in areas where we have dense distribution. They're going into stores and driving more velocity, building more points of disruption in each individual store. Because when it comes to drinks, we got to compete with Coke brands. We got to compete with Pepsi brands. There's some stores that if you stand outside a high velocity Walmart, you will see a Pepsi truck two or three times a day going in there and refilling shelves because they sell so much shit. And for Pepsi, that individual truck driver is going in, bringing more product in.

52:53He's the one. He's selling in Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Muscle Milk, Gatorade, all these other brands. That's the advantage of being under a bigger umbrella is you're just getting the economies of scale on the team. But a brand like Slate, they're not going to give a shit about, right? And so maybe one day. But so for us, we got to do it ourselves. We got to do what makes sense to us. And that's sending our people into the stores to compete with those brands. Who are those people? What's that persona? Do they have a marketing background? Are those like fresh out of college type people? Our team is a very unique and diverse collection of individuals, all with unique selling styles, but they are selling.

53:28If you look at who the store manager is, that's who our team sells to. And the reason we're selling is, look, look at store X, store Y. Look at what we're doing when we have four facings at the checkout cooler. That could be your store. You're going to be making more money. Let's move. Now you have 14 facings of water. Let's make it 12. So they just have a strategic partnership with the manager at each of these stores. And they just say, how can we increase sell through? And then they come back to you with any and all of these ideas. Built from scratch. Well, we have a team. My VP of sales, Mike, oversees the entire program.

53:58Mark oversees the entire team. And we have district managers. We have regional managers. We have actual area sales managers, which are the ones actually going in the stores. So it's a very robust program. And each individual person on the team has done an unbelievable job helping us build it. And we have people from the bottom up that are maybe newer to the team that are giving recommendations on what they're seeing working. Other people will take it and learn. And you have to be completely selfless. You have to just know that every day is not going to be your day. And you have to be able to take feedback.

54:30And you're selling to so many different types of people because each store manager is so much different. And so you're constantly selling, but also respectfully. We're not taking, we don't grab space, right? We sell, we sell for space and we advise the store on why we deserve it. And if they say no, then you got to help them unpack a case of eggs. You see a spill, you clean it up. Like whatever we can do in each individual store to increase our velocities and drive more sales, all of that adding up is how Slate wins. What's the lesson that one of these people in the field brought back directly from the mouth of the manager?

55:05Ooh, that's a good one. Well, we have an entire wins channel in our Slack thread. and so oh every day oh freaking badass freaking badass they're badass and and like we love they just they just grind you know and it's you know everyone on the team freaking grinds but they're in the car they're in a car every day and podcast radio but but one um trying to think of a lesson i mean we've had we have people on the team that have done it in the past and so they came in and they brought findings from other brands correct and there are certain intricacies to each individual retailer because when you think about like a harris teeter which is owned by kroger but kind of operates independently versus uh you know a hagen in like the pack northwest speaking another yeah so just so like if you're thinking about bristol farms versus air one versus walmart walmart yeah your opportunities for incrementality in each store so more facings are going to be completely different.

56:04But in LA, we got Eugene hitting all these stores, right? So I think it's figuring out what works, bringing that back to the team. And so each individual store, you kind of know what we call the flexo spaces. So there is space that are planogrammed, basically demanded by the buyer, the national buyer, regional buyer, whatever, where it's, this product goes here, this product goes here, it all comes on a sheet of paper. and once you get the planogram, it's like, all right, the store themselves will reset the shelves every year typically with the new products going in, the ones coming out, whatever.

56:36Getting more planogram space, fantastic. It's guaranteed space. But then you think about coolers. You think about some stores you can put up these cardboard fixtures in the stores and some people have come back to us with ways that they've had success doing it told it to the rest of the team and the rest of the team doesn't have success. I need to know one way. You got to give me one way. To get more real estate in there, what do you have to do? Are you taking the manager out to dinner? Are you giving them gifts? Nope. I would say one way is it starts with one win. Let's say you get a cooler placement in a Walmart.

57:15Let that build for two weeks. Take it to the Walmart down the street. Show them the sales. And Walmart down the street might say, no. It's like, I'm sorry, that's Pepsi space because - This is all about just one use case and just go back to the same store, the next location. And that's how we built the business is it started with Whole Foods in the North Atlantic region, which is New England, and Harris Teeter, two of our first accounts, Central Market, which is like 14 stores down in Texas, became top of set in all of those stores, really focused on Whole Foods, built a case study, took it to Publix, Wegmans, Market, like took the case study to the next retailer.

57:58Bigger case study, next retailer. Bigger case study, next retailer. And we're still doing that today. Because these buyers, anyone, is taking a shot on something that they don't know is going to work. Even if we have all the data in the world, if we're not in their stores or we don't have a certain flavor in their stores or a certain line, they're risking something. So they need to be able to have conviction that this will work or be able to just be convinced, okay, this all makes sense. Ultimately, they're taking somebody else out to put you in as well too. Correct. So if I can say this brand's doing two units per scoop or store per week, basically two units of flavor nationwide at a retailer just like yours, I'm doing seven.

58:34You should take mine. It's pretty strong story. But if I come in and say, hey, they're only doing two. I think I'm new five. They're going to say why? If I don't have any data, it's just going to be a leap of faith. And that's where it begins is someone taking a leap of faith. But then you build that, make it the best thing ever. like when people breaking in come to us. I'm like, start at a farmer's market. Start at five stores. Start at eight stores. Doesn't matter. Just go somewhere and fucking win and then take that win to something a little bit larger. Don't go to the farmer's market and then call up the global Whole Foods buyer, the global Walmart buyer, but start at something.

59:11Start at three stores, a three-store chain in your area. Blow the freaking doors off. Compete with the best and then take that to someone a little bit bigger and then blow the doors off that. take that to someone a little bit bigger. One thing leads to another and you've won. You're just big. Who was your first retailer? Whole Foods. How do you get into Whole Foods? From the Kickstarter campaign, we had the old North Atlantic president reach out to us and say, I love the video. I'm vegan, so I can't drink it. But let me know if there's anything I could do to help. Wow. So Kickstarter had a huge ripple effect on the whole entire business.

59:44Yes. You could directly correlate. You got into Whole Foods because of Kickstarter. Yes. Enough said there. I want to dive back into marketing. I know you said that you're looking at parallel, you're looking retail and then direct to consumer. What does the direct to consumer side look like? So still, it's kind of ugly to visualize, so we don't say it like this, but the top funnel for both is awareness. So it's kind of like one big top funnel and two like sub little funnels. So still awareness, right? We still think top funnel, like everything that we do with the UFC and our partners and whatnot, they are helping to build awareness for the brand.

1:00:15hopefully then when someone sees middle funnel which on um on d2c would be like your social media ads and whatnot like again for there it's a little bit more you're evergreen with with the goal of actually driving a purchase and then bottom funnel would be actually on our website like subscribe and save things like that pricing emails stuff like that so it's a little bit quicker of a funnel right i think you can kind of blend a little bit this probably into two funnel paths but we really focus when it comes to DTC on Amazon marketing and like pricing in terms of subscribe and save in terms of email discounts, things like that.

1:00:55How do you look at the buyer funnel in a sense that, you know, if I go on your.com, I got to pay shipping versus me in a gas station where I can just buy it with no shipping. So are you guys almost looking at maybe like a DTC as, let's just say like a loss leader or discovery and then you're winning and driving in retail? How does that strategy go? You'd be surprised. Once you hit certain volumes, you can do all right online. I would say our goal to build a very large brand, like what we think the opportunity is, the majority of people will buy Slate in retail locations. but online you look at amazon in particular for protein drinks because everyone's buying it now it's part of the routine right and so people just want to buy it in bulk and so we actually have an offering on our website where you can buy 48 cans for a significant discount that's our golden goose online because i can pay less on shipping per can i could have someone have a drastically higher and they get shipped every four to six weeks that's the end goal of everything and so online I would say that while our focus is still in retail and driving retail sales, because it more directly correlates to our end goal, the DTC business we think is going to continue to grow and it will still be a significant portion of the end goal.

1:02:07Well, ironically, I found you on Instacart and I read an article that you guys were one of the biggest brands on there for, I think it was 21 or 22. How do you look at something like Instacart and DoorDash and stuff like that into the mix? Yeah. So 20, I think it was 22. We were the number one fastest growing brand on Instacart. um it's it's it's on the retail side and for that i would actually call that bottom funnel which we call like within the four walls of the store but also direct digital so that someone at checkout is getting served an ad and so it's been a fantastic trial driver because at the end of the day like the way that a company like slate wins where you don't really know what it's going to taste like you feel like you should but maybe you don't like we're converting a lot of people that have never had protein drinks into protein drink drinkers even people that don't understand that they're now protein drink drinkers.

1:02:54Like they're drinking the vanilla latte, which at the end of the day is more or less a caffeinated protein drink that's marketed as an RTD coffee with its macronutrients. So for us, driving trial, cans and hands, liquid delivers, whatever you want to call it, it's so crucial to building the business customer by customer and Instacart and ways to sell one can at a time are essential to building that. I am your perfect use case. I literally trialed through there and my LTV is probably$700,$800 dollars through all in-store. Where do you buy? Whole Foods. Yeah, right by me. So I want to go back into marketing.

1:03:29You were very, very early with these kind of fitness first influencers. Brian Mazza is a mutual friend of both of ours. Hinman was another one that I saw. What was the strategy on that? Like you said, our brand kind of screams fitness. We wanted our people to feel a certain way when seeing our package. We felt like there was a large growing population of individuals that were kind of these biohacker, extreme fitness, but not bodybuilder-esque that didn't have an offering. And so right away, we wanted to hop right on that. And Mazza, Hinman, they love the products. We work with Todd Anderson, Katie Hopp, that entire crew.

1:04:07I would say that everyone's somewhat connected and they're all fantastic people. They helped us build the brand. Absolutely. Because people that followed them knew that if they wanted a red-to-drink protein drink, they were going to Slate. Let's talk about the Cavender twins. How'd you close that deal? We sent them the product. Loved it. They believe their female following should be consuming more protein. They genuinely believe that you can feel it with their content. They post about their workouts. They talk about their diets. And so it was just such an authentic fit where they didn't have a protein drink partner.

1:04:38We understood that that was their vision. It aligned with our vision. And so they're also small investors in the company too. And did the deal with them. And their team has been great to work with. And that's going back in the original thesis, you think the puck is going there in the next 12, 24 months that females are going to start adopting protein. Just like I think creatine is kind of on the same path as well. Oh yeah. Creatine is coming. I think protein is coming faster just because it's easier for the everyday folk to understand what it is. I think what makes Slate so simple and beautiful is that it's just ultra filtered milk that has natural sweeteners and natural flavors in it.

1:05:10And with the coffee, it's also got caffeine and coffee in it. And so our goal is always to just be 5, 10, 15, 20 % better than the next best person. And that's what we're always trying to build. All right. Let's, uh, let's wrap up on the marketing side. What are you most excited about in marketing? What's a new initiative that Slate Milk is doing? We're coming out with higher protein versions of a product. And I'm excited because when you look at the products out there that are called ultra high protein, right? So call it 40 grams of protein per 15 to 17 ounces. They're all very intense. I think what's exciting from a marketing perspective is working through how do we make sure that people know that this has 40 grams of protein plus, but also how do we ensure that this product isn't going to be too intense?

1:06:00And what do you mean by intense? Like in terms of branding, if you think about some of the 40 gram protein plus products out there, it feels very masculine. It feels very, you know, it's meant for a certain type of weight lift or exercise, or it's not meant for the everyday person. What we want to do is we want to bring protein drinks to the everyday person. Big Tam, baby. Gender neutral and Big Tam. That's what I mean, man. That's what I mean. And you can accomplish that through simple branding and very specific marketing. I think that's our key. From a brand perspective, I think Rahal did this very well with RX.

1:06:32I think even Doug and Halo Top, it might skew a little bit more for them, but they did it very well, where you can have a product that's meant for everyone and a brand that's meant for everyone, and you attack certain subsets of consumers with certain marketing messages. And that's what the digital world allows you to do. What I find really interesting is I asked you, what are you most excited about from a marketing perspective? And you told me products, which ultimately I think, as Peter Rahal said, I think product trumps all. I want to know. You may or may not have it right there. What are we looking at?

1:07:02Protein and cows on the next one. So this is 32 grams of protein per 11 ounces, 150 calories. This is not yet on the market. And it's already been run. It is delicious. I'll give you this one for the road. And so 85 % of the calories in that come from protein. so it's basically pure liquid protein that tastes like a milkshake and we believe that the market for people that want 30 grams of protein is also increasing not just the market for people that want 20 ish grams of protein i want as much protein as possible as little amount of calories as possible uh all right so let's go to the team now um you guys are remote um how does the company work from operations perspective as far as comms and meetings remotely tuesdays we'll stack our company meetings.

1:07:54So like Josh will have sales meeting. I'll have marketing meeting. I'll have ops meeting. Josh will have finance meeting. Typically one day a week, we'll meet with each individual team, talk about what we're doing. We'll have a director's meeting on Tuesday as well. And so stack the meetings one day a week. But other than that, Slack, I'm on huddles all day, every day. I'll be on a huddle with Josh and huddles like a phone call on Slack, basically. I'm a big Slack guy. I love Slack. I know all about the huddle. Yeah, I'll be on a huddle with Josh for 45 minutes and it's been 26 minutes and neither of us have spoke just because we're emulating being in the same room and then we'll just both work.

1:08:28And I'll be like, all right, I got to call Ron or Justin or whatever. It's very, I would say, unstructured structure. It's like we all know what we have to get done and when we need something from someone else, we just reach out and we kind of just emulate all being at a desk in the same place. So let's just keep talking about, let's go into Josh. So two co-founders, no quote unquote CEOs. Obviously you guys lead different parts of the company. And what happens if you guys don't agree? We both oversee a bunch of shit, but we do most things together. Like I'll hop into sales calls, he'll come into ops calls.

1:09:00It just depends on what we're discussing in terms of if we don't agree. We know that if it's something ops related, marketing related, brand related, innovation related, like I could have final say, but if he doesn't agree, it's not right. because we are like, we're the same brain. Like we have to both agree that this is what's best for the business. And if we don't agree, it's not like, nope, I'm the ops guy, we're doing it. If he doesn't agree, I need to convince him why we should do it. Or if we're doing something sales-wise, like we should absolutely go get this account. And like, that doesn't make effing sense from an ops perspective.

1:09:35Like we're not going to be able to do it. The risk's too high or whatever. And he's like, no, this is why it's going to work. Then, and I agree, then we do it. But if one of us don't agree, what it comes down to is like, it's not what's best for the business because we both know every nook and cranny of this business. And if one of us doesn't believe it's best and the other person can't convince that person that it is what's best, it's not what's best for the business. Bless you that you haven't gotten there yet. You know, on the UFC side, Dana White and the Fertitta brothers, they have in the bylaws that they have a Brazilian jiu-jitsu match.

1:10:03You know that? I did not know that. That's a good one, right? So what would you say is a non-starter as far as when picking a co-founder? Gut. If you don't innately trust this person with your life, like if you don't believe this person would literally like frogger hop through traffic with you then they're not your guy they're not your girl they're not your person this person is like are you're blindly going to go into battle with this person for the next five years of your life so regardless of how intelligent they are are they as gritty as you are they willing to work as hard as you like if you feel i feel like josh knight ying and yang very well where there are some things where I know he's better than me at, but there's some things that I know I'm better than him at.

1:10:45And I think that we genuinely believe we're equals. You can ask Josh. He'll probably say I'm better. No, I'm just kidding. No, I think that we genuinely believe that our weaknesses and our strengths play well off each other, but it all starts with trust. I blindly trust him. I always say he's not just my co-founder. Josh is my business partner. Anything that I look at in life to infest in, like big life decisions. Like we'll talk to each other about like anything that involves finances at all. Like we, they, they have to be your person. I feel the passion right now. Oh, he's my guy. I love this for Josh.

1:11:20Yeah, he's my guy. How many employees you guys got? Like 45 to 55, 50 to six, call it 50. So a company with 50 employees, what you say, what would you say was the biggest mistake when scaling your teams? Too fast, too fast. I would say that we believe it's the right time to hire someone when either so much is slipping through the cracks that it's negatively impacting the business to the point where we can see it and it affects whether it's the bottom line or top line or whatever. Or something is taking too much of our time or someone else's time that is prohibiting them from doing what we actually need them to do to the best of their ability.

1:12:00And then we need to hire someone underneath them or over them or whatever it is. So don't hire early, hire when you really, really need it. Dependence on the position. So there are certain key things, like when it comes to the finances of the business, when it comes to navigating the P &L or setting the plan or people that can help you strategically plan, earlier is probably better. I love that. Let's fire away some random questions and then we're going to get into the last segment. Let's do it. How do you measure success for the company outside of revenue? I mean, a lot of it is bottom line too.

1:12:33I think that's very key. I think that the numbers that you see when companies raise a lot of money and they say that they're doing X in sales, you don't usually hear about their EBIT. So I think that if you can limit burn, that's a great business. If you can make a little bit of money in the early days and grow a little bit slower and prove out that your product fits in the market and your brand fits in the market, I think that that's something that our entire culture doesn't focus enough on. There's certain companies you have to go a certain speed, but if you are in a market where you can make money early on, to freaking make money.

1:13:05So what does that do for you mentally? I know in the CPG space, people lose money for, I don't know, I've seen it as late as Series D. What does that do to you psychologically understanding and knowing that you're going to have to lose on the EBITDA side for a long time before you make money? Yeah, understand. Again, it's setting the goal and the expectation. I think you got to understand that if you wanted to go into a business that made money from day one, it ain't this. I think that every sophisticated and smart investor of anything, whether it's public, private, whatever, is going to want revenue as high as possible and burn as low as possible.

1:13:41That's business. But in certain industries, if you look at the successful case studies, that's not how they're built. There are family businesses that have been around for 42 years that grew and never lost money and never raised a dime. And now they're doing 182 million. Fantastic. It took them 42 years. If you're investing in a company like Slate, you do not want us to be profitable day one based on what we're trying to build because we will not get to our goal in the next eight to 12 years if we grow at that speed. And it requires more capital because if you look at how it's been done, this is what it takes.

1:14:14This is what it takes to actually build the company that we want. And in certain industries, it just takes a certain amount of capital. But if you're in an industry that doesn't require that, make some money. Smart man. what is the biggest misconception about Shark Tank? Got to be careful here. Was that a long NDA? Shark Tank, is it? I don't remember. We had someone on that was on Shark Tank and he was speaking freely. You're a different human then. He's the guy that's going 87 and the 75 zone, so I can go 83. Okay. The biggest misconception about Shark Tank. You know, I don't know if it's a misconception, but I would say that the conversation was authentic.

1:15:00Like the after pitch conversation, it felt authentic. But I think that some of the way that like the mannerisms were a little, it felt a little like embellished per se. But you know, maybe that's just who the sharks are. Maybe they're just like more animated people. But no, I think for us, it was a great experience. We like to think, Josh and I like to think that businesses, it's like an infinite game, right? There's no winning and there's no losing. Maybe if you sell your company to win, but then in 20 years or five years after, if it goes out of business anyways, did you actually win? At that moment though, we felt like it was our Superbowl.

1:15:33And then after, obviously we felt like we lost because it didn't go as planned. But I think for us, it was kind of a good reminder. Everything can be fixed. Nothing in business is permanent. It's all about getting yourself back and up and doing the next thing. And regardless of if it's aired in front of 4 million people or whether it's a tiny little meeting that goes your way, like there are going to be so many twists and turns and it's just like onto the next. Infinite marketing touch point as well too. Do you still see lift from that on DTC? Like when they randomly air? It's definitely helpful because it also shows the story.

1:16:04It's what makes TV great. It's what makes anything great. It's what makes conversations great. It's if the story of burbs of Boston, you know, whiteboard in the living room to Kickstarter to Shark Tank to 100 stores to 20 ,050 people. And there's a lot more twists and turns that we are going to go through to grow. But it's a great piece of the story. On Shark Tank, if I like the humans and I like the story at absolute minimum, I'm going to check on Instagram or just on Google and just see what's going on. A hundred percent. You'll definitely get those, I think, in perpetuity. So, all right. Last section, man.

1:16:36We're going to go lightning rounds. Real quick, I'm just going to ask you quick questions. You can go as short or as long as you want. Let's start. Bella check or Brady Brady more important taste or health benefits taste favorite CPG brand outside of slate you got to do one one ooh have I chosen for the people or the product so I've been on a kick recently and I don't I don't know the guy so I gotta meet him the wild chips I just started eating the wild chips I just thought they got a bit they this race 20 mil yeah yeah so I gotta I got to reach out to their team because they, uh, high protein tortilla chips.

1:17:12It's protein chips. They're not like, they're not as high protein as quest. So quest is like, I think 18 to 20 grams of protein per 150 cal, but the wild chips are great to add a little fat in there. So I think it's like 200 cal. They're like chicken strip chips. It's like 200 cal 13 protein. Um, but again, literally I've just been on a kick. So today I'd say the one that I've been leaning on the most is wild. 213 is rookie numbers compared to this over here. What we got here guys, Best gym in New York City. I'm doing it to you again, man. You got to do one. No, I'm doing two. I got Kenny Santucci at the Strength Club and then Richie over at Culture Fight Club.

1:17:49Fair enough. How many slate milks a week? 18. Shark Tank or Kickstarter? Kickstarter. Controversial, but Kickstarter. Why? It's more fun. Fair enough. biggest misconception about entrepreneurship? That you're ever out of the scrap. That you're far enough along that you can finally take your foot off the gas or it's more like traditional business. Yeah, man. Momentum is a sick, sick drug in this game. The second you slow down is the second you lose. It's not by chance that you are an early customer of Iconic. Because you literally, it makes sense. Dude, I love your brand. I have your shit all over my apartment.

1:18:35I like that first Zoom call I saw in the background. Yeah. Very, very true. One word to describe Josh. My guy. What's harder, making a product or selling it? For us, making it. For most, selling it. Biggest mistake you've made with Slate? In certain situations, working with the wrong people. Whether that was an individual or a partner. I think there have been multiple times where we worked with the wrong people. And how and why did you make that decision? Because you looked at the financials before the human perspective? Because we looked at the paper, not the person or people. We looked at, call it the metaphorical resume versus actually processing and digesting how our conversations actually went and not fully understanding, again, how this paper person would actually integrate into the business's needs.

1:19:32One thing you would never compromise with your business? Product. Love it. All right, we got the last three questions here. Favorite book or podcast and why? What's this podcast called? No, I'm just joking. I like that. Open residency. We're just getting out the gate. My favorite podcast. I'm not a big book guy. I like to listen to shit. I'd say probably the VMG guys were putting on an unfinished biz podcast for a while. Who's VMG? They're the VC firm. and I was listening to them for a while. And - What's the name of that podcast? Unfinished Biz. And then I also, Josh is a big fan of how I built this with Guy Raz.

1:20:12It's just learning about other entrepreneurial stories, like the ones that you're talking about, is you can learn about companies that you see on the shelves where like this company fucking crushed it. And then you hear about how it went and you're like, damn, that's relatable. Like Doug from Halo Top would always say this. You got the big guys, that are going to try to knock you off with all their money. You got the little guys that are going to be nibbling at your ankles the entire time. You constantly got to go. Because if it works, others are going to try to do it. People have and will continue to try to do sleep.

1:20:43It's just when it works, people are trying to do it. And you are not only battling to protect what you've built, and there are always going to be people that are trying to take that from you. But then you're also looking at the future and building towards the future. And it's battle. To the end. next one weapons of choice so we ask leaders to share the products tools or services that they rely on to drive success assume that you have internet and you're breathing and let's say Slack is one of them okay we're a big Excel company a lot of things just done in Excel we don't use a ton of platforms on the marketing side we use Hype Auditor we use Archive what about for you personally outside of drinking I don't know what you say 18 slate milks a week outside of that What keeps me motivated or what do I use?

1:21:29No, what are other things you use? Like for me, another really good, I consider Slate also a snack. Like for me is Chops. That's a huge one. Chops is great. Good protein, low calories. What's another like one or two brands that you eat? I actually drink Zevia at night. Zevia. Zevia sodas at night. I mean, I'll mix in the Ollipops and the Poppies too. I think those are great products. I drink Zevia. In terms of other snacks, protein bars, they kind of rotate. so sometimes i'll have bear bells sometimes i'll have quest we have a friend that started a company atlas bar we i think the legendary pastries you know the quest team did a great job everything i can get that's high protein i'll eat uh zero sugar yogurts i'll eat cottage cheese which i made fun fun of for all the time my girlfriend's huge on the cottage cheese it's just the macros man i'm on the greek yogurt okay and blueberry game okay that's a good one but you know i'm a I'm a simple man.

1:22:23I typically eat and drink the same thing at the same time every day. The brand a lot of times will rotate when I go through things, but obviously it's always slate for the drinks. And I'm a big drinks guy. So anything that I haven't had, I'll taste. So that goes right into our last segment. Let's not do wilds. An entrepreneur or brand that you want to give flowers to and why? There are a lot of people out there that are just freaking hustling. You know, it's funny. I'm not even joking. I would have said iconic if we weren't having this conversation. Would you really? I'm not even joking because when I think I'm, cause I was trying to go outside food, right?

1:22:58Because like we are, we, we're friends with a lot of food and beverage founders. And I think they all have great products and we all consume each other's products. And then I was thinking about my home and I'm like, it's all over my walls. And it's just like, like there's the one that's like a mountain. It says one day at a time. Like I forget. I love that piece. It's just like, it's simple, but it makes you think, you know? And what's good for you and bad for me, it's evergreen. You buy it once, it's on your walls forever. Sucks for me though. But I'm glad. Those are nice, kind words. I appreciate you.

1:23:26Yeah, I got you. So I want to end last question. You've raised 30 mil plus. You guys are in 20 ,000 plus stores. You're an animal, I can tell. How big can sleep be? Don't be humble. when you think about the size of the ready-to-drink protein drink market i genuinely believe that it's just scratching the surface the amount of people today that drink waters and sodas and energy drinks like i would call those like a markets right just inside in terms of the size of the market i think that you think of your b markets right now you have ready to drink protein ready to drink coffee you know tea is kind of like one a so many more people are drinking teas than coffees when it comes to RTD in stores.

1:24:07Not a big tea guy, but yeah, it's crawled to looking at some of the, like, if you looked at fricking Arizona's numbers, your skull would break. It's crazy. The amount of volume that some of these tea companies do. But when you think about the human diet, like I said earlier, keto, I believe was a fad. There are going to be people that do it, but the general public isn't going to continue doing keto as often as they are now. The evolution of the human diet is going to be higher protein. That's what I believe. That's what Josh believes. That's what Slate believes. I believe that too. And the most efficient way from a caloric standpoint to keep your calories low and get your protein high is to consume beverages.

1:24:43So if you look at like the Slate 32, which isn't even out yet, you got 32 grams of protein per 150 cal. If you look at the Slate 20, you got 20 grams of protein per 100 cal. If you look at your typical protein bar out there, you have 20 grams of protein, you have 220 cal, maybe 200 most maybe some 240 the reason why it's more efficient from a caloric standpoint is because the way to create more mass in a beverage is water and you can put water in a beverage and if you have enough flavor it tastes great still the way that you create mass in a food product is either air or ice right it's the same thing more or less where if that's why halo top was so successful it could be the same amount of mass or space as a ben and jerry's but have 40 less product.

1:25:28And so we think the market's going to grow like crazy. You didn't answer my question. How big? How big can the business be? I think that when you look at what Fairlife is doing right now in sales, they obviously have their core power line. They have their milk line. If you just look at their ready to drink protein line, we look at it in the market, it's doing over a billion dollars. I think that there's no reason why if you take all of the pieces, one day a company like Slate could become a billion dollar brand. And I think that when you look at what the size of a company can be, and when you're starting off, it's extremely important to understand what the TAM is.

1:26:06Because I think that if I sat here and said that Slate could be a$20 billion brand in five years, you should call me an idiot because the market isn't that big. But when you look at the size of the market, the way that it's growing, the top players, what they're doing, some of the major players are declining. I think there's opportunity in the next decade to build that brand. I'm sold. Dude, amazing conversation. I feel like we've been here a very, very long time, but it felt very short. Where can they find you? You personally and the brand? Yeah. So SlateMilk.com, Slate on IG. I'm Manny Lubin on IG.

1:26:38But follow our Instagram account. We got discount codes on there all the time. DM us for a code and 20 ,000 stores all over the country. SlateMilk.com. Go to the product locator. amazing man if you guys like the video like subscribe appreciate your brother cheers all right thanks