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Back to another episode of Mind the Business Small Business Success Stories, a podcast brought to you by Intuit, QuickBooks and Ruby Studio from iHeart Media.
I'm Janice Torres, author of Financially Lit The Modern Latina's Guide to Level Up Your Dinero and Become Financially Poderosa.
And you may also recognize me from the other award-winning podcast I host called Yo Quiero Dinero.
And I'm Austin Hankwitz, host of the Rich Habits podcast and co-founder of Wits Ventures.
You also might know me from my TikTok videos about personal finance and investing.
I feel like I say this every two weeks, but today's topic is honestly one of my favorites.
You do say that every two weeks, and you're probably going to say it in two weeks from now.
Probably.
OK, don't judge me.
But today we're talking about resilience and reinvention as a small business owner.
The types of mental toughness that it takes to turn setbacks into victories, and the open mindedness that leads to being willing to try something different.
You know, I think about just all of the challenges that I've had in my now over decade long career as an entrepreneur.
And I think the important thing is you have to just really be ready for anything, right?
You just never know kind of what life is going to bring.
Knowing your numbers is so important, too.
And I made the mistake of that in the beginning.
I didn't really have a system for knowing what was going on with my finances until tax time came around.
And that's never fun.
And you know, I think one of the best skill sets that comes from this journey is really that resilience that teaches you how to turn those downturns into opportunities.
Most definitely.
And I feel like not just the resiliency of it, but kind of taking that a step further and really having that fortitude, that deep understanding of what it means to be an entrepreneur and have to take one step at a time.
Left, right, breathe.
Left, right, breathe.
And...
To your point.
There's a lot of things that happen to us as entrepreneurs that come out of left field, that completely derail our days, our plans.
But being able to adapt and weather the storm is just so, so important.
And not just being able to do that by ourselves, because we hear the word solopreneur a lot, but also to have that support system.
It's so important to have that community of other entrepreneurs or maybe it's your friends or your spouse or things of that nature.
But, being an entrepreneur, I've heard described as eating glass, and I could not agree more with that description.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, it's not always fun and games.
One of the biggest lessons that I've learned about resilience is just really like having financial cushion, because so many things can change from an economic standpoint right.
Like there's just no level of certainty when you're operating a business.
I actually couldn't agree more there.
To give you an example.
So a pillar of my business is marketing consulting for companies in general.
But in the beginning, I specifically focused on marketing consulting for fintech companies.
These fintech companies experienced a little bit of a pullback in their marketing spend in 2022, when the stock market crashed by about 30 to 35 and the economy was not doing that hot.
And so I had to pivot, right?
You got to have the resilience, but also the adaptability to say, okay, wasn't expecting this, but I do know I could do this just as well.
Absolutely.
It sounds like you've gotten really good at recognizing opportunity in change Austin, which I think is gonna be very central to our conversation today.
We're gonna be talking to some folks who are really like Creating a new industry right before our eyes.
We tend to think of innovation as like largely tech-based, but cultural shifts can fuel marketing changes as well.
And one market that is skyrocketing at a rate that's hard to even keep track of is the non-alcoholic beverage industry.
And when I say skyrocketing, I mean it.
A Grandview research study is predicting that market to hit 218 trillion yes, T trillion dollars by 2030.
That is absolutely insane, Janice.
Yeah, you know, and there's a lot of reasons for this.
A big reason is that people still want to go out and socialize.
But in this information age, we're just so much more health conscious now.
Three women in particular wanted to be able to have fun while minimizing the occasional bad effects of consuming too much alcohol.
Shanna Watkins, Ashlyn Knox and Darian Rhodes came together to create Sensory, a non-alcoholic beverage line that gives you the euphoric feeling of being buzzed, but without compromising your health goals.
Now, like many Americans, during the pandemic they were stuck inside with plenty of time to research their own health.
They came out the other side of things feeling the same way a lot of other people felt, with a newfound appreciation for being able to socialize and a new knowledge surrounding their beverage options.
Through their own personal journeys and research, the three friends invented a recipe that's a way to celebrate that feels good in the moment and, even better, the next day.
They found funding and launched their business, diving headfirst into arguably the fastest moving market there is.
Absolutely.
They are totally making it cool to order mocktails, and I'm so here for this.
And today they're here to tell us all about their story and about the resilience that got them through tough times and allowed them to reinvent an idea that turned into a business.
This is an iHeart Podcast.
Guaranteed Human.
Let's welcome to the show, Shanna Watkins, Ashlyn Knox, and Darian Rhodes.
Thank you so much for having us.
We're excited to be here.
Yes, thank you.
All right, so let's start at the beginning.
You've said that it was the pandemic that had a huge impact on all of you deciding to get into this business.
So Shanna, can you talk a little bit about your journey from being at the job that you had then COVID hitting, and how you came out on the other side running your own business with your two best friends?
Like, how does that happen?
Yeah.
So I think, like many people, COVID gave us all space to sort of like pause life and just kind of do some evaluating.
And so during that time, myself, Darian, Ashlyn, we have all always been like wellness girlies.
So We would, you know, jump on on Sundays and listen to a church sermon together.
And then we would discuss, like what our key learnings were, or Ashlyn's always been a physical trainer.
So we would join Ashlyn's like physical training sessions.
And then similarly, I think a lot of us just like held this passion for like, what we were putting inside of our bodies.
And so became super passionate about you know, just like the organic options of things and just organic learning.
You know plants that you could use to heal your body and whatnot.
So I started going down this exploration of, like what was out there for me that I could use as a replacement to alcohol.
And that was sort of the start of me just exploring like what sort of adaptogen mushrooms or what sort of just like plants I had never heard of existed that could serve as sort of a replacement, to give you that ritual of like.
I like to have a drink, but I know that alcohol doesn't serve me.
I was in my kitchen and my husband was like.
You know, you keep complaining about the lack of options for non-alcoholic beverages.
At the time there were probably like three or four players that were doing it like sort of at scale.
And he's like, I think you just need to go ahead and start one.
And so I was like, oh, my gosh, like, why hadn't I thought about this?
And then, you know, some months later, I brought my two best friends in with me.
And ever since it's been like this extremely fast moving journey, that has been honestly the best thing in my entire life.
That's incredible.
You know, it's like, yeah, sure. sure, let's start a business.
I don't think that's a conversation that I've had with my best friends at all.
I feel like we need to start elevating our conversations.
All right.
So over to you, Ashlyn.
Was there a moment, or a collection of moments, where you found yourself wanting to find an alcohol alternative?
Like, when did you first discover the fact that there were even alternatives?
And when did you realize that it could be a really big market?
For sure.
Well, what actually put me on to adaptogens and nootropics before even our first like dry January together and Shanna even telling me about them was with my own challenges with ADHD.
So when I was diagnosed, I was diagnosed like as a very young adult.
I think it was like my first year out of college.
And I soon came to find that I just didn't really like the way my stimulant medication made me feel.
So I was doing a lot of research into herbs and adaptogens that could replace that for myself.
And then talking to Shanna, talking to Darien and then even a lot of my other like young adult friends who were like I'm struggling with not being able to drink, or struggling to focus, or I want to drink less caffeine.
And it kind of like turned on a little bit of a light bulb moment for myself.
And at the time I was running a social media agency.
So, like Shanna said, we were really waiting on honestly, like the universe to just show us this opportunity.
And when Shanna kind of had that light bulb moment when her husband asked her, like why don't you just make one?
That was literally it.
Like we kind of waited on it for like a good year, year and a half.
And I think we recognized that it was truly an issue in just talking to people.
This was becoming like a common struggle, especially after COVID coming off of being just super bored honestly, because we were just drinking out of boredom.
We had worked out, we had read, we had meditated, we did all the things.
So it was like by 2 p.m., we already watched like all of Tiger King.
Like, what else is there to do?
Ashlyn, I'm going to jump in here because I've got a background in finance and economics and you're using words that are above my.
Just understand adaptogens.
Like walk me through real quick.
What is what are some of those ingredients?
You mentioned lion's men.
What does that do to a person who might have ADHD or someone who's trying to wind like walk me through some of that real quick?
Yeah.
So adaptogens are essentially natural herbal ingredients to help your body adapt to external stressors.
So Lion's Mane really helps any external like distractions you may have really help you focus, hone in and just have like a nice clear mind, which was why it was great to replace my ADHD prescriptions or stimulant medications.
And then we also have nootropics, which are what we kind of like explain as like brain boosters.
So they help with, you know, your memory, with your cognitivity and things of that sort.
So that's what kind of gives you, like amongst our other ingredients that are in the beverages, that kind of like uplifted feeling, but also feeling super clear, which is the opposite of what alcohol does.
I appreciate that breakdown, Ashlyn.
Darian, I want to bring you into this conversation because I'm sure there was a point where you're looking around and you're like my friends are talking about these adaptogens and these nootropics, and it's over here.
I'm learning more about this in real time now.
So walk me through, how did you decide to get in the game?
Well, I will say that we all kind of have a similar story of experimenting with adaptogens nootropics, mushrooms.
And for me, it was having high anxiety.
And my sister is like a holistic wellness girly.
And she was telling me that I should start taking supplements lion's mane reishi, turkey's tail, cordyceps.
And these are all mushrooms that when you pair them together, like Ashton said, they give you clarity.
So that was the initial point.
And I will say, when it comes to thinking about like a non-alcoholic beverage, when me and Shanna decided to like shut down Savvy Strategies, she had just told me I want a product.
And I literally said, OK, well, when you have one, call me.
Like and on that day, we were both so tired.
I was just like, OK, this is like our third business.
We're shutting it down.
Like call me when you have the product.
And that's exactly what she did.
Like I was I walked out of Pilates.
She gave me a call.
She was like, I have it.
We're going to start a non-alcoholic business.
And I was like, OK, like, honestly, I trust your vision.
Let's call Ashlyn.
I trust her with marketing.
And then from there, we literally started like going at it.
So Shanna, what was your business experience like before this?
You mentioned Savvy Strategies, which I'm assuming is this PR consulting firm that you and Darian had here.
So what was your prior business experience and how did you sort of parlay that into this new venture that you guys are obviously very successful with today?
Yeah, my very first business was Savvy Strategies.
It was a PR and sort of like branding agency where essentially I got to work alongside founders and help tell their story from like a PR perspective and a branding perspective.
So getting to work alongside someone like Shane Heath at Mudwater.
When I'm setting up an interview and he's talking to Business Insider about how he builds his business, how he thinks about building a team, how he makes decisions, I'm like taking notes internally, because I've always known that I wanted a product.
And so really before I started Sensory, I'd already had experience doing all aspects of starting a business from finding your vendors, sourcing different things you needed.
Setting up the software as you need to run a business.
And while the second business, Born Collection, it didn't do well from like a revenue standpoint, but from a branding perspective like it was golden and everyone always gave us like our kudos on, like wow, the branding is amazing
And that was extremely beneficial because I got to see that OK, CPG brands do extremely well if you find a product that's a reoccurring in nature, that B solves a problem for people and that C has, like this, emotional resonance.
I appreciate that walkthrough.
And before we jump to the next question here from Janice, I'm really curious.
I could be wrong, but I don't remember ever hosting three co-founders for a business before on the show.
And it's really interesting to see that, because normally when people think about a business owner, it's like oh yeah, I started this one company.
It's me or me and my one business partner.
But there's three of you.
So I'd be curious to hear from all three of you what your sort of role in the business, or that identity, from your own expertise, with your own background, in these seven businesses collectively that you all have started.
So for me as a CEO my, my role in the company really is like big vision focus, but also just like strategic move focus.
So I'm always thinking about from a sales perspective, like what can we do to push ourselves forward and, like you know, the retail space, or how do we push ourselves forward and our direct to consumer channels?
And then again my two best friends, my two business partners.
They have the skill sets that I don't have.
And that was exactly why I knew this would be like an amazing fit.
So I'll pass it to Darian to give her role, because I think her role is extremely important into what we do and just how we're building this.
We call Shanna our dreamer.
And oftentimes she'll call me and I'm like, bring it back down.
Bring it back down.
Let's look at it.
No, it works well, because I honestly need Shannon Ashland and their roles in order to ground me too, when I'm being super operationalized and focused on finances, which I guess.
So my background is in product management and program management.
And so for Sensory, I really just focus on our operationals from a finance standpoint, but also like our roadmaps and how we can scale all of our products across like a 12-month roadmap.
That's usually what I focus on.
And so, for me, I'm just always constantly thinking about what will this all entail from paid and organic marketing, from a sales perspective, from a branding perspective?
And my head is always in the weeds of like how much money this is honestly going to take.
So I always make a joke that like I love manifesting and thinking about being present.
But with my role, it can be really hard because I'm always thinking about the future.
And always trying to plan for what can go right, but also what can go wrong.
And if things go wrong, how are we going to pivot?
And now I'll pass it to Ashlyn.
My role as a CMO is a lot of marketing, but a lot of my background is in social media.
And you even said that like that's the first thing that you went to look at whenever you were looking to learn about sensory.
And that's just kind of like the way of the world now.
So yeah.
A lot of my understanding from working with you know my clients and like the CPG space was that was really where they were getting all of their real time customer feedback.
Like content really is a means of A-B testing, especially now with platforms like TikTok, where you can post 10 videos a day and none of it's in chronological order and you can really see which types of messaging stick.
I think that that is a huge part of what we do as a brand.
And I think that's something that all three of us kind of take on is really inserting ourselves into cultural conversations, whether it be through a person that we know in real life, or inserting ourselves into a conversation on the internet, sliding up on a celebrity story, sliding into their DMs.
So whenever we talk to other founders that are like, how are you guys here and there?
And it seems like you're everywhere.
I think one content and then two, because there's three of us.
Sounds to me like y'all got a well-oiled machine.
That's for sure.
Oh my goodness.
So I hear a lot of you know positive stories around how you guys have found kind of your synergies right.
Like your zones of genius.
But we all know as entrepreneurs, like not every day is rosy.
So Shanna, if you could talk a little bit about what was that first roadblock that you faced when starting Sensory?
So I would say the very first roadblock I faced and probably like most people that get this brilliant idea and they want to hit the ground running was capital.
Don't have rich parents that I can just go and say like hey mom dad, can I borrow 20000 for a business?
But what I did have was a strong credit.
I had taken care of my credit for years and years and built that up to where I had a really good credit score.
So I was like okay, I'm going to go and I'm going to get a line of credit that could just be that initial capital to get us started.
But that was the first roadblock.
That honestly, is what took the longest amount of time for me to actually get going.
Was this feeling like I didn't have the money to start?
And I feel like a lot of people find themselves in that same boat.
And Darian always talks about this like we're never advocates of just like running up a bunch of debt.
But if you do it strategically it works, because that same debt we had to use to start the business that's now paid off because, you know, crediting to Darian, we operated very strategically and made sure that we put away the money to.
You know, pay that debt back down.
Um, so that's the first and foremost, you know, roadblock.
But I also want to mention probably the biggest roadblock that we encountered.
Getting started was um.
So we were probably a week from launching the business and we're getting the delivery of our first 5000 cans.
And so if you can imagine, we're like, wow, this is crazy.
Like we have 5000 cans coming in a week.
So we're planning it all out.
Like I had cleared out my garage because we quite literally have started out of my garage.
Now we have a bigger warehouse.
But at that time, we just had my garage.
So clear out my garage.
We're getting started.
Our truck is on the way from Florida, which is where our beverage is made and manufactured.
The truck is on the way from Florida.
And all of a sudden I wake up one morning and I see like my community group chat and they're like, oh my gosh, you guys see this huge truck like tilted over in front of our community gate.
Like, do we see this?
And my husband, he wakes me up.
He's like, Shanna, do you see that?
And I'm like, what?
My heart sinks, y'all.
Like I'm feeling the like PTSD from that moment.
And lo and behold, it is our truck.
And I see like probably a thousand cans of sensory like splattered across the ground to enter my community gate.
A fourth of our product got ruined.
So that was at first like our initial reaction was like.
High stress, I will be honest.
But I think one skill set that each of us have is we do have this ability to sort of regulate our central nervous systems like pretty quickly.
And so within, I would say, 30 minutes to an hour, we were like, keep calm.
All is well.
We are lucky girls and great things happen to us.
And so we were on FaceTime like that entire day.
And I'll pass it to Ashlyn to continue the story because it was like it was such a day, honestly.
Yeah.
So at this time, I lived like 10 minutes away from Shanna.
So I wake up, I have like seven missed calls and it's like 8.02 a.m.
I'm like, this isn't good.
So by the time I got there, I was like mentally prepared.
And then Darian in New York was like on FaceTime with us, like trying to problem solve, like messaging, like our co-packer and everyone like in the background like hey, this happened, like what's going on.
And by the time I got there, I was like, well, this is a content moment.
So I put up my tripod and that's literally, we recorded the whole thing.
We posted the whole thing on TikTok.
We were like live posting it on our stories.
Um, I have even the driver, like he, the driver that literally got the truck stuck in the ditch.
I was like, this is a part of, you know, the storytelling.
I feel like everyone in Shanna's neighborhood has had sensory, because we were also like handing it out, because we were blocking the gate.
So we felt bad.
So we're like handing out damaged cans, people in the cars, like it turned into an entire content and kind of like pre-launch marketing moment, especially like in Dallas, like that entire neighborhood is now sensory advocates.
We were able to talk about it in our newsletter and stuff as well.
And it really is now just like a core memory for us, and all of our other mentors in the space were like oh you guys, just wait.
Like you guys think that this is the worst of it?
Like you guys have no idea.
So honestly, like now we approach everything with that kind of notion.
Like now 500 cans get damaged on the line.
We're like, oh, yeah, like another day in the life.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like next point.
Like, let's get on to the next part of the call.
That is a story for the books.
I feel like when you guys write your founder story, because obviously you know y'all have a long life in entrepreneurship just with your resilience and your personalities.
I see you guys doing big things.
But I think it's just such a great reminder that.
Even if you think that the entrepreneur that you admire out there in the world has got it all figured out.
Like I promise you, every single one of us has multiple versions of these types of stories.
And I bet in that moment you really were glad that you had sensory on board, because I would have been popping open some bottles of wine after this, if not.
Let's talk about reinvention.
So what strategies or aspects of sensory needed to be reinvented along the way here over the last let's call it year, or so, if any?
I think the biggest thing, especially from a marketing and branding perspective, is constantly tailoring our messaging.
We were really positioning ourselves as like just an alternative to drinking alcohol.
But we found that people were actually drinking sensory in many other settings.
People were drinking sensory midday while they were working, drinking a play, rather than drinking another matcha or another coffee.
And things like that have allowed us to, you know, make different kinds of content.
Sit down with our designer.
How can we get photos and videos in different settings?
And just constantly taking in that consumer information, whether it's from our customers, what we just see generally trending online and in the culture, and just being comfortable with that consistent reinvention, because that's the only way that you really build a legacy brand.
And I love that you are able to sort of reimagine the brand like that.
And Darian, you mentioned pivoting earlier before.
Is that sort of what you were alluding to?
Or maybe walk me through kind of what you meant around the idea of pivoting along the way when it comes to Sensory.
I was mainly talking about pivoting in a sense of operations.
On a daily basis, there is something going wrong.
Working with co-packers or vendors, there is always something, and we have to always think fast.
There are several examples, such as when we got our initial primary boxes when we were launching Sensory.
They were not the correct dimensions.
Like one was the correct dimensions and they fit our cans perfectly, but the other two didn't for our 12 packs and our 24 packs.
And I was like, we have to move forward with launching Sensory.
We cannot just depend on having these primary boxes when we do have secondary boxes that fit the cans perfectly.
We can't have another week where we push the customers that we own are delaying the launch because at some point it gets tiring when you want to buy a product and people are just now selling a story and not an actual product.
We sold out of our first version of Connect and this was, on accident, a video of us telling our story.
Shanna and her daughter went viral.
And then we went to Whole Foods as well and that video went viral and we sold out of Connect overnight.
So having to pivot and spin that into a story of how you know, We sold out of our brand in 115 days and making that a big splash.
But also in the background, realizing from an operational standpoint.
We can never let that happen again.
That means we have holes in our system.
And then one of the biggest things we had to pivot for was...
For CultureCon, we had, like, 2,000 cans shipped from Texas to New York.
And they come to my house that morning.
And I'm excited because they're there early.
I'm like, oh, my gosh, they're here a day early.
Like, I specifically paid extra for them to bring it to my door, for them to bring it inside.
Like, I was, like, telling the guy, it's just me.
Like...
I weigh 120 pounds.
What am I supposed to do with 2,000 hands that essentially weigh 2,000 pounds?
And he's like, well, I'm just the guy.
Like, what am I supposed to do?
And they take the product back.
And I'm like, we actually have an event in 48 hours.
And I actually paid extra money to have this delivered in a specific way.
Like I worked with the customer service.
I talked to everyone purposely on the phone.
And it's one of those things where I always say like, focus on what you can control and And so we start working together and I'm telling her you know, like I physically can't lift this.
I don't know.
What are the solutions here?
And I need this product to be back here in 24 hours because this is an event worth over $10,000.
And essentially what we work out is just hiring two men to help unload.
Two thousand on the street.
I mean, two men in a truck.
Really?
Quite literally.
Quite literally.
We also have videos of that.
The reason I try to stay grounded and stay calm and focus on what we can control is because my role is focused on everything that goes wrong.
Like I said earlier, and I have to be able to problem solve because I was like well, since I paid for all of these extra incentives, like I want a refund here.
And the guys were like, 75% cheaper than if we would have went with those incentives anyways.
So it's like honestly, a lot of times you just have to believe that the universe is giving you something better anyways.
And we ended up saving money and they were able to get the product into the house within an hour.
And then honestly, they helped us out in multiple ways for CultureCon and made several of our initiatives so much easier.
And then they became our friends by the end of it.
We.
I feel like when you focus on what you control, there's always like something that comes out of it that's for the greater good.
I could just tell by talking to you that you absolutely are an operator.
You figure it out.
You get things done.
And it makes a lot, a lot of sense why, you know, that's sort of your role in this business.
All right.
So Darian, as the numbers girly, you have to be able to help the company weather these unexpected challenges.
So I'd love to know how you use QuickBooks to this effect and like how does the done for you business tasks and the streamlined bookkeeping really help you free up your time to be brainstorming solutions instead of like getting caught in the weeds of the numbers?
I would say QuickBooks is like the foundation, the first foundation of our numbers.
All of our accounts, our credit cards, are linked to QuickBooks and I check it on a weekly cadence so that I'm able to like categorize all of our expenses.
And this just makes it really easy for me to work with, like our accountant, and provide them a clear visible, like insight into where our money is going.
It also is really important for me to be able to see like, where Our cash flow, what's going in, what's going out, where it's going, where we're breaking even and where we need to honestly hold back on our spending.
And I will say that recently, very exciting for me, we got Forecaster.
And Forecaster links to QuickBooks.
And so I'm able to feed in all of our real data into Forecaster and it just allows me, instead of just looking at what's historical, which is very important for me but right now I'm really focused on us building and scaling and seeing what we can accomplish really quickly in the future.
With QuickBooks.
As I've been working through my onboarding, it's just really important that it allows me to see what we're actually doing on a day-to-day and how that can feed into our actual forecast.
So, in terms of QuickBooks, I would just say that setting it up early and ensuring that, just like all of your financials are flowing into it, is imperative for you to be able to see both what is going on day to day, but also if you do really want to be able to scale your business in an efficient manner.
Setting up the infrastructure for your finances as a business owner.
I think it's such an important part of the whole foundation setting, if you will.
But it's a part that a lot of people skip in the beginning, because they're still wrapping their heads around like am I a real business?
Do I even have enough things to justify signing up for an accounting software?
And as someone who led a spreadsheet financial life for way too long as an entrepreneur and then having to like rebuild that system into QuickBooks, I realized like just how much more powerful you are when you have that data in real time and you have like the full picture of what's going on in your business.
You can be a lot more nimble.
I'll tell you what and I think this is a myth a lot of small business owners fall for, which is the oh, but I spent money, but it's a tax write off.
It's okay.
You know what I like?
I like those after tax profits.
I like money in my bank account after Uncle Sam takes his little bit there.
That's what I like.
But listen, I am so excited for sensory.
I'm excited to drink these and enjoy myself and really support the business here.
And I think non-alcoholic beverages are the way of the future.
We're seeing Gen Z, you know, kind of moving away from alcohol.
So how are you all setting sensory up for this awesome secular growth trend that is, non-alcoholic beverages?
What's next?
What are you all excited about?
I'll let the visionary, the CEO kind of paint the picture for us first.
Yeah, so I think we are extremely excited about just the future of drinking, because I think we are clearly seeing a shift in a society where people are drinking less alcohol, but they're not necessarily drinking less.
They're just being mindful about what they drink, how they drink.
And so it's a really exciting time for us because we're right sort of on the money with the trend.
And so we see ourselves as honestly just becoming the non-alcoholic option that feels really approachable, that feels really culturally resonant, because I think that's another important factor of sensory is sort of this, this persona that we create, where people almost see it as like kind of like this exclusive, like oh, I'm a part of the club.
And so, in the near future, what's next for us is continuing to grow our presence online, growing our community but, first and foremost, also really growing our distribution footprint.
And so in 2026, our big goal is to land our first big retail partnership.
Continue to be a part of cultural moments, like you know, South by Southwest, you know, create and cultivate big moments, Culture Con again, and just those big moments where we can really just be more than a beverage but also sort of like a cultural movement.
Yeah, it's really important for us to not just be seen as a wellness beverage.
Like we full heartedly plan to insert ourselves into the social scenes and just making it known that, like when you're out with your friends partying, you can also have an intentional option That's not alcohol but will still give you like a luxurious, sexy feel.
So you feel a part of the scene.
We do want wellness and our beverage to feel like accessible and that you can bring it to the spa with you.
You can buy it from a retailer, but you can also bring it out to the club with you.
The more we learn about the self-care moments or the social moments in which people may be reaching for something, we have the opportunity to then create a formula that meets that same energy or that same vibe.
Because the entire name of our brand Sensory.
We want it to be a very sensory experience, down to the felt sensation, down to the taste, down to the smell and the colors and the packaging.
So yeah, I think we're also just very excited in 2026 to get a little bit more creative and launch new SKUs and new flavors that can really meet more consumers where they are and whenever they are reaching for a beverage, no matter what.
You know, the alternative situation is
Y'all heard it here first sensory.
I can't wait to indulge my own sensory beverages here.
And I'm just rooting for y'all.
Y'all are so fun.
And I'm so excited to see the rise of your company.
And I can't wait to see what y'all are doing in five years from now.
No, we can't thank you all enough.
This has been so much fun.
So fun.
Thank you so much for being here.
Yeah.
Thanks so much for joining us on this episode of Mind the Business, Small Business Success Stories.
Yes, of course.
Thank you guys.
Okay, can we just like cheers to these three, because they are really.
They're killing it in every way possible.
I mean, I was loving all the positivity today, right?
I feel like sometimes you hear like these horror stories of like co-founders that have falling outs and like these three give me so much inspiration to be even more collaborative in my own business.
And Shanna had a great story about overcoming difficulties and her product is really helping people have fun and be healthy.
And we love to see it. overcoming difficulties i think is an understatement if i had ordered 5 000 cans and a thousand of them were just tipped over rolling around on the concrete here in front of my community that is definitely a difficulty for sure it's also a great reminder though that the world we live in is going to waver from crazy to calm and no matter what really the only thing you can do is roll with the punches and do your best to succeed where you can they mention control the controllables That's all we can do.
We can just control the controllables, take one step, left foot, right foot, breathe.
That's entrepreneurship.
Absolutely.
And now that we've given our audience plenty to think about, what do you think about us giving them something to do Austin?
I'm ready for it.
All right listeners.
Between now and the next episode, let's see if you can make a list of worst case scenarios, from realistic to apocalyptic, and analyze your readiness to deal with each crisis.
Identify who in your network or your team can be leaned on in the event of a major setback.
Also, identify those different areas that your business can pivot to in the event of a challenge.
And find at least five stories of overcoming setbacks, whether that's fictional movies and books, to personal stories from a mentor or a peer.
And think about what aspect of that story you can apply to your own business as well.
Well, that's it for today's episode.
You can find me on social media at YoQuieroDineroPodcast.
And you can find me at Austin Hankwitz.
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