When Straightforward Business Advice Isn't What You'd Expect

0:10Hey folks, I'm Ray Lateef and you're listening to the number one podcast for the food and beverage industry, Taste Radio. This episode features an interview with Will Nitsa, the founder and CEO of brain health-focused CPG brand IQ Bar. By his own admission, Will Nitsa doesn't give great advice. His nearly 41 ,000 LinkedIn followers likely have a different opinion. Will cut his teeth in CPG in 2017 when he launched IQ Bar, a pioneering brand of protein bars infused with ingredients, including Lion's Mane, that are said to improve cognitive function. The company has since created a portfolio of adaptogen-enhanced product lines, including zero-sugar hydration powders and instant mushroom coffee.

0:57IQ Bar is carried in over 10 ,000 locations, including Walmart, Sprouts, Wegmans, BJ's Wholesale, Vitamin Shop, and HEB. Over the past six years, Will has chronicles his experience as an entrepreneur via daily posts on LinkedIn, where he shares words of encouragement and lessons learned from building an upstart brand. But he's careful to contextualize insights and advice, including those about IQ Barr's successful e-commerce strategy and its unorthodox approach to financing, as specific to his business and not necessarily applicable to other brands. Nevertheless, he has the attention of many founders who praise his candid takes on the food and beverage industry.

1:38Will is equally forthright in the following interview, in which he shares and explains his perspective on everything from fundraising, quote, bootstrapping is the worst thing you can do, staffing, quote, how can we build a$50 million brand with a staff of six, and retail strategy, quote, choose channels that scale well.

2:00Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now I'm honored to be sitting down with Will Nitza, who is the founder and CEO of IQ Bar. Will, great to see you. Thanks for having me. So originally, I had hoped that we'd be meeting in Boston and recording in person, but you moved out of the area not too long ago. You're based in Miami, if I'm not mistaken. Yes, just in time for the winter. You did move just in time. It's actually snowing out right now. But why else besides the weather did you move to Miami? I've been in Mass for a very long time. I grew up in northern New Jersey, which is also cold.

2:40And then I went to high school in Western Mass. And then I went to college in Boston. And then I stayed in Boston for 10 years after college. And I don't know, I was just ready for a change, ready for warmer weather. I had a buddy who moved down here. I don't have kids. So it's like, picking everything up and moving is actually pretty easy. And I also didn't do the COVID thing, you know where you bounce around airbnbs or go to random cities like i never did that and i was always kind of jealous of that well i hear that miami is a great place to do business these days is that true anywhere is a good good place to do business uh if you're selling stuff online but i mean we so we don't have an office and we had an office actually in boston at mass challenge i don't know if you're familiar with them but it's an accelerator and they give us free office space So like 2018, 2019, we used their free office space and then COVID hit and we've been remote since whatever that day was, like March 9th, 2020 or whatever it was.

3:41But we're still very small, but we're all over. Our head of sales is in Eugene, Oregon. I'm in Miami. Our creative director is in Salem, Mass. We have a warehouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin. It's truly spread out. When COVID hit, I wonder, were you as active on LinkedIn as you are now? And I say that because on LinkedIn, you are quite active. You have quite a following. As of this recording, you have 40 ,691 followers and counting. Was that something, was your activity, was your interest in LinkedIn more COVID-related or was it pre-pandemic? No, I mean, it was a confluence of many things. For the first couple years of starting and running and growing a consumer goods company that was not seeking to raise mega rounds, I very quickly learned that getting coverage, it was very difficult.

4:38Publications don't really want to cover you unless you raised a bunch of money or you got a zillion new doors or whatever. And so I just sort of over time realized I have to, in some way, shape, or form, we have to become our own publication, so to speak. and create organic content. And there was also a trend that had taken root by, let's say, 2020 around founder-led content. I think TikTok was really big for this development. I mean, it makes sense, right? People like to hear from people over brands. And so I was just sitting in my dining room with my wife, who's our CMO, and I was like, what is the channel that I can become my own publication on.

5:22And I was kind of agnostic, right? If I loved making short form video, I would have done TikTok. I just so happened to love writing. And I also felt there was a huge arbitrage opportunity. LinkedIn is, for lack of a better term, lame in most people's eyes, right? It's like a resume uploading site historically. And it's pretty boring stuff that you're going to fine on there. So just an interestingness arbitrage is a lot easier there than on, let's say, TikTok or Instagram or whatever. And then it was just like fun. Some people wake up and they journal. I wake up and I'll write a post. It's sort of a form of journaling.

6:07And then the last thing I would say is there was no obvious benefit. Like I wasn't like, oh, I'm, you know, if I do this, that will happen. You know, I'll get new retail dojo or whatever. It was truly like trusting in the phenomenon that if I can get a big following, good things will start happening. I don't know what those are, but that will happen. And that has come to pass for sure. But to the biggest thing is just meeting awesome people you otherwise would have never crossed paths with. But yeah, it was a confluence of a lot of things. And giving you visibility in a platform to promote your brand.

6:47Again, you have well over 40 ,000 followers. And it seems like when people hear your name or hear the name IQ Bar, there's a point of reference. You're like, I've heard of Will. I've heard of IQ Bar. And it's not like this is the first time I'm encountering this person or his brand. But the volume of your posts feels like it has a lot to do with the number of people following you. Am I wrong there? It feels like not only the content matters, but how much you produce on a regular basis. I mean, I just try to do it daily for a variety of reasons. It's easier for me to do it daily than for me to do it once a week, as ironic as that may sound.

7:29Like just getting that daily habit is key because it's just like you wake up at 730, 730 to 8, you do the post and then you make coffee and yada, yada. And then, yeah, you see more results, right? Like the more you're posting, the more content you're putting out, the more people will take notice. And it's definitely not easy. I mean, just think about like if someone said you have to wake up and generate an insight every morning. That's kind of stressful just at a high level. Because how many insights are in any one person's brain that are truly different, unique, original, etc.? Not many for most people.

8:08So either you can do one of two things, as far as I can tell. You can curate. So take interesting things other people have said or done or whatever and cover it. Or you can do something on a day-to-day basis that has a byproduct of spitting out interesting insights, which is entrepreneurship. leadership so like just my day job on a daily basis i'll have all these like micro insights where it's like huh i thought it worked like that but it works like this and then i just have this like messy google doc where it's just a bulleted list and i just add that to the list and then so i wake up and i'm not there's no writer's block because i'm not like huh how do i conjure this this thought it's just let me look at the list one of them will speak to me pluck it out flesh it out put it into the universe.

8:58I know other people have frameworks and templates. And first of all, I wouldn't find that to be fun. Second of all, I don't think it's that differentiated because it's really dry and sort of square. And then I just don't even think I could create good content that way. So it's not authentic to what I would want to say. Well, your content is great. And I I enjoy reading your posts daily. Your insights, I think, are quite helpful for people who are building brands. And yet, a post that you wrote on LinkedIn this morning says slightly otherwise. I'm going to read that post, the content of that post, which is, This app, meaning LinkedIn, is for inspiration, motivation, networking, and entertainment.

9:42If you ever find yourself relying on a social media feed for actual business advice, something has gone very wrong. Hashtag PSA. So on the one hand, I think truly your insights help people to build their businesses and brand build. But you're saying on the other, this isn't really the platform for that. Can you expound? I don't think my insights do help people build a better business. I just don't. I think people often confuse interesting things and business entertainment and sort of quirky ideas or things that make you laugh or whatever. That whole bundle of stuff that's on your LinkedIn feed, they sometimes confuse that with a prescription for my business.

10:29And I just think that's like a terrible idea because everyone has their own set of contextual details. They're in a certain macro environment. They have a certain fundraising profile. It's a company that has 100K versus 10 million, you would give very different advice to. They have a different team. They have a different product that's in a different category. They have a different go-to-market strategy. And so I just found that, and I also realized this through just asking people for advice, is unless someone has done the thing you want to do in your category or an adjacent category or a comparable category, like very recently, like no more than five years ago, unless all of those checkboxes have been checked, the advice is not only useless, it might be harmful because it's going to send you in the wrong direction and it's going to sound compelling.

11:27That's what makes it harmful. You're like, huh, this person has XYZ pedigree and this worked for them. And maybe I do that. And it's like, no, that's the worst thing you could do because you're in a totally different category. You shouldn't be on e-com. You sell a frozen whatever. So I don't know. I just, it's a PSA because it's like, I hate seeing people fall into that trap. Now there's some nuance to that. I actually think LinkedIn can be really useful for networking into the people that you can then have a bilateral discussion with and go really deep on topics and then get actual good prescriptive advice.

12:06So it's a good mechanism to find the right people through what I would call maybe like pontifications or business entertainment or whatever. And then in the second step there, you can actually get really good prescriptive advice given all the context. Well, you've been in CPG since October 2017, six years and four months, according to LinkedIn. And it's interesting to me how entrepreneurs learn about the business and use information that others share with them about how to be successful in business. Where did you develop your foundation for learning and ways to succeed in CPG? Not through any human being.

12:52I'll tell you that much. So I just, I think advice is not helpful to get to that end goal. The only way I know how is trial and error is doing it yourself. And there's a good book called Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and I think Justin Maris that kind of like covers this topic of, you know, forget the quote unquote playbook, how people 10 years ago got to the promised land. And you should look at every possible way you can develop traction. Let's say there's 20 different ways. And don't discount the ones that sound crazy, right? Direct mail, going to events, or this or that. Don't discount those.

13:34Keep those on the list. And then try all of them. And pretty quickly, you'll learn a number of things. Maybe you'll be surprised, maybe you won't, at what delivers the most traction for any input of one unit of energy. but you're going to learn a lot and then just siphon down, double, triple, quadruple down on those things that drive traction. What is going to drive traction though today, you would get totally different results 10 years ago. And by the way, the number of black swan events in the last couple of years is like breathtaking, right? COVID, the Silicon Valley bank collapse. Like it's, I mean, so much crazy dynamic shifting events have occurred that have change the game.

14:19I just fundamentally believe you have to engage in trial and error, collect data, learn from data, and iterate. And I don't know a better way of doing it. Now, there's some objectively right ways to do certain things, right? Accounting is accounting. Gap accounting is gap accounting. There's a right way to have set up a P &L. Fair enough. But the things that actually drive success or failure in a business, sales, marketing, product, go-to-market, et cetera, that is constantly changing. Yeah, you're right. It is constantly changing. I don't necessarily think it's sort of flip a coin and maybe this will work.

14:55Maybe this won't work based on the brand or category that you're involved in. I do think, as you mentioned, fundamentals are so important to nail down. And, you know, if you don't have a CFO or, you know, an accountant on your team, or at least someone who knows numbers, you would do well to hire someone like that. But are there any lessons just in terms of the basics of building a brand that have helped you? Because I don't want it to sound like, or I don't think you're saying that we tried a whole bunch of things that weren't common to or traditional to building a brand. I don't think you're saying that.

15:37I think it's more, there are certain fundamentals you need to adhere to, but there are other things that we had to learn as we went. Totally. To be clear, you should be copying 90%. Everything I just said is in the final 10%. Right? So don't try to get creative in incorporating your business. Don't try to get creative in how you do financials. I would argue, for most people, don't try to get creative in how you do flavor profiles. There's a whole series of things that I think in the vast majority cases, you should not try to get creative on. You should do what's either right and or give the people what they want.

16:16And then in that last 10%, though, which is really just like, how do I take this thing and scale it up? It is trial and error, but it's not haphazard trial and error, right? It's trying things based on highly educated guesses or data or anecdotes you're seeing in the marketplace and then just like constantly refining your perspective you're asking about you know what are like the basic block and tackling things of building a brand i think i won't give a revolutionary answer to that it's like products it sounds weird but people stop at pretty good and i think that kills brands like everyone knows you got to get from like okay to pretty good.

17:02And then one thing I've seen is a lot of people just stop at pretty good or good enough. And then they'll start obsessing over LTV to CAC metrics and how do I make better creative and how do I hire more people and yada yada. Not realizing that if you had gotten that product from pretty good to excellent, like all of that would have improved. The number one thing you could always do to improve all metrics is improve your product 10%. And I think branding is not that far behind that, right? There's just such a fundamental uptick in business you can do if you have branding that appropriately calls out the right hierarchy, delivers the right aesthetics, et cetera.

17:40So like product brand, like just table stakes and push that truly to the limit because the multiplier effect across all other aspects of the business is just so massive. The other thing is just like gross margin and fundraising. It's very, very basic concepts, right? How much money am I making before taking all other expenses out? And then how much money do I have in the bank? And this is another really interesting topic around bootstrap. There's a whole thing in the last couple of years where bootstrapping, it's like the rise of bootstrapping. Everyone's obsessed with bootstrapping and keep more equity and yada, yada.

18:15I fundamentally think that's the worst thing you could ever do in consumer goods, unless you're rich or you have a rich uncle or whatever, then fair enough. but even if it is possible, I don't think that it's advisable, but on the flip side of it, so, okay, let's say you do need some money on the flip side. How do you be as minimally dilutive as possible? How do you, like for me, my whole thing was own more than half the business. When I sell the business, how do I make that possible? And you can just work backwards for me. Okay. I need to raise that over across X, Y, Z rounds over this period of time.

18:50The valuation needs to be this, this, this, and this. I'll get diluted that down there. and cool. And then of course, like I said, gross margin plays right into that because the better your gross margin, the less times you're raising and the quicker you get to profitability. And so like product branding, gross margin, having enough money in the bank. And then the last thing I would say is just like go to market. This is one where I think people drink the Kool-Aid of people who have been successful, like there's the playbook, start in natural, go to conventional, go to big box, go to club. I think that's like so dangerous when people just try and shove that down your throat as an entrepreneur.

19:33It's like, yeah, maybe that works. Like that could work and that did work. But like, what about e-commerce? Like I would argue for most brands that can pull it off, they should be in their first couple of years, be doing e-com only. I think Nutpodge just got acquired. I think they did e-com only for the first three years before they even touched. And they crushed it on e-com. And then subsequently crushed it in brick and mortar. I don't think that's a coincidence. But you don't really hear that from people purveying the playbook, because frankly, they don't understand e-commerce in many cases.

20:06And they don't understand how e-commerce has evolved. One random anecdote, we got our biggest retailers, we got because of our online presence. Think about that. It wasn't like, oh, what are your velocities at other retailer? It was like, oh, I saw your Amazon ranking. That was literally how we got into the biggest retailers we're in. That's not necessarily intuitive and people wouldn't have predicted that or told you that that was going to happen, but that is what happened. So just your go to market is the last thing I would say. And just sub bullet point, choose channels that scale well. Amazon would be an example that scales well.

20:47And what I mean by that is, can I double, triple, quadruple my revenue in this channel and hire zero new people? In other words, what's like a dial I'm twisting and I could just twist it harder and it scales really well. And then there's some brick and mortar channels that are similar to that too. So those are my blocking and tackling tips. Will, you said a lot there, and I love everything that you said. I want to break down a couple things. One, you talked about Nutpods. Nutpods is a great example and a great brand for this conversation because when it came out, frankly, I didn't really understand the need for a brand like this.

21:32But I am not someone who needed a brand like Nutpods. But it did solve this demand, this thirst for a vegan, non-dairy creamer. When you thought about launching IQ Bar, did solving a need come into play or was it much more of a personal drive to create a CPG brand and a personal need for this type of product? It was definitely a personal need. And I don't even know it was a need it was like a want often people say you know find some need you could also just find some strong want i was really into brain related stuff i studied psych and neuroscience among other things in college and and then i experienced failings of my own brain and my first job because i had a terrible diet i was getting headaches and brain fog mental fatigue on a daily basis yada yada yada so i just i got really interested in the intersection of nutrition and cognition and how the things you eat today impact your brain this afternoon.

22:38And then also how the things you eat for the next 30 years impact what happens to your brain when you're 60, 70, whatever. And a couple of books really impacted me too. Grain Brain was one of them by David Kohlmutter. But basically what I realized was there's really nothing that no ready to eat thing that sat at that intersection. Like if you looked at cookies or bars or what have you, it was all body, body, body. Like build muscle, improve digestion, lose weight, like all body, right? Cliff bar, the classic bar, go into rock climber, go hike a mountain. And I didn't really get that. Like why?

23:18There are two things we care a lot about, which is our brain and body. And we seem to be focusing on functionality around just one of those. But there was, of course, no data, like market data that the market wanted this thing. I mean, this is why a general mills or whatever would never do this, because there's no data that people want it, right? You're taking a total shot in the dark. But I wanted it. And I thought other people probably wanted it too. What I then learned over the ensuing year was incredibly nuanced. And that whole idea of what people want and how they related to our product got massaged many times.

23:53The net net of it is basically, I created brain food. I did a Kickstarter. It went well. Raised a little bit of money. Started selling. And very quickly, I learned people don't really want brain food. which may sound funny for me to say that. They want a bar that delivers the checks, four or five checkboxes they have that are nutritional checkboxes. Let's say protein, protein source, sugar count, carb count, label cleanliness, price point. And then, and only after you check all five of those boxes, can you kind of interest them in some pluses, shall we say. So, oh, and there's this kind of unique brain element to it.

24:35But the order of operations there is critical. If you inverse, if you invert that order of operation and you start with sort of a off-putting or arcane framing of your brand, it's intimidating to people. Instead, meet them where they are. I want a chocolate sea salt bar that has 12 grams of plant protein and one gram of sugar and the price point I can get behind. And oh, by the way, you know, brand new chains. That was like, maybe the biggest unlock of the entire company's history, that realization, because then it allows you to scale into Walmart and Target and Costco and Sam's Club and BJ, right?

25:18No one's going into BJ's looking for brain food. That's not a thing. So that was like the scale unlocker. In your hierarchy of importance, I'm a little surprised that you didn't include taste as near the top of the list. And I feel like taste really does allow you to scale in those mass retailers that you mentioned. And earlier in our conversation, you did talk about increasing the tasteability or the flavor of your product or optimizing the flavor of your product by 10%. And that can solve a lot of problems. That can solve a lot of goals. or that can address a lot of goals that you have. How does taste factor into your business strategy?

26:00Yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty simple. Like everything I just described is how you get someone to try, right? And then taste is how you get someone to re-buy. Right. Re-buying is just as important as trying, if not more, because it's more cost-effective to get someone to buy it a second time. So that's the delineation I would give there. And that's like critically important too. too. It's taste, but with functional foods, it's also how you feel. When you eat a plate of fries, that tastes really good, and then you feel terrible. Now, you might go back just because it tasted so damn good that you're willing to make that trade-off.

26:42But if you can hit taste and make them feel good, well, that's the holy grail, right? So I think it's both of those things, especially with functional like people in the bar set they want function part of the function is oh this digests well and makes me feel good so no i mean it's critically critically important taste is king and always has been and there is a moment there with certain trends where funnily enough that was not the case like let's take keto right that there it was such a craze that you could put the word keto on a piece of cardboard and someone would still eat it because the motivation centered around the diet superseded taste appeal and preferences around taste to such a great degree that you know you could build a thriving business with the product that tasted terrible it was kind of a wild moment in time and that's not the only time that's happened but it's probably a good example so but then it always everything reverts back to the mean right a couple years later, Hershey's stock was at an all-time high.

27:48They'd never been selling more Reese's. They'd never been selling more chocolate bars. Why? It doesn't taste good. And it's cheap. Price is the most overlooked variable in all of consumer goods, in my opinion. No one's going to try your thing in BJ's or Costco or Walmart if it's not priced right. I mean, some will, but you will never hit mass market. No one talks about price. When we spoke last, we talked about, or you talked about creating a$50 million brand with only six people, which you're not at$50 million yet, but the idea of trying to get to that revenue point or that revenue goal with only six people sounds pretty remarkable.

28:33How do you go about hiring and thinking about full-time employees versus outsourced help? I hate hiring. It's my least favorite thing ever. Second, maybe only to firing. Because it's just so impactful and so risky. When you have six people, you bring on someone and it doesn't work. It's like devastating. Now, at some point, if you really scale your business, you're going to have to hire more people. But for us, we were always like, how do we, and this coincided with the market correcting and everyone saying you need to have tiny SG &A and be capital efficient. So we were doing it before it was in vogue, but now it is very much in vogue to just have less people.