#205 - CPG Brokers 101 with Matt Merson

22:51They have to train their people. They have to ramp up. And they're certainly providing you some of their intellectual knowledge of, hey, here's the category review schedule. Here's where we think you should fish. So they're going to want to be on a retainer until the time that commission, like a 5 % commission would exceed the retainer. Then the retainer will disappear and it'll go to a commission-based model. If you do have a book of business and you are in distribution and you need help growing that from there, it's very possible that the volume you're already doing is enough commission to get the broker off the ground.

23:26And then it becomes just a commission-based model. And some of those, when I've talked to the national brokers, sometimes they'll have like, oh, it might be 8 ,000 bucks a month or 10 ,000. It kind of depends on how many channels you're putting on there or maybe regions in some instances, even up to all the way up to, I think, 15K I've heard as well, even for kind of smaller brands. And then, I mean, there are some regional ones you can talk to that might be 1 ,000, 2 ,000, 3 ,000, something like in that range, depending on what exactly they do. And yeah, obviously those national ones, they will switch over to the 5 % once that's the greater number of the two.

24:01Does that sound about right or do you think I'm - I think that's accurate. I think between 5 and 10K is probably, it might even be between 5 and 12K now is probably the national retainer. Regional and channel focused, obviously much less. And I think that from a Walmart, Costco, Target standpoint, given that the review only comes once a year, given that each Costco region could be worth$5 to$10 million, if the broker believes in the brands and the positioning, they will sign representation for free. And that commission is typically less than 5 % because the volumes are so big. You could probably sign a Walmart, Target, or Costco broker anywhere from 2.5 % to 4%.

24:41That's very good information, Matt. I did not know that, actually. And that's good to know that you could try to negotiate it, maybe talk to a couple different brokers. If they really believe that they're going to get the product in there, they're probably seeing big dollar signs. As long as the brand is ready for that kind of growth, right? And listen, brokers are going to put the kitchen sink in front of you. They're going to ask for 5%. But it's just an ask. It's their starting point. You know, if they ask and nobody challenges it, let them get 5%. But in reality, Costco, Walmart is such significant business that, you know, you got to think two, three, four years out.

25:16Could this be a 20 million, 30 million,$40 million business? And look, the broker doesn't want to lose the line. At what point, you know, if you launch in a Walmart, 4 ,500 stores and your business is$20 million a year paying 5 % commission, that's a million bucks to the broker. You know, at what point can you put on two full-time people against Walmart and save half a million bucks to the bottom line? Yeah. And they know that and they're used to it and they know people can do that math. Right. So you can renegotiate or switch. We'll be right back. Are you going to crush it on Amazon this year?

25:48It's such an important channel, but it's so hard to do alone. And most agencies are a total ripoff. We can't afford$5 ,000 a month and a commission on our sales. They just don't get it. That's why I love our partners at Daybreak. They are full service, meaning they do the creative work, the listings, the logistics, and of course, all the ads, all with the most reasonable retainer out there. I work with them personally. I'm so grateful we have such a good partner to recommend out to you, our community. They do evaluate your product first to see if it might be a fit. So if you want them to have a look, email them startupcpg at daybreak.agency and they'll do a free audit for you.

26:21Good luck, everyone.

26:28And what are some other tips for negotiating with brokers? I remember one time working with a broker. I think, you know, one thing we were very happy that we managed to do was at least change that commission number, like the 5 % from gross sales to net sales. So that we're deducting all of the big slotting fees and the promos before we're paying a percentage on that. Is that a good one? What else? Well, let's pause on that for a minute because that's a very good point. And that goes back to my kitchen sink. A broker is going to put in front of you a contract that is absolutely 100 % in their favor, and they will absolutely put percentage of gross sales.

27:05What you have to be cognizant about here is you do have TPRs, you do have MCBs, you do have scans, you do have slotting fees. And while I believe that slotting fees are outside the purview of brokerage, that is a marketing expense and on the brands. Anything that is a reduction in price, so if you have a 15 % OI month, or you run a special buy, get deal. Anything that reduces the price is a net revenue to the company, and then you should be paying your brokerage off of net revenue. That makes a lot of sense. And especially with things like free fills, it's like, wait, I have to pay you to give stuff away?

27:41That seems kind of wild. So I hope everybody at least negotiates that part of it. What else? Any other things that you think you would want to push for from the brand side in an ideal world? I think it's fair to sign a length of the agreement. It's typically going to be a one-year agreement. You should really look at the renewal process very carefully. A lot of times there'll be language around it has to be notification 30 days in advance or the contract automatically renews. I think if there is a breakup, another key factor here is a lot of these contracts include like a 90-day tail. And if a broker goes and lands a big piece of business and the contract ends a month later, they're going to want to be compensated still for the business that they secured past the brokerage.

28:29So you have to be clear on how long the tail of revenue is past the brokerage agreement. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. The thing that I hear most people complaining about is like, oh, I worked with some specialty broker and then it wasn't going well. And maybe I missed that renewal clause or whatever. Or like, you know, and then I couldn't get out of it. And they insisted and they're suing me and they're threatening my reputation and all this stuff where, yeah, if you like really pay attention to the out clause there, like, OK, what happens if it's not going well? Do I have a clear way to exit the relationship with that broker where I don't owe them stuff in perpetuity?

29:05They can't hold on to this. I think that's a really good idea, especially with smaller brokers where they wouldn't necessarily have the reputational risk that some of the national brokers might. I think in most cases, the big national ones, if you don't want to be there, they don't want you there. They don't, you know, it's not good for them. It's not good for their morale, like for their account managers to be selling stuff that, you know, when there's kind of blood in the water on the relationship. What do you think? Agree? Yeah, I totally agree. And I mean, these national brokers are set up to really manage big, chunky national brands that are delivering, you know, five to twenty million dollars in commissions.

29:37You know, if they're not set up to incubate startup brands, you could get lost in the shuffle. So you want to make sure that the national brokers properly can incubate emerging brands. OK, so that's the like kind of the messy side of it. But let's talk about the beautiful side of it. So I found my dream broker. I have the best product in the world. They're going to crush it with me. I'm going to save by not having to get all these full-time resources. And I don't even really like sales. So they're going to do all that stuff for me. What are the right ways to kick off with them? What should I have locked and loaded day one or even a month before day one with them to just help them do their job so well?

30:16First and foremost are selling deck and a tools, right? You're going to want an incredible one-page sell sheet that has all the information I see on the CPG Slack channel. A lot of people asking, what should I include in my sell sheet? Scannable UPC codes, nutritional information, contact information, pack size. So a selling deck that is a very six to 10 page that has, hey, here's the opportunity, total addressable market or size of the category. Here's where we are in the category. Here's our pillars of the brand or clear points of differentiation. Here's the products and SKUs we offer. Here's the usage occasion.

30:56You know, when do I use this brand? Might not be crystal clear if it's a snack or a meal or meal replacement. So you want to be clear, you know, you're now arming third party to be your expert seller. So clear, concise selling deck, clear, concise sell sheet. A lot of sophisticated buyers are going to ask for data. So if you do have access to data as a brand in one of the emerging NIQ packages, certainly package up where your brand stands in the category. Cut it up different ways by customer, by channel, by region. Perhaps you're doing a broker kickoff video, which can then live evergreen as the broker changes staff.

31:36You don't have to go retrain staff that this video can be housed. You communicating to the staff, they record it, and now it's housed internally on the broker's portal or hard drive. An outline of the guardrails, right? You don't want brokers giving away the house. So what is your policy on free fills? What is your policy on the promo calendar? What kind of marketing activities can they commit to? If it's a certain number of demos or big book ads, stuff like that. So guardrails around the finance and marketing stuff, what requires approval? If somebody wants more than a one case free fill or more than$50 free fill, got to come to the regional manager or whoever's managing the broker for approval.

32:17And one thing I want to note, Daniel, is most of the brokers are kind of bifurcated where they have people that are experts in the customer. So just picture Matt's brokerage. I have somebody that does Whole Foods, somebody that does Sprouts, somebody that does Fresh Time, somebody that does the Fresh Market. Those people are out with all the brands on the customer side. They're typically not talking to the brand side. The broker will have the second side of their business, which are brand development managers. One internal point person at the broker that will collect all the information from their internal salespeople and also disseminate all the information you share with your one point person.

32:57Like, hey, we have a new SKU launching. It's a chocolate coconut water. I want to make sure it's in front of Whole Foods, Sprouts, Fresh Thyme and the Fresh Market. That internal broker business development manager then disseminates it to the sales team, brings back to you when the reviews or cut in opportunities are. So you really are working with one. And of course, if you do want to specifically, if you do have the Whole Foods review coming up and you specifically want to deep dive with that rep, absolutely, that'll happen. It's not like it's a roadblock. It's more of a streamlined process.

33:25And yeah, I've worked with some that would say we are also your outsource sales team and we are also a broker, which I found kind of tough when there was actually too much bureaucracy because you're talking about like one point person. Okay. But I've worked with one where they're like, yeah, no, we just, we are your whole sales team. We're all, we're like your fractional sales team. And then, you know, those are not actually people who have relationships with buyers. But then I feel like the messaging can get so diluted because now you have to work with just an entirely new layer in between you and the people.

33:57And they have managers and they have all these other brands also that they have to work with. And I actually just found that very difficult to try to get what I wanted to happen, which is those account managers to go and actually pitch the accounts with that kind of layer in between. It just felt like, you know, you're playing a game of telephone that you're going to lose. For sure, there's some telephone in there, but that's why your evergreen tools are so important. Your sales training video, your sell sheets, and a clear, concise deck, you know, so people can take it, interpret it, understand it, and run with it.

34:28You can only personally pitch and train so many people in your day, right? Yeah, you're right. And yeah, I mean, you can't be there for every meeting, for every call. And actually, a lot of brokers won't let you into a lot because if they're running in and they need to pitch 100 brands in an hour, they're not letting you come in and do your 30 minute like, you know, when I was a young boy, I dreamed of spiel. So, which, you know, makes sense. So, yeah, I think very good point of having like a good one pager stuff that really and just having great packaging, you know, that even can live on its own because that's like the people who pitch the best.

35:02They just hold up the product and it's actually almost all there and clear to see. And that's how things, you know, can sell well on shelf, too, when you're not there. So, OK, I think that makes a lot of sense. And then just on that free fill thing, because we're on that point, what do you actually recommend for early brands, especially, OK, you get into some of the big accounts, you're going to have to do it. It's going to be a little more strict. You can negotiate in some instances. There are some accounts, especially like, you know, the Northeast of the U.S. For some reason, they all like to try to ask for like five cases per store per SKU, which is a little bit of craziness.

35:32But then, I mean, I've been at plenty of shows like distributor selling shows where you've got somebody who's like, yeah, I have three stores and I'd like you to give me a free shipper for every store. And then maybe I don't know if it goes well, I'll consider ordering. But you can lose your shirt doing that. Right. So how do you think about authorizing free fills through a broker, depending on the account and the strategy? You know, again, you got to you got to just depend on the broker's expertise. And for me, again, there's two buckets here. One is national accounts. Right. So I know that startup CPG has an incredible tracker of about one hundred and thirty retail chains.

36:07You know who their distribution partners are. Those guys, their slotting fees are largely set. You're not going to get away from a one case per SKU per store fee from Whole Foods, right? It is what it is. Where it becomes more challenging is to manage the rest of the market. So all these independents that exist in a market, I would expect the broker to have knowledge of these are either A, B, or C ranked independents. A, because of the traffic, the dollar sales of the store, and the size of the store. B and C, smaller traffic, smaller stores. and the guardrails you would provide or I would provide to the broker, I'd be like, all right, look, if it's an A store and I would ask for the list up front, show me all the stores in Chicagoland that are independents and how you rank them A, B, and C.

36:57And then the A stores, if you were able to close, you don't have to come to me for a free fill. I'm willing to give one case per SKU per store. Outside those guardrails, you need my permission. For the B stores, I'm willing to do 50 % free fill. So whether that's buy two cases at full revenue and get too free. Or if you want to MCBB back 50 % for each case, I'll cover free fill for D stores at 50%. C stores at 25%. I wish I had known that to do that because it never even occurred to me to ask the broker for the list of stores. And the way that you say it so naturally, like, of course, they're the broker.

37:32They need to have that. Makes a lot of them like, yeah, why didn't they have that? Why didn't they give that to me? But look, at the end of the day, brokers want to sell, right? And if there's no guardrails on, they're going to be like, hey, I got a new widget. I'm friends with these little tiny natural channel stores, and I'm going to give them free fills. And hopefully it turns themselves. But a lot of brands will go under because there's a fee associated with that. It's not just your cost of goods. You're going to get built back at full revenue from UNFI and KEAT. And then all these little C-store, not convenience stores, but C-sized stores that start adding up for all these tremendous refills are not going to deliver the velocities and revenue of an A store or potentially top B store.

38:17So you just got to be really careful about arming people for broad-based refills. I really agree with that. And I think it's very important because it's like a party trick. You can get like, oh, I got a bunch of placements, meaning I gave away a bunch of free stuff and then they never ordered again. And you got to pay for all that stuff. So I think that's a really, really important point, I think, that you've highlighted here. So, okay. So let's say you're going along the journey now with the broker. You have that clear prioritization. They have your tools. They have their strategy. You're getting some accounts.

38:47Hopefully, they're supporting those accounts well. What do you think you can expect from the broker also when you're getting into an account? Like I've had ones where they're like, hey, can you send me a bunch of pictures from the store? Like how the product's doing in the store. And they're like, oh, I mean, we don't have people in the store. I don't know. And then I think there are other brokers that really do have people in the store on a frequent basis. What do you think you can expect from that perspective? Obviously, a lot of them have data packages also, maybe just the distributor data, maybe the retailer data.

39:15Some of them have partnerships with some of the data providers. Daniel, it's a part of your due diligence. And we touched on this around velocity and merchandising. And, you know, if you're expecting your broker to merchandise, you need to ask those questions up front. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for a picture here and there of placements because you're obviously not in the market. But you should be clear whether or not the brokers offer that service to go in and take before and after photos and upload them into a portal so that you can have easy access to them. So it's a good call out, but I don't think it's unreasonable to get one or two pictures here and there.

39:52That could lead into what are your expectations of a broker in year one, right? To me, some of the things that go into that would be in the area or channel or market that you're addressing, how many independent accounts are there? How many chain accounts are there? Can we expect that you would get 25 % of the independence account secured in the first year and that those accounts might do two cases per store per week? And if there's 35 chains in the region and you're calling on 35 chains, is it likely to assume we could secure 20 % of them? You know, can I count on a good seven chains? So those are the kind of metrics that I'd set with the broker expectations, you know, to be aligned with them like, hey, these are the goals we're going to track against every month, every quarter, once a month, once a quarter.

40:41We're going to measure up against that and see where we stand. If you're not there, what are the roadblocks that are preventing it? Like, why did we not get into the said number of independents that we set? Why were we rejected by chains? or conversely, we got 14 chains. What made the selling so easy so that we could continue to hone the message and focus in on that? So I like those points. And I think also maybe it's a little bit easier to do that with, let's say, an account-focused broker. But when it comes to national brokers, I'll tell you, when I was working with one, the struggle for me was when I started out, I didn't even know who all the accounts were.

41:15And I would say year one was me just learning the lay of the land. Who are the retailers I should even be focused on? because I just didn't have enough experience to know that, to know all the chains. Now I see the badges at Expo and I pretty much know who all the chains are. Like you mentioned, we have that resource of the retail sales tracker on our website that now lists all of the ones we think are relevant for early stage brands. But how do you know if the broker is really like, okay, yes, our whole team is working on this. We've submitted to everywhere that you want us to in the right way.

41:43And we're doing the follow-ups. We're trying to get you those meetings versus if they just haven't prioritized it yet. How can you be really trying to make sure they're doing what they should be doing in the right way, not just pushing them to do things too fast? But what do you think? You need a de facto, whether it's the founder or your head of sales, but you need a de facto person who is going to manage and track that broker's activity. You know, back to the due diligence, if you're focused on the natural channel and you're interviewing a natural channel broker, you know, tell me about the team calling on Whole Foods and Sprouts.

42:14Tell me about the authorizations that you've gotten for brands in the last 18 months. And then go call those brands. I think that makes sense. All right. And, you know, that really is one of the reasons why we built that retail sales tracker. And Matt, you helped me on that also with some really great input. And that was because I don't want people to have a broker like that who just isn't really transparent about the universe that's out there and helping you understand what they should actually be doing so that you can then hold them accountable on it. Yeah, I mean, just going back to brokers I've worked with, in the end with some, I just would really end up going around them to the buyer in a lot of instances, which they don't like, but actually it can often really jumpstart a relationship as well.

42:55And I mean, I think some buyers are just more responsive to a founder. You hit them on LinkedIn or meet them at a show. So I think I kind of found a way to handle that because if you like doing sales and you're good at it, you're a founder, I think it's important for you to find ways to do it. Because if they're pitching tons of brands, but you're hitting them on LinkedIn and they're seeing your content and they're engaged with you and that can get you a special kind of look. What do you think about like, yeah, your team kind of interfere? Let's say what the broker would call maybe interfering, but what you would call just advocating for your brand always.

43:27I think buyers love to hear from founders. And a lot of times you can get a better, quicker response coming directly from a founder. Shows the importance to the buyer of the account to the brands. you know, brokers are tactical and nobody's going to sell the brand better than the founder. So depending on, you know, obviously the top whole food sprouts, fresh market, fresh time, would love to hear from founders. You get into them smaller regional chains, you know, you could go as deep as your bandwidth permits. I mean, if I was a regional chain as a buyer and some founder is calling me from California, Florida, New York, that's incredible.

44:04Like, wow, can you imagine the message? Like this regional natural channel account is super important to me and my brand that I'd like to speak to you directly. I love it. Okay. And, but you know, but you know what I mean? Like sometimes the brokers don't love it when you do that. Like I'm working on that. I'm talking to that guy. Don't mess with this. It's a fair point. And it happens all the time. And, you know, I try to put myself in, in their seat and, you know, if I'm the broker and I'm responsible for Whole Foods, I want to be responsible for Whole Foods. I want to control the flow, set the appointments.

44:35I want Whole Foods to call me the broker versus you the brand. I get it. It's a dance. And so I know one of the things is you're coming into a broker for the first time and how do you get them to prioritize your brand? They already have a portfolio. Some of these natural channel brokers, I'm going to tell you, already have a hundred brands in their portfolio and maybe split between HBA and food and beverage, But nonetheless, it's 100 brands. And so how do you get the broker reps, your business development manager, to spend an inordinate, disproportionate amount of time on your brand versus a brand that's more mature, paying six-figure commissions?

45:17That is the science. Yes. I like it. You know, I've had this happen also where I've worked with some different kinds of brokers where they weren't getting something done and they didn't have the relationship with the person. And then I got it and I met the person on LinkedIn or, you know, at a trade show, whatever. And I got the meeting and then they like send their team. They like really want to come and they'll send a bunch of their team members then to meet the buyer where I like made that relationship. Or I've even had others where I got the relationship and then passed it to the broker because I'm trying to do the right thing.

45:47And then I see that they're actually then like, great, let's have a meeting. By the way, I have three other things I want to pitch you. Like, what? What on earth are you doing? Have you been in those kind of situations? Listen, you have to have the mindset that the broker is your partner. You cannot have a combative relationship with your broker. The broker, you've made the decision to go the broker route. You've selected through due diligence a broker partner. The broker is now your partner. You're going into battle together. You know, if you can help the broker get wins with other brands because of your relationship, so be it.

46:20Now the broker is going to give you a little bit more share of mind and time. If the broker brings you a relationship and gets you a win, that's what you want. It's got to be a symbiotic relationship. There's no broker out there that has unbelievable, incredible relationships with every account across the board that you cannot help facilitate. It's just the unicorn. And I haven't seen it. That sounds like a very mature way to look at it where I would just be like, what? And you're like, no, it's good. If you can help them do that, then great. I'm like, no, I got that. So that's why you are who you are.

46:53And I'm just here on this podcast. So let's say hopefully it goes well. And you and that broker partner together forever. And it's fantastic. How should you know if it's not going well and maybe it's not the right fit? and you should consider another broker or another strategy? Well, I would say two things. One, maybe it's not the right fit or a lot of emerging new brands, maybe it's not the right, that something's missing in the brand. You can aggregate all the feedback you got in your chain account pitches. You can ask the broker to aggregate the feedback that they're getting from the independents in the trade and see if there's an issue on price.

47:31People are confused about the packaging. People don't know how to use the product. They already have something in the store or marketplace that is cheaper and same product. But no brand coming out of the gate is going to be the brand for the rest of the way. Maybe the packaging isn't right. The size isn't right. The pricing isn't right. So it's important for the broker manager or the founder to get two-way feedback back to them and bubble up common themes about what is and what is not working in the trade. Yeah, I think that's a good point. And hopefully everybody also hears it themselves because they're out there demoing or they're out there, you know, pitching at trade shows.

48:07And so they get a chance to actually hear some of it and, you know, not be afraid to ask for it. Because, you know, we had a startup CPG event the other night and there were tons of buyers there. And I'm really encouraging early stage brands like feel free. They're like, hey, that didn't really seem like they wanted to take it right away. Like you can ask them, hey, you know, just interested in your feedback. What do you think about this? And often a lot of those early stage buyers are very happy to help and give some feedback because they mostly are in that position because they do like supporting brands and they want to win and they want you to get better and then maybe work with you.

48:36And they also kind of like it if you're coachable. So I do. I love that discipline of just getting feedback, whether it's from buyers or from your brokers. And I think thinking back to working with a broker, I think the kind of feedback that they bubbled back up to us when we were, you know, not so happy with the amount of yeses that we were getting were, you know, I don't know, it'd be like some just had an issue with an ingredient. or I think the main thing, honestly, is they would just be like there's a lot of competition in this space right now. And it is growing, but there's just so much in here.

49:06And, you know, they want to see more traction and more penetration in the region. And obviously that's a chicken and the egg because you need them and others like them to take it to get the penetration in the region. But yeah, I don't know. I think it worked out because we were playing a numbers game. We weren't just relying, I think, on one chain. We were really open to working with a lot of them. So we ended up getting a lot more yeses than noes, I think, overall. What do you think? Any reflections on that? Well, I would just add, aside from bubbling up the feedback, there probably is some quantitative metrics that you need to track and evaluate whether it's time to part with your broker.

49:41If you've upfront, you should agree on how many sales calls per week, per person, per region should I expect them to make? Are they going to pitch my product to 10 people in each region? Is it 10 people at each channel? You know, and then on the national count side, you know, was the submission made on time and in full? So there's some quantitative metrics that like, oh, yes, the team, you know, here's 40 calls the team made this week. That was the agreed to number. Here's the feedback from it, the pros, the cons, the good, the bad and the ugly. So if you see that they're making the calls and you feel like they're pitching it correctly, maybe it's something on the brand side.

50:20However, if only five calls were made out of 40 or 20, whatever the number is, and that's happening week over week, that is grounds for a serious discussion. I gotcha. Okay. And I also, just coming back to the point you made earlier about, like, you know, make sure you have some data for your broker to use. Oftentimes they'll have it. But, yeah, you mentioned the reports that we have with NIQBisor. So I really do recommend everybody take advantage of those free reports because you can get some info at least on, like, is your category growing? You know, who's the competition? They have the Whole Foods data.

50:49So we'll put the link here in the show notes, but get some free reports that definitely will help you. And so, Matt, probably everybody listening right now would love for me just to ask you, based off your experience, can you actually just rattle off a bunch of names for people you think could be good partners for early stage brands? And obviously, everybody should go out there and do their due diligence. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think in the natural channel, there's two brokers that really separate themselves from the rest. Now, obviously, these are national brokers. They represent a lot of brands.

51:20But if you have the strategy in place and you have the financial runway, you know, Greenspoon sales is one and presence marketing is the second. Those are probably the top two natural channel focused. I'm sure they do have strengths on the conventional side. But if I was hiring for national, natural, those would be the two I go to first. On the conventional side, you know, I'm partial to advantage sales and marketing. I think that they are probably the best well-run conventional channel broker. They have partnered with the former FDM, so they're set up to incubate emerging brands. I like C.A. Carlin out of Chicago.

51:58Those would be my two national conventional broker partners. And there's lots of little ones. You know, I want to shout out my J &W Sales is my broker on Once Upon a Coconut here in the Midwest. Fantastic family-run organization. they cover up and down the street from Ohio to Wisconsin. They make all the chain accounts. They've secured some big business for us. So that's an example of just a regional broker in the Great Lakes footprint that we're partnered with. All right, Matt, I think we've covered it. This is another podcast in the overall series of podcasts that I want to do with you to try to extract as much as possible from that big, beautiful sales brain of yours to help benefit everyone in the community, because if I know one thing, it's that every time I told Matt something that I was doing and he was like, that's not a good idea.

52:45It wasn't. So I really appreciate it. So Matt, hey, thank you so much. This is incredibly helpful for all of the brands out there getting just a real cheat sheet on brokers. And, you know, we just, you know what it's like to just start and have no idea about any of this stuff, to not even understand brokers place in the industry and how important it is. So just thank you again for being so willing to share all of the knowledge that you've built up with our huge community here. Well, great seeing you, Daniel, and appreciate you having me and happy to chat anytime. All right, everybody. Thank you.

53:21All right, everybody. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. If you loved it, I would so appreciate it if you could leave us a review. You could do it right now. If you're and click on write a review. Leave your company name in there. I will try to read it out. If you're in Spotify, you can click on about and then the star rating icon. If you are a service provider that would like to appear on the Startup CPG podcast, you can email us at partnerships at startupcpg.com. Lastly, if you found yourself grooving along to the music, it is my band. You can visit our website and listen to more.

53:59It is superfantastics.com. Thank you, everybody. See you next time.