Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - Brewing Success from College Projects to Industry Giants

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

Unlock the secrets to transforming a college side hustle into a beverage behemoth with Chris Hunter, the ingenious creator of Four Loko. Our engaging conversation peels back the curtain on Chris's audacious journey through the world of entrepreneurship. From his first dollar earned through college coloring book sales to navigating the tempestuous waters of the beverage industry, Chris's story offers a treasure trove of insights on innovation, agility, and the sheer tenacity needed to build a brand that defines a generation.Embark on a rollercoaster ride with us as Chris opens up about pivoting from the infamous party drink to leading a plant-based beverage empire, Koya. Witness the strategic moves and personal life shifts that catalyze new business ventures and drive a brand to nationwide success. Chris's transition underlines the importance of foresight in capitalizing on health trends and scaling a business, proving that personal evolution can be the catalyst for professional revolution.Reflect on the transformative power of self-improvement and the courage required to steer your own fate, drawing inspiration from Chris's remarkable resilience to setbacks. His approach to customer engagement transcends conventional wisdom, showing how direct interaction can turn obstacles into victories. This episode isn't just a playbook on creating a successful brand—it's a testament to the entrepreneurial spirit and the relentless pursuit of escaping the drift to craft your destiny.Highlights:(01:40 - 03:08) Founder of Four Loco Brand(08:41 - 09:38) Word of Mouth Club Promotion Success(14:05 - 14:34) Starting Over in Chicago(22:20 - 22:48) Learning in Alcohol Industry Sales(25:38 - 26:21) Alcoholic Energy Drink Market Analysis(30:25 - 31:34) Pitching a New Beverage Product(53:45 - 54:28) Nightclub's Downfall After NFL Star's Scandal(57:02 - 57:46) Finding New Opportunities and Transitioning(59:40 - 01:00:30) Discovering Market Potential in Chicago(01:02:51 - 01:03:35) Starbucks Innovation Strategy DiscussionCHAPTERS (00:04) Escaping the Drift With Chris Hunter(03:20) Making Money Through College Promotions(12:32) Entrepreneurial Journey and Tenacity(18:10) Transitioning Careers and Taking Risks(24:46) Entrepreneurial Journey Into Alcoholic Energy Drink(34:33) Entrepreneurial Challenges in Beverage Business(39:21) Navigating Challenges and Pivots in Business(47:26) Importance of Structure and Partnership Agreements(50:38) Entrepreneurial Lessons Learned From Adversity(56:42) Transition to Plant-Based Drink Success(01:04:40) Effective Customer Relationship Strategies(01:11:19) Empowerment and Self-Improvement Podcast💬 Did you enjoy this podcast episode? Tell us all about it in the comment section below! ☑️  If you liked this video, consider subscribing to Escaping The Drift with John Gafford 💯 About John Gafford: After appearing on NBC's "The Apprentice", John relocated to the Las Vegas Valley and founded several successful companies in the real estate space.➡️ The Gafford Group at Simply Vegas, top 1% of all REALTORS nationwide in terms of production. Simply Vegas, a 500 agent brokerage with billions in annual sales Clear Title, a 7-figure full-service title and escrow company.➡️ Streamline Home Loans - An independent mortgage bank with more than 100 loan officers. The Simply Group, A national expansion vehicle partnering with large brokers across the country to vertically integrate their real estate brokerages.✅ Follow John Gafford on social media:Instagram ▶️ / thejohngaffordFacebook ▶️ / gafford2🎧 Stream The Escaping The Drift Podcast with John Gafford Episode here:Listen On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7cWN80gtZ4m4wl3DqQoJmK?si=2d60fd72329d44a9Listen OnApple:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/escaping-the-drift-with-john-gafford/id1582927283

And now, Escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm John Gafford, and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. Back again, back again, literally back again. I'll get to that in just a second for another episode of Escaping the Drift, the show that gets you from where you are to where

you want to be, man. And you know where I want to be? I'll tell you where I want to be. I don't want to be feeling like I'm having deja vu, but I'm having deja vu. And I'm going to preface this before I introduce today's guest, which is this, which is sometimes, man, you don't always get, you know, you don't always get dealt a good hand. And today, for the first time in 200 episodes, maybe, maybe that many, one of the channels was not on when we recorded this show. So I recorded a banger of a podcast, a banger for you people. And guess what? Another I choose. So this cat that was nice enough to fly in, to do the show, I hit him up and I'm like, bro, I am so sorry. I'm so embarrassed. This never has happened. Can you do me a solid and come back? And he has come back for round two. And so, you know, look, there's a lot of stuff we done the

first one. It's going to be just as good. I trust you. And there, you know, look, there's a lot of stuff we've done in the first one. It's going to be just as good. I trust you. And here's the thing. Even if it's not, I hope you're wondering, like, where's the lost tapes, the lost episode that I didn't get? And I'll leave you hungry for a little bit more. But on to today's guest. If you drank yourself blackout, drunk between the time of about 2007 and 2010 today, it might be of interest to you. If you thought about drinking yourself blackout drunk, if you were a college guy,

maybe, maybe, maybe you're a fraternity guy. Maybe it's Friday night. You had a tough time on your final. You're like, dude, I'm just trying to kill the end of the week and get a little buzz.

We're heading down to the old frat house and you look in your bank account, your ATM card, back when we had those things and you stick in the ATM and you put your number in and it says, current balance, $2.95. Because you spent all the money mom and dad sent you, but you still want to catch a buzz. So what do you do? You go down to the store, you open that glass door, you look for that elixir it's 24 hands count you grab yourself a four loco well if that is something that you did in your life i got a treat for you because the guy that made all of that possible the founder of the brand four loco and more to the point better stuff now but the founder of that wonderful brand in Studio J, ladies and gentlemen, welcome

back, Mr. Chris Hunter. Chris. Second time's going to be better, buddy. So good to see you, man. You as well. I feel like it's been four hours. It's been four hours since I saw you the last time. But that's okay because we're going to get all the good stuff out. So you're a guy that scrapped up a brand from nothing and you started from zero and you just, you just got this thing going. So the first thing is how did you like, what was the first hustle as a kid? That's a question I didn't ask you earlier. What was the first hustle? Yeah. As a kid, let's see. What was the first way you made money? Yeah. I think, I think the first way I made money was around first or second grade. I was coloring pictures in a coloring book like first or second graders do.

And I think my family told me, those are really good. I had the shading right. I don't know, whatever. So I decided to rip them out and go sell them in the neighborhood. I went door to door and sold my own coloring book pictures. Oh my God. What a gangster move for a little kid. Because who's going to be like, I'm sorry, your coloring sucks. I'm not going to buy it they're like oh you're trying to say how much is

it exactly you're like 37 dollars yeah i think i started at a quarter and by the end i was up to a couple bucks because like no one was saying no your first grade you're just pressing that you're pressing pressing the market till you find out where the cap that's right you got to find out how high you can go you got to find out how high you can go. You got to find out. So you went to college at Ohio State University. Yes. We didn't talk about that.

I don't know how I feel about that. Don't tell me you're a Michigan guy. No. All right. No. I could care less about Michigan. I could care less. I'm the most jaded college football fan base after last year there is.

Do you care to guess what college football fan base that is? Who did Michigan beat? No. No. Who didn't get the chance to play Michigan? Who didn't even get a chance to suit up? Who was screwed by Kurt Herbstreet and ESPN and the rest of those money-grubbing bastards to give Saban a chance to try to go out on top

even though he didn't deserve it. Remind me. Florida State University. Oh. You guys had your run. You guys had your run. We're in the middle of a run. Mid-run.

It's ebb and flow, and right now we're... Is ebbing or flowing better do you think i don't know but it you're in the better one i think yeah we're flowing yeah enough about listen if today's a good example like the second time is the best so next year exactly so you went to ohio state yep and there you had uh you started really you learned a great hustle that we talked about earlier yeah and if you are somebody that if like i said earlier if you're if somebody was i'm no longer going to say like i said earlier because i will say that 800 times today i'm not going to say that if you're somebody listen to this and you are in the 18 year old to maybe 25 year old and you got some swag to you and you're

good looking human you might want to listen to this story this is a great way to make money if you're a college kid it was the best way to make money. Great way. Explain that story. What was it? So basically, I go to Ohio State, right? And I guess if I look back, I started throwing parties when I was in high school. So at the end of the year, I would throw this party at my house. We lived on a property that had like a half an acre beside it. And when I think all the way back, my stepdad's birthday, he probably turned like 40. My mom threw a birthday party for him and they threw a rager. My uncle DJ, they brought in a mobile hot tub. And my family was partiers, right? And you're taking notes. And I'm taking notes. The next year, I throw that same party

as a freshman and I have a lot of cousins and we bring in people from everywhere. What did your parents say? Good for you. You're a smart kid. Make some money. My uncles are working the door, charging the money. Other ones are making, I swear, other ones are making sure people aren't drinking in the cars. So I guess if I look back. This is Chicago? This is in Ohio. Ohio. Youngstown, Ohio. Youngstown. And so I guess if I look back- Is this Chicago? This is in Ohio. Ohio. Youngstown, Ohio. Youngstown. And so I guess I learned my promoting career then, but I didn't think of that. I go to Ohio State. I get this job working for the spring break company called STS. I go to Cancun and live there during spring break.

And one of my jobs is standing at the nightclub door and watching people walk in with an STS bracelet and clicking it. I count the number of people. And I'm wondering why I'm doing this job. And I find out that they're getting money for every person that comes through the door. Light bulb clicks. I'm in a fraternity. I know a bunch of people at school. I get back from spring break and I randomly called this nightclub that was kind of struggling. I said, I want to throw a night. I want to throw a party there on Thursday in three weeks. And the guy said, how many people are you going to bring? I said, I don't know. I'll bring a thousand people. And he said, paused for a minute. I just

threw out a damn number, right? Pause for a minute. And he said, if you bring a thousand people, I'll give you half the door. And the door cover at that time was 10 bucks. So I was going to make $5,000 in one night. I came up a little bit short. I got 900 people in the door. I made 4,500 bucks. And that started my promotions career. And we were talking, I mean,

look, if, if you don't know what you, if you don't know what to do, if you can talk to people and bullshit people and try to say, this is where the spot is in Vegas. It's it's second nature. Every nightclub has these guys that patrol.

But if you're a college kid somewhere understand something if when you go to college like these college bars like you get one night like you get like oh we all go there on thursday we go here on wednesday we go there on tuesday dude if you can somehow go to a bar that's got nothing else going on and tell them i'm going to bring you a bunch of folks and you don't have to do anything and all all you got to do is cut me in. You essentially become a partner of that business. Right. And you have no overhead, no taxes, no payroll, no insurance, no anything, just the cost of some flyers is all it is. So you can literally pretty much own part of a business from doing that. And I thought when we talked about that, I, you know, through the years from my

college bar days to even in Atlanta, you know, at the nightclub we had there, you know, Jermaine Dupree would throw a party every Sunday night. It was promoted by two guys that were there and we would hand them like 25, 35, 50, $60,000 a night just for coming in. It's crazy the money you can make. And I say everybody had their ramen noodle days, right? Most likely. Mine were not in college. Everybody else's were in college.

When I was in college, I was buying boats. I was like living the high life. Because at one point I started promoting three, four nights a week. To your point, pick a different club or take your crowd somewhere else. Take my crowd somewhere else. And what I found is that most people did not want to think about where to go. Just like, tell me where to go. Tell me what's going on tonight. And if it's fun, I'll be there next week too. Dude, it's so funny how quickly word of mouth can catch for stuff like that. You know, when I, my, I was literally telling the story yesterday, I forgot about it,

but my claim to fame and promotion was this was, and we'll talk about, we talked about this person, a guy named Dave, your road who, uh, became good friends of mine were for Red Bull. And we'll tell his story in a minute and how it interacts with you. But I went to, there was an event in Atlanta called music Midtown. It was a big multi-day outdoor festival downtown with bands. And went with red bull uh as their guest because i was their guy and at the time i owned a bar that was a live music venue in atlanta and very proud of that bar i loved it uh it you know gracing that stage where the likes of john mayer the zach brown band played there this wasn't little locals you were bringing national acts no no these

were local guys. Oh, wow. Dude. Zach used to play for a hundred bucks on my pad. Oh, amazing. Yeah.

Like literally John Hopkins is the bass player for that. That's Jack Brown band, which I'm happy birthday today. I've known him forever, but a lot of those guys that came out of Atlanta played this bar. But anyway, long story, boring.

We go to music Midtown and somehow maybe I had a couple of drinks and I spread a rumor that live who was playing at the festival was playing an after show at my bar and maybe i just i don't know 10 people i told this to just oh yeah i don't know if we're doing after because you know live's gonna play a secret show later right dude we left music midtown to go to dinner and we were in the red bull limo and i said dave i can't just i need to go by the bar and we were in the Red Bull limo, and I said, Dave, I need to go by the bar and just check on it and see what's going on. It's Sunday.

It's going to be dead. Dude, there was like 3,000 people in my place. I walk in, and the bar manager, who was supposed to be there taking inventory but is now working, just looks up to me in this panicked face and just says what did you do so i literally i made a call to john hopkins i just talked about that is and i had said dude can you get down here with band in like an hour and plays like yeah no problem brother i got you and nobody cared as long as there's music and we crushed it that's amazing sunday that's amazing i was very i was very very proud of that so here you

are back to you you're you're promoting your business or you're promoting bars and stuff yeah and and you learned a very interesting skill doing that what was that or what did you see that you learned well um i saw a lot of stuff that i learned i mean i met a lot of people networking is obviously huge and i and i believe that from that day but uh but I started to see Red Bull be introduced, right? And so this was at the time, like right before I started promoting, Red Bull was kind of hitting the US, but it wasn't in the Midwest. It wasn't in Ohio yet. And we had actually gone down to this little like Asian market in town and they had the

original Red Bull, which was in like a bottle and it was like a concentrated syrup. And we started buying that and bringing it back to the fraternity house and selling it for five bucks a bottle because this idea of an energy drink was not, there was no energy drink, right? Red Bull hadn't come to Ohio yet. And so as they expanded, they hired reps in the market and they started handing out cases. They would always have product at our party. And of course it was being consumed with alcohol. So it was the first exposure to this idea of caffeine and alcohol being mixed way back in college great plan yeah yeah so you graduate and what do you do now so i moved to

chicago um no job no clue what i'm gonna do um but my now wife girlfriend at the time was moving there i was originally going to move to la and i went to la with a buddy who had won a reality show back at that time it was called paradise hotel it was it was the most so let me set this stage for you so my buddy is dating my wife's friend they live together okay he leaves to go on the show and doesn't tell his girlfriend much about this show it's a show it's a dating show the way you win it is by hooking up essentially the most so i'm going i'm going to my girlfriend's house to watch this show with her and her girlfriend and and and they're she has no idea no and it's just a disaster needlessless to say, they broke up. But I was supposed to move to LA with him. I went to LA with him after the show.

I hated LA. And I was like, I'm not going there. I landed back in Columbus, called up my girl, who I was just getting back together with, my girlfriend, who's now my wife. And she's like, Chicago's amazing right now. Come check it out. So I go there. Love it.

I'm moving to Chicago. No clue what I'm going to do. Yeah. Get there. Run up debt. Run through all the money I'd made in college, run up a bunch of debt because I'm not really an employable person. And I've always kind of been an entrepreneur and I'm in a new city, not knowing what I'm going to do. Isn't that so funny?

Because I mean, you don't want to call them weed dealers, but let's call them weed dealers. You have like the guys. You did a little of that too. No, but I'm saying you got like the professional guys. You got the guys in college that are like, I'm going to school for finance, but I'm a weed dealer too. Right, right. And then they graduate and they're like, I'm going to get a job at, you know, at Deloitte and Touche. And then all of a sudden they're like broke because they're not dealing with weed anymore.

Right. And it's the same thing. You come out of the nightclub and all of a sudden you're like, whoa, what just happened? Right. And like, I gotta go work this long to make this much money. So, so I run through all the money and, um, and I'm like, not going to go get a regular job. I, but I will wake up one day at my girlfriend's house and I must've been singing the blues and telling her the situation because there's a check there. She literally cut me a check to pay rent. Ouch. Yeah. So that was, that was what I needed. Cause I was like, now I got to just say on the, on the memo line, did it just say in exchange for your

masculinity? Is that what it said? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Handed it over. You better run this back. It was tough. So yeah. So, but it was a motivator,? Now I'm going to make it happen. And so adding one layer to the story, I knew these guys who seemed to be rolling in cash. I didn't know what they did. I found out basically they were like storm chasers. They would do hail damage on roofs and it paid a lot of money. It does. It's great money. And I said, I'm in. There was no barrier to entry, right? Just show up. I'm a hustler. I can sell, you know, color pictures door to door. I could sell this shit, right? And so I go and do it.

The funny thing, the ironic thing is I'm afraid of heights. And so I find myself climbing on roofs, doing hail damage claims, starting to make money. I never lost an incentive. I needed to get them. I needed to eat. I needed to pay my girlfriend back, but I wasn't long for the industry. I knew that. And so I started trying to figure out what I

wanted to do. I looked back through all these business cards I had collected in college from all these people I had met. And I see this card from this guy that had started a vodka company. And I met him when he was in Columbus because he wanted to meet all the party bars owners. That's where he was going to sell his drink. It was a cherry vodka that mixed with Red Bull, oddly enough. But his broker there called on all high-end restaurants. And so they called me and they said, can you take him around? So I did. I paid attention. I learned. I understood how the alcohol industry worked. That was it. Two years later, I find his card and I literally call and email him every day until he picks up and says,

I'll hire you. And so that was, that was how I got into the beverage business is the only real job I had. And I, and I love that story because look, if you are trying to pester somebody to mentor you into sales as any part of the business, you've got to understand you've got to chase them with the same tenacity of which they would expect you to chase their clients. Right. Or they chase their clients. So many people do hit me up and they're like, hey, I want to work with you. And I'm like, I don't really take on any experienced agents.

And then crickets. That's it. You know, I tell, I tell the story a lot of very similar. I had somebody that worked for me named Amber and she came by the nightlife industry and she came here and interviewed and said, hey, I want, you know, steps just came back and said, there's a young lady up front. Let's talk to you. Look out what's going on. She's like, Hey, I want to work for you. I just got a license. I'm brand new. I'm like, I don't want to hire brand new agents. Not something I do. Right. She's like, okay, cool. Thanks. I'm like, here,

you're probably looking at this, do this, blah, blah, blah. See you later. Next day, she's here again. Did you forget something? She's like, no, I want to work for you. And she kept coming and it only took three days. And I was like, dude, all right, I'm in. I'm in. And she turned out to be just such a phenomenal human to work with because that tenacity, it's like that you can teach people a lot of stuff, man. I can hand you a script. I can hand you a plan. You can't teach tenacity. Yeah. Your willingness to be able to do whatever you need to do, right? Yeah. You got it or you don't. You have to. I mean, I remember in high school, I took a job selling Cutco knives. Do you remember Cutco?

Yeah, of course, dude. I had one customer. It was my grandma. I asked a lot of people to buy those knives. I realized that I did not like taking money. For me at that time, these knives were so expensive. It was like car payments for people I knew. I couldn't go sell them. The point was I was- Because you didn't believe in what you were doing. I didn't believe in what I was doing, but I could do it.

I could go ask the person for the sale until I was detached from, didn't believe in what I was doing. Yeah, when I transitioned from the bar and restaurant industry, when I made that transition, when the doctor in what I was doing. Yeah. When I, when I transitioned from the bar and restaurant industry, when I made that transition, when the doctor told me I was essentially, I needed a life change diagnosis at 28 years old. Jesus, look at you, man. What's your diet? Maker's market cigarettes. Yeah. You need a life change. Time to move on. So yeah, but, but I, I called my buddy in sales. He was the vice president of world comm at the time. And I said, man, give me a gig. He's like, I can't give you a job off the street.

Man, you need sales experience. And he's like, I'll give you two roads. Go sell cars. Go sell Kirby vacuum cleaners. Either way, you'll have a PhD in sales in 90 days. Yep. Yep. I was like, what?

And I was like, dude, zero chance I'm going to sell. Because, dude, I'm here. I'm the cool guy. I'm the club guy. I'm the bar guy. I'm not going to sell Kirby vacuum cleaners. but i swallowed my ego to get the education and i went and sold cars and that's where i learned how to sell and he was right man yeah because this was like this was back before you could just go on the internet rip down and see exactly how much

the dealer would take a dealer cost right like there was still money selling cars yeah i sold cars as well so um i had this short stint at Ohio State the first time I went. So essentially, my college career started this way. I went to Miami of Ohio, which is like a very high-end, we call it the Ivy League of the Midwest school. And I just felt like I didn't fit there. What I realized in retrospect is I was homesick. I decided to transfer to Ohio State. I transferred to Ohio State. I'm there for three days. I go to the ATM. My bank account is emptied. My mom struggled with addiction and she had emptied out my bank account is emptied. My mom struggled with addiction and she had emptied out my bank account. And I was like, okay, shit, I got to go home.

I go back to Youngstown and no one in my family really went to college. On my dad's side, no one even finished high school. On my mom's side, I had one cousin who went to college because he played football. He was a year older than me. And so I had an uncle who was a general contractor and he knew I was coming home and he's like, yeah, you're coming to work for me. And so I had an uncle who was a general contractor and he knew I was coming home and he's like, yeah, you're coming to work for me. And he made me pound nails and hard corners and all the hard shit. I'm going to show you what life's going to be like, right? Quickly realized that was not for me. And I was going to go back to college, but I had a quarter until I could go back. And my other uncle worked at a car dealership and he said, come work for me. Day one, throw me in the deep end, go sell a car, sold a car day one bullshitting.

I have no clue what I was telling them. I don't know what happened, but to your point, just personable and just talk to people. Right. Yeah. I think that, you know, that's something anybody in sales, I would highly recommend that job just for us, even if it's just to getting it out. I knew I was 90 day or there from the day I started. Yeah. And literally from the day I started, the day i left on the day 90 when i left and i

told the i told my boss i'm quitting i'm i'm out of here yeah the owner of the dealership comes comes to me and he's like hey uh what's going on and i was like keep you i have a second so i'm like i'm like i gotta come up with some and I already knew what was next. Right. I knew, I knew what I was going to do. And I knew a company that my sister and I were going to start. And I knew this, but I didn't really want to talk about it. So I figured I'd just come up with some bullshit reason why I can't work here. And I got to move to Florida. So I was like, ah, you know, you know, at the time you're young and the nightclub business, whatever, you know, even though I had money, you still have five roommates. It's just what you did back then. And it was just a gang of It's just what you did back then. Right.

And it was just a gang of dudes and just what you do when you're in your early twenties. And, uh, I stayed home. I go, ah, you know, I lost all my roommates. They all moved out. So I can't afford the lease on our place. So I'm just, I'm going to move back to Florida. And he goes, no, no, no. Here's what we'll do. I'll be your roommate. He goes, I'll pay five, six of all your bills. You'll never see me. I'll never even come over. I was like, ah, he's like, I'll pay all of your bills. I'll pay

all your bills. I'll never come over. And I was like, okay, no, I'm really moving to Florida to do something else. I can't do this. Right. Whatever, blah, blah, blah. I thought he was going to cry. Cause I was really, I got really sharp at that job because it was good training and it was man. And it's a great place to learn that. It's my first job. The one that I got really sharp at that job because it was good training and it was, man. And it's a great place to learn that. It's my first job, the one that I got selling vodka. I looked at it that exact same way. I got to learn on somebody else's dime. And so I got to understand the alcohol industry, three-tier system, distributors, retailers, or bars and customer. I got to manage multiple states. I got to build relationships, similar story. When I had decided that I was leaving to start Fusion with my two partners, I went to him and

told him I was leaving. And he's like, what if we offer you shares in the company? And I knew enough to ask, he said maybe a hundred thousand shares. I don't remember the number. And I knew enough to ask, well, how many shares are there? And there were millions, right? Exactly. And I was like, we're going to dilute you down to 0.0006 but you get a hundred thousand class b non-voting yeah yeah exactly common um and uh i said look man i i really appreciate that because it was a nice gesture sure to to the same story of the guy that tried to keep you there but i was like i have to try this on my own and if if i fail at, someone will recognize that it took balls to go try it anyways. See, so many people are not willing to do what you just did. And I love this

because they look at when they get a job in a new industry or new field and they, you know, maybe it doesn't pay that great. Maybe it's not that awesome. I look at it as, you know, if you go to college, you pay a shit ton of money. No, I'm not anti-college. I believe college is a wonderful thing. So I'm not one of those guys that says waste of money. I think it's depending on your, if you get a degree in like, you know, Western civilization or Latin, I think you're an idiot, but if you get a degree, you know, degree in finance, there's nothing like go get a degree in finance. It's the language of business. Go get a degree in accounting. It's the language of business. But if you get a job that maybe doesn't pay a lot,

but you're learning a skill set that we can carry on that you could eventually possibly replicate or even open your own business by learning it, that's getting paid to go to school. Exactly. That's not a job, right? A job is where, you know, you sit at a counter and ring people up and you're not learning a skill set that you can take anywhere else. Yep. But I think if it becomes unbearable when you don't know that you're going to go do something else. So if you can look at it at that, at that time,

that was the vision to the next step. Yeah. And I don't, I don't think people have to know what's next. I think it unfolds, right? Like I would have never, maybe an early college said,

I'm going to create a caffeinated alcoholic beverage or I'm going to create plant-based protein drinks. Right. But things just fell in line because I was paying attention and learning things and trying things, many of which I didn't like to learn what I did like or what I was good at. And then this idea of like caffeine with Red Bull and things and alcohol with selling vodka, it just then made intuitive sense. But you got to go do things to see what you like and what you don't and what you can create. you got to go do things to, to see what you like and what you don't and what you can create. You got to figure it out. But I also believe too, that, you know, there's that one little gene that we all have in the back of our mind that says,

you can't be a good employee. You're an entrepreneur. You're unemployable. This is terrible. Every day you go to work is like grinding your spirit down in a chalk. That's what it's like. I agree. I know that talk. Yeah. You're smarter than your boss. I know that conversation. So when that gene took over out of the liquor selling business and you decided to go out on your own, talk us through that. Yeah.

So I basically was selling a lot of this vodka mixed in with Red Bull. It was a cherry flavored vodka. And so the idea for caffeine and alcohol was very deeply implanted, right? Like I drank it, I was selling a lot of it. It was clear that there was demand for this. And so I was out in California on a sales blitz and I saw this product called Sparks and it was the original pre-mixed alcoholic energy drink. And I asked the guy working in the store, I said, does this stuff sell at all? And he said, yeah, mostly bums. And it was just this like baffling thing to me. I was like, I'm not a bum. I'm interested in it. There's they're missing the mark. Right. So that, that's what started the idea. And then I found

myself obsessing over it. Do you think, but it's kind of the same thing, but like PBR, I think like Pat Pabst has been driven, like, like that's not a high end beer, but it became the hipster beer of choice. Sure. Just need a little, just need a little push in the right direction from the guy that knows what club to go to. That's right. Exactly. How to position it. Is that what you saw?

You said, I just don't think this is position, right? I think I can make it cool. Yeah. That's exactly what I saw. All right. So we saw, we're going to make this cool. And what is that decision? You're sitting here, you have your job.

You've seen this product. You think you can do it better. Yeah. What is the, are you with the girlfriend at this point? Yeah. Okay. With the girlfriend girlfriend tell me about that conversation when you come home yeah and tell this person that wrote you a rent check that you're gonna throw away the job that you got to chase the bum the homeless dumb perry well when you say it that way it really doesn't sound that good yeah so so what happened uh my wife, girlfriend at the time, we were going to a comedy show in Chicago

and it's a BYOB thing, right? So I pull up to the liquor store, she runs in, she comes back out with Smirnoff Ice. And I was like, what the fuck, Smirnoff Ice? She goes, well, I was thinking of getting Red Bull and vodka. I'm a little bit tired, but it's just two of us. I didn't want to buy a whole bottle of vodka, Red Bull, blah vodka red blah blah blah and so i had been thinking about this idea anyways kind of obsessing on on it she says this and i'm like i'm gonna start a alcoholic energy drink she's

like okay whatever kind of dismissive i'm like that's the fucking ammo i needed i'm starting it now so i didn't she pays attention to everything you say now now she does for sure now she does so look she she always knew what she was getting into i mean with me right she always knew it was going to be this kind of ride um i don't know that she thought i would start the better take of the bum drink like but uh it's on the presentation that's probably a bad pitch yeah the slide deck would have been magical yeah right exactly but um it look it didn't it it wasn't a big deal or surprise to her um yeah there was there was no big you know shock so you get off and this is where i find this interesting so manufacturing a product from scratch when you have no idea how to do this and this is not exactly the boom time of private labeling,

easy to find on the internet, all this stuff. This is a little bit of a treasure hunt to how to get this done, I imagine. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so I come up with this idea and I'm like, I'm going to do this. And then I start to think, all right, probably out of insecurity of my own ability, like, okay, who can I do this with? And so I call up my buddy from college, Jeff, and I told him the idea and he's like, yeah, I'm in. It wasn't very hard. He had a great paying job. We were both going to do it like part-time as we kept our jobs and figure this out. And to his credit, he started like asking around like, how do you get these things made? He selling industrial gas a lot of it was used to freeze pizzas and so that's how he he learned where to start digging right because there was

already there's a manufacturing component there was some manufacturing component and so then he started like learning about okay there's this thing called a flavor house so that's where we started and you know once you're established they'll create anything for you for free because they want to sell you the ingredients but when you new, you go in and you pay at that time, 10 grand upfront, and they'll tell you, they'll give you three versions of your product. So that's what we did. So that's great. We figured out how to make, how to create it. Right. And it was very non-scientific. It's like, we look at the competitor, they're 6% alcohol, we're 6% alcohol. They say, well, how much caffeine do you want? And I turn a monster can around, this much caffeine. That's how non-scientific it was,

but we get the product. Great. Now, how do we make it? Do we have to buy a brewery? What do we do from here? And so we just start asking questions and we ask the flavor house, who should we talk to to get this made? And they enlighten us that there are these things called comans or co-manufacturers. And so we call one of them up and basically we give them our formula. We show them the design. We buy the cans that we want them to put it in. And they'll essentially take all the ingredients, package it and give us a finished product.

Great. Now we know what to do, but that is expensive. There's a huge risk there. Right. And so what we then decided to do is I had some contacts back in Ohio. I was going to Ohio for my job. So I take half a day off. I go do my job during the day. I take half a day off and I book an appointment with this distributor. And I walk into this distributor with a glass bottle that's like hand labeled it says caffeine and alcohol and it didn't even have a name on it mixed number 47

a number on it right and it's like a twist top and then i have over here a can that's like a mock-up with no top on it and i tell them like this is what it's going to taste like this is my pitch right and this is what it's going to look like because you can't put it together because that's is what it's going to look like. Because you can't put it together because that's where the money's spent. That's where the risk is. That's where the risk is. Because once they start putting together, it's like, yeah, we're going to do this for you, but we've got to do it a hundred thousand times. Right, right.

We can't do it four. Exactly. There's no four. So we call the guy or I pitched the guy and he calls me a week later and he says like, yeah, thanks for coming in. But like, call us when you have a finished product. And it was baffling to me in my mind. What do you mean? I'm not going to have a finished product until you're going to buy it. Here's a chart. Right. Close enough. Yeah. Yeah.

Got to get the orders first. Yeah. That's always, you know, I tell people all the time when you come in my office and you see all the little stuff in there. So many people love to have their accolades on the wall, right? All their trophies and all their things i collect i collect uh i have a collection of failures little things like i have my hundred thousand dollar bottle of vitamins on my desk um from when we started our vitamin multi multi-level marketing yeah and because because what i did was i went and said i'm gonna sell all this shit so let's just fill a warehouse up because it's cheaper to do it that way right so we spent a hundred thousand dollars and fill the warehouse up and then nobody bought the fucking vitamins.

So I got one bottle left at my office to remind me to make sure somebody wants to buy it before you manufacture anything. Because our ideas are always genius to us. Dude, I don't, I've done that. Man. And it's hard to, it's so hard because you get an idea and you're like, this is great. Yeah. Like I can spend this up for nothing.

Like it's going to be like five grand and I'm getting better at this. Right. Like I have, I have a, an idea for a very simple tech platform. Very simple. It's not even hard. It's super simple, but the concept of what it does is kind of unique. Great. But the guy, you know, we're spinning it up on high level, which is what

we spend all our sites up on. And to make it work, he needed this plugin that's like $500 a month. I was like, no, I'm like, spin it up in WordPress on standalone. I'm going to market it out. If it works and people sign up, then we'll move it to high level and I'll get the plugin. I'm like, and it was cheap. You're talking about like $6 six thousand dollars a year but i'm so gun shy for this bottle of vitamins i'm looking at i'm like don't do it you can get the website you can do the marketing for cheap that's the tester see if it works and then go from there it's a good it's i love that that's a really good reminder my my biggest mistake was when i thought it was going to be easy i i spent i lost a million dollars by thinking i could create while i I'm running Koya and, and

which is more than a full-time job as any business is, right? And we have a tiger by the tail and this thing's growing like crazy. I decide that during the hard seltzer boom, I saw some white space and an opportunity and I could easily stand it up. And I was being told that, you know, the big people were, the big companies were buying brands really early. I said, great, I'll commit a million dollars to this thing. I bought, I did exactly what we said not to do. I bought all the inventory.

I got the distributors. I even got some retailers to agree to take it on. And in the time that it took from concept to finished product the market collapsed everybody else came out with it so it collapsed in that way it was saturated yeah all of a sudden everyone's saying well like who's running this thing and how much time you dedicate and and i was like oh shit you're like you were just supposed to buy me out on day one what are we doing here to really make anything i'm just trying to get like a 4x multiple i'm not even being greedy here let's just get me out of this thing exactly oh man yes but dude it's you know like i always say if i have a toxic trait

for me it's i meet people i talk to them we sit in this room my hair's unbelievably great business stuff and they walk out of the room and i don't care how fucking smart they are how genius they are i'm immediately thinking i can do this yeah yes. I can, I can do this. I mean, I'll just, I'll just, I'll just get on the Google machine and just start looking for some stuff. And I'm like, Oh, I found, I found this. I wonder if this is the mothership. Let me just go a little bit. Oh, this is the mothership. Okay. Yeah. I think I can do. And then my wife's like, what are you doing? No, stop, stop. Go run your real estate company. You stop it. Stop it right now. Because I'll get to a point where I'll just

spread myself so thin over all of these different things that I'm doing that like the awesome business that I have here, let's make a truckload of money. We'll start to suffer and then dwindle a little bit. So it ends up just becoming way more work for the same amount of money. And then I start chopping legs off and get rid of things. And I'm like, okay, get back to my core focus. And then the money comes back up a lot of effort. It's a real problem for entrepreneurs though. I mean, I've clearly have done it a couple of times as well. Yeah, you have.

Yeah. But your first product comes out. So you got your jar of liquid. And we all know what the color of energy drinks. I just picture you standing there with this executive looking like you're holding a peace sample. That's all I'm envisioning in this meeting. Well, we made ours red. Okay, it was red. that's good that's better that's better so he tells you

to pound sand because you're a real product yeah so talk about tenacity again right so i said okay um he was gracious about it it's like not right now but when you have a product and i walked away from that i'm like what can i do here? So I remembered all my friends that own these bars and nightclubs that I made a lot of money for. And they made me a lot of money as well. And I called them all and I said, you guys are some of that distributor's biggest customers. And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I said, will you please call them and tell them that there's this new product that you want and you need them to carry? So slick. They all called him and he calls me a week later and he said, well,

I guess, you know, some people here, uh, we'll take the product, but we're going to take one pallet. I would lose money shipping one pallet, but it didn't matter. We were now in business. We got going. Thank you. It's always good to have buddies that'll have your back and make those calls when you get them. I got red bull in my bar in atlanta a similar way by just being through nonsense but they were rolling that out slowly and like one bar in a market would get it and they give it to another bar the next month and they just did this real exclusive layout roll out one of the guys that worked for me was this german cat peter fafn bigler and uh what's up peter you're not listening anyway peter fafn bigler was his

name and uh he's like germany's like all listening anyway peter faffenbichler was his name and uh he's like germany's like all these red bulls every people you know europe they love it they mix it with vodka bottle bottles bring cannon so we had a can of it and that day we were doing something for an article for for cobalt and they were like what's your what's your house drink and i'm like it's gray goose and red bull and they took a picture of the can and they took a picture of the of the bottle and it was in like the luxury magazine in Atlanta, like the next week, my phone's ringing. Hey, this was, you know, Dave, your road from Red Bull, you know, just, uh, where are you getting our product? What? And he's like, I saw in the magazine that that's

your house drink. Where are you getting the product from? And I was like, uh, yeah, we don't have it. He's like, what? I go, yeah, I just want to be first. He's like, okay, then you're first. You got it. That's amazing. I started laughing. So take a chance. You know, why?

No, don't do that. It's a terrible thing to say. Terrible. So you're up and running. Now you got it going. The first iteration of the product was called? Four. Four.

Just four. Yep. Just four. Not four. Not four. Not crazy at this point. Not crazy. It's just a little bit of energy drink, a little bit of this. And how did four go? So we had this false sense of success.

So what I came to learn over years of scaling beverages is the real metric is velocity. How much is it selling in that bar or store, right? Pick one. You don't need a bunch. If it's selling over and over again, you have a real business. If it sells in once and it sits on the shelf, you don't. But we would sell to distributors. So that's where we would make our money. So we would sell them to them. They would sell to stores. And we had this false sense of we were doing well. Our product is flying off the shelves onto other shelves where it's sitting. Exactly. Exactly. Wait, what? We got to go get it. It's going to expire. No. To that point, there was a moment where we got into Circle K in Arizona. And Circle K is the

biggest C store in Arizona by far. And it's kind of make or break there. And it was not moving. And my partner was going around literally buying the product off the shelf so that we could manufacture Velocity so that we wouldn't get dropped by them or the distributor. So needless to say, it was not working. Not working. And I'll say we did that for about, let's call it a year and a half to where we were, it was literally just us three working in the company. We had hired two other people.

We had to let those people go because we couldn't make payroll. What was the loss on year one? I mean, we didn't have much money. So maybe $200,000. Okay. So you're 200 G's in the hole. Yeah. Start having some long looks at each other,

like doing this, like, are we, what are we doing? And there was a guy who was in the industry who kind of was a one-man show. He didn't have any monster success products, but he had a couple that did okay with broad distribution. And so I, my partners and I were talking, are we going to do this? Are we not? Are we going to shut this down? These guys both had careers, right? This is what I was doing. Anyways, I was, are you all in at this point? Are you done with the, everybody's all in at this

point? Okay. Everybody's on. So they had all quit their jobs. I had quit my job. I think I was making, instead of 42,000, I was making 45,000. It wasn't much, right? It was something. But these guys had really good paying jobs. And I said, all right, listen, if this doesn't turn, you guys go back to your industries and your career. I'll keep running this thing. I'll try to get your family.

Their family had invested. I'll try to get your family's money back. And then I'll keep running with this thing and see what I can do with it. In the meantime, we decided we have to iterate and do something different. And so minor tweaks, we took the same product. We did a different flavor. We took it from 6% alcohol and put it at 10% alcohol. We took it from a white can, put it in a black can. And what was the change? So this is iteration. What caused that change? Why more alcohol? Because, well, one, because four wasn't working, what we were doing. And then second of all, we were noticing other products with slightly higher alcohol were

selling. So we said, let's try that angle. And then also we had this ingredient called Wormwood, which is from Absinthe, if you've ever heard of it. We had it in our original drink. It sounds horrible. It sounds horrible, right? We thought I, I'll take the blame. I thought

it would be cool because it was in absinthe and it hadn't been used for a hundred years. Yeah. It did not work. And so we took wormwood, right? I ain't drinking that with wormwood in it. You sound like the distributors. All right, there you go. And, um, and so we took that out and we made four max and it didn't light the world on fire on fire, but it did good enough to keep us in business. And so that was the first kind of like iteration that opened our eyes to like, hey, we might have to try different things. So we could pivot. You know, so many people make the mistake of falling so in love with their original product that they can't pivot. They can't see that. And I think, I think, I think probably for

you guys, from what it sounds like, you were probably in love with the idea of having a beverage company. You didn't give a shit about the product. Yeah. I was, I was probably holding onto the original product because what I had been told in my training with my first company was you have to nail your base product before you come out with line extensions. Well, the difference is this wasn't a line extension. This was a pivot. Yeah. Hard rebrand. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so, yeah, I think we got, we knew the idea was good. We knew there was interest in it. We just didn't find the right fit. And so that got us going along those lines. And then my other partner, Jeff was out in Arizona and he saw this product called juice and it was 24 ounce can at 9.9% alcohol. Again, remember we weren't

the first to do any of this, right? We were just mimicking what was out there, caffeine and alcohol. So he said, listen, this stuff is selling and it's selling really well and we need to do it. You don't need a million dollar idea. You just need a $50 Xerox machine. There you go. With a cool factor to it, right? A little cool to it. Just a little cool to it. And so we, we came up with the idea of 4Loco. We didn't know what it was going to be called. I want my other partner, Jason said, it's kind of crazy. Let's call it Loco. That was as scientific as that was. And then we made a 24 ounce can. We took it to 11% alcohol, which was the highest we could make it

in many of the states. And the minute we put that product out, we knew we were on. It went through the roof. It went through the roof. So sales are booming. Life is going great. Everything is wonderful.

You're like, man, honey, I told you this was going to work. Give me grief. I told you, here's your rent check back. I don't need that anymore. I told you this was going to pay off. And then there's that knock at the door where you get a letter. It's probably the scariest letters you

can get. What was that letter? So we knew there was a little controversy around alcoholic energy drinks because a competitor of ours and the original alcoholic energy drink called Sparks had been acquired by Miller. And there were 18 attorney generals that had signed a letter saying they didn't like this and they thought it was unsafe. Well, Miller, big company, lots of brands, said, okay, we don't want this negative press or this pressure and we'll voluntarily reformulate it. And when they did that, they turned their attention to us. So the attorney general letter was, look, it's 18 attorney generals. It's scary, but it wasn't that big of a deal. It so the attorney general letter was look it's 18 attorney

generals it's scary but it wasn't that big of a deal it wasn't threatening it was suggesting uh when it really got scary was when this media storm hit and we ended up on every news channel across the country and chuck schumer's holding a can up saying this stuff gets you higher than ecstasy right and see but here's the okay all right stop for a second start there had to be a moment when you saw that you were like holy shit we're gonna be rich i mean like is for that particular product in that particular monic model is there a better is there a better spokesman than chuck schumer standing there saying, this will get you higher than ecstasy? Exactly.

It had the exact reverse effect of what they planned. It's like back in the day with, who was it? Tipper Gore with the, don't listen to this record. And all the kids bought it. Everybody buys it. Right. So that was a little bit scary. And we were spitting, to your point, we were spitting off money at that point.

We were growing like crazy just just shooting off cash um when it really got scary was when we started to have bigger more organized uh agencies like the fda knock on our door dude when you get it when you get a piece of paper that says the united states government versus yeah it's not there. So, you know, the emotions of those lawsuits getting filed and having to navigate that. Now, obviously, you know, you said that originally you've chosen your partners in this company as so many people do. Like this is not a sign. A lot of people do this terrible idea, but a lot of people do it. A lot of people want partners in a business. They do because they don't want to walk the lone, you know, one log makes a lousy fire, right? You don't want to walk

that road by yourself. You want it and you do it with your buddies and we're all high-fiving this and that. But if all of you do the same thing, then most of you are not needed. And that causes a lot of friction, a lot of problems. So I'm guessing when these lawsuits started to hit, this is probably when you and your partner started to have a little stress. So we had stress, but it didn't really stress our relationship. It actually bonded us at that time. Oh, good. Because I think looking back, the high highs and the low lows

cause you to be bonded, right? You're either celebrating and high-fiving, or you're like, oh, shit, we got to get through this. And there's no time for these like tiffs. There were breaks in the relationships from day one in different ways, right? Different communication styles, different mentalities, different like desires to be the top dog. And we didn't have any hierarchical structure. We were just three equal partners. And over time that got to, that started to fray When we ultimately, I'm fast forwarding a little bit, when we got through that debacle that cost us $30 million

and kept us on the verge of going out of business, all that stuff, and we went to a steady state again, it was toxic. And we had a business coach come in who told us, this is a three-headed monster that is bound for disaster unless you figure out a structure yeah and that just stirred the shit up and probably made things more um tense than they ever were the lessons that you learned from that and we're going to get to the new business now and how this kind of fell apart but i want to i wanted to talk about this was the lessons that you learned from that obviously you guys just kind of fell into

this and you did this you didn't, you guys just kind of fell into this and you did this, you didn't have, like I'm a huge proponent of EOS. Like we run all of our businesses on EOS. We have an operating system. Everybody knows what's going on. We have the meetings worked a certain way. Everything happens.

There's workflow, there's goals. Everybody knows what is going on from top to bottom in all of our businesses. And I look back to before we had that in our companies and I was like, whoa, like we were just fucking winging it right we were i i like to say we were failing successfully is what i say we're very successful but i think we were leaving a lot on the table everywhere we were so what is the you know as you go into the formation of your new businesses are you using anything like that

are you guys you run your business like that with not as formal as EOS. We do have structure, which we didn't then. And keep in mind, we went from a $6 million company to $160 million company in two years. There's not much opportunity to put structure. Up and to the right, my man. Yeah. We were just like throwing shit together, right? And holding on for the ride. And it was wild. In terms of structure, we have much more now and we really try to focus on transparency and communication and avoid any back-channeling discussions and all these kinds of things that can be toxic in a company. But you asked what I've learned and what I took forward. I think some of them are about partnership structures, right? And look, we were very successful as a partnership group and we made some amazing

things happen. What I would say is people grow and change. And we started when we were all 25-ish and I'm in my early 30s, married with two kids where my other partners weren't at the same place. Life is just different. And what we didn't do was talk about and structure how you get out just as much as how you get in, right? Yeah. I tell people that all the time, man, that they want to come together in real estate. There's a lot of people want to work together as teams and a business this, and I'm always like, man, you got to structure the separation agreement first. It's more important than partnership agreement. You know, what's the buy-sell agreement look like? Who's going to keep the, I mean, down to the website, the domain names, who's going to keep this day? Who's going to keep all of it? How are you splitting this up? How does

this work? And if you guys can agree to that document, if you can agree to that one, the partnership agreement is easy. Who's going to do what? The airs responsibility part is simple, right? That's the hard part. And if you can do it upfront and everybody's still friends at the end of it, then you're okay. It's essentially a business prenup and you should absolutely have one. I think that is imperative. And I think if you're going to have partners having a shared vision for what the end, what the exit on the business looks like, like what's our long-term goal? What are we trying to do to get from here to there to get out of this? Right. Like, because these people try to build,

I just don't believe there's anything such thing as a legacy business anymore. There's like, if you think your kids are going to come up and run your business, not because it's probably not going to be worth anything by the time they're around. Yeah. It changes so fast now. It changes so fast. So, you know, you've got to, businesses are built to be sold, you know, to, to build up as much profitability as you can and then exit when, and if you can, if the opportunity presents itself. So I think those two things are very, very important. And we've had some great exits in some of the businesses that we've done and they, cause they were built that way from the ground up. Like we knew, like we want to build this and then we want to sell this to these guys. But when you say that, I think

one of the things in, in beverage, that's interesting, especially in non-alcohol is like the traditional build to sell model is you never need to really make money. All top line growth, burn as much as you want, fund it. And some strategic will come in to fix all that backend stuff, synergies, margins, whatever it may be. And we started with Koya, which I know we'll get into, but we started Koya in that way. And the market changed around 2020, where that was no longer good enough for a strategic to acquire. You had to prove profitability and you had to still grow. And so the reason I bring that up is because I've changed my mentality now, which is just build a good business foundationally and someone will come along and want to buy it. Yeah.

Well, I think there's, I think, I think, well, I think just because of what Wall Street and how it's performed over the last 20 years, where like, let's face it, as a tech startup, the worst thing you can do is get profitable. Right. Because as soon as you get profitable, well, now there's something to have a run a multiple off of, which you don't want to do. Right. So I think that in, in, in these massive acquisitions, you've seen some of these, these VC companies make and private equity make, and then these companies go just flat and blow up

instantly because there's no real business behind it. The WeWorks of the world. I think, I think proof of concept to a, you know, from manufacturer to consumer or from however it is, but you've got to have some real sales that actually hold the business yeah i think it's important right so you're cruising along with four local you get outside of that what's what's you know obviously there's a day that comes along that you're no longer at four loco on a database what is that day like so so backing up a little bit um four loco gets stabilized we get through all the government bullshit we realize we have two assets or at least the way I looked at it, we have the brand,

which is great. We have this distribution network that gets us in every County and every store across the entire country. And so my thought was like, how do we capitalize on that? And so we started doing innovation. I found this, this small kind of like, um, proof of concept idea. It was called, uh, it was an alcoholic root beer, but this guy had no way to scale it. And so we essentially bought this on a future royalty deal, created the brand, not your father's root beer, scale that over 18 months and sold it to Pabst. And, um, and then after that, which was my baby, right. It was where I was spending my time. It was like helping us gloss over partnership issues that goes away. And I'm, I'm like

directionless within the company. Yeah. Tensions are high. And so long story short, I end up fired from my company by my partners one day and wake up and go, Oh shit. Okay. What do I do now? Who am I? What, what, you know, what, what is my purpose? Yeah. That's, you know, that's something I preach all the time. It's so important is to, if you're going to be, I don't care if you're an entrepreneur or an employee, right? There's so many things that your ego gets detached to what you do and you can't let what you do become who you are because just like that situation, you were for local Chris, I'm guessing, right? Yeah. How many times did, Oh, Chris, a for local, for local Chris, like, Oh, it Four Loko Chris. And all of a sudden one day you're not Four Loko Chris. And it's like,

whoa, did that just happen? And for example, like I learned this lesson when after, you know, an NFL star, you can Google which one, you can figure this out. An NFL star had a murder issue at a nightclub in Atlanta during Super Bowl of 2000. That was the club that I was running. And then of course, if anybody says, we actually, it was the joke. Anybody that says any press is good press, never tried to run Cobalt Lounge. That's what our thing was. Cause dude, we went from Esquire Magazine called that place the best nightclub on the East Coast to essentially like 10 people in it. You could, you could bowl in there on a Friday night. It was that bad and it

never came back and i'll never forget the main investor um super nice guy sent his like money guys finance guy to meet me with me one day and i was really really good about training people let this be a lesson too i was really good about about training people. And I got to a point where I've just, I, everybody in there could do my job because I trained off every piece of it. Right. There was nothing that I did not know how to do that. This other person did not know how to do. And he was much, much less than I was. Right. So they came to me and they're like, yeah, you know, today's your last day. We're just going to move on. And I was like, Whoa, okay. So I'm out. Yeah. And then like, uh, like uh you know i i didn't i

kind of just i had plenty of money things were good so i'm like i'm gonna take a break for a second just kind of chill i'm just getting my wits about me because i was the cobalt dude that was a super hot nightclub i could go anywhere and it was it was on yeah and i'll never forget and this sounds stupid but it affected me to my Yeah. So there was a new club open up called Lava Lounge downtown in Midtown Atlanta. And we went on opening night. And I knew the guy that owned it, but he was obviously in the bar. So there's a line around the planet. And there's this guy at the door that I don't know.

Right? So I go walking up. And I'm like, hey, man, how are you? He's right here. And he's like, oh, he's inside somewhere. What's up? And I'm like, oh, I'm John from Cobalt. And he's like, the he's like oh he's inside somewhere what's up and i'm like oh i'm i'm john from cobalt he's like the bar closed like two months ago like and it crushed me to my

to my my my my core yeah i was like man i will never be my business i will never attach my business to who i am again ever do you think you can tell somebody that or they have to experience something like that kind of got to experience it man because i think i think you think you can tell somebody that or they have to experience something like that? I think they kind of got to experience it, man. Because I think you're going to have that. And the thing is too, is like, think about how can you make a good decision about exiting a business if it's tied to your ego? Yeah, true. If it's tied to your whole perception that you put out to the world, how can you make a good decision about that? Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. And you probably have a lot of people ride businesses down further than they should when they could have sold them and gotten out of them because it's just who they are. Yeah. Well, this is what I do. Yeah. You

know what I mean? Yeah. So, you know, obviously they pull the rug on you a little bit at Four Loko and that sends you right to the list a little bit. Yeah. But, but similar to you is like, let me take a break. Let me think about it. Once you come out of the, I mean, the first emotion was actually released. You still retained your ownership. Yeah. I still own a third of the company. Your day to day was gone. That's right.

So this isn't, it's not, it's not catastrophic. It's not catastrophic, but, but I come from, you know, a lower middle class, blue collar family where you work to eat and that's who you are. And so that's a transition, right? That's not the reality anymore, but it felt like that. Like, what the hell am I doing? So once I get past all that, I'm like, let me just take some time. And the blinders came off, right? Like when you're deep in a business, at least when I am, I'm, I don't even know there's

the rest of the world sometimes. Right. And so the blinders came off and I was like, oh shit, there's all kinds of opportunities. There's more opportunities than I can ever take advantage of. What do I want to do? The easy thing would have been to go create another alcohol company, right? I have all the contacts in the industry, track record, all that good stuff, but I didn't want to compete with myself. And it just wasn't really aligned with who I was at the time or what I was doing. So- Hard to be the party guy out at the club when you got two young kids that expect you home. That's right. That's right. And luckily I made that transition, right? Not seamlessly, but I made it. So my second son's born. We find out he's lactose intolerant. My

wife is a nutritionalist. We become a dairy-free household. This is back in 2014 before, you know, plant-based and all these milk alternatives were what they were. And so right at that same time, I had a buddy call me and he said, Hey, we're looking at this product called raw nature five. We're thinking of investing. You're a beverage guy. Will you take a look? So I come out of my gym and they actually have it there. One of the 20 places it's distributed. I taste it really good. Not a big like health guy at that moment. I mean, in my way, but not like the way I am now. And I'm like, yeah, that's good. I'll invest in it. So I invest some money. Don't think much more of it. But you're not thinking, you know what this needs? Yeah.

Wormwood. Luckily I wasn't thinking that. No, okay, keep going, it's fine. So the entrepreneurs, the original founders were in Chicago. I'm the local entrepreneur. They're calling me for different advice. There's some turmoil with an advisor in the company. It's on the verge of going out of business.

And I'm like, I'm looking for something to do. And this is really aligned with who I am in my life. So basically go to them and I'm like, look, I'll come in and fund this company. I'm going to come in and help pivot it. I'll co-found this new company with you, but I'm a hundred percent in charge. And that was called Raw Nature 5. And that turned into Koya, which is essentially a plant-based protein drink. We use a blend of, of, uh, plant proteins in almond milk and low sugar, and it tastes really good. So what did you see in the original brand that you knew, man, I can, I can, I can jazz this up a little bit. Yeah. I can make

it look pretty, right. Make it cool. Um, well, look, I saw the negatives. I saw it was a bad name. It was an ugly bottle or label. Um, then I knew the nutritionals weren't what they said they were on the bottle. I just suspected that. And that wasn't name. It was an ugly bottle or label. I knew the nutritionals weren't what they said they were on the bottle. I just suspected that. And that wasn't intentional. It was just made in a commercial kitchen. They were doing everything themselves. I knew that I knew how to make this commercial and scalable quickly. And then I went in and doing some due diligence. They were in One Whole Foods in Lincoln Park in Chicago. I went into that store and I just watched. I did like secret shopping. And this woman goes up to the shelf and grabs it and she explains it to the guy she's with. And she's raving about it and explaining it to him.

And to me, I'm like, if there's something interesting enough that someone's willing to explain, it's that digestible, there's something here. And we weren't in New York or LA where these trends start. So it's like, if in Chicago, this makes sense. You're a deep dish Chicago, buddy. Right, exactly. Like, this is going to work too. You know, you're getting hot dogs and deep dish. And so I said, if it's working here, there's a real opportunity here. And it makes sense for me and my lifestyle. And so there's a little bit of like gut feel to it. And then those things kind of subconsciously added up.

So you get that going, you bought the company outright from the guy or you just- No, sorry. I took over the majority investor position, took over an equity stake. I said, I'll take a one-year interim CEO role. I'm going to hire a backfill and all that. And then I ended up raising more money than I ever planned to. And once I took money from investors, it was my job to run. Negative go. And I'm guessing sales up and to the right, yes? Yeah. So we did 300,000 the first year. We did 3.2 million the second year and it's been steady ever since. And how did you, so the original distribution was really just through Whole Foods. That was it. So the original distribution in Raw

Nature 5 was just them. They were self-distributing. When I pulled it off the market, when we reformulated, created the new brand Koya, our original distribution was Whole Foods. And we did that exclusively for four months, which was a great launch, right? When you go into anybody else and say, we launch nationally with Whole Foods exclusively, you get get a meeting so we quickly went from those 400 let's call it in 25 stores to to now we're in 30 000 stores across the country from starbucks to whole foods to walmart to 7-eleven to ralph's or crowder but i know that starbucks was really the account that because again this is like a sample thing it's like when you go to a night club and they're like hey have you tried our new tequila here's a shot again, this is like a sample thing. It's like when you go to a nightclub and they're like, Hey, have you tried our new tequila? Here's a shot of it. This is essentially what you

use Starbucks for, right? Yeah. So Starbucks is relatively new. We just launched with them at the end of last year, but to your point, yes. Beverage in general is a liquid to lives business. People have to taste the product. And so even from day one in Whole Foods, we focused on getting them in that store to taste the product. That's how we would win. So it's always been an ideal situation to have a partner like Starbucks that has heavy foot traffic. Like I read a stat, Starbucks has a hundred million people walk through their doors weekly. Now that's global. So cut it in half and say it's 50 million, but that's massive awareness and impressions, right? So I always knew that would be an ideal partner. And so much so that we revised the formulation of the product in the early days. It had hemp protein in it, which although it's federally legal, we knew would not be okay by Starbucks

standards. So we changed it. We have brown rice, chickpea, and pea protein in it now to get a complete amino acid profile. So we made that change specifically for Starbucks. Starbucks was bringing in new brands six, seven, eight years ago. Fast forward, the woman who was doing that initiative leaves. They're not bringing in anything really new for a while. COVID hits. And so it was a passion project of mine to get in there, but it took eight years to do it. Eight. So, and you were reformulating with the idea of you knew you, they were going to have to have this seven years ago, seven years ago. Yes. So again, but this is, this is beginning with the end in mind. You knew what you, you knew who your eventual

powerhouse player was going to be. So like, let's not wait to pivot to do what we need to do to get there. Let's do it now. Right. And it, and it wasn't a key element of the product that would change the perception of it. Yeah. Yeah. How'd you get it? How'd you get in Starbucks? So, uh, we have a lot of different celebrity investors and athletes, and, um, we've worked with them in plenty of different ways, sometimes just to build awareness from social media or from different partnerships. But one of the most valuable ways has been talking to them about their network and being clear on what we were trying to accomplish. And so with one of those, I won't say his name, but with one of those, we mentioned that we wanted to be in

Starbucks. Barry Sanders. I'm just kidding. I don't know. It wasn't Barry Sanders. I don't know. He was on the draft last week. I saw him. I don't know. Which is amazing that that draft was so successful in Detroit. Yes. No kidding. But so he basically worked his network and said, I'll get you an introduction to the top. And so we talked to the CEO and his right-hand man who helped us navigate down through the organization to the appropriate person that was making these decisions. That's how we got to the right person. There was also a bit of luck. They just happened to be revamping their coolers. And so it was a perfect timing of talking to the right person and then them being focused on this.

Dude, you know what? It reminds me of one of of my superpowers i'm the best complainer in the world right i never like if something's going wrong like i don't call 800 help number this is for suckers right i go i google who's the ceo of the company then i figure out what the email chain is of that company of said company i'll just figure out what their email pattern is right and then i'll find out the ceo is and then i'll write my little letter of complaint or whatever i need help with and then i will basically be like you'll say it's bob smith so i'll be like bob.smith at company.com bob smith at company.com b.smith at company.com and i'll just fill in 20 email addresses in in the in the send right yeah yeah and then i just hit send and then i just watch the kicks right kick one kick kick two, kick two. And sure enough, 19, number 20 got through. And every single time, man, I'll get

a phone call in two seconds. And the world has actually made this easier because you can also go to Twitter and at people. You can go to Instagram at people. You can go to LinkedIn and message them directly on LinkedIn. I mean, the world's pretty easy to get right to the top. Yeah. And the funniest thing about that is, is these, the people at the top of most of these big companies never get stuff like this. Right.

And they're just like, not realizing the shit happens every single day, but 87 levels below them. Right. Never gets to them. They're like, oh, this happened in our company. And they, dude, they go, they get right on it. oh, this happened in our company. And they do, they go, they get right on it. So, so I have that exact story.

Do you? I love that. I think that CEOs and leaders of company need to figure out ways to stay in touch with the end consumer and it gets harder and harder, the bigger you get. Right. And so one silly example, but I think it's, is relevant is every time someone posts something on our product, I ask our team to repost it on social media. And I watch our account and I go to every person that we repost and I like their post that was for us. That's awesome.

I can't tell you how many people have reached out and been like, oh my God, you're the CEO of the company or co-founder of the company. That's amazing. Like reaching out. On a separate side, our product is very sensitive. It's a perishable, which means it needs to be refrigerated at all times. Low acid beverage. It's like milk. So it can be sensitive. Milk spoils sometimes, right? So occasionally there's some temperature abuse, I'll call it. Like they might offload it from the truck and it might set out a little too long

before it goes into the cooler, right? And you can get an off taste or it can be whatever. So we've had customer complaints before. Sure. I try to reach out to those people directly. And at one point I would do it with a video, personalized video. If not, I'll send them a direct email, never saying it was anyone else's fault. It's always our fault. We expect a perfect experience. You didn't have one. I apologize. And I'll tell you the people that, you know, people sometimes are pissed about stuff. The people that are the most pissed, if they just get that message from me, they're like, oh no, we love your product. It's okay. Yeah. Yeah. You don't know how many times I've spent 45 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes on the phone with somebody over one star, like Yelp review. Yeah. We're one of our people.

I mean, like real estate brokerage is hard, right? We got 580 agents that work here, right? It's a lot. That's a lot of transactions and they're all independent contractors. But if one of them gets a bad review, it affects all of them. So it's my job to defend this stuff and try to get it on. And normally if I just spend an hour with somebody on the phone, like going through every little thing and what can we do, blah, blah, blah, I can normally get them to like back it off, Yeah. Right. Pretty quick. But what I've started doing that I find is much more effective, not just for, not just for our clients and customers in simply Vegas, but also our agencies here. I love to just randomly call clients that

are closing with deals and just thank them for using our agents. Huge. I like, dude, the owner of the company just called me and said, thanks for, I love that. Yeah. Appreciation goes a long way. Yeah, dude. It's such a, it's such a little thing. And I find that, you know, thanking people for, for their business will go way further than just waiting until you get a bad Yelp review.

Yeah, absolutely. And for their partnerships, right. For, for partner agencies or people as well. Like it does go a long way and, and it's hard, uh, at least for me, maybe for many entrepreneurs, but like to slow down enough to do that. But it is really important. Yeah. But it's the best part of your day. Yeah. It's like the best part of your day to do that. I love that. So what's next for Koya, man? So, um, you know, our number one request for Koya is how do I buy it in bulk? We sell over 2 million bottles a month, but it's one bottle at a time, which is, which is great. We have a lot of trial and a lot of awareness, but we get asked constantly, how do we buy

it in bulk? And then the second most common question is, how do I get it delivered? Because we're primarily a retailer business right now. So we took that feedback and we created a shelf stable, like Tetra Pak version of Koya that'll be available on Amazon soon. And so we'll sell 12 packs that you can get delivered right to your door. Flavor profile is exactly the same. Exactly the same. 20 grams of protein, vitamins and minerals put into the product. So it's really good. We're really excited about that. That and expansion into other categories that are

authentic to the consumer's request for Koya. So I'll give you an example. I have three kids at home. Clearly they drink Koya. They're young. So I find half bottles of Koya. So I'll give you an example. I have three kids at home. Clearly they drink Koya. They're young. So I find half bottles of Koya all over the house all the time. So make a smaller size. We're making a kid version that'll come out later this year as well. So eight ounces, vitamins and minerals. We sneak some greens in there and some fruits and veggies. So really excited about those two things. And there's some others that I won't share yet, but this will be a big year for expansion. That's awesome. Yeah.

Koya for kids. Koya for kids. I like it. Well, dude, man, I look, it was a pleasure to have you again twice.

And I do have one question. Cause I know you came into Vegas. You did. This is the fourth podcast today. So two of them were with me, but you did four today. And all I want to know is this. Cause the other two guys you're on are friends of mine was this at least the second best podcast you've done today yeah easily i'll tell you where you easily win yeah it's the best intro

dude you know what man it's all about the intro yeah because if you still nail them at the intro yeah it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Well, guys, how can they find you, man? How can they find you? Well, you can find my whole story in my new book called Blackout Punch. Blackout Punch. Read the book. Buy the book. Available.

Amazon. Everywhere books are available. Yep. You can find me on social media, LinkedIn mostly. So Christopher Hunter. You can find me on Instagram, double underscore Christopher Hunter. That's where I'm active. Well, dude, I appreciate it so much, man.

Thanks for coming back. I'm not going to say that we didn't give away the entire formula for Four Loko on the first one. Maybe we did. It's the lost episode. You'll never know anyway. There you go. But guys, if you, man, first of all,

thanks so much for joining us today. Please give us a subscribe. Give us a five-star review, four-star review, whatever it is. However many stars is the max, wherever you are. And dude, if you're just drifting along with the currents of life, you got to start swimming against the current, man. Nobody's coming to save you. You might as well save yourself.

See you next time. What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list. But do me a favor. If you wouldn't mind, throw up that five-star review.

Give us a share. Do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully, you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.