Digital Social Hour - The Coconut Water Revolution | CoCo Vinny Digital Social Hour #80

Starting point is 00:00:00 They kind of positioned me as the Cocoa Clown and this and that. But at the end of the day, it's about getting your brand exposed. Every setback is a setup for a comeback. And if you truly believe in something, if something's calling you in your heart, don't pay attention to what the noise is. It doesn't matter who believes. If you believe and you can see it and you write it down and you put it up there, go get it. Don't stop. It doesn't matter how long it takes.

Starting point is 00:00:28 If it's worth it to you, anything worth doing is worth overdoing. Go all the way. welcome to the digital social hour i'm your host sean kelly here with my co-host wayne lewis oh what up what up some coconut water getting tapped in yeah that's coco vini coco vini what's up man i'm good the coconut. The coconut legend. Right. Coconut guy. I'm about to take my sip right now. I love coconut water. Oh, dude, please.

Starting point is 00:01:09 You need a straw? So this is a real coconut. That is a fresh coconut from the tree, from the farm to the fridge. Which country you think has the best coconuts? Yeah. So... Are they different? Every company?

Starting point is 00:01:21 You know, every region, every, you know, soil, everything tastes a little bit different. You know, it's like the wines, they have different wines from all over the world. But my favorites are, I like Thailand, I like Vietnam. We've planted trees in Puerto Rico, Costa Rica. It's all about the type of coconut that you plant as well. Right. A lot of factors that go into it. Oh, so there's different types of coconuts?

Starting point is 00:01:49 Oh, yeah. Like an apple. You know, you have a green apple. You have, you know, some sort of honey crisp. It's all different. So there's Fijian talls. There's dwarfs. Like we're planting the dwarf trees.

Starting point is 00:02:01 They don't go 100 feet in the air. They're right here, six feet. Right there. You don't have to climb. Certain air they're right here six feet right there you don't have to climb certain environments so you can't plant coconut trees here no the coconuts will only plant in they like the water the ocean water the salinity they like humidity so there's that line on the equator it's kind of like the line that hooks hawaii and puerto rico together anything they don't like they don't like like elevation. They like sunshine and water. And coconut is considered a fruit, right?

Starting point is 00:02:28 It's actually a fruit, a nut, and a seed. It's called a droop. Wow. It's crazy. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. That's crazy. Fun fact.

Starting point is 00:02:36 It's called a droop. Yep. It's different. Wow. In fact, if you think about it, the tree is actually not even a tree. It's like prehistoric grass. It's one of the most evolved carbon dated dated fruits we have it's 20 million years carbon dated whoa you guys are getting a coco university right here yeah i didn't know fruit is a droop

Starting point is 00:02:55 yeah i'm gonna start telling people that yeah yeah gotcha 20 million years how how does it survive that long because most fruits don't last so long it's one of the most resilient um plants on earth i mean it can actually grow without soil it can it can go in the ocean for 3 000 miles roll up on shore sprout gravel lava sand and plant itself plant itself and it's it's resilient wow it's hurricane resistant you know you go to these places yeah and growing lava it's it's sprouts so like you see these beautiful tropical places that have hurricanes annually there's still coconut trees there that's because they bend with the wind they let go of the coconuts they're resilient they're they're totally different than than any other you know plant out there that's insane how did you get

Starting point is 00:03:45 into coconut like why did you how why what made you choose coconuts in general so it's expensive right uh well expensive is all relative to how much money you have but at the end of the day i got into it because i had a problem i was doing ironmans in hawaii and i saw all this trash along the shores of Tetra packs plastic bottles and people were drinking this coconut water stuff I don't want to name names but I didn't like any of it out there in the package and the Tetra packs it tasted like I call it the cocoa hate I made me think I hated coconuts but then when I would crack open a fresh coconut I was like I don't hate that so

Starting point is 00:04:21 I was like how do I get that that fresh that cocoa love to the people and that's why i invented that um the tap this is where that inspiration came from i broke a knife on a coconut and i said i got to figure this out so this is not plastic this is ocean safe biodegradable corn flour if it ends up in the ground or in the ocean it will deteriorate this is a we're the first zero waste certified company in Las Vegas so this actually deteriorates that that is an animal actually eat like a turtle for turtle well in that form that it won't totally destroy them shout out to our sponsor today AG one man AG one's been a great product been using it for the past

Starting point is 00:05:04 few months now used to have some constipation issues. It's helped my body feel a lot better. Every morning I wake up and it's a good start to the day, you know? Yeah, same thing with me. I take AG1 in the mornings and at night before I go to bed, especially before working out, bro. It gives me all the nutrition that I actually need. I feel

Starting point is 00:05:19 really, really good working out clarity, energized. I mean, it just helps and then supports my immune system also yeah it's got 75 high quality vitamins it's got probiotics and honestly it's pretty affordable less than three dollars a day wow less than three dollars a day yeah i actually like it way better than taking individual vitamins just because granted i mean who wants to take 20 pills whether just pour this in my water shake it up drink it and get on the go yeah i used to take like 40 pills a day but this makes it easy yeah boy that's a lot bro

Starting point is 00:05:51 yeah so guys if you're looking for a simpler more effective investment for your health try ag1 and get five free ag1 travel packs and a free one-year supply of vitamin d with your first purchase go to drinkag1.com slash dsh drinkag1.com slash dsh link will be in the bio thanks guys as far as like the the microplastics that are out there that are getting into our food and our water supply yeah that is what's destroying us as a whole that will deteriorate in in less than nine months and this is just if it's in water water and heat and and the environment oxygen it'll just break it down and if you're in a like a composting bin that's got aeration it'll be gone in two weeks why don't they make straws out of this stuff they do now they're starting to starting to get into that you know but i mean it it's

Starting point is 00:06:38 expensive you know like you said if you're doing millions and millions and millions of tons of it the the oil companies are actually subsidized and they create the price of virgin plastic so low that there's no real demand for the recycled plastics and you got to make it out of something that actually degrades and it's a time time so how bad are micro plastics for you It's the worst thing you can do for yourself, for us as humanity. And how do you limit it? Endocrine disruptors. I mean, it's being found.

Starting point is 00:07:15 Microplastics are being found in the air, in the soil, in everywhere. It's basically acidifying the ocean with too much of that stuff in it. And so, you know, the, the ocean is the,

Starting point is 00:07:29 are the lungs of the world. Right. So I think, um, two out of three breaths you take are from the oxygen coming out of the ocean. So if we acidify that, we're done, you know,

Starting point is 00:07:41 even in the rainforest is, is one third. So two thirds of our oxygen is, is, is the ocean. we're done you know even in the rainforest is is one-third so two-thirds of our oxygen is scary and that's just all plastics being thrown in it's all chemicals and plastics and all the other terrible things we're doing I mean our whole system is you know factory out there's really no way to limit it then if it's in the air yeah well start to use different materials and start using you know plastics aren't all bad I mean if you think about something that's not single-use like your car like certain

Starting point is 00:08:13 things like that plastics are very valuable materials right we should be drinking out of them and we shouldn't be putting them everywhere and in our food system Wow so what about plastic forks should be made out of something that's not toxic that they won't destroy the ecosystem mm-hmm right so what were you doing before you started cocoa love like s4 or work were you always an entrepreneur you so I've been an entrepreneur my whole life out of necessity so necessities the mother of invention it all started when I didn't want to ask

Starting point is 00:08:45 my parents for money at 12 years old I said I'm gonna go out and get a job I'm gonna go to work right I want to go the movies I want to go on my terms I want to ask dad for money so at 15 my dad went to prison and we went from riches to rags so I was riding in a limo, high on life, everything was good, well fed. And then when my dad went to prison, it changed everything for me. It gave me a whole new inspiration of why.

Starting point is 00:09:15 And my mom and sister and I were about to be homeless. We lost everything. House, cars, everything gone, right? So that was it. Two full-time jobs. Went to school. And that wasn't enough. So I said, I got to start my own business.

Starting point is 00:09:31 I did that. By the time I was 18, my business was taken off. And I bought a house at 18 with my mom and little sister. And they said it couldn't be done. I met with the top criminal attorney in Las Vegas. And he said it couldn't be done I met with the top criminal attorney in Las Vegas and he said it couldn't be done he goes kid even if you had a million dollars I don't want to I don't want to take I couldn't take your money because he was caught on camera doing a big high drug trafficking deal he said I don't

Starting point is 00:09:58 think you can get out they gave him 25 to life through the book Adam and I went to bat. I said, okay, if you can't get it done, then I'm going to get it done. And it took me eight years. I lobbied the Supreme Court in Nevada without an attorney, and we got him pardoned. I got my dad out of prison. Whoa. So that was the beginning of learning my power and learning how to manifest what I need to get done.

Starting point is 00:10:23 So it doesn't matter what anybody says. I tell people every day, it's like every setbacks is set up for a comeback there that's a setup for you that's the opportunity when you're sitting in you know that you're planted for success now you know and there's there's a lemon there is there is a lemonade out there to be made so it's just that's just the way we we do it and i mean all the things that i've done before you know after all that have all given me skills and proved to me my own power of manifestation and as long as you have that that faith and that belief it's about going by faith not by sight mmm

Starting point is 00:11:05 everyone wants to see it but if you can't see it before everyone else does then you don't have nothing if you want to make an opportunity then you gotta not only blaze the trail you got to make the trail yeah we're trail makers let the Blazers come behind you so that's what this is about well that's what this is about this is really really, really, really, really good. Are you working on any other flavors? Are we going to see some lemon limes? We have a whole

Starting point is 00:11:32 line in our product roadmap. It's all based and rooted in cocoa love. Everything we do is going to be towards something. So every can sold, every coconut sold, there's a homeless women and children shelter that we are aligned with called new life beginnings and also

Starting point is 00:11:49 our own nonprofit called roots for change and we're planting coconut trees in the United States Wow so we're gonna be the lot we're already the largest coconut farm in the United States at the moment so we're gonna continue guys have your own farm and everything yeah we planted 34,000 coconut trees last year we're we've got trees in Puerto Rico and Costa Rica and then we're opening escrow on a Hawaiian farm amazing so if you think about it localizing the supply chain is how you're gonna get it fresher and also how you're gonna build economies out of ecosystems locally two

Starting point is 00:12:27 of the biggest problems in Hawaii and Puerto Rico right now is food insecurity and there's no jobs like just tourism is their whole industry and like they grow coffee in Hawaii but that is so small scale when we bring the coconut and bring that industry to those islands we can literally create hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in economic development that's amazing i love your mindset you're going to be living there too right yeah oh yeah yeah we're opening into coco shack and we're going to be serving is that a restaurant it's going to be a full-on retail hydration you know health and happiness with fresh tap coconuts off the tree um we're gonna take

Starting point is 00:13:06 coco love and make shave ice out of it ice cream it's fire in fact i'll be there the chef chef sarah at the um casa playa at win and encore made us a coco love shave ice the other day it was the best thing i ever had in my entire life. So is it hard? Because every fruit obviously doesn't mix well. Or does it? Is it hard to kind of – what flavors actually go to you and which ones are like, nah, that's not it? Everyone's got their own taste. You taste for different strokes for different folks.

Starting point is 00:13:42 But, I mean, coconut is kind of like that universal mixer. Oh, okay. And then you can drop in whatever you want to go tequila vodka yeah rum you know puerto rico they like the whiskey cocoa yeah it's just all different cultures different tastes i mean yeah you know i'm a six five mexican jew i like what i like but it doesn't mean you're gonna like what i right and so I make sure that it's highest quality and best flavor profiles possible and then you know and well what are some of the health benefits oh my gosh like so look for people that don't know like all right you never hear anyone like oh yeah I'm a dream come I call it God's Gatorade okay so it's got all the electrolytes magnesium potassium

Starting point is 00:14:21 calcium phosphorus iron everything that's going to give you energy and you know without making you spike it's low glycemic so it's got like one third the sugar of like orange juice and apple juice and all that other stuff but it's going to it's going to give your body what it needs so i mean even back in war times korean war they ran out of blood plasma it's got almost the same molecular structure of blood plasma. They were IVing these into people's arms. You serious? To save lives back in the day. And only 14 grams of sugar.

Starting point is 00:14:50 And it's natural. Low glycemic. No added sugar. I mean, this is from, you know, that's what we're all about. It's all about 60 calories per can. That's not bad. How do you maintain quality and freshness? Because I went to the Asian grocery market the other day.

Starting point is 00:15:03 I got one. I had to throw it out. A lot of the stores that you go to with the markets, they'll leave the coconuts on the floor. Yeah. They're not in cold chain. So they're going to spoil. Like this needs to be held in cold chain. From the farm, it goes into a refrigerated container, comes to our warehouse in refrigeration,

Starting point is 00:15:24 and then it goes in the truck to deliver the resorts like to MGM Resorts all the retail it's in a cold truck and refrigerator truck wow you hold the cold chain you can hold the freshness but they leave them out on the floor and I'm like I wouldn't want to buy those coconuts because they've been out of cold chain for a week two weeks like you know it's just like you do you eat your fish or you eat your sushi yeah it's got to be cold even the cans too right those got to be refrigerated no this is pasteurized so this is shelf stable okay so this will this is out of 24 month shelf life oh wow it can sit in your closet it can sit on the floor of the grocery store without going bad wow that's why we did

Starting point is 00:16:02 this so that we could scale and get to the world you know but let's talk scale let's talk distribution you're in the biggest retailers in Vegas and throughout the country how are you able to pull that off because a lot of people struggle getting their products into big chains so um really it's about distribution we're not nationwide yet we just launched this six weeks ago and we will be nationwide within two years but we know we're not in any hurry because we built out the infrastructure and the distribution channels with this so we plug that into our trucks our warehousing our our teams so we do it a little bit different than a traditional drink owner they just plug it into a distributor but you get lost with a lot

Starting point is 00:16:44 of distributors like 10 000 products we have five skews that we distribute you know maybe it'll go to 15 but we love to focus and execute and make sure that every product that we sell is getting the attention it deserves and so that's why i'm gonna i'm gonna own vegas we'll get to 15 20 million a year in vegas and then we'll go nationwide i'm lighting up Hawaii Puerto Rico Texas the other distributors yeah yeah we Cali for sure yeah for sure anywhere the shelter so I'm from Long Beach too and the shelter is in Long Beach so we have new life beginnings has two shelters that hold up to 80 women and children and we created a job

Starting point is 00:17:24 program called project hope so helping others providing experience and a lot of people won't give the moms a shot they won't give them an interview and we actually give them the experience they go out and sell at the coco shack we go out and teach them how to how to communicate and do some of the skills and then then once they get the interview they're already ready to go so so that's how I just cope how important this legacy to you it's the most important thing I have I have I'm 44 I'm the last is all the bar of my of my tribe and I'm having a baby in six months from now your first thoughts yeah my first my first wow you waited yeah well you know I was I had to grow up really fast and I took time to

Starting point is 00:18:10 make sure that I was ready and I could provide that I could do everything that I needed to do for my family I was helping my dad and my sisters and my mom and I was more focused on the immediate family than making my own you know do you think putting others first was a good thing for you yeah yeah I mean it gave me a purpose and it gave me work ethic it allowed me to really know what I don't want you know seeing you know when you witness things when you're growing up and you witness those crazy things and you you really just think about like do i want this for my life so that you can learn a lot from someone who makes

Starting point is 00:18:52 mistakes like uh what not to do and then sit back and actually write out what do you want to do what do you want what's your why i call this my hydration okay it's my hydration because i'm going to plant 1 million trees in the united states i'm going to help millions and millions of people globally just do something that they want to do for themselves by by that why and that hydration i mean teaching people how to farm and teaching people how to do it on their own not just be stuck in this wheel, you know. You know, it's kind of ironic, but it's Memorial Day today. And people have fought and given their lives for our freedom.

Starting point is 00:19:34 Well, if you're free, then it's your job to fight and free someone else. And so that's why I'm doing this is so we can drink it all forward. We can all drink it forward. We can do better. We can be better steve jobs says it the best he says it's about the crazy ones who think they can change the world are the ones that do and i truly believe that i'm here for a purpose and a reason to be that coco crazy one to to help inspire and change change the way things are done just because they're done this way doesn't mean they have to stay this way you know i love that man it's powerful i want to talk about your tv

Starting point is 00:20:10 appearances oh okay this man's pretty famous you've been on some big shows what did you learn about shark tank going on there so shark tank is an amazing platform an amazing education platform it inspires others and it it was the best thing for me to go in there is it hard it's hard to get on there right yeah it is you have to beat out 50 to 75 000 people per season crazy and my first time i tried out i had the callbacks and everything and then they just ghosted yeah so I did it again I mean we're talking about hundreds and hundreds of hours of paperwork and auditions and videos and it's a terrible grueling process and I did it twice and then I finally got on so took me two years and I had to beat out a hundred thousand plus people to get on there yeah it was insane to be on

Starting point is 00:21:04 that show guys and what was your be on that show, guys. And what was your ask on the show? So back then, it was 2017. I was asking for $150,000 for 10% of my company. Valuation way higher now. Pricing went up. I'm glad to say that when I go back on Shark Tank. Are you going back?

Starting point is 00:21:22 I will. I'll be back. And it'll definitely be $100,000 to $ what we know it's funny the valuations going up very fast our company's profitable we're growing at a 50% clip a month Wow our team is in just the last three weeks we've onboarded over 150 new customers in this city and we're're going to keep doing it. We'll be in that. It's going to take over Vegas.

Starting point is 00:21:47 And what does Shark Tank do for your brand? Because I hear once you go on there, your phone starts ringing. Nah, it's not. Because you've got other investors actually watching that. Yeah, yeah. I had a lot of tire kickers. You know, there's a lot of traders. Okay.

Starting point is 00:22:01 They're not true investors. There's investors that are in it for the long game and the long haul. Right. And then there's traders. They're not true investors. There's investors that are in it for the long game and the long haul. And then there's traders. I just read an article about the Stanford professor who invested $100,000 in Sergey Brin and his partner's Google idea. He was the first check writer at 100 Gs and he held, and that 100 grand is worth 10 billion today okay that is a long-term holder right and then there's other people that just want to write a 50 000 check and they want to get their 500 000 as fast as they can out of there that's a traitor so you have to think if you're an investor think about true equity warren buffett has got that long game buy buy buy never

Starting point is 00:22:47 sell build the equity right and of course he flips he trades and does stuff but I mean to be a true investor you gotta think long game our plan is a hundred-year plan I won't be here to see it all execute but it's there it's a long game this is not a trade I just sold 10% of our company to long game, long term investors. Nice. That understand that we are going to go all the way. And that was recent? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:23:12 Congrats. Congrats on that. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Also, I want to talk about The Prophet because that's one of my favorite shows. Have you seen The Prophet? I have. I haven't watched it in a while.

Starting point is 00:23:20 That dude's hilarious. Marcus Limonis. Were you intimidated by him at all? No. He's a lot smaller than me. So I'm really not. I wasn't intimidated. The reality TV show game, that's a whole other story.

Starting point is 00:23:34 Not everything you see on TV is what happens. And so they rewrote and re-scripted and voiceovered a lot of stuff. But they made their entertainment show. It was good it was entertaining as hell they kind of positioned me as the coco clown and this and that it was fun but at the end of the day it's about getting your brand exposed and getting it out there brand awareness for sure we out there man we out there it's really exciting yeah i'm excited to see where you take this for

Starting point is 00:24:05 real i love your energy thanks man i mean you got to try this guys yeah i'm gonna try i already had this and it was probably actually it was crazy even before he was on the show i had it like i was sitting in the lobby and they had him at gym right yeah that's where i had it too before i even met him you know there's uh you guys know fight Stars. Yeah. Yeah. They have a they have a promotion. If you go to Coco Lovewater dot com and you enter in Fight Stars 10, you get 10 percent off your whole order. It will should be a case right to your door. And every can sold helps the women and children in need plant trees. We're all about the hydration, the mission, the vision.

Starting point is 00:24:42 It's everything we do. I mean, I dress like this every day. I'm not just a costume. This is my vibe. is my style like i just i love it you know what's next for you after this or do you want to do this the rest of your life um this is it i mean when you plant a million trees and you own the coconut commodity in the united states you're gonna make a lot of coconut products because you got a lot of coconuts. I mean, what other coconut products are there? There's chips. No, no, guys. There's 360 products you can make from a coconut tree.

Starting point is 00:25:10 Name 10. All right. Oils, lotions, soaps, candies, creams, everything you can imagine. Then you have soil remediation products, activated coconut carbon. Endless. Endless. Can you make a soda? A coconut soda?

Starting point is 00:25:24 You can make a carbonated. You can carbonate this. I would soda a coconut soda make it carbonated you can carbonate this i would try that vodka what about yeah you can make coconut you can make a coconut rub you can make you can make coconut porter beer you can make coconut lots what about a wine well coconut coconut ferments in a different way wine would be a little bit different wines grapes yeah you know but it's a cocoa wine you could make like a cocoa moonshine kind of thing you could there's every the coconut like skin huh like inside the coconut the meat you know I'm never underrated yeah we could cut this open you could try to coconut milk yeah yeah you take the meat which

Starting point is 00:26:00 has all the fat and you blend that with water or with coconut water and that's coconut milk once it's by two mixed in you can eat that with cereal yeah that's just coconut milk you could drink that bro it's you can make a coconut ice cream with that so at the coco shack we're gonna have oh yeah you so you guys are coming up with ice cream too he's doing shaved ice we do the full coco love shave ice you've never had shaved ice bro it's no i've had shaved but you know the you know like the normal shaved ice not coconut that's made out of water yeah it ain't made out of the cocoa water you know what i'm saying it's been a blast man any closing comments you know guys at the end of the day uh all your listeners they need to learn that every setback is set up for a

Starting point is 00:26:40 comeback and if you truly believe in something if something's calling you in your heart, don't pay attention to what the noise is. It doesn't matter who believes. If you believe and you can see it and you write it down and you put it up there, go get it. Don't stop.

Starting point is 00:26:57 It doesn't matter how long it takes. If it's worth it to you, anything worth doing is worth overdoing. Go all the way. Nice. That's it. You heard it here. Wayne? Coco all the way. Nice. That's it. You heard it here. Wayne.

Starting point is 00:27:07 Coco love. My coco love. That's right. Coco love, baby. Thanks for tuning in. Digital Social Hour. See you next time. Peace.

Digital Social Hour - The Coconut Water Revolution | CoCo Vinny Digital Social Hour #80

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