Creating an anti-marketing brand with an unserious name and serious nutrition | Dejan Rankovic , Founder Man Cereal

0:00Coming up in this episode of Professional Jealousy.

0:03Dejan Rankovic:Everyone I knew, I basically told them I was going to leave my job, convinced me not to do it. I'm not the best collaborator, unfortunately. Like, I like to. The moment we did that, we had a flood of people interested in investing. I always tell people this is like, life is a simulation. Like, I don't believe life is real. Yeah, would my mother be embarrassed about this? Exactly.

0:27Hello, I'm Natasha Jakubowski and this is my podcast Professional Jealousy where I talk to people that I'm impressed by and yes, just a little bit jealous of. And today I'm talking with Dejan Rankvic, co-founder of Man Cereal, super interesting, disruptive, new, high performance cereal made with creatine. And as you can probably tell from the name, the branding is pretty irreverent and bold. So hello, Dejan.

1:02Dejan Rankovic:Hello, Natasha. Great for having me. um i mean since when when did you actually launch uh we launched two months ago october okay so yeah in those two months you've had an amazing amount of uh press like i i found i feel like it has been longer than that so i feel like i've got your pre-launch seeding uh comms too but for anyone that hasn't uh seen man cereal can you give us the elevator pitch for sure so man cereal is the world's first creatine cereal for with made with high protein zero sugar and low carb and it's targeted towards men but available for everyone perfect um i mean this actually it's it's actually not that often that i come across something that really is different and uh you know and i definitely haven't seen a creatine cereal do you think of yourself as a food or a supplement like or your when you kind of pitch for sure i think we're more of a functional food um so kind of playing in the gray area between the two um so we position ourselves as like here's a traditional food that you can add to your routine but it's enhanced with these vitamins and minerals that maybe you don't get as easily throughout the day and the big one is creatine i think a lot of people are really attached to that but the other is like whey protein isolate like that specific ingredient is mostly available in powdered form like we're one of the few brands that put that into food and the only cereal that does that into food so that's kind of like how we position ourselves it can be tricky but also it kind of can be a more competitive way to position ourselves when it comes to like pricing and our pure set if you will yeah pure set being cereals but now that being cereal or supplements I think, again, it's kind of like this white space that we're playing in, which I've noticed gives us a little bit more leverage when it comes to pricing.

3:01Dejan Rankovic:People don't really scoff that we're a lot more expensive than the next closest cereal. I think they're used to paying for products that have had these beneficial features. One example is Machos, as an example. like a lot of them have these um beneficial ingredients um like moon brew as an example they specifically specialize in like your nighttime tea and i don't think people view that as a coffee or a tea i think it's like its own specific type of product so i think that's how like man cereal is being received but who knows i mean it's only been like two months yeah no that's that's amazing and benefits from not having to change behaviors actually it's more of a an ad so so smart um so how did you like what was the trigger for starting your own brand for sure so the idea of just starting our own brand is something i've always wanted to do like i've always wanted to be an entrepreneur um would have done it sooner in hindsight i should have done it sooner and just a little bit too risk reverse i guess and then the insight for man's real came from just personally like i used to love eating cereal but stopped because the steel that i loved as a kid and into my teens i just realized it was so bad for me i think everyone has like that aha moment like wait i'm like eating a lot of garbage i need to like clean this up and one of the first things to go was cereal um and then rather than going to new age cereal i just like left the category Like I kind of was like, I'm better off just eating egg whites and oatmeal at this point.

4:38Dejan Rankovic:There's nothing like unique about healthy cereal that's meaningful to keep in the routine. And so I talked with like other men in my network and they said the same thing with none of them eat cereal anymore. And then we did some small focus groups and they also confirmed that hypothesis. so that was like the big highlight was like within the healthy cereal category there's no strong reason to stick with it from a formulation perspective and then the other one coming as being as more of a good marketing guy is like there's no cool cereal branding in the healthy in the healthy aisle like this is yeah exactly i think magic spoon did a good job of kind of pioneering like a little bit more irreverent branding but there's no like dr squatch liquid death within healthy cereal, Old Spice, whatever it might be, that a lot of men could resonate with.

5:30Dejan Rankovic:So we went to solve for that, those two things, the branding and the formulation. Amazing. And you still work at Dr. Squatch. That's right, yeah. So Dr. Squatch was a big inspiration for Man's Cereal. I think Dr. Squatch, like other successful brands that disrupt their category, really execute anti-marketing very well, which is like, I'm sure you know. I don't need to talk. I'd love to hear your take on the anti-marketing, especially having come from that kind of world. Yeah. What are the, what are the, tell every, you know, Kellogg's. For sure. Totally. So it's like, how, how should they be thinking about it?

6:10For sure.

6:12Dejan Rankovic:So for a lot of these like very mature categories, I think norms get established and a lot of like brands follow these norms. So the marketing becomes super repetitive. And ultimately, when it comes to marketing, especially now, because there's so much competition, the name of the game is to break through the noise as efficiently as possible. and one of the best ways to do that is through anti-marketing which is basically rejecting the ways a category defines itself and so like liquid death is like one of my favorite brands they do this so well like they market their water as if it's like a beer product or like an energy drink and when you do something like that not only do you get customers to do a double take like it does get their attention i've noticed it adds this layer of authenticity and credibility because you're not using traditional gimmicks to pitch a customer.

7:06Dejan Rankovic:You're trying something different, and it comes off as more authentic. So at Dr. Squatch, we did that very well. We were able to get men to think about their personal care routine with a little bit more thought through our disruptive marketing. And a lot of that inspiration came into Mansfield, and I hope it comes off that way. So anti-marketing has been the framework we've been using. now is inspired by dr squatch as well as like other brands that i admire within their respective categories yeah also you know taking that big bold name that kind of sets who you are pretty you know that's your billboard and then breaking the kind of design cues going from like you know the cereal bowl and the colors to the black and white.

7:56How did you literally go about starting? You said you wish you'd done it earlier. So did you leave Dr. Squatch and then do it? Or did you start while you were there? Like, what were the steps to actually making this happen? Like, did you raise money? How did this literally come to life? For sure. So I was at Dr.

8:21Dejan Rankovic:Squatch from 2020 up until 2024. And like at that moment, I was really itching to start my own thing. But the idea of Manstero had not come up yet. The framework kind of was there like, hey, here's like what everyone else that disrupts their categories. Like the anti-marketing thing was in my head, but I wasn't sure which category to go after. So I ended up leaving and joining Salmstone, like another beauty brand that was, you know, on an upward trajectory. and that did scratch some of the itch like I was able to come in as an executive really kind of like own the entire marketing funnel all those things but still still hungry still eager to do my own thing and then the yeah the aha moment came when me my co-founder Emily were working out and we always like when we're working out in between sets we would just you know pitch different ideas and I had pitched her on Man Serial which honestly was a placeholder name and then it just stuck and she was like hey that's a great idea um and so we talked about it and like okay how do we make it like do those two things that we think is super important branding that is going to resonate with men and then formulation like how we make it even more differentiated give it even more of a purpose for people to add back into their routine so the the branding side kind of you know we workshop that and came to this type of approach we also worked with an agency to kind to get the design over the finish line.

9:50Dejan Rankovic:And then from a formulation perspective, we knew that creatine was going to be the big differentiator. And I can go into that a bit more, but we were like, okay, like creatine supplement that everyone should be taking, but not many people take it relative to other more established supplements. Okay. Why is that? On the branding side, it's like stigmatized as like a steroid. Like the branding for creatine has been for the longest time like bodybuilders only take it and like the most intense bodybuilders and then from a format perspective like it hasn't evolved at the same pace as like protein it hasn't been basically put into food and like through my research through our research like if you want a supplement to be widely adopted it has to do two things it has to be super convenient and it has to be like have some sort of like experience to it like make it flavorful if you will yeah so protein has crushed that protein maxing is happening like protein has been put into every food yeah i feel like fiber doing that too totally and fiber as well and then creatine has not um the biggest reason is because it's just tricky to put into food it like breaks down super easily um so when you prepare it it has to have the right conditions um and then yeah that's like the biggest reason and the other one is the bitterness of the creatine.

11:13Dejan Rankovic:You need a lot of flavor to mask that. So as an example with gummies, like there's a reason why you have to take more than one gummy is like you need a whole gummy to mask like one gram of creatine. That's why you have to take five. So when you think about it, like cereal is actually really like very innovative way to solve for those two things. A lot of volume of flavor to mask that creatine. And then in the way that cereal is prepared, it doesn't have the limitations of like high baking temperature like coating within the product things like that so yeah so we're like yeah put creatine into it then the additionally okay let's make this the best real ever whey protein isolate zero sugar low carb yeah and yeah that was kind of yeah so once we had i feel like i'm rambling a bit here but once we had that we went out to suppliers or manufacturers no one wanted to work with us because manufacturers hate to do something new like they have a very specific yeah totally um except for one so one worked with us and then we are indeed with them for like over a year amazing how did you fund it so um so okay so the plan was to raise money um we got very serious about this in january like when we both like left our jobs um so okay we're gonna do this we're gonna try to bootstrap it um but as we went through that process we were like okay this is probably going to be a little bit more expensive than we think because we wanted to do direct to consumer exclusive first um for a couple of reasons like just like prove out the hypothesis and then to like figure out the price point for this product um so to do that we wanted to raise money um i had like so my approach to raising money this is my approach i don't know if this is the right way but i met with everyone i knew and I basically told them I was going to leave my job, convinced me not to do it.

13:10Dejan Rankovic:Here's why I'm going to do that. I pitched them my man's cereal. Majority of them were like, dude, I think you have something here. If you're willing to quit your job, you should go after this. Oh, by the way, reach out to me when you need fundraising. Yeah. So that was like the first like warming up of the leads. And then I felt pretty good. Like we could raise a good amount of money based off of that exercise. and then unfortunately we sent out our like investor comms the day the tariffs happened in april and so a lot of those people that like were like i do want to invest here's a blank check we're like hey i need to like rethink things so there was a very scary period from like april through may where we weren't getting any fundraising we would now have to bootstrap this thing there's potentially a recession on underway um but then things kind of changed like in may like we got to like 300k through friends and family and then that gave us a little bit of credibility and then i think the term is like a like um venture scout i think i i basically met a venture scout who was super into man cereal okay and once and once he introduced me to the first VC we were very lucky that that VC got it once we got them on board the rest kind of flowed in very quickly so long story short we raised um like seven figures within like a two week period um and so we were like pretty well positioned to um launch the brand amazing um Yeah.

14:43So did you find like, for me, we come up with ideas like a man cereal for often big companies. The idea is so clear. It's almost like a concept, you know, man cereal. Did you think about changing the name or like balancing efficacious versus, you know, gimmick? Like, tell me, did anyone like push back on that? Or how did you, I'm assuming that they, people see that this is a great white space and they're investing in you being able to do it. But was there any, did you have any issues with the kind of branding or that was part of the kind of anti-marketing pitch?

15:31Dejan Rankovic:For sure. So there definitely was pushback until they saw the box and like understood the story a bit more. but the name man cereal is very triggering and i think and it's very understandable like the connotation of man like you like obviously like you understand this like sometimes it has a very negative connotation of like exclusivity limitations on other demographics all these things i totally understand but i think once you kind of see the branding you understand that this is something that doesn't take itself too seriously and is kind of tongue-in-cheek and light-hearted and i think that basically should translate to like this is a very inclusive brand and that's kind of playing out now which is great um but yes there was pushback um and there was thoughts of changing the name um but i think again like our mission our tagline is serious nutrition unserious name And the way we position ourselves is like, we put all of our thought into the product.

16:30Dejan Rankovic:That is like the most important thing for you as the customer. The marketing itself isn't really that serious. We're trying to remove all of the noise and be very direct with you because we have nothing to hide at the end of the day. um so that is basically once people understood that they were really supportive um but i always had this backup plan that if it didn't work we would just rebrand to mankind cereal it would kind of lose a little bit of that anti-marketing yeah it loses a bit of the edge doesn't it yeah um but that was kind of always a backup plan but no it's been it's been pretty good like like 30 of our customers are women um and yeah like 50 of like as an example the influencers that we seed that post about our products are women they like they get it i think they get it and they appreciate the thought that went into the product and that's kind of ultimately like what we want people to take away is like marketing is kind of bullshit that's what's cool about anti-marketing is like we acknowledge marketing sucks and everyone hates getting advertised to yeah we're gonna make fun entertaining content just to kind of keep your attention but just know that we are putting a lot of thought and effort into the product itself amazing um what what advice would you give anyone trying to start an anti-marketing brand uh and look for raising capital like what's what do you think is like the unlock um any advice for people trying to do a similar thing um i think if i were to approach this again i would basically look at all of these big categories that haven't had a lot of innovation and really do have deep entrenched norms and i would use that as the funnel to filter out what this idea could be um so that's i don't know at top of my head what that is but that would be the exercise and then the fundraising approach um i do think what i did is probably what other people should do is like you should start thinking about your network the moment you're in in university to be honest because that network is going to be very valuable in multiple ways so for us fundraising half of our fundraising did come through my network or through our network yeah um so keep those relationships kind of do what i did i would recommend that warm them up get them on board don't feel like you're selling them feel like you're bringing them into the process and then if you're eager to if you feel like there really is something here and you're eager to um you know fundraise very quickly i do think institutional is probably the best route um so that is kind of my advice other kind of interesting facts is like i kind of wish we announced manster on linkedin a lot sooner than we did because the moment we did that we had a flood of people interested in investing um this isn't meant to be braggadocious but we could have fundraised a lot more um so that was a very interesting moment where the reception basically proved concept market fit like people yeah got it and we're excited to bring this to market and yeah that's super interesting so had we done that it probably would have saved us like multiple investor meetings um but yeah that's the one thing i would call it for people too yeah i mean it's quite unusual to go vc so early um or not do you think i mean like if you'd got more from angels would you have still taken the vc money um well my understanding of working with vcs is that they can be more um like more of a pain in the butt to work with than helpful um that was just my perception of it like they would demand like updates quarterly meetings they want to be on the board they want to have a vote whatever it might be we did race through a safe note so those terms were not available to vcs so that already filtered out a lot of people and then we were really thoughtful about like the vcs that we work with and they've all been very very helpful like more and more than more more more than one way or another um yeah so i don't regret it and then i do think somewhere that's my advice to other people is like make the terms in your favor and don't have boards don't do quarterly don't like commit to quarterly updates, create that flexibility that's most optimized for you.

20:55Dejan Rankovic:And you'll find the right partner. The right partner is going to want to work with you if you have something cool and like you have to be a good founder. Yeah. Amazing. All right. How are you? So you come from a kind of marketing digital kind of how are you spending your money? How are you scaling? So influencers, tell me how you're kind of going about it. As I said, your pre-seed and initial stuff i can't believe it's been only two months like i feel like it was everywhere um great question so um we were following somewhat of the standard digital playbook like a lot like paid social influencer marketing the one thing that we're starting to lean into a bit more is out of home marketing um that has actually been pretty effective we've had like measurable lift from doing that which is really cool and key cities or areas like new york city predominantly in a little bit of la but mostly new york city mostly new york yeah yeah um but um having come from like this like digital marketing background i know how hard it is and i have a good understanding of like what is required through to make the algorithm work in your favor and we did engineer man serial to do that so like some of the things i talked about like creating a new category is scary but also the auction can make it very favorable for you on meta as an example yeah also man serial is clickbaity and so if you're able to get people to engage with your ads that has like a beneficial effect.

22:32Dejan Rankovic:And there's clear value props to the product. Like we can very easily sell the benefits. So it's been working. It's been mostly like meta influencer and a little bit of out of home. And then I think once we go into like retail and Amazon, I think that marketing mix will be a little bit more broad, but that's kind of been the core right now. So yeah. Amazing. What do you think mainstream retail food brands etc don't understand about today's younger your your consumers um i it's a good question i don't spend too much time thinking about this so i'll just kind of give you some off the off the top ideas um i think they just don't understand trends and what the consumer really, really wants at the end of the day.

23:25Dejan Rankovic:I think they think they do, but they really don't. So those are the two things, like trends and having a deep understanding of what customers value is, I think, what a lot of these legacy people are missing. And I understand why. They move slow. There's a lot of red tape. And so innovation on the marketing and product side is a lot slower. and that's where you can have these challenger brands like man's still come in and really take advantage of those weaknesses so i think again like the cereal category i think they've just been so used to just doing the same thing here's our new flavor you know okay here's a little bit more protein but i think like creatine infusion whey protein isolate really zero sugar like to do that i like a big legacy player would require a lot of approval and layers and as a man's still you don't have to get away with that and i understand why they do it they see if man they'll have man's real waste their time on that and if it works okay we'll dedicate resources or yeah do the added added creatine yeah exactly exactly um but yeah that's my opinion on that how do you um who if you had to kind of paint a portrait of your core consumer i know you said you're you've been very careful saying it's not just for men and you know we obviously have women But presumably, like, give me the persona that you're, what are their aspirations and the trends that they're into and their health and wellness kind of behaviors?

24:59For sure.

25:00Dejan Rankovic:So I'll speak more on the male side because I'm still learning more about, like, the female customer. On the male side, there's essentially, like, three core customer demographics that we're seeing. high level it's like 18 to 40 45 maybe even like at times 55 and within those sub segments you have the biggest segment being like that like mid 20s to mid 30s gym bro as the yeah who you know cares about working out cares about fitness but isn't like super anal about it likes to have fun, likes to have flexibility with their diet, is hacking their diet as much as they can to keep it fun, and is more than willing to add Mansfield into the routine.

25:48Dejan Rankovic:These type of people also love pop culture, entertainment, sports, all these things that Mansfield as a brand can really kind of service. Then you have the younger demographic who are just getting into supplements who don't really know too much about it. This is a very clear way to kind of get like the benefits of like a protein or creatine with something that they're familiar with and then the customer base that i'm most interested in is that like older male demographic and that demographic for business perspective they're affluent so that's awesome but they're the ones that are really resonating with the creatine they like don't know much about creatine they didn't know it can do more than just build help you build bustle they love cereal they understand cereal they understand that cereal has historically been fortified with vitamins and minerals like they understood that fiber had a moment with cereal iron had a moment with cereal they very much understand like okay there's an opportunity to add a supplement that can add a lot of benefits to me through like a product that i love sign me up so those are like the big core demographics at the moment yeah interesting and i guess when you go into retail actually that's probably going to be a a kind of target group that you could probably go after pretty hard totally um interesting um you said that you wished that you had um started your brand earlier what is that anything like why do you think you're entrepreneurial was there anything in how you grew up or like what do you think is driving it i'm just curious as a i have a kid so i'm just curious like how do you how do you have entrepreneurial young people um it's a great question um yeah it's so weird talking about yourself so much um sorry um um well okay so my parents were entrepreneurs so there was always that inspiration like they were immigrants they're from former Yugoslavia during the Yugoslavian war they migrated to the U.S.

28:03Dejan Rankovic:with like literally nothing no no English no money no formal education they worked their way up to starting their own business and then we were able to have like a pretty awesome life and I was able to see that journey like yeah they started their business and it started doing well when I was about 11 so I saw both sides of it and that was very cool and inspiring um so there was always that the other is like i think my own personal characteristics like i'm driven creative and i don't know how to say this but people have told me this i'm not the best collaborator unfortunately like i like to i don't have opinions i like yeah emily says this all the time i have i'm very opinionated and there's pros to that if you're super opinionated you're likely also very passionate and hardworking.

28:54Dejan Rankovic:So I think there's like positive synergy there. But because of that, I always wanted to be a founder because I always wanted to be like, okay, I'm going to be like the main decision maker here and kind of do what I want. So I think like all of those things kind of put me like towards this goal of like helping start my own thing. Yeah, amazing. I'm sure that's also something that is helpful when you're pitching for investment and funding. having someone that is driven and believes in you know the idea in themselves that you can buy you know you can buy into and think he's gonna he's gonna do it yeah yeah totally um do you think um how it's it's interesting when i work with big companies like you get stuck work you know creating big decks and you know doing a ton of stuff you often don't need when you work with startups and smaller brands um what's been have you now that you've gone from like dr squatch and you've got salt and stone um like what are things that you feel like you've let go of because you don't need to anymore because you are the boss business wise totally i've been like um the way that my trajectory has been has been like the most formal to now the least formal so a little bit more about my background I started in consulting out of out of college and then was able to join Netflix and work there for four years and that was actually probably the most meaningful career experience I've ever had I never got like the mentorship I got there is invaluable to me so I think that was like a big inflection point for me personally um so it went from super formal to you know formal but it's still a startup and growing super fast and like i remember like my first couple weeks in netflix i would create presentations and show them to my boss during our one-on-ones and he'd be like they're just like bullet points like we don't have time like bullet points yeah none of this consulting bullshit exactly and that was cool um and then dr squatch was like the first like okay like we're doing like we're a startup we're not doing the formalities um it's all just like do it yourself if you need another pair of eyes you know get someone else in here but like do it yourself get shit done x y and z but Squatch as it grew into like a hundreds of millions of dollars of a business there are the layers start to come in um and so there was like a little bit of a reset with solid stone and then now at man cereal it's very much like get shit done like execution is key um there's no overthinking of strategy i think action is usually more valuable than strategy like more times than not um just act and react is kind of what i've learned to be the best approach and so this has been like the most fun i never i actually I always tell people this is like life is a simulation.

32:03Dejan Rankovic:Like I'm doing a man cereal with creatine and I'm the founder and I'm working with one of my favorite people in the world, Emily. I don't believe life is real. So it's great. It's great. It can be scary, but it's because it's ambiguous for sure. And there's not like a clear road. But there is like a high level compass that we have a guide towards. But that's kind of how we're working today. All right. So tell me, tell me where, where are, where is your compass pointing? What is, what are your goals for Man Cereal? Do you, you know, you've got the word cereal in your name. Do you stick to cereal?

32:38Is it, do you like, what are your plans? Growth, ambitions, big, I'm sure you've got some big, bold plans.

32:46Dejan Rankovic:For sure. So there was, there was kind of two routes that we were thinking about is like, stay with like functional cereal and really kind of just own that. Yeah. So creatine could, you know, creatine is one example. The other could be like magnesium for nighttime cereal. There's other ingredients you could add to cereal that add energy to start your day. Yeah. There's that route. And we'll just kind of lean into the functional. The other is to create a man foods. Yeah. That's what I was thinking, right? The protein. You could do the bars. You could do. Exactly. Yeah. I think that one is the one I'm most excited to do.

33:25Dejan Rankovic:But it's so hard to think about that because we have so much work to do with the cereal. Yeah, two months in. But I think Man Foods would be like the ultimate goal and just have an umbrella of products with the consistent DNA being, you know, there's like functional ingredients here and clean ingredients that are good for you. Yeah. And it's wrapped and designed in this branding that you can trust and you enjoy being part of. That would be like, that's kind of ultimately like the long-term goal. yeah that sounds pretty exciting um what makes i'm just interested for you what makes a good boss like how do you try and as you create your culture and it sounds like um netflix was very informative um like how how do you think about being a good boss and and uh merging people yeah it's such a great question i was more qualified to answer this years ago um because i've put a lot more thought into it now i'm just kind of just operating by personality but it's definitely something that i'll have to start to add back into my routine of training but i think from my perspective what makes a good boss is someone who ultimately is respected and so they have to earn that respect likely through a superior skill i just think that's required.

34:46Dejan Rankovic:I think if you don't have that, then it's very challenging to get buy-in from your team. So you have to be good at something really, really well, not the best at everything, but really, really good at something. The other is creating a sense of investment in your team. So it's less of transactional and more kind of a relationship. I think that is super important. That's what I've noticed gets people to work the hardest is they're not working for the business. They're not working for even themselves. They're kind of working for you. You'll hear things like, I don't want to let this person down.

35:23Dejan Rankovic:I want this person to be proud of me. I've had that feeling like a Netflix in particular, and it can be very like powerful. So you need to have that deep interpersonal relationship with your team. And then I always think you need to be some sort of galvanizer. um so galvanizer like enthusiasm bring energy to the team um it may not be required i've seen other leaders do really well that rule by like fear um unfortunately um i don't like that style um but i've noticed that like being a galvanizer being charismatic being super energetic if you can do that with in addition to interpersonal relationships into having like respect from your team from a skill set perspective you should be able to to do really well as a leader i think interesting um you seem very kind of growth mindset um like how do you think about getting better and dealing with failure like any any thoughts anything that you found hard particularly hard that you weren't expecting with with the creation of man cereal so many things um everything has been so hard um everything has been like super hard the easiest is i've been the marketing which may sound obvious but like product has been super hard um like managing a team has been super hard because we're working with freelancers and that's like a different type of relationship and then it's very hard to just keep yourself like positive every day like there are days that are very dark and there are weeks that can be very dark how do you kind of maintain positivity and keep like focus i think is very challenging and that's one of the biggest reasons why i think like people should have co-founders i think it's helpful to have someone to share that experience with and kind of like help each other out and Emily has been so great in that um and then how we continue to learn my approach has just been to just like talk to as many people as possible like I am like a I like I like I don't know anything about products who is like someone I know who knows the most about product I am like getting on the phone with them I'm like hey man I need an hour of your time fifty dollars of DoorDash on me can you chat tomorrow I had these specific questions that has been my approach um the other has been to like test and learn but that's kind of been my approach to kind of learning and growing and yeah if you're able to like have a cool network like that is kind of what i would recommend but those are like kind of the things yeah um and i so i've spoken to quite a few uh people now and i think there is actually a common thread where people are willing to just reach out and ask people like there's no like lack of I don't think it's even confidence I think it's like a type of person that is like yeah I'm gonna I don't care if they don't say yes but I'm just gonna ask for help and I think people have been surprised by how many people are willing to give you a bit of time and help a fellow founder entrepreneur etc i mean do you how if you i mean either you started with a ridiculously good network or how have you built your network or do you just reach out to people cold or like what i'm interested for people that aren't that don't have much of a network and i think asking people and asking for help is such a massive unlock like any any thoughts on that do you did you have like a ridiculous network set up yeah great question it's so hard to kind of do the steps backwards but i've always just kind of like reached out to people and this is super genuine to have a super genuine here i would always reach out to people that i thought was doing awesome work and be like dude you're so inspired inspirational like you're doing such a great job i'm a huge fan of you keep up the great work and then that can snowball into something like hey what do you do like what are you up to oh you do that let's wish i was nerding out about that x y and z and then that's kind of how you build this actual kind of meaningful network i think um that has been my approach um and then i always think that like um indirectly if you are like awesome to work with people will champion you so i've always like really made it an effort to like if you're going to work with me I really hope you walk away with like an awesome experience like I've always like what stuck with me is like you don't remember what people say or do you remember how they make you feel and I've always tried to like lean into that with people and I think one those relationships have been helpful but also too like they're the people that like will talk about you behind your back so people already know about you or they'll be the first to give you a referral so i think if you do those things i think that's a pretty good approach to building a network and then all those things require like putting yourself out there yeah amazing um what tools or practices do you do to work on your own kind of growth and self-discovery Like, I feel like you're purposely trying to grow and learn.

40:53Any, yeah, what do you do on your own time to be better?

40:59Dejan Rankovic:On my own time, I have a robust digital diet. So lots of podcasts, lots of YouTube videos, lots of... Any in particular? Any titles people can check out? It's a great question. It's a great question. it's honestly stuff that's not super related to marketing yeah it's more like um business finance stuff like like professor galloway's podcast as an example um i do listen to the all-in podcast and i'm one of those people that hates them now because of just like how political it's come and yeah that said though it's always good to get other people's perspective on things um that's one example um there's a ton of other i can't think of the top of my head but it's probably like the top 10 business ones yeah um and then my routine is like every morning i run on the treadmill for like 60 minutes and i'll just throw on cnbc and like that typically is enough to get a sense of like what's happening and like what is important to talk to think about um and then most recently i've been using chat gpt as like not like a therapist maybe more like a business coach to kind of just talk about like hey am i doing this like yeah function as like a business executive i have these feelings what do you think or like workshop ideas with with with chat things like that that's been like the newest thing i've added to my diet yeah so interesting chat gpt is business business coach are you using are you using ai within the marketing and the other elements of man cereal um great question um sparingly i'm actually like very anti-ai um i just think it kind of goes against like what i'm hoping or what we're hoping to build with man cereal which is authenticity and yeah authenticity creativity all those things so i typically use ai as like like the first draft of an idea like more like that um sometimes i'll use it as like hey is this too offensive i've done that as well is this like too edgy you ask your business coach or is that a different one that's a different one that's a different one um function as function as my mother is this offensive would my mother be embarrassed by this yeah would my mother be embarrassed about this exactly um and then like sometimes we use it for images but ultimately i'm trying to use it as least as possible because it does remove that authenticity and credibility and creativity i think for now yeah for now yeah all right i can't believe we're running out of time so going to more quick fire um quick fire probably more frivolous questions um all right so what's your desert island food product oh food product oh great question um and i'm not allowed to choose man cereal i'm assuming other than man cereal um great question food product um it would be it would totally be a cereal i swear to god like i do love cereal so so much i'd rather just not shout out another brand but it would be cereal man cereal it would be manseal if not manseal then it would probably be either a fish wife or um maybe the jacob protein bar the jacob or the david one the jacob oh i don't know jacob i'll look that up okay yeah um best career advice worst career advice you've had um best career advice um great question as well um sorry this is not rapid um i think it's just follow your instinct i think your gut is more right than not and you can live with failure if you follow your gut i think you know obviously you want to be thoughtful with your decisions but there's something about your gut that is usually right and i noticed that like if you follow your gut like you'll live with yourself if it doesn't work out and then the worst advice has been um the worst advice has been um like one way or another just like play it safe like i've had people tell me like stay at netflix you could be an executive there and make so many millions of dollars and it's so uninspiring to hear that um so i think people kind of those are kind of the big when i was leaving for squash i got a lot of that i got of like don't go this you're insane you're joining a soap company and it was like exactly what i just said it was a gut thing it was like i just feel like this is right right now um so those are the two things uh what do you think your superpowers have been that helped you be successful uh great question um i think it's um uh probably insatiable curiosity i would describe it like having a deep appetite to like learn um and like kind of entrench yourself into something and that's happened in so many ways whether building core skills or building ideas so i have like a i would say like what differentiates me a lot is that curiosity piece okay anything you wish you'd learned earlier in your career that you that there's no like there's no right or wrong way to do anything to be honest like you think you need to do like you think you need this much of experience you think you need to be this type of way or that type of way that's all bullshit that's just that's just society putting like you in a box and had i known that i would have done mincephal so much sooner um and taken a lot of other risks that i probably should have done so that's like the big one um do you have i know that you reach out to a lot of people which is amazing do you have formal mentors i don't think i have like a formal mentor um like if this person was like did john refer to you as a mentor they'd probably be offended like hey but we were friends um but um my former colleague at netflix who's now like head of finance over there he has been like a meaningful mentor he very much went out of his way to train me when i was at netflix and he's always been like a big cheerleader of mine and he's honestly had little to gain from that relationship i just think he just liked me and he just thought i had good spirit um so that's been like the biggest one amazing um anything that you're trying to get better at i think right now as a like starting a startup i think it's like leadership i think like okay this is like when you're like a legit leader like anyone can be a leader in like peacetime anyone can be a leader when they have like a team that like no like is like knows what they're doing super professional like can I be a leader right now when it's super informal what is super unstable when I'm high emotion I definitely need to do so much better at that I can just already tell so that's like the big thing I'm thinking about for your chat GPT business coach to help you with yeah totally I mean he's I think that I think yeah I think it can only take me so far I think like getting some more formal training or just doing more formal kind of like um formal training as well I think would be like the right next thing um what uh what's the biggest misconception about being a founder um I feel like it's always very kind of glamorized yeah exactly it's it's glamorized it's totally glamorous I think it's um maybe that they always know what they're doing or that like they feel like yeah they feel like they have control but they don't know what they're doing i think most of the time and they feel like they have no control um so i think that's like the answer yes funny my my husband uh was an entrepreneur and he was like i'm not gonna have any bosses anymore but then he had retailers and he had like people his investors that he still needed it it was like a whole he still kind of had clients um and bosses in in just in a different way um i can't believe we're at the last question so um tell me someone or maybe something that you're professionally jealous of it's a it's um it's an interesting question because you know jealous is like you know one way to phrase it i think like in myers another way about it yeah Yeah.

50:03Dejan Rankovic:I think I really admire Fish Life and Becca, the founder of Fish Life, a lot. I think they've done such a great job of taking a stagnant, boring category and innovating, revolutionizing and bringing a lot of new consumers into that specific category. and so that's like i think that's so awesome i also think the way they go about their branding and the way that they talk about their brand is very thoughtful i think a lot of people as an example like to champion their brands on linkedin and you should do that you totally should do that but it can create a sense of like um animosity i think or a sense of like jealousy um or sense of hate i think fish life does that so elegantly like i think like they're really thoughtful when they celebrate their wins they i feel like there's a strong sense of team community there and has to like assume that becca is the mastermind behind that so she's probably the answer of who i'm most jealous of and that brand is one that i really really admire yeah yeah i'd love to interview becca millstein just in case you want to you know her for sure thank you so much um um just so interesting and um yeah if you're ever in new york city i'd love to uh buy you buy you a matcha um if there's ever anything i can do to be helpful i would love to i'll email you but thank you again for your time this is amazing um thank you so much for watching listening do take a look at some of the other episodes we've done which you can find on spotify apple youtube wherever you get uh your podcast from professional jealousy.com um get in touch if you have any questions feedback or importantly um would like to see someone in particular featured on the podcast a quick thank you to shimmy uh the producer for his help and yeah please subscribe and comment leave a review whatever it helps um catch you soon

52:14Thank you.