The Startup Ideas Podcast - How To Build A Brand Of The Future

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

Storytelling is the future of the brand building. How are you telling your story? In this episode, we explore what today's successful companies have in common, why brand is everything, and how to create a network from scratch. Hosts Sahil Bloom & Greg Isenberg are joined by guest Nick Saltarelli, an experienced entrepreneur and co-founder at Midday Squares, the brand that gave the world functional chocolate. Nick is unapologetically himself, and today he offers his raw insight into why everyone should be learning from mentors, how success comes to those that follow their hearts, and his hack to expedite the fundraising process.►► Want more community? Learn more here: http://trwih.comSPECIAL THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS►► Competition for great talent is more brutal than ever. To be able to hire better and faster, you need a trusted source of pre-vetted candidates. Lemon.io is a place like that. They have a network of engineers from Europe and Latin America, and every candidate has been already tested and interviewed by their team.So, how is it different from hiring on your own?• You can have an engineer start working on your project within a week instead of months• You don’t waste your time on candidates that are not qualified• You’ll have easy access to global talent without having to go through dozens of job boards• And finally, it’s more affordable than hiring local talent.Sign up at https://lemon.io/room and get your 15% off for the first 4 weeks of work with a developer.►► LMNT is a delicious electrolyte drink mix with all of the things you need and none of the junk. It contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio: 1000 mg sodium, 200 mg potassium, 60 mg magnesium. LMNT can help prevent and eliminate headaches, muscle cramps, fatigue, sleeplessness, and other common symptoms of electrolyte deficiency. It tastes amazing and is great after a workout or one too many drinks :) Right now LMNT is offering our listeners a free sample pack with any order. That’s 8 single serving packets FREE with any LMNT order. Get yours at http://drinklmnt.com/HAPPENS. And it’s so good they have a no questions asked refund policy but you won’t need it.THIS EPISODENick Saltarelli: https://twitter.com/nicksaltoSahil Bloom: https://twitter.com/SahilBloomGreg Isenberg: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergProduction & Marketing Team: https://penname.co/FIND US ON SOCIALTwitter: https://twitter.com/_trwihInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/_trwihTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@_trwihWeb: https://trwih.comSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6aB0v6amo3a8hgTCjlTlvhApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/where-it-happens/id1593424985

So authentic is the most important for life in general because you don't have to show up ever thinking about being a different person. Like being authentic allows you to free headspace to not have to worry about anything. But how that relates to making more money is really simple is that in your authentic state, you have an intuition that nobody else has. Like, period. And when you are in that creative intuitive state that is so 100% you, it's a, it's a little bit of, it's. like I can almost guarantee that you will find success. Now here's the kicker. Very few people reach that level of intuitive self-truth. Nick, Greg. Greg's hair right now is someone, you have to watch this episode on YouTube simply to just observe and admire Greg's hair for the

entirety of this thing. It's basically like a gorgeous prancing gazelle. flying through the safari, just so graceful. That's all I have to say. That was basically the description I was going with, actually. It's very like Boy Meets World 90s show vibes. Yeah, it's Joey Lawrence. Joey Lawrence vibes. Yeah.

It's got good Lawrence vibes, good Lawrence brothers vibes. I dig that. What's going on today, guys? What's on everyone's mind before we dive in here? Well, I'm just excited to bring Nick on the show. I've known Nick for many years. he's uh he always brings the energy and he's uh for those you don't know he's the founder of midday squares which is probably one of the more interesting d to c companies uh in the space right now and they're

and they're they're they're they're loud that's the best way to describe them their marketing is loud so i'm just excited to bring nick on and just sort of talk about um how to be loud in the d toc space. And I didn't know Nick until you brought up, until you brought up having him on the show. And I'm embarrassed now because then once I like went down the rabbit hole on all the stuff you've been doing, Nick, I'm like blown away and super excited to dive into it. But I have to say, when Nick sent his headshot for this, which will be on the cover art when we drop the episode, hands down like 5x as good as any other headshot that we have seen someone sent. You know, you get the like professional headshots, the kind of like blue steel, magnum vibe.

that people try to throw at you or the little like, you know, the kind of cheeky smile, etc. Nick brought a totally different level of heat with his headshot. So I am personally excited to see what kind of heat he brings to this episode here. I'm fired up, yo. You got to bring the heat. You get one shot in life to make magic happen no matter what you're doing. So if you don't bring the heat, that's on you.

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Oh, well, I think that's a good jumping off point. I like that. It's our first framework for the day, Greg, is got to bring the heat. It's the got to bring the heat framework. No matter what you're doing, you got to go hard at it. I actually look, I mean, broadly speaking, I completely agree with that too, right?

Like you have a finite amount of energy. And so pick and choose the things that you really care about that you want to be working on. And when you're going to work on them, work really freaking hard at those things and go dive in on them with a lot of that energy. So I love it, man. It's a good jumping off point. I think honestly, man, I've been great, like Greg alluded to, like we've known each other. I like to think of it, if it's, if it's, if it's, It was in a music scene, right?

Like, let's say we're talking about a city's music scene, but we were talking about entrepreneurship, but think about it through that framework, right? Where a lot of musicians in a scene will get together and be amongst each other and see each other as they're trying to do their thing. Greg and I since like 16 years old have been hustling entrepreneurship. I'm 33. So just, Greg, I don't even know how old you. I think you're 33 too, probably.

Yeah. run the same age. So we've come up together in the same city. We were under one of the same grandmasters, Rory Olson. I always love shouting him out. Come from Montreal. Wait, just pause on that. Under the same grandmaster, Rory Olson, is that the name? Yep. What does that mean? What is a grandmaster? I mean, I'll give you my take on it. I think, you know, Greg could take you another, can give you another take on it. Rory's just a really predominant entrepreneur out of Montreal has done over three nine-figure exits, over three.

Took a cut. And was the founder of PaySafe, which I think is today still the largest, third largest e-wallet in the world, if I'm not mistaken. I mean, this guy negotiated. We were just, it's funny, Greg, he says what's up. for dinner two weeks ago. I know you guys speak a bunch too, but he was talking about he negotiated with why am I blanking out on this gentleman's name? He is Musk's partner at PayPal. Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel. Yeah, he had a pretty heavy negotiation in a restaurant we were at in Montreal with Peter Thiel in the basement. So, I mean, long story short, Rory's a G. After my dad died when I was, my dad died when I was 10, he kind of took me under his wing from like 11 to 9.

and just really gave me the ins and outs of the game. I learned all my M&A finance dealmaking stuff through him. And so I call him a Grandmaster because that's what he was for my life. And I know Greg had a really intimate time with him too. So it's just we both came from the same Grandmaster. That's what I like to call it. Yeah, I think, so similar experience that I had as a teenager, I met him. and he also took me under his wing and sort of showed me the ropes.

So, but, you know, it was also a different time back then. Like, back then, like, there wasn't podcasts like this that the ropes were being shown, you know? So having someone like that, I mean, is still today such an advantage, but was back then like 10 times or 100 times even more. Because, you know, startups back then were completely demystified. So having, like, someone like that who's the top of his game, just sort of show you the ABCs was super valuable. Yeah. It's kind of one of the benefits I was going to say, too.

Like you guys are both from Montreal or Montreal, as you guys say, I need to get, I need to get the accent down. Being from like a non, you know, it's not San Francisco, right? Like it wasn't the tech hub of the world. And yet there was this thriving entrepreneurial community, right? Like we've had Harley on the show, amazing entrepreneur from the area. there's tons of you guys it's like you know the little montreal mafia um and it's like one of the benefits of being from one of these sort of off the beaten path entrepreneurial communities is it becomes

tight knit as a result of it being off the beaten path and so these people that otherwise might be inaccessible to you in a large you know thriving tech hub become these mentors and want to see that community you know growing and thriving and i'm sure you guys are now doing that for young up-and-comers from the area the same way i know harley is i'm diehard much i mean i'm speak with Greg about this all the time, diehard Montreal. I mean, one of the main reasons why we chose to build midday squares here. We were looking at Toronto and LA is just, I always, I have this, you know, vision of bringing the energy that Nike brought to Oregon to Montreal. And that's something, that's one of the main reasons why we chose it to even do it here. But going back to what

you're saying, I think a lot of people don't understand how much wealth is in Montreal. I mean, we have, we have this ridiculous amount of concentration. traded wealth from very, very long histories of very powerful families in a very small city. Like I'm telling you, it's really small. You can drive the entire perimeter of the island in one hour. And so like a lot of people don't know this, but the Demeray family, which is from Montreal, owns one third of Adidas, right? That means they own one third of the easiest deal. They own, you know, they own some serious stuff and that's a Montreal family. So yeah, Montreal is like low key, like really powerful. And, and I think to your point, you know, they own. You know, they own some serious stuff. And I'm, you know,

point, you're better off sometimes being a huge fish in a small pond. And that's, that's kind of like what I've always loved doing. I know Greg went out there to San Francisco and really chopped his teeth out there and did a hell of a job. But I never made that jump. I think there's a benefit of both, right? Like the big fish, small pond and then, you know, small fish in a big pond that people always presented as like an either or and you kind of got a pick. But like Greg's an example, I think of someone who's done it both ways and you kind of benefit from it in different ways. Like I think, think, you know, for me personally, my own experience, like I was kind of a big fish in a small pond growing up, playing baseball in a small town. I thought I was like legit. It probably led to me

getting some really cool development opportunities as a result of being a bigger fish in a smaller pond. And then I went out to school and all of a sudden I was like a tiny fish in a massive pond and I was horse shit at the things I thought I was really good at on a grander scale. And you get the like humility, you know, and the grind that you have to develop in order to actually come up the curve when you're in that environment. So I think actually, I mean, having a combination of both, it's like the, Greg, I've talked to you about this. I think it's Jim Collins has this idea of the genius of and. And it's like the counterpoint to his tyranny of the ore, which is these false dichotomies that we create where you're like, you have to pick one or the other. And the

reality is you can do both. And so it's like the genius of and in these situations, which I've always loved. I feel the same way about so much stuff. I just, I think people overanalyze a lot of things like all the way down to should you fundraise should you not fundraise should you it just doesn't fucking matter all that matters is that you have a goal in mind and you have to get there and to get there is going to have you know whether you need to raise money or not there's going to require some type of capital requirement to get to where you need to do and if you don't have enough money well then you need to fundraise and if you don't then you know continue doing what you got to do like it doesn't need to be so complicated all the time I think

You know, 33-year-old Nick versus 20-year-old Nick, it just oversimplifies everything. It's the Occam's Razor, man. You've got to find, like, the simplest answer is often the best one. Simple is beautiful. I completely agree with you. It's actually a great place to start, too. Because I do want to get into this amazing business you've built and some of the principles and, like, get a little bit tactical on some of the learning so that we can share

with people. We've never really gone, Greg, into D to C and, like, true consumer on the show. And so I'm really excited to kind of get. And we are not, I want to just preface something. We are not a D to C company. And so I think I could give you a great, a great take on what it means to be a D to C company today because we operate in the D to C space, but we do not operate as a D2C company. Can you clarify what you mean by that?

Yeah. So I think I think there was this movement in 2000 to 2020 that was like you had to build a business around direct to consumer. And I think in that time, a lot of people, especially depending on what channel you're in, but when it comes to consumer package goods, I think people miscalculated the value proposition of the supply chain partners, i.e. distributors and retailers. And so people went out and took those margins because it's like a really nice story, right? Hey, you make a product, a distributor takes anywhere from 18 to 25%, then you give it to a retailer and they take another 30 to 40%. That's a nice story to say, we're going to take that away and we're going to pass the savings on to the consumer. What I think people forgot was how trained humans are in that buying cycle and how much more money it actually cost it to scale than to actually just play with.

in the distribution channels that exist. Yeah, I mean, that's like the, I think Toby, another Canadian, Toby from Shopify, he's Canadian, right? Is he a, is he a, is he a, is he a, German, born in Germany and move to Canada. Okay. He was commenting on this earlier, especially too, like when you think about the early days of that movement and the idea people had, which is actually a fair insight, as you point out, that was during a time when you could literally like, you know, put in any keyword and have pretty

little competition. If you were like buying ads on Facebook or social or Google AdWords, whatever it was. And he was joking that like now you can rub your face into your keyboard and probably run into like 100 people bidding against you on whatever that is, like jumble of letters. And so that, I mean, the rules of the game have just fundamentally changed as a result of that. Yeah, which is always like, I think I feel like I want my whole life to come back to square one. I mean, remember when I was 16 years old, I was just like brand, brand, brand, brand, brand. And then I went away from that.

And now I've come back to that. Like the worst place I think you could be to build a massive business is in commodities business. And so, you know, brand is everything. And then you look at retail partnerships and how meaningful. I'm telling guys, I've been in software, retail wholesale revenue is absolutely. as good as software. It is like clockwork every 28 days. If you have a product that repurchases,

meaning that that's the good sign, right? If people are coming back into their grocery habits or any of those, like it's like clockwork. I've never seen that. So that's what I mean by I really, DDC is just a component of what we are, but we are absolutely not a DDC business. So we are manufacturing business that runs a brand.

So in the like CPG space, like who do you, like what other brands are you seeing that are doing a really good job? And what are, you know, how are you incorporating some of their stuff into midday squares, if any? Because, you know, sometimes I look at what you all are doing and I'm kind of like you're just doing your own thing. It feels like you're doing like a unique thing. Yeah, but it's not even that unique, Greg. It's fully stolen from the music industry. That's what I love, I love talking about this all the time. is like it is um okay so let me let me really bring it down what was the initial strategy

midday squares okay if you really so yes we're a manufacturer uh yes we're a cbg product but to really understand what we're doing from a marketing perspective is we're a media company and our patreon is our chocolate that is like the best way to describe what is happening and so my my partner jake really brought this idea to us is let he distilled the last 10 years of brand and like hardcore brand like stuff that really is moving the needle and I'll give you I'll give you some examples of like like I think figs is doing a great job at just like being a D to C company you know I think everybody can find their own playbook and just to clarify figs for those you don't know at uniforms basically for health care workers

yeah they made they like public too I mean they got huge Lulu Lula Lemon vibe, like, brilliant, brilliant play, right? Boring, unattended to industry of brand. It was all commodity style players, but there were some big players, and they just brought some style to it and really exploded. I think for us, it was like, if you really look at what was happening in fashion and the music industry and like the convergence of those two, it feels like every brand today that's successful has to be celebrity driven.

I don't know if you guys feel the same way, but it's almost like, hey, if you're a celebrity, you've got to have a CPG product. And that's true to a certain extent. But I think that the reverse is true too. You can actually use the product, if great, to celebratize yourself and then bring out an audience that's really committed to seeing your growth. You can do it in reverse. And so I think the Kardashians, Shark Tank and like Elon Musk's style of communication really, resignated with Jake and that's what he came like me and my wife are super introverted she's the third partner and for everybody that's listening we make we make functional chocolate bars because we

even touch on that bar we manufacture them as well too you own a factory did you like create a factory oh wow so you really own it's fully vertically integrated got it yeah you can visit anytime you're in Montreal like it's crazy that experience I'd love to even speak a little bit on on on why I think manufacturing so critical for the for the next steps of having success in brand. And there was a reason why we had to pursue it, but that's a story in of itself. So the last piece to the playbook was, hey, why is it that, you know, Skims was able to come and really come after Sarah Blakely's Spanx in a very, very fast period of time? And I think that's really because it's driven from a narrative. People like to buy into stories and then the stories lead to the

product. But if you have that brand narrative, sorry, if you have a personal narrative, you can convey it into a product line. And so Jake's idea was, how do we create a product line that is about being in your face and bold, kind of giving people permission to be themselves unapologetically? And that led to this brainstorm, which was like, what if we conduct ourselves like a band, hence Sehill, the picture you got before, right? You can really orchestrate how you show up in the world. It's very possible. And musicians and artists have been doing that forever.

And so we started conducting ourselves like a band. Everything the way we brand it, talk about the product, the way we do photoshoots. Like, why do we do photoshoots every month? Just because, right? Just because that's content to put on the gram to bring to life to show you in a light that seems larger than life. That's what musicians do all the time. And at the same time, tell the story of entrepreneurship on the rise.

And that was like Shark Tank's numbers, they were the number. They were so high in the rating Shark Tank. It didn't even make sense when I was seeing the data on that. They were like the number one show by Miles. And so it was like so obvious that people wanted to watch this. And we kind of just put together a mini reality television show on Instagram, started really small, started manufacturing in our condo, and built that narrative and story and still have it today.

Like we're trying to build super fans. So get into the manufacturing piece of this because my perspective or my assumption rather generally is like when people think about creating a CPG brand, they're like, holy shit, I don't want to touch manufacturing because that's just like. Yeah. And I want to get into why you think that because I think that's an interesting contrarian insight. Because like my instinct when most people start one is like, okay, let me do this in the latest touchway possible. I'll pay a contract manufacturer.

You know, I'll hire an agency to handle all the ads. I'll do like everything. And it just, your margin just keeps coming down and down in the quality because you're outsourcing to a contract manufacturer is just harder to control, I imagine too. And you can't iterate as quickly on things, test, learn, et cetera. So I'm curious for you just like, what was the insight there? How did you actually do it and act on creating that manufacturing side? Yeah. So I, you know they tell you the more swings you have at entrepreneurship, the better you're going to get. Like that is so true. I've failed at so many different things and trying to bring them forward. And I kind of have developed this like list of things not to do. And one of the main things was to avoid China at all costs when creating products. So that was the reason why is like, I think early. on, you need to be able to have a competitive edge when it comes to uniqueness of a product.

And manufacturing, if you play in that area of where things could be copied really quickly, you're going to be commoditized pretty quickly, is an insight I have on that end. And then two is, I love massive markets, massive, massive markets that are saturated because those are such proof points that a pond full of fish exists, right? So you have a fucking pawn full of ridiculous fish. And so here's where the contrarian play comes in is the problem with saturation is that by definition, saturation is an uninnovated market. And to bring true innovation to market, you almost are never going to be able to show up to a co-manufacture and have that happen regardless of what you're building. So for us, we went to go see 26 different co-manufacturers.

And again, I want you to know it wasn't like there was. was some grand plan to go become a manufacturer. It was in the event we could find a contract manufacturer we wanted to use it. We absolutely wanted to use it. Problem is, is that nobody wanted to make what we wanted to make. And this is where I think, especially in food, food entrepreneurs go wrong because you show up to a contract manufacturer and they will take your product and turn it into the thing that already exists on the shelf. And here's why. And I know that because We're a manufacturer now. It's if I'm running a manufacturing line and I want to have as little turnover as

possible and you want to use an ingredient that I'm not storing in my warehouse, okay? What is my incentive for you to use that ingredient? So I'm going to come to you. I'm going to say, hey, we can do this at the minimum order quantities you want, but you can't use cocoa butter. You need to use palm kernel oil. By the way, you know how you want your chocolate to be one and a half inches? Can't be.

So we're going to have to do an enrobed chocolate. You know you want it to be square. It's got to be circular edges. I mean, we could go here forever. And it's like, so you leave that thing. And now you have a product that looks like everything else in the market. And guess what? A manufacturer that knows how to make your secret sauce.

Who the fuck wants to give away their secret sauce? Like I, you know, in software, you show up. I want to take you guys through this, okay? Just because I want you to laugh with me. This is how whack it is. I don't think it doesn't hit a lot of people until I say it this way. So imagine you show. open to an investor's office and you're like, all right, guys, I got the greatest fucking idea.

Everybody at the table is like, okay, we're ready for you. We're going to build the next Google. Okay, you have my ears. What are you going to do that's different than Google? You give your pitch, yada, yada, yada, yada. All right, who's your CTO? Who's the team that's going to be building this? Guess what?

Here it is. Asset light. We're exporting everything to an agency. The agency is going to build Google from scratch. We're just going to sit here. Tell them what to do. They're going to ship us the code. when it's, I mean, you're going to get laughed out of the room.

Your core competency is being outsourced to another company. Like, what the fuck has happened? And I know how it's happened, having been here now, it's because Pepsi and Coca-Cola fucked everything up back in the 80s. And we're like, hey, we've created these big conglomerates. We want to divest all of our asset-heavy, you know, manufacturing plants. We're going to go in franchise models. We're going to create cash for shareholders.

and they created this false ideology of this co-manufacturing being the holy grail to asset light CPG businesses. And I just don't think that's the way to build the next Nike. You might be able to build a company in five years and flip it to Kellogg's or, you know, Nestle, but you ain't building the next Nike with co-mends. Yeah, I mean, I think, so you hit on like a hundred fascinating ideas here. So I want to go run back through some of these to double down on them. You just tell me to shut the fuck up.

No, no, no, no. There's too much gold in there, man. It's like too many cool ideas. So, first off, one of the things you said at the very outset there that I thought was great was like, when you see a pond and there's a whole shitload of fishing boats in one area, that's probably a good indication that there's a lot of fish in that area. And actually that you might want to go there. And so like, that's really, again, contrarian advice because usually people are like, go fish where there isn't anybody. But if you go fish where there isn't anybody, there might not be any fish there. and that's why there isn't anyone sitting there.

So, I mean, I just, I love that idea. And it all kind of goes to like a common thread in what you're saying, which is like this whole concept of playing different games, which is something that I think about a lot. It's like, what game do you want to be playing? And how do you figure out a different way to play it? That just doesn't look the same as the way everyone else is assuming you should. And so, you know, you talk about like manufacturing as an example and as a use case of that.

I have this friend who you might have come across. actually in the consumer world. His name is Chas Flexman. I started this business called All Day Flavors. And it's like all day flavors.com. It's actually my go-to like spices for, I'm not an investor. I have no affiliation for what it's worth. But it's amazing like low sodium spices basically. But they've done something similar, which is like rather than just taking the same approach of going to like random contract manufacturers and making the product that that company knows how to make that are optimizing that contract manufacturers margins or whatever, they're like line utilization, which is all they care about. They've taken this like data first approach to producing CPG products where they're

like doing small, small test runs, focus groups, getting initial data where they have a high degree of certainty when they launch a new product that it is going to pop because they have the data and the insights from the get go and they're able to iterate quickly, change, et cetera. And the spices are amazing and like they haven't had a flop of a product because they're taking this very different approach to doing it. So I just like that was just really hitting in my mind as you were talking through all of that around the manufacturer and just like doing something differently, taking a different approach to something that is very commonly done. And then also under, I think the biggest part that people forget is to look at the world

through the lens of playing a game. You said that perfectly actually, Sehill. It's like, the faster you figure out the game you're playing, the more you can find areas of exploitation and it exists because unlike a board game real life is full of um full of conundrums full of false positives full of double-sided swords like nobody's thought about everything perfectly in our societal structure and business structure so these pockets present themselves so for instance there's this pocket that in cpg if you own a manufacturing plant the probability of you finding another competitor willing to put chips on the table under,

I know because I have some two really big buyers of companies at big CPG. I won't name their names that are in M&A. They won't even look at reproducing a manufacturing line internally unless they have proofpoints of $300 million of year of revenue. So like, like right there, I weren't. We're just trying to get to 20 this year. We know that these guys are, they won't even entertain the idea of making a midday squares manufacturing plant.

Then you go into the internal smaller co-manufacturers. I know when we were going through, people were willing to listen to how we would want to make it. And they would say to us, hey, are you willing to invest three million in our plant? And your minimum water quantity has to be a million dollars. So there's these pockets. And that's why it's like four years now.

that Midday Squares has yet to see a competitor on the shelves. I think it's coming eventually, but it creates a ridiculous moat because... Yeah, it's a real mode. An internal politics of where people just don't want to fuck with investing that type of money. Yeah, it's the narrative too, right? Like the narrative around manufacturing is like, oh, shit, sounds like a lot of headaches, and I got to deal with this and that. And I don't understand any of fact, I got to hire people to deal with it.

And it's like, it's this whole narrative that you build in your mind. But to Hill, that's when I get... I get excited when that gets presented to me. That's actually my driving force in life. That's part of my algorithm for decision making is, is this something that most people say is a bad idea? I saw this on your, first off,

that's like a Keith Rabeigh thing that I've seen him say a lot, is like his barometer for his investing as a VC is like, do half of my VC friends laugh at the investment that I'm making? I've always loved that. Like I thought it was just a good, idea in terms of as an entrepreneur, as an investor, etc. But I read this when I was doing my research for this episode and one of you were like, I think it was a blog post you were interviewed in where you said something like going after

hard concepts is actually an easier way to succeed. And I thought that was really, really well said. I've had inherently the easiest time fundraising with this business. My enjoyment level every day has been so much happier because it's attracting talent, easier when you're going after really hard things. Raising money is easier when you're going after really hard things. It just makes everything so much easier. It's like this epiphany I had.

It's like from now on going forward, whether midday squares is successful or not, everything I will touch must be in this realm of hardness, complexity, and magnitude because it has made my life 10x easier than the nickel and diming that I used to do. And when I talk about nickel and diming, I mean going after business. that could hit, you know, only 20, 30 million a year of revenue.

I will say the one piece you are missing is, I think, authenticity. Because when I look at midday squares, I see, like, it's not just that you're doing hard things. You're doing hard and authentic things to you, Jake and Leslie, the co-founders. So, for example, like, you know, I saw a video of Jake, who's this, like, highly energetic guy, basically pumping up like I think it was like an air Canada or some like company doing like dancing to the YMCA and you just see him like going completely like bonkers and and if you know Jake that's Jake and if you know Leslie that's Leslie and if you know Nick that's that's Nick so I think it's a good framework um to start thinking about it is like do hard and do authentic yeah and

do so authentic is the most important for life and general because you don't have to show up ever thinking about being a different person. Like being authentic allows you to free headspace to not have to worry about anything. But how that relates to making more money is really simple is that in your authentic state, you have an intuition that nobody else has. Like, period. And when you are in that creative, intuitive state that is so 100% you, it's like I can almost guarantee that you.

that you will find success. Now here's the kicker. Very few people reach that level of intuitive self-truth. And that's what I'm out there pitching, which is, you know, go deep, figure out what that thing is that makes you you and then triple, quadruple down on that. And that's it.

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kind of complexity and like I always think of the I think it's Charlie Songhurst the famous investor has this matrix that he draws of like complex on one vector and boringness like or sexiness on the other one and he talks about the fact that you want to be building businesses that are in this quadrant that is like complex and boring because complex and sexy you know that's like SpaceX or something and there's so much competition when you're building complex sexy sexy things that everyone wants to build. And so like when you talk about manufacturing, I'm like, holy shit, that's boring. You know, that's like the boring stuff. And it's super complicated to do. And so you're building in this rarefied air where people don't want to be building there because

it's not sexy and it is complicated. And so now all of a sudden, what's your competition look like? I mean, you're building in a big space with less competition. To your point, five years, people haven't been replicating it or doing it because it sits in that in that sector. Oh, man. Oh, man. That is like, It's number one in finding pockets of exploit. What I will say is Greg asked me to come up with some ideas for the show today. And I thought about it. And I have ideas. But I want to leave for sure an anecdote on this podcast, which is I've gone after things just for money and have made money doing them.

And I know for sure with 100% truth that. the success lies in the thing that you want to do no matter what. And usually if you do something, for instance, there's a huge keyword spread right now on HRFs, right, for plumbers, local plumbers. There's a huge opportunity to build a monster aggregator for plumbing, the plumbing industry. It's so clear how to make money in that industry. Would I do it tomorrow? No.

even if I see it because I, when the going gets tough in a business, which it ultimately always will, you want to quit. And this is the first time ever because I'm excited about what we're doing. I love chocolate. I think literally in my graduation when I was in grade six, I said, Willie Wonka in the Charlie Factory was my dream to be one day. I never want to quit. I'm addicted to it. And so I don't ever discount that.

part. And sometimes when you're doing unsexy things, like for midday squares, as unsexy it is in manufacturing, it's very sexy from a brand standpoint. Like people love wanting to build brands. People love what comes with that aspect. And I have. And I'm, and I'm, I'm, I could tell you, I've been chasing this since I'm 17. I've wanted to build Nike since I'm 17. And I veered away from that for many years. And now that I'm back, I realize why I'm addicted to it. And why did you veer away? Is it because you were chasing the money. Yeah. I was chasing the money.

There's a million easier ways to make money than to build a brand. It's, there really is. I don't care what anybody says. Like, you know, if you're trying to become a millionaire, building a brand is not the fastest way to do it.

If, if anything, it's actually the least probabilistic way to do it. The truth is, yeah, the truth is it's, it's enormously difficult to build a brand. and it's enormously difficult to build a startup.

If you want to make a lot of money, you know, honestly, just go work at Facebook and Google and get some stock and you'll probably make a lot of money. Like people who go into startups, especially like CPG, or even hard things like consumer social, like don't, it's just not, your odds are so low. Like you need to go in because like you want to make, you know, 16 year old Nick proud basically yeah it's it's like iron man no I'm actually really I'm really open to

sharing the why the why is I like doing things that and I know so he'll even Greg you both feel this way one I'm an ex-athlete Greg we've been doing this as where you're at her I like knowing that I'm doing something that a very small percentage of the world is capable of doing that's that's what that's what drives me it's it's my competitive force against myself I always have when I was playing It wasn't about what was going on and around. I was like, okay, how far up the stats could I get myself? How good of a goalie could I become? And it's the same thing here is I love the idea that, I don't know,

five, two people in 100 years, three people in 100 years get to make Nike. I don't know if we'll do it, but that's the dream. And that's why, you know, if you hear me talk about this all the time, is I'm always like, we're doing this for 25, 35 years. Again, everybody I meet is trying to build businesses, for five years in flipping it. Do you think that we would have ever built a manufacturing plant if we had a five year business plan?

Absolutely not. You could not make the returns work. And so again, like a competitive advantage. People think competitive advantage comes down to intelligence all the time, how much experience you have in something. Sometimes it's as simple as saying, hey, I'm not going to play the game that the world wants to play. I don't want to do this for just five years, 30 years.

You're going to interact with your decision making like on a whole different. level. I saw a great tweet about that exact point that you just made on like people think that experience and intelligence is like the most important thing around this. I think it was Jack Altman. You know, Jack, Greg, he's a founder of Ladis. I think he's brother, Sam Altman, one of the YC guys. Jack tweeted, one of the most surprising things in business is the degree to which an inexperienced person with the right mindset will outperform a highly experienced person without it. I thought that was so well said.

I was like, the whole thing of experience is just like, I just think it's overrated. So overrated. What it, what it, what is not overrated on is giving you the lay of the line. That's it. After that, get, get the fuck out of the way. Like, when it comes to experience people, they actually do more damage in their square Even like myself, I will be that person when I'm 70, going back to a 20 year old, I will be more destructive than I am positive to that person because I will have created all of these false stop and goes when wire Zed roads present itself simply because of timing, luck, my own skill sets, right? But what they are really good at is if we give the analogy of a Formula One track, they can tell you on turn two, there's going to be a pothole, avoid that at all.

like they're really good at that and then after you've distilled that like get them the fuck out of the way they've gone through the um the idea maze like they've kind of been through it at least in some form in some way shape or form i do think that like sometimes you know those people have this like flawed map of the reality because it doesn't apply anymore and so they're like hey you're you're going to screw this up you know nick your manufacturing is going to be broken because of this this or this and like that was 10 years ago and things have fundamentally changed and there's some reason or new insight that, you know, they don't understand or fully fully appreciate. But I agree with you.

Far from it. Like, I have, I have an incredible board, okay? And I've spoken about this. So I'm not throwing them under the bus at all. This is really just a good example of it. We were going through, we just transitioned the whole business from a two square business to a one square business. We needed to make these decision quick costs were rising.

We wanted to do a price increase. We had data from the customer that they wanted to buy one square business. square at a time, not two squares. So we said, you know what, let's do a $1 price increase, but to offset the feeling to the customer, we're going to drop it to one square. So now instead of selling two squares at $3.99, we're selling one square at $249. Okay. That's the premise of it. We presented to the board saying, we're rolling this thing out. And then everybody's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, like, could we do a test market first? And this, I'm just looking at everybody. I'm like, what do you think this is fucking L'Oreal test market? We were barely surviving.

the water's filling up every day. We have two people in QA. We could barely scan the boxes in. We can barely manage three flavors. Now you want me to manage three flavors and two skews, which creates six different skew possibilities. It's like, no, we have a gut feeling. We're rolling with it. This is where it's at. And I get in 10 years when we're a different company that we can be more calculated in our approach. But sometimes you're just too far from it and you forget what it's like to be on the, uh, the,

uh, the army lines. First of all, I love that you're just like, absolutely, like absolutely not. Like I feel like a lot of, I know a lot of founders who have conversations like this with their board and it's easy to,

you know, it's your board and, and ultimately you're the CEO and you kind of work for the board. Um, it's easy to be like, all right, fine, let's go test it and sort of delay it. But,

you know, Or was that hard? Was it hard to speak to the board and basically be like, I'm sorry, this is the direction we're going. No. And this is a piece that I think a lot of investors are going to hate me for saying on this podcast is just I, I, I, our board trusts us. Okay. So that's one, that's one piece I want to make sure that that nobody gets false representation of what I'm saying, what I'm about to say, what I'm about to say, is that you have to earn trust in life. and how you earn trust is by delivering.

That being said, founders need to start taking back, not control, but conviction that we are the people that are on the front lines doing the stuff. We are the scarce ones. Monies of abundance. Investors are of abundance. Boards are of abundance. That is not to be saying that you should show up like an arrogant prick. Because I think if you called my board, they would say, you know,

what, he's, he's reasonable. He's very reasonable in the conversations. But at the end of the day, you get paid to make the convicted shots. And you have to, you have to show up with that confidence to lead, you're leading them through war, not them leading you through war. And that's the piece we got to flip because there's a huge, there's this huge idea of like founders are just glorified employees. And that is the furthest thing from the truth. truth. What's a really big decision that you made or you and, you know, your co-founders made at Midday Square is where it was a gut decision and you went with it. But deep down, you're like, oh my God, I don't know if this is actually going to work. Because I'm sure there's, you know,

I'm sure you have some of those. Can I tell you honestly, it's happening right now. It is the one square decision. And here's why. I'm going to explain to you why. And I don't even have the answer yet. We're actually right now in this part of the movie where the plane goes off the radar and nobody knows if it blew up or not. That's kind of where we are right now. So here's why this was such a big deal. If every customer, right, we were on fire in the U.S., we beat perfect bar in the last 24 weeks as the number one bar in the U.S. Okay. So that's like, do not fuck with anything, right?

Like, don't fuck with anything. Now, the board was like, guys, if we're selling two squares for every customer and we now bring it down to one square package, what's to say that every customer is going to continue to buy two squares? We might actually go cut our revenue in half. That is a factual statement. And this is where gut overroated. It was, I hear you loud and clear, but if you just read the request from the customers, they want one square so badly at a fair price. And there was no data in the world that could have made this presentation

look like this was the right decision to make other than anecdotal evidence. And so our bet is that no matter how much carnage it reeks on the P&L, that in the long term, we will actually end up selling more squares per customer. And we think that because now we're giving the customers what we want. And that's what we have 100% conviction on, is that they want the one square. So even though it might hurt the company financially in the short term, we bet the farm on it in the long term. And that's where, you know, in September, if we were wrong on this, we put ourselves into a position of where we can potentially smash into a wall and have to raise, you know,

way earlier than expected, with revenues not hitting where they need to hit, potentially creating a downround scenario if that all does come to fruition. And that's where like, that's where I love thinking about entrepreneurship, like being a Formula One driver. Sometimes you can't think. You just have to act. And what will be will be, you know,

you live and die by the decisions you make. And so we made a really, we made a really hard gut decision on this one. There was no data to suggest that we should have done this. I love that because it's just an example of a bold decision that you just, you had to make. And it's also the benefit of being a private company, right? Like a public company, the reason I think most public companies end up stalling out at some point, you know, in the long run and getting, you know, chipped away at by innovators and by,

you know, new entrance to a market is for this reason, right? Like a public company can't make that decision because it's just like, oh my God, we can't shoot the golden goose. Like we can't give up revenue in order to go after the thing that might be correct in the long term because we have quarterly earnings reports and we have to read them out to investors and we told analysts what we were going to hit and we have to hit that or we have to be in the band, whatever. And so, I mean, it's also, it applies to like when you think about the public companies that have really thrived, like in the tech world especially, the ones that have the founders still leading them still make those bold decisions because they aren't just some like executor. that's come in to like operate for their 10 years stewardship and then move on and retire with their $30 million pay package, they still care about it like it's their baby. And so like, you know, Evan Spiegel at Snapchat or Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, you know, criticize them as

much as you want, but they're still making decisions as though it is their baby. And it is they care about it so much over the long term because it's so much of their legacy is tied to it. Why I'm so bullish on, so two other contrarian things. Well, actually just one, on that end, but is we fundraise at lower valuations every single round to control the board and have complete voting control. So we've taken $10, $50 million cuts from the valuation in order to have those provisions in the term sheets. This is stuff that people need to continue to do.

Now, why am I so bullish on control and board? People always ask this question is like, why are you an egomaniac? or no, it goes back to your answer. In software, all of the top companies, I think people just got excited by software. Yes, they're great business models, but in CPG, there's not one founder-led top 10 company

in the publicly traded ranks. It's all, like, you know, the guy who founded Hershey's was a G back in the day. That guy is dead now, and it's, you know, like what happens when a founding team in CPG goes the distance, doesn't sell the company, retains ridiculous voting control at like the super voting rights of the Zuckerbergs

and is able to continue to make crazy bold decisions while bringing in a billion dollars of revenue. What does that world look like? That's what I think we're excited about and why we fight so hard for control. I mean, fight fucking tooth and nail in the negotiations for that. It's the classic name your price and I'll give you the terms. Something like, right? The saying, it's not about the price that you get. It's about the terms that are often way more important.

And that's actually how we start the fundraises. So a trick that I've learned that I really like is we create the term sheet. And I think other founders could use this too. So you go out, you pay a law firm to create an outline term sheet. So you get rid of all the people that are going to waste your time. And you show up and you're like, here is the framework of the term sheet. You, no price. Just the framework of.

the voting control and all that. If you are willing to do this deal, you name your price knowing these provisions. If not, walk now. And you could still bring your own term sheet. I'm not saying you have to use our term sheet. This is the outline. So this way, in 24 hours, you scare away all the players that don't want to play. Nick, you are on this podcast right now because literally no one talks like you at all in Silicon Valley or whatever. Like not only are you saying, things that no one I know is doing, you're telling other people about it in a public saying. You're not afraid to tell. And that's why you're here.

Like, that's why I love you. And I love that about you is because you're not afraid to do your own thing and just kind of, hey, this is how other people are doing it. This is how I think is reasonable. Let's go. But it comes down to, when my doubt. died, my dad died at 10, my family really all mourned it separately. So we all became alone for a very long period of time. You know, we were in a house together. And I think that period of time of my life

has really, it really shaped me to, to having first principles thinking and unique thoughts and because I was just so alone for so long, even though I was amongst people, that you start to really lean in and trust yourself. When you are trying to figure out death, it creates this really amazing energy in you to have to figure out life fast, quick, who you are, how you're going to react to it. And that's why, like I always say, like, the best thing that ever happened to me is my dad, my dad passed away. And I don't mean that, and I wish that he passed away, is that it really just shaped everything for me because it taught me to be a unique thinker because there was nobody to mourn with. And the more I leaned into myself, the more happy I was getting and that

kind of translate into life outside of the morning part. And then I just started to realize, wow, you know, this is going to sound bleak, but I don't mean it in this way. You're born alone and you die alone and conduct yourself accordingly. Doesn't mean you're going to have a great journey on the planet. But really think for yourself. So in our last couple of minutes, I just have like a prompt for you, kind of, I guess like pretty, pretty open-ended prompts. Like say you were dropped into a, you know, new place. You have nothing on you. You got, you know, no money, no connections. You don't have your network, any of that stuff. What would you do? How would you, because you, You strike me as the type of person that would figure out a way, like, I would go check on you in 10 years and you'd somehow be successful and have figured something out and you would have made friends and done stuff.

Like, what would be your moves? Like, what would you go do if you were dropped into a new place and needed to, you know, needed to find your way? I would, I would really do I get, do I get to bring the skill sets that I have? Yeah, of course. No, no, no, no. You get all your skill sets, all your knowledge and your brain, whatever. You go and, you know, you have your baseline level of like you don't need to be stealing food. I'm at the outset to survive.

Yeah, I would find baseline family businesses and go become the right hand person to the right person because that is a launch pad that like, I mean, putting yourself secondary to someone is always the best way. How did I make my network in Montreal? it was, I was at like this like thing where I had John Biggs, who was the editor of TechCrunch, and we were just eating dinner,

and I just was like a servant to him. It was not about me. And, you know, two months after he hits me up, he's like, you want to host TechCrunch in Montreal? And then I made somebody else the face of it, L.P. Maurice, not me. I just got to put my name with it and was a steward to him. And he got to put his name on that. And that changed my whole life.

Just that one, just that one little thing, right? Is be a steward to others. And it's the hack. So I say it all the time. You have no idea how many people come through midday squares and piss away their opportunity to be the right-hand person to the next Nike. Like they can't see it, right? And I'm always like, why would that person want me to have a negative opinion of them?

Like if they were smart and they were to make a bet, even if it's unlikely, but if we do succeed at our vision, it's going to be pretty big. What don't you want me to have a good opinion of you? And these are the things that I think about it myself. So I would be a steward to somebody that needs to and make sure that I make them a boatload of cash or a boatload of notoriety or a boatload of fame and whatever the hell it is. And my life would work out. It's like the era of apprenticeship is not dead.

and if you can find a way to go be someone's apprentice and hustle your ass off to do it well and to learn and be a sponge when you're around that person and go improve upon it, like that's kind of an old-fashioned way of making sure that you succeed and win in the long run. Oh, my, it's that, I think that is the thing that will never change. You know, Bezos always talks about what are the things that are never going to change? That's one of them. Like being a steward to somebody will never change.

That's one of my favorite frameworks, by the way, what will stay the same framework. It's like Bezos talked about how, you know, for anyone that doesn't know this one, like he talks about how it's really hard to predict the future. Like it's so hard, so uncertain. And so if you're trying to say like, what's going to be different in 15 years and let me try to plan around that to position us well, it's really, really hard to do. Sometimes people do it well, but it's very difficult versus the flip side. If you invert the problem and think about what's going to be the same in 15 years,

what do I know is not going to change and let me make sure I'm building for that. So it's like customers are going to want things fast and they're going to want things seamlessly and check out easily. Like that is never going to change. People always want less friction. And so how do I build around less friction? It's why we chose chocolate. I mean, 142 billion traded globally. Every country knows what chocolate is. Nobody requires education for it. If I give you a piece of chocolate in a country where we don't speak the same language, you will immediately know what I'm doing. I'm showing you gratitude. I'm giving you a a little piece of good vibes.

These frameworks are so powerful. That doesn't mean that they're going to be easy once you do them, but that what is not going to change is a great place to start. 100%. Greg, any closing thoughts here as we hit the end of our time? I feel like we hit on so much interesting stuff here. How much, Nick, how much are you sleeping? Like, would you say you sleep a lot, a little?

And I ask because a lot? I ask is, especially with this change from two squares to one square, it must be like in your brain right now. And yeah, just curious your sleep habits and how you're feeling, just, you know, mentally right now. Mentally, I need always a week every. So, okay, I'm plugging the podcast. Midday Square is uncensored, guys. Come, come listen to it because it's Jake Les and I. We talk about our journey and what we're going through. So it's not an interview show.

It's really about us. Like you get to be a fly on the wall as we just distill what we're going through. That's why that brought it up. But right now I'm a bit beat up, but I went all in with my life on this. And so I really don't have much of a personal life. And I mean that, Greg, like I haven't seen any of my friends in three years. My family knows that I'm going to be very unpresent. Les and I who are married, this is all we do.

And so the reason why I'm sleeping well is. because I've eliminated everything from my life except midday squares. And so when I get home, it's just home, sleep, back at it. And every three months, I need one full week off to sleep. And that's how, because it's so hard manufacturing. Just to give you guys a scope of the scale, August 2018, we had max capacity per day of 60,000 bars. And today we produced 46,000 bars a day, fully automated. And we're looking to double that. That, that I've had a teammate die on us at a

company retreat. I've had molded in the walls while investors were visiting. I mean, it's just been one thing after another. There's no reason why we should still be alive. And I attribute sleep to a big part of the success is that I'm sleeping really, really well, which allows me to be decently, emotionally stable to deal with, you know, the onsets of depression that come. come on while you're going through it, which is, you know, something I've struggled with my whole life. I mean, we can get into that another time. But yes, it's been crazy hard, but I prioritize sleep like crazy. That's like, again, 30 year old Nick versus 20 year old Nick, prioritize sleep. I love it. You, uh, you, I feel like you opened my eyes to a bunch of new stuff here.

I'm going to need to do like, uh, Greg, we're going to need to do like a debrief and, uh, and takeaways and stuff as like a follow up post script to this when we, uh, when we released the episode. because there was so much gold in it that I feel like I'm going to need to go back and re-listen to it again to uncover all of it. So thank you, Nick, for taking the time to join us, man. This was awesome. Where can people find you and your business? Yeah. So Instagram, Midday Squares, Nick Salto on Twitter, I love just, you know, dropping tidbits as I'm not tidbits and necessarily how we're doing stuff, but just what I'm going through. So Twitter, Nick Salto, Instagram, Midday Squares, TikTok, Midday Squares.

I'm going to go buy some now, too. I'm excited to give them a shot. This is going to be awesome. Please do. Please do. Thanks, I will. I will let you know. Thank you so much for joining, man.

This was awesome. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you have any questions that you want featured in a future episode, email us at high at t-R-W-I-H.com. Leave us a review at Apple or Spotify to help us grow the reach of this podcast. Until next time, we will see you soon.