So we have with us today the king of commerce, the titan of Target, the big man of the brand, Eric Ryan is here.
I feel like I can rule the world.
I know I can be what I want to.
I put my all in it like no days off.
On the road, let's travel, never looking back.
You are the co-founder, the inventor of products that sit on a lot of people's shelves.
There's some in my kitchen right now.
Method Soap, Ollie gummies that my kids have every day, Welly Band-Aids, and then your investor and a whole bunch more.
So you are here and you're kind of, the magic man when it comes to reinventing consumer categories.
So when we did our call before this, we agreed to do two things.
I said, I want to know your playbook.
How do you do this?
How do you go into the category and figure out which product to select and how to disrupt it?
And you have this like four-step process or whatever you outlined to me.
And the other thing is we agreed that we would each bring a couple of ideas and of kind of half-baked ideas of brands that we think an entrepreneur could go do.
And we're going to kind of pitch them back and forth to each other.
We didn't tell each other beforehand.
And so we'll see what we came up with.
How's that sound?
Amazing.
That sounds great.
And that is way too kind of an introduction.
So thrilled to be here.
And way too kind.
Thank you.
How big were some of these businesses, just so we understand the magnitude here?
They are – they're both probably getting close to billion-dollar brands now.
But would you go in and see like even 10 million of soap or vitamins sitting in a warehouse?
That's what always blows me away of like how many units we actually move of these products in that are sitting in people's homes today.
And I've been looking forward to this because I remember Sam used to host this conference called HustleCon.
And he would invite founders, entrepreneurs to come speak.
I didn't know your story at all.
I was sitting there in the crowd.
And I remember you got on stage and you talked about how you started Method, how you started Ollie, how you started Welly.
And you had all these little phrases.
You were like, I walked through the aisles and I look for, and I saw just a sea of sameness.
And you had a picture of the soap aisle or the dish soap aisle.
And it was like every single one was green and looked like you know green packaging and looked just like a old school, like my mom's cleaning product.
And then you had this like totally different shape of a bottle.
It was like, you know, blue or purple or whatever.
And it was, and it stood out.
And I remember the way you talked about it.
I really had never thought about how much thought goes into which category to go into.
How do you actually bring something fresh and new to the table?
And then how do you hustle to get it off the ground?
You had a great talk that day.
And so I know that was like, whatever, a decade ago.
But if we can get even close to that, this will be a success from my perspective.
And you said it in passing just now, but Method is probably a billion dollar brand now.
Olly Gummies is also...
Ollie, the vitamin company is also probably half a billion to a billion dollar brand.
And so that's pretty amazing.
And I think like one of the other claims to fame is Target loves you, don't they?
I feel like somebody told me this, they go, Target loves that guy.
I love Target.
So it's a mutual love affair.
You've like launched brands with them, like even from the start, right?
You have like a kind of a unique relationship with them.
Is that right?
I do.
I mean what we did back in 2002 when we pitched this idea of designer commodities.
It was at a time where no mass retailer worked with startups.
And so, through a lot of Hail Mary passes and some good luck, we were able to be the first to kind of go in there.
And it's been an amazing partnership ever since.
So can we do your process before we brainstorm the ideas?
I want to hear the process you outlined.
And I took a couple of notes so I can kind of prompt you.
But you basically had told me these four, three or four things that you do when you go in.
Because I was like, you've done this not once, not twice, but three times.
And I was like, can I nerd out with you a little bit?
Yeah, and as you can hear, I'm really annoying to go to a grocery store with.
To me, it's like the Super Bowl of Commerce.
So every time I'm in a mass retail or a grocery store or a drugstore, I'm always hunting.
So I came out of – I have a really simple model, and it was built off of this idea, of what I learned in advertising, which is how do you take a really deep consumer insight and translate it to great creative execution?
So my kind of core thesis as an entrepreneur is to look for these, like you said, these kind of white spaces where there's a sea of same-ness and it just kind of smells ripe to go in and do different.
And what I do is I look for a cultural shift or a big macro trend that that category has missed.
And then in between that and where the category is, is the business opportunity.
So in the case of Method, there was like two big cultural shifts I found.
One was this idea of lifestyling of the home.
This is back in 2002.
You look at a dish soap more than you use it.
Basically looking good on your sink.
So like I keep my method soap next to my faucet.
So just like looking good when it's on my counter.
Exactly.
Which is because you look at it more than you actually use it.
So it's a pretty meaningful part of the experience of buying a dish soap.
At that time, what else did you see where you're like, oh, that's new, that's new.
And then you applied that to dish soap.
So what else were people doing?
Where you noticed the shift before you did, it was really in personal care.
And so a lot of like, I always say like, I'm a bit of a thief too.
Like I don't steal from our competition, but I try to steal from as far away as possible.
So in method, there's two areas I stole.
I stole from personal care.
So if you looked at the colors, the fragrances, compared to like how home care, which was these like really toxic cleaners at the time?
So I brought a lot of that personal care approach over to home care.
And I also stole from the housewares.
I would always say, like I go to a department store, I look at the beauty aisle and then we'll look at the housewares aisle up top.
And so we stole like all these beautiful vase shapes.
And so we wanted these things to look like little objects of desire.
You know, sitting on your camera top.
Okay, so the first thing you said was you look for a cultural shift.
That's happening, that a category has missed.
So it's happening, and it's maybe happening elsewhere because what do they say about the future?
The future is here.
It's just not evenly distributed.
Oh, I love that.
So a shift has started to happen, but maybe it hasn't hit in the home care aisle yet, or hasn't hit in the –.
That's not an original.
A bunch of VCs like to say that one.
All right, so that's the first thing you do.
And are you looking for a new category or are you looking for a pre-existing big category?
What do you like to do?
So like some people would say, oh, that's already done.
It's already saturated.
I need to go find something that doesn't exist yet.
And they're making bets on what doesn't exist.
And it seems like what you did was you went into things that already existed and you weren't scared of the saturation or that it's already been done for 50 years.
No, that's right.
I think it's much easier to make money by creating an iteration of something that already exists.
Because then you don't have to drive all the consumer education to educate and explain something that's wildly new.
Living in London in the 90s, I was super inspired by Richard Branson, as many entrepreneurs are.
But what I liked about him, he had a model.
And I think that's what inspired me to create a model.
His model is an entertainment model, right?
So you go in these really unsexy industries like airlines and you would apply his entertainment model that he really understood well.
And so I was always inspired by this idea that if you looked at any successful serial entrepreneur, they typically had a model.
But what I also loved about Richard did is he went into really well-established categories that were easy to understand and just put his twist on it.
And so that very much became a lot of the way I thought about how I would approach entrepreneurship.
Yeah.
And then you talked about being a thief.
Can you give a couple examples there?
So you said I go to a big category.
I walk through the aisles, I look for the sea of sameness, I look for a culture shift.
Oh, sorry, you told me one other thing that was great.
You said something, you go, have they made it unnecessarily overcomplicated?
And you go, I think they're hiding something.
There's an insecurity there.
If they've made this product category feel overcomplicated, And another one was taking themselves too seriously.
Can you talk about those two attributes also?
Yeah.
So I think any type of category is taking themselves too serious.
As you said, they're probably hiding something, right?
There's like an insecurity there.
And so a lot of my model too is going into these categories that are unnecessary, complicated.
Can I really simplify it back, make it easy for the consumer?
And also I love categories that take themselves way too seriously.
And so I love to bring almost like an inner child approach into the categories that I create.
So if you look at method, it's kind of like what a kid would use to clean the kitchen.
If you looked at Ollie, like I got adults to take gummy vitamins, you know, in masses.
That didn't happen before.
With Welly, I got adults to wear, you know, bandages with patterns and colors on it, versus just the nude ones that are supposed to hide away with your skin but never really do.
And...
You know, what I try to do with that, the idea of a culture shift.
So if you look, if you look at method, it was both this idea of lifestyle, of the home, but also, at the time you know, you were asked to pollute when you clean or use poison to make your home healthier.
So there was this other big macro trend of health and wellness and sustainability.
But to your point, you know, it was showing up some categories, but it was yet to show up here.
So it's really connecting the dots on those trends and bringing it to new spaces.
That I find is kind of core to my model.
I saw that you said that one of your favorite ways to come up with ideas is to travel abroad.
We had this guy named Kevin Ryan on the podcast.
Kevin has founded this thing called MongoDB, which is like a $30 billion software business.
But very interestingly he also started Gilt, which is you know guilt group, the women's clothing thing.
And he was like, I got the idea for guilt when I went to France.
And I think I saw this thing called the Vendy.
I think I think it was called where it was basically like flash sales for clothing.
And so he would he talk about that as well of going abroad.
When you go abroad and you like travel, do you like?
Are you?
Are you going on trips just to find ideas?
Yeah, totally.
I think by far, for me, it's where I get my best ideas for a couple reasons.
One, I just think better when I'm in motion.
So, walking retail, with a cup of coffee in your hand, those ideas flow better than ever sitting at a desk.
Two is we do these like trend trips where we also take designers with us.
And so our goal is not only to spot ideas, but translate it immediately into a design idea that we can bring back.
But also when you're in a foreign country, you're jet lagged, which means nobody's bothering you.
I think you see, when you're jet lagged too, you look at things a little bit more fuzzier, which could be a good thing.
But also just opens up new pathways where you're walking retail where everything is foreign.
You don't understand the language.
And for me, trying to connect the dots between seeing what somebody's doing in one category could reapply that to another space is so much easier to do when you're out of your home market.
So what's an example?
So where would you go and what's an example of, maybe an idea you had while you were on one of these trend trips that turned into a success with one of your brands?
But we got Orla Kiley, who is really known for very expensive handbags and patterns, to do a collaboration with us at Target which, as far as I know, is the first ever designer collaboration.
And somebody who is known for very expensive items being able to bring those patterns into a product that sold for 3 and was the first time that Target ever did a designer collaboration at that price point.
So that was out of London, was a huge success.
There was a building we saw in Japan that we absolutely loved the way it was skinned.
We turned that into a hand wash design.
The shape of the building or what do you mean?
Yeah, it was like the texture of the building had this, it was in Tokyo and just had this incredible kind of like pillowed texture on the outside of it.
And we turned that as inspiration into a bottle.
And you're saying that like, really simply like oh, we saw the texture of a building in Tokyo and then it turned it into a hand wash.
Like that doesn't even, those dots seem really far apart.
Can you describe your actual process?
So you go to Japan, presumably, right?
Yeah.
You're then going to do what?
You just walk around?
He said the texture of the building.
That's like when you're on drugs, you're like, can you feel this building?
Wouldn't it be great if that was a bottle of soap?
Okay.
So I try to design everything like an object, because it's all about creating these little objects of desire, especially when you're doing it in a category like soap, that you have to buy and you're trying to turn into something you want to buy.
So I look at everything kind of through this idea of it's an object.
So I looked at a building.
The building looks like an object.
And it was easy for me to think about like, oh my God, that pattern, that shape, that texture is amazing.
What if that little object was sitting on a shelf at a store versus in the ground as a building?
So it's like trying to look for those types of patterns or um, the original method bottle was this camping fuel bottle i found in norway and i just love the shoulders on that that, that bottle.
So we translated that into our first, our first ever product, because we couldn't afford industrial designer at that point.
So i had to find something we could just uh, riff off of.
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You told me something that I loved.
You said, my favorite question when I'm doing these trips is, what if this but for that?
And you said something.
You go you know I'm trying to take one dot over here and then say what if that was connected to this dot over here?
And you said something cool.
You go, the further apart those two things are, the more powerful the potential idea.
Like it's not always going to work, but like if you just look at your competitors and you say oh, we could do that too.
That's not a very powerful idea.
But if you take something from a whole different country or industry or like different genre and you bring it to your genre, all of a sudden you have something right.
By the way, an example that just came to mind, I got a little kids and the most popular show right now on Netflix is K-pop Demon Hunters.
And they basically did like K-pop music but then like kids cartoon American kids cartoons which like wasn't what people were doing before.
Like you were doing Cocomelons, like a baby singing American nursery rhymes.
And, right now, the most popular songs for, like you know, five to eight year olds.
Half the lyrics are in Korean, but they love it.
And it worked.
And they.
You know they connected two different dots.
That seemed far apart, but it created a pretty powerful idea when it works.
Yeah.
And first of all, you make me really miss being able to watch cartoons with my kids because they're all older now.
I love that show.
And I think what you're describing is really, it's about creating creative tension.
And the more two disparate ideas are that come together, the more creative tension.
So Method was really the first to do Eco Chic.
So we brought together high design and deep sustainability.
Those were really two opposing ideas.
But by bringing it together, it created this creative tension.
And also when you have Creative attention, you create a deeper experience.
That also drives much more loyalty and people stay within the brand.
So that's exactly right.
So I try to look for the most two disparate ideas that could come together.
The other part that that unpacks is this idea of finding something that lives at the intersection of familiar and novel.
So if it's too familiar, right, it lacks complete differentiation.
If it's too novel, it's incredibly foreign and it becomes harder to get somebody to try it.
So I look for those ideas that bring together exactly what you just said of this creative tension, but there's enough familiarity in it.
You can jump into it, but there's enough novelty to it that it makes it a new experience.
And it's easy to say, but it's hard to find.
That's the art form, I think, of finding those intersections.
I'm not sure what percentage of Welly or Method Soap you would say was just the fact that it was a different colored Band-Aid or a different shaped bottle.
But if it's a high percentage, it's sort of insane.
That's kind of a hard...
You're like, it's almost like this seems too easy a little bit, right?
The more I try to innovate, the less successful I've been where I've moved more into that space of being too novel.
I think I feel more times by being too novel than being too familiar.
We launched the most amazing laundry detergent years ago.
It was 10x concentrated.
So it was the size of a shampoo bottle for 50 loads of laundry.
But because it was so small.
This was an idea.
I got out of Japan too, where I saw they had bigger laundry detergent, but they would use these almost like the Axe mouthwash, where you squeeze it, pre-measures it.
But we turned it into where you just pump it, a pre-measured dose.
But it was so hard to get consumers to believe that something so small could be so effective, because they've been trained forever that a giant jug of laundry detergent is what you need to get your clothes cleaned.
But yeah, I've always usually over-innovated when I fail, then under-innovated.
I think I saw a quote with you and Simon Sinek on his podcast.
He said, if it's hard, it's probably wrong.
And then he said, I know I have a good idea when I can't believe others aren't doing it.
I somehow think that there's a correlation between.
This sounds controversial, but there's a correlation between how hard I work, or how hard something is, and how much value a customer will get, or how valuable my business can get.
Yeah, there's kind of this golden rule and this came out of a lot of apparel and fashion which is if you change one thing, like if you do one iteration off of the core, you have a higher probability of success.
The second you change two or three things, you're most likely going to fail.
It's almost like an advertising we used to say if you throw a consumer an egg, they're going to catch it.
If you throw them two or three eggs, their chances are they're going to drop it because you're throwing too much change at them too fast.
Right. whether that's communication or a product.
But also I think we live in such a surplus world of endless ideas and choices that I think it creates this pressure to really sometimes over-innovate, to be too different.
And to your point of if it seems so obvious, then I would always get tripped up of like.
Well, why has nobody done this before if it's this obvious to me?
That's a really good insight.
That's a really good insight about the, you know, just change one thing.
Do you think that that applies across software companies or internet companies?
Or is that just commerce or fashion, like things that are more consumable and that I touch and feel and wear?
I think it applies to everything, whether you're launching.
I mean, even if you're within a B2B business, arguably you're just as distracted as a consumer as you are when you're, I think, I guess a real consumer.
And I don't know that world as well, but...
I would imagine again, just creating simple iterations off of a successful model is way more likely to succeed than trying to create something radically new from scratch.
Or when something radically new from scratch is started.
I mean think about, like in the social space of, you know MySpace, Friendster it was really the third that got it right.
But it's just kind of simple iterations off of that first model.
I did a call the other day with an AI company that's raised a ton of money.
And they have this huge valuation, basically a billion dollar valuation.
And they initially grew because in AI, AI is so hot.
There's so much attention that people are willing to try a bunch of things.
But now they're like, hey, how do we grow from here?
So they're like, hey, really respect your growth ideas.
We want to do a growth session.
I was like, I don't know, guys.
It's not really my, you know, like, I don't know if I can solve your problem, but cool.
I'll jump on a call.
And we get on the call.
And they start telling me all about this, all the stuff.
And I just kept asking the same question.
And I was like, cool.
So why would somebody choose to use you?
Like why?
Because most people today are using tool A.
You want them to switch to tool B And I was like awesome.
So like, why is tool B better than tool A?
And then they were like, oh, it's way better.
Like in all these other, all these different ways.
I was like, awesome.
So just like, tell me the one that like is the biggest one that would immediately convince me.
And they were like, well...
Well, there's not really like one.
And I was like, cool.
Okay, so let's say there's three.
Just tell me one of them first.
They were so focused on we're better that they forgot to say we're different.
Like, how are you better?
And like, they were trying to throw four eggs.
And I was like, none of those eggs were very convincing and they all just cracked on me, right?
And I wish they had just thrown me one egg that said listen for this type of person.
Here's the problem with the tools that you're currently using.
And we do it this way instead.
And I say that that would resonate.
That would be obviously the ideal scenario.
So I definitely think this applies to not just consumer products.
The only thing that comes from is just pure ego.
I think a lot of entrepreneurs, their ego gets in the way.
And so they almost intentionally overcomplicate it to show how special the product is, therefore how special they are.
And the best entrepreneurs I've always met are the ones who take incredibly complex ideas and simplify it down.
Then it's easy for consumers to get it, for their teams to execute.
I think that art form of simplification is the biggest hack in entrepreneurship.
The number of pitches I sit through.
I'm like you're intentionally overcomplicating this to justify evaluation or justify your specialness.
I think it is ego, but there is something strange.
I think that it's easy for you to think this because you've done it so many times, but there is something strange where it's like wait, so if I just change the color of the Band-Aids, it's going to win.
And that's obviously, you've done a lot more than that.
But within my company, with my employees, they'll be like, we have to do this, this, this, or this.
I'm like, but what if we just...
Like don't do any of that and just make better ads.
Or you know, like you just like, just do one thing.
But for some reason that's hard to conceptualize that like just a minor change on one thing can create a significant amount of value because you think to yourself, I have to work $1 billion worth of work or put $1 billion worth of effort in order to have a $1 billion idea.
But it's oftentimes it's not the reality.
Yeah.
Can we do an example here with... You talked a little bit about method.
I want to talk about Oli.
Maybe it's because I take it every day.
Maybe my kids take it.
So it's very in my life.
And you went into the vitamins category.
So let's imagine... Let's take you back.
I don't know what year this was.
You walked into the vitamins category...
You're looking there and you see, you know, a bunch of sort of nature-made type of looking things.
You've got maybe Flintstone vitamins just still hanging on for dear life.
And you saw an opportunity.
I just want to give you one prompt, which is he said something on the pre-call that was hilarious, Sam.
He goes, I went into the aisle and I saw, okay, cool.
You know, first thing I observed, all of them were round.
So I thought, okay, I guess we're going to have a square packaging.
And I just thought that was literally the funniest way of like, well, I guess that's that then.
Everybody's round, so we must be square.
If everybody was square, then we would have been round.
It's as simple as that.
And there was no focus groups.
It was like, yeah, they're all round, so we had no choice but to be square.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
And the other thing I remember was vitamins used to be like a game of inference.
So it would say, you know, whatever, vitamin D, but you don't know what vitamin D does, right?
You'd have to then know what is the purpose of vitamin D, or what is the purpose of melatonin, or what is the purpose of I don't know, whatever the thing that puts you to sleep.
But you guys just wrote sleep.
And he wrote like, you know, immunity, right?
Like you just wrote the benefit instead of the feature.
And I was like, oh, that was also quite simple of a change to make.
Can you talk about, take us back.
You go, you walk into that aisle or I don't know how it actually started, but.
Yeah.
So.
So I sold Method, but I still involved.
And first of all, for the first time in my life, I'm a pretty optimistic, happy, by default person.
But for the first time in my life, I felt a little royalist because I was like, I'm an entrepreneur.
And suddenly, I did not feel like an entrepreneur anymore.
I was working for somebody else.
And I was also doing a project for Target to create what we called Made to Matter.
And the goal was to get them to have credit for having all these natural brands.
And so we were looking for these brands that connected with millennial moms, and we couldn't find any.
We couldn't find one for the vitamin category.
So I just went and literally walked the aisle.
And first thing I noticed was people stressing out, trying to choose something that was healthy for them.
Since I think I was studying the aisle, people assumed maybe I knew what I was doing.
And so like people would just randomly ask me like, do you know what magnesium is for?
Um, it was, they were just like standing here staring at us.
Just lost people in that aisle.
And it was a dog's breakfast.
It was really hard to shop.
The brands were super inspiring.
The packaging was terrible.
So that was the clue dig here.
And so the first thing I tried to figure out, I was like, all right, what is kind of going back?
What is that big cultural shift this category is missing?
And what I figured it out was it was really millennials view health and wellness as a lifestyle pursuit.
And the clue for me and kind of what you said earlier of like you start seeing these trends in one area, the clue is really SoulCycle.
And the way that SoulCycle had repositioned fitness into something that was almost spiritual.
But I love the branding of SoulCycle, the name, the whole identity.
And so my inspiration a little was like, all right, what would the SoulCycle of vitamins look like?
And if we reimagine a vitamin as a lifestyle product, so then to your point, it's like all right well, it's got to be a square pack.
And then I always want to design everything to have like a.
So again, it's really designed as a product, not a package.
So I wanted to design it like a jar, something you would want to leave out.
Because if you left it out, you most likely remember to keep taking it.
But also like it actually had like intrinsic value.
And then I realized, okay, well, we have to put a giant cap on it.
So we might as well make the cap the logo.
So then the whole idea and this flowed really within a matter of probably days the idea that it would be a square jar with a white cap, and that's what would make it iconic.
And then it just started quickly flowing from there of like well, everybody else is selling like, why sell biotin?
Why not just sell beauty?
Why sell melatonin?
Why not sell sleep?
And do these really unique blends.
And again it was all the spirit of really making this thing easier to understand, that almost you know again, turning a vitamin into something you have to buy, into something you want to buy in this little like object of desire.
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We didn't talk about the hustle that it takes to make them happen, because there's, like the artist brain that you're talking about.
You're like, so then I took the roof of the Japanese hut I was staying in and that became the lid.
And then I did this and I did that.
But now you just have a product idea at that point.
A box.
But like, you know, the cool thing about you.
A beautiful box though.
Don't get me wrong.
The best box.
The best box.
People love this box.
So you but you know all entrepreneurs.
They're typically not like the best in the world at a single thing, but they're like pretty damn good at a couple of unrelated things.
I'm going to keep showing up in some way that, like other people, would have given up five days ago, but I was still here.
And that was the thing that gave me the break.
You know you're top 20 in two different things, rather than being top 1 or top 01 in a single category.
I'm just assuming that.
Is that true?
And are there any stories of the hustle that it took to get to get into the stores?
Actually get the momentum?
Yeah, super true.
It is funny.
As an entrepreneur, I think a lot about energy flow.
And when I'm working on something, if it's giving me energy back, then I know it's right.
And to your earlier comment of if it's hard, it's wrong, that's a lot of the way.
And I'm working on a concept right now that I've literally been pushing water uphill.
It's been painful as far as trying to, but last week it broke.
I'm like, oh, there it is.
Now it's flowing.
Like I can't stop working on it right now because it's energy giving, it's flowing.
The narrative is like beautifully coming together.
Each insight's unlocking the next.
But in that case, like I had to push water uphill for like the last six months on this concept.
Trying to get it to a place where suddenly, like, I can see it now.
And then hopefully other people will see it.
But to your point of execution, like, at the end of the day, like, ideas are easy.
Like, execution's the hard part.
So, with Method, I think that was where we had, because we had.
You know, Adam and I were two guys in a dirty flat in San Francisco with like zero experience on how to make or sell anything.
And um, I think, where that persistence really paid off is we had to sell it into these you know local San Francisco grocery stores where the manager made the decision.
So you would just show up at 6am and you're, like you know, frumpy manager and you got you know quickly.
You've got literally three minutes to like pitch your idea for this new premium cleaning uh uh cleaning brand.
And I realized a lot of ways selling was just really this transfer of emotion.
Like, I don't think he ever believed in the product that we're selling.
Um, But you got to get them to believe in you.
And, in some cases, believe that you're going to keep showing up until he says yes to that persistence.
But it's really that emotion, that energy that's contagious.
And it's finding it first in what you're building that you love.
So then you can share that with other people and have the energy to keep going when things get hard, which of course they will.
Do you look at a company like a project?
Like this is my art project and I'm going to jump from thing to thing to thing.
Do you acknowledge like or are you more of a are you more operational?
I both.
I'm a project guy at heart.
I love the start, middle and finish of creating something.
But also to build great companies, the operating side of it is so important.
My core philosophy of building companies is this idea of artisan operators.
So I want to build companies that have incredible imagination creativity, that can innovate but also run a really good, predictable business with great supply chain finance controls.
And doing both.
If you think about it, there's so few companies in the world Apple, Nike that do both really, really well at scale.
And so I try to build teams and cultures that have this idea of being great artists and operators.
But I do at the heart of it.
I do love.
I heard Tim Kugel, who was on my board, say once he referred to Yahoo as a project which he started as employee number six, the CEO scaled it through an IPO and beyond.
And when he referred to Yahoo as a project, I thought that was pretty cool.
Do you have like an open check from Unilever or Target and they're just like whatever you got going on, get after it and come see us in two or three years and we'll look at the traction and we'll just buy your company.
I wish.
If it's that easy, but no.
In his chair with a cat on his arm, right?
I mean, we've had a lot of success, but we've had a lot of failures as well.
Every one of them is hard and hard in their own way.
I do.
So I'm moving over.
I joined Greycroft, and we're launching a new Greycroft Consumer Brands Fund.
So I'm moving into the VC space.
And kind of what you're talking about too.
I realize my superpower of working with entrepreneurs is to help infuse them in energy.
Because I've sat in their shoes so many times, I understand how hard it is.
And so I love now not being the quarterback on the field always throwing the passes, but actually being the coach on the sidelines and coaching these young founders.
And it's just a thrill to do that now.
You told me something kind of amazing.
You said that you went on your trend trips, let's say to Tokyo or wherever you're going, and you took some people from Target with you during this kind of like brainstorming phase.
But you had this system that was kind of like going to wow them.
Can you tell this story about how the 24-hour cycle that you had that would like wow them?
Yeah, I mean a lot of people.
You know trend trips are quite common within consumer, especially among retailers.
The problem is you come back with all these amazing photos and then you're buried in your inbox and meetings you've missed and usually it goes nowhere.
So the process that we found worked really well is we'd kick off every trend trip with like okay here, you know, ground ourselves.
These are the big macro trends.
And then we'd hire somebody on the ground for Asia or Europe and we would go to all of like the most influential retail that was occurring in that market.
But everybody had almost like a scavenger hunt.
You had an assignment.
By the time we got to that pub at five o'clock to sit down for a happy hour, everybody had to have multiple ideas that they were excited about while being in the field.
And then we would talk about it.
We would pick a couple.
And then, as we're going to dinner, I would call it into our creative team, who's sitting in San Francisco where it's morning.
And then they would have all day to work on the brief that we just gave them.
They would send it at the end of their day.
We would wake up.
And then at breakfast, we would present what looked like polished products, ideas to Target.
And so by the time we got on that plane to go home, we actually had sold in new products.
That's like how South Park makes an episode.
Have you guys seen that?
Where Matt and Trey will write all day and then they'll send it to their Korean editing team, and then the next morning they're like oh cool thanks.
And they run with it.
I saw the podcast version of this, Sam.
So we do a thing where, whenever we have a guest on or like especially when we do them in person we will bring a gift.
And cause I was just like, oh, you know, like this person took time out of their day.
They did this.
Like, I want this to feel like a great experience.
Like what makes a great experience when you, when you have, when you, when you are with somebody.
I think giving a gift is a nice thing.
Right.
Steve Bartlett, who's another podcaster.
He, he was on Jimmy Fallon the other day and Jimmy was talking about how his experience on the show.
He goes, you guys do this incredible thing.
I did the podcast with you.
And when we got up and the episode was done, Somebody from your team came and handed me this book and it's a photo book of printed photos from the podcast that they were just doing, like moments earlier.
And he was like, I've never seen anything like this.
And this guy's been doing TV production with Hollywood stars for years.
But like that creating, like going a little bit extra to create a wow.
And in that case it's the speed of the turnaround, similar to what you were saying with your the speed of the turnaround.
I'm sure a lot of people will come up with mock-ups or product ideas two weeks later at a follow-up meeting.
But the emotion's gone.
And then the wow factor is gone.
At that point, doing it in the 24 hour cycle is is that little extra, that entrepreneurial juice that, like I think, most people wouldn't, wouldn't even think to go?
They wouldn't, they would think that's, that's there's an invisible fence that you can't do that.
Well, it's like living in that state of make.
And also, I love that line by Steve Jobs of, I trust people, just not in groups.
And so it allows you to keep a really small team that's agile, that isn't overthinking things and just living in that state of make.
And that's where magic – and I'm such a huge student of SNL and how Saturday Night Live their entire creative process any of the former – actors.
On it that's written an autobiography.
I've listened to.
I think I know it by heart now of what they do Tuesday morning through.
But there is something so powerful about being in that state of make.
And now that we have between AI and digital tools where we can build and make things in such real time, I think it's even more powerful.
And it's also where you see real talent versus people who don't know how to actually do anything.
They know how to manage.
And so it's a place where builders and doers really thrive and managers kind of just get in the way.
I don't know if we should do it right now, which maybe have a part two, but it would actually be awesome.
I never realized for, like you know, Sean has an econ brand and for all the people who are in the more physical space, it would be really fun to see how you use AI to ideate.
That would be really interesting.
I never thought about, you know, folks making physical products being able or not being able to use it.
I'm so bad with ChatGPT right now.
Like last night, I used it as a whole creative team and partner.
It's absolutely amazing what you can do now.
I want to get to the brainstorm.
So we did promise.
I basically said outline your method and then let's use the method to try to come up with some ideas, which I think is fun.
Living in the state of make on the podcast too, right?
Because how many podcasts would actually try that?
Okay, so just to outline, your process was find a big category, ideally an already big category, so you don't have to educate the consumer about something new they haven't thought about buying.
You want to find a sea of sameness where everybody's kind of doing the same thing.
You want to look if there's a cultural shift elsewhere that hasn't applied to this category.
Ideally, it's something that's overly complicated.
They're taking themselves too seriously.
Then to come up with your idea, you'd be a thief.
You find unrelated things.
You say, what if we did that over here?
And you're trying to come up with a single stroke that cuts through the noise.
That might be your packaging or your colors, your positioning, whatever it might be.
The square bottle when everybody else is round.
Um, and then you got to hustle to get the momentum going.
All right.
So I came up with a couple of half, I'm calling these half baked ideas.
I don't think there, I think one might be good, but the others are, are, uh, are pretty tough.
Uh, did you have a chance to come up with some?
And if so, let's, we'll go back and forth.
Yes.
Yep.
I got a couple.
Okay, I'm going to pitch you one, and then I want you to give me the thumbs up, the thumbs down.
Feel free to be brutally harsh.
It makes for better content.
All right.
All right, I think this first idea I think is genuinely good.
The other ones I don't really have a lot of faith in, but this one I genuinely believe in.
All right, so I think about products that my mom takes that I'm going to take.
Because humans are not like.
The world feels like it's changing really fast, but biologically we're not changing that fast, right?
And so when I see my parents, I'm seeing a future window into what I might look like, or things that they prioritize that I don't really think about today.
And my mom was just over at my house.
And one thing my mom takes religiously is fiber.
She drinks fiber every single day.
And I'm in a world where I hear about gut health and microbiome and fancy stuff.
But she's like I need to take this to poop, okay.
So that's what I'm gonna do.
And I need to take this to poop.
You got that?
I'm like, yeah, that's simple enough.
And so then I looked at the brands that she's using and I walked through the aisle.
So, preparing for this podcast, I went to the grocery store And I walk through and I see Metamucil, which to me sounds like a disease.
I see Benefiber, which sounds like an Obamacare, you know, spinoff.
And I just thought the brand, the leading brands in the fiber category, I think, are completely outdated.
But I do think that there's something familiar about fiber.
So like I get pitched a lot of products that I don't really know if they'll work or not.
But if somebody said hey, this increases the fiber in your diet, I would personally have pretty high conviction that that's like good for me.
I just don't want to take a grandma product right, because that's not really – I would feel unhealthy taking the product.
So I want a fiber brand that I feel like I'm – the same way when I take, you know, protein or amino acids or something that's like yeah, I'm trying to be peak performance right now.
And so I want to reinvent the fiber category.
That's the point of view.
And I have an idea for how to do that, which is to get out of this kind of grandma product category and do a fresh take on fiber.
Sharks, where does that land with you?
Well, let's start with the space, because if it's the wrong category, then it's pointless to go any further.
I think he found great white space.
I agree.
Fiber is the new protein.
As protein gets more and more saturated, we're seeing huge growth across all areas of higher fiber.
The place I would look is, if you walk Costco, and what fiber products are available there.
And you're right, it's the legacy brands.
Nobody's really put... a fresh spin on it.
You could do it, like, where would you steal from?
I would steal from juice bars of.
Like that wellness, appetite appeal like a green juice.
Like what does a green juice, a modern green juice look like as a fiber product?
And then you can innovate on flavors around it.
And the other thing is, it's a really great margin category.
I have this friend.
Do you guys know what Kegel exercises are for men?
I don't know how to do it.
You're supposed to squeeze something inside, but what?
The few women who listen to this, they know what that is.
All four of you, listen up.
This part's for you.
For the men.
People apparently do Kegel exercises so they don't premature ejaculate, basically during sex.
I think that's the main thing.
I've got a buddy who made a... That's commitment, by the way.
Well, I've got, yeah, yeah.
Like you must, you really need it.
And I have a friend who created a Kegel exercise app for men and he was like promoting this.
And I was like, man, I see why young or any man wants this.
That's great.
It sounds like you're doing great for the world, but...
My honor costs too much.
I don't want to be an influencer or a promoter for this.
And I wonder if there's like a little bit with fiber where it's like I don't know if I want to talk about, like you know, pooping more.
So I did think about this and I have two possible angles.
We either lean in or we swerve out.
Okay, lean in.
Here's the lean in path.
The lean-in path is going to be, look, poop is – yeah, poop is poop.
It kind of could be funny.
And so I actually pitched this to our friend who came on the podcast, Hasan Minhaj.
I said, Hasan, I got a product for you.
Because I was like this guy is so funny that like his ad creative would be – like would perform better than anybody else's ad creative.
And it's almost like you know any celebrity who hawks a product.
There's a little bit of sellout nature.
And so it's almost – funny to sell out for something that's like so clearly silly and in that way that it might actually work for him.
Like, he gets a license to, like, promote the product because it's kind of a silly product.
So one way is to lean in and actually have a comedian who you kind of have as a face of the brand.
That actually leans into the fun of it.
The dude wipes so well executed.
Right, Manscaped leaned into the use case.
All right.
So then there's the swerve out path, which was you're right, maybe it's not about, maybe it's not about.
Maybe the framing is a little more on metabolism or digestion.
Can you use a different word?
Because I don't know anybody that wants worse metabolism.
Yeah, like cleaner system.
And I've never heard really of that many products that like talk about.
Like this improves your metabolism, right.
And so you get away from the sort of like, the lower intestine area.
And you sort of like you move up towards more like the stomach and you get a little away from the gross stuff and you talk about metabolism.
So those are my two ideas.
I love it.
And what I would do, if I were you, I would then create two very different concepts around that.
So I would do like dude wipe potpourri approach that just unbashfully claims that function.
And then your point, then I would go to a really elevated, almost like beauty-like approach.
And then what would you do?
Would you test those in some way or you just look at it and feel which one feels right?
Like what would you do once you come up with the two very disparate concepts?
So I like to solve the work in the creative.
And so I take those two concepts.
I'd work with a designer and creative team, really bring them to life.
And then first I'd be like, what one am I most excited about?
Back to that idea of energy, like which one am I like personally excited?
I would share it with friends and family because if they don't like it, why would anybody else?
And then, if I was really torn, I'd do consumer auditions, not for the consumer to like choose A versus B, but just so I can hear feedback from consumers, like in a qualitative focus group, to help kind of guide my decision of which direction I want to go.
And then I would also put it in front of retailers.
I don't ask the buyers.
I think most people go into buyers with the intent of like, I'm going to sell to you.
I'm here to prove myself versus I'm here to improve myself.
And when I sit down with buyers I always try to go in and improve and really invite their feedback into the process.
That's interesting.
Consumer auditions.
I've never heard that.
That sounds good.
I like that.
That sounds way cooler than focus groups.
All right, Rookie.
What do you got to pitch, Eric?
Let's hear it.
So I'm going to pitch arguably one of the most important institutions in America and arguably one of the lost institutions of America.
And that is the American diner.
At one point, these beautiful silver, and it was really the first third place before Starbucks.
And in a world where, more and more, I think, we'll see a backlash to AI of understanding what is real and what is not, we're going to want these places of human connection and just deep authenticity.
And there's also no better place than to really start your day.
So my pitch is, I'm going to go back to SoulCycle again.
I would create the SoulCycle of the diner.
It would only be open from morning through lunch.
So it's one shift.
So it's a really good academic model.
But when you walk into it, it feels incredibly vibrant.
So I would do probably like the entire thing would feel almost like a modern barn of like white B-board with yellow accents.
I would have a standalone grab-and-go juice bar, coffee bar, But the rest of the restaurant would be how a diner is set up, where it's all stool bar seating.
But I would have it so it moves throughout.
So the counter, there's no separate tables.
The counter kind of flows so you can get everybody around the counter for that communal, but also so it's really efficient for the staff too to move through it.
And then when you pop in at 7 a.m., like, it's popping.
Like, it's got great, great energy.
It's just a place you would want to start every morning with that level of optimism.
So the seating is kind of like those sushi bars where they wrap around, like you know, those conveyor belt sushi bars.
You're sort of stealing from that but applying that to the American diner.
Yes, there's that, I forgot the name of it that Parisian restaurant where the entire restaurant is built like a counter, but the counter kind of meanders, so you have a full view of the kitchen.
And it's very communal.
It's in and out.
You don't have to seat anybody.
And it's also about creating this amazing energy.
So what I would want to do is take on Denny's and IHOP with that model.
That's awesome.
I have a – since we're in a creative brainstorm here, I got a what if for you.
I got a how might we for you.
You know what I mean?
I feel like I need a hacky sack or something creative with me here.
Okay.
So in mobile gaming, I tried to make a mobile game once.
And so before I even made the game, I went and talked to a couple guys who made really popular mobile games.
And I sat down and I showed them a prototype.
And they go, oh, dude, you have a TTF problem.
And I was like, I don't know if that's an STD.
I don't know what you're talking about, but I don't want a TTF problem.
But I'm sure, I'm absolutely certain I have one based on the way you just he was like disgusted with my app.
Or you're like, oh, thanks.
Like I worked really hard.
Do I have too much or too little?
Which way do I go?
So he was basically saying the most important metric in a mobile game success is TTF, time to fun.
So basically, from the moment I click the button to open the app, How long does it take for me to have some fun?
Because I was like, cool.
Open the app.
Registration screen.
Sign up.
Give me your email address.
How about your phone number?
Would you like push notifications?
Would you like me to remind you?
It's like you haven't even tried the app yet, right?
You're like, what's my TTS?
It's like, never.
The fun never came.
There was no fun.
And he was showing me, like you know, if you open up, like Mario is one of the classic examples of this.
Like if you start Mario first level, there's no tutorial.
There's no, nothing like Mario starts in a small Goomba, starts walking towards you and the easiest enemy to defeat.
And if you jump on his head, you get a satisfying like, yeah, I squashed that bug.
And then the next thing you do is there's a brick above your head.
You jump up, you punch it and you get a coin.
You jump and punch the next one.
You think it's a coin.
No, a mushroom comes out.
You're like, oh my God, do I want this?
And you go get it and you grow.
And so in the first 15 seconds of Mario, you have learned all the controls.
You've defeated an enemy.
You've gotten money and you grew bigger and stronger.
And it's like the greatest first 15 seconds of your life.
So I have an idea for you because I went to a diner this weekend.
Wait, hold on.
Can we use like a time to fun?
Like that's a new metric I'm going to use for everything now.
Whether you're like it is like getting a restaurant airline.
My marriage, like time to fun, is off right now.
But it's like, yeah, removing all the friction to get to that experience.
Time to fun.
Can I front load a little bit of the fun?
I'm not going to give you all of it, but can I get a piece of it here now?
Because I need to hook you.
And so I thought I went to a diner this weekend.
And from the time we got there and we were all excited to get there and my kids wanted pancakes and all this good stuff.
To the time we actually had anything fun, like any food or drink on the table was like 22 minutes.
And I get it.
They were totally busy.
But I wonder if there's some way where right when you walk in.
There's something because right after the diner, we went to Costco.
And right when we walked in, there was like a Costco sample person.
And my kids got something and they were like, hey, what is this place?
We like this place.
Because they instantly got like a cracker when they walked in.
And so I just wonder if, with the diner, you could do one thing, which is like eliminate the weight and bring that TTF down, which is what we want.
We want low TTF.
I love that.
Okay.
So what I think is, like you know, like Dunkin' Donuts and Munchkins, we do like a really great like – gourmet cinnamon munchkin.
So when you walk in, like it's almost like a sample, you grab a munchkin as you walk in to go sit down, so you get that first, like little taste.
Do they have a smell too?
Because that would be nice double to get, to get two senses.
But you can do a smoothie shot next to it.
So it's a tray of smoothie shots and munchkins.
So it gives you that little – and also takes the edge off your customers while they're waiting as well.
So the wait time will never feel as long.
I love that.
Two other little culinary steals maybe.
Okay, one other steal we could do.
Five Guys, they have the barrel of peanuts, which I think is kind of what you're talking about.
You go in and there's just free peanuts you can scoop.
Again, I love that.
Who doesn't love that?
It's great theater.
My first business was a sushi restaurant and a traditional sushi restaurant.
When you walk through the door, the entire kitchen staff.
They don't turn to you, but they hear the door chime go and they go like the whole crew is like oh, what's up?
It's basically like the Japanese what's up.
And it basically means like a customer is here.
Like, hey, like pay attention or whatever or welcome.
I don't even know what it means, but like that's what they all say.
I think you could also like kind of, if you talk about soul cycle, I think there's a way to make the experience of the customer interesting when you walk in.
Like I just wonder what ritual we could have when somebody walks through the door.
That would be welcoming and unique and interesting as well.
We're just such neat.
We're so neat.
We're Neanderthals.
Like you know, we're going to talk about, like Aristotle and the philosophy of life and all this stuff.
And it turns out you just kind of throw a bunch of nuts at my face when I walk in to get a burger.
Dude, I love a good high five.
Yeah.
You just got to say what's up in Japanese.
I'm like, I'm good.
I mean, you can picture the playlist in this place, right?
Of like the best morning music.
And there's something of like they hit something and like a good morning.
Good morning comes over as people walk, as each time somebody walks in the door.
Right.
I love that time.
I'm so fascinated with time to find out.
I think about like vacations.
Like going skiing, time to fun can be really low.
You're schlepping to get to the hill.
That sucks.
Yeah.
But everything now I'm going to measure in TTF.
Well, like you know, you arrive in Hawaii and they give you the lei right when you get out the door, right?
Like a hotel check-in process, right?
So that normally the fun is when you get to maybe your room.
In Hawaii, as soon as you get out of the door, lei, blue drink.
Fun instant.
Sean, do you just have like a notepad of like all low, like do you have a ranking of low TTF?
Well, he said travel.
So it just, you know what I mean?
Creative savant brain.
Well, the arrival.
My wife and I say there's nothing better than arrival drinks.
Yeah.
Like that's the best moment of a vacation.
Would you ever get into a non – I mean you've done the same category forever.
Would you ever get into a restaurant business or something that's not what you've done?
Well, I just tried building a retail business and –
I think what we built was amazing and I was super proud of it.
And it was working with the consumer.
It was just impossible to fund in this current capital cycle.
So what I try to do is reinvent the American jewelry store.
And my theory was I always wanted to do retail where I could geek out on every expression, from the playlist to the scents which we did.
And even the way you're greeted and I'm a huge student of, like Danny Meyer and the way he thinks about it at each restaurant, like 15 seconds right to be greeted.
And even the service manual, where does the salt and pepper go?
And how do you think every detail through?
But when you walk into a jewelry store, I found it to be like The most intimidating experience, like you never felt like he belonged there.
You had to like ask for the world's smallest price tag to be turned over.
And then you have to give a reaction to something you thought was 5,000, but it's actually 50,000.
And the insight there was women self-purchasing is driving growth in fine jewelry, but nobody was really creating a experience for them.
So we created this brand called Cast.
We opened up three stores in the Bay Area.
And I wanted Willy Wonka pure imagination to play in a consumer's head when they walked in and feel like a kid in a candy store again.
But again, being able to sign leases, build out stores, omni-channel.
We had an incredible partnership with Nordstrom, who put capital in the business.
But it was so capital-intensive that a path to profitability changed.
And then raising capital in this market was just incredibly, incredibly difficult.
So that's one of those situations.
You're like all right, I'm sitting at the wrong.
Tony Hsieh would say.
Sometimes you got to move poker tables.
And just I'm at the wrong table.
And gold pricing was spiking.
Diamond pricing was crashing.
You couldn't sign a lease in these A-class because LVMH should eat up so much of these leases.
So I realized it was just back to if it's hard, it's wrong.
How long did you work on it until you were like, all right, it's dead?
I worked on it from launch to it's dead three to four years.
Oh, a lot.
Yeah.
We worked hard at it.
It was a fun business, like designing jewelry and incredible culture.
Our team, Issa Bray was part of it.
And we were on the White Lotus season two.
The cast was wearing our product.
We had a profound mark on the industry in a very short amount of time, but it just was a business that nobody wants to put capital into, unfortunately.
And there's never been really great access.
It's not like the easiest pitch at the moment.
Like, okay, so how are you an AI company?
Yeah, I mean, it's not like very appealing.
You know, he has like great phrases.
He had one on this when he was talking about the jewelry shop.
He goes...
It was like a plane made of gold.
It was a great idea, but it was like a plane made of gold.
It couldn't get lift off.
It couldn't get off the ground.
It was too heavy.
It just could not get airborne.
But if you look at it, it's Cast Jewelry, our store.
I mean, I was super proud of what we built, but I picked the wrong space to try to innovate in.
All right, let's take a quick break because I got to tell you a story.
Let me tell you about the first time I tried to run payroll for my team.
I was using a traditional bank, and you know the type.
It's got a janky interface.
It's built like a 2002 tax form, and it was open only during business hours.
And I hit send, and it froze.
They flagged the transaction.
They locked my account.
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Do you want to tell them more of your horrible ideas?
Yeah.
Okay.
I got another one here.
You think I had one bad idea?
I'm a volume guy.
No, your first one is a great idea.
I would invest.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right.
So now here's... It's about to fall off a cliff here.
Okay.
So I walked through the grocery store looking for that sea of sameness.
And honestly, like...
You know, shout out to the grocery store.
There wasn't a whole lot of categories that I saw.
One that stood out to me because I'm looking for everyday products.
I'm looking for repeat purchase.
I'm looking for everybody buys this, but I'm looking for something where there's not a brand.
I don't have a favorite brand.
I don't have, even like I don't even couldn't even tell you the name of four of the brands in the category.
That's kind of what I was looking for.
So I'd like to introduce you to my company, White Label Chicken LLC.
And White Label Chicken LLC is getting into the chicken game.
And what we're going to do is we're going to white label someone else's chicken.
So we're going to take chicken from somebody else.
We're not going to get into farming, but we're going to put our own brand on it because they're like Sam.
What's your top three favorite chicken brands?
I don't know.
Don't know.
Eric, you got a favorite chicken brand?
We're talking about like packaged chicken.
Packaged chicken.
You're going to go buy like breast meat or whatever.
It's like nine bucks for the little mini tray.
Yeah.
That's a real, that's a, we're inspiring name.
Well, we're not getting the front facing brand is not white label chicken.
It's a, it's a working title.
And so we're white label chicken LLC.
And so then I don't even know the angle yet.
I, all I knew was I can't believe there's no like, like there's no Oatly for chicken.
No, I mean like there's there's no there's, no.
I can't believe.
There's just not a favorite like, not like distinct chicken brands that stand for something and mean something, like whether it's whether it's about the flavor or preseason, whether it's about like this is man's chicken and you're going to get your protein from this meal, like this is what we do.
We give you a little extra.
I don't know what it is, but I just kind of saw that white space and I wanted to open the floor to you gentlemen, to help me kind of workshop this.
This is where it goes familiar and novel.
So this is very familiar.
So how do you add novelty?
It's interesting.
You're right.
As soon as it gets put in a dinosaur shape and breadcrumbs around it, it becomes dino nuggets.
It becomes incredibly well-branded.
Or it gets served at a restaurant as a sandwich, Chick-fil-A.
But the chicken itself.
Foster Farms did a pretty good job of this. out in California, but it was really not the product.
It was just their advertising was so good.
Right.
That could be did years ago.
Okay.
So I think you got to go back.
I would sell, I would turn it into an origin story.
I wouldn't sell the chicken.
I would sell the farm.
And I would create this... That sounds so smart.
That just sounds cool.
I wish I had said that.
As if Don Draper wore hoodies.
Don't sell the chicken.
Sell the farm, baby.
I might say that to my wife later today in any context.
Eric, do you have a pack of cigs that you could light up right now?
If you took out a cigar right now, you would be the coolest man I've ever met in my life.
Put your feet up, smoke a cig, and tell me about selling the farm, not the chicken.
Because we don't want to think about the chicken because we murdered it.
Right.
We want to think that the chicken had a good life on this farm before it was killed.
Right.
That's going to make us feel good about the quality of the chicken.
It's going to make us feel good about the chicken's short life.
And so I would build the whole brand around this heavenly farm for chickens.
And What if we create an Instagram account?
We actually pour all our energy into the Instagram account of this incredibly aesthetic farm.
And it's like Truman Show.
It's just totally a set.
Because again, we're White Label Chicken LLC.
So I'm starting with inauthenticity here.
But I'm just thinking, what if we... what if you started with the social?
You just made everybody's favorite farm.
And then from there you're like of course, if you're gonna buy chicken, you'd buy it from your favorite farm.
Dude, I have a, I've got a friend that exited a multi-billion dollar consumer brand.
And I was, yeah, so he's- He thinks you're his best friend, but he's just a friend to you?
Yeah, he might use the A word, acquaintance.
And I use, you know- Close friend.
Yeah, close friend.
Yeah, we're a little bit different.
But he was like telling me this idea for his new business and presumably he's very smart because of his previous success.
But he was like, do you know what free range means?
Like free range chicken?
And I was like, I guess that means they're running around a farm.
And he was like, no, the definition is like they've got like a cage the size of like five by five.
I forget the exact definition, but it was like shockingly small.
And he's working on this thing where he's putting RFD... Is it called RFD tags?
Is that what it's called?
Yes.
Is that what it is?
He's putting them in cows and in chickens.
And as they are scanned, So the whole farm has, like the, the technology to see how far away they're running.
And as they go to the kill bin or wherever they got to go to, their RFD thing is scanned.
And so a consumer can on his chickens and this is a real thing that he already built.
You can see what radius they were running around.
This is his whole premise.
Is that people which it kind of that could?
Maybe that actually might be interesting, but you could actually see it's just truly free range chicken, or were they just like in a small pen where they're just in their own feces like you know, like because there's like a correlation between how like healthy the farm was and how they actually follow the rules?
Yeah, and I think to build an area too.
I always say the framework of like, you got to find that intersection of altruism and narcissism.
So the case of Method, you bought it for very narcissistic reasons.
You love the fragrance, you love the design of it, but the altruism it's good for me, good for the planet brought you coming back.
And if you can deliver on both, I think is real power.
We try to do that in all of our brands.
So in the case of our chicken farm here We need to sell the narcissism that this is the most organic good-for-you, great-tasting chicken, but the altruism that you can feel good that this chicken.
While they had a short life, it had a really good life.
Right.
It was a great six weeks.
Yeah.
You know, it's almost like you steal from children's books.
So you do the whole branding like it's a children's book of this magical farm.
And even like you make the farmers who work there kind of you know part of the overall like iconography of the brand.
And you make them heroes in it as well.
Old MacDonald had a farm.
It's called Bingo Chicken.
Is Old MacDonald available?
Bingo Chicken.
Old McDonald's would be great.
Old McDonald's, if that's available.
Does anybody own that?
I think because McDonald's, you'd have to be like old, you know, McDonald's.
You have to like do something weird with the spelling.
Do you guys ever buy these eggs?
Yeah, all the time.
Yes.
Yeah, they're in my fridge right now.
I used it this morning.
This is like what you're talking about, of like the sea of sameness, or like the commodities that they made.
Like look at the bottom here.
Medium brown egg is literally the name of the product.
It's like a transparent medical packaging, like sterile packaging.
And you just see these eggs.
And then this Vital Farms thing on top, because they literally draw like flowers and, like you know, hay or whatever on the thing.
I'm like, oh.
Farm.
Good.
Arm to table.
I'm doing good.
Now that he says see a sameness, I'm like, oh, I do this all the time.
The other day.
I bought yogurt the other day because, instead of Greek yogurt, this yogurt was Icelandic.
Right.
I don't know.
I don't know what that means, but I'm in.
Yeah.
I was like, for some reason, it's all Greek, and this is from Iceland.
Do you have a theory on naming?
Because you've named your products extremely well.
Yes.
How do you come up with names?
So the holy grail of naming is one word, four letters, if you can do it.
That'll really, really hard.
Naming a brand is the most difficult part of a startup because everything is taken.
Do you use like an agency?
Do you just sit there and think?
It's all different.
I'm not good at naming, but I'm good at spotting a name.
So method was Adam was literally my co-founder.
We were literally brushing our teeth at the same time.
And he's like, what about method?
I was like, that's it.
Lawyer's like, you'd never get method.
It's like way too generic.
Then I asked my lawyer while he wasn't working over drinks.
I was like, if you thought this meme was really important to your success, what would you do?
He's like, Hey, I'd go for it.
Cause lawyers never want to be wrong, but they don't need to be right.
Um uh, Ollie came from.
I was working with Alan Dye, who was helping me, who's creative director at Apple.
And we came up with Ollie Slate, like Ollie for friendly.
I wanted, I wanted the name with each case, I come up with a jumping off word.
So for method, I wanted to represent technique, right?
So you're in the gym, you use good technique to get force, because this was going to clean without force.
So I was like, we want something that represents technique.
And he's like, how about method?
It's like, that's it.
With Ali, everything in the category was pseudoscience, like Centrum, or was very folksy, like Nature's Garden or Bounty.
So I wanted a name that just sounded friendly.
So he came up with Ali Slate and then we realized Ali, we were able to get it on its own, so we didn't need the Slate part of it.
You're ripping through the story, and it's like insight, insight, insight.
You have what I call the curse of knowledge, which is...
You think that this is – you're like, oh, yeah, I just did this, and then I just did that.
You didn't even tell us that, and that was so interesting.
What if we hadn't asked the question?
We wouldn't have known that.
How many more of those you got?
You're like, oh, well, I just do this.
Of course, as one does, you pick a jump off word and then you – I was like oh, I don't do anything like that.
I just –
But you know someone's a master when they're fluid.
They're fluid with this.
And it's incredibly clear when you describe the simplest things that you are a master.
What was the jumping off word for welly?
So for Welly was I wanted something about health care.
And so we actually came up with Nightingale.
So Nightingale, because of the idea of like Nightingale is like, she is like this icon and it's all about caring for you.
And Anthony Spaduti and Partners in Spade came up with Welly.
And I was like, done.
Every name, like cast, we came up with for jewelry.
Again, each time I saw the name, it was like, no debate.
It was like, that is it.
And then it's all hands-on.
How do we secure this name?
Amazing.
Do you have another idea?
One of my favorite foods, and I watched my kids go through it, is packaged cheese.
So I think Kraft Singles, mozzarella sticks.
I have... never seen anybody do anything really.
So there's this big delta in cheese too.
You go to like the artisanal cheese, uh counter right it is it's art for and we have this place we live on shelter island summer and this guy andrew runs the cheese wagon it's literally a wagon and my wife and i will go there every few days just because we'll sit there and taste the cheese with them and it's like wine he just romances it so the the gap is if you look at all the categories that have have taken a more artisanal approach and then you go shop packaged cheese it's the same thing it's cheddar it's like it's It is not change.
And my favorite packaging form in the world are those baby bells, right?
In the wax, like little Pac-Man's that you split apart.
So my idea is I want to create a line of gourmet cheeses in the prepackage, in those baby bell wax forms.
But do really like take what they've started and go super gourmet with different flavor profiles in it and make that packaging form.
I'd make it slightly bigger too.
Different colors, but I would build a whole line of gourmet cheeses around it.
And if anybody wants to do this, please reach out to me.
Sorry, is this for, you say it's for kids or it's not for kids?
You're just saying I want to do the gourmet cheeses, but in this new packaging and in that aisle.
Yes, like my boys love the baby bells.
I want to do that for adults.
Again, taking something that's a kid product, but then elevate it as an adult product.
And there's just something so fun about opening up that little wax.
It's very satisfying.
Sam, you're a man child.
Where does this land with you?
Dude, I had three of these.
So I do what I call redneck fitness food.
So last night I just had three baby bells for dinner and I wrapped it in salami and just piled them in my mouth.
I call it balls of fun.
Time to fun is really fast on that one.
Who are you telling this name to?
Sam's mouth surprise.
I don't know.
We're still workshopping it.
I'm not sure yet.
But you could even squirt a little mustard at this ball.
But yeah, this is great.
I love those cheeses.
And I think they only make Gouda and like the normal one.
What is it about that packaging?
Does it actually because it's kind of softer inside, right?
Is it is that because of the type of cheese or does the packaging do that?
Well, I think it's already like that, but you could just like grab it.
It's just like I'll grab them and I'll literally put it in my pocket.
And like as I'm walking, I'll eat it.
Oh, it's a grab and go cheese.
Okay, gotcha.
And it's a single serve.
It's a single serve.
So like it's like super easy.
But yeah, it's definitely a convenience thing.
Not necessarily a it's better tasting thing.
But I think there's something very primal to you about opening it.
So it feels natural.
It's very relieving.
Peeling back the wax, like opening an orange, like you feel like a little monkey just getting into your snack.
And so it's, and it's time to fun on that is three seconds.
Yeah, it's oddly, it's oddly satisfying whenever I peel back that wax.
And then when you peel back the wax Sean, if you've ever done it the two things open up and like, the top part doesn't fall off, the bottom part of the wrapper.
Yeah.
It's like an oyster.
Yeah, it's like an oyster.
Have you guys seen those new Coke bottles where you twist the cap off and then it peels back and the cap stays on the bottle?
No, I haven't seen that.
Oh, man.
It's kind of like that.
I love that.
Just delightful.
Oh, is that so you can fully recycle the bottle then?
Because the caps usually don't get recycled.
Now we might be breaking the laws of physics here, but one of the most satisfying food experiences in the world is cracking the top of a Coke can.
The sound and literally it's like an iconic sound of the tab.
I wonder if there's a way to create some sound or satisfying crack here.
But I think I'm making a good idea.
Bad here, you've over innovated it.
Yeah one, one iteration.
Yeah, just blue bell or baby bell, whatever it's called.
But fancy cheese.
I also had exactly idea.
So, great minds think alike.
I also had a cheese idea.
Yours is better, but i'm just gonna say mine out loud in case there's something you want to steal out of the carcass of this idea that i'm about to give you.
Um, this was like a dying idea i had, but um, So my mother-in-law came over and she's great, but you know she's got mother-in-law itis a little bit where she's like.
Well, I know the answers to the test and you're still trying to figure out the answers to the test.
So like, let me just tell you what to do.
And so for example, it'd be like, oh, he'll love this rice.
Kids love rice.
She'll just say these generic things like kids love rice.
So your kid's going to love rice.
I'm like, no, no, he doesn't eat rice.
Doesn't like rice, blah, blah, blah.
Or, you know, milk.
Like one of our kids wasn't really drinking like milk from like a milk, like a gallon of milk or whatever.
And she was like, all kids love milk.
Your kid's going to love milk.
And we're like, you can try.
Be my guest.
But this kid doesn't drink milk.
And I was waiting for the satisfaction of being right.
And then five minutes later, she's like, oh, he loves it.
And I'm like, no way.
And I go over.
And basically what she did was she would pour the milk into the top of the cap and give him like you got to have a tiny mini cup.
And he was like into that.
And so he was like, oh, like taking shots of milk, like a like, you know, like a spring breaker, basically.
And I couldn't believe it.
And she was like, change of presentation.
And so now this phrase, change of presentation, has become a big deal.
So anytime there's a food my kid doesn't eat, it's not a question of do they like it or not.
It's what is the change of presentation we need to do to get them to eat it?
So, for example, bread was another.
Didn't want bread.
My wife takes a cookie cutter like the star shape or whatever and he gets to stamp out the bread, and now he likes that.
And we're like, oh, my God, change of presentation.
And now your mother-in-law is the man of the house.
I think she already was.
I just was in denial for a period of time.
But I, too, have now bent the knee like the tech CEOs, like sucking up to Donald Trump, basically.
Like, that's me now.
I'm like, yes, mother.
Hello, mother.
Can we get more gold in this room?
Love it.
You know, so basically.
My cheese idea is basically instead of just slices of cheese, you include a stamper.
And the stamper is like shapes that they can stamp the cheese into, so they can play like Play-Doh, stealing from Play-Doh.
And you basically get the Play-Doh shape cutters, but you apply it to cheese.
And you sell it together as a little pack, basically.
I think my kids would love that.
I don't know how scalable that is.
That's the problem?
Did you hear the point about my mother-in-law?
Did that come through?
Was the audio good on that?
When we sell 10 million versions of this, I don't know if we can afford the operations.
I agree with the insight of change your presentation.
I don't know if I agree with the application of it there.
Turning it into a toy.
So like giving them a little thing that they can do to the food.
I like that idea. that i like as well again it's like it could be a durable it's to your point of like how do you make it a consumable so it's an annuity so people keep buying it see he's in the cheese but he's a competitor now so he doesn't like this idea because he's like all about his like artisanal cheese this is i'm gonna do this his cheese comes with a little stamper and he's like yeah the hater said it wasn't scalable that Dude, should I just pitch craft singles that come with a cookie cutter?
Exactly.
I think you overcomplicated it.
The story is key to the understanding of the idea.
In fact, the label is going to include the entire story that I said in verbatim in size 8 font.
Instead of buying the chicken to support the chicken you know, or like a good farm, we're going to be supporting Sean to stick it to his mother-in-law.
What happened to the safe space where there's no bad ideas?
You're like, watch what I do if you bring a weak, wimpy idea in here.
I'm going to give it a wedgie, so i want to leave you with a big picture question.
You've, you've obviously done it, you've proven yourself, so that's good.
You've made money doing what you have, you know you're financially, you know, secure and free, and all that.
What is like the end of the story for you?
Like, what are you trying to do?
Do you have somebody in mind, a hero?
You're like oh, i kind of want to be like them.
Do you think, like 30 years down the road, like i want to have done xyz, do you not think about that at all?
Like i, do you think about your life because, like you could just keep doing this sounds fun.
Uh, is there a big picture?
Yeah no, i'm a planner, so there definitely is a big, a big picture for me.
I at the heart of it.
I love building and creating and if i wasn't doing that, i think i'd be really miserable.
But what i don't want to do anymore is um, you know, be a ceo.
Were you the ceo before?
I've been CEO of my previous companies.
And I love being in it with a team and building it every day, and in the trenches with your team and helping steer the ship.
I absolutely love that as well.
But I'm at the stage of my career that the pressures of raising capital and being able to answer to that capital, I want to be able to work.
You know, going back to projects, work across more things.
So I'm splitting my time between, you know, continuing to incubate new ideas, but then I hire CEO and team and I work alongside that team.
And then moving over to joining Greycroft to launch this consumer brands fund, really now being able to, you know, be more of a coach and help work with entrepreneurs.
We've had a bunch of people come on here with the dream, the have your cake and eat it too.
It's like I want to be part of the idea and the start, but then the grind for 10 years.
I really want an operator to do that part.
And some people have come on here and told us how they do that well.
So other people have been like I don't know how to, i can't incept my idea and my energy into somebody else.
That's a really hard transfer to do.
Do you have like a talent threat like how do you, how do you get the ceo to then like run your thing?
Do you have a strategy around that or is it?
It's hard and that's what i've been doing.
I've been doing more of an incubator model my last few startups where i've not been the ceo running it.
But actually, you know, create the team.
So really what i love doing is like create the concept, pull together the team and the capital, But the part of that that has been really hard is actually finding those leaders.
And the reality of being an entrepreneur, it's iterative, right?
You try something, it works or it doesn't work.
You're constantly iterating your way to success in those early years, which means you're running up against roadblocks and things that worked and what didn't work.
And what I found is there's a certain personality that can live in that uncertainty of a startup and stay committed to it.
So, when something doesn't work, instead of panicking, they quickly start taking the clues, figuring out, making adjustments, keeping the team confident, bringing along with them.
That's the art of entrepreneurship that is really, really tough to hire for.
Because the ones who are good at it want to create.
They probably have their own idea that they're working on.
And what I found is I would hire very accomplished people, but their entire life had been fairly linear in their careers where, like I, get good grades.
It unlocks getting in this good college.
I do really well at school.
It unlocks getting the right, like each thing unlocks the next step for them.
And that's always work because they're incredibly smart, talented people.
But that's not the reality in entrepreneurship.
And so what I saw a pattern of, like I would hire these incredibly accomplished CEOs.
And then, as soon as things would start going wrong which they always do in a startup they would really struggle to the mental games of that.
That's the hardest part of this model.
You're amazing.
You know, every once in a while we have episodes that we're like we have to have a part two, and sometimes a part three and a part four.
And hopefully that will be the case with you.
No, let's do it.
I would love to.
I feel the same.
I'm walking away on Monday morning here with more energy.
So I really appreciate it.
This has been such a fun conversation.
And if anybody loves our ideas out there and wants to pursue it, please reach out where eric ryancom.
And then there's like a contact button.
Is that right?
Yeah, you could go to uh um gobstopcom, g-o-b-s-t-o-pcom.
It's for this idea that i try to build these everlasting gobstoppers and brands that continue to be able to refresh themselves and stay on trend and, like you, try to bake that into the, into the center when you create something new.
Oh, you're a, You have silly, crazy ideas and yet you've been able to make potentially hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars off it.
I mean, that's the dream.
So thank you so much.
You're the best.
You guys are great.
Thanks for a lovely conversation.
This episode is brought to you by HubSpot Media.
They have a cool new podcast that's for AI called The Next Wave.
It's by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lanz.
And they're basically talking about all the new tools that are coming out, how the landscape is changing.
What's going on with AI tech?
So if you want to be up to date on AI tech, it's a cool podcast you could check out.
Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts.
