Every argument clarity score on this site is built from rows on this page. Each
question and answer was assessed with names hidden, the host's own answers included, on
four things from 1 to 5:
directness (does it answer the question asked), coherence (do the ideas follow),
precision (concrete details and clear references), compression (says a lot per word). The weighted
mix (30/30/25/15) is the exchange score. A person's published score averages their exchange
scores on raw tape only, at least 8 of them, shrunk toward the cohort mean.
Full method →
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 5 5.00
Q How was the nut business? I mean, we've, was it successful? Were you doing very well? Like, how, how did, you know, two, three years in, Did you find it to be challenging, or did you start to really see some results?
A Well, it was, um, yeah, I think by, let's call it maybe, you know, I had a little, nice little factory in Salem, uh, with a warehouse. I had a, a broker. I was buying all my peanuts through, and, um, he tipped me off that there was, um, gonna be a big crop failure that year because of drought, and so I went very bullish. I speculated, which was, Really crazy. And I contracted way, way more nuts than I actually was currently producing. And, um, sure enough, I was sitting on all these valuable contracts and the market for, uh, peanuts essentially tripled. So I ended up selling truckloads of, you know, 50,000 pounds of peanuts. And I was making like 25,000 dollars a truckload. And that, that effort capitalized my little business, which prior to that was extremely thin on working capital.
AI assessment note: “And that, that effort capitalized my little business”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q are, they're insurmountable in my mind. Like, you've got to now find a Place to make them and find a distribution channels and, and like you have no, so where did you start? I mean, because I should say you launched this thing less than two years later in the UK in 1989, but until you get to that point, how do you start to make this into a reality?
A Well, the, in the last couple days that my son and I were in the UK, we were, ah, we were in London, and we agreed that the following spring I would come back to London, and we would investigate this with more seriousness. So, I went back, you know, got back involved in life and business, and I think January or so, I went and bought a suit and tie, I hadn't owned one, Because I figured you do business in England, you got to dress up, and, um, got on a plane and, uh, packed some samples of kettle chips and flew over, and, um, Tim had organized a meeting with a potato supplier up in the Norfolk region, which is northeast of London, a couple hours. We'd also made contact with a company called Derwent Valley Foods , they'd begin making tortilla chips, the first tortilla chips in the UK, but doing pretty well, uh, with their brand. Um, anyway.
AI assessment note: “we agreed that the following spring I would come back to London, and we would investigate”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q And how did the two of you start to talk about maybe bringing kettle chips to England? To start selling on there.
A Well, you know, being interested in the food cultures, I was eager to, um, you know, look at some stores, look at some, what they call the crisp market in, in England. Tim made a list of stores to go to and collect certain brands of English crisps. I remember we were all at a big table with all these bags spread out and opening them and tasting them and talking about the flavors, but, um, You know, I began to feel, you know, kind of a cultural change of foot. What drove the natural food movement, particularly on the west coast of the U.S., a lot of those lifestyle values around, you know, health and fitness and all those things, I started to sense that there, that was just beginning in the U.K. and London particularly, and that, um, Kettle chips as a natural foods product, it would be an opportunity to really pioneer a category.
AI assessment note: “Tim made a list of stores to go to and collect certain brands”
Answered produced feed
D 4 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.00
Q taxes on liquor and alcohol in Hawaii are very high. A lot of challenges. My, my biggest question about the challenges is, you were the CEO of Kettle. You've got a plant in Salem. You've got a thriving Business in the UK, and you're starting a beer company with your son, so were you flying, like, Kona to Salem to London to Salem to Kona, like, was that your life?
A You know, by that point, we had a really good team in the UK, and we had a good team in Oregon, and, um, I was able to, you know, have a little bit of arm's length role, but also having been a yogi, I still do yoga and meditation, that always balanced that. Kept me in a, uh, a healthy mindset and helped the stress from overwhelming me, particularly in high-risk Periods, but, uh, we got the, the brewery open, uh, in 95 we produced the first beer. I thought, you know, we could figure out this manufacturing thing in Hawaii, but I quickly became aware of how expensive it is to manufacture in Hawaii, and why, why there weren't any beer producers in Hawaii, but it kind of plateaued at a certain sales that, uh, Causing it to lose about 20,000 dollars a month. And this went on not for months, but for several years.
AI assessment note: “we had a good team in Oregon, and, um, I was able to, you know, have a little bit of arm's length role”
