The Exchanges

Q 80,000 followers on Facebook, that was gonna be your, presumably, these were gonna be your first customers, so you were gonna sell them direct to To consumer from like, you were gonna, I don't know, have like a logistics or drop shipping or some kind of third party, you know, logistics team that would sell them directly or you would do it through Amazon or what? What was the plan?

A Yeah, so it was through Amazon and, um, you have your product as a page on Amazon. Um, people can buy it. Amazon ships and fulfills the product for you, and then Amazon charges you a fee for every case that they ship and fulfill. And it was very expensive. That's why, you know, we had to charge 20 dollars a 12 pack in the beginning to even get anywhere, you know, into the black in terms of, like, making money on a case, which was so expensive. Um, because it was so expensive to ship a heavy case of water that weighed 13 pounds. Like, that's not cheap to ship. Like, if you try to go to FedEx right now and ship a 12 pound case of liquid death, they're gonna probably charge you 20 dollars just to ship it.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, so it was through Amazon and, um, you have your product”

Q Um, tell, and, and this is like, tell me, I mean, I don't, for people who don't know, know advertising, they're like a pretty well-known, was a sort of a particularly creative agency, right?

A Yeah. They did a lot of funny, disruptive marketing. That resonated far more with me than like the graphic design world that's like measuring pixels and designing to a grid and all this very meticulous stuff. You know, I was always into the more, oh, let's make stuff that's funny and clever, but, um, you know, I think people will tell you like a year at Crispin at that period is like five years anywhere else, because again, it was like, you know, people called it a sweatshop, like, it really burned me out after a year, I mean, doing that where, I mean, I think there was a period for three months I didn't have a single day off. Um, so it was After a year, I kind of was starting to look at some other spots, and of course, because I had a year of Crispin under my belt, there were some other agencies willing to pay me a lot more money than I was making as a junior, you know, creative.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. They did a lot of funny, disruptive marketing.”

Q Um, and, and I guess you connect with the creative director who used to work there, and, and some other people, and, and they actually agreed to partner with you to, to help you launch, uh, This brandy, and, and I guess you moved back east to where they were based, which is Philadelphia, to kind of work with them. Is that right?

A Yeah, so I moved back to Philly. We, we started figuring out the details of, um, you know, working with this distillery, how much they wanted to charge us, um, how much we were going to create, and that was really, like, we were just going to create a really small amount. Like, I want to say, like, the first, um, Batch of this stuff was maybe like 15 grand or something like that. It was like, not many cases. Like, I don't know, 60 cases or something like that. Um, And then literally it was, you know, these guys, I mean, they were creative directors and, like, VP-level account people at agencies, so they had probably pretty high-paying jobs. Like, they were homeowners. Like, they kind of had their own independent money, where I did not. Like, I'm still paying student loans. I have, like, nothing in my bank account. So they were able to kind of put up, like, a little bit to kind of help it going. Like, I had, um, you know, I basically asked my dad, like, hey, I got this thing, like, and I think they lent me, like, Five grand, like, just so I could, like, put in a little bit also. Um, and we got, like, the first production going, where we, you know, went through all the legal head, you know, of, like, dealing, like, getting an actual, you know, through the red tape of having an alcohol brand, and we got it into a warehouse in Philadelphia.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, so I moved back to Philly. We, we started figuring out the details”

Q Hmm. Were you, did you feel like, I don't know, like you failed? I mean, did you feel bad? Did you feel like, God, I poured all the last two years into this thing that I really thought was going to be the thing, and now I'm like back to square one working, looking for agency work again?

A I mean, it was, yeah, I mean, it really was a tough time for me. It was like, you know, I worked at one agency that wasn't great, and then I got fired from that agency because they kind of, I think they realized my head just wasn't in it, and I was literally just like phoning it in. So it's like, I'm fired from a really crappy agency, or what I thought was a crappy agency at the time, and I just had this whole, like, what does it all mean? Like, where, you know, where, what am I going to do with my life? I have no interesting work in my portfolio. There is no cool agency that's going to really hire me.

AI assessment note: “yeah, I mean, it really was a tough time for me.”

Q Yeah, yeah. And, and what did they say? What did they think about the idea of, of doing a, uh, you know, a spoof ad like that?

A Yeah, so I wasn't there to actually present the idea. It was, like, our boss who presented the idea, and, you know, they just They had zero interest in creating a real product. They're like, no guys, like, we don't want to create anything like that. Like, we literally just want a funny video like the real bears thing, but for energy drinks. Yeah. But I just knew there was something there. I'm like, regardless if these guys were going to do this, like, I think I stumbled onto something really interesting here, and I kind of just kept it in the back of my head, and like, I started just Flipping that entrepreneurial switch again, because I finally found something that got me excited, that I thought I saw white space there again.

AI assessment note: “They had zero interest in creating a real product. They're like, no guys”

Q part of you started to get nervous about how quickly, I mean, or maybe, I don't know, I mean, I've talked to founders who are like, we're growing too fast, you know, this is too fast, or there's too much pressure, but I don't know, was it, but was a part of you worried at all, or were you just like, yes, amazing, let's bring more of this money in?

A No, I think I was, um, I was excited at, at how fast it was growing, because I think we built the team the right way to be able to Sustain the growth. I think, you know, even as an organization, we've taken a very, almost top-heavy approach, where it's like, we want seasoned gangsters in every position, you know, where they've done things at a much higher level, so that right now, they can do this level of stuff in their sleep, versus like, You start with, I don't know, a lot cheaper labor to kind of try to save money, but it's less experience and less, you know, talent. And then there's more risk that if you're growing that fast, that they don't even know how to deal with that kind of growth and it breaks. So I think we, we built the team the right way to be able to sustain that level of growth we were at because yes, it was fast growth for us as a company, but you know, even in 20, 20, um, 20, 21, I think we, you know, we did, uh, I think it was like 45 million in like gross top line revenue. Um, that is tiny for a beverage company. Like you're not even a blip on anybody's radar at that level. I mean, and I think, you know, people had reactions to You know, whatever it is, over a half a billion valuation for, for water. Like, what's, what's wrong with, with the world? It's like, did you know that smart water, plastic bottles of municipal tap water sells a billion dollars a ye…

AI assessment note: “No, I think I was, um, I was excited at, at how fast it was growing”