Experts of Experience - #13 Ian Wishingrad: A Masterclass in Branding & Customer Experience

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

Dive into the world of creative customer experience with Ian Wishingrad, Co-Founder and CMO of Three Wishes Cereal.In this episode of Experts of Experience, Ian shares his journey from advertising to entrepreneurship, revealing how authenticity marketing strategies have shaped his customer-centric approach. He shares the challenges and triumphs of creating a customer-centric, healthy cereal brand that stands out in a competitive market. This episode is a deep dive into how customer experience, innovative packaging, and creative marketing strategies can transform a simple idea into a thriving business.Wishingrad's story is a testament to the power of vision, persistence, and customer-focused innovation in the modern business landscape. Tune in as Ian shares personal anecdotes and professional insights, offering actionable strategies to revolutionize your approach to customer experience.  Subscribe Now: https://www.youtube.com/@ExpertsofExperience?sub_confirmation=1 Imagine running your business with a trusted advisor who has your success top of mind. That’s what it’s like when you have a Salesforce Success Plan. With the right plan, Salesforce is with you through every stage of your journey — from onboarding, to realizing business outcomes, to driving efficient growth.Learn more about what’s possible on the Salesforce success plan website: http://sfdc.co/SalesforceCustomerSuccess (00:00) Introduction and Ian's Background in Advertising(01:44) Transitioning from Advertising to Creating a Cereal Brand(06:09) Concept and Brand Pillars of Three Wishes Cereal(08:51) Identifying the Key Customer Base(09:45) Importance of Customer-Centric Focus(11:33) Packaging and Retail Strategy in Branding(14:15) Challenges in Personal Brand Building(16:42) Retailer Relationships and Customer Feedback(22:29) Creative Marketing During COVID-19(31:34) Leveraging 'Evergreen Zeitgeist' in Marketing(33:03) Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Reached out to all these really famous plastic surgeons on TikTok. And I said, would you do an honest review of our facelift for our cereal box? And I sent all their offices cereal boxes. And I got all the top plastic surgeons to show the boxes, all of them. And they did a really honest side-by-side. Like, oh, I think the logo looks droopy. Now it's tight and snatched. We got some press and we got a lot of comments.

And it was a really good audience for us. Because anyone who's going to spend thousands of dollars to improve their aesthetics is probably trying to be healthier and wealthier. And that is someone that I would say over indexes on a slightly more expensive, better for you breakfast cereal. So our audiences overlapped nicely. I had two types of clients. I would have the projects from the big ones that I'd always worked with for AT&T or something for Diageo or whatever. But then when you're also a small agency, you get these entrepreneurs that come in that like your hunger. They don't want an institution. They don't have necessarily the money to go to some big

holding company advertising agency. And so I got to work with these really amazing entrepreneurs that were able to move at the speed that I was able to move at. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Experts of Experience. I'm your host, Lauren Wood. And today I'm speaking with Ian Wishingrad, the co-founder and CMO of Three Wishes Cereal. Ian is also the founder of an advertising agency, Big Eyed Wish, and a podcast host for Adweek's I'm With the Brand. He has a deep background in branding and advertising, working with some of the largest brands such as AT&T, Nike, and Nestle, just to name a few. Today, we're going to explore how Ian has applied his expertise in the advertising industry to his own multi-million dollar brand,

and of course, how customer experience has played a role. Ian, how are you? Hey, Lauren. I'm good, thanks. Thanks for having me. That was nice to hear. You have a wonderful background and I'm so excited to dive into it. But to kick us off, I'm really curious. So you've been working in advertising for a long time, pretty much your entire career from what I have gathered. And then you decided to start a cereal brand. Tell us the story. What happened there? That is accurate.

I've been doing advertising since I was a sophomore in high school. I have super duper ADHD. And I remember my mom would take me to a psychologist and get tested. And I had 29 of 31 attributes. And ADHD is good and bad. It's great for advertising because I get to work on multiple clients at the same time. I'm asked to be creative. So I'm literally letting my mind scatter all the time and just keep coming up with ideas for brands. And so that is just a kind of a good profession for me and something I really enjoy doing.

And then adding entrepreneurship on top of it worked out really well because when you have to be employed, even at an ad agency, you have to kind of move at a certain pace. And when you want to just move insanely quickly, your best just kind of working for yourself is just what I found. And so I started the agency about 10 years ago. I was just like a very it was like sitting in a, you know, a budget version of WeWork hacking along. I remember getting my first $5,000 retainer, my first $20,000 project, my first $75,000 project. These were just moments in time for me. And at the same time, I started to date a girl, which is now my wife. And so there was just this entrepreneurial, super gritty, super nerve-wracking few years of getting going. Then the agency started to get going, which was really exciting.

And you're hiring people and you're like, wow, this is happening. This is so cool. And then I had two types of clients, I would have the projects from the big ones that I'd always worked with, you know, like you do something for AT&T or something for Diageo or whatever. But then when you're also a small agency, you get these entrepreneurs that come in that like your hunger, they don't want an institution, they don't have necessarily the money to go to some big holding company advertising agency. And so I got to work with these really amazing entrepreneurs that were able to move at the speed that I was able to move at. Let's come up with a name. Cool. Let's create the packaging. Cool. Let's create the look and the feel. And then all of a sudden,

the really successful clients that are entrepreneurs, these products are everywhere. And I've seen my product. I get to see my work out there in Petco and PetSmart. We've created branding for Kevin Hart and his restaurants. We did stuff for Dos Toros. We've, it's really exciting to see things you've created live in the world. And I think in the back of my head, people always think the grass is greener. You're like, oh, I'm an agency. But then the chief marketing officer rotated off and you get a client, you lose a client. You get 3 clients, you lose a client. And it felt like this is... That's the inevitable path of growing an agency. I enjoy the work. I enjoy the process. But I think everyone in an agency thinks it's easier to just... Oh, I wish I had my own brand.

I'll just do my own brand. And so my wife and I definitely thought it would be cool to have our own brand after seeing the success and having so much fun building brands for other entrepreneurs. And then when my son was six months old, my wife came up with the idea of cereal. And it was an instant like, yes. And this was also the era of every industry that you never thought was disruptible was getting disrupted. Like Casper's doing mattresses and Dollar Shave Club and Harry's are doing razors and Siete's doing tortilla chips and Bons is doing pasta.

And you're like, oh my gosh, it just feels like I grew up and it was boomers, boomers. And so quickly it was gonna be a millennial takeover and we didn't want any of that old stuff and we wanted to reinvent and disrupt everything. So I was excited to be part of this and wanted to do something, but I didn't have that idea.

And then when my wife said serial, I'm like, oh, perfect. That's another humongous category that is in decline, that has had no innovation, and that is owned by a handful of big players. So the entire kind of strategy was set. It was like, this is a good opportunity. And then from there, we just did what we did and tried to make it happen.

That's wonderful. I mean, and so tell us the three wishes, the three kind of pillars that the brand stands on. So we kind of went against our own advice from an agency point of view. So if a client came to me and said, I want to stand for three things, they'd be like, no, consumers don't have the attention span. You'd be lucky if they remember one thing about you. Clients are always drinking their own Kool-Aid. Pick what you want to be. You're grain-free, you're grain-free. Or you're high protein, you're high protein. But the truth was, we could have been like the only grain-free cereal. But that's not why people were leaving breakfast. They didn't think grains are bad for them.

That's not out there. They knew that it was very sugary. And at the same time, they knew that it was empty, sugary calories. So it was extremely difficult for us to actually do the branding for this because how do you say three things? And so my wife and I got married at the Central Park Boathouse. And we lived near there. And we had another name we were going with. And we had a trademark issue. So we had the packaging done. And then we had a trademark issue. And we're like, oh my gosh, we're going to launch soon.

And we're back to square zero. We're back to square one. So in that, we sat outside where we got married with our little kid in the stroller. And my wife said, what about three wishes? And at the same time, when we had our first son, my wife used to be very like big on social, not big, meaning having a lot of following, but she was just very open and sharing. And when she got pregnant, she felt like she wanted to kind of be, I don't know, just be private and closed off. So for a lot of people, she posted on Instagram, and there's a little baby holding a necklace. And her caption was three wishes. And it was like, oh, we're the wishing grads.

We were two of us. Now we're three. And three wishes was a double entendre because it's three wishes. And the three wishes are high protein, low sugar, grain free. And I'm like, oh, that's no way we can get three wishes. Trademarks are so hard. So many names are taken. I ran back to my apartment to go on USPTO.gov to do the trademark search. And it's a terrible website. So doing it on the phone was a waste of time. And when it looked clear, I'm like, oh my God, if we get this, if we get the name Three Wishes, and I'm not particularly spiritual, I did feel like there was a little destiny. And in our office, one of the things hanging on the wall is the trademark approved

application from the government that we could have the name three wishes because there we were going down some weird paths with some weird names and i remember sharing one of the names that i kind of rallied everyone behind that would not have been a good name in hindsight and i ran up by a friend of mine who wasn't drinking the kool-aid in too close to it he goes are you crazy what happened to that other one i'm like okay, okay, you're right. You're right. And then we went back to the drawing board and came up with three wishes. So anyway, that's the story. I love it. Who would you say is your key customer? Millennial parents. People who have children and they're like, I know you want to eat cereal, but I'm not giving you that, that other crap. Exactly. We de-guilt it. The same people that do Annie's Organics and all the swaps. If you go to

certain parents' homes, you could see they're trying to do everything. They're trying to do a better version of everything and we fit that. Now, obviously, tons of people buy us for a whole other host of reasons. but as a brand, if you're trying to be everything to everyone, you're really nothing to everyone. So we try to look through the lens of millennial families, even though there are people that are trying to lose weight or have diabetes or are weightlifters or have celiac disease. There are, there is a, you know, a whole host of people, but that is definitely in terms of who we target. That's who we target. Cool. And it sounds like, well, obviously it's, you're also your customer, so you know your customer best. Absolutely. Um, yeah, that is very true.

So I saw that you, that Forbes had listed you as one of the top 100 most customer-centric companies of 2022. I'm curious to get your thoughts on why that is. What brought you onto that list? Well, to your point, I think we're one of the few brands, like you said, we are the customer. We're talking to ourselves in a way. We know exactly what other moms and dads are thinking about. We're not owned by Kellogg's or General Mills and on some cross-functional marketing team trying to do it. We are very authentic, which is a huge advantage in brand building and anything. People are kind of see-through it all now. We're not in that era anymore, social media and the level of transparency. So just the fact that we're fighting,

we understand that there are compromises. So if you're a big company, and you're and you're looking at us or other cereals that have come into the market, you're trying to find a way to replicate our product or make it less or compete with us. But we understand that a mom looks at the ingredient panel, she turns that box, it's not just eight grams. It's not just any times of eight grams of protein or any types of three grams of sugar. They want to see the ingredients. They want to see few ingredients. They want to see names they know and pronounce. And so the fact that we work so hard to make something that passes that level of scrutiny is, I think, why people consider us customer-centric. When you look at everyone who's come to knock us off or compete, you could see where they're making the compromises and cutting the corners. And so I think that level of care into the product is why people would say that.

Yeah. It's so interesting because the package is like, that's really your main connection point with your customers. Predominantly, you do sell on your website, but for the most part, you're selling in retailers like Whole Foods. I think I saw Costco as well. I mean, you're kind of everywhere. And so it's how you're literally designing your package to the needs that you know your customer has. That is really where you're on point and people are obviously valuing you because you've been blowing up. I appreciate how much you do notice all of that because so many people like, oh, so you're mostly online, right? I'm like, no, not at all. I don't

know why you say that. So yeah, you're totally correct. And the packaging is everything. I mean, some other brands, you don't, we have like a massive billboard, right? Like somebody, a can of super small or a spice or whatever. This is huge real estate in a grocery store. So we knew that this was our advertising. And we really worked very hard on the branding to thread this needle of trying to create a certain emotion. And what we wanted to be was, we wanted to look new and youthful and transparent and functional. So there's actually, it might look like the packaging might look somewhat busy. But at the same time, it's extremely clear. And so you could get what you want when you look at it. You understand the macros, you understand what we're selling. But there's just something kind of

groovy and energetic to it and different. And so that is extremely difficult. And, you know, I think a massive advantage for us because we've been doing this for other clients for so long that we understand these nuances and that so much of like good packaging makes food taste better. And our stuff tastes legitimate, excellent, no matter what. And it could be in something less beautiful but i think just this balance like we don't use a character people say is that i would sample they go is it for adults or kids i'm like anyone with a mouth taste it but people are so conditioned to think oh well cascading and kashi are for adults and honey nut cheerios and frosted flakes are for kids or nature's past with a with a monkey on it. It's just like there's such a convention.

And so we tried to figure out how do we look delicious and yet healthy. So you got to work on your color palettes. How do we look delicious, healthy, new, all these sorts of things. It's a very bright aisle. How do we have a consistent brand block? There's been a lot that went into it that you don't appreciate. You appreciate, but a lot of people just don't appreciate it just is what it is. But there's a lot of strategy and thought that goes into that.

For sure. How was the experience of actually working on your own brand after doing it for so many other people? It's really hard. It's really hard. It's really hard. I don really hard. It's, um, it's really hard. I don't know what else to say. It's, it is, it is something it's, it's you second, you just have a lot. Yeah. It's really hard. It's much easier to do it for someone else. You have such more, you are not as

attached to it. So really hard. Everything, everything's harder than I thought it would be, ultimately. Yeah. I mean, I can only imagine, especially creating a product that really hasn't been on the market. I mean, there are some others that I think you could probably say are similar in the terms of low sugar content and just being healthy cereals. But I can only imagine how difficult it was to actually develop that product and actually make it taste good because I'm trying to do a lot. Yeah. I totally was incredibly naive at how difficult it is to actually make it. I was like, oh, you know, we're a good agency.

We're cool. We'll just like, you know, get a formula, find a food scientist, do it. We'll put in a cool packaging. I'll sell it in and boom. Oh my God. It was like the most, it took two years. I can't believe how long it took. It took two years to make the product, to get it right, to get it ready for commercialization. Everything is just incredibly difficult. So we really, once we realize, there's kind of two things. Once we realize how hard everything is, you want to be so diligent and responsible about how you grow and do this. Because I think I used to think like, oh, we'll build this brand and grow it, flip it, sell it.

We'll build another brand, grip it, float it, sell it. We'll build another brand, grip it, float it, sell it. Like, oh, God, this is like so stupid. If you could ever make one real brand that really resonates, that gets to America, that penetrates pantries, that people know and love, wow, insane. become difficult for a lot of other brands that haven't operated with as much care and over their expenses per se, because it was a very just like, oh, let's raise money, let's raise money, let's raise money. And that's never been our mantra. So anyway, yeah. Anyway, it's really hard. When you're using Salesforce to tackle your company's most important goals, failure is simply not an option. That's why their most highly skilled advisors, Salesforce CTOs, are available to help you succeed with expert guidance and implementation support at every step of the way.

Learn more about Salesforce CTOs at sfdc.co slash professional services. I can only imagine. I mean, being a solopreneur myself, like working on my own website is literally the hardest thing. Like I'm like, I can't write the sentence. I can't write the sentence about myself. I need someone else to do it. So I can only imagine when you're... That is very typical. That's typical. I mean, I also know having... I employ some designers and they all always help each other do each other's websites.

Everyone's so close to it. So... But you get it. That's exactly what it is. Fully. So I'd love to talk a little bit about your retailer relationships. Because I can imagine... I mean, they're kind of your biggest

customer in a way. They're buying so much of your product. How have you approached that relationship from a customer experience standpoint? Asking about the relationships of the retailers is a very another astute observation because they are so much the customer. We have 2 customers at all times. We have our buyer and we have the shopper. And you need both big time. It's very hard to work without them in concert. So the good thing is the background I've had of client service, you try to win a customer over,

you get a chief marketing officer to give you a project and how to client service and communicate effectively, not waste their time, be very... Just manage clients. I think I look at the buyers like clients and know how to take care of them. My team knows how to take care of them. And I think really being very effective communicators and being really mindful of their time is much appreciated. And knowing that we need to bring the same way I would bring a great tagline or a campaign to a brand. I'm trying to bring some excitement and sizzle to them.

So I share along the journey like, oh, we did this buzzy stunt. They're like, oh, that's cool. I drove them into the store here. Just think like, I got to show them that I'm putting the effort in. And so ultimately, they have a lot of discretionary power. Because if you go into a grocery store, and we're not at eye level, we're near the floor, that is really tough. And if they like you, and they choose to take six SKUs over three SKUs. I mean, that's game changing for us. So we work extremely hard on our relationships and Margaret and I manage all of them personally. So that's,

that's a huge thing because if they put you front and center, you're going to do really well. And so we work really hard to make sure we're front and center and we're really good partners with them. So it's about the personal relationship. Absolutely. Yeah, I can only imagine how that is something that is so incredibly important. I was reading that when you got put into Whole Foods, you were national really quick.

What would you say was the reason for that? Well, that, so there's, as I said, there's two parts. You need the customer and you need the buyer. So we, we did the thing that I was most excited for. There are a few moments I would say, or signs that you're like, Oh my God, this is working. Yeah. Coming from an agency background, I wouldn't, I would build brands like three wishes,ishes, but they would never have the budget for then me to activate them, right? They'll do the packaging and then you hand it off to them. Yeah. Like that, we don't have a budget to go start running TV commercials. Like I said,

if we wanted to go raise a fortune, but we didn't want to do that, we didn't want to build a brand that way. So we needed it to just work. We needed it to good packaging, good product. It needs to be on shelf and it just kind of moves. And we're very lucky. Good product and good placement and good price and good promotion. It worked. So it worked in the Southern California region. It worked in the Northeast region and they had enough good data points. Now, obviously, we did stunts. We moved the needle. We did some social media, but very grassroots stunty. It's not like we threw money at the situation. We just, you know, they liked us.

They needed it. I mean, people really needed us, honestly. Like Whole Foods is like, I need a cereal. There has not been innovation. So we really also, where there's been a proliferation of other cereals, they all went direct to consumer. We went direct to store. So that was it. We knew winning on shelf. There's very scarce real estate in a grocery store. There is endless aisles on the

internet. So we knew being first to market, first to shelf was huge. Because if you're doing well, they're not going to kick you out. They might kick someone else out and add some other person. But if you're doing well, they're not removing you. They always try to clip the cereals that aren't moving as well and then put in ones that are doing well. So we did well, and doing well at success breeds success. And so we did well, and then they took us national. That was huge. Because normally the cadence is you go one region, then you go two regions, then you go three regions, and then you might hold three regions, and you beg Whole Foods to take you national. So we were very fortunate that after two regions, we were able to go national. We were working on the third region, but then we did

the national review and they took us. How have you changed your product since launch? And I'm curious specifically around like customer feedback or retailer feedback. Have you made adjustments based on things that you've seen from your customers? No. I mean, there's always slight processing tweaks, but just truly like, oh, I think the product's better now than when we launched, but marginally. Like we made it softer or something like this, but no, it's been, nothing has changed. Wow, that's great. Yeah. And how about, I mean, like, I'm just curious because I'm not as familiar with physical products, especially physical retail products. Do you have people reaching out to you?

Do you have a customer service team? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. I'd love to hear more. Reaching out with questions all the time. Oh, my gosh. Yes, of course.

DMs and hi at 3wishescereal.com every day. There are questions in question. So what we've done to be organized is we have most of the time, the questions are the same. So we've created an entire, you know, organized document of when people ask this, here's the answer.

Cause they really just want information. It's not right. So we just, when you've been asked a thousand times, the same thing, you just have answers. And so we have a team that wears multiple hats. People at my big I'd wish the ad agency also have emails at three wishes.

So any kind of marketing, customer service, those things, branding, sales support, we do. And then there also are a handful of full time people at three wishes that tackle different things. So but we're very, very lean and scrappy. And also the fact that you're able to use teams on both sides. So you know these people, you know how they're trained. It hasn't been like you're drumming up an entirely new team in order to address the brand. Yes, exactly. All of it's been quite considered and works really...

We're very fortunate. I early days in the agency, I a lot of the mistakes of a lot of entrepreneurial mistakes I made with the agency early on. So it's been really nice to not repeat them with the cereal yeah i've realized i used to be so stupid about culture and people and i was just and and i was so wrong that's literally everything the whole thing is culture of people yeah truly that's it are people having fun is it cool are we doing oh do we enjoy each other that's it then people want to work yeah it is so incredibly important go ahead yeah and the other thing i would say is i think people i used to think that was lip service totally didn't believe it and then you also see a lot of the other brands that wound up... They got early on the fundraising. And they did the fundraising and they were burning cash and they weren't profitable. And they just keep raising

and raising. And eventually, what happens is you feel really good because you raised some round at a big valuation that is truly impossible to meet the next. It is just... And you watch that with so many brands. And then the founders are under insane pressure to make a number that's never going to be made. And then they totally self-immolate and kill their employees and culture because that hour, I'm calling it slow and steady, is not fair because we're basically almost in every door and we've done so much in only four years. But compared to just a rocket ship of cash behind you, it does feel more deliberate and slow and steady. We've allowed ourselves to just let the brand quickly but organically grow and haven't had to do any like, what are we going to do? And like flipping tables and just crazy founder behavior that we've read about all these different taketown pieces, because they were great people that got, you know, in a pickle on the funding side. So we've never had, you know, the agency is just owned by my wife and me, it's us, there's no investors or anything. And we did a small little, you know, friends and family

round, but then she's done such a killer job of operating the company and being profitable that that allows us the freedom to be able to kind of keep charting our own path and making the right decisions for the brand as opposed to some kind of ticking time bomb timeline that's over our head. Yeah. And I think what I hear you saying is the, you don't have the emotional tax of really, really fast growth. Like when I've been in those hyper growth environments and it's super fun and exciting to be growing, but there's also a lot of stress on the people and there is a lot of stress on the leaders, which trickles down to kind of everyone. And there's a big

emotional tax. It is expensive to have that level of stress within an organization. You may be showing great numbers, you may be moving really quickly, but the people don't feel good. And in the long run, I think it can come back in negative ways, such as people leaving or getting bad reviews, getting takedown pieces. I mean, that's like kind of one of the worst case scenarios. But it's definitely something that I think is so important when you're building a business to really build the trust of your people and have that internal culture of trust. Amen. Agreed. Yes, exactly. All of those things. And we're, and we really, and we set really ambitious goals, but they're ambitious goals within the confines of what we believe is achievable. And then we've asked ourselves, okay, so what if we raised a ton of money? What would we do? And it just feels like things that will totally artificially inflate the brand and not grow a real one. Our names are wishing grad. It's three wishes. It's our family. I think we feel like we have something really awesome here. We want to do this really well.

I don't want to squander this. This is our faces are on the box. Like I feel like we feel a responsibility to be really good stewards over this brand and business. I love that. So as this is a show about customer experience and how we create experiences for our customers, I want to ask the question kind of off the three wishes topic and more just about what you've seen. What is the recent experience that you've had with a brand that left you really impressed? Funny you say that. I am the most unimpressable person because I'm a creative, at my heart, more than anything, I'm just a creative advertising guy.

Like that is in my soul. If my dream job would just be like, people bring me briefs all day long and I'm just sitting there and I get to come up with buzzy ideas, pitch them to clients and execute them. That is what I absolutely love doing. The same way someone else would want to, I don't know, whatever. I don't know, play golf. So there have been very few things that I think

are actually clever and smart and effective where I feel like they won. And when I do, I find the marketer and I just say, good job. And I sent a note yesterday to the CEO of Solo Stove because I got tricked by this. I don't know if you saw this like a week ago, a week and a half ago. Snoop Dogg put on his Instagram that he's quitting smoke. And then he wrote like, please let my family and I have privacy at this time. And I'm like, oh, shit. Does he have lung cancer?

Like, what's going on? I totally believed it. I didn't go dig into it. But I saw the news. I was talking about it. He was trending on Twitter. Snoop is not smoking like this is that's that's his whole persona. And when it's like, hey, please let my family and I have privacy like, okay. And then a couple days later, it comes out that he's doing something for solo stove because solo stove is where you get heat without smoke. I'm like, Oh my god, that's unreal. That's

the best thing I've seen in years. So I found the CEO. I linked in with him and then I wrote him an email and I just said, awesome. That was great. That was amazing. So that is something I could tell you recently. And then I'd say a lot of the stuff that we've done,

I'm really proud of. So we have had three versions of our box. If you look closely, if you're looking like if you're zooming out, it's all the same brand. We've done tweaks. We just keep making it look better. There was V1, V2, and then our new one in market is V3. And when we went from V2 to V3, it was very slight. And I'm like, no one's going to write any stories about us giving ourselves a little bit of a brand facelift. That's all it was. We cleaned up the packaging. And I'm always looking at other brands. And I see all the time when they're tweaking the package and change it, make avocado oil larger or whatever. It's not worthy of any ink but i thought okay it's a facelift and i see all these plastic surgeons

on tiktok that are always doing before and afters like i didn't do the work but i do think kylie jenner has her lips done and at ariana grande had a brow lift so i reached out to all these really famous plastic surgeons on tiktok and i said would you do an honest review of our facelift for our cereal box? And I sent all their offices cereal boxes, and I got all the top plastic surgeons to show the boxes, all of them. And they did a really honest side by side, like, oh, I think the logo looks droopy. Now it's tight and snatched. And so that was really fun. We got some press and we got a lot of comments. And it was a really good audience for us because anyone who's going to spend thousands of dollars to improve their aesthetics is probably trying to be healthier and wealthier. And that is someone that I would say over indexes on a slightly more expensive, better for you breakfast cereal. So our audiences overlap nicely. So that was fun. For sure. I love that. I saw you did a drive-through taste test during covid that you

got a lot of press for that was our most viral for sure yeah i was just sitting around so basically we launched october 2019 every weekend multiple days i would just be in the store sampling sampling we were hiring other people to do sampling it's an incredible effective way of moving product when you haven't you know what's a new cereal it's healthy cereal but it doesn't taste good sir try it oh my god it's delicious billy do you like it great buy it so we'd sell so much cereal by sampling but that's you know basically it's november december january february march covid no more sampling not even a chance so it was like how do i get people to taste the cereal and we have a u-shaped driveway and everyone's just sitting at home watching TV. And all they keep talking about is people are driving up,

rolling the windows down, shoving a Q-tip up their nose. And they're doing drive-through COVID tests. So I said, what if we did a drive-through taste test? So I got a bunch of people to do it. And I videoed it like a news person, like B-roll, just a lot of raw footage. And I put the package together and I shared it with the local paper. And then we were on the local paper. And then I got picked up by Fox News. And then it just kind of went everywhere. And we had our biggest sales day ever. We were literally on national TV. And my wife's like, who watches TV? And she has the laptop on the side. And let me tell you, obviously, Fox News is very red and probably not what we think of as our audience.

We got orders from every state in America. And it was unbelievable just watching the orders blow up. So that was super exciting and definitely our most viral thing we've done to date. For sure. I mean, in both of these examples that you just shared, it's just so relevant, like culturally and to the time. I mean, especially during COVID, we were like, all right, let's rethink, drive through everything, drive through, pick up your groceries, drive through, you know, COVID test, taste tests. I love it. I've kind of coined this term because that's how I've done this. I've done this maybe 10 times in my career. Like I've come up with buzzy things that, so I call it the evergreen zeitgeist. So it's not just the moment. Some things are very

moment. Like when the Superbowl lost power and Oreos tweeted you could dunk in the dark. You can't. That's just like amazing. That's beyond amazing. That's just like we did something brilliant in that exact moment. But the zeitgeist exists for a little bit. COVID was the zeitgeist for 18 months. So that's something you could jump into.

Or we were the first brand to put a college athlete on a box of cereal and do a real commercial with a college athlete. When that launched in July of two years ago, that was kind of a zeitgeist. For a while, for almost a year, people were always writing articles and talking about name, image, likeness. So when those things are out there, I try very hard to jump into them because I see those as opportunities for earned media. What is one piece of advice that you think every founder should know? Don't ask for permission. Yeah. I mean, I, I just like, it's no one cares like you care and no one,

because so many people come to me because we were acquaintances or they all want to, you know, can I borrow some time? And they run me through their thinking. But they're always being held back by themselves. They're always, when they try to eliminate all risk in their venture, they're still left with uncertainty. Well, duh. Of course there's uncertainty. But you've eliminated all the risk except for you. You have to except for you. You have

to bet on you. And so many people see themselves as a liability. Okay, that's true. You're also the asset. So if you don't really have that kind of belief that you could pull this off, you're not going to pull it off. And if you have this belief that you're going to pull it off, you're going to pull it off. You will live to the expectations you set for yourself. So I have seen these, like I have a vision and I, and I'm like, I can make this vision happen. I can do this because all you're really doing is it's a long daisy chain of people. You're just connecting with the next person who's going to connect it with the next person who will connect it with the next person. And if you come to them with genuine excitement and enthusiasm and they feel your energy, they want to help. That's exciting.

Everyone wants to help someone. You should talk to this person. You should talk to this person. Oh my God, let me introduce you to this person. But if you're always like, you know, you're afraid to ask, you got it. You know, know, and yeah, so you just gotta like, go for it. It's really good advice. I think that is something that I see. I mean, even if you're not a founder, it's pretty much for anyone, like go for what it is that you want. Go, go after the opportunities that you see in front of yourself. Um, yeah, it's so important. Well, it's so important. Well, it's been so wonderful to have you on the show.

I am going straight to the grocery store and grabbing some three wishes. You've definitely sold me. For those of you who are listening, if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to us for more and we'll see you all soon. Thank you, Lauren. Appreciate it. Thank you.

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