First time we did a Super Bowl. Let me lay this down for you. We bought the Super Bowl 5 days before the Super Bowl.
Sam, you want to do like an intro real quick?
Yeah. So, you and your husband are one of the founders of Poppy, which you sold for $2 billion. And I would have to say you probably win the award for brand glow-up because one of my favorite things to watch is this old Shark Tank video of you guys.
So good. And the way that it started and where you are now, that gap is huge.
Yeah. What was it called originally? Mothers or something.
Oh, so embarrassing. You had to say it out loud. Um, Mother Beverage. And yes, I think it was a glow-up of the century. The best of all time.
It was just one of those beautiful entrepreneurial American dream stories where you start in your kitchen because of a personal problem. I had like tummy problems with drinking apple cider vinegar, you know, hated the taste and I was like, I have an idea. I can make this taste better. Little did I know how intense beverage is. Looking back, I don't think if I knew what I knew now, I would have done it. And it's not knowing is just such a beautiful thing.
But you basically were selling something at a farmers market that was kind of curing your own problem. And I think you did that for more than a couple years. And then you hooked up with a guy who kind of was like, "Hey, this is amazing, but why don't we tinker with the packaging a little bit?" And then you raised a little bit of money and it was like off to the races. It was like zero to like 20 million to like 60 million to like 120 or something like crazy like that. Was that crazy?
Yeah, to kind of ground you just in timeline. So we did do for like 2 years farmers market and then went on to Shark Tank, got a deal on Shark Tank and went through a whole rebrand and then we decided to launch Poppy March 3rd, 2020, the first week of COVID. And it was like the first time everyone's thinking about their health, health and wellness. It's the first time people are looking at labels and wanting to understand what they're putting into your body and how can I boost my immune system and all of these things of the conversation. And so that first year we launched, I think we did about 3 million in revenue and then the next year was 20 to 50 and then the big jump was from 50 to 200 million and then 500 plus to then be sold. So it's like four and a half years to almost $550 million which is crazy growth.
Did you ever feel imposter syndrome doing that? Because like, you know, whenever I have a little bit of success I'm like, oh man, is this real? Is this wild? But our success was a lot slower than yours.
We were just going so quick. It was hard to even sit back and even realize or fathom what was happening because it was so not normal. Like people don't understand like what we had and what growth we had is not normal. It was truly lightning in a bottle. And so I don't know if there's imposter syndrome because like I'm very confident. We were confident in what we were building but it wasn't a guarantee, right? And so it's this thing of like, do I celebrate? Well, it's too soon to celebrate. So, when we finally sold it definitely was like, wait, what just happened? That was 4 and a half years, 5 years of this crazy growth. And I don't think I ever stopped and smelled the roses.
Did you, you know, when there's like a movie and they always have like act one of the movie is the main character and they're just sort of stumbling and fumbling and they're struggling and then they finally start to figure something out. Act two is always the montage where things start happening sort of fast and furious and that's kind of the growth phase that you're describing. But they usually, you know, they sort of figure one or two things out, right? One or two things start to really work and then they lean in and double down into those and it's like the things that make all the other dominoes fall. So for you guys, you're saying timing was obviously beneficial, but what were you guys doing as entrepreneurs or founders? What were the key dominoes that started to fall?
Yes, we were one of the first founder-led brands to really lean into TikTok and back then it was the wild wild west and you were doing dances, you were doing recipe videos, you're just like literally doing all these like fun transition videos. Do you like almost making a fool of yourself to try to go viral? Because I had this like personal obsession with TikTok and it's funny. I know you guys have had Rohan on and I remember him being like, Allison, that's for like young kids and dancers and don't try. He wasn't like against it by any means, but he like no one really got that platform. And so I was like, "Okay, I'll spend my nights and weekends and I'll play around on it until we finally went viral." And we had a lot of success on the platform and I think it was a really big key driver in why we grew so fast because typically if you're a better-for-you brand, you blow up in LA, New York, Miami, these like major hubs and then you kind of grow inwardly. But when you grow up with a digital-first mindset within the business from day one, we had people like I think at one point one of our top targets was like Fargo, North Dakota and all of these like Cincinnati, Ohio, Houston, Texas. And so when you're a true digital-first brand, you can really break through and go to more places quicker. It's like a modern field-day marketing type tactic, right? Do you want to stand in a Whole Foods and give away 30 samples or do you want to do something and educate and put paid behind it and push your ads out organically to the FYP page and get 300,000 people to see it? And so I think that was a really big thing that really just made us different than other brands. Now everyone's doing it, right? It's part of everyone's marketing mix. But I think another really big one is we were brand-first. So our number one KPI was brand awareness. How do we truly build a long-lasting generational brand with every ounce of every decision that we did down to if we were like, what should be our variety pack at Costco and the data was saying, you know, it should be root beer, this cream soda and cola and I'd be like, well, those colors don't look good together and our buyers would be like, wait, what? And I'm like, no, no, no, it has to be vibrant on the shelf, it has to jump and people have to, right? Every decision that we had was brand-first, digital-first. And it's easier said than done. I say this like it's common sense, but a lot of people still don't do these things.
You sort of have this energy that I've seen with a lot of my very successful friends, particularly the women, where they basically are like a bull in a china shop, which both men and women are, but you've like wrapped it in a much more appealing package where like a lot of my friends who are bulls in the china shops, they like I look at them, I'm like, you're kind of a wreck, but like you're probably going to figure it out. But when I watched your stuff on Instagram, you're very relatable. Even though you're crazy successful, and yet you still have this like attribute where it's like A is here, B is here, the straight line, and just go and run as fast as you can.
Yeah. Well, I think it's confidence. So, people ask me all the time like, how are you so confident? I'm confident because I failed and made a total fool of myself for so many years to kind of figure out what works and how to be confident. Like for example, everyone sees this $1.95 billion exit, but they don't see or remember me standing at a farmers market at a folding table saying, "You want to try this apple cider vinegar drink?" Like that's so embarrassing. And so it's this ability of like I have lived the American dream. I was raised by a single mother, kids myself. Like end of the day, even post-exit, I still have soccer practice tonight I have to go to and we're in Texas and it's 100° weather. Like I'm just living life. And I think within it, it was relatable with people online because they saw themselves in me. And then that confidence piece is like I wasn't always that confident. But I think that I've just allowed myself to share so openly and authentically the entire journey. And so people have kind of seen the journey of me becoming confident as well.
How did you get on Shark Tank? What was the story?
I think the best way to become successful is to see how other people did it, whether you're going to copy them or just use it as inspiration because then now you know what's possible. So starting at the age of 24, I did this relentlessly and I was very methodical about it. And I created a spreadsheet where I tracked roughly 50 people who were uber successful. And I looked at the year that they were born, the year that they started their apprenticeship, and then the year that they started the first thing that made them successful, finally the year that they broke through. And I aggregated all this data along with the stories of what they did to be an apprentice and what they did to finally break through. And I put it together in a database. And HubSpot went and found this thing that I frankly even forgot about, but it did change my life. And they resurfaced it. They made it even better. And they put it into a thing that you can download for free right now. So if you click the link in the description or click the QR code right here, you can see this database that I made when I was 24 and it changed my life. And so if you're looking to become successful or you're already successful and just want some more inspiration, check it out.
Shark Tank. We love Shark Tank. It's just such a beautiful, literally because I've also been on the show, but I've also been a judge on it and seen both sides of the show. And they absolutely want people to get deals. They want people to be successful and they have such good intention. And so the whole process of it is if you have a good idea and you actually have some kind of proof of concept, you will probably have quite a bit of success on the show. And so for us, it was one of those things that like we had been doing it for a bit. Mother Beverage at the time, we had done about 500,000 in revenue. And it was that point of like if we don't get investment, we can't sustain this, right? We were working 80 hours a week. We had a kid on the way. Steven was working a second job just to pay our mortgage and you can only be in that rat race for so long and so Shark Tank was just this beautiful opportunity. So we stood in line, poured our hearts out and you know the producers fell in love with us and then going on we were so blessed to have gotten a deal with someone that's so good in beverage, right? Like it's the things that have happened to us over the years, these doors that have opened. It's just kind of crazy. So we got a deal with Rohan Oza. He had a great history in beverage. And so working with him and building it, but Shark Tank, you know, I don't think any other shark would have given us a deal.
What was the, you know, Shaan's in the e-commerce space, we've had a bunch of people in e-commerce. I've not been in it personally, but I've been able to like live voyeuristically through these folks. And what it seems is like the faster you grow, the more cash flow sucks in terms of inventory management. And there's like a lot of issues where like the top-line number is amazing, but some of the other stuff is kind of breaking. Were you cash flow positive the entire time? And what was that like?
I don't think we were profitable until like right the year before we sold, but it was intentional. I think we could have starved the business and really focused on conversion and how do we really be profitable, but if you were brand building, it's expensive. It's expensive to do a beverage. So every step of the way with the board, the senior leadership, the founders, we were intentionally reinvesting back in the brand and raising the entire time, right?
I think it was closer to like in the 70s.
Yeah, absolutely. We bought multiple Super Bowl ads. We're running TV. We are marketing with creators. We are doing pop-ups with 50 Cent, right? Like all of these big brand-building activities are so different. We aren't a traditional DTC company. We're actually not a B2C company. We were 100% on Amazon from day one, which was a decision we made as a board to do that. And it was such a good decision, but you don't make a lot of money on Amazon as a beverage. And so, we saw it as a great marketing tactic for awareness because it's in so many households across America. So, all of these decisions were intentional. And I think people don't get if you want to be successful, you have to put your money where your mouth is.
You mentioned Rohan. He came on the pod. I was kind of blown away. I think that guy's awesome. I've heard about him from a few other people that he's invested with and I think he's kind of a bit of a savant with marketing or beverage. I don't know what way to describe it. But this is just me from the outside. I'm curious from the inside. What was something very useful or insightful that he did or taught you guys about or helped guide you guys towards?
You know, I think it's in different stages of the business. In the early days, it was the money and the connections, right? I think that if you are taking on capital or any kind of investment and you can't get that network that's actually meaningful network, it's pointless because now you have all this money and you spend it and you don't have what am I doing here? So, he helped us get our first like five hires within his network that were incredible and with us till the exit, right? That was a huge impact on the business. On top of it, he has this woman Stevie he's worked with for 15 years and he might have mentioned her on the podcast, but she is just brilliant in brand positioning and messaging and she's the one that did all the rebrand with us from Mother to Poppy. So being able to bring that to life really early on allowed us to then focus on the brand. So what I mean is when we were in Mother, we were so focused on putting caps on bottles. I couldn't even have thought about what the marketing strategy was. But when we got a deal on Shark Tank, we took nine months off. We went through, we did a rebrand and we asked ourselves, who is this product for? Who is our consumer? We stepped back, what are we doing here? Then we went out and started selling. So then when we were selling, we knew who we were. A lot of brands don't do that work. They're just constantly concerned with how do I get the next sale? How do I get the next account? Not why am I here? Why am I doing this? What is my... they're not asking these questions. And so I think we allowed ourselves to have time with this. And then I think as the stage of the business grew, Rohan then started really trusting the team. We brought in incredible senior leadership. So it moved over to like more of a board-like role. He was always heavily involved throughout, great in the brainstorming conversations, but as the business grew we hired on really smart people smarter than me to come in and really advise.
Hey, what's the economics of a Super Bowl commercial? You guys did, did you guys do two or one?
We've done a few too. What people don't realize about a Super Bowl commercial is sure there's the media buy, but then there's the production buy and then there's the sustaining after the Super Bowl. It depends on if you do a 30 or 60. They're anywhere from $6 to 11 million. It's a standard price for everybody. But what is the cost if you're going to hire to do it a director, a film crew, and then how do you sustain that afterward? So you hit people at the Super Bowl with a Super Bowl ad, you got to hit them about seven more times with more linear ads, right? And so that you have to also invest in. So I think you also have to have distribution. It's pointless to do it if you're in five stores. At the time that we did our first Super Bowl ad, we were finally in almost every grocery store in the nation. We were really focused on our awareness goals and how do we, you know, up the awareness while Super Bowl. I remember we did it and the day after we tripled our awareness overnight. And no one had really seen us as a soda. They were like, "Oh, there's sparkling water or better-for-you this." After the Super Bowl, we said we were a soda 17 times in that Super Bowl ad. Afterwards everyone thought it's a soda. So there was a lot of intentional motion behind why we did that and it was breakthrough for us.
Well, do you remember the all-in cost and then was there like analytics live and like looking at your website traffic? What was that like?
First time we did a Super Bowl. Let me lay this down for you. We bought the Super Bowl 5 days before the Super Bowl.
Literally. So that must have been stressful.
So that's not normal. Most people buy it a year ahead of time. And so what happened is we've done a bunch of brand work. We put together a creative campaign on how we're the future of the soda or future of soda is now and called Poppy. And we brought this creative to life and we saw it and it was just going to be an evergreen brand campaign that we were going to run across all of our linear media channels and streaming. And we saw this piece of content and it was very anthemic. It was beautiful. It just like told the story of soda and the evolution of it. And we're like, "Wait, this is a Super Bowl ad." We went to go buy one. You can't just like buy a Super Bowl ad right before. But it's what big companies do is they'll buy a bunch of Super Bowl ads, say like for a bunch of their brands, and sometimes they end up not using them at the end. And they'll go on the market for like secondary buy on the remnant market. And we found one. I was like at a dinner with someone at a TikTok event and they were like, "Yeah, I think one of my friends has one." I was like, "Oh my gosh, can I get him on with our CMO?" And our CMO at the time, Andy Jud, went back with him back and forth and we bought it and we're like, "Okay, now how do we activate?" Because we can't activate in store. So, it's really hard to talk about the all-in cost because typically there's store activation, there's creator activation, there's, you know, the media of it all. There's website, there's production. We didn't get to do any of that, honestly, with our first Super Bowl. And then the second time around, we did it with Charli D'Amelio. And it was one of these moments where we wanted to just have like a fun time with it. So it was like all about the vibes within it. It wasn't this like, it was just like vibes. She said that was like the tagline that was just like Poppy vibes. And so we're just different. Like we're not super concerned with all of those like little aspects that you're asking. And I honestly don't even know the full number. I'm sure if I asked our CMO, he would.
Shaan, how does that make you feel? Because a bunch of our friends who are in e-commerce and probably many of the ones that are like significantly less successful than the greats are so like CAC-driven and so metrics-driven and she's sort of saying the exact opposite.
Well, look, that's why we do the podcast is because there's a thousand different ways to win. And so we like inviting people on to understand how did you win? What did you do? How does your brain work? That's part of the beauty of it, but also they're not in e-commerce. They're CPG. They're in retail. And so, like, I was just looking at the Super Bowl ad, the first one you were talking about. And it starts with like, you're a human on Earth, and in all of human existence, but things have been done a certain way, and soda's been done a certain way. This is Poppy. Poppy looks like soda. It tastes like soda, but and then it has the differentiator at the end of it. And so, like, I kind of dig that. Like, I think positioning is super underrated. I don't think most founders know how to do positioning at all. I think they jump straight into trying to go sell, sell, sell, but they haven't done the upfront work of figuring out, well, how is this going to live in someone's mind and why would anybody want to buy this because they don't care about you? And you have to sort of fit into their worldview in some unique way to break through to make all the selling more effective. And so what I really like is like the name, the brand, the packaging, the positioning, you know, you guys kind of did a masterclass on that and I think that's a pretty underrated founder skill. I don't think many people do that well. Do you think people do that well or do you think people screw that up? Like when you walk through the stores, are you just like, "Oh god, that's wrong, wrong, wrong."
Most people do it wrong. Unfortunately, I teach like masterclasses and I go all over and I speak on brand and how you can break through on TikTok and all of these things that are inherently so first experience for me, just like second nature and it's blowing their minds and then they'll go in and their mind is blown and they're still not doing it. And I just like actually don't get it. So when it comes to brand positioning, it is so core to what we've always done that it's actually always an ever-breathing document. So we knew we were revolutionizing soda for the next generation. We knew we were giving everyone the freedom to love soda again at its best without all the baggage. Cool. Northstar that is never going to change. But what does change is how culture changes.
But can I pause you real quick because you're saying we knew we were going to revolutionize soda. The Shark Tank thing is a really interesting thing because you were on there with a brand that was not that great, packaging that was not that great, not talking about soda. So, something happened in that nine months after the Shark Tank deal where you guys had some sort of rebirth and some conversation in a meeting room somewhere where somebody asked some good questions and somebody had some good answers. So can you describe what was happening in those meetings or like what was the useful either question or exercise or consultant or whatever you did that helped you kind of get that level of clarity?
You know, and I think it's this ever-breathing document. So when we first launched it was apple cider vinegar, prebiotics, like super simple gut health. We knew we were going after soda. No, it goes back to nobody believed us. We didn't even know, but hey, we're gonna... This is a huge category and kombucha was on the decline. Sparkling water wasn't giving everyone that full flavor like soda filling that they wanted. So, we knew all of those things are the facts that we know. And what we knew is once we launched, people were starting to have this use occasion where they were drinking Poppy in the same occasion as soda. And so, we got more data points along the way. So, I sit here and joke with like we're brand-forward. We were actually incredibly sophisticated in our platforms and our processes as well, which made us, I think, such a strong company. But I do think then we learned, oh wait, this occasion, okay, so on the front of our packaging, our tagline used to be be gut happy, be gut healthy. We're like, wait, people don't really care about that that much. We changed it to soda's back better than ever. We were constantly tweaking and changing as the consumer was changing in the use occasion of what people were saying about us online, what we were listening to our consumers. So, and that's what I mean within building a good brand is focusing on what you know, what's your northstar, but then you can change. You can change and it's really hard for entrepreneurs to change by the way.
Well, what I've noticed is that like, have you read Peter Thiel's Zero to One? Okay. So he like has this whole chapter or chapters on like moats and he's like one moat is, I forget what he says, network effects this or that and then he gets to the last chapter and he's like there is one more moat, it's called brand. I know it's important and I also know I don't know much about it so I'm not going to write about it but if you can figure it out you're going to be amazing and it's like kind of funny because it's like kind of a stereotypical Silicon Valley thing where it's like tech and product is number one and like all the other stuff like brand is number two.
And Shaan has talked, Shaan loves comedians and like the creative process. And we talk about this idea of being sensitive and how you have to be sensitive in order to find like good stories. Like you got to see, like you have to be sensitive when you see what resonates. And something that I've learned about branding and I'm not good at it. I'm trying to learn is that you do have to be very sensitive. And so like you're talking about these things I've noticed and you're making like very small observations or they feel small like you're talking to like maybe let's say 50 people over the course of a day at a farmers market or whatever and you're noticing like actually people care about X, Y and Z and those small changes appear to have in some created this massive outcome along with a bunch of other stuff and I think that's what's interesting is there like an 80/20 rule where it's like if you focus on these handful of things it will make a meaningful difference.
I think it goes back to I've said this before, but it's this ability or this thing around embarrassment. I think embarrassment is the most underexplored emotion when it comes to being successful in life. I think a lot of people say to themselves like, "Oh, I want to go pitch this idea on a meeting, but what if I sound stupid?" Or, "I want to start a business, but what if no one cares?" Or, "I want to make a TikTok, but maybe I'll look ridiculous and like people will think weird of me." But I think with it to your point of like all of these little moments I hear like what if I am successful? What if I am viral? What can I learn about my product? And then how, okay you hate it. Tell me why you hate it. Okay. Well, so like for example, we had a flavor root beer that we launched and packaging we'd never really loved because we were really bright company across like right basically the rainbow effect of like all these colors and we had root beer and it was brown and I was like ugh but such a core soda flavor. And so I was like okay we got to figure out how to do this and our consumer was telling us it tasted horrible and we were like maybe we should listen to them and we changed the packaging. And we changed the entire flavor and then we put out online all the bad comments and like confronted it and we're like, "Hey, you guys made us do this because we listened." And I think a lot of people just aren't willing to do that or like put themselves out there or acknowledge when they were wrong. And it's hard because entrepreneurs like we have egos like you don't want to do those things.
Was there any book or resource that you read that changed your perspective when it came to branding?
No. So, fun fact about me. I'm like severely dyslexic. You could not like pay me to read a book. I'll listen to a book. I'll listen to a podcast. I'm obsessed with doing that. But I think it's so funny. I think there's this like theory that you have to like read all these like self-help books and you have to like be on this train of like meditation things. Like I think all that is [__]. Like that's not how I live my life. I wake up, you know, as my child's like hitting me in the head, asking for his iPad code and me being like, "You... I took iPads away," you know, and I'm like trying to get coffee and my kids out the door. Like I don't have time for that stuff because what I do know is I listen to culture and I was saying we moved at the speed of culture. What is culturally relevant in society from social speak to not only social speed but like what are people talking about meme culture to tent poles within society that are culture relevant. So you look at the calendar, Coachella's a tent pole, Grammys, how do you break through? Hamptons is a hot spot, right, that people are at during the summer. So for me, it was like with brands, it's so tied to culture. And that was my obsession and my team's obsession. We hire people really young. We love to hire Gen Z, smart people that are living the moment within culture and we trust them, which is also hard for I think some people to do.
You sent us a list of ideas because one thing we like to do is we like to brainstorm with other founders and how lucky are we that we get to sit with somebody who's built a multi-billion dollar CPG brand and be like hey what else is interesting maybe some maybe you know you guys are doing a new thing now but something you won't do something you don't plan to do but you think hey there's an opportunity there because once you start to win you see all kinds of opportunities in adjacent spaces that you're never going to have the time or energy to go do. What's on your mind? What do you see as opportunities, white spaces, things that you think you know, somebody like you could go, the younger version of you could go and attack.
You know, I always love this type of question of like what could you do or what do you want to do next or like what's the hottest thing? The beauty of Poppy is we figured it out before everybody else. So, for example, protein is so hot right now. Everyone's trying to figure out how to put protein in from ice cream to drinks to, you know, you see what David is doing with the protein bar and all of this and it is really hot. But for me, I'm like, okay, cool. I think it's hot. I'm not going to now go create it. Someone is already first to market on that. And usually winners are the first to second to market. It's really hard for like even a third to market to be successful unless you do it different. So, you take like the AG1 craze, the green craze, right? I don't know if you guys remember, maybe it was like six years ago, we were getting hit with like 300 AG1 ads.
You know what I'm talking about?
Well, podcasting was just one long continuous AG1 ad for a while.
Yeah. It started with MeUndies and then it went to Athletic Greens.
Athletic. Yeah. And you're just like, "Oh my gosh, it's everywhere." But I actually feel like they failed to like innovate, you know? Then Gummies comes along and does it in the gummies and they exit. AG1 still has not exited. So I'm not here to say you can't be late to the game and still win. It's just way harder and you almost have to do it better, smarter, and different if you want to be successful. So for me, protein's hot. Good luck breaking through the market. It's very crowded right now. I think everyone is also trying to figure out the creatine craze. The gum, do you put in a powder or two going? How do we get women on it? Right? Everyone's talking about these things, but it's almost like you need to have been the first creatine gummy. So, I'm not here to say like I don't even know what's next other than I am starting another company and I can't tell you guys what it is and I do think it's what's next. So, it's hard for me to like speak to it.
Well, maybe a different question on that. Okay, we can keep it a mystery, but tell us your mindset on it. So, are you like I want to run it back. I know so much. I'm going to go kind of same genre of business or you know sometimes people are like oh my god so much scar tissue from that now I want to go do real estate I want to go do something so different over here. How are you just thinking about it because I think every entrepreneur on their second act, their third act, they get to decide.
So what's crazy is obviously we exited the company and then Pepsi gave everybody jobs that were Poppy employees but you don't sell your company then they're like hey here's your employee badge so me and Stephen stayed on as advisors, but as a founder you have to take a step back from the day-to-day of the business and I still like adore Poppy and I'm just so happy for everything that's happening there, but I have a lot more time on my hands and I'm just really intense. I'm really hyper. I love chaos. And we went like 6 months. I played golf and like we went on vacation. I like hung out with my kids and it was just this whole thing where you're just like, "Oh, wait. I missed the team. I missed the build." So, we always knew like we had something else in it. But I do think to your point, it's very important to like whatever we do next, I want it to be successful and it to be something I do because I love it and it's a good idea, not just to do it again. So, with it, we came up with like a really good idea. It was another like personal need where I think a lot of good ideas come from personal needs, right? That passion within versus I read the data and there's a gap in the market and the white space is this and you're like ugh boring. So for me it was very personal and it's also mass. So I think a lot of people with starting a company they try to get a little bit too niche and apple cider vinegar Mother Beverage was really niche. That's a great example. It was for people that, you know, my grandma told me I should drink that or like, yeah, that does help my tummy. But the second we switched basically this exact same liquid over between positioning and the occasion to soda, it blew up. And so I think that whatever we do will be mass and really catered to all demographics while honing in on a particular creative demographic.
What's... Okay, so we asked you about this topic in advance and you wrote down a word that I keep seeing. I don't entirely know what it means, but you said lymphatic massage. I follow a guy on Instagram and every morning at 4:30, he posts these videos of him doing lymphatic jumping.
You follow a guy? I'm doing this. I'm laying there with my legs on the wall.
I'm like I don't know if this does anything. Somebody told me...
Lymphatic is the word I keep seeing. They go, "You might feel a little sick at first, but that's how you know it's working." Which is the ultimate marketing sales pitch. It's like you trying to get healthier. You might feel sick at first. That's how powerful this is.
You know, and I've never been sick from it, but what happened is, you know, I worked for 10 years at Poppy. I think I went to the doctor like once, you know, you were just like on this build mode, but I was like, "Oh, wait. Okay, I need to like get my life together on like the wellness front." And I started doing all sorts of things doing longevity doctors and you know getting all the function health and like and then you get all this data and you're like well what do I do with this? And so for me I just recently had a surgery with the whole mommy makeover. I had like a tummy tuck and I'm like living my best life and the doctor's like the number one thing you can do is lymphatic massage. I started doing it after surgery three times a week. I still do it twice a week.
But what's like lymph? Is that a body? I don't even know.
Lymphatic. It's the system that helps flush out all the toxins and get everything out of your system. And so the idea behind lymphatic massage is you are slowly working those fluids to your lymphatic system for it to detox and flush you. So you feel lighter, you feel, you know, not as bloated, more energy. You're just getting like all of that bad stuff out of your system.
But like on a scale of woo-woo to proven, with woo being totally fine, that's not an insult. Where does it rank? Like where is it on that spectrum?
I don't think that it's something that there's like a lot of science behind it by any means. For me personally, I always think like personal recommendations are always better. It's like it's been life-changing for me through I mean there's like you say you're like running a marathon like running the New York City marathon and he's been having knee pain. I was like go get lymphatic massage and he was like for 3 weeks he was like oh my gosh like my pain is gone. And so it just helps the soreness, just all that stuff built into your body, it gets it out. So I challenge you to go do it. And one of the best people in the space, it really comes from Brazilian lymphatic massage. So this is really big in Brazil. Her name is Josie, and she lives here in Austin, and she's like does all the stars from Miley Cyrus to Katy Perry to all these people. So like test it out. Might not work for you.
Sam, just go to the spa and ask for a Brazilian and see what happens. I think that'll work.
Yeah, I don't know about that.
So, you talked about you can't announce your company, but can we guess? Can we just take five blind guesses in a year we just come back and see if we had it right?
Sure. I mean, I won't say anything.
You don't have to confirm or deny. You could just say that's interesting. I'm just thinking where you go into... Let me ask you one question. We had Eric Ryan come on. He created Method soap and a bunch of amazing things. And he had this great line where he goes, "I walk through the aisles and I look for a sea of sameness." So basically, I'm looking for these sleepy categories where everything looks the same in the aisle and I want to come and be different. And he said, even with the gummy brand, he was like, "All of the vitamins look the same. They were all round jars." He's like, "So I just knew right away. First note, okay, we're doing like a rectangular jar." He's like, "Is it better? No, but it's completely different. So like it's better there." Therefore, do you have a similar approach? Do you kind of walk looking for sort of sleepy aisles or a sea of sameness? Is that a heuristic for you or no, you think about other things?
No, for me it's personal need. So it's like I think there's this whole new wave of this like GLP-1 era that people are sleeping on and not catering to and thinking that it's going to go away. And so I lost 60 lbs on GLP-1s. It's absolutely changed my life and that like there was just like a personal need there and I think that people... it's not that deep either. I think that you make the best brands and the best businesses are 10 to 15% better than the established norm. It's not the niche products like I said.
Can you explain that? Because what I hear all the time in San Francisco is the you got to be 10 times better is the kind of like the thing and who can argue with that? Hell, might as well say a hundred times better, right? Like you know who doesn't want that but you're saying something a little bit different you're saying actually a small kind of angle difference 10 to 15% can be enough can you explain that?
I think with like food and beverage in particular or beauty products like hardcore CPG I can only speak to that because that's what I know and I think it's true for in that space in the way of you take soda for example everyone grew up on soda and usually when you say the word soda you have a memory like movies late night with family burger and a soda. It invokes emotion because there's that long ingrained nostalgia, something you grew up with. So, every marketer's goal, how do you get to the consumer and you move the buying power from the head to the heart so they're emotionally connected with your brand? That's what you always want to do with brand building. How do you get someone who's obsessed? So, you tap into emotion and you make something that they grew up with just a little bit better, right? That's what we did at Poppy. We have cola. We have root beer. We have cream soda. We have all of these flavors that people grew up and we're just we're better, right? And so instead of being like, "Hey, we're Poppy. We also have Ashwagandha and Lion's Mane and we have 38 other ingredients that nobody actually cares about versus, hey, we're going to make this 89% less sugar. You're going to get all the same flavors you grew up with and we're really, yeah, sure, we have prebiotics. We're not going to talk about it that much." And that's what I mean, that 10 to 15% better. By the way, I started drinking Poppy so much more when the prebiotic or probiotic messaging was a little bit different before when I used to see it at Royal Blue grocery store and I was like is this supposed to be...
Be like a health, a health drink? I was like, what is this?
And it was that evolution of that be got happy, but we got healthy to soda. We found people didn't care, and you're like, that's a perfect example. And we got that from the consumer, and so we just started leaning into our consumer journey. We wanted someone to pick up the can and say, this is so cute. We wanted them to drink it and be like, holy crap, this tastes amazing, and then to flip it over and be like, wait, this is so good for me too. And it was intentional, and it's an easier journey in versus that niche health consumer.
