Mid-Day Squares: The Human Side of Brand Building

0:00We sell across all over Canada and the United States in close to 11 ,000 stores. We've sold over 85 million bars to date. It just feels like we're just getting started. We started this in our condo kitchen. None of us really had any food experience. I think entrepreneurship humbles you no matter what. It's the one that can withstand the most amount of pain over a period of time and keep getting back up and recover and go back up. That usually wins the biggest in entrepreneurship or in anything. No one can be you but you. Welcome to the DTC Insider Podcast, where online business owners come to find actionable tips and tactics to grow their businesses.

0:35Now, here's your host, Brian Roizenthal.

0:45Hey, welcome to another episode. My name is Brian Roizenthal, and today I have a very special guest, someone I've been following for a long time. His name is Jake Carls and he's a co-founder of Midday Squares. Jake, thanks for being on the show. Fired up to be here. What's cooking, Brian? What's new? I love the guitar in the back. I love all the action. You're standing, I'm assuming. Yeah, I'm fired up to be with you. This is something new actually I'm doing to, you know, stretch my legs a little bit during the day. But yeah, by the way, as we speak, I don't want to say anything in advance. It's not me, but both of our countries are currently, at least at the time of this recording, the workout.

1:23Are you following the workup? Yeah, no, I'm super fired up. I hope Canada can take it all the way. They're on fire. It's exciting. It's super exciting. You know, I was always a hockey fan, but, you know, you got to watch this stuff when it's happening. And it's super cool to see. Yeah, exactly. And on my side, it's Messi's last workup. So he's good. He's good. He's good. Yeah, I don't know if we want to win because of Argentina or because of Messi. Both, both. Argentina's great. You guys are great. You guys are both. Both are great. And Canada is awesome too. Yeah, it's playing amazingly. So, yeah.

1:57So again, I'm excited for you to be here. I come, you know, we are 10 ,000 miles apart. You in Canada, I'm in Argentina. But I love doing this podcast because I get to meet amazing founders. Some are discussing offline that we haven't come. And I'm always fascinated by these stories because besides, you know, spreading the word, I learn a lot. And I appreciate you for being here. So I listen to many of your podcasts and I know many listening to these too, but in case they don't know you, could you please tell them more about who you are and more about Midday Squares as well? Yeah, so I started Midday Squares with my sister and brother-in-law.

2:37You know, I like to say that, you know, we're a family business, but we didn't go into business because we're family. You know, the three of us are extremely different, very different skill sets. So we're very complimentary. tree. The idea was we wanted to build the biggest afternoon snacking business and better for you, you know, globally. You know, right now we're just in North America, so Canada, U.S., but we started this off with a huge goal and we just make these squares, these we call them midday squares and they're afternoon snacks. When the 2 p.m. crash comes, it's something that's indulgence.

3:05It's better for you. It's the hybrid. It's got a little bit of protein, a little bit of fiber, and we're trying to build a fun brand while we're doing it. And, you know, I'll never forget, We started this in our condo kitchen. None of us really had any food experience. And the three of us were just, you know, like I say, irrationally optimistic and, you know, a little bit delusional. And we just put our heads down and we started hand making these bars every single day, filming everything on social media to show people what it looks like to build a business. And then we would hand deliver them because we couldn't really afford shipping to consumers across Montreal, where we're from.

3:36And we just did that day in, day out, rinse and repeat. and that slowly started to compound and multiply into something more meaningful. And, you know, we're now fast forward seven and a half years later. You know, we've built an amazing team of great humans. We sell across all over Canada and the United States and close to 11 ,000. We've sold over 85 million bars to date. And, you know, it just feels like we're just getting started. I think one of the coolest parts is we actually built our own manufacturing plant, you know, in Montreal. You know, we actually, it was a necessity. You know, when we went to Coman's co-manufacturers early on, they all told us that, or majority of them told us it was very difficult to make this product.

4:14So we ended up changing, sorry, staying true to what we wanted to do. We built our own facility and that's where I'm sitting today. It makes up to 150 ,000 midday squares a day, which is super exciting because we're hopefully expanding over the next couple of months to even make it even greater. So that's kind of the journey. Obviously, there's been a lot of ups and downs and good, bad, ugly in between. And I'm sure we'll talk about it, but that's the gist of what we're building. Yeah. I mean, it's amazing. Congrats again. I wanted to interview you for two reasons. Of course, one is the company side because the company is pretty successful.

4:46It has grown a lot, as you said. But the other one is your huge transformation, right? Because I personally relate because I, you know, I started my first venture in 2008 with a business partner. And that business partner, I see a lot of things from him in you, right? And he was very small, but with one big difference, he wasn't able to let go. He wanted to be everything. And I know you now, your role is the ring maker, the chief ring maker, right? Yeah. And I see your videos, man, and you really make it rain and it's amazing. But I want to ask you about that transformation. When did you first realize that you didn't want your current role?

5:33And what was that first conversation with your founding team like? Yeah, you know, when we started this business, the three of us were, you know, we're so we're equal partners. And, you know, they took my two partners took a co-CEO role. And I felt that, you know, I needed a role that was, in quotations, a big title. And that was just ego driven. And it really wasn't focused on playing to my strength. It was more what did I want to say I had. And I started as CMO, chief marketing officer, and I actually struggled. I struggled tremendously at the management aspect, the execution, the operational aspect of not the storytelling and marketing, but the everything that goes with being a very good leader in that sense.

6:12And after months, I just realized that this wasn't for me. You know, I was struggling. I wasn't enjoying it. It wasn't fun. It wasn't where I felt like I felt alive every day. And through therapy with my partners, because we go to a therapist, you know, almost weekly to work on communication. I came to realize that I need to change roles. And my partners were super supportive about it. And they just said, figure it out. Take your time to figure out what you do best and what your skills and superpowers are and go all in on that. And it took some time. But over time, I realized that I was a rainmaker.

6:42And what a rainmaker is, is simply someone that brings friendships to the organization, someone that focuses all of its time on making noise, increasing the surface area of luck for the organization and opportunities, and also bringing friends to the team. So if it's a friend in retail that we want to go work at a certain retailer, I'll go make friends with that retailer and then bring them in. If it's we need capital, I'll go focus on finding investors, making relationships with them, spending time with them. And then when the time is ready, I'll bring them to our finance team when we need to do due diligence.

7:13So my role is simply instead of marketing, I'm still doing some sort of marketing. So I'm building the brand and yelling and screaming and making noise and beating the midday squares drum every day. But I'm focused on how do I make friends for midday squares? What do I need to do? Where do I need to be? what noise do I need to make? And that became my role. And now I'm playing to my strength. And I believe I'm one of the best at that role because it's authentically who I am. And I learned that that's where I could spend energy and give the most amount of energy and actually feel like it's not really a job.

7:42It's more me just living my life while bringing the most amount of value I can to the organization. When did that happen? Was it before you were successful as a company or, you know, our first year goal, and my partners came out to me and told me in year one before we think it was August 4th, 2018, they said we're going to sell$250 ,000 worth of midday square. So let's just say at the time, I don't know, give or take 100 ,000 bars at the time, let's just say that was the number. And I thought they were crazy. I was like, no one knows us who is going to buy 100 ,000 bars, we don't have budgets to go do unlimited marketing or unlimited sampling or or big events, activations.

8:21I said, how are we going to do that? And they were so convinced. They had so much confidence and conviction that I was like, you know what? I'm kind of like, I like this delusion belief, this unconditional self-delusional belief, and this is possible. So I kind of just went with it. And then after three months, we blew past that. And I was like, holy, I was like, oh my God, this is real. That was the moment I started to believe that this is going to be part of my life for a very long time. And I need to get with the program and realize that this isn't something short term. This is a long game that I'm going to be on.

8:52And that's when I kind of start to change and start to realize that if I'm going to be doing this, I need to start doing what I love within this organization. I can't just try to hit the nail on the wall until it goes in, if it's not even moving, right? So after three months to that eight-month phase is when I start to really put deep thought into what do I need to do to make sure that I enjoy this journey as I'm on it, even though it's going to be painful, very hard, Very difficult, big sacrifices. How can I do that to sustain over a very long period of time and enjoy it? And that's when I figured out the Rainmaker role eight months in.

9:28And I dropped out of the CMO. I actually, you know, became managed at the time and I loved it. And, you know, today I'm basically independent of the organization indirectly. Like I focus on, no one really knows where I am half the time, but I'm focused on any type of friendship we can make for the business. It doesn't matter if it's something from a completely different industry. if it's something in government, if it's something in investment, in new team members, whatever it is, I'm just beating our drum to the world. I want everyone possible to know midday squares and I want to increase the surface level to be so large that every opportunity of luck can strike or every opportunity that we can get will actually get.

10:07So I don't know. My role is really strange and there's still moments that I feel very sad and very, you know, this is uncertain what the hell am I even doing? but I always carry myself back to my raison d 'être, as they say in French, or my why, my purpose of what I do every day needs to come back to that. And then that drives more energy and more energy every single time. Yeah, I love that because again, not many people can let go of their ego and their previous role. And sometimes it's not easy to find what's next for you within the company, right? And do you think that becoming, you know, in this case, the rainmaker is something founders earn over time or is it something that they should chase from day one?

10:48Because I'm asking because, you know, in one interview, I listened from Mr. Beast, this case, he said that, you know, everyone celebrates him now. He's successful and well-known, but nobody did that when he was a nobody and he was, I don't know, doing YouTube videos for 18 hours straight every single day. So what do you think about that? Do you think that anyone can, even if they have the skills, can say, I will be the rainmaker? Or is it something that, again, it's earned? I think, first of all, mad respect to Mr. Beast. You know, you're right. No one saw the time he spent and many other successful people, you know, in the world.

11:28And, you know, I always look at Michael Jordan. No one saw the back side of what he had to do to his greatness. And everyone I look up to has put in immense amount of time, sacrifice, and a lot of them have the ability to withstand immense amounts of pressure and pain for a very long period of time. But coming back to your question, I would say this, I would say it is extremely important. And I learned this from a guy named Ronan Harare. I don't know if I said his name right, but he was one of the founders of Spin Master. And I respect that company so much. And him and his partners, both of them, or all the three, I think it was three of them.

11:59But he said, it is really, and I'm paraphrasing, so I'm not sure if I'm saying it correctly, but this is what I interpreted, is that it is your duty to spend time and invest that time in taking risks and finding out what you need to do in your 20s. And the way I would take it even further myself, my opinion is during your 20s, you should invest and even 30s, you should invest so much of your time into understanding who you are, what your skill sets are, what you love, what energizes you. Once you have those answers, I would recommend you find the role that fits it, whether that's within corporate, whether that's within academia, whether that's with entrepreneurship, you need to spend those time, that effort, that resources, the energy, the behind the scenes that you've put in into figuring out what you need to do.

12:40And then you need to go all in on that 24-7, 365. And I'd say do it with strong opinions, Lucy held, because things will pivot and change. But at least you're directionally going in the right direction and that you'll live a very fulfilled life. So yeah, being a rainmaker, that works for me. And I think many other businesses should have rainmakers because it's someone that's focused on bringing opportunities all the time or modern day business development 24-7, 365, while the other teammates can do what they do best and not have to look for those opportunities. So yeah, I just think spend your young ages, in quotations, young, investing in yourself and investing in education and learning and understanding in therapy, whatever it is, to understand what you do best and what you believe your purpose is and your raison d 'etre and your why and what actually juices you up and makes you feel alive.

13:26Because if you do that, I guarantee you, you will see success or at least get yourself the opportunity of success. And success doesn't mean financial to everybody. It can mean many different things, but it will give you the opportunity of success because you put the time to understand. I did put the time in and I spent many, many years getting failures and things, learning what I was horrible at, learning what I was great at, learning what I don't want to do, what energizes me. Until this day, I'm 32. I am still learning because I still don't know it 100 % because it's never 100%. It's infinite learning forever.

13:56And if you continue to learn, you're going to win in whatever winning you define as winning, to be honest. Yeah, I'm 38 and still learning as well. My father, civil war, is 64 and still learning. So I think one of the problems is that, at least I have, right, is that social media puts too much pressure on us. Like everything needs to be right away. We need to have everything figured out. And sometimes we don't see through it and we don't see the realities behind the LinkedIn posts or anything like that. So we don't assume that it's fine to figure things out. And I mean, things are changing so fast right now.

14:31Like I own a growth marketing agency. Will there be any growth marketing agencies from five years from now or paydots or whatever? So we need to rementor ourselves so fast these days and fighting against this concept of having things figured out. Otherwise, we are not smart or whatever that, again, I admire what you may have done. So, but you know what, Brian, I think people, I think, and I appreciate you saying this, but I think, I think that people just need to, we don't know what's going to happen in a year. We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. Actually, we don't know what's going to happen 10 years.

15:03So I think the most important thing is how do you become so good at the present moment? How do you become so good at what you love and do that presently every minute of the day or every moment? If you do that, it's going to compound over time into something very meaningful, whether chocolate will still be a thing in so long or whether growth agencies will be, Who knows? We don't know. But what I do know is, Brian, you are the best at your game because no one can be you but you. I can't be you. You can't be me. And that's the difference. So if you understand yourself and you invest in those skills and you invest in learning and you invest in what makes you great, you will always have some sort of opportunity, whatever that is.

15:40Doesn't matter what industry it is, because no one is you. And I know it sounds cheesy. It sounds like, you know, like lucky talk, but it's not. It's actually real. And once you believe that and you truly believe in yourself, you'll figure everything out, no matter what, no matter how hard the moments are, no matter how great the moments are. And that's why I love the world we live in because at the end of the day, even with all the tools we have, whether it's AI, the internet, social media, we're still humans and humans have something unique about each one of us. That is something unique and we just need to lean into it.

16:11We need to lean and find it and go all in once you have that. Yeah, I agree. So you said Mike Jordan did a lot of hard stuff before becoming who he was ultimately. And the same with Mr. Beast and every other successful player, you know, outside and inside the court in this case, in the business as well, in the business landscape. So what was like for you? What were the hard things that you need to went through that you want to share, of course, before becoming who you are? I think I've been through many hard things. You know, I think I've been, I always say I've been wrong and failed a lot of times in my life, but I've been right a little bit more than I've been wrong.

16:49So that's allowed me to grow. And I think some of the most proud things that I've done in my life is, is just having the courage to step forward and take the risk. And I say risk in the sense that it was risk for me. And it made me build this muscle of courage to keep going and keep trying and go through pain, go through discomfort. And every time I've done that, I've learned something or I've won really big. But I think the hardest moment of my life in the past, in the past 15 years, let's call it, other than like death and loss and all those things was, was when I had a burnout a couple of years back.

17:20And the reason why I had a burnout was because I just didn't stop. I just kept going unstop, nonstop. I thought I was unstoppable. I thought that as humans, no, I'm young, I'm, I'm wild. I could keep going caffeine nonstop the whole nine yards until eventually I just didn't, I couldn't go. I got hurt playing hockey and then I couldn't travel. I couldn't do all the things I did and all my, what my identity was tied into. And then I did some deep thinking and it just like, it's like a car broke down and I was the car. It's like the brake light came on, the oil light came on, there was no gas left or no battery left.

17:50And then the car just couldn't move. Right. And that was me. And in that moment, I spent a long period of time taking time to myself and understanding what was going on. And a lot of it was I was doing things I didn't like at the time. I was tied up in an identity that really wasn't me. And I was just I was I went through so much, you know, I was so exhausted. I was so tired. and I never listened to what my body was warning me of like I had lethargy I was feeling you know you know sadness brain fog all these crazy things that I didn't even know what was going I just kept ignoring keep going keep going hustle hustle hustle and then it then that was it and I went through basically a year of just learning and and a type of recharge and rest and I came back from it and now I'm way better and I now listen to my body I take rest the rest is not a weakness recharging is not a weakness it's a strength and you know we talked about great athletes and and great, you know, entrepreneurs, a lot of them have a method to recharge, have a method to recover and then go back at it.

18:47And it's not a weakness. It's a strength to have that ability to understand what recovery you need to go out and win even more. And that was one of the hardest moments in my life was going through that burnout because burnout to me and burnout to many people is very different. But to me, it was hard. And, you know, it was a crisis in my life. And I'll never forget it, but I'm super grateful I went through it because I learned a lot. And yeah, I just think that that was one of the harder moments that I've been through. And again, Bruno's experience is very different to everybody. And it's not medical advice of what I did.

19:21I just did a couple, I did so many different things to try. And yeah, I got myself back up. Thank God. Do you think being humble is what lets you do everything that you have done? Because you had, you've been humble enough to let go of your previous role. You've been humble enough to You ask for help to take the time for yourself and learn about yourself. I think entrepreneurship humbles you no matter what. And I'll tell you why. There's immense amounts of failure and rejection, hardship, obstacle, adversity, failure. And some of it's public, some of it's, you know, out there. And you just, I always say it's the one that can withstand the most amount of pain over a period of time and keep getting back up and recover and go back up.

20:02That usually wins the biggest in entrepreneurship or in anything. And I don't mean like suffering. I mean pain that you choose to go on, like, you know, and the idea that it's a privilege to be on the entrepreneurship journey, but understanding that you're not doing it to suffer. You're doing it because it's hard. It's just hard to win. You know, you look at the odds of any entrepreneurship journey or any business. The data shows how difficult it is to scale a really big business and win in quotations. But pain is not something I'm scared of or I reject. It's something that I'm actually grateful because I choose to be on this journey every day.

20:33I choose to show up to midday squares. This is a choice of mine. And I know that the pain is just hard, but I won't suffer. I don't want to suffer because I don't think that that's necessary to to succeed in anything you're going to do. And I think it's really important to be rationally optimistic throughout your journey, because as you build your entrepreneurship, the humbling is also from the judgment. The people, you know, consistently saying it's impossible or it's not going to work or or why are you doing this? And those those those those those those those words and and that that language from many people you love and care about can can can really hurt.

21:06Right. So you got to just be rationally optimistic and really believe in yourself and actually surround yourself with people that also are a little bit delusional in that sense that that believe because it's important. It's important to see the light because the light will continue to drive you, even if it's almost impossible. I think it's still possible because it's almost right. And yeah, I'm grateful. I surround myself with really irrationally optimistic people at the beginning. And that got us through a lot of the hardship at the beginning. And, you know, now as we've scaled midday scores a little bit bigger, more people are like, oh, this is actually working.

21:37And it's just, I always say it's about convincing people over time. More and more people will join that journey, but you got to put the hard work in. So I don't know. I don't know if I'm doing it right or wrong, Brian. I could be completely wrong. I have no idea. But all I could tell you is this, is it humbles you pretty damn good because you fail a tremendous amount and you get judged a tremendous amount and misunderstood. Yeah. So doing what you have done as a company is not easy at all. I interview a lot of companies here, over 200 in this podcast. And it's been, again, amazing to learn from the stories.

22:09And I see a common thing, you know, most companies fail, as you said before. And some have the fortune and, of course, hard work behind to succeed. But what are some of those unique things that you think that made Bit.Square what it has become? Because many companies put in the hard work and still can't scale at the level that you have scaled. I think team is the most important, the people you have in your company. And I think it's really important to, you know, bring together amazing folks that have different skill sets and allow them to collide and create that serendipity. And our team is incredible at Midday Squares.

22:46And without them, we wouldn't be here today. So my partners and I are just part of that team, right? We're doing our expertise within that machine of making sure it works. I think the second is being able to block out the noise in comparison. I think it's really important to stay focused on your game and your goal over a period of time because it's very easy with social media and the internet to compare yourself and feel bad and and think that everything's smooth sailing you don't see the behind the scenes of typically everything you don't see the the the 10 000 hours that somebody put in of hardship and adversity and getting back up you see the product on the shelf or you see you know the big moment of an award that's not the full story and then the third part i would say to for us at least that that worked really well was was the idea of of you know relentless execution you know we we built a manufacturing plant, that was not part of the plan originally.