Is Capital Starting To Flow Again? Plus, A New 'Fast Track' Emerges.

29:06The tip top you're holding. So you would look at that and say, wow, that has a hundred something calories, but this it's like, uh, better to not know. Yeah. Maybe sometimes when you're consuming alcohol, at least. So, uh, I'm not saying that this is high calorie, but it is true of like, you know, most people are not like, oh man, you know, this type of wine has this much calories versus beer versus like i'm poisoning myself anyway might as well go all in you know oh boy all right well you know there are some wines out there that are starting to put calorie counts and i'm not sure about sugar counts but calorie counts on their bottles because people are looking for lower calorie wine for sure yeah i want to talk about some products but jackie i'm sure you know beyond the glamping camping van i got some san diego products okay this one the pat like don't mind the packaging no you have to mind speaking of primal jackie ripped into this bag so that she could put her whole face in it watch oh my god look at what the hell no hands needed she went full feedback on this it's that good it's that good but uh what is this that is a giant bag it's a giant bag and it's almost done so i bought it last night and i haven't stopped eating it we have to say the name of the brand here anticipation uh this is nomad snacks and this is a local san diego brand they make popcorn and this is ramen they're ramen popcorn and they also have chimichurri and this is just delicious i think the only thing that would take it next level is if they collab with snoods and had like some ramen thrown in there.

30:47But this is so good. They really hit the nail on the head with the flavor. And I really liked the packaging. The packaging is what stood out for me. Are you listening? I want some chimichurri popcorn. We need to get some Nomad in the Newton office, please. You know what? I DM'd him. I see the packaging and I see the flavor. I'm expecting some big things for that brand. That looks great. Ramen flavor. Everyone knows what ramen is. I'm sure people would love to try ramen popcorn. I think that that has some serious, serious legs. And it looks like they just recently launched based on their Instagram.

31:23So found them in Lazy Acres and hoping that they grow and they can get their way over to you. Care package from Jackie. Coming soon? Yes. Okay, good. Thanks. And then I also have another San Diego brand. This one is like hyper local with their messaging and their marketing it's called the san diego bar and this is the chula vista chile which is an area of san diego so all of their different bars are named after like a neighborhood are they flavored after the neighborhood yes they just captured the air of the neighborhood and just infused it the stereotypical things from each each part of the garage happy hour flavor yeah yeah well this tacos chula vista chula vista is like garbage can of ceviche flavor yeah can we can we keep going please but chula vista is like known to be predominantly like latin and this is a chile infused bar it's really good it has a little bit of kick their main thing is that they also only have six ingredients so just really simple clean plant-based bars and they're cold pressed So everything is intact.

32:37Nice. I imagine they will eventually evolve the branding just to call it SD bar or something else. So it's not to be so specific. Oh, did? Okay. Did you say that? No, no. Oh, I just, I just, I just invent that. Oh my God. See this? I should get a check. All right. I want to talk. I just want to talk about something I saw in the cooler. Now, we have, I don't know, at least two dozen, maybe three dozen brands in our cooler out front. And so I mean, that's probably an undercount there. OK, well, there's a lot of brands in our cooler. And this one really caught my eye. Taika. Taika is a maker of canned lattes.

33:19They typically or do they all have adaptogens in them? I believe they do. I think so. And they're leaning in on the matcha, it seems right now. Yes. So this is their strawberry matcha latte variety. It's made with adaptogens and macadamia milk. It contains zero sugar. There's an asterisk after the zero sugar. I believe that's because it includes a different kind of sugar or sugar alternative, which is erythritol in this case. I'm going to try this. Ray's going in. Cracking it open. That is fantastic. Wow. No shock. That is really good. No shock. Everything is high quality. I was expecting sort of a, I don't know, I don't want to say this in a negative way, a sort of a fake kind of sugar taste.

34:03No, this is really, really good. It's 80 calories per eight ounce can. Feel inspired, not wired is the tagline. And Taika, if you recall from four years ago, was that brand that had the number on the front of the can where you would text them and they would text you back. I thought you were supposed to call it. But now it's a very small part of their can. And it's not as much part of their branding, but you can still text them 415-212-7711. At least you didn't send a fax. Exactly. Talent Taste Radio sent you. Yeah, right. Fantastic. Good job, Taika. I should have faxed it. Should have what? I should have faxed the number.

34:42Right Ray doesn't even know what a fax is. I'm trying to... Pretend that he doesn't. Yeah. It's okay. Exactly. All right. More Gorilla? More Gorilla. I mean, I don't know how I missed this because I know Gorilla did send us a very generous care package. So Gorilla, a maker of THC infused products. Of hemp derived THC. They make THC, HHC and CBD products. I'm learning a lot, Ray. I've learned a lot since the last episode. And so the last episode we had their gummies and their shots. Or I didn't, but you did. Their gummies, their spray. What? Spray? Spray. Spray. Okay. Oh, spray. Sorry. I was like to spray on yourself or other people.

35:24Like Panaca. Like Panaca. Yeah. Under the tongue spray. All right. 10 milligrams of spritz. Okay. So this is their, I guess you'd call this spirits. They call this Gorilla Elixir. And the thing about these bottles is that there isn't a lot of labeling on here. So I don't know how much there is per quote shot. It says zero out by volume. This is 750 milliliters. I'm assuming it's either five or 10 based on their other products per serving, but we've got lemonade, orange, berry blast and strawberry watermelon. And I am too scared to try it, but it looks really cool. Well, the colors are definitely less than natural looking.

36:08There's a very hot pink one. There's a light purple one. There's a peach-ish colored one. There's a yellow one. It looks very yellow. It looks more like a mango. Yeah, it actually reminds me of, you know, that brand Hypnotic. Oh, yes. I was going to say that. Yeah. Or like the ones that glitter, you know, like the glittery. Oh, yeah. Yes. I mean. Do not hang out of places that have glittery booze. I'll say every, everything. You call me upscale. Whoever their designer is deserves a lot of props. I mean, their packages are beautifully designed. I'll say that. This one is scary. If you put that purple one up next to a bottle of hypnotic purple, they look quite similar, actually.

36:53We should put them together and see if anything happens. Yeah. Okay. So Mike's not going to drink these now, but he's going to drink some later. If you want to know exactly what happened with Mike, follow him on Instagram, BevNetMike. There you go. Quick break. If this episode has you thinking about what's next in food and beverage, explore BevNet and Nosh Insider, our subscription platform with deeper insights from the BevNet team. Visit tasteradio.com slash insider to learn more. All right, let's get to our featured interview for this episode. As I mentioned at the top of the show, CPG Fast Track is a new venture developed to support founders of emerging food and beverage businesses.

37:31Launched by five industry executives, Dave Kalina, the founder and CEO of O2 Hydration, Jason Pfeiffer, the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, Lisa Barnett, the co-founder of Little Spoon, Marcus Kariorleinen, the co-founder of Four Sigmatic, and Matthew Garland, the co-founder and CEO of SPI Media. The company works with entrepreneurs who are beyond the proof point phase of their businesses and beginning to scale retail presence and distribution. I spoke with the quintet behind CPG Fast Track for a conversation about how they're utilizing their collective experience to provide mentoring and additional forms of training to carefully selected founder cohorts.

38:14Hey, folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now, I'm honored to be sitting down with the founders of CPG Fast Track, Dave Kolina, Jason Pfeiffer, Marcus Karolinen, Lisa Barnett, and Matt Garland. How's everyone doing? Great, man. Great. Good luck. Perfect. Thanks for having us. Thanks for being with me today. Actually, I should make sure that everyone knows your voices. So let's start with you, Dave. We've known each other for some time. How are you? We have. It's been a while, Ray. I'm doing great, man. Thanks for having us on the show. Yeah, of course. Marcus, did I get your name pronounced correctly or close enough?

38:46Absolutely. Better than 99%. So thank you. I'm part of the 1%. I'm very happy about that. Lisa, how are you doing? I'm well. I think I have the easier one to discern among us. I would say so. Yes. Yes. Matt? Doing really well. Thanks for having us, Ray. Yeah. And Jason, do you have a typewriter by you? Is that the typewriter I see by your side? Yes, that is the typewriter. Hello, everybody. I'm Jason. So this is a, if you're watching this, there's a nice typewriter, like an antique typewriter next to me. It is not a prop because it was my grandma's, but it is a prop because it doesn't work anymore and it's just there to look nice.

39:20Okay. So it's a prop. It is a prop. Okay. Well, you know what? It's a beautiful prop and I'm glad you have it by your side because there's probably gonna be some people in the audience that are like, what is that thing by Jason's arm? And now we know for Gen Alpha, Gen Zers, that that's exactly what it is. Now they're gonna have to Google what a typewriter is. Anyway, I've had experience, I've had the pleasure of sitting down with several of you and knowing your companies in the food and beverage industry in particular. Dave, we've known you there, I want to say, for at least six, seven years now as the founder of O2.

39:53Marcus, you're the co-founder of Four Sigmatic and Lisa Littlespoon. And, you know, as entrepreneurs, I always hear that it's nearly impossible as entrepreneurs to avoid making mistakes. and in your respective experiences though, I wonder how in hindsight, some of the mistakes you made could have been avoided if at all. Dave, let's start with you. How much time we've got, Ray? There have been plenty, but you know, I often go through the mental exercise. If I were doing this all over again, knowing what I know now, what would it look like. And for us, getting the marketing positioning right was so important.

40:39And it took a long time. And it probably had to do with some stubbornness on my part. But we started out positioning ourselves as a oxygenated recovery drink, which meant nothing to anyone, really. And so there was a huge uphill battle in terms of education with respect to selling an oxygenated recovery drink. And so over time, several conversations, dozens at least with our customers, we realized, hey, the reason people drink an O2, it's because it's a clean sports drink. It's clean hydration, one gram of sugar, a bunch of electrolytes, and it tastes good. So it's like, okay, got it. Why don't we try to position ourselves that way?

41:17And we did. And so today, O2 is positioned as a clean, healthy sports drink. And it's been so much easier to get product off the shelf when people can quickly understand it. That was such a tough, tough lesson to learn. Do you think that in hindsight, some of the challenges with the positioning of the brand could have been mitigated, could have been fixed with better coaching or mentoring? I do. And that's, you know, that is the reason why we pulled this group together is a conversation Marcus and I had several months ago. We're like, man, you know, we've gone through so much of this entrepreneurial journey, we've learned so much and we've made a tremendous amount of mistakes.

41:58And we've grown from each one of those mistakes, don't get me wrong. But wouldn't it have been nice if we had a group of people telling us, hey, you might not want to position yourself as an oxygenated sports drink or an oxygenated recovery drink. And these are simple things that would have benefited at least me tremendously. And so I've kind of grown to develop a love for teaching. I picked up an adjunct professor position at CU Boulder and realized I love teaching. I just hate grading papers. And the teaching component is really, really appealing to me. And I love the notion of helping people avoid making some of the same mistakes we've made and really fast tracking their growth in that sense.

42:36Hence the name CPG Fast Track. Lisa, biggest mistakes you've made as the co-founder of Little Spoon? Yeah, I think when I hear the word mistake, I'm like, maybe this is like the founder entrepreneur in me. I'm like, it's a misnomer. There are no mistakes. I do really think, and I'm not just being overly optimistic, like most of the time, those mistakes can be good redirections, like Dave was just saying. And probably they won't kill your business or endeavor and can sometimes serve you well. But I think that's really only the case, you know, if you have the right structures and like processes and people in place.

43:13And that's, you know, for me, part of why I think I'm really excited about what we're doing with CPG Fast Track. I'll highlight like one mistake in particular. It's actually bringing me back to my first entrepreneurial endeavor. So before Little Spoon, even back when I was at Warden for business school, I was working on a company called WeTrain. So the idea was to build a solution that gave people like what we felt they wanted in fitness, which is a more affordable option to receive like personalized yet social fitness services on demand. So this was like pre the explosion of fitness influencers on Instagram and some of those platforms like ladder and everything like that.

43:50It was a great idea. Like I was super pumped. I thought it had a lot of potential. I personally always wanted to build something in the fitness space because it's basically my only hobby outside of startups. So I was really passionate about it. And, you know, what happened was I felt at the time when we were like getting ready to launch it, like it was really important to get all these ideas for like the feature, the experience, get everything done, get that set, make sure it's like exactly how I wanted it with every, you know, bow and frill. And much of my time was spent thinking about and like trying to execute that vision for the platform and the marketplace, all the details and the features.

44:29And that came a bit at the expense of focusing on, you know, just simplicity and a little bit of balancing, you know, perfectionism with like getting something to marketing, getting market feedback. All these ideas were totally possible at the time, but like generally you should try not to do all that at launch. You need really like that North star, that very simple problem statement that you design around and getting in the weeds too early at the expense of focusing on that can at best like just distract you and at worst make you a little too obsessed with the details and solution that like you're actually like not responsive to like market feedback because you're like so obsessed with bringing this exact thing that you pictured to market.

45:13So, you know, I think it's a rule, not an exception that you're going to have to like pivot and change and adjust. You know, when I think back, if someone were there during that time, kind of asking me the right questions, telling me like, how do you want to prioritize? How do you want to balance all of these things? It would have been a lot easier. I would have learned that lesson a lot faster. And I've always said to like my teams, entrepreneurs, like Like startups are not dying from starvation. They're dying from indigestion, meaning like too many ideas. They're not balancing like prioritization and focus.

45:48So I would have died to have had a trusted advisor at that time. And, you know, over the years have developed those networks and everything. But I think that's like one of the reasons CBG Fast Track can be really powerful. Yeah, I love the term. Keep it simple. Sometimes it's not as easy as it sounds, especially if you're a marketing brand like Four Sigmatic. but Marcus, I imagine, you know, simplicity and marketing and messaging wasn't your only problem. And again, not to call Four Sigmatic, which is a very successful company, one that has a lot of problems, but you must have gone through it at some point.

46:21I mean, what would you consider to be some of your biggest pitfalls building the company? I mean, I can echo a lot of what Dave said about the positioning. You know, I think that one thing I want to highlight here is that our background is a little bit different. We came from Europe, from Finland. We started the business there. Now I've been in the US almost 10 years. And I think that we joined early on these private groups and communities, especially on D2C. There were not many on CBG. I don't know actually any of CBG ones, but D2C ones especially. And I gave a lot of credit for these groups because I didn't have any network.

46:58We didn't have any network. And all the tactical and strategy pieces were inside those groups. There was no podcast. as YouTubers telling you what to do. And they drove like a significant amount of revenue. And I'm not the most focused guy in Four Sigmatic. I like to do maybe a little bit too fast, too many things. So these groups helped me to focus quite a bit and make sure that we're doing the right things. As you can see, I speak highly on the groups and what I got. I think one thing that they're missing were the fact that a lot of these groups were about revenue generation. So how do we get ROI?

47:33Which makes sense. They want to make money out of this. But the issues are always also non-revenue related. Like for my example, for me, if I would have engaged early on with like executive coach or like a group that is focusing on more my development, I feel like I would become a better leader and there would be less damage done for like leadership standpoint of view. And then building more confidence as a European, like humble Finnish guy, I think coach would have been able to say like, hey, you're doing well. Things are going pretty well. There's momentum. Keep going. Keep going. Do bigger bat swings.

48:09But we didn't have that. So we relied a lot on us on doing that. So this is actually something for us and our group. And I truly hope that we can build some of these elements to CPG Fast Track, that we can treat these founders more holistically and help them out and not just only revenue generation. And I think you can help, despite the fact that many of us in the industry, and I don't think I'm speaking out of line here, are not humble Finnish entrepreneurs, more like bullheaded Americans who are determined to make their vision or turn their vision into reality. But again, we're talking about, you know, how to step by step develop a company that has a sustainable business strategy and one that can actually be profitable.

48:57I mean, profitability, as we all know, is the buzzword and has been for the past 18 months in our industry. Jason, you know, Dave, Marcus and Lisa all touched on various aspects of CPG Fast Track. And as I understand it, the group is there to support founders at a very specific stage of their development, their brand's development via mentoring and other business training. I'd love to hear a little bit about the origins of the organization and how the founding team came together. I'll do that. But first, because I wanted to jump in when you were talking to Dave about his pivot away from the phrase oxygenated recovery drink and how valuable a lesson that is and something that I see with so many founders in so many categories, but I think particularly in CPG, which is that you have an idea of what differentiates you in a marketplace.

49:49But when you take that idea out into the marketplace, you might discover that it's too confusing or that it requires so much consumer education that people don't even pay attention to it. And that sometimes the thing that you think makes you the most special is actually just the most confusing. And it's the reason why it's so important to be constantly testing and listening to consumers and being open, as you heard with Dave or Marcus Anlis, be open to the possibility that the way that you're doing it is just wrong. even if you have something that's great just the way that you're explaining it is wrong and i dave i remember dave and i've known each other a number of years now and i remember dave gave me a o2 t-shirt that i gave to my dad because my dad's really the athlete not me i i can i can barely run down the street my dad's doing marathons and so i gave him this t-shirt and it said something like it said it used the word recovery on the shirt and my dad said you know i love dave's product but i can't wear this shirt because i feel like uh it says that i'm like in some kind of drug or alcohol recovery.

50:55So I relayed that to David and you know, that he wasn't the only time that he heard something like that, like that language, it may mean something to you, you may understand what that language means. But if it doesn't instantly mean something to the consumer that you're talking to, then you have to put it aside and find some other language. So my dad, my dad loves O2, but he didn't wear the shirt, but he'll wear a new shirt. We got a new shirt. It's not our tagline. So anyway, I just wanted to bring that up. All right. Right to your question. I've been in content, quote unquote, a long time, years and years, my whole career.

51:26And now I run this business, national business magazine. And yet I have come to this conclusion and it was a creeping one at first. And then it just became a raging shouting one, which is that even though I'm in the business of content, people don't want content. People are listening to this podcast right now. They're producing, they're consuming content. They don't want it. They don't want that, right? What they want is the knowledge that the people who they're hearing from have. They want to be able to build their businesses to find that help. What they really want is connection. People want connection, not content.

51:55Why do they listen to content? Why do they read content? Because it's the second best, more available option. Not everyone gets to talk to people like Dave, Marcus, Lisa, Matt, who are building companies, who are very successful. And so you can read the content or listen to the content. And I became obsessed with this question of what would it mean to really lean into connection, to really build up opportunities to connect entrepreneurs to the people who are going to most matter to them. And I had a lot of conversations about that. I'd been starting to have some conversations with Matt, who's the CEO of Smart Passive Income, which is a great community for entrepreneurs.

52:31And then Dave, Dave one day reaches out to me. I was in Boulder, Colorado, where Dave lives for the time being. And we have coffee and he says, hey, so I've been talking to my friend Marcus at 4SIG. about building something for CPG founders. And he tells me more about it and about how much they have learned on this journey and how they would love to be able to share what they've learned with people who are at earlier stages. And I said, oh my God, this is exactly what I've been talking about. This is the way to start thinking about creating that connection and not just that content that's going to really impact people.

53:02And so Dave said, do you want to be a part of it in some way? And I said, yeah, I'd love to, but actually you should talk to Matt because Matt has been spending years and years and years understanding how to build community and how community works. And, you know, SPI, Smart Passive Income, his playbook there is just changing lives. And, you know, Matt, you have the numbers. I don't, but I know that it significantly outperforms other communities in terms of engagement and retention. It's just he knows how to build these things. So I said, Matt, Dave, you guys should talk to each other. It turns out they're both from Columbus.

53:31And so they met each other back in Ohio and had a great time. And then suddenly it became a conversation with me, Matt, Marcus, and Dave. And so we're talking and we're trying to build this out. And we say, you know, somebody's something missing here. Somebody's missing. First of all, we got four dudes in a room. That's never good. So we need to fix that. But also, you know, we need someone who has like deep expertise in fundraising, in operations at various levels, in just like just a lot of experiences, the deep marketing experience. And then I said, wait a second. I just I just like walked around a lake in Prospect Park for like an hour and a half with my friend Lisa, who had just left Little Spoon.

54:06And this is exactly the background that she has. And I think that she'd be perfect for this. And so we got on a call with Lisa. She was intrigued, also had been thinking a lot about how to best support entrepreneurs. And suddenly it became the five of us. And we started to build out this vision of what it would mean to offer something really useful to people at the moment in which they start to really need it. Like, you know, that$250 ,000 to a million dollar revenue or$1.5 million revenue is when you've gotten something off the ground, you've proven it, you've gotten validation to the marketplace, and you're starting to hit these first big, giant, crazy existential questions that like didn't even know you were going to slam into.

54:46I remember talking to a founder of an indie soda brand in San Antonio who came from marketing and he started the soda brand. And he told me, he's like, I thought all I had to do was create a great brand and create a product that people liked. And then it would just take off by itself. And now like I was struggling to afford to make the product to fill the shelves and fill the orders. Like, I don't even, I didn't even know this would be a problem. I don't understand why it's a problem. And I said, this is, this is why we're doing this. This is the reason is because no article can help that guy.

55:15No podcast can help that guy talking to real experts who have been there, who have done that. That's what helps that guy. And that's why I'm so excited about this. Yeah. I mean, certainly it's difficult to get all the information you need from a lot of different sources and compile that information into something that's going to give you a successful business strategy. You know, it takes a team, it takes a village to borrow that term, but not everyone is the right fit for an organization like yours. And as you mentioned, yes, there is a specific revenue that is associated with CPG Fast Track in that you work with brands or companies that are at that$250 to a million dollar range or level, and you've already launched or you already started working with your first cohort of founders.

56:08I'm wondering who might be the right fit? What is the right sort of brand, product, company, person that would benefit from working with CPG FastTrack? Matt, can you talk a bit about that? Yeah, I'd love to. It includes really important aspects I've already been mentioned around revenue stage and around certainly even market sector. We're kind of skewing food and bev right now as one sort of data point. But this third one, I think, is arguably the most important, which is attitude. We're here to engage with founders and operators that want to do the work, right? That want to come into a safe and controlled space to connect, to learn from us, but very much to participate in action and take action.

56:55I love when Lisa mentioned just a little bit ago, the indigestion versus starvation sort of conundrum, right? And I have always found across my career an interesting sort of relationship between, you know, some founders' ability to take action in correlation to how much they're consuming, whether it's ideas, advice, information, content, even to Jason's point, right? So we're building CBG FastTrack to be a place to connect with the right sort of people with a common enough reality, sort of a stage of company, but want to do the work. And they have that attitude of rolling up their sleeves with us, being pushed a little bit to be receptive to both the giving and the receiving of feedback.

57:36Because that's what connection is. If it's really authentic, valuable connection, and if you're building really deep, meaningful relationships, which is the name of the game for us, then you're going to hear what you need to hear, right? And that helps you maybe not avoid the mistakes, because also I echo and agree with Dave and Lisa on that point, but you want to minimize those mistakes. You want to have them be more shallow or have them be less potentially impactful than they may otherwise be if you don't have the right people around you that you've surrounded yourself with that have those battle scars already, right?

58:09That can help you navigate those faster so that they don't potentially cause greater levels of disruption to your operation for a longer period of time. So that's why we're building what we're building and why it's community powered. It is entirely a safe space to share, to engage, and to grow. We will have programmatic, if you will, experiences, different forms of events and learning opportunities first and foremost based on the five of us, but also our relationships and people we can bring in. But then also, again, roll up your sleeve activities, like let's do this work together, something of, if you will, a challenge.

58:45Sometimes it's a word that gets used. Like in the month of October, let's engage on this topic together. Everyone do the work, share it, get feedback on it, improve upon it, and be rapid with the action taking and the feedback loops. So that's, I think, the differentiating factor in so many regards with, again, Ray, to your great question, like the sort of founder, you know, that we're really hungry to serve is someone that doesn't just want to join a social club or a Facebook group or a super large and noisy pre sort of quote unquote community offering. Now we're here to work with people and to help them achieve goals.

59:19Yeah. And Ray, if I could just add to that, as you know, my brand O2 is very mission driven. And that's another thing we're looking for is mission-driven brands. And almost always, there's a better for you element within food and beverage, whether it's alcohol, non-alcohol, name the food. There's generally a better for you element to the founders and our cohorts. And we like that. We want to feel really good about helping the right people succeed with the right products, the products that we want to succeed in the market. Yeah, I think, you know, rolling up your sleeves or being willing to do the work and having a positive attitude, being mission driven.

59:58You know, these are all things that I think any founder would want to be associated with. They would be associated with any of those terms. But I got to think that there's probably even some more specific qualities to the founders in your first cohort. I mean, Marcus, are there any other commonalities that you see among that group? Well, the way I'm looking at this, we've been, by the way, screening every single applicant. So we have had a conversation with them. So we know who's joining. We want to be as helpful as we can. So we want to upfront know what are the challenges that they have and the situations they're in.

1:00:33Hence, certain revenue range is important for us because we feel like we can be very helpful for companies in certain size. Because when you get bigger and more resources, you have more connections, you have more network. So that's why that size is a certain way. I had a really good call a few weeks ago with someone, and I think he was showing me what really great candidate is like, because he turned the conversation midway and said, like, hey, I'm an ex-buyer at Target. I can help all these brands inside the community as well. And for me, that felt like, oh, you are the right person because you can bring something in and you have that attitude and willingness to do that.

1:01:12So at the end, we want that because once we get bigger and bigger, obviously, we rely more and more also that itself and not just us coaching one by one individually. So I would highlight some of those things. And I think that speaks to Matt's point, too. I mean, so much of the value from this first cohort is going to be from the community. Sure, we're going to be able to help folks avoid the mistakes that we've made and give them advice and help them fast track their way along success. But I think at a certain point, we're looking forward to kind of stepping out of the way as the group more and more helps itself and helps each other.

1:01:51Because when you're at that stage, it's really tough to relate to people who are not founders in the muck, in a place where you're at within that 250 to a million and a half revenue range. And so we're really looking forward to bringing the right types of people together. So they've got a group that they trust and they know they can speak openly with and they can help each other. Yeah, I just wanted to share something that I've learned as I've started to engage in online community building, which has been fascinating. It really goes to what Dave and Marcus were just saying. You know, look, the funny thing is that you can reach out to anybody at any time online.

1:02:28You can find anybody on LinkedIn. You got a question, you see an expert or somebody who's been doing this for years, We can go DM them. That's fine. So why would you join a community if part of the reason to do that is because there are people in there, a lot of people everywhere? Well, the answer is because if you think about it, it's about permission. When you are on LinkedIn and you've got a question and you want to DM someone who you just know has the answer, you don't necessarily feel like you have permission to reach out to them because they're a stranger. Are they going to want to hear from me?

1:02:56Are they going to have the time? Everybody's getting these DMs all day. They're like, hey, do you have 30 minutes of your time? Nobody has 30 minutes of their time. And if you do reach out, well, the person might receive it and think, well, this person didn't have permission to reach out to me. There's a permission barrier that we all have. We're afraid to reach out to people. And when people reach out to us, we feel like, well, I'm not exactly invested in their success. So maybe I'm not going to spend the time to help them. But when you create a community structure, when you create a shared purpose, a social contract, if you will, that suddenly there is permission.

1:03:31There's permission to reach out to the people who are a part of the thing that you have joined. And everybody feels like the other people in this community have permission to reach out to me. And that is what binds people together. And that's what helps rally everyone together. It is true. The world is connected and you can reach out to anybody at any time, but it really takes community in order to feel like you're part of something together and willing to really support each other. And that's what I found is so special about these kinds of organizations. Matt, did you want to follow up on that?

1:04:11Yeah, I'd love to. And it maps to the other qualifier that I think is really important, not as a requirement per se, but I think has, or I know from our internal conversations has come up any number of times, which is the lack of a preexisting network in this space that we can provide that, We're grooming for that. We're filtering for that through our application process to Marcus's earlier point. But if we can, again, build the right network of peers, like-minded peers that share calm struggles and pain points and problems that are in a similar enough stage of their company, right? again, share some of those adnitudinal qualities in common, then they have each other.

1:04:50And over time, mapping now to Dave's point, it becomes less about us being the criticality around people staying in the community, right? They stay for each other because those relationships intensify, they learn from each other. We create something truly much larger than just the five of us. So the ability to build and rather for our members have immediate access to a professional network of the right sorts of people, especially if they don't have that already is an immense value that any number of us have learned in our own careers, not having that and doing the hard work and building those ourselves.

1:05:26Lisa, you know, in addition to being an entrepreneur, you've been an advisor and angel investor to early stage brands. Do you see CPG FastTrack as an extension of your work with those brands? Yeah, I mean, I've been doing a lot more angel investing recently and a lot more evaluating companies. You get a lot more companies than you can invest in. And I've been advising and consulting, as you said, for startups for a handful of years now. And also prior to starting Little Spoon, I worked in venture capital. So I've kind of been on like a lot of different sides of the same coin there. And, you know, one of the best pieces of advice that I got early on was like, find your little group of people, whether those are like trusted friends or advisors that kind of like help you see the things you don't have time to see when you're like in the thick of it.

1:06:18And like kind of identify those blind spots because we all have them. And it's kind of like the better founders are the ones that are like self-aware enough to know like there is going to be a blind spot and I'm not enough to cover everything. And so when I look at the work that I've been doing, and actually it speaks to kind of Jason's point around like strangers DMing, like, to be perfectly honest, like, I only advise and work with companies that are like warm introductions, because there's just so much volume. It doesn't mean that there aren't great people out there. In fact, part of what gets me so excited about marrying those one-on-one efforts into CPG FastTrack is like, I think about one of my greatest professional kind of like connections and decisions arose from like a random time.

1:07:03I just picked one out of a thousand LinkedIn DMs responded to it and it turned out really great. So I think about that a lot. We're missing a lot too. And so when, you know, my fellow co-founders kind of came to me with the idea for CPG fast track, I was immediately inspired and excited to basically take, you know, the frameworks, the playbooks and networks that I've developed and kind of help programatize that to a group of people where I can scale my one-on-one efforts better. And the reality is like every company is unique. We're all like a snowflake in many different ways, but there are like a really common set of problems.

1:07:38Like everyone's facing questions around like fundraising and cash management? How do you develop and execute a marketing campaign, particularly with limited resources or capital? How do you balance sort of long-term brand equity and growing with short-term ROI so that you could develop that cash to then reinvest or raise the round and stuff like that? And those are exactly the topics that I've engaged on and worked deeply with founders. And it's also the topics that we're hearing from a lot of our applicants for CPG FastTrack. I think back to like when I was maybe in like the first year of Little Spoon and one of the most valuable things I did outside of like operating the business was find fellow founders, actually, frankly, mostly consumer founders, mostly fellow female founders in that particular situation and connected with them.

1:08:29But you know what? A lot of people don't have time to do that or don't have access to do that. Not because they're not capable, but because they don't live in a city where there's a ton of meetups or like Marcus, they're coming from a different country where the ecosystem isn't as developed and connecting with fellow emerging category leaders. Like imagine if all the CEOs of like the greatest brands that we know, like all went to college together, right? And all like knew each other. That's kind of what we can try to replicate in many ways. And then you grow together, you succeed together, right?

1:09:02You said it, it takes a village. And so we're kind of like curating those villages together. There's no question that the talent and the experience of the five people I'm talking to isn't pretty amazing. And if I were an entrepreneur, I'd definitely want to speak with all five of you, perhaps all at the same time, if I could. I think also based on our conversations, it seems to fit a really interesting and potentially sizable hole in this particular market, which I've learned and appreciated, you know, from Dave and Marcus and Lisa here in the world of CBG, where almost in any kind of business or entrepreneurial category, you can invest thousands of dollars a month in an executive coach.

1:09:42And sometimes those are really valuable experiences, but that is a bigger commitment. In dollars, it's also, at least I would argue, with some spice to it, a bigger risk, depending on who that person is and that person's domain experience. It can potentially be quite narrow and quite limited. Dave, Marcus, Lisa, Matt, Jason, thank you once again for taking the time. Really appreciate it. And I look forward to staying in touch. Thank you. Thank you, Ray. Thank you.

1:10:10That brings us to the end of this episode of Taste Radio. Thank you so much for listening. Taste Radio is a production of BevNet.com Incorporated. Our audio engineer for Taste Radio is Joe Cratchy. Our technical director is Joshua Pratt. And our video editor is Ryan Galang. Our social marketing manager is Amanda Smirlinski, and our designer is Amanda Huang. Just a reminder, if you like what you hear on Taste Radio, please share the podcast with friends and colleagues. And of course, we would love it if you could review us on the Apple Podcasts app or your listening platform of choice. Check us out on Instagram.

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