Curiosity, Lobsters, and Building a Brand That Lasts | Mark Murrell from Get Maine Lobster

0:00This is the GaryVee Audio Experience.

0:30you again, well I don't know if I've seen you, but it's great to be heard again. Hope everybody's well. Actually before we get into this incredible podcast with another great entrepreneur and a motivational story and some insights and entertainment, just take a quick second and let's lean into some gratitude. I feel like people are just too heavy these days, are just deciding to focus on negativity. So take a deep breath if you're on the treadmill and just be thankful for what you have instead of envying what you don't. Anyway, my friend, with your incredible beard here, why don't you take the next minute or two and tell the Vayner Nation who you are, what you do, and let's get into the show.

1:07Yes. So I am Mark Murrell, founder of Get Maine Lobster and Black Point Seafood, direct-to-consumer lobster business. Been around since 2009. We're right on 48 Union War from Portland, Maine. So it's a ton of fun. or right there in the middle of it, you know, salty lobstermen come in. We pick the best, put it in a box and ship to any doorstep in the US. And yeah. It's pretty cool. Actually, I took it off, ironically, to put the fly fish hat on, but I shouldn't. This is the, for anybody who's watching, this is the loyal lobster. That's right. This is the loyal lobster hat. And we did a collaboration together.

1:45One of the reasons I wanted to mark here is we did a collaboration for all the loyal lobster NFT holders who've been just blown away by your service. And I do think direct to consumer, and I think live shopping is a big trend. And I think, you know, again, everybody's infatuated with the Bitcoin of it all, the Snapchat of it all. But 99.9 % of businesses are analog or different. Like, you know, just something that I think will resonate with a lot of people here. And so I want to dig into this journey because direct to consumer seafood. yeah that's a minimally a uh only a two decade new phenomenon it's just not how i mean there was some cataloging stuff but like the internet changed the variables the way things are done takes the variables let's go back to the beginning of it how did that even start yeah so i grew up in maine born and raised not born but raised born i was born in tampa florida okay yeah Yeah.

2:44So my mom's from the West Coast. My dad's from Florida. My mom didn't like the South, even though Florida's not really South. My dad got a job in Maine, moved to Maine when I was six. What did he do? He's done a lot of things. He's got like five masters, but he ended up being a speech language pathologist. Good for him. My mom ran medical offices. And so wait, your mom, your mom was born and raised where? Seattle. And so Florida's weather was just too nice for her? she didn't like she didn't like the culture yeah it was different and the weather was hot i was born in july in tampa yeah right so she was like you know what let's get out of here and so you guys went to the like at the i mean what year was this yeah 1978 right so i'm gonna today we can agree that maine is not new york city no 1978 maine is even more rural so when i moved there to auburn which is inland 30 miles where i live now how close is that to wayne maine you know wayne i know wayne maine because i have a lake i have a house uh i have a small little thing on wayne in on the lake yeah so i a friend of mine in college pete who was actually the kid who had the computer that went on the internet for the first time in my famous for my hardcore fans my famous I saw the internet and I saw the future it was on Pete from Wayne Maines computer he was a crafty little white boy basketball player big shout out Pete if you know uh the old Mount Ida days so I know Wayne Maines I'm curious where's Auburn to Wayne Maines very close 20 minutes love so I know the area go ahead yeah so you what when you moved there in 78 it was like rural farm everything now there's like a mall there's an applebee's is yeah everything right but uh auburn like how many kids were in your high school 250 for the whole high school or your class my class got it so it was a regional high school yeah we had like five towns right you had a friend that was like 26 minutes away exactly uh-huh yeah so i know the game and not a lot going on it's really grown a lot because we have two hospitals and lots of lawyers so doctors and lawyers so that's where you grew up and what kind of child did you have like sports books nerd the usual outside yeah yeah football basketball baseball yeah you know and learned my grit you know from there and 100 and uh how to take a beating when you were in high school what did you think you wanted to be a writer interesting you were good at writing ever since i was a little kid i loved entertaining and being funny to the crowd and my parents tell me stories about that and uh and i still write i write a lot of you know i still do some writing for you know the lobster business i do most of the writing for it so so the copy storytelling i love telling stories good for you all right so you're thinking about being a writer then what happens did you go to college did not i went to college did not want to go to college but you're preaching yeah i was like all right i'll go so i went to two-year school hospitality got a degree and then moved around for five years doing this that and the other i went right to nantucket uh after college that's cool and i lived there for six months had you ever been there before i hadn't so that must have been in 1992 went there by myself you got to see wealth yes yes and I got to serve the wealth.

6:13I get it, me too. My whole life, growing up in my daddy's liquor store, I would take out boxes to these Mercedes and BMWs and get a$1 tip, occasionally a five, which would make me lose my mind. And it was like, I thought if you owned a Mercedes that you were the richest person on earth. Oh yeah, exactly. And yeah, it's Nantucket, crazy, crazy wealth. But whenever I go, it's one of my favorite places in the world. my shoulders drop my blood pressure goes down good for you I'm just like relaxed no it's a great it's a chill place it's a little different than a vineyard totally yeah yeah so anyway so you went there after college I went there after college got to see that and then I caught the hospitality bug or no I did that for like four or five years yeah you liked it it's a great thing to do at that age yeah then I went to Florida worked at a hotel and then went back to Nantucket and ended up working at the chicken box in the Muse got a bartending gig at a young age which just changed everything for me yeah right why just because i had a ton of cash at a very young age yeah and a bartender in nantucket you know it's uh that's fun yeah a little bit of fun byproduct you know so um and then i moved to colorado did a season there in aspen or telluride telluride sure love telluride so really i did that four or five years until finally I started a gig with my dad we made t-shirts trying to sell them yada yada yada were you or dad entrepreneurial?

7:46my dad was yeah you were less so you would say no I had I you had a two I was doing stuff at a young age yeah selling lollipops or doing some random shit exactly okay so you got it so that's what led to the t-shirt thing go ahead keep going how did that go? disaster? yeah totally I think we still have inventory this is 1993 you know yeah my mom keeps yelling at us well that was when you know like the t-shirt thing was very hot in that era i was a junior in high school at that point and i was doing a lot of my businesses and you know the life is good and like don't worry be happy and like put a slogan a tie-dye like you know there was just fucking t-shirts were flying yeah we were talking to peace frogs right so close you know and then uh just i was like hey i gotta you know season's over i gotta get out of here and blah blah blah we just let go of it tried to sell them you know concerts things like that it was a southwestern motif my dad was the artist it was super cool that's rad yeah and so you've created a family dad's an artist yeah you're a writer photographer dad's photographer has got a whole fucking agency yeah yeah well not not right now fair enough go ahead and um um and so then it was 1995 where I got a couple buddies in my town that I'm still really good friends with and we had a couple concepts and one of them was my buddy's like hey I can get this gig for us but I need you to run it you you lock it down and then move to Florida and we're going to do this thing he was a day trader and it was um building um you know a platform for this guy to manage his day trading this is 1995 tech yeah tech early tech yeah so i go down and do that i got no money my buddies he's established there and i drive from maine and my little nissan centra and i get there and i'm not feeling it not feeling it and i have it and i'm like i want to start like i want to go i want to like how old are you at this point uh 25 six go ahead and And then so I took off in the middle of the night, two days later, drove back to Maine.

10:07Wow. Said to my dad, hey, I can do this. So when you were talking about Wayne, Maine, the internet, I was on the internet in like 1988, 87. Because dad? Because dad. Right. I had like five, six computers. Prodigy. Yeah. The early Apple computers. Commodore 64. Yeah, remember? Oregon Trail. Yeah. Yep. Used to put in a little floppy. Wheel of Fortune. Everything, yeah. So then I go to my dad. Prodigy was big. Prodigy, remember that? And then AOL obviously took it up to the moon. Okay. Netscape. So I go to my dad and say, hey. Could you code? Just enough to, you know, do a little bit. And when you say you had it, when you failed in the middle of the night, what was it?

10:56The concept? Yeah, so I went to my dad. I could build websites. I could build. Got it. That's what I thought you were going to say. And I knew people. That's huge. We're using Dreamweaver? Dreamweaver and then Adobe. I'm getting very nervous. Nerdy. I'm getting nerdy on you kids right now. We're going to our youth right now. Adobe had a product as well. Yeah. And I just knew enough. I knew I could do something. In a world that no one knew shit. Nobody had a website. Especially in Maine, right? Bingo. So I go, listen, I could do this. He puts up 15 grand. I'm sorry to interrupt. This is a commercial interruption.

11:29when you know something. When, even if you don't know a lot of it, but nobody else knows nothing, then you're the smartest person in the room. Yeah. Right? This is very important for everybody that's listening right now. There may be something you know and you are insecure and you think, well, I don't really know it like the experts in the world. But what you didn't calibrate is that you know more than 99%. Yeah. What our friend here is talking about is he knew how to build websites. Let me tell a story. the first wine library.com that was built was built by a guy named alex for a company named scapegate and he charged me 25k and this is inflation it was a ton of money yeah and years later i realized he built it on dreamweaver and it took him two seconds yeah i knew something he knew more and that's the moral of the story here like don't be like alex and scapegate and and do the wrong thing, because then he disappeared in the hole.

12:24It was terrible. But, like for example right now, I think you all know I'm very hot on social live shopping. A lot of you remember six years ago when I was yelling at you to do TikTok. If you know a little advantage, and that's what Mark had, he had the advantage of I knew how to build websites. Let this be very clear. In 1995, forget about Maine. Most of the world did not know about how to build websites. Sure, Silicon Valley, sure, Pockets of New York, but let there be no confusion. It was early, but everybody knew the internet was coming. and it must have been a hot period. So you went to dad and said, I got this, give me a couple bucks or what?

12:58And an important part of that that you reminded me about, so thank you. I was in a coffee shop. I had so much experience. I was doing this just for myself and I was designing stuff for my family and blah, blah, blah, blah. And so then I read an article about, you know, the internet. I think it's like 1996 or whatever, 1995, you know, something like that. I was like, man, And this is a fucking thing. So I walk out of the coffee shop. Two blocks later, I see a storefront web design shop called Tricycle Media. And I walk in and I go to the founder and it said, I will work for free. I want a key and I want to know everything you know.

13:39Real quick, when you read this article in the coffee shop, when you walked out, had you already known about Tricycle? You'd seen it? No, the universe just put it there. Fuck you. Swear to God. That's why I'm asking. because I was like it was congress and state I was on congress having coffee reading the article and then state is the next one over that's insane that's out of a fucking movie you know that yeah I just go after it and learn everything that I can and I go out and sell websites you know for her are you coding in html at this point is html like I'm doing.asp I only do.asp yes well if you need some functionality yeah but you're just doing debate that's what you needed again brochure you just took the words out of my fucking mouth sorry i won't know i love you for it i just want all the kids to know like literally you would just have a brochure like you couldn't click anything you just needed something basic exactly so then that's where i got a lot of my experience because i had enough to do some damage then i says all right i got the coder and an illustrator i'm gonna build three concepts so i tell my dad here's the three concepts right one is a dating site two is a wedding concepts planner site and the third is a portfolio site for artists that can't afford to have an instance online they can have a piece of real estate here you know one page two page whatever they want something right and he's like cool forked up 15 grand bought some stuff yeah dad came through dad really came through dad is alive what's his name richard big shout out richard he's gonna love that big shout out richard honestly look when a parent can do that for a kid did you borrow the money and said you were gonna pay him back or did you know we were partners all part even better yeah even better but we failed you know but that's all right happens you know why did you fail let's let's teach kids i think timing right so um we were a little bit ahead so the wedding concepts was weddingconcepts.com i let go of the domain um later became the knot you know yeah so it really are you fucking kidding me do i know i grew up with you in that era i watched thing after thing yeah be too early and then the thing i mean tinder yeah was an idea me and my brother had we called it booty call yeah and it would only work for midnight ours was pick a pickle jar yeah i mean like it's a pickle i mean swear to god it was just what was happening back then but this speaks to actually at this point with a successful business now and you're being very amazing to this audience talking about failures how much do you now believe in execution over idea absolutely it's everything right because i've had i had a brilliant idea when i so for a minute and when i was in chicago i was actually a consultant oh boy right i like how you did the suit yeah if you're watching at home you can't see this because if you're listening he just took both hands and put it down his whole chest and i knew what he meant he was wearing the fucking suit for a few seconds in chicago yeah that clearly didn't last no you're way too creative for that for one my one of my first meetings you know after that she's like you wear flip-flops to all your meetings oh wow you were really bringing that fucking main dna huh well so my goal in life is to be barefoot i love it so i don't i try i hate wearing socks and shoes by the way you know that's becoming like you know that's the og shit and now all these coastal kids want to be grounding and have their feet to the ground like the whole fucking nine totally you're ahead of the trend yeah again again no by the way i believe that maine vermont hippie culture like i'm a very big believer that it's ahead of the trends there's it's not super complicated the data has proven it yeah well the nature right it seeps in a hundred percent your soul well because people forget we're fucking animals yeah like we're fucking animals and like no shit the earth should be part of our equation and I'm a good old fashioned city boy I love this city more I will never leave this concrete jungle it is my habitat but there's no confusion to me that I could benefit dramatically from some feet in the fucking sand and rubbing my fucking face in the salty ocean and fucking getting some sun in my fucking soul like of course it's the first thing I do wherever I go is take my shoes and socks off and walk the ground outside oh yeah I love grounding Yeah, absolutely.

18:06So I do have a habit of grounding. By the way, you know what's so funny, Mark? I've been pretty excited to meet you, like all the vibes, like do this interview. Just getting your vibe right now makes me want to eat your seafood so bad. I'm not kidding, actually. In a world of clean eating and all the chemicals and all the trends and gut health and all this, I genuinely feel like I'm now gonna sign up personally because it's so clear to me that you're actually picking those fucking lobsters. Yeah. And that matters. Yeah. That's the whole... What is the website real quick just for everybody else who's inspired as I am?

18:46GetMainLobster.com GetMainLobster.com And it's M-A-I-N-E. Yep. Because a lot of people type in... How much is the lobster of the month? How much is it? I think there's one for like$150,$60. We're coming out with some more for the holidays too. Love it. It's a mystery box, so it's cool. How's the business? Like, how is the main lobster business these days? You know, it's tough this year. Why? Not enough? Fishing's down. Why? You know, the guys... So the price really constitutes effort, right? So if the guys during the nice... And girls, during the nice months, get a really good price at the wharf, then they're going to bring in a lot more money than they would have say the year previous so they can work for less amount of time right and the price of the warp is based on just consumer demand it's called boat price well so consumer demand actually it's like um think of um major buyers so think of a large grocery chain that wants live lobster at a number of its locations albertsons albertsons so albertsons will come in be like hey uh i want to earmark you know 200 000 pounds over the next three months um at this price and they say we say hey you know seven bucks a pound like no 625 tops yep boom that's the boat price right then and there got it china will come in say i want two million pounds chinese new year and i'll pay this boom price goes up because they want to win some people overpay to ensure the catch i get it right makes sense so it's all it's a bidding i fucking love it every day i might move to maine and just trade fucking lobster this is getting me excited yeah i have an office go ahead so um and what's the season so the season is really um may june right all the way through december okay big harvest right about now october november big harvest because they want to bring it in at a good price and then they will convert it into lobster tails lobster meat hold and then we got valentine's day right so um they want to try to have a nice price you know until then and you can actually hold live lobsters too some people have these natural you know they'll take a part of the ocean and then keep their lobsters in it a pound right or some people tube them indoors they'll have very deep indoor serviced right from the ocean oh and they'll tube them so they hibernate the water is really really cold wow the problem with that that lobster when it gets taken to the market it actually has less meat on it because you know the lobster's got to survive so it's eating a little bit of itself you know so we like to we buy direct right at the wharf and we also have people trusted partners that we work with where we know that they always have the best catch yeah you've been fucking you know mix forever yeah so they've been pre-sorted for us or we have to sort it if we're buying direct and then boom right so how fat when i ordered this what am i looking at like best case scenario when the lobster comes to new york city here yeah when was it in the water living its life yeah you know the best case scenario day before get the fuck out yep that can happen that fast i mean lobsters are coming in like every single morning that makes sense right so they wake up at like three you know do their thing they got little shanties right on the wharf so they can do their coffee and change uh and then they go out super duper early waters are calmer typically in the time they're probably out by like four or five o 'clock and they get in like 10 to noon it depends those are day boaters and then you got the guys that go way off and they'll go out for a couple of days bring back a few thousand pounds you know and so they'll have let's say one guy commercial guy has a thousand traps he'll try to do a quarter of them on Monday a quarter of them you know so he's got a little rhythm very but there's a lot of regulations being put on them is that good or bad?

23:12overbearing a little? overbearing a little because the lobster men and women in Maine actually created the sustainability laws they are the founding fathers and now the politicians took it to a further place yeah like hey we want you to have this tracker on your boat so we can follow you wherever you go yeah fucking government shit and then when we buy off the boat we got to report it as if our phones don't track us i mean jesus right it's ridiculous so they're just trying to make it more difficult why i don't know i think you know political reasons um well part of it hopefully is sustaining the industry i think look i think there's validity to that but like anything once you get out of balance it becomes not practical well this is the impact yeah right is geyser i mean if you go to our wharf you'll see more traps on the dock than you will on the water and that's never a good thing now portland's different than northern maine and the coast of maine is huge yeah no it's monstrous yeah and so we love those lobsters up there so those get trucked down you know every even better up there you think i like deep deep water very very cold um it creates an environment for them to be super duper healthy um one of the things that i test for when i pull if anybody comes to the wharf yeah pull a water a lobster out and it goes spread eagle like this yeah i'm like that's a good one because he's super duper spry lots of energy right so he's not lethargic or anything that's so cool you know yeah and that's how you really should what is how is the lobster commercial demand these days like in the in how long have you been doing this uh 15 years okay in the 15 years that you've been in the business and obviously being up there and being in 15 years you've heard the war stories of the past where does lobster sit in people's prestige interest like where's lobster sitting these days in people's minds you think it's still there it's still considered a special occasion uh luxury expenditure right so typically we have some customer we just sent a survey out the other day um and there's a number of people like hey i eat it once a month at least right and there's others like only special occasions yeah i love it yeah i'm happy to has the suit yeah i'm gonna be a happy customer one more time on the website because by right by now i really want some of you to actually try this out and email me what you think because i actually think the perishable item direct to consumer things about to explode yeah so i my take is that the gig is up for food in america that consumers are getting quickly and rapidly educated yeah my fiancee mona is like demanding correct which is gonna be awesome and i mean back to the nantucket i was there this uh summer visiting a friend and they like bought these eight dollar pears from california ate a piece was it good it was remarkable yeah it really was it was truly no bullshit not like i'm good at like kind of like because i grew up in wine i have this detachment theory of like i don't give a fuck what you're telling me i'm gonna like blanket my brain and stomach and palate and just analyze it it was remarkable what the question is is it i don't know how much a regular pear is at the store but is it eight times more remarkable that gets into can you afford it all this other stuff but what is very clear to me is that people want healthier, cleaner, better product and they're willing to pay a super premium to do it because it's your fucking health.

26:52And so I think a lot of shit that we buy at supermarkets now are about to be one, two day overnight and we're gonna pay, if you buy, I'm gonna just use a weird one, raisins. If you can buy a fucking box of raisins in the store for four bucks, I have no idea how much the fucking raisins are, that, let's just use three bucks because it's a good number, that a lot of people are gonna pay$9.99 a box and shipping because they're starting to realize that paying the extra for the speed, especially if you just pulled it, if you just got it at, if a fucking, now all I wanna do, like you fucked me up, brother.

27:29Now when I eat lobster, my brain's gonna be like, man, I wonder if this motherfucker was in the deep, deep cold and when it hit the fucking wharf, did it fucking spread eagle because if it didn't, it's not gonna be as good. Yeah, absolutely. so anyway i'm fascinated by that so when you have it at a restaurant you say hey we're you know where was this caught you know and then um when and how long has it been sitting in your tank or your cooler right because we supply restaurants yeah and they don't have a tank right so they put in the cooler but lobsters are resilient um which is why it made its way into being such a big product right yeah the resilience helps yeah but if it's been in the cooler for 11 days you can't and it wouldn't survive 11 days no it wouldn't like two three oh not long yeah okay good thank god i got scared yeah and it was like that was kind of the origin of why i decided to do it because i never thought in a million years i would do lobster but i'm in chicago at this restaurant and they get a lobster tank on display in these four seconds when you were wearing the fucking suit in chicago the lobster thing started to get there yeah it well chicago right yeah they can get everything that's right and but i go to this restaurant and they have a lobster tank on display and i'm looking at the water i was like god dang that water is dirty i go i wonder if the senility well no i didn't say that in my mind i say it now is the senility right right the ph has got to be there right salinity senility salinity has to be right it's right ph for a North Atlantic lobster.

29:03And people are like, oh, Maine lobster. And I'm like, yeah. I was like, you want, you know, I can bring some home next time, you know. And then I'm talking to a guy in Bath, Maine who owns a seafood joint. He's like, hey, I want to ship lobsters online. Will you do some research for me? Because that's what I was a consultant. So I do the research. um i say here you go um there's only a couple players doing a great job so there's plenty of room because demand is actually pretty high and i go however if you don't commit to customer experience this is going to be a real pain in your butt because if you ship live lobsters to jane and des moines yeah and they arrive at six o 'clock and she wants to cook them at 6 30 and you're already got two whiskeys in and you're an hour behind she's and she screws it up she's going to the internet and saying you're a piece of shit these guys suck and you don't want that he's like i don't want to deal with any customers and i said you cannot do this business yeah yeah yes you know and i'm living in chicago in maine with him talking about this and i'm like i love customer service why don't i do it you fulfill my orders and we'll see how it goes.

30:18And that's how we launched. No shit. Yeah. So that was 2009, launched December. And then I was in Chicago. How did you get the original demand? Groupon, Living Social and Guilt. Oh, that era. Right? Yeah, of course. Because I was bootstrapping. That's where everybody bought everything. And you were in Chicago where Groupon was... Down the street. I remember. It was fucking the one. I literally just went down there and said, I have lobster that I can deliver to any doorstep in the US. They're like, let's try it. They were like, oh my God. So I literally kind of built the business with them. Of course, a lot of people did.

30:55So I only did that for two years. And Living Social was down in DC, Aaron Battalion, one of the founders. I was very involved with those companies back then. Very cool. Yeah, I mean, they had such power and juice and I was like, it's never gonna end. And it ended. Yeah, of course. You know. Famous last words. Okay, so that gave you the jumpstart? They gave us the jumpstart. And then? We chose to listen. what do people want? Are we treating them well enough? You know, da da da da. And then we started getting into email marketing. Okay. So then we started, you know, your own email or you're buying awareness on emails.

31:30them. We didn't buy any emails. We used Infusionsoft. Yeah. Of course. Such a great tool. Yeah. Still is a great tool. Still a good tool. I agree. We still have it. And then we started, you know, branching out into, you know, other marketplaces. other methods then we started doing ad buying you know social google social google all that fun stuff you know and here we are and here we are and then um what's the most challenging thing for you as a small business owner right now right this nanosecond right this nanosecond or in the last six months you know just to share with the other small business owners yep so we grew 600 % in 2020.

32:13Wow. And so, right. That was really hard. And then, you know, we're this new business and now we're getting ready to scale again. So we increased our physical capacity. So COVID exploded it. COVID exploded like that. Yeah, of course. Like that. People weren't eating lobsters at restaurants. And I fueled it. You knew the moment. I told our ad buyers, I knew, so I knew in early March um my brother's birthday is March 15th and I always do something you know hey it's my brother's birthday so special deal and it was like a little bit it was like around close to double the orders I expected and you smelled it and I smelled it and so I contacted our ad buyers and said, no limit, do whatever you want.

33:03And April was as much revenue as three quarters of the year. December, in three weeks, we did more revenue than the entire year. Yeah, of course. It was a once-in-a-century event. Now, we maintained that level, right? That's been the challenge. Right, you mean the infrastructure, just like building out the company? The logistics. Yes, of course. And as you get ready to skip, we're making all these investments, and then you have market dynamics, and sentiment, and all these things, and inflation, and like challenges. Talk to me about the seafood of it all, the way you introduce yourself. It's not just lobsters.

33:43Talk to me about that. We just launched a website called blackpointseafood.com as well, which is, it's the first generation, generation one seafood subscription. Okay. So, because of in Maine, right i had literally access to anything right right why stop at lobsters right yeah so for example big green egg uses me for their salmon for all their major events right awesome which is i'm like yeah our salmon's awesome like the guys are freaking out about it so salmon cod scallops we sell a lot of scallops i love fucking scallops scallops are maine's got some of the best oysters we got amazing oysters i'm more of a west coast oyster guy yeah i like the smaller i mean maine has great oysters but i'm yeah i'm more of a west coast like olympia i love that so you like your mom's you're right yeah so my cousin has uh crab traps sorry random thought she's still in there she's still in seattle that's awesome um so yeah anything and everything right so then we try to tell a story and then we have a relationship with jeffrey zakarian yeah um so we're building some seafood stuff with him very cool his guy was literally texting me earlier because i didn't include the room a lot in the box and i was like can you just whip something up because we're doing a photo shoot thanks and uh but so we're working on that me selling seafood or beef because i get really good beef too is difficult because my name is get main lobster right it's people like mark has great lobster right i'm just gonna buy his lobster those that discover that i have really good salmon or something else you know they end up buying that scallops you know i don't know if it matters what your brand name is people always tell me about the beef all grass-fed and finished so a variety right so um we have some tips that are grass-fed um and then finished with grain of pasture right grain and then we have grass-fed grass finish you know all the way all the way now we're talking to uh an outfit in colorado that does completely grass-fed and they got american wagyu and we're talking to a place down in florida that's got pasture raised so or pasture finished which is a little bit of grain but not intentional which he really is excited about the flavor that he's getting and he's got black Angus and he's got American Wagyu and then I'm talking to a guy in San Diego who wants to do some stuff you know it's funny you're such a multi-dimensional dude this is actually a fun question for me what's your favorite part to do in the business go look at the spread eagle lobsters go negotiate with vendors like this with beef do the social media creative to acquire customers do the customer service email replies manage the people what's your fate currently maybe it evolves for the years currently what's your favorite part i love the customer journey i have a file that i yell at everybody about it's like it's dated 6 23 22 or something and i'm like this is everything that we need it's all here this is all the answers if we answer these it doesn't matter what's going on in the world let's do this and you know i love that geeking out and looking at geeking out on like mike doesn't know who you are discovers you through a google search gets to the website that whole you know becomes a customer buys yeah gets the email confirmation has a problem solved by us like yeah so that and like what story got him there yeah why and then the why why the story got yeah What was the headline?

37:36Do you find yourself, this is actually a fun question. I'm not going to lead the witness. Do you think you're curious? It's funny you use that fucking word. Curiosity is the number one most important ingredient of all things. Yeah, it's funny. Number one. When I tell you that, hold on, this is going to be fun. That's so fucked up. Team, did you guys find me a curious crane? I need a curious crane today. Do you have a Curious Crain trading card around? I need a Curious Crain. It was so funny that that moment just happened. It's just listening and listening and listening. V friends, my Pokemon thing, my loyal lobster, the whole thing.

38:19It's so fun for me because I think everybody has their favorite V friend. Because I think every person associates with an attribute. Oh, you guys are on fire. Thank you. it is so clear to me that you need to be a curious crane collector I'm going to sign this for you that is wild my friend this is the curious crane that is for you you are amazing you are so deeply curious and it's so obvious to me and I think it is a true superpower so it's funny you say that because I've been stuck on so sometimes tell me if this happens to you something comes into your mind and you want it to just season before you even put it on uh paper happens every day of my life yeah so i call it marinating and so the last time i had a really awesome one was at your event in los angeles when the guy from 11 madison park was talking yeah and will gadara yeah will gadara and he actually messaged me i was like that's awesome because I was like, dude, you fucking blew my mind.

39:29He's a great speaker. He took what I desire to do for people to like such a creative level. The Thank You Economy, the book I wrote, is in pocket to what he talks about. It is my favorite book I've ever written. It is the least successful. It was a New York Times bestseller, as you can see, but it's still. right and it's the message yeah it's the fucking message yeah if people understand customer service as an offense it's game over not a not a thing you have to do yeah well i let that one season for i just took like tiny notes my daughter was with me and i was like freaking out to her and and um and then i started putting it down on paper right so but curiosity i want to develop an internal presentation for my team to talk about the value of curiosity.

40:29So when you said that, I was like... I'm a very intuitive iguana, my brother. Yeah, intuitive iguana. You know, it's funny. I talk a lot. Even in this format, I interrupt. But I'm always listening. And boy, is it curious. Is it obvious to me? The thing I love the most about myself. Good for you. Me too. And with you, it's obvious because of your demeanor. With me, it's completely not obvious. It's actually the reverse. if people don't know me it feels blabber mouthy it's high energy it's chaotic but it's fucking listening yeah well you've got left and right yeah exactly that's right that's right my brother a couple minutes left I want to make sure I give you the floor we'll make sure we shout out the website because I have a funny feeling a lot of people fell in love with you today and probably want to support and probably love lobster and seafood but is there anything we didn't touch on that you were hoping we would touch on when you thought about coming down here for this event anything we didn't touch on no this has been i was hoping that we were just gonna like do whatever because that's where you know i love to be yeah and this is great oh great brother so why don't you tell everybody first let's tell them the websites let's start with that one last time everybody i couldn't recommend more when i tell you the emphatic emails i've gotten from the lawyer the loyal lobster holders this was a surprise thing we did for if you own the nft you would get this subscription for a year with his company it people are blown away but why don't you tell everybody which what are the websites one more time so it's get main lobster.com all of our socials are at get main lobster okay and then if you want the inside sign up for email or sms they always get the best deals i love that right i love that that's on the website and what's yeah yeah and what's the uh the broader seafood website blackpointseafood.com which you know go there but I have plans Q2 2025 got it so it's still early over there yeah when they go there still very early but we do have a box there great seafood one thing I also know based on everything I heard is if you DM him on Instagram I have a funny feeling you'll get into very deep meaningful conversations so that's at getmainlobster yeah on Instagram all socials yeah my brother thank you for being on absolutely good tips for having me good tips for having me good tips for having me good tips for having me good tips for having me