169. How to Create Products People Beg to Buy ft. Maxx Chewning

23:57Well, cause you're basically saying that like, Hey,

23:58Maxx Chewning:your base is not very good. I want to change it. And they're trying to say like, no, it's not right. And I'm so eventually we got to a manufacturer that had a product that was like, I was like, this is fantastic. Right. I was acceptable at it. And then what we ran into over the years is constraints of the size of that manufacturer. Um, the ability to scale, like we were almost, we got to a, which is crazy to sink, but like we got to a point where one of the biggest reasons why we changed manufacturers a couple years ago was that we outgrew this manufacturer who had been around for like a long time.

24:34Maxx Chewning:And I thought that was just wild. Like the fact that came in with like this bare minimum and to get to the point where you've literally, you're scaling to the point where they're like, hey, we can't supply you with as much as you want to do because of X, Y, and Z reason. And I was like, well, I'm not gonna limit my business because like you either going to grow with me or I need to get out. Right. And so even when we switched manufacturers and adjusted and like changed the entire formula of like the product, right. Um, that was a huge risk in the company. Right. But I trusted in my ability to go, Hey, we have to make this decision, which I never really disclosed that we outgrew the company, but I just, I was like, I have to make this change, right?

25:16Maxx Chewning:Like the company is either going hit this ceiling and I'll live in this ceiling forever. And, uh, or I make this night and day jump. Right. And I change a bunch of things and I, you know, basically start over while I'm four years deep and people rarely do that or they usually can go under because they do a drastic change and people hate it. Um, but I was like, we have to do this to like scale the business. And it was probably the biggest decision while I was still running the company. Did you get to keep that original formula or do you have to start from fresh at the new spot? Well, a lot of times like you want to change things, right?

25:52Maxx Chewning:Because you like a lot of times I felt like a lot of whether it be flavor profiles, a lot of the textures or the ability to do certain things like need to be changed. And some manufacturers don't have the same access to maybe some of the same like the way you make the candy, right? If you make a gummy bear manufacturer A, gummy bear manufacturer B, they might have their own different processes. And unless you're about to invest into – maybe they have different machinery that gets you the same yield result, but the machinery of an extrusion machine might be slightly different and the process from A to Z is different.

26:29Maxx Chewning:right? And so unless you're willing to invest, like, hey, I want to order these same machines, these same extrusion machines, you know, do this to like replicate it one to one. But I looked at when we switched manufacturers as this ability to tweak the things that I, while I love the kind of like, you know, the product that we use originally, I looked at this opportunity to like, be able to like, kind of like start over and change things, whether it be from a formula perspective or like a, like a taste profile of the texture, softer, whatever. So we, the, the customization was significantly more than what we were able to do.

27:04Maxx Chewning:And even the current manufacturer tried to keep us and was like, we can do X, Y, and Z. We can do all these custom things. Like we can do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I had already kind of made this decision. And you know, we got a lot of pushback when I made that because I knew when we changed, I was like, okay, this is what went through my head. I was like, we're going to get one of three pushbacks on this, right? You're going to get group A that goes, wow, this is so much better. I love it more than the original. That's what you hope, right? B is, wow, I hate this compared to the original.

27:38Maxx Chewning:I'm never eating this again. You hope that's the minimal. And then you have group three. I guess there's four. And then the third was what with someone like me is like, products change over time, right? And we've experienced this throughout. Like you're like, oh, this is kind of different. Right. And if you don't love it even more or hate it and never going to go back to it, you fall in this other category, which is kind of like, Hey, I maybe have preferred the other one, but I think this one is also really good. And if this is like the, the future of what it is, I'm totally fine with eating this.

28:08Maxx Chewning:Right. Like I like both of them. Right. Um, type of thing. And I was hoping that a lot of people would, I was like, I think that'll be the majority of the, of the, of the, the group. Right. And then, and then the other way that I thought about it too, is like, if we're changing this and yeah, we're in 25 at a time, maybe like 20 ,000 locations. I looked at it, I go, okay, if we're in like 20 ,000 doors and X amount of people have eaten it, if we, you have like almost 250, 300 ,000 doors to be able to get into the United States, I go, there's the amount of people that have not tried it is eclipses people who have tried it.

28:46Maxx Chewning:And as long, and I, and I still am confident that it's a great product, although different than the original. So the people that haven't tried it will then make their own decision of just, do I like this candy or do I not like this candy? They're not comparing it. Right. So it was just like, it was something that had to happen. That was a super stressful time. And then even the original launch of it was honestly, it was, uh, not accurate. They kind of like messed up the, like the sour potency of it. So then I came out with something that wasn't what I was supposed to. And it was like this whole thing, but I was like really as transparent as like you can be on social of like, this wasn't what it was supposed to be.

29:23Maxx Chewning:So I just want you all to understand this and we're changing. And like, in like two months, you'll be able to notice the difference. And now it's to a point where it's exactly what we want to be. And we're always, I'm always like making like minor adjustments here and there. But yeah, it's, it's been like quite a big journey. And again, even those decisions to change this, should you do it? When should you do it? How should you roll it out? How, how do you, how do you like rotate that amount of product? And like, when do you launch it is like, again, I don't, I didn't have like advisors telling me to this people in the CPG business.

29:56Maxx Chewning:It's like me and whatever employee I decide at the time to be like, Hey, we managed this. Here's how I come thinking of doing this. Like, how do we roll this out? Um, so it was just like a lot of like really big decision makings that were like critical for the success of the business. And looking back, it was a single greatest thing I ever did in the company. How stressful was seeing the P and L statement once it was like switched over and like seeing the DMS maybe on the sour strips account or your account, were you like, Oh my God. Oh yeah. The initial pushback was like, cause again, I, and I, and I, I, I visually, so not only would I, I knew people would be able to tell the difference.

30:33Maxx Chewning:Um, so I wasn't trying to like hide that it was different. Um, and then we, I changed the, I was, I changed all the coloring, like the, the order of like the color size. I wanted it to, to visually look different. And, the initial pushback, because at first it's like, what the fuck? Like, what is this? And then you got some, the people who did not like it were very vocal about it, right? You know, but the problem is you see those comments. Those are the biggest ones. And you think that's what everyone thinks. But I just, I feel like I had a lot of skills of what helped Sour Strips grow. But like one of the greatest advantages that I had was every decision that I made, like was this gut thing, but every decision that I made was, was based on as a candy consumer who has eaten a lot of candy, who really likes it, who was really like analytically, like, like, uh, uh, like scrutinize like every experience of opening it, tasting it.

31:30Maxx Chewning:How does it make me like everything about sour candy? I, um, I just, I did it from a perspective of the consumer of me being the consumer. It wasn't like, what's the best business move is like, what's the, what's the best business move, but also like, I'm the guy who's buying this stuff, right? I'm just, I didn't launch a business that I thought would be good. I'm a candy lover, right? So I was able to almost, I bet on my opinion of what I felt that the majority of people would respond based on how I would respond. And that's probably not the best, but I just felt like that I have consumed as this weird to say is like, I felt like I was such a candy lover, loving expert at sour candy that I think for the masses that my opinion on sour candy should apply to the majority of people who like sour candy.

32:21Maxx Chewning:You're like, I'm the gold standard. Essentially. It's funny that you say that because I think of both you and Christian. I think the reason why Christian was able to build the best gym in North America, potentially the world, is because he's a bodybuilder at his core. When he's thinking about how to build a gym, he's like, I know exactly what machines should be here, what the layout should be like because I live it. And you're the same way. You're like, I eat candy fucking every day. I know it better than anybody else. Sour is my shit. I'm going to make the best thing. And if you disagree with me, you're just wrong.

32:58Maxx Chewning:And honestly, like when you say like that, it sounds crazy, right? But that's what I like truly believe. And again, like that is why I feel sour. I mean, it's little things of like the reason there's a viewing window on that bag is because there's another brand, which I won't mention, that I used to eat a ton in college. Loved it. It's a sour candy. They took away the viewing window on their packaging. and I would always hate because then you'd open it and then sometimes it'd be like a wet consistency. So when I did this, I was like, something that I love is when I can physically see a product that I'm about to consume because then I can, when I'm looking at the candy, I'm like, oh, like my mouth's starting to salivate.

33:43Maxx Chewning:I'm like, it looks good. It looks sour. Because if it looks like, but the downside is if your product manufacturing is shit, all your flaws are gonna be shown in the viewing window, right? So like every detail was the experience that I wanted as a candy consumer. Again, reseal. I mean, these are our larger bags, but even our smaller bags. The resealable thing is huge. It's huge. That's like actually massive. Because the only people, go look at anyone again, unless it's someone that started after us. The only people that did resealability was larger pack size, share sizes, maybe five ounces and above.

34:19Maxx Chewning:but in the, call it two and a half to four and a half, five ounce range, which is like generally like your three, usually three to four servings is like the standard of like a regular bag of candy, right? Usually three, three and a half. So, um, no one did resealable. And what's the frustration you'd experienced over the years? It's like you rip the bag and you try to rip the corner and it goes the whole way down the bag. And then you're like, what the fuck am I supposed to do with this? Right. Or like, you know, like, or, or the candy then gets stale. You're trying to roll it up. It goes in your bag and then the sugar fucking gets everywhere.

34:50Maxx Chewning:You know, your girl throws it in her purse and it's like at the, all the gummy worms are at the bottom of the bag. And again, so it's like, Oh, the, you'd think it's like, put a resealable. You want to know why people don't do that? Cause it's really expensive and it's really complex to get a product like a sour belt in a resealable bag, right? It's a process. So like there's reasonings why companies don't do it. Cause the cost is astronomical or the custom machinery, right? Take us through what is just the resealable bag? Like how much does that end up impacting how much it has to like go into the cost of everything?

35:23Maxx Chewning:Do you have an idea of what that is? I mean, yeah. I know all the specifics. I can't like say the actual number. I would say to do a resealable bag versus what you'd call like a fin seal flow wrap bag, which is what if you grab any bag of gummy worms or whatever, it's called a fin seal because it's like a shark fin. but that that on the back of the bag there's like a little flap in the middle right you sometimes have to lift up to see the rest of the the things and what that is is because when it goes to a what it's called a flow wrapping machine um the bag is actually like this flat on a roll and it's wrapped around around the product and then it's sealed like with this fin seal right but with ours i would say just the bag cost alone is probably it's going to sound a lot but it's it's probably like 10 times more expensive, like seven to 10 times more expensive for this flow wrap bag, which comes on a roll of 10 ,000 or a hundred thousand, right?

36:20That just fed into the machine versus these bags

36:23Maxx Chewning:with the zipper. And then there's a million different types of zipper because also on the edge of the bag, there's a thing called a crush, right? So the little flat part of the side of the bag, right? To put the, to put the zipper, you know, you can't have, you don't have the zipper that goes to the very edge of the bag, right? Because it has to have the crush where the bag is sealed on the side, or I guess it's sealed on the top. When they make the bags, it's individually made. It's not on a roll. The bag is on the side or it's crushed on the side. So the zipper is in between those crushes. So the zipper depicts like how wide the opening is to get your hand in, right?

36:59Maxx Chewning:So in order to get it on a roll machine, you would need to use a different type of zipper. But because the, I'm getting like technical. No, I love it, I love it. Because the crush sleeve is like, or the crush zone is like different on a flow wrapping one. If you were to like put this exact same bag on a roll, the crush zone is a lot greater, right? And you could have a zipper with that makes the opening of the bag a lot smaller. So your hand can't get in there. So to make it, to make it on a cheaper bag, you'd have the bag would have to be like, you'd have to add like an inch to the bag to make up for that width.

37:31Maxx Chewning:Or you have to use, which we have not done early this stage. like there's a completely different type of zipper that applies to the entire sleeve where it's almost like a Velcro type of experience. So just everything about sour strips is like, there's a purpose or a reason why it is or isn't like that. And it's because I decided that it should or shouldn't be on there. Um, and so that's what's like cool about it. And even when we started, if you ever had one of the original bags of sour strips, the viewing window is like massive because when we started, I was like, let's have this massive viewing window problem I ran into.

38:07Maxx Chewning:And every time you change, um, these graphics, it's like, you have to get a new plate fee. And so if you want to change a color, that's okay. But if you're changing the design or a word or something, it's a new plate. Cause they make, they have to make it. Every plate is like$900. So when you make a bag, it's like thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars for one bag. And if you want to change, like, I want to make the window, like go from here to like right there, like just a little bit. That's a completely different design, a thousand dollars. And I probably changed like seven times. Um, because I realized the viewing window, although great when the candy would sit in there, unless it would sit perfectly, you'd have these little like areas in the bag where it was like blank space.

38:47Maxx Chewning:And I hated visually, no one commented about this, but I'm like, I hate how, unless it's sitting perfect hung, but if it's laying, it's like, you can see this empty space in the bag. So I wanted to make the window so that it was just the candy in there, even the, the bites, the reason the window, we originally had the, um, like the flavor name, you'll notice the flavor name is above the viewing window, right? Specific reason for that. Because when I sampled having the viewing window below, the candy is filled to the half of the bag. And what I realized, I was like, once you eat like five or six pieces, you start seeing blank space.

39:20Maxx Chewning:And I was like, I don't like, I don't want that. So I moved the viewing window to the top so that you could eat like a couple, like a serving or so before you started seeing blank space, just so it like, doesn't look visually like empty and whatever. So like, again, like everything has a very specific purpose and it wasn't like, Hey, I sent it to this company and they based on, you know, analytical data. And here's all the PowerPoint of like presenting. It's like, Nope. Uh, I think this is like stupid looking like, and it's like, let's change it. Oh, it's gonna be a thousand. And every decision that I made like financially in the company, because again, I managed the, I managed the money from day one until I sold the company.

40:02Maxx Chewning:So every financial decision was made on like a gut feeling, not because, well, based on the P &L of this, I have these receivables coming in this month and I'll be able to do it. And this will affect my margin by this much. None of that. None of how this is going to affect anything. I go, this needs to change. Okay, there's, I know there's some money in the bank. I don't know that like the data of how much this is going to affect the P &L. It was just like, this needs to happen. Let's do it and just keep trying to scale the brand. So I tried to make the brand as good as it could and just hope that the money would kind of come in.

40:32Maxx Chewning:I didn't make decisions based on the finances, if that makes sense. Hearing you talk about it and hearing your passion, it's no secret the reason this brand has become what it has become and is so successful. And it's really refreshing because I think that's the beauty of what could be a creator-led brand if they're really in the weeds with it. And it's actually something that's authentic to them in the sense of you love candy, it makes sense that you made a candy brand. Because you love candy, you can focus on those details and make the product actually as good as it possibly can. As minute as possible.

41:13Maxx Chewning:And what I want to stress is like, while I do take pride, a lot of pride, that I did what I did with my team and was able to accomplish and was so hands-on because I fell in love with the business of it as well. I don't think there's anything wrong with, um, not doing this. Right. But what I look at is I was like, if I have a conversation about my brand with anyone, I want to be able to have a conversation with it. I don't want to be like, Oh, I don't know that. Oh, I don't know this. Oh, I've this guy does this. Like, yeah, you have employees that maybe you don't know like the technicality of like your, how your optimization of the warehouse, but like from an overall, like I should be able to talk about my brand of like, why it's like this, Hey, what's, what's X, Y, and Z.

42:01Maxx Chewning:And so if I talk to another founder or something and I'm asking these questions, like maybe broad questions and they're like, Oh, actually, I don't, I don't really know. Like, I'm like, I'd be like, what do you mean? You don't know? Right. Like, and I'm like, yeah, it's yours. Yeah. I'm like, what do you, what do you mean? Right. Uh, so, but again, it's two different business strategies, right? It's just two different. Like some people don't want to, and I understand it, like don't want to do the, like run a business because it's a whole different skillset. Maybe people just want to focus on content, but I think there's a reason why people with huge followings, not necessarily in candy, but other products with heat followings that are 10 times mine, right?

42:41Maxx Chewning:Millions of views, millions of right never had a success that maybe sour strips did right i think the authenticity of the product the the showing the business not just like guys we got some samples and trying these samples yep approving it right like um so i think that's attributed to this success like a lot and i've been extremely like you could watch any of my videos and i've shown the exact blueprint right from September or September 9th of 2019 to, you know, when I sold the company in November of last year, like nearly every video is every step of the way, every step. Here's me installing racks in the warehouse.

43:25Maxx Chewning:Here's me touring the warehouse. Here's, here's me like, you know, we're getting forklift certified, like everything I've like shown it. I do want to talk about your marketing strategy of not having yourself as like the face of the brand. Because I'm not popular enough. Really. But the decision to have the branding and the marketing behind Sour Strips separate from you as a creator and your decision to do that, which then allowed it to go on to grow as big as it did. Yeah, that was a early on decision. It's it even stems back when I used to make clothing. I had a company called Everford Apparel, which I ran for like seven years and ended up shutting it down January of last year because sour strips just was way bigger of a focus.

44:16Maxx Chewning:When I launched that clothing brand, which I was one of the first to do this like overseas manufacturing for a separate brand in the YouTube fitness space, most people did like merch or like screen printed stuff. So, but when I did this, you were able to create like custom hang tags because I went this route of customization. And on the original hang tags, it was ever forward on the front. And on the back, I was like, I'll get people to come to my YouTube channel. I put youtube.com slash max tuning on the back. Right. And after like a couple of months, I was like, I feel like this is kind of tacky.

44:45Maxx Chewning:Like, I feel like this is like, this is the brand. Like it doesn't need whether or not it's actually helping my channel or not. Um, but I was like, I don't want me on there. I think this is like tacky. It's like, is it a brand or is it like me with my, my face? My, my little deadlift silhouette on the back of it. I can show you the hang tag in the office. Um, so I like early on, I had that decision. And then when sour strips, um, I made the decision. I was like, this needs like, as it started growing, even early on, like I was, what I thought was really popular in the space and the fitness space.

45:18Maxx Chewning:Again, I never was, uh, I'm like an influencer that is like known in my community of the fitness world. Right. But the Casey Neistat has no idea who I am. Right. I'm not like a marquee says, no, I don't know who I am. But we're like, but all those creators, even if they have met them know who they are. Right. Like I'm like in this little pocket of a bubble of the fitness world. Um, so I knew I wasn't as popular enough for like to put my likeness face, whatever on there, but it was almost like this strategy early on. So besides being in the launch photo on sour strips, if you go back to the first like sour strips photo, maybe in the first or second photo of when we had people was like announcing it's like me, Heidi and Mona, who I said works with me.

46:03Maxx Chewning:Besides that photo, I am not in any other photos on the page, right? I've never put founded by Max tuning in the bio ever, never did that. Um, even with sour strips, no marketing of it was like, had my face on it, likeness on it, like founded by max tuning, you know, at, on like a promo strip at a store. Um, one, I don't think I was well known enough to make that have an impact. And I think it would have done two things. One, it would have like, I think again, tacky up the brand. It's like, I don't want, I want, I want the brand to succeed because it's, because I know that it is a fantastic product, not because like, if you, that's why I like, you know, um, something that I found interesting is like whenever, if you go on YouTube and you type in like, uh, reviewing influencer products or trying influencer brands, I've, you know, Colin and Samir have done these a lot.

46:59Maxx Chewning:Like all these sour strips is never mentioned ever. Right. And all these new products come out of influencers sour strips never mentioned, right? Is it? And I think it's because they have no idea who I am, right? They have no idea that it's maybe a creator led brand, or I'm not like large enough. And I always found it interesting where I'm like, man, all these, like there's all these influencer products, like why they never mentioned sour strips, right? I've never even met these people. So it's not like they don't like me, but like, um, well maybe, but you know, I was like, they don't know. I wanted me, I was like, I want sour strips to succeed because it's a really good product and it's a really cool brand.

47:36Maxx Chewning:Right. And yeah, I can drive a ton of people to target the day it launches and sell it out. Right. I can sell out a gas station and it's like, now it's in, you know, Alabama, go to this Alabama squad. Like, um, I can do all that, but like, there's a difference of selling out a store first week for the first day, the first month, right. First two months, you want the random people walking down the aisle to get this, right? And yes, the random people walking down will maybe be like, oh, oh, my son follows this person or, oh, I see this guy on, on the YouTube machine, right? Like, oh, let me get this.

48:13Maxx Chewning:My kid will like it. Cause I know that influencer, right? I wanted it to be the candy lovers go into the aisle and go, cause the way the sour strips works, in my opinion, and again, I don't need data to back this up. I love the note. I really love the note. I think I really do. the what the no date you're just like dude i've this is my yeah my experience and like as a as a candy buyer myself well the reason why i was like i think sour strips would be successful is because i go as a candy fanatic since i've been like 10 years old i have walked down the candy aisle of every gas station every store ever to this day i just when i go in the gas station to get a drink i just walk down the candy aisle i mean even more now so but the problem you have is if you love candy it's not like the energy drink space where every time you go in there there is like 17 new products to try, right?

48:58Maxx Chewning:It's, you know, it's, it's all the same brands. And every now and then it might be like a very, like a new version of the worm or a new thing. And, but so you always know what you're going to get. And then when there's something new, you notice it and you try it. Generally I found, especially when it came to sour, I'd be disappointed, right? I'd be like, they'd be like new extreme sour, like nine meter. And you'd be like, what the fuck is this bro? And you'd be like, who's signing off on this, right? Who's like, yep, nailed it. This is the best we can do. So what I found, that was the joke. I'd always, when I try candy, I'd say this in my videos, I go, there's no world that they ate this.

49:36Maxx Chewning:And they're like, you know what? Johnson put a nine out of 10 on a sour meter. I am just puckered up. Okay. You know, no, we got Susie from accounting. She also thinks this is great. Right? Like I was like, who's approving this? So the idea was like, if you walk down the candy aisle, you notice when there's something new because it's not very often, right? This is my experience over 20 years of eating candy. And when there was something new, you would try it. So I knew if I could just get sour strips in front of it, I go, if you like candy, because again, this is just, because this is what I do.

50:08Maxx Chewning:I assume people are like me. I was like, you will try it because you'll go, because you'll notice that it's there because you know everything that's there. And the branding is so different. It's different with the white packaging. So I was like, all I need people to do is try this candy. and if you like sour candy, I think it's my favorite and I think it's a fantastic product, right? It may not be everyone's favorite sour candy, but I think if you like sour candy, I think you would be lying if you say Sour Strips is not a good sour candy, period. Like I think it hits all the notes of what a sour candy should be, whether or not you want it to be more extreme sour, maybe you this, that, but I don't think you can deny that it's a good product.

50:49Maxx Chewning:Like if you're in the mood for something sour, this is going to hit. Correct. I just, I think objectively it's a good product. It reminds me of, of the, do you see the Uber documentary? Like the, I've not. Yeah. It's so fucking good. You should, you should watch it. You'd really like it. There's a scene where the guy who started Uber is named Travis and he's talking to this guy who's investing in him. And he goes, how sticky is the product? Meaning like how likely is someone to try it and then do it again. He goes, you ride with us twice, you're a customer for life. That's exactly what it was.

51:22And so I feel like for you, it's like, yo, you try this once.

51:24Maxx Chewning:Oh, we got you. That's what I was saying. It's like, so when you walk down, you'll notice it's there. And if I can get you to try it, I think nine times out of 10, you'll go, this is good. This is probably slightly better than the other sour brands that are in this category. And I think if I can get you to try it, I think you'll be hooked. And so I just needed people to try it one time. So that is why I didn't need me to, to put my likeness on it. Like, yes, that helped. And like, yeah, my YouTube audience absolutely 100 % helped. Right. Which I built for seven years to be able to have the ease of launching this kind of thing.

51:59Maxx Chewning:But I go sour strips will live on its own because it's, it's that good, right? It's not, it's okay. And, um, I'm buying it cause I'm supporting like this guy I really like, right? I go, maybe they want to support me, but it's a good product. So I wasn't focused on, I wanted my audience to help, right? Which they absolutely did. But beyond that, you need the random people. And that is a long story to get to the point of like, Sour Strips was created so that the random candy consumer like me, or even less than, right? Like less than of like, maybe I'm not obsessed like Max is, but like, you'll notice it.

52:35Maxx Chewning:And when you try it, I bet you'll like it. and that was the whole thing of where we went into this, you know, Sour Strips is priced higher than other brands, right? Unless you're in like the better for you's type of candy, the pricing was because I couldn't compete with selling it for a dollar a bag starting the brand. I would have never been able to scale the company. Were people upset about that in the beginning? Were you transparent about it? Because we know how that works, obviously. Even with the drink brands, it costs so much to ship them. You know, I'm just curious like what those conversations were like from people.

53:06Maxx Chewning:Well, here's again, a big, big brain move of why I thought it wasn't going to be a problem was, was I, I knew, because when I first launched this, I actually asked, uh, one of, uh, he, one of the people that actually started like prime and all these, um, I like ran this idea. I was like, Hey, here's the pricing for it. He's like, it'll never work. I'm like, why? He's like, he's like, uh, he's like distributors need it for this price. You have to make it for this price because you know, all the other people sell to this. I was like, well, bro, I will never be able to, I'll never be able to let alone make money, but never be able to scale it.

53:37Maxx Chewning:Like it, it costs me this to make it right. Cause you know, your margins, we've been profitable since day one and we've gotten better, but like I would have, I've been, I was skating razor thin for a while, but I would have been like, I made a penny every bag I sell. Right. Um, so he's like, it'll never work. And I was like, I think it will because I go same type of way of like, I think people will go down the aisle. I think they'll see it because if it's not every day, there's a new one. I think they'll like it. And in my opinion, I go, I need to sell it for slightly more than the other ones.

54:06Maxx Chewning:Cause I cannot compete on like price differentiation. I can't, I, I, I couldn't compete like selling this for a dollar. Like, and I remember the first gas station I went into, it's, uh, called star stop. There's like a hundred of them around Houston. Um, one of my buddies is like uncle owns the chain and he's like old school, like businessman, like this uncle. And I remember going in there trying to kind of pitch to these stores and he like says it and he sees the pricing of it. And I'm like, yeah, it's going to sell for like three 29, three 49. He's like, hold on. And he goes and he gets like a bag of like gummy worms or something.

54:36Maxx Chewning:And he's like, yours is 3.4 ounces. Like this is five ounces. This is$2. Like why would anyone, why would anyone spend more to get less? And I go, cause I think it's a really good product. And I go, I go, if I was even before I started doing well with myself, even back then, if you like really good candy, I know you'll try it. So even if it's like a little bit more expensive, I know you'll try it. And if, and if you think it's a superior product, like I believe you will, I believe that most consumers will be willing to spend the extra dollar because it's worth that amount. I think it's worth the extra price, right?

55:11Maxx Chewning:So I did it cause I had to, and I believe that it would succeed. Um, because I think that people will be willing to pay a little bit more for a product that hopefully they like more, right? It's also just in my head, correct me if I'm wrong, and this might make me feel, or this might make me sound a little out of touch, but a dollar is not nearly as much as maybe making a t-shirt that you're like, I'm going to charge$90 for this t-shirt. It's much better quality. Most people aren't going to be spending$90 on a t-shirt. Yeah, but in the world, people are so used to, you know, they look at sour strips and you see it three 49.

55:50Maxx Chewning:They look at a bag of gummy where I keep using gummy worms, but like, you know, and it's a dollar or$2. And they're like, I get more for this. But again, if you try it, if you like sour, you're like, I kind of like this better. I was like, I bet even if you're not, even if you're a college kid on a budget or, you know, a younger kid, like you'd be like, I'm willing to pay that extra dollar. And that is just what I bet on. I bet that people would, would not complain about it. Yeah. Um, and it would continue to move. And, and if I, if I had tried to compete on price, I never would have been able to scale the company.

56:22When you, when you finally get into like target, do they stick you on the bottom shelf and you have to work your claw your way up to get higher up? Or how does that, how does that whole thing work? Cause obviously, I mean, whole thing's being seen and our eyeballs are average dudes probably like her gal five, eight to five, two or something. You want to be

56:39Maxx Chewning:like in the middle and like the eye zone, right? Okay. So there's some depth to this. So sour strips, a lot of the success that it had was because again, right time, great product. We got to that part. Right. But the reason then it blew up because of not only are we sick, right? We're super cool. And, um, everyone was talking about it in end of 2019, but then COVID happened. Right. And COVID, although a wild period of time was actually probably one of the single greatest things to happen for sour strips because everyone's at home. Our online sales just went through the roof, right? Which is we're making all this, you know, in the business world margin, right?

57:19Maxx Chewning:So I'm making like essentially hand over foot, but my margins are super thin, but like we're, I'm not in really stores. So our popularity and awareness is going through the roof because of short form, Tik TOK, everyone's ordering online. So we're making a bunch of money. And again, I'm not out buying Lambos and shit. I'm just like going back in the business account, back in the business account. And so our popularity and revenue is going really, really scaling really high. So our awareness is going through the roof and you know, people are not going into stores. Right. So then, and this is just my perception of it.

57:53Maxx Chewning:I don't, this isn't a, who knows if this is actually what, what actually happened, but this is what I assumed happened. Popularity. And then when COVID started being like, okay, people are going out in the stores out in the world. Um, in my opinion, I was like, now retailers are trying to get people back into stores. Right. And so because our awareness stores, like whether you're a buyer or just like a, um, like a category buyer for like their whole chain or maybe just your store or whatever, they're all, all these category buyers are looking to boost, you know, themselves on, you know, their manager.

58:28Maxx Chewning:Right. So they want their category or their section to boom. They want their stores to boom because then I'm, I'm assuming again, um, that they're probably going to benefit, whether it be commission raises because they're doing better at their job. Like look, how much money I'm bringing the company type of thing. So they're always looking to bring in like the new hot thing. And, uh, the, so every store that we have gotten into that they have contacted us. I never had a sales team. I was every sale, Every store that Sour Strips has gone into up until the sale has gone to an email that came direct, that went to me first.

59:04Maxx Chewning:I decided like, yes, I want to do this. I started the conversation with every single store that went in. And I remember getting the email in October of 2020 from, I got an at Target email and through our portal and I go, oh my God, fucking Target, right? And I remember posting it on my social media and like blurred out everything, but I was like, Target, Target, reach out to us. and it said like, we're, you know, we've seen you online. We're interested in like testing you in stores. You know, here's my information. Like email me and we'll set up a meeting. I posted that an hour later. I'm not even kidding, bro.

59:37Maxx Chewning:An hour later I get an email from Walmart. That's like, we're interested in bringing this in. Please don't post this on social media. It's like, and I'm like, they're watching my shit. And then right. So, um, so we got into these like bohemian right out of the gate. So again, reason I'm kind of saying all this is like, so again, stores are like trying to get that big thing because they want their category, their managers to be happy. And so what Target saw was like this booming brand, right? They're about to do their reset, which new products, like they kind of can, but generally for you to get into the shelf in the aisle, that happens like once a year, maybe twice a year, but it's - What time period?

1:00:17Maxx Chewning:It fluctuates. It fluctuates. So Target like used to be like June resets. Now they've shifted to like September, which some new stuff's coming in September to target. Just saying. Um, so they do these resets once a year, but they talk to you like 10 months before, and then you have this time to prepare and all these things. Um, so it's, it's when a store takes you to when you actually get in the store is a long pro it's a, it's a really complex process. So they talked with us and they're trying to get this like new age, like booming brand into the store. So when they originally were going to like test us, they were like, we're going to get you in like 700 stores.

1:00:51Maxx Chewning:Right. And they have like 1900. I was like, wow, that's crazy. That's great. Right. And then like four months before we actually went in, they're like, actually, we're going to bump you up to, uh, I think it was 1300. Now. Okay. For someone listening and me specifically, it was 1700, 1300 stores. They have how many? Is it 1700? 1900. Is that normal? No. Okay. No, no. Well, generally, if you were to get a test in a store, let's say even a target, I would say on average, you're probably going to get, I think on the low end, it'd be like a hundred stores. I think on the normal, it'd probably be like a hundred to 300, a hundred to 500, because again, they're just testing.

1:01:34Maxx Chewning:So they'll put you in like the larger stores. You're not going to be in maybe like the center of New York. Cause that's like a smaller store. They're putting your bigger ones, give you like the best chance to they're testing you. And then you'll be able to like get into more stores, but target really believed because they're not only trying to get people back in from COVID again, this is what I'm assuming getting people back in from COVID this brand's booming. So we got three, was it three? It might've been two, but two or three skews, which generally maybe you try like one, they got, does this skew mean like this is a skew?

1:02:04Maxx Chewning:Yes. One, one flavor, so three flavors, two or three flavors. And so we, I think it was 1700 stores. Yeah. We went from like, it was like, you're going to get in test into like 350 to like 1700. It was crazy. And so and because so to answer your question of where you go on the shelf is like when they do something like that, they want to kind of give you the best chance. And so they put us like right in the middle. And also what helped our growth is because during covid, you look at these other big brands. And again, I'm just assuming all this. You look at all these other big brands. if they're in 300 ,000 stores and I'm in like 500, right?

1:02:43Maxx Chewning:When COVID happened, supply chain's messing everyone up. So they have to ration out product to everyone, right? But I can, if Target's like our only big customer, I can just funnel all product into there. So while the shelves are diminishing and they can't fill POs because they have to supply to hundreds and hundreds of thousands of stores and worldwide, I can be the brand that's on the shelf because everyone else is having supply chain issues, but I'm like, I can be on the shelf. So being there when other products weren't, I mean, remember all the shelves were like, whether like they had supply chain issues, they couldn't be in there.

1:03:18Maxx Chewning:So it was just like, again, it's like this, it was, Sour Strips has been this, a lot of work, right, over the years. But a lot of it was just this like lightning timing, right thing. And on top of everything, I started this brand before it was the common thing to start brands. Not like I'm a hipster and I liked it before it was cool, but I just got in early. Like I, it's even with, I look at YouTube, like I got in YouTube really, really early. I got in, um, to CPG like really, really early. During COVID, you said that was big for you and that was huge for your growth. from the marketing perspective, creating social content, what was your content strategy?

1:04:04How did you promote social strips besides like social strips? Sorry, dude. I like that. Social strategy, sour media. Yeah. Sour media. How did you promote? How did you promote sour strips? And how, like, what was your content strategy going in? Um, like from a marketing perspective, besides talking about it on, you know, your YouTube channel and in your vlogs, what was that like?

1:04:31Maxx Chewning:My strategy, uh, early on, and it's actually to this day was, so we, we have never paid an influencer to promote our product ever. Uh, in early on. And again, this landscape has changed, especially with Tik TOK. Our, my strategy early on was like, okay, we're going to run ads. That's going to happen. Uh, we're new natural stuff. We're going to be quirky, but, um, and for the first, like, you Six months of the brand. Like I was one like shmoning to every like DM until I got Callie who handles all of her stuff now. But I was like, we can afford to spend the money on marketing just giving this product away at scale to anyone who has a following.

1:05:17Maxx Chewning:So we started just like reaching out to every influencer under the sun. I would DM them, right? I remember the day, I mean, I would, I remember I was like staying in the warehouse with a Christian when like I DMed like, was like, like David Dobrik and he responded right back like Jake Paul. I was getting into like, you know, Addison Rae, you know, when Dave Portnoy was doing those like box hauls at his studio, we shipped him. I have a picture of like him holding it up. I've, you know, Addison Rae, honestly, like Addison Rae posted us a ton. But again, a lot of the strategy is I felt, especially as we, I mean, we started sending to everyone, so many influencers.

1:05:56Maxx Chewning:Then you got celebrities like G-Eazy, Lil Yachty, like all these people. I mean, we had Lil Yachty DMing us going, hey, can I get some more? I have like a personal video from him. Like when his friends like, man, he literally is like, this stuff's so good. He's like, I want to put it in a girl's booty and eat it with a spoon. Not even kidding. I had the video. um i uh is his friend says that he's like this stuff's good uh i uh but like addison ray and all these people were just like i have seven photos of her on snapchat like eating in tiktok and making all these videos and i think again everyone was kind of in a different space where maybe everyone wasn't like as big to the point of like one million dollars to post this brand I also felt that if other influencers knew that an influencer owned the brand, they might be hesitant to post it.

1:06:48Maxx Chewning:Because I was like, I don't know, maybe they're, if they didn't know I was like, I don't know, this random creator, like, oh, yeah, he wants to like use my bigger audience type of thing. And maybe I'm just like, actually, not everyone's an asshole. but I also felt I was like because I've been doing influencing for a long period of time and you know you get hit up by brands and what not and you know if like a toothbrush company hits you up right you're like we want to send you this and promote it and you're like okay here's my rate like whatever but if you get hit up by you know the ice cream company you like or whatever and they're like hey we want to send you like five you know ten pints of ice cream that shows me your door you'll just post it because you're like oh, well, this is food, like ice cream, like certain stuff.

1:07:29Maxx Chewning:It's almost like you post like for free. Right. Cause I was like, I just kind of know this. Like I post random stuff, but other brands, if it was like maybe skincare or something, I'm like, oh, I want to do a brand deal or something. It's, I don't, I don't even know how to describe it, but if you're kind of in the space, you know, you'll tag brands. Oh, I love this drink. You'll tag the brand company. And they've never even talked to you. Right. Um, I felt, I was like, if someone sent me candy, I bet people will post about it and not require a fee, right? So we would just send, what we did is we, I had this strategy, and we probably sent to fucking thousands of influencers at this point.

1:08:06Maxx Chewning:But every single day, I'd probably DM like 10 to 20 influencers, just anyone. Anyone who has a following, start with, you know, big, whatever. Because I'm always like, okay, and I always started with like, want some free candy? Because I knew that people saw the DM, right? I knew that like, but this is before you could hide that if you can read it or not. I was like, a lot of times you don't want to open stuff. Right. And, and you'd see a brand DMs you, but I was like, if a brand called sour strips, you think it's probably candy. And then the opening line that you can see before you have to open it says like love sour, like love free candy, like love sour candy.

1:08:38Maxx Chewning:I was like, I bet they'll open that DM. And then when you open it, it just like, Hey, we'd love to send you a box. We'd never asked. We never like, if you tag us, if you did this, it's just like, well, Hey, love, what you're doing. Would love to send you candy. That's it. Right. And what I, what my idea was, was if we send them to this, I think there's a high probability that they'll eat it, that they'll like it. Cause it's good. That, that if they like it and it's candy, I was like, I bet they'll just post us regardless. I think they'll, they'll probably tag us. Right. That's, that's the first mindset of like what I went into.

1:09:11Maxx Chewning:And number two is I bet they'll like it so much that they'll hit us back up to get some more. And at that point, so you give it to them for free, nothing. You don't even mention a tag, right? Or a post or anything where a lot of brands would hit me up, be like, we'd love to send you a, you know, one, this$2 item. And if you could just make a reel about it, like what? So we just send it to them. And then when they would ask like, hey, this was so good. Like, can you send me more? That is when you go, we would love to send you more. Like, be like, like we could send you a whole nother box. like, would you mind like, like throwing us an at like on your story?

1:09:48Maxx Chewning:We'll put like a little emoji, like, like, you know, like a little, little cute thing. And of course they're like, yeah, like, of course. Um, so that was like the strategy. I was like, we just sent it at scale for free, not to try to like manipulate, but I was like, I bet people, we can't afford to pay people. Um, I mean, um, so we kind of did that. And then if they hit his backup again, and a lot of them did. We're like, Oh, I want even more. I, we created this, like, um, I had this idea to do, I was like, how about we put people, people who like really like us on this like monthly influencer list.

1:10:21Maxx Chewning:And then you'd basically say, Hey, we'll ship you candy every single month. And all you have to do is one time in that month, just mention us on your story one time. And then, and then we'll send you candy on autopilot every single month. And people are like, yeah, sure. Of course. And so that was like, that was how the brand just like blew up. because I was able to build the brand because of how well I knew candy from a candy consumer. And then I was able to like understand how influencers brains work because I was one of them, right? So I kind of had this like double dip type of thing. And again, we did the no paid thing because I couldn't afford to pay these big things.

1:11:03Maxx Chewning:And I also, you know, we'd get tagged by these massive accounts and you wouldn't see this like crazy spike in sales or whatever. Um, so I was like, the conversions are only there. My goal was just to get the awareness out. So then it'd be like, it's like David Dobrik, for example. Uh, I've never met David Dobrik, never talked to David Dobrik besides on sour strips when David Dobrik, uh, was like, yes, I love candy. Send me a box. Right. I put together, I physically, I did it actually. I put this like huge box together. Cause I was like, all right, I know he's a big content guy. always looking for stuff.

1:11:36Maxx Chewning:I put like 200 bags of candy, all this like confetti, like all this stuff in this big box. I was like, I bet I'll show like in a video, right? Never posted us, never did anything. I'm like, damn, like what the heck? Right. But then I started noticing that like months later, people tagged me that like on the table at his house or in his Tesla would be like a bag of sour strips or like, you know, David Nash and all them, they'd be doing something and in a bowl on the table was a bunch of sour strip bags and stuff. I'm like, that's what I want. I just want sour strips to exist in the world so that they're just out there, right?

1:12:09Maxx Chewning:I don't like, it's great if they tag us, but I just want the candy to be out there. The more people that see it, I mean, I have photos. I have photos of like Jake Paul's Snapchat of a picture of Logan Paul sitting at a table and in front of Logan Paul is a bag of sour strips. And I was like, that's what I want. It's just out in the world, right? People like, oh, I love candy. Like there's at someone's house, it's there. So I didn't really care if people posted us. It was great if they did, but I just wanted it out there, right? I wanted to be in the random background in the house so that their friends are kind of eating it.

1:12:42Maxx Chewning:And I knew that if it's out there enough, then when we started getting into stores, it's kind of like, oh, there's that brand I always see on TikTok. There's that brand that I saw Addison Rae post about. There's that brand, right? They don't, it's not like, there's that YouTuber guy's brand. It's just like, there's that brand. So we've just given sour strips out at scale we used to send like probably probably like 10 to 15 influencers a week or no like a day yeah like a day we probably send 10 new influencers a day for like years wow it's insane and you start going into like all the different um all the different sectors it was like well who's your target audience do you have a mouth do you like candy i was like i started talking to you know my my social person yeah and i'm like send it to the like the the fishing community the the art The archery community, like every, the beauty, everyone, the, the frisbee golf community, it there's, I was like everywhere, send it everywhere.

1:13:38Maxx Chewning:And then even recently what we've been doing, um, I'm giving all my strategies away. Everyone's just going to copy all this, um, is like, we had this idea where like, let's get outside of almost the influencer world and get into like, I hate calling like the real world, but like, um, so we started sending these huge boxes. Now we send them to every sorority on the planet, right? Like every sorority, because they're doing all these rush things. So it's like, let's send them 300 bags of candy because then they're going to post and then that sorority is going to see it. Then they're going to reach out and then it gets out into like the non kind of influencer world or maybe the micro influencer world or trying to come up.

1:14:12Maxx Chewning:And it's just like, I just wanted Sour Strips to be in the world, like saturated, like as much as possible. And it wasn't like, I'm annoyed by seeing this because I was like, or what people would think because I knew that it's a good product. so that it's okay that it's saturated because it's a good thing. And when people are out, they're going to try it. They're going to like it. And I realize I talk so much. I love that. And I'm just like yapping. No, I love it. This has been like so insightful. Okay, I want to back up to when it gets into Target, I've heard you say this story before about how you have to pay for individual SKUs when it goes in the store.

1:14:49They're like, oh, we want 100 ,000 bags. There's a little fee. Slotting fees, bro. A slotting fee. Okay, cashflow, obviously,

1:14:55Maxx Chewning:in a business like this is really important. It's the, it's the, one of the single hardest things to run a business, managing people and managing cashflow. Okay. So, and, and with, when the margins, when you're trying, you're going up against the Goliaths, right. And you're like, you know, ours is a little bit more expensive. And still at that point, you're still not making everyone's like, you're not making tons and tons and tons off of every single bag. Right. How did that work when they're like, Hey Max, we would, we would like a million bags and you know, and all these stores where you like, holy shit, my, this, the math here is, is this is going to get, this is going to get tough.

1:15:26What was that like, what was that inner dialogue like? And talk us through that little period.

1:15:30Maxx Chewning:So like I mentioned how everything was just like perfect timing, right? I mentioned COVID and we're booming online. And I mean, when we launched, I mean, when we launched like cotton candy, for example, which is not a top seller, fantastic flavor, by the way, not a top seller. That was our one year birthday. That online launch, I think we had like 13 ,000 orders that day. And it was, I mean, it eclipsed every launch we've ever done. It was just because it was like during peak of COVID, year anniversary, we're booming. And it was like this monumental thing. So because we boomed so much online, we had, I say so much cash, but again, margin's not that great, but we're making - It's so much cash.

1:16:11Maxx Chewning:We were rich, dude. All right? I mean, we - We were rich. We were, we were. Like the bank of Sour Strips was. So the only way that I was able to, everything had to happen the way that it had to happen, or the way that it happened for me to be able like to get to this point when the target launch, it was also this massive launch with, uh, H-E-B. We're doing this big promo, which when you do promos, when you see brands on like the end of the shelf, like the end cap or whatever, and they have like this cool display, they're paying a shit ton of money to do that. Right. It's not, wow, the store loves these brands so much.

1:16:43Maxx Chewning:Like they're paying like tens of thousands. If you see a basket in an aisle at a target, people are paying a lot of money to be in that basket. Like it's not just, you know, they had a lot of product they put in the middle of the aisle. So just now you can be aware if you're on an end cap, if you're like a side panel, like there's some, some stores that have a little flexibility, but. Yeah. You see Mr. Beast in seven 11 dude, right? When you walk into seven 11. Hey, well, they might just give it to him. I don't know, but, but no, but everyone's like paying for this. Like if you have all this, like you're paying to be in this store, you're paying to play.

1:17:14Maxx Chewning:Right. So because we're rich AF from, from, from online, that was the only way that I was able to fund launching into target. If we did not have that boom and have that thing, I would have either had to raise money or put my own money in there. So while I did start the brand with 50 K and never, there might've been one time where I think I've added like 10 ,000 in the account. And then like two weeks later, I pulled it back out. Like, but the 50 ,000 investment, like that truly was like the whole company, which in our peak year last year, we did$34 million, right? So 50 ,000, 34 million. Last year was your peak year?

1:17:50Maxx Chewning:Well, that was before I sold the company. But that, so that's like the final year where like - You were the full - I was the full owner. I did$34 million with Sour Strips last year. And this year we'll do better. But like, but 50 ,000 to that, like to manage the cashflow, especially if you know business, like in the CPG world and everything that goes into it is mind blowing. Like everything had to have happened in this perfect arc to be able to scale to that number without raising money. Like it's an anomaly. So I'm so proud of sour strips for the fact, a lot of people when they raise money, it's like the celebrated thing, right?

1:18:29Maxx Chewning:And usually you only wanna raise money when you're funding growth. If you're doing it for like, I wanna do it for like marketing and all these, it starts being a dangerous game because you're changing the whole business because now you have to sell because now you're working to pay back those shareholders, investors, right? It changes the game. And you're giving away little bits. It could be equity. Ideally, maybe you just take like a big interest rate and the company's scaling. So it's not, it's a necessary thing for a lot of companies. And the fact that we did not do it is actually like wild, wild, wild, wild.

1:19:03Maxx Chewning:So had this boom online. Again, I wasn't, I never got reckless with the money. I was fortunate enough to not only do the clothing, do social media, which I've never, I do well on social media, but I mean, I was never like balling out of control from social media, brand deals and all that stuff. Um, but I had my reserve of, of savings and whatnot. So if I needed to put a little cash, I could have, but, um, with the, when the target launched, like it was an astronomical cost and what the, what the problem is. So when you get into a big store and you have this big launch and that's why almost smaller is almost better.

1:19:37Maxx Chewning:Cause you can grow into it. Right. But when you go into a 1700 stores at target, right. Let's say you have six months to prepare for that. They're like, all right, here's what we're going to do. Here's how many stores you're going into. And you usually find that out. Like I'd say six months might be crazy. It might be like four, maybe four to six months. How, how, how quick is that, that money do right? Well, here's, so here's, I'm going to break this down for you is like, let's say they lock in. They're like, okay, we've decided you're going in in June here. It's, let's say it's December, let's say you have six months, like December 31st, they tell you in June, you're going in 1700 stores.

1:20:12Maxx Chewning:Okay. You have six months to prepare for that. So what that means is they're going to tell you how many stores they're going to tell you how many, like they're going to tell you what the general opening order is going to be, right? Cause they're going to be, we want these flavors. We're going to want a safety stock. So it might be, so we sell them in 12 packs, right? To the store. So 12 units in a case. So they might be for every store. We want three 12 packs for every store. So three 12 packs, let's say three flavors. So it's a nine, 12 packs across 1700 stores, a lot of stores. You're paying a fee for each, um, flavor, not each unit, but like a flavor.

1:20:50Maxx Chewning:And it's a one-time fee. So it's like a, so you have, let's say three, three fees because you have three flavors going in times 1700. So you have six months. So not only, and that's not due until a little bit later, but here's how the cashflow it's fucking wild is you're going to see this huge launch. You have six months to prepare for it. So you need to have order massive amount of inventory because you need to prep to be able to send that out. It's not like I got the product in and a week later it goes out the door. It's especially with ours, there's a lot of like, uh, like manual processes.

1:21:22Maxx Chewning:And again, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. Right. So I'm not doing it the most optimal way and X, Y, and Z. I'm just like, I'll order it now, like timelines and inventory. So you're ordered, you have to order more inventory than you've ever had because you have this giant launch that you need are going to scale to. So you're ordering all that. You're spending the cash there, right? And generally, you got to pay for that product upfront. So it's not like you get it. And when they pay me, I can pay this manufacturer, you pay the manufacturer. So you have the packaging, the storage, the product itself, the labor, then you're putting it all together.

1:21:53Maxx Chewning:Then you have to store it and you're hoping you're not storing it for longer than you need to, because then it's taking up space. Again, there's so much bullshit that goes on, but you have to pay for all that product way ahead of time because he manufactures to make the more product. You got to ship the product. So it's like, you have to order it months and months ahead of time. So you're paying for it months and months ahead of time. Then it's finally the big day, right? You launch into the store, you send all that, which you've already paid for. Now it goes into the store, right? Then you have payment terms.

1:22:23Maxx Chewning:And for a store like Target, it could be 60 to 90 days. So let's say you have two to three months before they're going to pay you for that. So you paid for it over here. You waited. You don't have that cash anymore. It launched. Let's say you ordered it in February and March, and you've been wasted that or spent that cash three months before it launched. It launches in June. You don't get paid for three months after that. Okay. But during that time, you're hoping it's a success. So when it launches in June, July, August, September, let's say you to September, right? Hopefully if it's booming, they're like, this is selling real.

1:23:01Maxx Chewning:So they're placing more orders. And also you need to order enough inventory to support the launch, but you got to assume that it's going to do decent. So you need inventory to support the restock itself. And then you need to support all of the purchase orders that are going to come in. And assuming, let's say you're like, this is going to crush it. Let's say every week they're ordering, ordering, ordering, ordering, ordering still 60, 90 days. So you need to float like six to nine months of essentially no cash coming in of that retailer, this big expansion that you're so stoked for and all of the restocks, all of the other orders and assuming you're scaling in other stores.

1:23:37Maxx Chewning:Right. So you need to front all this money. And then it's kind of this like, I don't say first world problem, but like the money is coming in, you know, it on the P and L, the receivables, like it's coming in, but you need to, what are you going to do for that seven months? Especially if you're a startup, you don't have all this cash. And then when the checks start rolling in, then it's like, Oh, right. Then it's like, then it's rich again. Yeah, exactly. Then it's all good. But, but again, you're getting paid three months later and guess what? You have that slotting fee. So not only you're not, you're, you're getting paid.

1:24:10Maxx Chewning:Wow. You're getting paid. That first paycheck is a huge chunk taken out. I mean, it's, Oh, they just, they just take it right out. They take it out of that. Yeah. So you're not paying it. They pay, they take it out of what they pay you. That's nice. Um, so, and guess what? There's also on payment terms, they also take a discount. So they'll take like a, most stores are like a, a 2 % discount. So they, they will pay you later, which again, a lot of times you can negotiate, but a lot of the big stores are like, you want to be in this big store, you're playing by our rules. So they're going to wait 30, 60, 90 days, and they're going to take a 2 % discount and you're going to pay slotting fees.

1:24:46Maxx Chewning:So it's a, yeah, it's a crazy experience. Oh, they're just like, they're just like, yo, cause you're hanging out in Target. We're actually 2 % come back to us boss, man. And you're like, yeah, there's the fees to do it. And then, and then there's all these promotions. And then if you don't do the promotions, which the promotions can cost tens of thousands of dollars to do. And if you don't do them, then a lot of times these bigger stores will basically be like, like, man, you're not like, you're not being a partner with us. Like, so you like have to do a lot. You don't have to, but like, you kind of need to do this because you want to show them that you're investing into them.

1:25:19And it's... That's like making the bag three bucks, you're saying, instead of$3.49 for a period of time.

1:25:23Maxx Chewning:I mean, you could do it, whether it be a discount, it could be like an end cap. Oh, you give them, okay, I see. So they're like, hey, here's an aisle promo we'd like to do with you. And you're like, oh, and they're like, it's going to be 50 grand. And you're like, oh, I don't know if I can do this. They're like, well, come on, why don't you want to do promos? What, are you broke? Yeah. Cash flow problem? So, and this is with like, this isn't just like a Target thing. This is like really with like a lot of stores. Like it's, they don't want to feel like you're like just trans, like they place POs, you ship them products.

1:25:50Maxx Chewning:That's it. Right. They want to feel like you're a partner together. And you're like, could we be partners where I don't just give you like a bunch of money? Maybe you just put us in the store and I just make you more money. And they're like, nah. So all of that had to happen. Like that moment when we went into target and we had all this other kind of growth starting to happen. That period of time was probably cashflow has always been stressful, but that was the moment where like the, and I'm the only, I'm the only one that sees this, right? Uh, that was the moment where like the accounts got like depleted, depleted where I'm like, Oh fuck, we don't have any money.

1:26:26Maxx Chewning:Where did it all go? I'm like, and that was the biggest thing. Like with cashflow is like, you'd spend all this money and you literally would go, where did it go? Like I'm not pulling cash out. I'm not buying shit. I'm not doing anything with it. I'm like, I know we're just putting it back in the business, but I'm like, where is it? Where I know we're, we did, you know, millions of dollars in our first year. I'm like, where it ain't anything count. Where is it? Right. So money from YouTube as well as like affiliate with say ghost or something that was paying earlier your actual bills. You weren't, you weren't taking money from sour strips in those early days.

1:26:59I didn't take money.

1:27:00Maxx Chewning:I started, once we started structuring like a holdings company, like just for tax purposes, then I started paying like a management fee. Basically sour strips would pay a management fee because I was essentially working for free for sour strips. Right. So you start deciding like what your like what your payment is like running as a CEO. But you also don't want to you're managing cash where I was fortunate to have this other stream where, you know, maybe my salary for running a, you know, uh, an eight figure company, like think of like how much would a CEO running a, call it a$20 million company, like solid make right solid salary.

1:27:41Maxx Chewning:But you're like, I don't, I'm not going to pay myself hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Cause I'm, that's like the, I don't need, I don't necessarily need the money. I don't want to pull that money out. Um, so cashflow is just a bitch and, uh, you just never know what's going to happen. You never know what like problems going to happen. That's going to like, just the problem is like you, when you forecast, like, and I didn't really do forecasting, but when you, when you're like each month when you're like, okay, I know this is going to be this expense. Like I know this is going to be that every day or every week is something popping up that just costs you money every, and it could be an error in the, by the team, which again is generally of like, did you teach them the way to not make that error or did you put the right people in place?

1:28:23Maxx Chewning:So it's, it's always like your fault. Right. You know, it's kind of like, uh, it's kind of like if the team was someone said, it's like, if the team succeeds, it's like, it's like everyone did it. If the team fails, it's because you sucked. Right. Like it's, you know, it's like we did as a team, but if it failed, it's because the leader was bad. Right. So it's, um, it's a lot of pressure onto you to, um, you know, teach how you want to do. And also mistakes are going to happen. And we've, there's been a lot of errors by me, by my team that have cost, I mean, hundreds of thousands over the years for sure.

1:28:55Maxx Chewning:But it's only a problem if it like repeatedly happens, then it's like, what the fuck are you doing? Right. But if it's a singular time where it's this big expense, it's like, then it's okay. Why did this happen? You know, like, why did this happen? What was not in place? Who didn't know about it? Like, how do we, how do we make sure this never happens again? And that's the important thing is like learning from those, not just being like, this costs$5 ,000, this costs$10 ,000. It's like, why did, why did this happen? How did I not catch this type of thing. And it's only things start repeating. Then, then there's a bigger problem with maybe the structure of the organization that you have.

1:29:28Were you using like 27 different business credit cards to be able to float this money or never used never business credit at all?

1:29:35Maxx Chewning:No, I, no, I def I'm a huge credit card guy. Same, same. I got, I got them all in my little chat GPT so I can see what they do. Yeah. But the, but the credit cards you, I mean, like two, but most of the time people don't let you pay with credit cards because they get those little fees. Yeah. So you can't pay the credit cards, but I mean, I only like one or two credit cards. So I never had like big lines of credit, like Lily, the 50 K and then the money from what that 50 K created funded the entire business. That is insane. Yeah. And so they're just yanking cash constantly for all these orders.

1:30:06Maxx Chewning:You can't do that. I'm sending it all. Like every wire, every money that has gone out of the account from the day one to, uh, before the company got sold, uh, every single dollar was like me going ACH to this person, wire to this person. I, I transferred all the money. I managed all the money. I was the only one that could see the account. I was the only one that decided, yes, we should spend money on this. No, we shouldn't. Um, so I'm amazing, but I'm not like a finance guy. I just like, I just did a lot of things like with my, with my gut. It was like, do we need to do this? Yes. Okay. We got money.

1:30:41Maxx Chewning:I know money's coming in. And I also, again, not a good business practice, but like generally you should know what your receivables are where you kind of like, if it's January, you should know on like a spreadsheet what's coming in later that month, what's coming in next month. And you do cash flow analysis, right? I would just each day get whether it be a check or like a deposit. I was like, oh, shit. Nice. Like, I'm like, oh, that was a bigger one than last time. it wasn't like, okay, on the 13th, we should be getting the paid from the three months ago. I, and again, not like in a, I'm so cool.

1:31:16Maxx Chewning:The business just worked. Cause I'm so good at what I did. It was like, I didn't know like what to do. And I was so trying to like cash strappy. That's why I was like someone like I had a bunch of buddies that would have businesses that were scaling. They're like, yeah, two years in, I have, I just hired a CFO and a COO. And I was like, nah I can do it I'll figure it out and they're like you would save so much money because they would save all these mistakes I was like nah I figured it out and I was just stubborn and I was like stubborn of just being like no I can manage it when I shouldn't have been doing it you think you should have brought on a CFO earlier or no well I did it all you know so the only person a person that I hired that has been with us for about a year and a half was an inventory analyst and I would say that was the single role that I absolutely should have hired so early on, especially in CPG and your scaling.

1:32:10Maxx Chewning:If I mean, the inventory management was probably the single most difficult thing in the most stressful thing of not trying to run out of product, run out of like specific types of products, packaging, not ordering too much timelines. You're not getting product in six months early when you could have ordered it three months early and then that cash could have used for other things um that sounds like a key hire oh no inventory analyst is that's the one that's phenomenal hire okay so let me ask you this how far into you creating sour strips did you feel like holy shit this could become a huge huge company that i could day one i'm just kidding eventually sell and get acquired for.

1:32:59Maxx Chewning:Was that your goal from day one? I never thought that. Interesting. Ever, ever. And I've, what I've always said, and you can ask any of my friends, I've never once, never once to my friends while Cyrus Strips, did the words come out of my mouth that I'm building this to sell, that I want to sell it, that, man, I hope I sell it. Never. You can ask Christian, I'll go on a lie detector test, right? And then even in my videos, when people would ask, I never got asked that question when I started sour strips the number one question I got asked was like would you sell it would you sell it would you sell it and I was like I never even fucking thought about that like because again I started it not to build this multi-million dollar candy company it was just oh Christian did energy drinks he's energy drink guy um I really know a good amount about candy I think I'll figure this out and then it just scaled like I just I never had time to do that so there wasn't this strategy I'm gonna launch online and then I'm gonna go my go to market strategy is going to be in retail.

1:33:54Maxx Chewning:I'm going to expand distribution. It was just like, I don't know. Um, so I, when I got asked this question, I, I, then I started being like, that's a, I never thought about that. But the entire time with sour strips, it was, I learned a whole lot, um, was fun as shit every single day. And it's an industry that I love and I was able to make content around it. Right. So I never had, and we were scaling and we were profitable since day one and we became more profitable. So like I was making money, I was having fun, I was disrupting this industry and I loved what I was doing every day. Why would I sell it?

1:34:29Maxx Chewning:Right? Like I'm making money, like we're growing like crazy. And then as you get larger, the problems get larger, the risk gets larger. Right. Um, and, uh, it's a very difficult kind of like thought process. And when people would ask me if I would sell the company, like you can go back and look in my Q and A's, what I would always say is I never even considered the option. I got hit up all the time by like private equity companies that would, and I never like went down the rabbit hole, but like they would hit me up and be like, we love what you're doing. We'd love to, whether it be investor, like buy a portion.

1:35:01Maxx Chewning:I, in my Q and A's, I always said, I was like, I have zero interest in selling this to a company, um, that is just going to like use it for cashflow, like a private equity venture firm, zero interest in that. I said that, excuse me, um, I would be open to like conversations with basically another candy company that would see what we're doing and help us scale beyond because all those sour strips, my, my dream with sour strips was always to prove that I could do it to disrupt this industry to like almost show like prove that like this dude who loves candy can create something that the other brands are like, who is this guy?

1:35:48Maxx Chewning:Right. To do that. I wanted to, you know, uh, achieve, achieve financial benefit from it as well. But I want, and I, but then the final thing was like, I want sour strips to be like the sour candy brand of like the generations. Like I want it to be around for, I want it to be a legacy brand. And am I doing the brand disservice by scaling it to like the way that I'm scaling it, um, with potential like pitfalls or like, could another company help me with their resources of manufacturing, of their ability of economies of scale, to be able to lower costs, like to take what I could do in 20 years to do in three, five, right?

1:36:29Maxx Chewning:Like I, cause my goal is like, I want more people to eat this candy. So I always said like, I would be open to selling it to a company or selling a part of it to a company where they, uh, loved what I did and wanted to like help make this dream of reality and like turn it into something. So selling it was never, I never thought about that. It was kind of like, I've always been a, um, while people maybe look at my life and see a lot of the successes that I've had. I actually talked about this two episodes ago and Christian's like, I'm gonna hit a million subscribers. And I'm like, bro, I don't think you're gonna hit a million subscribers in your second one.

1:37:08Dude, people were dogging on you in the comments. People fucking

1:37:10Maxx Chewning:ripped me a bit. And like I said, if people don't listen to the end of the podcast, if they get to the end of the podcast, I basically circle back on it. And I'm like, I realized that like Christian, your ability to dream is something that I can't even fathom. Like I can't, because I look at a lot of what I do. And I go, that's, that's not, I can't do that. Like that's impossible. Right. So even with sour strips, when people are like this coming, like scaling, you could sell it. And I'm like, that's never going to happen. Like, like that's not, not to me. Like I just, I never, I never thought these like crazy things could happen to like me.

1:37:43Maxx Chewning:It was more like, nah, that's like, I'm just this goofy guy. I don't actually know business. I don't know honestly what the fuck I'm doing. Like, I'm just, um, I'm, I'm always been like a, like a scarcity mindset type of guy, even though I, I want to make it believe like I'm like this abundance type of thing, but I'm, I'm more like, I don't know if that can happen. If it does, that's crazy. Right. Versus like I'm manifesting this. I will, I will achieve it. Right. I'll never stop until I do it. Um, so I selling, it was never a thought. Um, and again, it helped that it was just, I never had time because it was like scaling, growing year over year, making money.

1:38:21Maxx Chewning:Um, Um, so it never kind of came up. I've seen you post this on your story where people were like, oh, do you feel like you got lucky with sour strips? And I love how you comment back to them. You're like, you should, you should go make one. You should go make like a fucking candy bread. You think you're, you think I got lucky. You should go do it. If it's so lucky, you should go do it. Right. Do you have any want to run this back at a later moment? I know you're about to have a baby literally, it could be tomorrow, it could be next week. Like, is there anything in you where you're like, this chase was so fun and I had so much adrenaline during it that I could see myself maybe one day in the future, maybe when your kid's grown up, your kid's off to college, that you would want to do something like that?

1:39:02Or are you content? And are you like, I'm ready to be like the best dad ever and see what Hershey's is going to end up taking this into the, you know, into this next chapter of its life? Probably more so that I, um, I, I guess you could say never say never.

1:39:19Maxx Chewning:but I think that Sour Strips was my contribution to this industry that I have loved since I was a kid. Like, I think it was the impact that I could make. And I, I, I, I fucking did it right. Like I, I created something, uh, I created a brand that was so cool that one of the largest candy companies in the world decided that, that they think it's so cool too. And I was able to build this and, you know, I can sit on a podcast and go so in depth because I know what I'm talking about, right? Like I, I, I know the struggles that went into it. I know the time that went into it. Um, and, uh, I, I don't think I'll ever, I think this was my lightning in a bottle.

1:40:05Maxx Chewning:And I think this is the impact because I don't, I honestly don't think I can create something that is better than what I've created. Um, I think that this was the pinnacle in the candy world of what I was, what I wanted to do and what I was able to achieve. And I'm so proud of what myself and my team was able to accomplish in such a short period of time that I, you know, assume and hope that Hershey will do it justice, which I know they will. And you know, when I'm my kids and my grandkids can be like my fucking granddad he started that like right like he he did this right um and I think that's so cool and I I don't need to prove to myself that I can do it again I um sour strips changed my life and it changed a lot of people's lives and um you know I'm talking about kind of like the impact I was able to make on um a lot of my employees that were with me from the first day, I was able to change more than just my life with the sale of the company.

1:41:06Maxx Chewning:And I like, I never can go in depth in that. And but it's like, I was able to impact more than just my life by selling this company. And it's something I'm super proud of that I was able to do with the people that helped me get it there. And I, yeah, I think this is, this is my contribution to the candy world. And that was it. And I think I fucking crushed it. Like, I think we crushed it. And I think we crushed it so well that I think people are replicating what we're doing or trying to replicate in some fashion the thing that we built. And I think that speaks volume. You know, there's a reason why people are trying to do things that are trying to be similar to what Sour Strips is.

1:41:53Maxx Chewning:I think that speaks volumes in itself. And I'm super proud of this. And now it's kind of onto the net. I've always looked at like my life and like these kind of like five year like buckets or what's that happened to happen. You know, it's like when I graduated college, I started YouTube and that five year journey was starting my YouTube career while working a full-time job and putting out like four videos a week. So I worked for three years, started a clothing company, started my YouTube channel. And then in that five years, at the end of the three years, I quit my job, went all in on social media, started opening a gym.

1:42:25Maxx Chewning:And then at the end of that five year first bucket was literally did a powerlifting competition, hit fucking records, and then packed up my life and I moved to Texas. And I started the next five years in January of 2019. And that's where, you know, I got my dog, I started Sour Strips, I met my wife, I started a life in, in Texas, grew my social media even more, sold, sold my company, bought land, you know, build a home on got a word that I'm have my first child. And this next five-year bucket, I want it to be family and focus on that. And I don't think this will be the last challenge that I have in terms of business, right?

1:43:02Maxx Chewning:I have a lot of life challenges. But I don't know what businesses I'll get into. I don't know if I will start another kind of company. Maybe I just do, maybe I help people with their companies. Maybe I help, maybe I just work on my social media. Um, but I think, I think the crazy stressful life of entrepreneurism, especially the way that I never want to do what I did with sour strips again, I wouldn't, I'm so thankful that I did cause I learned so much, but I can't do that again. Like I can't do that again, especially now with a wife, with a, with a child. Like I just, I don't want to, like, I don't want to.

1:43:37Maxx Chewning:And I'm fortunate that I don't have to. And, um, So I don't know what businesses I'll maybe get into, but that this chapter, this five-year bucket was a fucking epic one. And now we're on to the next one. I'm excited for what that story is going to tell. And it starts with the birth of our first son, which is going to be in, you know. A couple hours. Yeah, like literally any day now. So amazing. That's amazing. So I was listening to, actually, I wasn't listening to the full podcast. I saw a clip and I brought it up to Brayden. It was a clip of Jessica Alba. And I forget the woman's name whose podcast it was.

1:44:14She was the girl who helped launch Skims. She's like this boss CEO lady. And they were talking about. The Australian girl? Yes. Okay. She was on a Shark Tank. Yeah. And they were talking about money. And the woman asked Jessica Alba about money. And Jessica Alba was like, when you have it, she's like, I want to go on record and say, it's amazing to have and it allows you to be like exactly who you want to be and do exactly what you want in this life and when you don't have it it's hard to make decisions and to live the life you actually want to live because you're kind of in survival mode as someone who just got acquired and like money is kind of like no longer an issue for you in your life how does that change the way that you're able to live your life?

1:45:02Or do you feel like you don't think about it too much? You're like, I have this amount of money, I'm all good. I'm still gonna be living my life exactly how I was before. Or does it allow you to change the way you live your life moving forward and maybe allow you to go 100 % in on this next chapter and be the best husband, best dad you could possibly be?

1:45:23Maxx Chewning:Yeah, money is, it's another topic that I am fascinated by, like finance and money and growing well. I've learned I love like, it's kind of like, I like almost growing my money more than I like spending my money. Um, cause I like the, it's like, I'm just like, I like game. Yeah. And I'm just like, and it's, uh, I even put it in like funny, like a chat TPT. I was like, one day I'm going to show my son, my portfolio is like, Oh my God, you're up this much. Like, when are you going to buy anything? It's like, no, we don't buy anything. We just flex on people and show them. We just watch. We just look at the account.

1:45:55Yeah, exactly.

1:45:56Maxx Chewning:And it's like, what the point um i think money it amplifies who you are if you were a fucking asshole before with no money you're an asshole with a bunch of money right um and i've done i've always been good with money even when i was i mean i've been literally work i took one semester off in college but i have been a at a physical job working for myself from i was 15 until now and i have always um been really good with my money of managing. I've never gone into debt. Like I've had car payments, right. And, but I've never gone into debt, credit card debt. I've always just been good at not spending more than I have.

1:46:33Maxx Chewning:And I've always been like, uh, scrappy with ways to make money, whether I've been selling shit, my room or building stuff for people's Jeeps or, uh, mowing lawns or getting a job or doing X, Y, and Z. Like I've always just like found ways to make money. Um, over ever since I was a kid, uh, I even had like a gumball machine at my dad's coffee shop, which is kind of ironic with candy, but, um, at like a gumball machine, my aunt got me and put it in there and I would like, you know, buy gumballs and put it in there and then like get the money. My parents would make me save it. Um, so I think money is similar to what, uh, you know, Jessica Alba, you have to say their full name.

1:47:08Maxx Chewning:No, Jess. I think that it's true. She says, you know, I've, I think money doesn't solve all your problems. I think money solves problems that money can solve those problems for it, which is a lot, right? Once, once you take away the stress of bills and you just take away the stress, um, then it just maybe decides like what the type of person you are, what the type of life you want to live. And, um, I've had not a lot of money and I've had a lot of money. I definitely think having a lot of money is probably a little more fun than, you know, having to stress about this or, you know, I, I, I look at like financial freedom of like, what are the things you actually like care about doing and, and certain things like being able to go into, you know, I know people will say like, I'm going to the grocery store and not look at prices and stuff, but that's like true.

1:47:56It's like, when you go to eat, it's like, you know,

1:48:00Maxx Chewning:it's like, Oh, which appetizer order of the three you want? Like, you know, it's like order these things, like, you know, get the fucking Wagyu steak. If you want to try it, like you're able just to do these things you, you before be like, ah, what if I like don't like it or I don't spend this money or like, you know, even having like, you know, ready, like a bunch of, I'm a huge, like I love drinks, like beverages, right? Love them. Like I want my fridge stocked with 17 different like drinks options, right? Like I look at that as luxury, like having all these ready to drink, whether it be like proteins and like, you know, all these energy, I know I work with ghosts and everything, but like having a fridge stock with like 17 different types of beverages, I look at that as like, this is living.

1:48:39You got to do the fridge restocking videos, dude. You know, You know this Sebastian Maniscalco, the comedian? I think so. Italian dude. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He has such a funny bit about bringing a girl over. He's like, fellas, you got to have options. For sure. He's like, you can't bring a girl over and just offer her water. She comes over. I got a fridge stocked. I was like, you want Orange Gina? She's like, you got Orange Gina? He's like, yeah, baby. Come on. Sit down. I got Orange Gina.

1:49:09Maxx Chewning:I can find these old videos at my old condo in D.C. my fridge, I probably had like, like I probably had nine different like diet soda options, like at any given time, fully stocked all the way to the back, baby. Right. Like yeah. Like bottles of water. I was just, I loved it. Um, so, uh, money is something I love talking about it. I love it. I look at my finances like throughout the day. Like I'm always like, whether it be investments or just, I love money. Right. Um, but in a way of like, I love making more of it, but you know, my life is, I think now it gives me the ability to again, do what I want when I want to do it at a level that I could have never imagined.

1:49:53Maxx Chewning:But, um, I think it also allows you to, whether it be, you know, me being able to help, you know, whether it be retire my mom, help my immediate family. If there's a business idea they have, I can be the lone, be like, here, here, here's the money. Like, you don't go to bank. Like, here, take it. I hope I get it back or something, you know. But it's being able to do things like that. Or I love, like, I love spoiling the people around me with stuff. I love, you know, my wife doesn't ask for a single thing from me, even though the internet, you know, probably has perception, you know, if a girl meets a successful guy, she's only like him for his money but like i love you know i love getting like nice gifts for my wife like because i don't care about designer shit really like i so i i like buying stuff for her that like like her eyes light up she never asked me for it but i i love when she talks about a bag i'm like christmas you know my head i mean like i like i like the fact that like money can almost like uh um just do a lot of things for like a lot of cool people like around and you know as soon as I sold the company, the first thing that I did, I told Taylor, uh, my wife, I was like, as soon as I sold the company, I was like, I want to rent a private jet and I want to, uh, rent a baller ass house, a ski in ski out in Vail.

1:51:13Maxx Chewning:And I want to get, I want to get our dog and I want to get our friends and I want to fly everyone there. And I don't want anyone to pay for anything. I was like, that's what I want to do. I'm gonna get my friends. Like y 'all just need to show up at this airport. I got a plane. I got the house. Like, uh, they didn't let me pay for their lift tickets, even though I wanted to do that. But they, um, I was like that, like that was the cool thing. Right. And it's not like, yo, look at me guys. Like I got y 'all a jet. It's just like, I I'll get it. Like, I don't like whatever, you know? Um, so I like that kind of stuff.

1:51:43And, um, and I don't know, it's a, it's a cool point moving forward.

1:51:47Maxx Chewning:It's like, if I get into hobbies, I can, you can be the dude, your best. Yeah. Best stuff right off the bat. You You mentioned this with Christian a while ago, talking about investing. And Christian's like, I got this money management firm. And you were like, you can do it yourself. I like being like hands on. Learn with like the candy thing. Yeah. You can do it yourself. Explain to me now. I'm sure that people were hitting you out of the woodworks. Hey, let me help you invest with your money. And I saw you post a story the other day where you're like, dude, half of it, S &P. And then the other maybe money markets, whatever.

1:52:18Is that what you've done since the very beginning? because that's what I've done as well. And I'm curious, as this stuff starts to grow, do you plan on doing anything with it? Or are you like, the books, the simple way is the way to freedom.

1:52:33Maxx Chewning:So I think different stages of your life should depict kind of like your investment strategies, right? And it's going to change over time. And trust me, everyone is a fucking expert. Everyone has the best strategy. Everyone is like, bro, you got to do this. And if that's the case, I should be like, you know what you want to do to get really wealthy? You got to start a candy company, bro. That's what you really got to do, right? You got to start a CPG brand right before COVID.

1:52:57Maxx Chewning:So everyone has successes and everyone is probably right in some aspect. But it also comes down to like your risk tolerance. And for me, I'm at a point where the risk was the business, right? And now when you get to certain like levels of wealth, the game has changed for you. and your goal is to preserve that wealth and not fuck it up for like, you know, trust me, two generations from now, they're all going to burn your money anyway. So, uh, you know, your grandkids are definitely going to spend it all anyway. So, but like during your lifetime is, and people see me like when I, whether it be when I bought land and I bought another piece of land or I bought like my truck or I got this watch, uh, which I got like engraved with like the sour strips, like sale date and stuff.

1:53:42Maxx Chewning:People are like, this guy's fucking burning through his money. I'm like, guys, I haven't spent a dime from the sour strip sale. Like my investments have returned greater than I've spent and I've spent a lot. And like, but that's like, it's, it's like, you should, I would never in a million years. First of all, I, I told my wife this, I was like, I, one thing I promise you is like, I will always protect this family in terms of like a financial security to the point where like, I will never do anything that would fuck this up for us. Like ever. I might do some stuff that might dip for a little bit, but I was like, it, like, I will never do something irrational with our finances to the point where like max lost it all ever period.

1:54:20Maxx Chewning:I'm confident in that. Um, but I think preserving wealth and understanding your risk mitigation and you can always like chase bigger yields, right? Like you could put everything in, you could put everything in like bonds and lock your money up and get steady fixed income cash flow. It's going to be a lower percent, but it's like 0.01 % risk. Or you could put in the S and P maybe seven to 10, it could go down, could go up. Or like some people would say when you're younger, put it more into like riskier stuff. So you have time for volatility over the years, but it depends what game you're playing and how you sleep at night.

1:54:51Maxx Chewning:If you sleep it better at night, making 4 % versus stressing all the time, trying to make seven or 8%. Is that really worth it? And does that money, you know, yeah, it's like, yeah, but you can make more money for next generation, but bro, I got enough money. Like I got enough money. My kids are good. My grandkids are good. Like there'll be enough money. I don't need to like stress and chase the yield, but some people get advisors because whether or not they're better or not, um, or they just don't want to like, like Christian's someone like he loves probably money and finance, but he doesn't want to manage it.

1:55:23Maxx Chewning:Right. I'm someone that like, I want to make the decisions on my money, whether or not that's actually yielding me the best results. Probably not. But I just, that's what I like to do. Um, so as far as like allocation of stuff, yeah. Um, like my portfolio is essentially probably 50 % in equities like S &P and like, like stocks. Right. And then probably 30 % in like municipal bonds, which is probably a lot at my age because I could take riskier stuff, but it also almost protects myself from myself where I can like lock up a chunk of money for one to five years, still get dividends from that, which I can invest in, but you're getting monthly payments tax-free.

1:56:00Maxx Chewning:And, um, you know, it's kind of like, it's just a safer bet. You're hedging your bets and then keeping a percent in, say, cash, but it's high-yield savings account, super liquid like money markets. And then you basically just figure out the lifestyle you're trying to live. Like, how much money do you want to spend every month, right? And that's a question, because at first you're like, I want to be able to ball out, but like, what do you actually want? Like, is it you want 10K a month? You need 50K? You need 100K? Like, what is the life that you're trying to live? And you work backwards from that, and you work backwards of how you try to achieve that for the longest period of time ever.

1:56:37Maxx Chewning:And that's going to change over time. But if you're someone who sells your company, you're like, okay, I want to live pretty fucking cool. I want to do these cool things. I need 40K a month to spend for my bills, utilities, spending stuff. Let's say it's 40K, which is a lot of fucking money, right? You would just work backwards. Like, what do I need to achieve that guarantees that it's giving me 40K a month, right? But it's maybe not locked up forever if I need to change that down or up. and your lifestyle is going to change over time. And like lifestyle creep is a real big bitch. But did that ever catch up to you at all?

1:57:11Did you ever? No, never. You felt really good about it the whole leading up.

1:57:15Maxx Chewning:Man, without sounding like a fucking dickhead, I like I could have been. I look at a lot of like younger influencers who start making a bunch of money. And a lot of times I'm like, either they're making 10 times more than me or they're just completely stupid without their spending their money. Right. Because I know that years ago, I'm like, I know I'm bringing in a lot of cash and I am not spending like that. I was like, they're either balling or they're just spending, right? I think it's the spend. Yeah. And everyone, you never know. No saving. Yeah. No saving. So I, even from like, I could have been spending a lot more of my kind of like world throughout, but it's just like spending money is my favorite.

1:57:59Maxx Chewning:Like I spend, I spend money and I spend a lot of money on the things that I feel the value they give me are going to be like relative to the, the, the money that it costs. Right. So I don't really, at this stage, I don't care what something costs me. I care about the value that I'm getting out of it. And if I feel like I'm not getting a value, I don't want to spend money on it. I'm going to, I'm going to take the time to, to try to get it for cheaper. And that could be as little as I found a way to save$5 off this. Right. Or like, I'm talking with my lawn guy for a random property and he quotes me this and I'm negotiating down 50 bucks, like some people be like, bro, you can just do whatever.

1:58:38Maxx Chewning:And I'm like, I like, I like the game. I think as a dude, I think men like love negotiating. First of all, like it's like part of the game of like business. Um, but also like if something can take me two minutes and I can save five bucks by going somewhere, I'm like, I'm going to fucking do it. Cause I like the process of like doing this, but in certain things where I'm like, I know that I'm just blowing this money on this thing, but I just need it fixed. I need it done. That's where like money comes in and it's just like solves it. And it almost like contradicts you trying to save over here when you're like, bro, you could have done X, Y, and Z to not spend that.

1:59:09Maxx Chewning:But like, yeah, but I don't fucking care about that. And I wanted to, it's just to be done. And I don't want to go through the hassle of getting this hundred, like, it's not worth my time, but be like, but that is be like, I just, I'm a hypocrite. Right. So, um, yeah, money is like a fascinating tool to use to like what you want to do. And it just depends like the life you want to work and you work, you just work backwards. How much do you want or need? And then that's where you invest. Um, but, uh, yeah. And I think with advisors and whatnot, uh, I think generally investing in the market will probably yield you great results, but that's not to say that investors and advisors like don't have a place where they could surpass what you could do on your own because they do do that.

1:59:51But I always just look at like, it's kind of like when I work on my car randomly and I like

1:59:56Maxx Chewning:couldn't do something. And I'm like, man, I need to take it to a shop. And I'm always like, I mean, a shop's like, it's just a dude. It's just a dude doing the same thing I'm doing. He just kind of knows it. I'm like, I can figure, I like, I can, I can figure this out. Right. So I like learning stuff, like learning about things and finance while I'm still like, um, not like the best at it. I, I, it's something that like, I enjoy spending my, I don't look at it as like me just like staring at my portfolio all day. I'm like, just, I'm like learning in different like bits and pieces about finance and like seeing how things work over time and whether or not I got a big yield or not.

2:00:30Maxx Chewning:I learned about it. Now I kind of know a better way, or maybe I need to be more aggressive in this investment versus being so like a frugal in terms of like not thinking it's going to yield results. So, um, that's just like what I like spending a lot of my time on, honestly. We only got a couple more. We'll get you out of here. I know you're good, man. Okay. If your kid was to listen back to this episode, call it 10, 15 years down the line, when they can really understand what you built, what would you hope for them to understand about this life that you built and the journey that you went on to get to this point?

2:01:07That's a good question, dude.

2:01:10Maxx Chewning:I... I think that the biggest, I have a lot of fears about raising a child, right? And making sure that I'm a father figure that like instills a lot of good values and a father that takes the things that maybe I know that I lack in and not showing him these like ways about myself so he doesn't maybe, you know, it could be procrastination organization. Like I need to be better. So he doesn't become these things where I know I'm like, man, I wish I was better at this. And I keep trying. Like, um, I guess I would hope that I've instilled enough values and, uh, morals in him and however many kids I have at that point to the point where like the life that they live, um, although like they need to understand how privileged and fortunate that they are to like be in this, in this world.

2:02:04Maxx Chewning:And like, of what, uh, maybe I was able to do it at a younger age, but not, um, feel that that is like the norm or not feel that they can just like float through life and that dad will, that will float them. Cause that's a big concern that I've had is, and I've done a lot of like, I go deep on like Reddit threads or whatever of like people, especially start getting into any sort of wealth of like, how do you make sure your kid's not a piece of shit who just like is a spoiled kid. Right. And you know, it's like, Oh, do you, do you make them do things when you could just pay someone to do them? It's, but like, I, I don't want to, our kid will live a great life and I'll take care of them and I'll take care of all of our kids.

2:02:43Maxx Chewning:But like, I don't, I don't want to give him everything that he asked for. I want him to, especially as a, as a man to a man, like I want him to like work and learn and like, Hey, your, your dad had a big windfall when he was like 35, but you know, that took 20 year. I started working. I was 15. Like I, I spent 20 years essentially building, building, you know, building the person I was to be able to achieve that. And at a minimum seven years to get to the point of starting the company that then took five years. Right. So it's like, I really spent 12 years of my life in the social media, real deep business.

2:03:20Maxx Chewning:But, you know, earlier on that, I understood the value of money and how I, and that's why I'm like, I feel like I'm good with money because I earned my money. I know how hard it is to make money. Like, I think people don't appreciate or don't realize how, whether it be, you know, 10 grand, a hundred grand, a million dollars, like it is hard to make that amount of money. And right. And generally the more money you make, the more money you start making. Right. So it becomes almost like easier, the more money you make. But like, it's not like, that's what I'm gonna teach Charlie, my son. It's like, like, get your ass out there and mow the lawn.

2:03:56Maxx Chewning:You want it to money? Like you want to buy some stuff for like, Hey, like I'll, I would love to pay you, but like you need to work for this. And it's like, I've, I don't want to give him everything. So I hope that he understands like the value of money and the hard work that goes into making that money. And he doesn't think that, um, you know, just cause dad is wealthy, dad, mom are living good. It's like, we're wealthy, son. You're not wealthy. You know, Shaq. Do you see that? This is my money. Have you seen that? I've seen something similar. Like Kevin O 'Leary is like, well, I don't want to sit in first class cause I'm rich.

2:04:27Maxx Chewning:You're not rich. Yeah. Shaq like flew across the country to be his kid. Mom and dad are first class. Last row, brother. Last row. Walk your ass back. That's the thing. It's like, I have no idea like what, you know, like I've never came I've done well but I've never came into like a a really wealthy point of my life and now I need to raise a child to be not spoiled when I I didn't grow up with my parents having a bunch of money so it's not like oh I know how it is like I don't how I've I can't like use my own early beginnings like I'm just gonna have to show them like work and like understanding the the value of money is so important and that's why I spend money when I want to spend money.

2:05:08Maxx Chewning:I'm good with making money and I'll continue to make money and, and not run out because I know how hard it is for every dollar that I have is a like time that I put into to earn that money. And, um, yeah. And then, like I said, once I'm, once I'm gone, I'm sure there's going to be like, now let's get the yachts. Yeah. You know, granddad's gone. Thanks for making that candy. Whatever, man. I'm ordered the helicopter. Man, son, you're, it's like stepbrothers. They're just wrapping on the boat yeah wrapping up your boat yeah yeah no exactly exactly and damn son you're uh you're zone six keep working higher you'll get to zone one yeah exactly like maybe you know if you if your grades are good i'll put you in the priority class at the beginning come for your seat with exit exit seat little extra leg we'll see but like as as weird as it sounds like you you need to do that like like maybe not that specifically but like you need to have them have hard, like you can't just dad, can I have this?

2:06:05Maxx Chewning:Can I have this? And I'll probably spoil the fuck out of my kids, but like to the point where I'm going to relate it to my childhood and they don't need to maybe struggle as hard. That's the thing is like, should your kids, I don't say struggle is a hard word, but should your kids go through the same times that you went to, because that's just what you went through. Or maybe now you can help them not go through that. But it's like, no, when, when, when he, when he turns 18 or whatever, it's not like he's just going to get a bunch of money. It's like, no, like you're going to get a, when you can get a job, unless you're in sports or like school and sports, probably your, or like extracurricular stuff or like your hobbies, like that's going to be your main focus.

2:06:39But like you need to have,

2:06:41Maxx Chewning:you need to make good grades and you need to be active with, with, with stuff. And then like, and you're going to get a G want stuff, get a job. Like, and if you want to work for me of some sort or whatever, it's like, you're going to work. It's not, I'm just going to pay you to do nothing. because I don't feel the best way. And I'm sure I'll bend the knee here and there. I feel like you would crush being a coach for your son. Probably. If he played sports, I feel like you would crush that. Yeah, I just came in and back talked to me and be like, 30 laps. Suicides, go. I got one more for you. If you could go back and chat with your 18-year-old self before you went on this journey, nothing that would change it, what would you say?

2:07:22Maxx Chewning:Don't you fuck this up. No, I don't know, man. You know, it's like you can't really change anything because everything led you to this moment. I would have, the people around me and myself, I would have never in a million years guessed that my life would have turned out the way that it has based on just my beliefs in myself and just like my surroundings. Like I wasn't surrounded by entrepreneurs. I wasn't surrounded by wildly successful people. My parents weren't wealthy. My, my, my parents' friends weren't wealthy. No one was driving fancy ass cars, like no one, nobody. Um, so I wouldn't, I didn't know this like a life of, uh, like working really hard.

2:08:08Maxx Chewning:You can have this like crazier life. It was like, I went into, you know, I got denied from my first college. Cause I had like a two, four in high school GPA and got denied from the one school of VCU, which I applied to went to community college and I felt like I was going to be a loser because I was going to community college. And, and then, you know, and even in college, I didn't care about school. I was just, I studied business administration, which makes sense now, but I only retained enough information to pass the classes and I just didn't care. Um, and I, I, I, my goal, me, my buddies always joked about it.

2:08:41Maxx Chewning:I was like, I was like, I just want, I don't care if I'm miserable at a job. I just want to make some money and I want to, I want to be, uh, I want to have a suitcase and a corner office. I had like a, I don't want to have like an assistant that I'm like, uh, cancel my calls today. And so I, I didn't have this like mapped out big life of what I was going to do. It's, um, I think I've just been someone who was like authentically himself, love it or hate it. And a lot of people don't love it. And I just was my, my same goofy self throughout my, uh, you know, early twenties and late twenties and early thirties.

2:09:16Maxx Chewning:And it's molded me into like kind of who I am and where I'm at. And, um, I don't think anyone could have expected. So I, I don't even know what I'd say. I'd just be like, don't change anything, man. Like, don't, don't change who you are. Cause you know, people say X, Y, and Z, you know, keep your like goofy self is going to be the biggest catalyst of like, what's going to help propel you like in life, like is being this goofy dude who just wants to entertain people. And, uh, you know, uh, something that I pride myself on over my journey is every decision that I've made and every, uh, every like decision and move that I've made has been, I think I felt good with myself, like on a moral and ethical way and to not do wrong by people and not take advantage of people and not lie to people.

2:10:11Maxx Chewning:And I pride myself on that and knowing up, I can like go to sleep every night on my pillow, knowing that I didn't rip people off, take advantage of people, scam people. And I could never do anything like that. And whether or not I was able to achieve the level of like, call it financial freedom that I have now earlier that I could have done, I am glad that my path maybe took me longer to get to this stage that I'm at in life. And I've learned so much and I can't wait to just instill all these values into my family and try to raise an even better version of how I hold myself. So I'm happy for you, man.

2:10:53This has been one of my favorite conversations. This is good. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been episode 168 of the 505 podcast. If you're still here, please hit the subscribe button, drop us a comment. We'll see you guys all next week. Peace.