Advice Line with Bill Creelman of Spindrift

Bill Creelman, CEO and founder of Spindrift, joins Guy on the Advice Line to answer questions from three early-stage entrepreneurs. Plus, Bill and Guy talk about the importance of solving one problem at a time. First, we hear from Josh in West Hollywood, California - a pickle beer maker - who's wondering whether to drop his home-made brine to save money by using a manufactured flavor instead. Then Zac in Marshfield, Massachusetts, is trying to figure out how to get marketing help for his Hawaiian themed Flannel shirt company. And Jean Pierre in Portland is wondering about the best way to get his Kombucha business back on track. Thank you to the founders of Donna’s Pickle Beer, Kona Brand and Soma Kombucha. If you’d like to be featured on a future Advice Line episode, leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and a specific question you’d like answered. Send a voice memo to [email protected] or call 1-800-433-1298. And be sure to listen to Spindrift’s Founding Story https://wondery.com/shows/how-i-built-this/episode/10386-spindrift-bill-creelman/?queryID=a546cbe0fa8121a27c2a06048ac78899 as told by Bill on the show in 2020. This episode was produced by Kerry Thompson with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Andrea Bruce. Our audio engineer was Kwesi Lee. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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  Visit mobilefuels.com for details. Hello and welcome to the Advice Line on How I Built a Lab. I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. Each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on this show, who will help me try to help you. And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298. Leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. All right, let's get to it. Joining me this week is Bill Creelman, the founder and chair of Spindrift. Bill, welcome back to the show. Thanks, Guy. Great to see you.

• 5:52Speaker 00

  It's great to have you. You were first on the show back in 2020 to talk about the origin story of Spindrift, and then you came back on later on during the pandemic, I think. And if you guys missed either of those episodes, we'll drop a link to them in the show notes. Just a great story. Before Spindrift, you actually had a whole different life, Bill. In the 90s, you were selling smoked fish and jams and ice cream. And then you eventually pivoted into cocktail mixers. You started a small, little brand, which became a big brand. And you ended up selling that to Diageo. And then there was a period of time where you were kind of drifting and trying to figure out what to do next. And you started squeezing fresh lemon juice and grapefruit juice into seltzer water.

• 6:33Speaker 00

  And then that led to a new idea for a new kind of soda. And before long, of course, Spindrift was born. And we talked about how you got into Trader Joe's. And that was sort of the first big step toward building an amazing and iconic brand that I am a big fan of and I consume many cans of every day. So just an amazing story.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Well, thank you. Yeah, and so it goes. I mean, trying to find seams from the consumer side, from the business side. And it's been a circuitous journey, but one that I've really enjoyed.

• 7:06Speaker 00

  And the big news this year is that a majority stake of Spindrift was sold to a private equity firm called Griffin. The deal reportedly valued the brand at around $650, $700 million. So congrats on that.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks. We're thrilled. I mean, it's, you know, we really think about it as a partnership, kind of the next stage in the business. Griffin's coming at an important time as we're gearing up for our next stage of growth. So it's been really fun to have their input and, you know, new ideas around the table, which is, as you know, is so important for growth.

• 7:41Speaker 00

  Bill, before we bring our callers in, I want to ask you a couple of questions. And one of them, because it may come up today, was, and this was, anybody who hasn't heard this episode should go back and listen to it, because one of the most interesting parts about our conversation years ago was the discussion we had around the challenge of basically making shelf-stable seltzer water using fresh juice, squeezed juice, and not, you know, chemical or even quote unquote, "natural flavor enhancers," which a lot of the other brands were doing. And this is a huge challenge you had to kind of overcome, even though it would have made, you know, you could have probably gotten away, I mean, there are lots of brands out there that do it, with just using quote unquote, "natural flavors."

• 8:24Speaker 00

  Why were you such so hardline about that, about not, you know, not doing that?

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Well, you're right. I mean, sparkling water is an old category. There are lots of products that were flavored with natural flavors. And so, you know, we really, first we thought it was important from a kind of a foodie perspective, you know, I am stubborn about ingredients. And in the beginning, that stubbornness led to all kinds of challenges. I mean, years and years of how do we do it, building a supply chain around it, you know, really kind of laboring against the odds. What ultimately emerged is really our key point of difference. And today, you know, we've really embraced that idea. We, we sort of stand still kind of on our own, but really is sort of where we believe, you know, food

• 9:10Speaker 01

  and, and ingredients should go, which is as, as unprocessed as you can make them.

• 9:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, in the, in the early days of Spindrift, you actually had two products. One was basically the Spindrift that we know today. And the other one had sugar. It was kind of more like soda. And, and that sweeter one actually outperformed the Spindrift one, but you dropped that, that you dropped the sugary one, which seems almost counterintuitive, right? Why would you drop the one that's selling better? But of course, it, you know, it was a decision that, that would bear out. But why did you, can you explain why you made that decision in the early days of the business?

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Well, we did it because we thought it was going to be confusing ultimately for, you know, to have somewhat similar products, one with sugar, one without. But it was, it was really going back to the learnings from stirrings. You know, you just can't do, it's hard enough to make one brand successful. But to have two brands, you know, early stage brands succeed means something for the consumer, go on to really gain scale and traction is, is really almost unheard of. And, and I think what we felt was that the sparkling water brand. Was eventually going to be recognized as being just as delicious as the soda. It just was going to take consumer a little while to get there.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  And, you know, that, that's really, that was that belief that really led us to that, to that change.

• 10:36Speaker 00

  But you basically were saying, let's cut off a significant revenue stream.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, about half our revenue.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  I mean, it's kind of nuts, right? But you believe that, that in the long run, of course, it would pay off.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, we had no evidence. It wasn't like we did, you know, a consumer study or we didn't, you know, talk to the market. It just, for us, you know, it was as sugar was starting to become more and more on people's radars. 2012, 13, 14. And, and really the people that were enjoying the sparkling water were in love with it. You know, couldn't get enough or buying it hand over fist. It was like a tiny group of really passionate people. And what I always refer to sort of the white hot center just seemed a lot clearer on the sparkling water than it did on the soda. The belief we have is that with the sparkling water, we are able to, to bring people along and have them not miss the sweetness. And it took some time, obviously, here we are 15 years after starting the business.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  But we think there's the opportunity with some of these other categories. Sugar is a very one dimensional flavor. So if you can introduce other flavors alongside a little sweet, a little tart, we think you won't miss that big hit of sugar. That's, that's really kind of the starting point for all of our development.

• 11:49Speaker 00

  Awesome. Cool. Bill, you ready to take some calls?

• 11:51Speaker 01

  I'm ready.

• 11:52Speaker 00

  All right, let's do it. Let's welcome our first caller. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just one line about your business.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  Hey, Guy and Bill, I'm Josh Jankowicz, calling from West Hollywood, California. I'm the owner, CEO of Donna's Pickle Beer. And yeah, it's exactly what it sounds like. We mix pickle brine with a light crisp lager and it's named after my mom, Donna.

• 12:13Speaker 00

  I love it. Josh, welcome to the show. Donna's Pickle Beer, and it is exactly what it sounds like. It is beer. Flavored with pickle juice?

• 12:22Speaker 02

  Exactly. We make a light lager and we make pickle brine about 20 miles away from the brewery.

• 12:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  After we brewed the beer, we put the brine in and we put in a really fun packaging that has a nostalgia feel from the 1940s.

• 12:35Speaker 00

  I gotta say, there's something about those flavors that is working for me because I love pickles and I like a nice light lager, especially on a hot day. All right. How did this? How did this even start? Tell me the story. How did you come up with this idea? Because it's so, it's so weird and cool.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  A pandemic idea. I had been running cocktail bars around the country for years. And during the pandemic, I couldn't sit still and I became a mailman in West Hollywood. And while I was delivering mail, I really didn't have the opportunity to be creative and it's all I like to do. So I was coming up with different business ideas, just throwing toilet paper up at the ceiling, seeing what would stick. And I happened to be on route one day and Donna's pickle beer kind of popped in my head. And I drew our can out on a piece of paper and I send it to my business partner, my now business partner. I said, what do you think about this? And he said, this is amazing.

• 13:32Speaker 00

  How did you? So Donna's your mom and I'm looking at your website and you've got like sort of a retro look, which I love. But, but how did you? I mean, what, what in your brain happened where you were like pickles, beer, pickles, beer, pickles and beer together? Like, you know, chocolate and peanut butter. Well, they made Reese's peanut butter cups, right? How did, how did you? I mean, it was just out of nowhere it came up or were you eating pickles and drinking beer?

• 13:56Speaker 02

  Well, more specifically, I was in Palm Springs, sitting in the pool of the Ace Hotel with a couple of my friends. Drinking beer, eating pickles, snacking around, just talking shop about ideas since I don't really get, I didn't get that opportunity at the time since I was always on, on foot, walking 30,000 steps a day. Delivering mail during, you know, the pandemic, the holiday season, the election. So yeah, I was just kind of messing around with with different things and enjoying my day off.

• 14:25Speaker 00

  I mean, it makes sense, right? We like salty snacks with beer. Okay. And and tell me a little, so you you started and where did you start brewing this?

• 14:33Speaker 02

  So I hit up about 20 to 30 breweries and everybody said no.

• 14:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is weird. They were like, I don't, this isn't gonna work. Is that what they were saying?

• 14:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  They didn't want to do it. So I finally found a brewery called Pilot Project and they're based out of Chicago and Milwaukee. And I pitched them the idea and they immediately said yes. And we started R and D ing and it got to the point where now when people say no to me, it kind of makes me a little happy. Cause I want the person to say yes.

• 15:01Speaker 00

  And where is the beer sold right now?

• 15:02Speaker 02

  We're now in 16 states. We should be in 19 states by the end of the year. We're just waiting for a couple of contracts to come through.

• 15:09Speaker 00

  Right. You gotta go state by state and you can't obviously sell this direct to consumer because it's beer. How are you? Are you? Tell me about the flavoring. I mean, it's you're brewing the beer. Okay, that I understand. And then are you, where are you? Are you buying the pickle juice? Like, how are you doing that?

• 15:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we're making everything through co-packers, but to our own recipe. So I threw a pickle party one day before we got this brand launched and tasted my friends on like 20 different pickles until we could finally figure out the best one for this beer. And then we tasted through a whole bunch of different beers with the brewery to find the flavor profile that fits best.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  Got it. Okay. So what is your, and tell us before I forget, what's your, what's your question for us?

• 15:52Speaker 02

  Yes, our brand is growing fast and as we scale, we're having deep discussions about maintaining authenticity while being conscious of costs. Specifically whether to keep using our fresh pickle brine made with real dill and garlic or to switch to an all-natural flavor house version. The fresh brine tastes better and feels truer to who we are, but it's more expensive and less consistent. The flavor house option would scale easier and cost less, but it feels less authentic.

• 16:22Speaker 00

  Got it. Okay, so right now, just to be clear, you are using fresh pickle brine?

• 16:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 16:27Speaker 00

  Even cucumber essence? That's basically an extract of cucumbers or what?

• 16:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, just so we're not throwing so many cucumbers or composting so many cucumbers.

• 16:37Speaker 00

  So basically, it's an extract. So, okay. All right, Bill Creelman, I want to bring you in here because this is right up your alley. I mean, you guys, you struggled with how to make sure that you didn't have to use anything but fresh, real fruit. Any questions for Josh?

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, this is the great dilemma that happens in beverage over and over. You start with a great recipe and you're faced with all these shortcut decisions. And which ones do you opt in and out of? So you're asking all the right questions. I like, guy, I love the idea. I love pickles. I love marinating with pickles. You know, we make pickle products at home. So I think the idea has real, real legs. I guess, you know, one of my questions, maybe to start out, I don't know if this is a category or not, but are you sitting in the set with all the other beers? Or are you in your own sort of flavored section of the beer set?

• 17:31Speaker 02

  We're in with other beers, but you know, we're mostly on premise. We're about 90% on premise. It's how I chose to build the brand. So we are sitting next to like a lot of Miller Highlifes and a lot of, you know, larger, more common beers, I would say.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Is there a premium attached to it? Or are you line priced with some of the beers you mentioned?

• 17:55Speaker 02

  Um, no, we're a little bit more premium. Yeah, so bars are buying us for about $39 a case, which ends up being a buck 60 a can, and then usually selling it for about seven, eight bucks. But we mix really well, Bill. We mix with whiskey and then Micheladas or with hot dogs. So people pair Donnas with a lot of different items.

• 18:21Speaker 00

  How is the business doing, by the way, Josh? I mean, are you self-financing this thing?

• 18:26Speaker 02

  So we're in our first fundraising phase. We're about halfway through it right now. But sales couldn't be any better. We started with 400 cases two years ago. And now we're selling anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 cases a month. The cases are 24 packs. So yeah, we're doing really good.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  It's obviously starts as a novelty idea. I mean, it sounds like something you would see at a at a, you know, fair or something. But I mean, pickles are hot. I mean, even, you know, if you read any of the trade magazines, you know, pickle, that flavor is performing really well. I think it's an amazing idea. I think to go directly to your question, I mean, I think you know, if you're, if you're familiar with Spindrift, you know, probably what my answer is going to be, which is like, what, what is hard right now for you is going to be your point of difference later, you know, so trying to figure out, you know, how to make this brine, you know, using all of the ingredients that are called out on the label will only bear fruit down the road. Someone's going to come out with another

• 19:32Speaker 01

  similar product. It's a real copycat category. And you, you need something that you can defend ultimately when, you know, bars or retailers eventually are making a choice between your brand and something else. In essence, it'll be very easy to add. If you come up with a brine that's uniquely your recipe, it's going to be, you know, make it much, much harder for someone to repeat it down the road.

• 19:56Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um, you know, when you think about a product like this, this is a really unusual product that jumps off the shelves. It's like, you know, it's like, it's so unusual. Pickle beer. What, like if I saw this, and I guess it's a, you have them at some Whole Foods, right?

• 20:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're in actually a decent amount of chains. Nothing national, but we have Whole Foods, Albertsons, Total Wine, Bevmo, Trader Joe's.

• 20:18Speaker 00

  Right. Okay. So if I saw this on the shelf, I would buy it right away just to try it. But Bill, I mean, he, Josh is going to have to make, he can't build a company around one flavor, one brand. Like you couldn't build Spindrift around. Grapefruit, that's it, right? You ha- he's gonna have to think about, in addition to what he's doing now, the next steps.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  What excites me about the product is everyone knows pickles, you know? And, and I think pickle beer, just on its own, is relatively self-explanatory. I haven't tried it. I would do as much as you can with one product. I mean, in the beer category, Corona, you know, has one, had basically one SKU for a number of years. So I also, what I also love about it is that if you can build the company and distribution with one SKU, when you come out with your next SKU, you'll already have a base, a base of business. I, I, I think it's that interesting, actually, that there'll be enough of an audience there, and your distributors will love you, because you're not asking them to carry, you know, 30 SKUs. You're really asking them for one pallet position in their warehouse.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  And I imagine the sale is, is really easy for them to make. And if the, if the product pays off flavor-wise, I think you've really got something.

• 21:35Speaker 00

  And how does he think about protecting the brand? I mean, if, if this really takes off, it's just a matter of time before, you know, the other, other beer manufacturers produce a pickle-flavored beer.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  And that's, and that's really, I think, why you want to go in. You want to move quickly. You want to lock up distributors, ideally, if they're willing to. You want to try to get some sort of exclusivity everywhere you can. Maybe you can get a pickle beer exclusivity at your distributor. You know, you can, you can start to really become synonymous with that category. And, and I, I do think all of that's in front of you. What's happening now is these things are happening really quickly, you know, with social media and, you know, virality. People are learning about products, so you, you just want to be ready to move, you know, so that, so that there aren't two pickle beer players, there's only one.

• 22:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 22:26Speaker 00

  Awesome. Awesome. Josh, any last thoughts before we let you go?

• 22:30Speaker 02

  Just want to say thank you for your time.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  Awesome. Josh Schenkowitz.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Congrats.

• 22:35Speaker 00

  Donna's Pickle Beer. Good luck, man.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  Have a nice day.

• 22:38Speaker 00

  Wow, that's cool. It's something that I just have not-- you only see something that you just have not seen before. It doesn't happen that often.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  It's a great mashup. I mean, it really, it's kind of, you know, the beer category is looking for new innovation. I think that could be a really fun entree.

• 22:54Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it's interesting, we said about Corona, because you're right. I mean, it is one product that we think of, right? I mean, Boston Beer Company, you know, started with Sam Adams, and then, you know, they've got tons and tons of different brands, but I would imagine that Sam Adams is still far and away their best seller.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  It's a big enough category that you have the luxury of having one product and building a really big business around it.

• 23:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, another caller, another question, and another round of advice. I'm Guy Raz. Stick around, you're listening to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. Does your team want a website that looks and feels handcrafted but is still fast to ship? Well, Framer is built exactly for that. With Framer, you design on a visual canvas with responsive layouts, hosting, and a CMS built in, so the work is production-ready from day one. And you can get it done with help from Framer's AI agents.

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• 27:11Speaker 00

  Welcome back to the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz and today I'm taking calls with SpinDrift founder, Bill Creelman. Bill, are you ready for our next call?

• 27:20Speaker 01

  I'm ready.

• 27:21Speaker 00

  All right, let's do it. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just one line about your business.

• 27:27Speaker 03

  Hey, Guy. Hey, Bill. Thanks so much for having me. I'm a huge fan of the podcast, longtime listener.

• 27:32Speaker 00

  First time caller?

• 27:34Speaker 03

  First time caller. Yeah, that's right.

• 27:36Speaker 00

  All right.

• 27:36Speaker 03

  My name is Zach Will. I'm calling from Marshfield, Massachusetts, a town about 30 minutes south of Boston.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  Nice.

• 27:42Speaker 03

  And my company is Kona Brand. We're an apparel company that makes flannel shirts with tropical aloha. So we take the cozy feel of your traditional flannel and swap out the plaid and checkered patterns that you're used to for fun aloha shirt designs.

• 27:59Speaker 00

  Awesome. Welcome to the show. Bill, you know Marshfield probably well because I think you started Stirrings in like New Bedford, right?

• 28:05Speaker 01

  We did, yeah.

• 28:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, I remember that.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Down in the South Coast. Yeah, not too far away.

• 28:08Speaker 00

  I always think of you when I think of New Bedford, you and Moby Dick.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 28:13Speaker 00

  Two important things. So Zach, so these are Hawaiian shirts, but flannel?

• 28:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly that. We took our like traditional New England flannels, that's our like fashion staple, and just swapped out those plaid, checkered, earth toned colors for the fun, vibrant, tropical colors and designs of Hawaiian aloha shirts.

• 28:38Speaker 00

  I mean, what a mashup, New England and Hawaii, right? Like flannel, New England. And then I'm looking at your website, so you've got like the hibiscus, you know, the classic Hawaiian flower, the hibiscus kind of, you see the Trader Joe's look a little bit. How did you come up with this idea? Flannel and Hawaii?

• 28:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, so it actually started off as a little high school class project. My junior year, I was 17 years old, in my marketing class, my teacher told us to come up with a random business idea, but it had to be... Based off a problem that New Englanders have. And for me, I have a closet full of aloha shirts. And I only get two, three, maybe four months out of the year to wear them before it's flannel season again. So I thought, all right, what is something that New Englanders wear basically year round? Flannel shirts. So it just seemed like an easy one plus one equals two.

• 29:35Speaker 00

  Make Hawaiian patterns on a flannel shirt. So like heavy cottons, basically?

• 29:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. So it's exactly like the flannel that you got in your closet, like same feel, same softness, everything, but we just swap out the designs.

• 29:51Speaker 00

  I love it. All right. So you started this as a high school project. How old are you now, by the way?

• 29:55Speaker 03

  I'm 25 now, just graduated from college two years ago. And now I'm living up in Cambridge.

• 30:02Speaker 00

  Okay. So this is what you're working on 100% of the time?

• 30:05Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah. And I took it from high school into college at UConn. And from there, I entered a bunch of like Shark Tank type grant competitions. And UConn gave me $19,000 in funding to get the brand started. And when I finally graduated a few years later, I decided to take that leap and make it my full time job.

• 30:31Speaker 00

  Amazing. Congrats. So how are you, how are sales? What do you expect to do this year?

• 30:35Speaker 03

  So this year, we just broke 140,000 and we expect to do 300,000 by the end of the year. I found that 80 to 85% of our yearly revenue comes from the holiday season. So we're in a good spot.

• 30:49Speaker 00

  Nice. And where are you finding most of your success? Like where, I mean, it's direct to consumer, but I imagine you don't have a huge budget to do ad spends. Are you doing in-person events? Like, how are you getting the word out?

• 31:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, a lot of it is the digital marketing, meta Instagram ads, all that. I just started doing that and it really helped Kona brand jump up and start to scale. But since the start of Kona brand, since I got my first flannels in, I've been doing craft shows, music festivals, weekend markets, anything that I can get my hands on to kind of get the flannels into the hands of the people.

• 31:30Speaker 00

  Cool. All right. Before we dive in further, what's your question for us?

• 31:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, so last year, one of my main focuses was finding a marketing manager. And I interviewed 12 people. I eventually found one person that I thought was a great fit. But after a month, I found we didn't partner too well, so we parted ways. And since then, I've been very hesitant to hire again. How do you think I should hire the right person for a part-time role? That's usually full-time, like a marketing manager, without burning cash momentum? Because I don't have the budget to afford a full-time hire.

• 32:10Speaker 00

  And you're probably just buried under all everything. You're doing everything yourself. You're collecting the boxes, you're shipping stuff out, you're doing all the packaging, plus you're trying to run a business. Okay. Bill, this is a perennial challenge for, you know, early-stage entrepreneurs. You're doing everything and you need to hire somebody, but you also can't really manage somebody because you don't have the time to do that. And also, you have to find the right person. And it's really hard. Where do you start?

• 32:36Speaker 01

  It's really hard. And I have to say, like, just off the top, I mean, it seems like you're doing everything right. You're being really smart and conservative and not spending money that you don't have. A couple of questions, I guess, just to help answer that. Like, one is, so you're going to do $300,000 in sales. It sounds like a lot of that revenue is going to be generated by DTC. Is it, are the shows and your event sales 50/50 with DTC? Like, what is the breakdown of the sales between the two channels?

• 33:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's pretty cool. So last year, I would say that my online DTC sales compared to my show DTC sales were about 50/50, maybe a bit more leaning towards the in-person shows. But since starting my online marketing, my paid ads, it's completely switched. I'd say it's about 75, 80% online ads and then 19, 20% in-person events. And then I just dabble a little bit in wholesale.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  Okay, selling to stores.

• 33:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  And how is your supply chain? Are you, you know, if your business were to... 10x next year, would you be able to support that kind of growth?

• 33:55Speaker 03

  That is tough. I I'd say that cash flow is another one of my big problems because

• 34:03Speaker 03

  I am cash flow positive, I'm profitable, but because I buy in bulk all at once, it takes a huge chunk out of my cash flow and leaves me scrambling for a little bit until I start selling those flannels again right away. So I don't think I could handle a 10x scale like this time next year without taking outside investment, I don't think.

• 34:31Speaker 00

  Zach, what you mentioned that you you want to hire like a part time marketing manager, right? So so let's just kind of dive into this for a moment. I mean,

• 34:40Speaker 00

  is there a specific thing that you need that person to do or like, what would the what would the priority, what would their priority be?

• 34:50Speaker 03

  Probably to run the social media aspect and the paid advertisements. I'm a very like numbers oriented analytical person. I do not have much of an artistic brain.

• 35:02Speaker 00

  You're creative.

• 35:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, creative brain. So that's been a huge struggle for me and I feel like my time is better suited towards business aspect of the business rather than the creative.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  You know, again, I you're a couple hundred thousand dollars in sales. You've got a neat product. I'm a I'm a right away. I'm a fan. I'm a New Englander. Fisherman chic is right up my alley. And so I, you know, I always think the founder should do as much as you can early on, even if you're not comfortable doing it. I bet you're great selling the product, you know, only you can talk about it the way you do. And you're going to be uncomfortable, but you know, sitting behind an Excel spreadsheet is not going to help sell more Kona. And so, you know, I would really encourage you to keep pushing as hard as you can while you can without hiring. But but in the meantime, be folding some of the things that can be automated

• 35:56Speaker 01

  that can be outsourced, you know, third party fulfillment, things that are just not behind the scenes, the customer's not going to see so that you can get as much revenue through the door as you can. You know, $300,000 if you bring someone in and you hire them, that's gonna, you know, that's gonna eat up a fair bit of your profit. I don't know what your margins look like. And there are third parties, you know, that can get you to, you know, to, to the next level, whatever that looks like, without having to take on the expense of, you know, the employment costs and insurances and all that kind of thing. And lastly, I'll just say, you know, you're a young guy. You probably, I assume you're a little bit risk adverse. You know, you're not looking to, you know, leverage an apartment or a house, you know?

• 36:40Speaker 01

  And so I think the more you can kind of test and learn on your own dime, if you will, and keep the overhead down, when you do go out and raise money, you'll really be in a different position of strength than if you take a big swing early on with like more and more overhead. So I, I think there's no question, I agree with God, you need help dialing up your, you know, you're in a rare category where you can build a big business online and through events.

• 37:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  And I think as a founder, you want to be in front of the brand as much as you can.

• 37:14Speaker 00

  But I do think that he, I mean, you are looking for somebody who has sort of chops making social media clips and coming up with sort of some branding ideas, right? Is that, is that fair to say, Zach?

• 37:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I want someone who can handle that side of the business and like maybe talk to micro influencers and help me just come up with ideas for the creatives that go behind these posts and videos.

• 37:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I wonder whether it's worth reaching out to your old alma mater, right? I mean, you, you went to the University of Connecticut. Clearly you were in a grant, you were in some kind of entrepreneurship program, maybe, maybe not, but you were around kids like that. I wonder if it would be worth reaching out to some of your old professors and saying, hey, do you know just like a red hot, you know, grad, kid graduating that might be interested in, in this as their first just, you know, gig for a little bit? You know, I mean, I would, I would just try that out. And this is something that they could even do remotely for some time. I mean, I, because the, the reality is the, the tools that younger people have now to build social media assets are amazing. So. I think that could be worthwhile. There's one other piece of advice I have for you, and this

• 38:24Speaker 00

  this really sucks. And Bill, you may have been there. I've been there. It sucks. I hate doing this. It's so tedious, but I would document as much as you can what you do. Write down what you do. Write down what works. I know you're really tired at the end of the day, but like, write it down, log it down. How do you write copy? How what's your, what's the tone of the brand? Almost like you're building a brand Bible. What which audiences resonate the best? What's the voice of the brand? Like a playbook, a brand Bible. So then when somebody does join you even temporarily, they can refer to that as, you know, and understand what you're trying to do.

• 39:02Speaker 03

  I love that idea. I didn't even think that. I use like chat GPT sometimes to catch my brand voice and stuff, but I never even thought of like writing down my notes to use as a reference for future employees to kind of get the better.

• 39:18Speaker 00

  A living document, right?

• 39:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:20Speaker 00

  Exactly. By the way, this is what a lot of brands do. Bill, do you guys have a brand Bible?

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Sure. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 39:27Speaker 00

  And so when people join Spindrift, they can refer to it and they know what you stand for.

• 39:31Speaker 03

  I love that idea.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think exactly right. Yeah, as much because as soon as you identify that that kind of marketing message, their first question is be, okay, well, tell me now what you want, you know, how, what voice should I adopt? And it's going to be, it's going to be yours. You know, it's going to be the work you've done so far. So get started on that now. I think that's a great recommendation.

• 39:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Zach, Will, the brand is called the Kona Brand. Good luck, man. Congrats. It's a great idea. I love it. Thank you, guys. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, I love that. I mean, who's going to wear a Hawaiian shirt in the middle of January in Marshfield, Massachusetts? Unless it's flannel.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  There's a lot going on there. I, I like. That approach, though, I think it's a neat concept. It is a New England is a really tough place to, uh, to dress for. Cause the weather seems to change every 90 days.

• 40:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. And if I'm remembering correctly, you grew up in Western Mass, right?

• 40:27Speaker 01

  I did. Yeah. I grew up in the, in the, but I, I live, yeah. As you could memory on New Bedford, I spent 15 years down in Fall River, New Bedford. So.

• 40:36Speaker 00

  And I remember, I mean, kind of like this story, you got a grant, right? Like, that's how you started.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  That's right. Yeah. For the city of Fall River and the city of New Bedford, both were kind enough to help me in the early days.

• 40:48Speaker 00

  So cool. Um, and they look at you now.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:52Speaker 00

  All right. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, another caller, another question and another round of advice. I'm Guy Raz. Stick around. You're listening to the advice line on how I built this lab.

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• 42:46Speaker 00

  Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz and today I'm taking calls with Spindrift founder, Bill Creelman. Bill, are you ready for our next call? I'm ready. All right, please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a line or two about your business.

• 43:01Speaker 07

  I'm Jean Pierre Parent. I'm in Portland, Oregon, and in 2009, I opened Soma Kombucha.

• 43:08Speaker 00

  Cool, cool. Welcome to the show, Jean Pierre. Jean Pierre Parent, that's your name. Soma Kombucha, okay. So I'm assuming you sell kombucha and what, where do you sell it? And yeah, tell me about, a little bit about the, about the brand.

• 43:21Speaker 07

  Sure, yeah. So we sell to stores through distributors, which used to be our main business, but that's dwindled a lot. We also have taprooms. There's five kombucha taprooms across the Pacific Northwest. The ones in Washington are kind of cool in that they're unstaffed and automated. Folks open the door with their phone and get in and help themselves and check out on their phone as well.

• 43:44Speaker 00

  Wow, you can literally, it's like going to get cash from a cash point. You swipe your card, you go in and you just get kombucha whenever you want? And there's no staff in there?

• 43:54Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, that's great.

• 43:56Speaker 00

  That's wild. Okay, tell me a little bit about how you started this kombucha brand. 2009, you said, so you've been around for a while.

• 44:02Speaker 07

  A little while, yeah. So my mom was brewing kombucha in the 80s and had some really great health benefits. And so the whole family got into it. I was teaching yoga, moved to Portland, started bringing kombucha after yoga class because people would be kind of like shy and leave class. And, and I thought, well, let's find a way to get people to gather up and have a little community after class. And it just went from there.

• 44:26Speaker 00

  Awesome. Okay, so you, and you launched this kombucha brand and you've got taprooms. So people can go and get draft kombucha. Tell me a little bit about the business. How is it doing overall?

• 44:37Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's actually, it's been a rough last couple of years with pressures from COVID and the supply chain stuff. We've had a bunch of distributors go out of business. We changed our packaging a couple of times, which was really challenging and lost us a bunch of shelf space in stores. Sales at the taprooms are down and all of the expenses are much, much higher.

• 45:01Speaker 07

  And so, yeah, we I was doing a million and a half dollars a year for for several years. And the last few years, that's that's really been dwindling. I started contract manufacturing for other beverage brands in the last six months. And that has brought its own challenges. Um, I also do beverage development and R and D for other brands, which is great. But it's just kind of like a one time project when we do it. Yeah, so I'm I'm really looking for the next step.

• 45:31Speaker 00

  Cool. Well, lots of questions to to to ask you, but before we get to them, um, what what question do you have for for Bill and I?

• 45:37Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, so the four uh revenue channels that I just mentioned, I'm wondering what you guys think is the best channel for me to focus my my efforts on.

• 45:47Speaker 00

  God, okay, cool. Bill, a lot of challenges here, right? The business that was doing a million and a half a year substantially down. There are a variety of reasons why that happens. Questions, thoughts?

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, it sounds, I mean, I my parents were product hippies in the seventies and eighties. And, you know, I I love hearing your hustle. It sounds like you love the space. And so it's a little bit of like, how do I make a living? And so I totally relate to that. It's it's a hard business, low margin business, super finicky. I guess a question like where where do you see yourself in 10 years? You know, what like, what would success look like, you know, on the other end of this?

• 46:27Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, I would like to be doing less jobs and be doing a better job at at the ones that I'm focusing on. So I'd like to either cut some things out or I'd like to get some more help. Um, I definitely would like to not be stressed about making payroll every two weeks, you know, and paying the rent. And so, you know, I mean, I I could do a lot of different things. There's a lot of different things that I do well. Um, there's some things that I that I don't do that well and. Um, you know, also I've, I've recently become a solo father of, of my eight-year-old uh, special needs kid and, and I just, I really just need to be able to make this company

• 47:09Speaker 07

  work so that I can punch out and, and focus on his needs.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  Hmm, that's a, that's a lot going on, especially being a solo dad. I guess without going into all the different margins and sort of the structure of the four businesses, like which, which do you have the most confidence in today? Like, is there one that you feel you, you have a real heart for and, and are energized by?

• 47:36Speaker 07

  Well, six months ago, I definitely would have said taprooms. Um, I love building them. I love, you know, interacting with customers directly. I love how nimble the, the flavors are and just being able to make something and put it out and, you know, and we, we curate other wellness products. And so I'm really passionate about that. But, you know, my local business neighbors, tons of them are going out of business. Like I said, our sales are down. I've never really done any marketing and I've started doing that and I haven't really seen that move the needle. I opened a taproom in Seattle, which I thought was going to kind of save everything. Um, and that has not, that's just barely breaking even after eight months, which is shocking because none of the other

• 48:19Speaker 07

  stores, like they all after three months were profitable. So I'm, I'm just, I'm a little unsure about where to put, you know, my limited energy and resources.

• 48:30Speaker 00

  What about the margins on the R and D or the, the contract manufacturing?

• 48:35Speaker 07

  Yeah, on R and D, they're high. On contract manufacturing, they're low, but there is a lot of contract manufacturing work and it's, it's very, you know, consistent. Um, it, it comes with its own challenge as well, just managing the expectations of founders, especially if they, if the product is kind of unproven and they give it to me and I follow the instructions and it doesn't turn out like they expect. And now I'm kind of financially on the hook for that. And so trying to mitigate those potential pitfalls.

• 49:06Speaker 00

  Is there any, I mean, if R and D and, and contract manufacturing are fairly robust, would it make sense in any way to sunset the other businesses, the taprooms, for example?

• 49:20Speaker 07

  Yeah, I would be open to letting go of the brand which is selling into stores. Like that has become increasingly challenging, you know, and we're competing with larger and larger companies which are getting into the space and, you know, shelf space is getting really expensive, um, as I'm sure Bill knows.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I had the same, same thought. Again, I, I really relate to the situation. We have an expression here called simplify to amplify. And I'm not sure there's like a better example than this of like, we really need to distill it down until like its most simple form and, and then build it back up, which sounds like your instinct here. I mean, if you're making money on the consulting side and you're sort of keeping the lights on, paying the bills with, you know, some of the contract manufacturing, you know, that's probably not the destination, right? It seems like you really have heart for building a brand. You want to get back to the growth years. You know, maybe that kind of brings it back to zeros or at least to baseline and then

• 50:21Speaker 01

  allows you to start to build back up again. I, I had 15 years of, you know, trying to figure it out, some similar amount of time to you before we really were able to focus. And so I, I guess my, my early advice would be around distilling it to the simple one or two things you can do and do profitably and, and sort of quiet, you know, any of the expense overruns or the noise so that you could then, you know, begin to rebuild.

• 50:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I agree. I mean, we've done so many episodes of the show where the founders had to shut down part of the business and it was painful, right? And Bill, you had to do that with, with one of your early products and, uh, and then ultimately it made sense. It was, it was sort of the obstacle that was preventing the founder from flourishing or the business from growing. You know, I think when I, when I think about what you do, John Pierre, I don't think about kombucha. I think about probiotics. I think you're in the probiotics business, you know, the gut microbiome business, if you will. Even though there may be more competition in kombucha as a product, the probiotics business is actually growing. You see this in yogurts, you're seeing it in other products where, you know, people

• 51:35Speaker 00

  are really promoting the probiotics and the, and the gut.

• 51:40Speaker 00

  Health side of their products. And I wonder whether if you start to think about you and your experience in probiotics now 16 years in, that to me seems like a pretty interesting consulting gig. Where you've got small founders, small food companies, brands looking for help and advice on how to think about and produce a product. Is that something that would fit into your wheelhouse?

• 52:09Speaker 07

  Yeah, kind of. The thing that has set Soma apart from other kombucha brands this whole time is that we have billions more probiotics because

• 52:18Speaker 00

  There you go.

• 52:19Speaker 07

  Special long fermentation process that I do. The thing is, though, is that like the lab grown probiotics that people are used to in capsules, those are really different than wild fermented product.

• 52:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 52:32Speaker 07

  I believe in wild foods and wild fermented products are going to be a lot more beneficial, but it's a little bit less easy to quantify in terms of probiotics. And so, and it's interesting, it's always been my focus is the health side. People are always, I feel like people are really focused on the taste and they want something that they can drink that happens to be good for them. So we focused on the taste too, and I've won best kombucha in Portland a bunch of times because of that. I've been so focused on kombucha and fermentation that I could certainly move into other wild fermented products, but it's kind of its own beast.

• 53:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think you're right on about wild probiotics. I mean, you're looking at brands like Nancy's Probiotic Yogurts. There are all these brands I'm seeing where there's a real emphasis on wild probiotics. It could be a really interesting next step for you.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree. I mean, in some ways like The world is starting to open up to the way you've been thinking about it for this whole time. Yes. I think it's a really exciting time, but I do think that simplification process, even if there's an opportunity right in front of you, it's going to be hard to see it if you have four or five different records spinning at the same time. You've got an eight-year-old at home that's going to want, you know, need attention too. So I just, you know, the more you can quiet kind of the noise and not be so divided, you'll be able to, I think, really be opportunistic with whichever the ideas you decide to go big on.

• 54:13Speaker 07

  Interesting. So you think that consulting and R and D should be what I focus on?

• 54:19Speaker 01

  Well, I just, I empathize, you know, I just picture the early days of like, you know, as much as you want to do certain things, the reality of keeping the lights on, paying the bills often kind of wins the day. If that's where the margin is, you have a consistent revenue stream, maybe you sort of pause the other businesses where there's more risk, more uncertainty, so that you can really focus on, you know, what Guy said is, you know, this probiotic, this real like, where is wild probiotic going? It could be a version of what you're doing, it could be something different, but it's hard to evaluate that until you really settle, kind of calm the seas, so to speak.

• 54:59Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 55:00Speaker 00

  Absolutely, absolutely. Jean-Pierre, looking forward to hearing how it goes. Keep us posted. Jean-Pierre Parent, founder of Soma Kombucha. Good luck, man. Thanks for calling in.

• 55:10Speaker 07

  Thanks, guys. Really appreciate it.

• 55:12Speaker 00

  Bill, lots of interesting challenges out there. I mean, you know, it's like, and you were there. I mean, you were, you were selling smoked fish, right? And you're like, this is interesting, but. It's not really, it's not really moving the needle. And then it was like, oh, but these, because you started to sell these like flavored salts and for cocktails. And then that was the thing that was getting traction. And you're like, well, maybe I shouldn't be doing smoked fish and jams and maybe focus on this thing.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  You know, the passion can cloud your decision making. Like, I love food. You know, my weekends and my weekdays look very similar, but you need to almost be of two minds. One is, what do I love? The other is, what's going to be a good business? And it can be really hard to see those clearly at times.

• 56:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure. Bill, before I let you go, if you, now knowing what you know, you know, you started in the late 90s, right? And literally had a fishing boat off Nantucket.

• 56:13Speaker 00

  And here you are, you know, 30 years later. God, does that sound crazy 30 years later? If you, if you go back in time, knowing what you now know, what's something that you would, you would be able to say to your past self?

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Well, it probably would have been some of the advice that we talked about today. Like, don't try to do everything. You know, I, I took, I think, a lot of time to get to where we are, 30 years, as you said. And, you know, some of it was valuable, but I think a lot of it probably could have been solved by not trying to wrap my arms around every problem, being more selective early on and really trying to solve the big problems, knowing that there was going to be a solution on the other side. You know, I think it's so easy to get caught in, I need to solve all 10 problems equally, when the reality is, it's probably one or two that is holding the business, the business back.

• 57:07Speaker 00

  That's awesome. It's founder of SpinDrift, Bill Creelman. Bill, thanks so much for coming back on the show, man.

• 57:12Speaker 01

  Thanks. Nice to see you guys.

• 57:14Speaker 00

  And by the way, if you haven't heard Bill's original How Built This episode, you've got to go back and check it out. We will put a link to it in the podcast description, the show notes. And here's one of my favorite moments from that interview.

• 57:25Speaker 01

  I knew where the risk was, or at least I thought I did. But ultimately, there's, there's just risk embedded in between the coolers and going up against the big soda guys and trying to do something really different in terms of the ingredients. All of that just was going to be challenging. So, yeah, it was terrifying.

• 57:50Speaker 00

  Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to check out my newsletter. You can sign up for it for free at guyraz.com. Each week, it's packed with tons of insights from entrepreneurs and my own observations and experiences interviewing some of the greatest entrepreneurs ever. And if you're working on a business and you'd like to be on this show, send us a one-minute message that tells us about your business, the issues or questions you'd like help with, and hopefully, we can help you with them. And make sure to tell us how to reach you. You can send us a voice memo at [email protected] or call us at 1-800-433-1298 and leave a message there.

• 58:34Speaker 00

  And we'll put all this in the podcast description as well. This episode was produced by Kerry Thompson with music composed by Rantina Rblui. It was edited by Andrea Bruce and our audio engineer was Quacey Lee. Our production staff also includes Chris Messini, Alex Chung, J.C. Howard, Casey Herman, Sam Paulson, Catherine Seifer, Neva Grant, and Elaine Coats. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.