How Ashley Rogers Built A $9M Brand In Just 4 Years 🚀 E98

0:28Real life experience. drove out here from Newport Beach, California, and she has been involved in some amazing brands in the CPG space, the retail space and the food space, ranging from Spudsy, the brand that she helped start to now Sprinkles Cupcakes and the new division of what they're offering that not enough people know about. And hopefully as of today, everyone's going to start talking about it. Everyone's going to start wanting to buy it because Sprinkles is an iconic brand. It's just so cool. Oh, Roger's handing me. Oh, man, we're going to dive right into it. I know. Should we set these up?

0:58Absolutely, please. so as you guys know the way it works here is we're going to keep the episode to under 40 minutes because the average workout is 40 minutes and the average commute to work is 40 minutes so this episode will be between 34 to 38 minutes for your listening pleasure so without further ado we're gonna have miss ashley rogers give you a quick two minute bio so we can get straight to the money cool hi i'm ashley i was born and raised in vegas um i'm a founder so i started my founder entrepreneurial journey. Well, I guess my first job, I worked as a cocktail server at the Hard Rock in Vegas.

1:33Oh, really? It was rehab. It's like this famous pool party. First place ever gambled in Hard Rock. Yeah. Crazy stories, crazy gambling stories I've seen. But realized quickly, I never wanted to work for anyone else. I was raised by an entrepreneur, my dad. So I knew I wanted to do my own thing. Made a bunch of money being a cocktail server, traveled the world for 30 days from the money that I saved. And when I came back, I'm like, I'm starting my own thing, started a meal prep company, um, making healthy meals before meal prep was cool to all the cocktail servers ended up selling that to one of my employees.

2:06Uh, and then started my next brand was a, which was a brand called buff bake, a protein cookie. Um, I barely graduated high school. So it taught me everything that I knew about business, um, sales, marketing, logistics, everything uh grew that for four years got in major retailers like g &c vitamin shop sold that to my business partner started it with five other people too many cooks in the kitchen wanted to do my own thing and i knew that i was like the magic and the brand so 2018 started spudsy um raised over nine million dollars for spudsy exited two weeks ago two weeks ago two weeks ago okay yeah And that, I mean, scaled that to$20 ,000 nationwide.

2:50My investors in Spudsy own Sprinkles Cupcakes. And so now I'm here and I created, yes, Sprinkles CPG. So now I am running this baby. These are our cupcake cups. So when I first started, we started with chocolate bars. These are available on Walmart and Target nationwide. But I wanted, I really believe in innovation and finding like a white space in the market. So I wanted to create something that did not exist. which is the cupcake cup. So it's basically a peanut butter cup, but instead of nut butter inside, it's cupcake frosting. Ooh. Do you want to try one? Absolutely. Birthday cake, double chocolate, and red velvet.

3:29All of them. Should we get some live on-air feedback? I can't explain how many red velvet cupcakes I've had at the Sprinkles Cupcakes in Beverly Hills on Santa Monica Boulevard. Yeah. Oh my gosh. If you check the cameras, I've been there a lot. It's definitely our number one flavor. There's a lot to unpack here. So let's walk through. So as you guys know, we cover three core topics, how to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity on the make money side. By the way, Buffbake, I used to know so many influencers that would just post about it organically. They did. I don't know if you were even paying them because I just saw people like they were just talking about it.

4:04Like I was paying a bunch of influencers and I kept seeing your brand over and over and over and people were just like eating it, posting about it. We'd be at like the fitness conventions and FitCon and all these places. And there your product was. There it is. There it is. There it is. And I just saw it so often. And I was always wondering like who was behind it. And there you are. Yeah, here I am. I feel like so when I started that in 2014, I feel like social media was completely different than like an influencer wasn't even a thing. It was just more organic where you could send a random person a product and they post it.

4:32And now it's like turned into obviously a big business. For sure. Yeah. Okay. So when you go from, all right, I'm going to start my own meal prep company. You sell it. How do you decide? Okay, I'm going to start Buffbake. Like what was the thing? Like what made you click? Like this is the market I want to go for. Yeah, I think starting in food. So it was easy to start, right? You could start a meal prep company in your kitchen. So it was just an easy thing to start. And then Buffbake was the same way. And since I was already in food with the meal prep, it was just like an easy transition to do something else in food.

5:03Got it. Yep. And so when you mentioned the too many chefs in the kitchen, when someone out there is thinking about having a business partner, I like when someone has one business partner maybe sometimes too yep walk me through what happens when you get to three and four like can you have five people involved in the company yeah i think when you are going in business because i agree like i wish i had a business partner um and think like in spudsy i did that solo i wish i had a business partner but i do have team members within the company who own equity who are like business partners but i would say the business the my biggest advice is like go in with clearly defined roles so you know what you're doing and what I'm doing, right?

5:43Because if that's not clear from day one, like in writing, operating agreement in hand, that's when shit starts getting muddy. So I'm going to give you guys a real world example and then I'm going to let you guys guess and what your thoughts are. So there's two things. One's called a scope of work, an SOW, or an MOU, memorandum of understanding. So that's what Ashley's talking about. Dan's going to do this. Ashley's going to do this. Let me give you a quick example. Let's say Ashley and I, we hit it off today. We're like, you know what? We're going to start a lemonade stand company together. Let's do it.

6:13We started our first lemonade stand right here in Temecula, California. That lemonade stand crushes it. We open it up and it's called A &D. So it says Ashley and Dan, but it doesn't actually say it there. It just says A &D. We didn't want to call it DNA because it's, you know. Original. We're all about originality. So A &D lemonade stand starts Temecula, California. We start doing like a thousand bucks a day in sales. We decided to open up in Vegas because she's from Vegas. We open up one in Vegas, then two, then three, then four in Las Vegas. We have five locations of A and D lemonade stand. Oh my gosh.

6:45Ashley gets a call from Gary Vaynerchuk. He's like, hey, Ashley, I've been watching what you've done with Spudsy and Sprinkles. I want to offer you the CEO role of my overall conglomerate, and I'm going to pay you millions of dollars. I need you to travel the world. Will you do it? And I'll give you equity. Ashley says, yes. Doesn't even mention it to me. That's fine. And she's her own woman. She can do whatever she wants. She takes this role, getting paid millions of dollars to travel the world to work with Gary V. I go open up location number six. She's on the group chat, so she's helping me.

7:17I open up location number seven, but she doesn't really respond because now she's kind of busy. And you become better. I'm getting a little frustrated already. You become resentful over this. I open up location eight, nine, and ten in Seattle because a friend of mine is out there. I open up location 11, 12, 13, and 14 in Phoenix, Arizona. I haven't heard from her in a few weeks now. She's really busy, obviously. She's scaling and building Gary V's company. They opened up locations 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20 in Los Angeles, San Diego, Ontario. Boom, boom, boom. Salt Lake City. A year goes by. Actually, I'm actually done.

7:48Dan, I'm coming back. And I've got 64 locations of A &D lemonade stand all over the country. Does Ashley still own 50 % of 64 locations? I mean, I do because from day one, we had an agreement. Where? Oh, you're saying we didn't have an agreement at the beginning? That's why they should have an agreement for what you told them. That's why they should. I thought we started our company 50-50 is what I was assuming this whole time. That's the problem. Yep. You need the agreement. We assumed. You need the agreement. I assumed you had 90%. You assumed you had 50%. No one knows because we didn't write it down.

8:18Yep. And then you left me to go work for Gary B. Understandable. And you come back. Do you own 50 % of one location? Six locations? 64 locations? I could argue either side. If we went to court, I think I could argue for your side or my side because you're like, well, I'm the A in D and D. and I'm like yeah but I you don't even know you don't even know the addresses of most of these locations you couldn't be a part of it and you're like yeah but I'm the brand look how famous I got working with Gary yeah boom boom boom boom all of that could have been resolved doing what Ashley said a memorandum of understanding Dan's gonna do this Ashley's gonna do that and that removes so much this is our equity percentages and this is the roles that each of us play and one of if one of us wants to go do this yes maybe the equity changes yes yes amen yes have fun arguing about that in the comments action who owns 50 of those 64 locations i see it happening all the time though for sure yeah it's a tragedy because it's we make assumptions and try to be brain readers and think that other people can read our minds of like oh yeah i'm gonna do this or she's gonna do this or and there's also what's called pillow talk then you're sitting with your husband or wife or best friend at having drinks and they're like oh no you built that brand yep but ashley's out there in new york city with gary b and her friends are like dan's leveraging you because you're becoming famous on tv because of gary like he's only opening those locations because of you and you're like yeah i should own more yep all these things are happening in our minds because then you have your people on your side and my people on our side and when i'm thinking in my mind and you it's just like a shit show yes clearly defined from day one yes yep memorandum of understanding or scope of work all right next question as we go from buff bake and now you're getting the spudsy yep what was the market there what did you see in the potato snack market why did you decide to do that and why i decided to be a solopreneur yeah well i think i was maybe scarred a little bit from the buff bake which is why i wanted to do my own thing um but i do wish i would have had a partner in it it just didn't happen that way because i mean i know what i'm good at and i'm obviously not good at everything no one's good at everything right and i really lean into my strengths and my weaknesses i find people that that are really good at those things to then run and operate them.

10:25Started Spudsy because I saw a white space in the market. So I saw all these vegetables popping up that revolved around chickpeas, cauliflower, weird vegetables that weren't appealing to me. To me, it's really important to be innovative and create something that's different. So that's what the sweet potato puff was. It was, there's a hundred puffs in the category, but there wasn't a sweet potato one. Got it. Yep. And so when you start approaching retailers, someone out there is watching, it's like, I want to get into retail stores. I want to be like Ashley and be in 20 ,000 stores like you got to.

10:55How do they get into their first one, two, three stores? Yep. So I, it's very important one to have a plan, right? And to build a story. So getting into your first store, I say it's normally a local store or it's one store. And it's really important to get into that store, dive deep, create a data story because you want to be able to have some kind of story to go to the Whole Foods and the Kroger's and the Sprouts and say, hey, this is why you need my brand. You need my brand one, because hopefully it's not another me too product. It's something innovative and different. And two, it's performing really well in these smaller retailers that I'm in.

11:33That's why you should take it in in your larger retailer. So someone gets into those first few stores. How can they nurture that store? How can they make them feel like a lot of times people don't realize you're either paying for merchandising displays yep you're paying for the discounts that happen you're paying for chargebacks if someone wants to return the goods to you there's a lot of money that goes into once you get into the retailer where can they learn about that stuff that you have coaching or masterminds or like what's how do people understand this stuff because i grew up selling my energy drinks we were in 55 000 stores but i lived and breathed it for half a decade of just like schlepping around the country carrying cases of drinks in the stores and like yeah will you buy my product and like yeah it's funny that you say that to him.

12:14So it's, it's, I feel like not a lot of people teach you how to do those things. And I've spent thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants and advisors, basically in real life experience. That's basically how I learned how to do all those things. But I also created this little program. Um, it's like a mastermind teaching people A to Z how to launch these products into retail. So from working with manufacturers to getting into retail to working with distributors and brokers and the whole gamut because I feel like not a lot of people teach you the A to Z of launching a product. So I'm in the process of building out that as well.

12:51Very good. Yeah. People need it. Side hustle. I read why I do sprinkles full time. Yep. I get bombarded with these questions all the time. That's why I was wondering if someone actually can teach it that's lived and breathed. There's a lot of people that can teach things on social media that haven't lived and breathed and got into 20 ,000 stores like you have. And now even more obviously with Sprinkles and other brands that you've been part of but like the information very is hard when it comes to retail it is yeah who's teaching it like who's no no one's talking about it no one's teaching it and unfortunately the learning lessons that you have to learn to learn are so expensive like they're crippling sometimes crippling brand ruining right a lot of the time especially if you're a small brand that's not well funded so that's my goal and that's what I'm really passionate about is like teaching people those mistakes like through some type of consulting mastermind subscription program is what I'm trying to build out right now there's been times I've watched brands going to retail stores and then they don't sell through and then when they get removed from that retail store yeah all of a sudden you get 300 grand with a product back and you don't have 300 grand to either pay for it or cover it or resell it or you can't resell it because it's damaged or whatever like what do you do like this happens at walmart a lot by the way if you ship to walmart and your hangers well i had in clothing i used a clothing brand and the hangers were the wrong way they would charge you 25 cents per unit well think about my margin on you know a six dollar t-shirt i'm making 60 cents so if i had to pay them back 25 cents they want an actual check by the way so if i ship them 16 000 shirts at 25 cents a unit i've all of a sudden got to pay them four grand on that order i only made eight grand or 12 grand on the order plus i got to pay sales reps commission i got to pay distribution shipping logistics logistics taxes fees marketing like it's like yeah and now what if i ship them a million shirts yeah what if i ship them you know and a lot of times you don't find out until last minute they're like you're discontinued your products discontinued and we're shipping it back to you next month also if you again walmart as an example costco target similar concepts they run like an actual machine morning noon and night when you think about they're doing millions and millions and millions of dollars a day in revenue some of them doing that tens of those days in revenue.

15:03If your truck is not at the bay and they have like 70 bays or a hundred bays, if your truck is the wrong bay, you don't, you don't get to get delivered or you got to pay a fee for them to like replace you a misplacement fee. So if you're a base 70 and you're supposed to be a base 72, your day is ruined. Totally. And again, your margin could be gone in one shot. And it's all those little things that no one tells you, right? Like even distributors are so many hidden fees like in distributors because i think a lot of people think i take this bag and i just send it directly to target that's not the way that it works you have to send it to a distributor and that distributor distributes your product but to your point like the margin is so slim that creating a product that has a good margin from the start is probably the most important thing right so in my beverage days i had 43 distributors we're in 55 000 stores average distributor was shipping to 1200 to 2400 stores per distributor half of them were budweiser core sorry half of them were budweiser the rest were coors miller pepsi and then southern wine spirits i had to travel to all 43 distributors i had to nurture them i had to i was doing what's called ride-alongs where i let's say ashley was totally budweiser i would get in the truck with like an actual semi truck like budweiser truck and i would go in there at six in the morning and drive with them till 4 p.m and go visit 20 25 30 40 stores in one day just to make that sales rep like me build the relationship right and here's why budweiser is there to sell budweiser that's their main job but it's kind of easy for them because they don't have to even ask the retailer they can just place the products into the cooler and then charge them later but lots of brands want budweiser to distribute them milk water soda energy every juice every category wants budweiser to distribute them because budweiser is in a gazillion stores why would that sales driver care about my energy drink compared to the other 30 40 50 60 70 80 and 90 100 brands that are inside that same budweiser warehouse the relationship that ashley just talked about yeah what you being in that car with him for all day long building a relationship is going to make him want to push your brand to all of the retailer partners that he goes into over these big guys right because really like the human and a lot of people don't want the budweisers to win they want these startup companies to win with these true human founders behind them yes so over the last three years i've been investing a lot in food and beverage brands and consumer products because they have interesting multiples when they exit when you get it right when you get spuds you know 20 000 stores you stand out versus the hundreds of other brands thousands of other brands that are only in x amount of stores or not any stores because it's hard especially to get into at scale at 20 000 stores why do you like the food and beverage space why do you like this the cpg world i like it just I'm so passionate about food.

17:46I do think the exits are interesting too, but I think we all know that those are anomalies. Like 0.1 % of these brands actually exit. But I mean, I've done it a few times, so I feel like I do have that formula now. I just, I love food. I think it's fun. I love the packaging. I love putting the branding and the idea and doing the manufacturing. It's just what I'm passionate about. I'm going to give you guys a fun fact. The reason that you see a lot of food and beverage brands get acquired is because for a large company, like the really big ones that you see, Procter & Gamble, Budweiser, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Sprite, those type of brands that you see all of a sudden like, why did that company buy our X bar for$640 million or$600 million?

18:30Why did they buy that snack company for$120 million, et cetera? Here's why. For a large conglomerate, it takes them on average$75 million to start this brand. They move so slow. takes them two years and 75 million dollars if they want to start their own version of sprinkles cupcake cups so they would much rather buy them for anywhere from 50 to 200 million dollars save themselves two years and they already know that it's almost free for them to buy what do i mean by that let's say budweiser buys sprinkles cupcake cups like that doesn't make sense why would they buy them well budweiser's already in let's call it half a million stores so if this brand is in 10 000 or 20 000 30 000 stores budweiser can just place the products into a lot more retailers so if they pay them 50 million 100 million 200 million which sounds crazy for the brand that's only been around for one two three four years they have overnight overnight distribution yep and so instead of them going spending 75 million to maybe make it work like actually said there's thousands of brands that don't work out they can buy an already successful brands already doing 20 million 30 million 50 million 100 million in sales pay them a good multiple 2x 3x 4x 5x 6x but they're actually saving themselves money because they're saving themselves two years of time, time, headache, hiring teams, gambling, trying to figure out if it's going to work out compared to, oh, you're already doing millions of dollars at Spudsy.

19:46Great. I'll buy you in all these other stores. Yep. All right. Let's talk about the investing side. Why should entrepreneurs and business owners invest into themselves and into their minds? I feel like for me, um, investing in myself is everything because I mean, I believe in myself and I know that I'm going to execute and bring something to life. So that's like literally how I invest is I invest in myself and every single time it's paid off. So someone that's out there that wants to get into the food and brand space, I often tell people that they should go work for a brand because that's the real school.

20:24You can go to college, you can go to university, you can study online, but going to work for Ashley for six months, going to work in your office for two years and watching the way you move watch the way you deal with the secretary the buyer the ceo the sales rep the investors the partners the media the consultants the lawyers the accountants like all the real life experience you need the real life experience did you go to college no i tried yeah i i barely graduated high school yeah so i feel like to me but that's like that's in my blood that's like in my dna you know it's like i figure stuff out and i and i learn off real life experience i tried to go to san State University.

21:00So I was 17 and a half and I saved up$43 ,000 during three years of high school working three different jobs. I was working at Qualcomm Stadium selling peanuts and cracker jacks, working at Ruby's Diner with a sailor's cap on, and then working for oldie discount stock brokers, working as an assistant there to the stockbroker. And then during those years, I was saving up, you know, 12 grand, 18 grand, 14 grand for the year, which is a ton of money, 15, 16, 17 years old huge put together 43 000 and i thought that's what i was going to use for san nicole state instead i started printing t-shirts in high school sold 100 shirts at lunch 15 bucks a shirt so i sold 1500 bucks i'm like oh my god i'm a millionaire this is it that's it i know i know where i'm going now went to the clothing convention called magic and i wasn't even allowed to go in because i wasn't 18 you had to actually be 21 and uh that's where it all started it all started from that moment and i took the money that i had for school and invested it in yourself yeah yeah into the brand and got got two booths instead of one booth i got 20 feet instead of 10 feet i'm like yeah i'm gonna be a big dog here baller yeah i was right next to a brand called fubu okay him and john and the other side was sean john when puff daddy had first launched at the same time 1999 the summer good brands to be sandwiched in between they had like million dollar booths next to my little four thousand dollar booth and uh but that's the magic that and we ended up writing one million dollars in orders only because well the name was fun but because what was the name who's your daddy like the slogan i own the slogan for 300 different products so the buyers from all the major chain stores were hanging out in front of the fubu booth and so they were just like oh what's this funny brand you know a bunch of high school kids working at the booth and we just started and then mervin's cole's dr j's mr rags miller's That's a cool story.

22:46Yeah. It all happened. So that was your first little venture. Yes. That's cool. Yeah. So we sold clothing. We were doing that year. We did 9.5 million in sales. Damn. What year was this? Now it became the year 2000. But 1999 to 2000. I graduated high school in 99. And then 2001, we started doing like 21, 22 million in sales. Wild. All in apparel. And then wanted to launch the energy drink. It took two years because we wanted to go public. So we ended up going public April 1st, 2005. and that took a lot of work literally two years of accounting two years of raising money wild but it was uh it's a cool story yeah and then 2005 2009 i literally don't remember anything all i do was sell i just drove around to 55 000 stores i didn't go to every store but i went to every distributor multiple times all 43 cities and just spent all the time with them and i would go meet with costco and rouse i mean putting in that work though and going to all those distributors and building that relationship is probably why your brand ended up where it ended up yeah we were the number seven out of 900 drinks on the market and we were number seven and it was a battle i had a website back then called energy drink wars.com and i would just post pictures and videos of us like at retail stores and then all of our drinks were outside in the dumpster so like another energy drink would take us and throw us away so we'd go take all their like zions the ufc had a brand we'd take all their drinks and put it outside and we'd put our drinks in there it was like a it was a war funny it was war because there's only so much shell space there's an old saying eye level is by level so if you go to a cooler and you open up that cooler or you go to a shelf when you're walking by if you're not above the above the waist is what we call it if you're not above the waist no one's buying your product no one like if you could i could literally attach a hundred dollar bill to this five dollar package or ten dollar package i could put a hundred dollar bill on it but if i put on the bottom shelf no one's buying it they won't pay 10 bucks for a hundred dollar bill because they can't see it when you look at the data it's wild the velocity difference between the bottom shelf versus the middle i i literally will turn down a retailer same i won't be in it because i'm not gonna do it yep what's the point i love you whole foods i love you costco if you're gonna give me a shot like you need you need to give me an eye level shot yes i need to be above the waist otherwise there's no point yeah because it's expensive going in a retailer on the bottom shelf and then getting discontinued because the product did not sell right yeah and then now when you talk to other retailers they're like oh how'd you do over at Whole Foods?

25:03You're like, well. Yep. You don't have that data story to go show these other retailers. You don't want to explain it because then they're like, oh, well, now she's going to talk bad about me and my chain story. I'm not going to take that brand. You don't want that. On investing too. I also think it's really important to invest in the right people. So it's not only things it's like yourself, but it's also the right people. So talk about team. Like when someone's first getting going, a lot of times they're just doing everything. They're a solopreneur. Maybe they get a partner and they can help split up some of the efforts.

25:29But what about when that first hire, they go hire an executive assistant or they go hire a sales manager or they go hire a COO or they go hire that first person. When do you know it's the time or do you do it before it's time? Both. But I feel like you know when it's the time, like you're overwhelmed and you know your strengths, right? So you hire your weaknesses. That's at least what I do. But I always get the ground. I would say I'm the solo person in the business for the first six months. I get it going. and then I figure out what gaps I need to fill first and the most important role I need to hire first, which is normally, I'm the best at sales.

26:07It's normally like the ops and finance side. So if I get somebody else to run that smoothly, I can go out here and sell and market the product and get the revenue coming in. Yes. So here's a big thing. Operations and finance is very time consuming and you want someone that knows how to live and breathe it. It's super important. I don't run any accounting in any of my companies because I'm better versed to go do, like what Ashley said is go do the sales or go do the marketing or go do the social content, go to the conventions. Me dealing with the accounting and finance is not helpful to the company.

26:37No. And sometimes like, oh, I can't spend the three grand a month or 10 grand a month or two grand a month or five grand a month, whatever the price is to have someone do that thing. But how much are you worth? Totally. Like, aren't you worth more than five grand a month? Yeah. If you know that you can go create 10 ,000, 20 ,000, 50 ,000,$100 ,000 in sales, then five grand a month is free. Well, that person will basically pay for themselves. For sure. Yeah. Just allowing you to unshackle yourself from the office and deal with accounting and spreadsheets. And so I go in knowing like, okay, what does my day look like?

27:08If I'm spending two hours a day dealing with accounting and finances, what could I do with two hours a day in sales? Yep. All right. So why don't I pay that person five grand a month to go do that thing for me? Unshackle me. Let me go. Yeah. Let me go fly. Let me go sell. Let me go. In the business or on the business. Like you don't want to be in the business on the finance side. You want to be working on the business and getting the revenue and the sales coming in. Yes. Okay. So you've talked to a retailer. You're on the shelf. It's working. Which is really hard. Yes. To get it working. Now you want to leverage it.

27:45You want to go get to other retail chains. What is that first phone call like? Let's call me right now. Like call me Ashley. Like I'm the buyer for Whole Foods. How do you get your product into my store? Okay. Hey, Dan. Uh, I love to be on the shelf of your stores right now. We're currently sold in Walmart and target. Um, we have a really healthy velocity. We're exceeding the buyer's expectation. We have this amazing brand name behind sprinkles, iconic 20 year old brand. We're creating something that doesn't currently exist. Um, our innovative cupcake cup, think of a peanut butter cup, but instead of peanut butter inside, it's cupcake frosting.

28:20Can I get an in-person meeting with you? I'd love to come meet you in person, take you out to dinner and pitch my idea to you. Wow, that was really good. What are the price points of these compared to normal chocolates? We are in line with our competitors. Are they normal chocolates? Because there's some chocolates that are very expensive and some chocolates are very expensive. This is premium chocolate. So like Lint and Ghirardelli, I would say, is premium chocolate. Hershey's is more on the cheap side. This is considered a premium chocolate. So Hershey's going to buy you? We'll see. Someone's going to buy us.

28:49So I asked that question because just recently there was a sour patch strips that oh yeah that an influencer created created just four years ago this influencer started with no money just had a social media following and started making these sour strips by the way there's lots of other sour strip yeah there's lots of other sour strip companies just recently this summer sold for over a hundred million dollars yep there's only a few skews and there's nothing new about it yeah god bless them i'm not saying in a bad way power of social media good branding but you have uh unfair advantage you have a 20 year legacy brand that's top top tier like it is the number one brand i can't even name another chain of cupcake stores right like this is the cupcake they're the og yeah and there's lots of cupcake stores that pop up but this is the brand by far so why chocolate what what why go down that path and what does it do for retailers to already have an established brand yeah so we didn't want to be in baking because the velocity is pretty low and baking.

29:52We wanted to be in a high velocity category and we're an indulgent decadent brand. So we just love the chocolate category. Um, when it was presented to me, it was bars, but I realized quickly that bars, like I, like I said, I'm big about innovation. So creating something that brought chocolate and the cupcake together and creating the cupcake cup, like was the perfect product for the chocolate category, which is like a higher velocity category. Cause that's another thing when I create things like I don't want to create something and know that it's going to be a slow mover. I want to go into a category where I know it's a high velocity item and the product's going to move salty snack.

30:32Like most people buy a bag of salty snacks when they're in store, right? Chocolate, another big category, ice cream, another big category, but ice cream is difficult. Cause I actually looked at the ice cream piece of it too. The frozen component. That's another thing you want to look at the logistics of it. does it need to be refrigerated is it frozen like this would be a great frozen brand obviously too but sprinkles could be anything yeah it could frozen is a there's a lot of ice cream brands yeah there are a lot of there's like six shelves like six cooler shelves of ice cream maybe more now uh at most chain stores but they also are owned by the same half a dozen companies like that are just cannibalizing each other and for sure buying all of each other okay so as you're getting into to retail stores with the brand and you're already in obviously to like the biggest brands which is walmart and target how do the small stores buy you do they buy you through distributors they buy through wholesale like how do small retailers go buy a brand like this so we actually got lucky with sprinkles and because of the background and me knowing like distribution how you have to go through a distributor to get into a retailer there's like a caveat to that if you're a big brand right like pepsi doesn't need to really go through like they go direct right so sprinkles right now it's actually direct with Walmart and direct with Target and then we're entering three other big national retailers that I negotiated direct on so if you have the power to do that that just gives you more margin to operate the business which is what we did with sprinkles but again sprinkles is the anomaly yeah so let's say someone just got their brand going and a broker approaches them brokers take a pretty good big commission or fees or consulting fees, et cetera.

32:08How could someone work with a broker and is it worth it? Yeah, I do think sometimes a broker is necessary. Like we work with a broker both on Walmart and Target. It's nice to just have an expert on each retailer, like managing your promotions in store, like you talked about the end caps and your promo calendar. And when I mean my promos is like two for five or they manage that. But a lot of time, especially for smaller brands, like buyers won't listen to you. You send an email like I just pitched you and they get a thousand of those a day. Right. So sometimes you need that broker who has that relationship.

32:42Yes. To get you in the door. Yeah. I think a broker's fine. And maybe the first year you pay them a little bit more in commission and prove yourself and then you can renegotiate the commission a year later because they do get expensive. So you've had a few exits, which is rare. People have one exit in their life. Hopefully Now you've had a few exits and you're working on an iconic brand that may decide to exit, may not, up to them. How do you know when it's time? Like, how do you know? It's like, you know what? Maybe I should shop this deal or maybe I should take that call. That private equity group keeps calling me.

33:14Maybe I should. When do you know it's time? It's hard, right? Because it's like you never know when you're going to start going down, right? So the timing of it, I feel like, is an art in itself. but I mean, as a founder, you just, I mean, you, you just know, you know, um, people will start approaching you. Right. So there's those people in your ear that will start coming to you. Um, it depends like where you are from a distribution standpoint. Like, are you in your max distribution? How much ACV, like additional doors can you gain? Right. Um, but it's, it's hard to know exactly. I feel like that part of it and that timing is really an art and you just kind of, I'm a big gut instinct person you know you just go with your gut for me personally i know when i'm ready to move on so that's like a big piece of it too emotionally ready to move on yeah mentally yeah like when when i'm ready i'm ready like but because i'm i'm just such a passionate person that like if i believe in something like you're getting a hundred percent of me and like i'm strong i'm a big work ethic person like i don't know a lot of people that can match my work ethic because I'll fucking work around the clock, you know?