Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - The Founder Who Built a $20M+ Business and Kept 90% Ownership | Entrepreneurship | How We Profit | E1

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

Starting a business from scratch is hard enough, but Rebel Cheese co-founder Kirsten Maitland did it by borrowing against her home, only for COVID to hit three months later. With no outside investors and everything at risk, she pivoted from a physical restaurant to an online business, learning e-commerce, logistics, and marketing on the fly. Years of relentless work eventually led to a Shark Tank deal with Mark Cuban that fueled massive business growth. In this episode of How We Profit, Kirsten breaks down how she scaled Rebel Cheese into a $20M+ business with over 60% profit margins while retaining 90% ownership.  In this episode, Hala and Kirsten will discuss:  (00:00) Introduction (03:34) Inside Rebel Cheese's Business Model (07:26) Revenue Streams and Shipping Challenges (14:52) Kirsten's Path to Entrepreneurship (23:10) How Shark Tank Fueled Business Growth (27:30) Rebel Cheese’s Branding and Marketing Strategies (33:26) Making Sales and Doubling Revenue in CPG (49:24) Using AI in Business to Scale Operations (1:00:28) Founder Pay, Equity, and Ownership (1:07:20) Entrepreneurship Lessons for Startup Founders Kirsten Maitland is the co-founder and CEO of Rebel Cheese, an artisanal plant-based cheese brand based in Austin, Texas. She bootstrapped the business from scratch, landed a $750K deal with Mark Cuban on Shark Tank in 2023, and has since scaled to a $40 million valuation, now on pace to generate $21 million in revenue this year. Kirsten is also a passionate advocate for AI-powered business tools, having built her own shipping audit tool that recovered $400,000 in overcharges.  Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/profiting Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Quo - Run your business communications the smart way. Try Quo for free, plus get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to quo.com/profiting Remitly - Transfer money internationally across 100+ currencies with no hidden fees. Download the Remitly app or visit remitly.com to get started. Use code BUSINESS to get a $100 bonus after you send $300 or more. New customers only. Prolon - Reset your body with Prolon’s five-day plant-based program. Go to ProlonLife.com/PROFITING for 15% off sitewide plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their 5-Day Program. Northwest Registered Agent - Get a complete business identity with Northwest. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/YAPFree and start using free resources to build something amazing.  Resources Mentioned: Kirsten’s Company, Rebel Cheese: rebelcheese.com Kirsten’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kirstenmaitland Rebel Cheese Instagram: instagram.com/rebel.cheese How Not to Die by Dr. Michael Greger: bit.ly/DrMG-HowNot2Die  Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals  Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter  LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new  Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Passive Income, Solopreneur, Networking Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, yeah, fam, we're about to launch something that might be my favorite thing we've ever done on the podcast, a brand new series called How We Profit. Now, I've been doing Young and Profiting Podcasts for eight years, and my listeners are successful. We are real entrepreneurs with real businesses and a lot of you guys are crushing it behind the scenes. You may not be super famous. You may not be a billionaire yet, but you've got a business that you've learned how to scale. And we want to hear from you. One of the best ways to learn as an entrepreneur is from your peers. And I found it super helpful to be in these peer entrepreneurship groups and learn from other entrepreneurs who are at my level, but just in a different industry. So that's what I want to bring to this podcast. I want this to be our own peer group, but on the podcast. And so I'm going to be interviewing people who are making anywhere from $500,000 to $10 million a year. They're not super famous. They're not the typical billionaires that are on my show. These are real entrepreneurs who are crushing it behind the scenes. And we're going to uncover what they do to sell, how they get their customers, what their profit margin looks like, how they market, and so much more.

If this sounds like you and you want to be featured on Young and Profiting Podcast for our How We Profit Series, just head to younginprofiting.com slash apply and share your story. Let me know why you think you should be featured on the show. Again, that's young and profiting.com slash apply. And who knows, maybe you'll be our next guest on Young and Profiting Podcast. We've built a $20 million company from 750K. We've doubled our growth year over year the last couple years. Our valuation now is actually $40 million.

I love that. Today's guest is Kirsten Maitland, co-founder and CEO of Rebel Cheese, a premium plant-based cheese brand with e-commerce, wholesale, and retail revenue streams that saw explosive growth after a shark tank appearance. We actually started as a restaurant in Austin. That was 100% of our revenue. And a few months later, COVID hits. Today, 90% of our revenue is some e-commerce.

You go on Shark Tank and Mark Cuban invested right away. You didn't even finish your pitch. Yeah. It was his fastest deal ever. How much profit are you making every month? Right now, we're hovering around 61% profit margin. Wow, that's really high. Traditionally, this industry has very low profit margins with the shipping.

What are you doing differently? I honestly believe it's because... So talk to me about how you compensate yourself as a business owner. We didn't pay ourselves for years. Really? What would you say is the reason for doubling? Well, what are the most important KPIs for you? We're looking at our customer.

You are raising another $20 million. Not $20 million. Oh, okay. How much are you raising? We're raising. Welcome to the how we profit series. Real Yap listeners, real numbers, and real businesses. In every episode of this series, an entrepreneur you've never heard of,

breaks down exactly how they profit. real revenue, real margins, employee count, marketing strategy, sales strategy, you name it. No highlight real, no motivational fluff, just how the business actually works so you can steal what's relevant for yours. Young and profiting isn't just about learning from billionaires and millionaires. It's about becoming one. Most business podcasts interview people after they've made it. I mean, I've been doing that with Yap for the last eight years. But by then, the story is polished, the numbers can be vague.

And the advice is sometimes just follow your passion. But that's not useful to somebody trying to figure out pricing or wondering if they should hire their first employee or deciding whether they can quit their job. Howie profit is the opposite. We're going to be sitting down with the real entrepreneurs. Yap listeners who have been studying growth on this show and who are actually applying it in real time. We're going to ask them to open their books. The result is going to be the most honest business content on the internet, a podcast mastermind group where every member shows up with their receipts. Kirsten, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

Hi, thanks for having me. I'm so excited because this is a brand new series. You are my first guest on the How We Profit series, and my team was sending me like a list of people to review, and I saw Rebel Cheese. And I was like, this would be such a cool business to unpack. So I'm really excited for this interview. For people who don't know what Rebel Cheese is,

how would you describe your business in a sentence? It's an artisanal plant-based cheese. that's made for cheese lovers. Fun fact, 74% of our customers are not vegan. That is so crazy. Yeah. So if 74% of your customers are not vegan, why do they want vegan cheese?

It's because cheese was taken away from them, either due to medical reasons or they're allergic, or they simply just don't feel good after eating cheese. So they're looking for an alternative that they can put on a cheeseboard, pair with wine, you know, a gourmet-style cheese, and that's where we come in. I bet you guys a lot of you don't feel great after you eat cheese. So vegan cheese is a great option for you.

So talk to us about the category that you're in. So CPG, right, your consumer product. Yes. Is that the only category you consider yourself in, or how would you describe that? I see it as we're competing with dairy cheeses. We are a CPG brand, yes. We also have her e-commerce store. That's where most of her revenue comes from.

But when you look at where we're placed in the grocery store, it's right there with the dairy cheeses or next to the vegan products, the vegan cheeses. What is your typical customer like? This is interesting because it's evolved over the years. When we first started, our customers were pretty young, mostly women. And after we aired on Shark Tank a couple years ago, the demographics have gotten higher. and higher and higher. And most of our customers tend to be women over 65 years old. They're worried about their health. They're looking for an alternative that's clean, made with ingredients that they know. And that's why they seek us out. That's so interesting. So like not only can your product evolve,

your audience can evolve as well. I'm going to talk to you about marketing and branding and maybe if you had anything to do with that evolution or if it happened naturally. But first of I want to understand, like, how big is your company? I read somewhere that you have a $20 million evaluation. That's insane. So talk to us about how big your company is, whether it's revenue, a number of employees, and so on. Yes. Our valuation now is actually $40 million.

Wow. So we're on track to do $20 million this year, and we're doing our capital raise right now. Yes. And, I mean, we've doubled our growth year over year the last couple years. So it's moving really fast. Our team size, it fluctuates depending on the season because we are very seasonal. But right now we have 50 people on the team. We do everything in-house.

We're control freaks. So we make all the cheeses by hand ourselves. Some of them take two weeks to make. We package those, fulfill them, ship them. We do everything. So that's why our team is around 50 people. Really cool. And everything is based in the U.S., like your manufacturing is in Austin, correct? Yes, yes. We have a factory here. My husband and I built a lot of it ourselves while we were practicing our Shark Tank pitch. We were doing both for the same time. Luckily, he has a construction background. So yes, we have our own factory that we built, and that's where we make all our cheeses. They're all made there.

Okay, so you've got multiple different revenue streams. So walk us through each way that you make money. Yes. It's funny because when we started seven years ago, we actually started as a restaurant in Austin, and that was 100% of our revenue. And then a few months later, COVID hit. And like other small businesses, we started pivoting and doing things we never planned to do, like ship perishables nationwide. So we started our cheese club online. We started shipping direct to businesses. It was a little messy. in the beginning, you know, orders arriving warm and, you know, so on and so forth. But we kept iterating. Our partners helped us and we figured it out. And now, fast forward seven years to today, 90% of our revenue is from e-commerce. Oh, wow. That's really interesting. Okay. So for our young improfitors that want to start a CPG business, what would you say is some of the biggest challenges you faced, especially with like an e-commerce CPG business? Yes. Oh my gosh, shipping comes to mind. A couple years ago, we were overcharged by a quarter million dollars. Not an over-exaggeration. So I actually built an AI tool. I vibe-coded a tool to get some of that money back and to make sure that never happens again. Shipping is challenging because if you don't watch it closely, like a hawk, you will get overcharged and there can be sometimes a 600%

variance in those charges. And their invoices are huge. They're hundreds of pages long with, you know, so many lines of data. Therefore, it can be challenging to catch these issues. So if you're doing e-commerce, watch your shipping very closely. If you don't do it in-house and you partner with like a co-man or a copac, I've heard, I haven't experienced this because we do everything ourselves, but I've heard the same challenges can happen there. where, you know, charges come out of nowhere and the contracts are hard to navigate. So just keeping a very close eye on your numbers, on your data,

and making sure that it matches what you agreed to. Yeah, and you've got this, like, added layer of complexity because you've got perishable foods. Oh, yes. And it needs to be cold as it's shipped, and there's an expiration date. So, like, for somebody who wants to start a CPG brand that is also food, what are the things that they have to consider?

Obviously, packaging is huge. I say obviously, but probably not obvious, actually. It took us a while to refine this and figure it out. We're a mission-driven brand, therefore it's important that we use compostable packaging or recyclable packaging. We're not going to use styrofoam, never, ever, which, you know, has the longest refrigeration out of everything. So we had to experiment a lot and we're always shopping around and trying new things. Even when we've settled on our packaging, mostly our insulation and our ice, we're still

looking for the next thing to see if there's something that is better and will extend the shipping time or be more reliable. So constantly be shopping your options, testing new things to see what does and doesn't work. When we first started shipping, we would get in one day out of our packaging, meaning it would keep it cold for one day. Now we get three days. Oh, nice. And it's fully compostable. Really cool.

So that must have been a lot of experimentation and a lot of cost associated with that. Yeah, fam, when I started my business as a side hustle, I was working full time at Disney. But once I started bringing consistent revenue and I had retainer clients, I knew it was time to go full swing into entrepreneurship. but nobody warns you about all the unsexy and complicated stuff you need to start a business. But luckily, this is exactly what Northwest Registered Agent is built for. They are the largest registered agent and LLC service in the U.S. And they've been helping entrepreneurs launch and grow legit protected businesses for nearly 30 years. When you form with Northwest, you get a complete business identity that includes a business address,

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So talk us through the unit economics of cheese, vegan cheese. Somebody buys, like, how much is a cost on your website? How much is it cost to ship? How much do you make per unit? Mm-hmm. Our cheese varies from $15 to $20 a unit. We have very different types of cheeses. Some take two days to make.

Others take two weeks to make. So that's why there's that variance there. It really depends how much. handhold and it needs and then the shipping costs they're still expensive yeah even with our volume we're averaging 22 to 25 dollars a box depending on the time of year and what's really challenging with that customers are used to Amazon free shipping you know get it in an hour so you can't really pass those costs on to your customers you have to find a way to build it in to the box

If you try to charge them $20 for shipping, you know, they're having a panic attack. They're just not used to that, which is understandable, right? Yeah, so give us an example. So if you need to bake in $20 for shipping costs that you don't want to charge separately on a separate line item because they'll just exit out of the cart, what are something, like what are you doing and putting in the box to make it worth it? We offer a lot of prepackaged options. like we have a shark tank box, a birthday celebration box.

So we let that dominate our page. We do offer single units of cheese too. But of course, we'd rather customers purchase the prepackaged boxes because they're optimized for shipping and packaging. If they do select to buy individual wheels or cheese, then there is a minimum to get the free shipping. So they have to spend $80 in order for free shipping to apply. And if they're below that, then there's a $20 shipping cost.

How big is subscriptions for you guys? Are you doing recurring subscriptions for people who want their cheese all the time? It's something we're working on currently. We're improving that. Due to rapid e-commerce growth, we doubled our sales year over year. We've basically been doing the bare minimum. So now that we have some room to breathe and take a step back, we're actually improving our subscription model and adding on incentives and tiers like exclusive

events and free shipping, you know, discounts and so on and so forth. So we haven't really historically done a lot of subscription models, but we're planning to launch that in the next couple of months. Okay. So I want to take a pause on the actual business and talk about Kirsten's origin story. Because you weren't always an entrepreneur. You were in tech, right? I started in the Navy. If we go way back, I was actually in the Navy on a ship. And that's what got me into tech. I was in a car accident, transferred off of my ship. My captain was at the same time. Initially, they had me answering phones, and he said, I can't imagine you doing that. I'm going to transfer you to tech. I had never worked in tech before. I said,

okay, I like to learn. Let's give it to go. And they just started handing me tickets. I figured it out on the job. And that was the launch of my over a decade tech career. Really cool. So you worked at all these different companies. You got divorced at some point. And you met your husband at a put putt putt club or something like that. And how did you guys end up wanting to start a cheese company? Yeah. So we met a put putt putt goal because we're both going through divorces. My husband and I, we wanted to meet a new circle with friends. And so we joined this pup-pot with no intention of meeting anyone. And of course, we met each other. We, you know, we were together for several months before we got together. And several years later, we transitioned to a vegan diet. I lost my parents at a very young age, both to cancer.

and I read about a link between cancer and dairy in Dr. Michael Greger's book, How Not to Die. And the second I read that, I quit dairy overnight, but I loved cheese. I had it with every single meal. We used to have cheese boards all the time and picnics and all the things you do around cheese. So we were like, well, what are we going to do now? Yeah. We started experimenting at home, and we had a little wine fridge. That's where our first Bree was born, a little eight-bottle wine fridge. And we knew we were on to something,

you know, with those experiments. And at the same time, we were both consultants. We had these very successful careers and businesses. But we kept having this nagging feeling that we wanted to do something that better aligned with her values, which, you know, is animal welfare or health or planets. We're very passionate about those things. So we just went for it. We couldn't get rid of that nagging feeling. And we dove right in and opened our restaurant in Austin. Wow. But there had to have been steps before you actually opened up the restaurant. So I really want to dig deep there because I bet you there's a lot of young improfitters listening out there who have this awesome idea, especially for a product because vegan cheese wasn't really in existence at that point.

You were one of the first vegan cheese suppliers, right? So talk to us about how you, like, perfected the cheese. Did you do any research? Did you do any testing? How did you come up with the restaurant idea? Why not go straight to e-commerce? Like, talk to me about how it all happened. Yeah.

Luckily, I'm very OCD about things. This is where it pays off. And we still do tests in R&D now. We have someone who's dedicated to that. He's been with us for six years now. It's part of our DNA is very important to us. Even for our top selling items, we still have tests going to see if we can improve them even more, even if it's just by a margin. So when we decided to launch Rebel Cheese, we hired a chef.

We were still both working full time. And we worked with the chef for a year on doing our development and testing and coming up with these ideas. And that's when our first cheeses were born. And we also defined our restaurant menu at that time, too. And then when we opened the restaurant, we hired people on the team to continue that R&D. We also brought in cheese scientists, collaborated with them. We've learned a lot from the dairy industry and dairy experts who've been working in the dairy industry for decades. We truly believed, because we've been vegan for a long time or something,

that we needed to lean into that dairy expertise, including trying the cheese, giving us feedback on it, because we knew it had been too long for us to really know what good cheese tastes like anymore. So you basically started as a restaurant. Yes. So talk to us about the challenges of having a restaurant. I know you no longer have the restaurant in Austin. Talk to us about the challenges in terms of margin with restaurants and the things that if

somebody wants to open up a restaurant, they need to consider. and why ultimately you had to close your doors? The restaurant was extremely hard. Well, one, we opened it three months before COVID hits. Oh, no. And, you know, when we opened the restaurant, we had no idea how it would do. It was such a unique concept, a vegan wine and cheese shop, really nothing like it in the world. So luckily, we started small.

It was only 1,100 square feet, which was a lifesaver during COVID. because we didn't know. Yeah. And when we opened our doors, we had a line down the street. So we're like, oh, we'll be okay. But then, of course, COVID. The challenge with the restaurant, and it actually set us up for success, ultimately, is that the margins are so tight. And then you layer in, you know, vegan concept.

And that makes it even more challenging because you have a smaller demographic that's going to go to your restaurant. So you have to watch them like a hawk. You have to be careful with every single expense. From the get-go, I set up tools to watch these things and monitor, and I'm so glad I did. Because had I not done that, I don't think we would have survived the six years that we did. So for somebody who wants to open up a restaurant business, like if any of the listeners are interested in doing that, what are the guardrails that they need to put in place? like what are some of the things that you were, you were realizing that the money was just going away

because it was getting spent frivolously in certain areas. Like what do they exactly need to watch? Margin's very, very important. I used a tool called margin edge. And one of the reasons that tool worked so well was because if the prices went up on any of the ingredients, it would alert you. So you could see any price changes. You could say this is what my margin needs to be. Send me an email. If that margin changes. Because ingredient costs, especially now, are constantly fluctuating. And they really are a big factor when you're looking at your margins. So you have to watch that closely. Waste what's selling, what's not. And if something's not performing, make the hard decision to remove it from your menu or from your store. Don't keep it because you're attached or it was your grandma's recipe or whatever. It was

not working, cut it, because that will eat away at your margins too. So monitoring those things very, very closely. You know, of course, making sure you have your schedules type for when you're open, you know, opening hours need to match with customer demands. If there are hours where you're not busy, cut those two. So you have to watch every little expense very closely. and act on things that aren't working well immediately. So then COVID happened. You pivoted to e-commerce. At what point did you go on Shark Tank?

Yes. We went on Shark Tank in 2023 towards the end, right before the holidays. We opened a restaurant in 2019. So it was four years after our opening. And we applied during COVID because, like, everyone, we were trying everything. Yeah. I was applying to every competition there was, every grant, PPP, you name it. I was in survival hustle mode.

Didn't think for a second we would get on. I mean, great decision. Like, thank God you did that. Yeah. And, you know, they told us all along, you may not get on, you may not err. Even when they told us we were airing, they said you still may not if there's an emergency. So we were excited but holding our breath the entire time until it. actually aired, but still trying to prepare for this moment, too.

So you go on Shark Tank and Mark Cuban actually invested right away. Like, you didn't even finish your pitch. Yeah. I think he's actually passionate about, I think, veganism and the topic, right? So talk to us about how much money you made and what happened after the Shark Tank episode aired. Yes, it was his fastest deal ever. Wow. Mark is known for waiting until the end, and he tried the cheese and immediately made us an offer.

And we were worried because we were we out there long enough for there to be material for this to air? Because it felt like we were out there for five minutes. But the producers, they were like, no, it's okay. You were actually out there for 50 minutes. It just felt like five. And, you know, it's been amazing. We are so grateful. Mark is incredibly supportive and helpful.

We asked him to help us with some videos for marketing. He said yes. He gave us a whole hour of his time. Anytime I send him an update or an email, he responds immediately. I don't know how. Well, he doesn't for everyone because even when I email him, he'll answer and be like, do you want to come on you up and he'll be like, soon. Like one word answers.

Yeah. Sometimes they're a little cryptic. Yeah. I'm like trying to turn it upside down to decipher what he's trying to tell me. Yeah. Because it's like one sentence. But he's been fantastic. And he has a team that's also very supportive and helpful. And we're very grateful for this opportunity. That's really cool. So you got $750,000. Was that your, so talk to me about how you funded your company. Did you use your personal money? Was it the first time you had an investor? And Lori also invested as well, right? No, not on the end? She made us an offer, but then she had a conflict with another company. Got it. And Mark took her shares. Nice. Yes.

Mark is our only investor at this point. Amazing. Yes. When we started the restaurant, we worked right up until the day we opened. We actually got a heat lock against our house to open the restaurant. As I mentioned before, my husband has a construction background. He used to be a carpenter. So we were able to build that out pretty efficiently, too.

with just this HELOC. And that's all we've raised. Until now, we're doing a capital raise now to continue our growth. But we've built a $20 million company from $750K. I love that. I love that. That's so, so inspiring. If you could do it all over again, would you take that $750 from Mark Cuban?

If you could do it all over again, would you do it that way? Absolutely. Absolutely. One of the challenges we face as a vegan brand, there's a lot of hesitation around vegan foods. People have been burned by vegan cheese before. They're always asking, is it actually really good? Is it truly healthy? Is it overly processed? And having the sharks share their delight and excitement over products has helped us tremendously. Yeah. Convert those customers. Yeah, so you guys blew up basically after Shark Tank. Yes.

At that point, were you ready for that kind of business to be coming your way? Well, my husband and I, after we aired, we worked five all-nighters in a row. It's not an overexaturation. Luckily, the Navy taught me how to do that, although I'm getting a little old for that now. But we were determined and we really wanted to succeed. and we get one chance with these customers, you know, so it's important that we deliver, and we're very strict about our quality standards and everything being perfect. So we got in the kitchen, we made that cheese, we over-communicated to our customers,

like if there are any delays or anything like that, we just made sure they knew. And because of all those things, it was a success. Although, you know, very well could have not been because it's a lot of traffic coming your way out of nowhere. Yeah. You've really branded yourself as this like gourmet vegan cheese. Yeah. And one of the things that comes across in this interview is you're really into quality and you, everything's U.S.-based. You're doing everything by hand. You've never really outsourced it. What are like the pros and cons of doing that?

Oh, gosh. The pros, you can pivot quickly and you can always be testing and learning. If we outsourced our production, if we wanted to try a new idea, it would take weeks to months to do so. Whereas, you know, we can turn around a new idea in a couple weeks, like, or even less than that, depending on what it is. Yeah. So that's a huge plus. Quality, like you mentioned, is another one I've heard of companies going to, comens and then having quality issues, especially with cultured products like ours are. It can get

complicated fast. You know, our brie only has five ingredients, but it's 20 steps to make. And that's one of the main reasons we want to keep all of that in house. We just don't trust that someone will understand our process like we do. Yeah. Rebel cheese is a cool name. I mean, that's what one of the reasons why I saw the name and I was like, this sounds cool. Like, I want her on YAP. What was up with the name and do you feel like it's helped you? That's one part of the question. The second part of the question is, how do you think people find you now? Like, it's been a couple years since the shark tank thing. Like, how are people finding out about you? The name was such a process. My husband, he's the executor. I love to analyze. I definitely, if it wasn't for him,

I'd probably still be analyzing things now. What cheese would have never started. And I was like that with the name and the brandon. You know, we went through so many iterations of names. And we wanted something sentimental. So we started with pet names and family names. And they all just were just weird. They didn't work.

So then we moved on to things that we felt like defined what we were trying to accomplish. And that's where Rebel Cheese came about. and, you know, we've used the same techniques as the dairy industry, like I mentioned. Yeah. So that's why we wanted cheese in the name, and that's why we kept the spelling the same. Many vegan companies will change the spelling, like they'll put a Z in there or something like that. But since we use the techniques, same techniques, we wanted to keep it. Oh, that's so smart.

That's such a good hack. Yeah. So it's like, don't get fancy with your name where you have no SEO. Right, exactly. There's that too. And then your second question around keeping customers coming back, we invest a lot in marketing now. We didn't used to. We started that with Shark Tank.

We have a pretty substantial email list that we've been building. That's very important to us. We've learned a lot along the way about that. We also advertise on meta that can be challenging. You're doing like paid ads. Paid ads, yes. And again, we watch our numbers daily. with that because that's another thing like the restaurant that, you know, can become very expensive.

And before you know it, you're not profitable if you're not watching that very closely. So that's another way we reach our customers. Plus, we're big into community. So we love to get involved with our community. We do a lot of events. We're doing a market in California this month. We're partnering with a restaurant in L.A. to do a wine and cheese night. So we believe, you know, in the world of AI, that connecting with your community and customers is more important than ever. So we put a lot of emphasis on that, too. Are you leveraging podcasts or influencers or doing, like, a lot for me, like as an influencer, I'm getting a lot of influx, especially for consumer-based products for, for like, UGC and whitelisted apps?

ads were basically I'll have a video and I'll promote the brand and then the brand will put paid ads on it. And that's becoming really popular. Are you doing things like that? We just started looking at that. We haven't done a ton of that historically, to be quite honest, but we are trying to diversify and that is certainly one way to do that. We're testing out a tool called Refunnel that we discovered through our Shark Tank community, which helps you find influencers and do whitelisting and so on. But we just started like a month ago. We're also looking into podcasts, too. We really want to diversify. We don't want to be as dependent as we are on paid ads and meta specifically. Yeah. Well, the community events are really smart.

How do you think about your personal brand when it comes to marketing of Rebel Cheese? personal brands. Like myself? Yeah, like yourself. That might be the answer in itself. Is that like you're just all about pushing the product brand? Is that right? Interesting. So my husband and I, we want to do more, you know, like be online more organically and do more behind the scenes. Because again, you know, in the world of AI, that authenticity and the story and the people behind and the brand is so important. I started a few months ago doing founder emails every week, and those have been really popular.

So, yeah, putting yourselves out there so your customers can see, you know, where their dollar is going, I think is incredibly important. Yeah. Okay, let's talk revenue. Let's talk money. Yeah. This is young improfiting after all. And I think everybody wants to understand, like, how to profit off a CPG business.

So talk to me about like year one, how much does you make, year two, year three? Like, and when did it really like start to take off? Yes. So year one, you know, we were like 750K, year two, 1.2. And then it went up like 500K each year after that until we were on Shark Tank in 2024, which is still great because that was all organic growth. And it was mostly the restaurant and during COVID. So it proved the demand.

We did launch your e-commerce too, but we didn't do any kind of marketing with that. So that e-commerce really took off one Shark Tank hit. Yes. We were in the New York Times before Shark Tank, and we learned a lot from that. We got a huge influx to traffic, but then we didn't do anything with it. Yeah. So all these people came in, and then they went away, and we're like, oh, no, come back. Yeah.

So we learned a lot about email and SMS marketing, and we implemented those learnings when we were on Shark Tank, because the same thing could have happened there if we didn't do more with our marketing, like her paid and email. Yeah. So how about currently, how much are you making a month, how many, like, what do you call your units of cheese? Like, how do you class? Cheese wheels. Cheese wheels, how do cheese wheels? Are you selling for a month? It depends on the month. We're very seasonal. The holidays are a busiest time of year, Mother's Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving. We're on track to do 21 million this year. And a big chunk of that will be quarter four and quarter one because of the special occasions. People are celebrating with her cheese. And then you know,

you asked year over year. So last year we did 15. The year before that, we did seven. So we've pretty much doubled year over year the last couple of years. What would you say is the reason for doubling? How did you double? Well, sticking to your values like ours, quality, very important. So we have a very high returning customer rate around 40 to 45 percent. And that's with investing a lot in marketing because that obviously drives that down because you're bringing new customers in. So quality, having new product launches. So there's a reason, you know, another reason for them to come back has definitely helped us grow our sales. And then, you know, the marketing things that I've

mentioned, you know, that's without a doubt fueled our growth. Because if people don't know about us, obviously they're not going to buy us. And even with that, I still hear all the time. I didn't know about you. I wish I did. Even with us reaching millions and millions of people with our meta ads. Now, where are you, where's your website house? Are you, using like Shopify or what are you using Shopify? Yes. Yes. Another Shopify user.

I love, this was not a sponsored plug, but Shopify is going to be very happy about this. I love that you're using Shopify. That's what you've used from the start. We were using something else called Chargebee before Shopify, but then we outgrew them and moved over right before Shark Tank. We saw like all the traffic that was coming and we recruited our friend Paul. He used to work at Amazon to help us with her Shopify store. He's been with us a few years now.

So he got us ready for Shark Tank. He made sure everything was stable. All the integrations were set up correctly with like ship station and, you know, all the other shipping tools. And he's been helping us ever since. Love that. Yeah, fam and business communication is part of the... What's up, young improfitters? When you start a business, nobody warns you that you're about to become the creator, the marketer,

the finance team, the customer support team, and the person who's chatGBTing, why checkout is not working. That's exactly why I always say start with Shopify. Shopify has been a real business partner for me as I've grown Yap Academy and launched products like my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass. It powers millions of businesses worldwide and 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. Whether you're a household name or just getting started, Shopify has got you covered. because let's be real, your business should not require 17 tabs, five logins, and a minor emotional breakdown just to sell a product. Shopify lets you build your store, market your products, manage payments, track analytics, and handle shipping returns and inventory all in one place.

Shopify does this all so you don't have to do it alone. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner Shopify and start hearing sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash profiting. Go to Shopify.com slash profiting. That's Shopify.com slash profiting. Yeah, fam, in business, communication is part of the client experience. Think about it. When you need to buy something or book a service urgently, and the first business doesn't

answer, do you sit around and wait? Of course not. You call the next business on your list. And that's exactly what your potential clients and customers are doing when you miss their calls. And by the way, your voicemail is not a sales strategy. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled QUO, the business communication system built so you can never miss a call. With Quo, your team can manage calls and texts from one shared business number so every customer conversation lives in one place.

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Try Quo for free, plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.com slash profiting. That's QUO.com slash profiting. Quo.com slash profiting. It's been too long, cowboy, from Disney and Pixar. Hi there. I'm Lily Pat. Let's play.

So that's the device. Me and the toys have been working to try and get Bonnie to make friends. What a friend made? What just happened? Lily Pad made Bonnie a friend in like... Fifteen seconds. I was counting. On June 19th. Our time ain't over yet.

Bonnie still needs us. Come on, Bullseye. Right for us. Disney and Pixar's Toy Story 5. Only in theaters June 19th. Tickets available now. My mind goes, okay, LTV is very important to her, and you mentioned like upsells and new products.

So what are the KPIs that you're tracking? Like, what are the most important KPIs for you when it comes to what you sell? Absolutely. We're psycho about KPIs. It's everything. We watch our marketing data daily. And we're looking at our customer acquisition costs. We're looking at our conversion rates on our website.

We're looking at new versus returning customers. What our lifetime value is. what an average order value. And we're looking at our MER, so our marketing efficiency ratio. Ooh, I never heard of that. What's that? That one's really important because it encompasses all of your marketing costs. So the challenge with ROAS, if you look at that single-handedly, is you may still be losing money. Your ROAS may look great, but if you're spending a ton on content,

or these platform fees, you actually may not be doing as well as you think. So MIR accounts for our team, our marketing team, it accounts for all the platform costs, basically everything. If we're spending a dollar on marketing, it's being accounted for in that ratio. And we target a MIR three, and we adjust our spend based on that. So if that starts declining, then we reduce our spend. If it goes up, then we increase our spend. So walk us through an actual example.

Like, what does good look like for these KPI? Take maybe like one customer order and like break it down for us, like the cost of the order, how much it costs to get that customer, what you expect to that customer to do in a lifetime? Like walk us through like what good looks like for a customer lifecycle for you. Yes. One thing I know for sure, lifetime value to your customer acquisition cost is, a very important number to be monitoring. Our customer acquisition costs average is $50, and our 30-day lifetime value is 208. So that's a 4-to-1 ratio. The industry standard is 3-1, so we're above that,

which is good. So you want to make sure you're getting a return on your investment, and that's one way to look at that. It is going to be costly to acquire those brand. new customers. That's the unfortunate reality. But as long as they're staying with you and you're getting that return from lifetime value, then it's okay to make the upfront investment. The other thing that's really important, you know, when you look at the unit economics, because shipping is so expensive for e-commerce, making sure your AOV is good, you know. What's aOV? Your average order value. So, EURS hovers around 107.

So that allows us to absorb those shipping costs, packing costs, fulfilling, and then also that customer acquisition cost. So depending on the time of year, we may actually be profitable with our first order or at a minimum break-even, which is challenging to do. It blows my mind that people are going online and buying $100 worth of vegan cheese or $200 in the first month you set. Yeah. What kind of people are these? Like, describe your customer. I know you did before, but like, what need do they have for $200 worth of vegan cheese? So this is where things get really interesting.

Dairy is actually addictive. It has an ingredient in there called Kaysen, which is addictive. I know that sounds crazy. Wow. So when people are forced to give up cheese because of high cholesterol, they had a heart attack, or they have a new allergy to it, they still want cheese. And, you know, that's where we come in and they will do anything for good cheese, I've found. They will drive 10 hours with a cooler and fill that cooler up. They will spend $400, you know, for a special occasion on just cheese because they miss it and they crave it.

And they're yearning those experiences that they used to have around cheese. So that's, I didn't know. this when I started Rebel Cheese? I've kind of learned this over the years. That's really lucky. Yeah. You got an addictive replacement. Yes. So that's really good. So seasonality was something else that was really interesting with your model. And I think a lot of CPG brands have seasonality. How do you like prepare, make the most out of those seasons? I'm sure you're like gearing up for them and trying your best to capitalize on everything. So like what are the things that you do to prepare for that? We start planning six months, nine. months out, depending on what's going on and, you know, our capacity. Quarter four is the most

important time of year for us. So it's crucial. We're prepared. It's also important for our customers. They're celebrating with our cheese. We don't want to ruin those moments because there's special occasions, right? They're getting their family together. They planing their family dinner around our products, so we need to execute and deliver on those moments. And there's a lot of moving parts. You know, we're dealing with outside shipping partners that may get delayed. And, you know, the last couple of years, the holidays fell right in the middle of the week, which meant we lost a lot of our shipping days during the main holidays. So we had a plan around that. So planning is crucial, having backup plans when things go awry because they will. They always do, despite all of

your best efforts, is really important when you're dealing with a seasonal business because you don't want to lose that revenue. Quarter four, you know, that's the bulk of our revenue. So we need to make sure we do everything we can to provide, you know, an amazing customer experience. Now, I know you mention that every month it's kind of, you know, you're doing 20 million you said this year. Every month You said it varies. You're making the most money in Q4. I have a couple questions around that. The first is like, what is a good profit margin every month for you?

Like how much profit are you making every month? Right now we're hovering around 61% profit margin. Wow. That's really high, right? Compared to most businesses, I think my business is like 40%. 60%. That's really, really great. So what do you account that for?

Why do you think you have such high profit margins when traditionally this industry has very low profit margins with the shipping? what are you doing differently? I honestly believe it's because we do everything ourselves. So we have full control of the end-to-end process. And when we see something is becoming expensive, we can do something about it. You know, when you don't have control, like we don't have control over the shipping, you know, gas prices are fluctuating now. So that's going up. The solution to that would be, let's launch our own shipping. Obviously, that's not going to happen. But, you know, for the things that we can have control over, that's been a huge plus for us.

Yeah. Because we can pivot and make adjustments, you know, when we see prices going up. Yeah. So you also mentioned that you're in grocery stores. Which business model do you like better? Like, what's a better business model? Oh, my gosh, e-commerce by far. And, you know, we just launched in Whole Food.

Oh, congrats. Yeah, the California region. Retail is very, very challenging. It goes back to having control again. When the products leave your building, you lose control. And there's so many things that can happen along the way. For example, we just had an order that shipped to the East Coast that was supposed to take two days and it took two weeks. Oh, no.

And then, you know, it's arriving late and they're charging us back for that order. So they're saying it got here late. We're not going to accept it. And that product goes to waste. And we lose thousands of dollars. And there's so many other things that can go wrong. You know, they leave it sitting outside too long. They don't store it correctly.

And then that's your brand reputation when people eat the bad cheese. Exactly. They don't display it, you know, well or they put it in a bad spot in the store. So you don't have as much control with retail, so the margins are a lot smaller. However, with that said, our customers want to see us in retail. It's a number two thing search for on our website. They go to a find near me. Constantly, they're always looking, when are they going to be near us?

They don't want to necessarily get perishable shipped to their door. Got it. So, like, you don't want to. to do it, it's not better for your margins, but your customers are demanding it. Do you feel like it helps you with your branding and your trust as well? Yes. And here's why. For customers that have never tried us before and they're hesitant, they don't want to spend, you know, $80 to get free shipping or $20 on a wheel of cheese plus the 20 for shipping. You know, that's a huge commitment for something that you've never tried before. So it is good for them. They can go.

in their local grocery store, buy a wheel of cheese, give it a try, and go, okay, I like this. I'm ready to commit to a larger purchase now. That makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. This has been such an awesome first interview of how we profit. Like, I feel like we've just covered so much ground, and it's just been so interesting to learn, to be honest. Thank you.

I'm blown away by, like, everything that you're teaching me because I have a totally different, I'm an agency and a network and totally different business. So it's so cool to kind of like pull back the curtain. Now, I found out that you're actually a Yap listener. Yes. So I guess like how do you learn as an entrepreneur? How did you find Yap? Like just curious because I think it's really cool.

One of the premises of the series is to actually interview other Yap listeners. I'm sure you listen to try to try to grow your business. So how do you learn as an entrepreneur? Oh, I love podcasts. Actually, I'm going to Dallas tomorrow and I'm like so excited because I get to listen. to six hours of podcasts. I love that. It's a great way to listen, to learn on the go because I'm always driving around or cooking or, you know, doing stuff in the kitchen so I can have a podcast going and feel like, you know, I'm being productive at the same time.

I also enjoy newsletters. That's how I spend my free time because they're quick. I learn a lot. I can focus on what I'm interested in, which right now, AI, I'm reading a lot about that and learning a lot about that. So, yeah, most of my learning comes from those two things. Yeah, I love that. Newsletters are really awesome because sometimes you'll find, like, the most expert people are writing a newsletter, right? And they're not necessarily published in, like, newspapers or whatever.

They're on substack. Or you're just on their email list and they're sending you, like, really valuable information. So I agree, newsletters are kind of like underrated. Everybody talks about podcasters, but not nearly, not usually newsletters. Okay, so let's talk tech and software. AI, I knew that one of the ways that you caught that big shipping mistake, that $400,000 shipping mistake was actually through AI that you built. Yes.

So talk to us about how you use AI in your business. Like, what are the ways that you use it today? Oh, oh, how much time do we have? Yes. So it all started with that. shipping mistake a couple years ago, we had just completed our busy Q4. We were heads down, focused on that, and getting boxes out the door. And we come up for air in January, February, and we're like, why isn't there more money in the bank? We just had this super successful quarter.

What's going on? So I started digging around, and I realized we've been overcharged on shipping by a quarter million dollars, and that's not an over-exaggeration. And I was like, oh, what am I going to do about this? So I turned to AI, I gave it all the data, I had to analyze it, and I was able to get most of that quarter million dollars back because of that. So I was hooked and sold. And I was also worried about the future. So I was like, okay, great, I got this money back. But now what do I do to make sure this doesn't happen again because it could very easily. So I turned to VibeCode in and I created a tool using, you know, Manus and Claude and lovable different AI tools that are out there. And we use it all the time now. So every month, what this tool does, we upload our invoice for the

week and we upload a contract and it compares them side by side and it spits out any discrepancies that I can then take to a shipping partner. Saved another $150,000 with that, and the overcharges have gone down over time because they know we're watching. Yeah. So, of course, now I use AI for everything. Yeah.

Cash flow analysis. I just did that this past weekend. Yes, we have a finance team, but I wanted to get more granular. I wanted to do what-ifs analysis, and I could use AI for that. I use it. I'm doing a capital raise right now.

I use it to manage my investor pipeline, to create the investor deck. I love it. To do research on our investors before we meet with them, so we're not going in blind. I encourage my team to use AI, and I do trainings with them,

so that we're all on the same page and getting the most out of it. So yeah, obviously you can't, you still need a human in the loop. You can't have it run your entire business, but where it makes sense, data analysis, you know, anything that's repetitious, some of the more mundane things that maybe the team doesn't enjoy or you don't enjoy is great for that. Yeah. Now, I know a lot of listeners are probably trying to figure out, like, what tools they actually want to use. For me, I'm constantly flipping between Claude and ChatGBT. I kind of use them for two different things. I've kind of liked ChatGBTGBT.T more lately, which is just so funny.

It seems like these tools will start to suck and then get better. Which tools do you love to use? I personally am a huge fan of Claude. And part of the reason why is because I'm so deep in there now. I've built out all of these projects and skills. And I have all of these connections to, you know, meta ads and all of these different systems. But what I like to do is every now and then I'll compare them side by side. So I'll put the same prompt in chat, Claude, Manus, and, you know, see what they come up with to test their strengths and weaknesses to see what's changed.

Is chatGBT improving in an area I may not be aware of? So doing the same thing in all the LLMs, I think, is a good thing to do every now and then. Yeah. So I know you said that you are raising another $20 million. You're not raising $20 million? No, $20 million. Oh, okay. How much are you raising?

We're raising $5 million. You're raising $5 million. Well, why raise so much money if you're 60% profitable and making money every month? Like, why do you think you need that money? That's a great question. It goes back to shipping. That's one of the big reasons why we want to open our own fulfillment centers on the east and the west coast. That will cut our shipping costs in half, which is significant, and it will help us mitigate some of the rising shipping costs with fuel going up.

We also are heavily focused on innovation this year. We're creating a new cheese with vegan casein. So I mentioned the dairy casein earlier. There are European companies that have created a vegan case in, which is a clean protein, and it's responsible for the stretch and melting cheese. It's like the missing piece of the puzzle. We've been waiting for it for years. So we're going to be heavily focused on that this year. And we'll be able to create like a gooey, camembert and a melty, stretchy mozzarella.

So that's why. And we also, we're growing a retail, as challenging as it is, in retail, it costs a lot of money to do that. So we want to make sure we can support that growth. Now, this type of, this will be your first investment after Shark Tank. That must be such a different feeling because Shark Tank came with like all this promotion and branding and Mark Cuban stamp of approval. whereas this investment, it's more money, which means more of your company, right? And potentially. And not all the exposure.

So, like, how are you thinking about it? Was it a big decision to make? Yes. It's very important to us that whomever we partner with, we're aligned on values. We really don't want someone coming in and asking us to cut corners or jeopardize our product in any way. So we've been very picky about who we meet with. And there's actually some innovative ways to raise capital. We're doing what's called an SPV, and our VIP customers are investing in that.

Can you explain what that is? What does that stand for? It's a fund in which customers and angels can invest in. Okay. So it's really cool because, you know, your mission aligned. and, you know, we reached out to our customers to see if there was interest and hundreds of people responded. Wow. It blew us away.

So we're doing that. And then we met with a syndicate today, so it's like another type of fund where we're going to pitch to sports athletes and see if they're interested in invest in. So there are all these creative ways I didn't know about them until now. to find mission-aligned investors, you know, you don't have to just do the VC path. Yeah, that's really, really interesting. Have you considered teaming up – I know you mentioned sports folks, but have you considered teaming up with, like, influencers who are in that, like, health space or who talk about not eating vegan influencers?

It's a good idea, but we haven't. I mean, maybe we should. Yeah, maybe. Maybe. So I know you're big on AI. One of the things that I'm finding with AI is that it's helped me not hire as much. And I find that I'm more involved in finance now. I'm more involved in certain aspects of the business where in the past, I didn't have the capacity to be involved.

But now I'm really able to just like dive into the numbers and like basically have this like support system that helps me if I'm stuck or I don't know the words or what, you know, like how to navigate things. what does your leadership team look like? And do you think AI has helped you kind of keep a small leadership team? Yes, absolutely. And funnily enough, most of our team, they were our friends. You know, we knew, but they still are. But we knew them before Rebel Cheese. We have multiple couples that work for us. We're a couple too. My husband and I run in Rebel Cheese. I swear is going to get us in trouble one of these days. We have five couples, a family. Oh, my God. Yes. So it's very, very much as a family office in the literal sense. And it's been fine. It's been that way for years. So we have our sales director, Kyle, you know, he was a friend and still was a friend. I don't know why I keep

saying that before Rebel Cheese. Yeah, but he was a friend and then you hired him. So friend before work. Yes, and his husband works for us, too, as our chief technology officer. So he helps us with Shopify, all the integrations, the shipping tools. We have our customer service manager, our marketing, creative director. She's been with us since day one. Our procurement manager, she started as our dishwasher when we opened. I love that. And she's now our procurement manager.

So she's been with us, you know, since day one. these seven years and her brother works with us and her daughter did at one point. So we like to have families working with us because we know them and friends. We know them and we trust them. And their mission aligned too, which is, of course, very important. But that must be hard, though. It must be hard because mixing personal and business, have you ever had to let go a friend? Was somebody ever like not pulling their weight where you had to let them go? Absolutely. And it is challenging and it's something we're always cognizant of. And, you know, we're getting away from, you know, hiring friends so there's more balance. Yeah, and boundaries. Yes, exactly. And boundaries as we grow. But it hasn't been a huge issue, to be honest.

Normally, we're very transparent in our office about everything. So normally, normally, we're very transparent in our office about everything. So normally when that happens, they understand and, you know, there aren't any huge surprises, even if it is a friend. So they get it. Okay, so talk to me about how you compensate yourself as a business owner because I think there's so many different ways to do it. A lot of entrepreneurs like don't actually pay themselves for a long time. So in the beginning, how did you pay yourself? At what point did it change? How much do you own of your company?

Yeah, talk to me. We didn't pay ourselves for years. Really? And, you know, that was very challenging. Because even though, you know, we're profitable, we have been reinvesting into the business for years now because we've been growing. So we had to, you know, build this factory that cost money. And then we had to add on to the factory. We needed to add some automation and so on and so forth.

So for years, we didn't pay ourselves. We just kind of figured it out. luckily when you're working around the clock like we do you don't really spend much money so it wasn't an issue but you do need to pay yourself if you want to do a raise at some point or if you ever plan to have a bank or an investor looking at your books you have to pay yourself really i would think that they wouldn't they'd be happy that you're not paying yourself no why no they flag that so that's a red flag to them because it looks at like you're trying to make the company look more profitable than it is if you don't pay yourself,

which is, you know, that normally isn't the reason why. Normally founders aren't paying themselves, you know, because they want to pay their team or benefits or grow or whatever. It's normally a million other reasons. But they frown on that. I learned. So you have to pay yourself no matter what, in my opinion. You're getting a salary, I'm assuming. Are you also getting distributions? No, not right now. Yes. At what point are you like, I'm deserving of distributions, or is it because you've investors, it's like different?

How does that work? This year we're focused on our primary goal is to get options for a team, especially the people that have been most for a long time. So they're part owners too. So that's our priority before anything else. We want to make sure we're set up for that, you know, before we do the raise. and then the other stuff like distributions, we're going to worry about that later. Yeah.

I'd love to unpack that a bit. I know I'm getting like so nerdy and so deep, but it's the stuff that you don't get to talk to other entrepreneurs often about, right? So how much percentage of the company do you have versus Mark Cuban versus your husband? So we're majority owners. So we own 90% and Mark Cuban. Oh, wow. Yeah, 10%. He's the only person on our cap table.

Okay. So 90% and 10%. You never gave equity to anybody else yet. No. And how are you going to, like, you mentioned options. So, like, how are you structuring this equity to your employees? We're very excited about this. We wanted to do this for a while.

So they'll get some company shares. So they'll be part owners in the company. And we're going to do that, you know, for the employees that have been with us for a while. And that's a lot of them. So we're really excited to do this. Is there like a certain percentage that you're like, okay, this 10% is for employees or something like that? We do have a percentage allocated, but it's shifted.

So I can't remember exactly what it is. I want to say it's like 5% for employees or something like that. Okay. Yes, I don't remember exactly because it does get complicated when you break those shares down and you're making room for other cap raises because that will shift the whole table. Yeah. So how much are you going to give away? to investors for this $5 million?

That's a great question. So we're doing it on a $40 million valuation. So, you know, $5 million, but some of that, this is where it gets complicated again. Some of that's Mark because he's investing again. And there are some other small offices. So it's really that whatever that percentage ends up breaking down to of the $40 million will be their percentage. Man, you did really good, $750,000 to kickstart for only 10% of your business and that drove you to 20 million. And you still own 90% of your business.

It's incredible. It makes me feel like I've been giving out my equity willy-nilly. I mean, I own like 90% of my company still, but I'll be at 85 because I give it to my early employees. I gave a lot of equity away. But it's interesting. It's really smart because I've had clients who've gotten kicked out of their own companies. Yes, that's terrifying. And also, I have friends that own so little in their companies, even though they work so hard.

Yeah. They need to get some massive exit in order to make any money out of the deal. Yeah. And so, like, they get caught in this, like, cycle. So I think you've got to be really careful. You do. You know, it's challenging. I go back and forth on this all the time because, you know, we have.

have made sacrifices to get to that point. You know, we had to work, we've had to work seven days a week since we've started long hours, multiple roles, because we've been very careful about hiring to keep those costs down and stay profitable. If we had done a raise earlier, you know, we could have made those hires and maybe had, you know, a little bit more freedom. Yeah. Yeah. So there's tradeoffs. You know, maybe we could have hired someone to build our factory instead of us doing it. Yeah, I go back and forth from this all the time. So I definitely understand the desire to do raises earlier on. I get it. I can see the benefits of doing that. But it does come with some risks. So you are a co-founder of a $20 million company.

Yeah. I hope that you are buying nice things for yourself. So what's the nicest thing that you bought so far? Oh. Well, well, I do love to receive stuff in the mail. I'm not going to like. I tell my husband that's market research, so I can see whatever e-com companies are doing. So I'm trying to think, you know, I've been traveling a lot. I do love, there's a company called Petit Ave, and I bought a coat for New York, because I'm in New York a lot. Through there, it's sustainable. And, you know, I'm a lot. I'm in, you know, I'm in, I'm petite, so I knew it would fit well, and it's high quality. So that was like a treat that I got for myself. Yeah. We're petite twins. Yes.

Love that. Yeah. Okay. Last couple of questions is about general entrepreneurship. So what do you feel like is the thing that you love about being an entrepreneur, and what do you hate about being an entrepreneur? Oh, my gosh. I'm a control freak, so I love having full control.

I don't think I could ever work for anyone again, to be quite honest. I love creating and building and implementing new ideas, and that's everything to me. And when you work for someone else, even if they're an innovative company, you can still be restricted on how much you can do. So I love that part. I love our team, you know, that we get to pick who we work with and there's great synergy there, you know, because that's important. That's who you spend your days with. And, you know, that I get to work with my husband every day. I wouldn't be able to do this without him.

There's no way. So there's that, too. In terms of what I hate, it can be really stressful and hard. I mean, there's definitely been moments, even with all of this success, where I've wondered, are we going to make it? And, you know, I haven't been able to sleep. And are we going to get through this? How much longer do we have? I've had many of those moments, and they're hard, some of the hardest, you know, moments I've had in my life. And, you know, because we're value, mission-driven company, I was able to come out.

out, you know, on the other side of those moments. If we started this for money for material reasons only, I don't think I would have, you know, because they were just too hard to navigate for just money. Now, speaking of rainy days, how much money do you have saved in the bank for a rainy day or how much months runway are you keeping for a rainy day? Yes. So six months is a, you know, a rainy day runway, but I'm watching that constantly. And, you know, there's a lot of things that can impact that, like, you know, CAPEX, building, you know, our new fulfillment center. If that ends up costing more, you don't know what can happen, terrorists overnight. So I'm watching our cash flow weekly. It's so important. Six months is really good. I feel like a lot of people have three months. So six months. So six months is like going the extra mile. But to your point, you're really seasonal business. So it's like you kind of don't even know how much money you're going to make until the end of the year.

So is that why you save six months? Yeah, seasonal. And then we always have these projects we're doing where we're reinvesting in the business. And even though we plan for those and my husband has a lot of construction experience, there still can be a lot of fluctuation there that can impact the bottom line. So that's the other reason why. And how do you and your husband like divvy up responsibilities? Mm-hmm.

This is really important. If you work with your partner, it's important you have some lanes defined. Yeah. Each day in your lanes, that's a hard and fast rule we have. He's not allowed in my lane. I'm not allowed in his lane. So I'm focused on R&D, quality sales, marketing, those are my big things. And my husband Fred, he's focused on operations, production.

Those are his strengths, you know, anything related to execution. He crushes that. And he also does some of the market in and sales too. What part of entrepreneurship has, like, surprised you the most? Like, did you think that you were going to be the co-founder of a $20 million company? Never. I don't know why. I guess I never really sat down and thought about it.

I'm very much a heads-down kind of person. I just get in there, figure it out, and then occasionally I'll come up for air and be like, oh, wow, I can't believe I'm here. So I've never really thought about it. I've always dreamed of starting my own business and being an entrepreneur ever since I was a little girl. So I knew I would do that, but I didn't think about the specifics, like the size of the business or anything like that. You know, on this podcast, I often interview, like, celebrities and influencers and people who created, like, billion-dollar companies and they're super well-known and their really big

personalities, which is why they're so well-known. They put out books and, you know. But here you are, like, this extremely successful entrepreneur so well-spoken, was able to kind of, like, just, like, distill down all these things for us. We learned so much from you. What's your advice to the person out there who's listening, who wants to start a company, who doesn't have a personal brand yet, who doesn't even want to be in front of the camera necessarily, but just has a really good idea, but has not, you know, typically been like the captain of the team or the president of any sort of club, which where I feel like a lot of the entrepreneurs that I talk to are like those types. What advice do you have to that person? That's a great question. The things that I'm most proud of

came out of nothing. So it came out of nothing and it came from putting myself out there. I'm, you know, I'm an introvert myself. I did not want to go on Shark Tank. I was terrified. You know, I thought I was going to puke. I was so scared. But I did it anyways and I put myself out there and there have been tremendous rewards from that experience. So my advice would be put yourself out there, just do it, even no matter what, even if you think it's a bad idea, you don't really know if it's a bad idea until you put it out there. It could be brilliant. It could be the next thing that everyone's looking for. And if nothing else, you'll learn. And then you can pivot from those learnings or build something else. But unless you put yourself out there, you'll never know. So that's my

key piece of advice is just take a step, get out there, execute. learn and, you know, build from those learners. Have you ever, I'm sure people are approaching you now and telling you their ideas. How do you decipher from like a good idea? Like you had a great idea of putting out vegan cheese when vegan cheese was not a thing. Yeah. How do you decipher between like a great idea and an idea that you should shoot in the shed? Well, you know, again, it's like there's so many ways with AI and,

you know, e-commerce and all these platforms to get feedback, my advice would be put it out there and see what the response is. Do, you know, one way we test ideas, we'll put a picture of the product that we're dreaming up and we'll have a sign up button and we'll see how many people sign up. If no one signs up, that means there's very little interest. So we're not going to invest our time in developing that product. If we get thousands of sign-ups, we're like, okay, there's something there. We should develop this. So, you know, you could easily create a landing page with AI now to get that feedback.

You could throw it up there or a Shopify store. Yeah. And, you know, just do a mock-up and put it out there and see what happens. See if there's a response and if there's traffic. I mean, that's all you really need to know. Yeah. It's like, are you going to get initial traffic? Before you go invest a whole ton of money.

and raise money and do all these things. Like, see if you can just do it yourself with the resources that you have before you just go all in. Exactly. I love this. This was such a great conversation. Thank you. What is your last piece of advice for any of the entrepreneurs tuning in who are, you know, thinking about starting a business? What's your last piece of advice that you want to part ways with? I guess do it. Just do it. Just do it. I mean, I mean, that's why I started Rebel Cheese. I didn't want to get to, you know, 60, 70, 80, whatever age and look back and have regrets and, you know, wished that I left that job and started that business.

You know, to me, that would be the worst thing in the world. So if you're thinking about something or if you think you would have those regrets, you know, when you're older, then that's your cue that you need to get out there and do it. Just do it. And how did you prepare for entrepreneurship? Like, did you do it as a side hustle at first? Or did you just like, you know, you had a great job? So were you just able to quit and kind of just use whatever savings you had?

We started developing the products before we launched Rebel Cheese. So that was kind of a side hustle. And we were figuring things out. We did a couple pop-ups. So we were able to get some feedback from our. customers and see what the response was like. So we kind of started as a side hustle, but we did have very successful careers before this. And we lived way below our means. So that actually gave us the confidence to start this because we, you know, I see this quite a bit. When I

worked in corporate, you know, people would max themselves out and would feel like they were stuck in their jobs. Because of the their lifestyle. Exactly. Yeah. So, you know, that's another piece of advice I would give if you can live below your means, so you have some flexibility and freedom to start over businesses. It will give you the confidence to take that next step, which was the case with us. You know, when we moved to Austin, we lived above a garage, and then we lived in a townhome. And, you know, then our house is really small. So we always lived way, way below our means. So we had this freedom to try things like a business. And what do you want out of rebel cheese? Like you don't seem like somebody who's

doing this for money, right? Not at all. You're not, you don't seem very flashy. I asked you what you, what do you like to buy? You didn't give me like a real, like clothes. And I was expecting like a jet or something, you know? So why are you doing this? Like, what's the outcome? To get, yes. a good question. Actually, I was going to say to get our cheese in as many mouse as possible, but there's a bigger goal than that. And that is, it goes back to her original values and mission, which is to move the needle on animal welfare, our planet, our health. And we know that it's unrealistic to expect everyone to go vegan overnight. It's not going to happen. But if we could get people to eat our cheese, you know, one meal a week or one meal a month, the collective impact of that

on the things I just mentioned is huge. And that's why I do what I do. I love it. Thanks. Kirsten, this was such an amazing interview. Thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast. Thanks to having me. And that's how Kirsten Maitland and Rebel Cheese profit. Every business has a hidden engine and today we learned that for a CPG premium plant-based food brand, the real leverage is not just making a great product. It's about aligning to a mission that's bigger than money, being efficient with shipping costs and understanding your key KPIs like KAC, LTV, and MER, leveraging technology like AI to catch mistakes that would usually take hundreds of hours or executive hires. And lastly, taking big swings like pitching your business on Shark Tank

even when you're an introvert. This was an amazing. amazing first episode of How We Profit. Until next time, this is your host, Halataa. Hey, App Bam, we're about to launch something that might be my favorite thing we've ever done on the podcast, a brand new series called How We Profit. Now, I've been doing Young and Profiting podcast for eight years, and my listeners are successful. We are real entrepreneurs with real businesses, and a lot of you guys are crushing it behind the scenes. You may not be super famous, you may not be a billionaire yet, but you've got a business. that you've learned how to scale.

And we want to hear from you. One of the best ways to learn as an entrepreneur is from your peers. And I found it super helpful to be in these peer entrepreneurship groups and learn from other entrepreneurs who are at my level, but just in a different industry.

So that's what I want to bring to this podcast. I want this to be our own peer group, but on the podcast. And so I'm going to be interviewing people who are making anywhere from $500,000 to $10 million a year. They're not super famous. They're not the typical billionaires. are on my show. These are real entrepreneurs who are crushing it behind the scenes, and we're going to

uncover what they do to sell, how they get their customers, what their profit margin looks like, how they market, and so much more. If this sounds like you and you want to be featured on Young and Profiting Podcast for our How We Profit series, just head to younginprofiting.com slash apply and share your story. Let me know why you think you should be featured on the show. Again, that's younginprofiting.com slash apply. And who knows, maybe you'll be our next guest on young imporafting podcast.