Exposing the Candy Industry's Darkest Secrets

Your sugar is back. I'm with you. I'm on team team real sugar. You're real sugar, sugar candy shouldn't just be not bad for you, right? It can be actually good for you. You're putting in your body right now, a lot of potassium, a lot of magnesium, a lot of good sodium and organic honey. It's crazy as you can taste that it's actually good for you. It's actually really the dye in a lot of the candies that are out there that make children have that nervous system dysregulation versus the actual sugar. What is like your Do not mark it in this way. Number 1, this was a huge one. No sexual innuendos. 0. We're a non-innuendo. Like you could do that so easy and we're like, no, that's just, it's like, yeah, it's low hanging fruit. It's, yeah, I was at the doctor's office yesterday. A kid got a shot and then on the way out they're like, Here you go. Here's some poison for you. You know, like, here's a lollipop with like all these dyes and gross like junk in it. I'm like, isn't this a doctor? when you go. To donate blood, you go in that room and it's filled with Oreos, cheeses, ribs, like muffins, and you're like, are you literally trying to put me into a fucking coma with sugar? It's like insane.

I want more people to like go out and make an idea happen that like does good in the world. Cool. So where people grab these if they want to grab them right now. www.enjoylilick.com. We can start there. I gave my mom acid for the first time last weekend? Give her a microdose, and we went to Meow Wolf. Meow Wolf in Santa Fe, in, no, in Houston, in Houston, but I took her to the Santa Fe one years ago. Aren't they opening a Meow Wolf here? They're opening a spa. They're opening a, right? Yeah, it's like a. Spot. OK, but so you give her, was it a macro dose or a microdose? micro, very micro perceptive or perceptual she was giggling. So she was, it was perceived. She was there. It was perceived for sure. Can you give us like a headline? At one point, I immediately I lost her and I got scared. Because I'm like, oh no, my mom is high on acid in Meow Wolf alone. I need to go find her. So it's like right when we walked in cause it's, you know, it's chaos and so she goes this way, we go that way. I'm like, OK, I gotta go find her. Now I'm running around, I speed run the entire Meow Wolf. Now I'm coming up and my dose was.

This acid was very strong. So now I'm like truly on acid coming up running around speed run through Meow Wolf trying to find my mom, and this felt like a nightmare from childhood where you're like running around a maze with the crazy colors and people everywhere trying to find your mom. It's like this is definitely a nightmare from childhood. So yeah, but she had a wonderful time. I found her and she was just laughing, like taking selfies with silly looking faces on the wall. That's so fun. It was wonderful. And what has she reported back? She's a fan. And did you guys have a lick for your come up? No, we did not. And see, that's the biggest problem is that we didn't have a lick, hydrated, not hydrated enough. So one thing I'm curious about is, do you guys have any unhinged lollipop stories? Oh God, I think the entire point of our company is unhinged silliness so far.

I actually have a good one. Yeah, let's hear it. I think I'm allowed to share this. So I'm in a men's group, and I really, we, we did a retreat. And so I really, I asked everyone to kick off the retreat with like, hey guys, can you catapult me? I really want to feel like your support of this, I want this retreat to like launch my business, this lollipop business. And so here we are and we're doing a silent dance party at one point, as one does in a men's group retreat, and silently all of the men decided to pick up a lollipop and hold it up in the air, kind of like, OK, Ben, this is, we're going to, we're are they going to like back you here. So then they take out the lollipop and then they put that everyone takes out the lollipops, they put them in their mouths, and everyone's like, you know, dancing silently with their lollipop. But then, Everyone pulls out their lollipop and one guy tells me to get on my knees, and he takes a lollipop and he sticks his lollipop that he had of his mouth into my mouth. Then comes the next guy, new lollipop in my mouth, and I got 2 lollipops. 3rd guy, 4th guy, 12th guy. I got 12 lollipops in my mouth, and we're just silently dancing, and I'm feeling like both, like, I don't know, I'm feeling supported and also a little bit like domed, you know. Yeah, yeah, I can see that lollipop bucocky, lolly bu cocky lollip cocky. And so there I am, and then at one point I just rip at the lollipops out of my mouth, hold them in the air triumphantly.

And that's how we launched the business, I mean, if that's not a good omen or a catalyst for success, I don't know what is. You asked for unhinged. Is that it was better than I anticipated, to be honest. I would have never have guessed. I wouldn't have guessed. Wow, yeah, I felt really supported by them. A lot of saliva though. Yeah, that's, that's a lot. Hey, your immune system is probably great we're top tier now though. Yeah, that's, that's something. Yeah, and that's how we started. We just started. This happened a month ago. We're just, we're, we're live. We're 6 weeks in. We're live. Yeah, so 6 weeks. I mean, talk about the 1st 6 weeks, then we'll get into like how it started, but I'm curious how it's been since day one of launching Lily. It's been going so, so fast and, and so great. I was literally in a you know, we're here in Austin. I was in a sauna yesterday, 2 days ago, and I had a little lick in my mouth and someone turned to me and it was like, Is that a little lick? And I was like, fuck yeah, like slowly not even slowly, quickly quickly. It's quickly catching on, you know, someone I didn't even know in a gym that just opened and You know, it felt really good. I mean, what's been great, we've been doing this for about 7 months, and we've been trying our best to build the flavors out. We really felt strongly that we had many flavors for launch because taste buds are so freaking weird and we learned that in these 7 months. We've been trying out different formulations. We've been Putting it in people's mouths. We've been asking people to try them with us. And some of them were just people I've seen people spit them out. I've seen people get really mad at me for putting this in their mouth. And so we just, it was iteration after duration. I forget what number we're at. It's definitely in like the 30s.

And so it's been really cool to actually, people are really liking them now. What was the most hated flavor as you were testing them out? What a good question. Spicy mango, when it came out, it was so spicy. And it was that we gave them to a wedding and the wedding decided politely to not put them out for their guests. It was that spicy, like a red, what are those red hot balls or remember the old school candies, but those were at least like somewhat enjoyable. And these were not at all. No, no, I didn't find those people felt them to be very just like ghost pepper. I was just like, why would you do this to my guests? What's the spice in the spicy mango? Um, what is it? It's habanero, habanero. Yeah, that's good. Habanero goes great with fruit. Oh, we think so. Now, we think it's good, but this is, I think, 5 like levels down from original spice, and even now we still get some, I'd say like 10% of people are like, yeah, it's still a little bit, it's a little too much for me. Yeah, people are so sensitive to spicy. Most people like, like. Yeah, just a black pepper is like, oh, that's spicy. Yeah, well, and I think the thing that surprises people too is, is that they are salty. Like that's the point, right? They're electrolyte lollipops. And so at first when if you're not like totally in on the, oh yeah, this is going to be a little salty, they're like, Oh, interesting. Yeah, it's jarring at first to have salty lollipops. It can be a little, a little like, oh, what's going on? But then you like it, but then you like it, love it.

Yeah, no, it's, I mean, one other thing that's been fascinating about this is I can tell you every flavor. I've met many people who hate that flavor. And every flavor, I can tell you people who say this is my favorite flavor. Taste buds are weird, man. Taste buds are weird things. Yeah. So you landed on how many flavors? We have 9 that are out right now. Nice 9 flavors. And what takes the cake like most people buy? Again, it's weird, man. It's like spicy mango and chocolate milk. Surprise chocolate milk came out. We, we actually didn't iterate that much on chocolate milk. That was one that just like. Landed and it, it, it has been a, a winner. Two completely opposite ends of the spectrum. Totally spicy mango chocolate milk. Totally lemons have been the hardest. Citrus has been by far the hardest. Interesting. Oh my gosh, I can't tell you we're still iterating on the pink lemonade. I mean, we've got some people love it. People just don't, and they're like, this does not taste at all like pink lemonade. Get this out of my mouth. You'll never get everybody on the same. That's what they tell me, but you know, you'd think people would like it because it's kind of like a margarita because you'd have the salted rim. And then, right, yeah, yeah, maybe margaritas at some point here you're gonna have to try and tell us what you think and only honest feedback, welcome, you know, but whenever you feel ready.

Um, yeah, soon, maybe towards the end of the episode, I'll keep you guys in suspense. We gotta build a little tension here, guys. Oh, I like that. It ain't hard to get on the long. Yeah, you can't, I can't just put it in my mouth right away. This isn't a men's retreat where you could just shove 7 lollipops in our mouth right away. All right, let's just shove all 9 of them in my mouth. Take me out to dinner first, goddamn it. Buy me a drink. Treat me like a lady. So whose, whose idea was it, or did you come together and have this like telepathy moment? Yeah, OK, so Savannah is chief watermelon officer. Um, so that's your legitimate title. Yes, that is my LinkedIn profile title. I guess I would say it was my idea or inception, but that really Savannah and some other members of the team, but certainly Savannah took it to a whole another level. You know, I basically, I was at a Skrillex concert as one attends, we we chase Skrillex around the world. Yeah. Was this I said it'd be a year ago. We're Skrillex family. My wife and I, my kids, we love Skrillex. My kids love, yeah, we have t-shirts. We have sneakers, your kids' middle names, Skrillex, Skrillex, obviously. One is named Sunny. I actually, my mom doesn't know this. I do have a tattoo of my first tattoo. My wife and I got bangerang both tattooed on our bodies. Yeah, we love Skrillex anyway, which doubles as a hook reference, which is great. Yeah, obviously.

Roofie. Oh, anyway, look on the ground, we see a field after one of the shows, a field of electrolyte packets and lollipop sticks just everywhere, graveyard of them. It was one of those like I can't tell if I'm just tripping face or I'm I have a really good idea. This was a high idea. Yeah, in a way, I hope my mom's not listening. That needs to be an AI video just like the packet being and then stick and like we need to merge. It will be. Our guy will do it. Someone, some of this clip will be, we'll AIify that, no problem. I think we just did it with AI, um, so anyway, that was the origination of it was like, man, that could actually be a thing. Um, started researching small batch manufacturers, found an incredible one. I mean, it's really hard to make lollipops, way harder than you'd think. Oh my gosh. Oh my God. Walk us through that journey. Like, OK, so you have the idea, I want to make a lollipop. What's your first step? And what are the trials and tribulations to figure out lollipop?

I had to, well, firstly, I had it was a recognition that I have no idea about anything food-wise, that I'm kind of a Luddite when it comes to that. So. First step, call Savannah. Savannah is a baker with the food. Yeah, I'm a baker. I'm a, I'm a food girlie, and I also happen to run a CPG e-commerce marketing agency. So powerhouse Ben called me up and was like, Hey, this is what I'm thinking. And at first we were kind of like, Oh, let's, let's talk. And then it was, it was very quick that we were like, OK, yeah, we're going to build this together. Yeah, and Yeah, I mean, then, then, then it's like, OK, what do you care about, you know, and so I guess I'll get into the manufacturing of it, but first was like, does it need to be organic? Does it need to be like, you know, are we doing fake sugar or real sugar, right? Are we doing like nice salt or regular salt? Big questions like that. And I can't tell you, people have really strong opinions about this stuff, especially sugar. Sugar is like a holy war for and against sugar, totally, especially here in Austin. We're, we're ground zero for the sugar wars anyway.

But sugar, sugar is back. We are, we are on a, on a mission to bring sugar back. I'm with you. I'm on team real sugar. You're sugar, sugar, real sugar. Yeah, I mean, there's, there's so many studies about sugar alcohols and like how bad they are for us and Organic cane sugar, there's, you know, it's, it, it comes from a plant. Totally. I'm, yeah, anything that's from a plant, I'm way more on board with. And obviously there's moderation that needs to happen. Like don't just shove sugar down the throat of your children and, you know, expect them to not be calm or expect them to not be hyper. But yeah, well, actually if you have the choice, can we talk about that for a second because there are a lot of studies that we have, have read in the development of this Ben about. Um, that it's actually really the dye in a lot of the candies that are out there that make children have that nervous system dysregulation versus the actual sugar. I mean, I want to go ahead and just like admit it. I've been guinea picking my kids on this. Yeah, I give it to him in the morning. Look, it's got honey. It's got electrolytes in it. It's got, you know, organic, only organic stuff. So I was like, all right, it's like not, it's definitely better than the cereal that you, you know, we used to give to we were kids. So I was like, all right, I'm gonna give him one every morning and just see what happens. I'm gonna give them one when they come home from school. Just track it, OK.

It's been pretty great. I mean, they definitely have a little bit of a burst of energy, but it's not a meltdown, and because you guys don't have dyes and zero shit, and that was huge. This, the, the colors are in the sticks, um, or in the packets, but not in the candy whatsoever. Can we, should we open one and show them what what they mean? Let's do a viewing party viewing party here. So this is a viewing party. I'm wearing orange colored glasses, so it's, it's a little different to see these colors, but you can see. So this is lemon drop, and this is like. I think we're changing the color of the stick to actual yellow. Yeah, it'll be a little bit more yellow, but like all of the pops are the same, honey, the same color, so they're all honey colored. So we didn't put, we, why do you need to do that? You don't need to put dye in it. I love that. Just color the stick so people know, but don't ruin the You've got a chocolate milk. I got it. Well, this one's actually a la latte. Oh yeah, so he's got la latte has caffeine in it, so I can, you know, get ready for this podcast here. So that one's a little darker just because of the. And what's cool about that is that like actually like that was one of the things we, we actually started from a place of, OK, like I don't know about you, but I love giving things at festivals. I just love giving things in general. Are you guys into that? I mean, you're wearing a shirt that screams, I like to give gifts. He's a huge gift guy. All right? And it just feels so good. And so then there became the question of like, how do you give something and not have any guilt around giving it, right? How do you know you're sharing something that someone really wants, right? And so that was kind of step one is like, well, Firstly, a lollipop's pretty fun to share. But like we started giving away lollipops and they didn't have like wrapping on. This was like, hey kid, you want a piece of candy?

You know, first generation was just a you had a loose bag of lolly. It's kind of like this definitely doesn't have drugs in it. Exactly. Everyone's like, what's in here? So that was actually step one was deciding we were going to wrap them fully because there was so much information. We wanted to convey, we want to make it so someone could look at the back, see the ingredients, see the nutritions and be like, oh, cool, is the move. That was important. But if you can believe it, they don't make machines like this. Like this is not out of the box. We had to get, we had to find a machine. We had to import it from China. This is right when Trump tariffs were happening. So that was sucky. But you know, we bought a crazy wrapping machine. So that was like weirdly step one. You know, that was step one was figuring this out. Step two is the sticks, and I'll be, you know, I'm gonna actually go on air here and be honest, we got the wrong sticks. I, I ordered these sticks, and I am the proud owner of what, hundreds of thousands, almost a million of these sticks, and they're, they get soggy. They're not, they're not, I know it was the worst thing. It was the one thing we're like, no, it cannot be soggy. We're fixing. So we literally in the air right now coming from China, our tapioca, organic tapioca waxed sticks.

So that they don't get soggy. And we've been through so many different vendors of this. So that's been crazy. So and because by the way, they just don't make colored sticks. It's not a thing, you know, like, so we had to do that. And then it was the ingredients and I was just spending so much time on ingredients. So we made the call on honey. First we tried date sugar. It just wasn't holding together. Then there was coconut sugar that started burning. And we're like, OK, maybe beet sugar could beet sugar work? It turns out they don't make organic beet sugar here in America. So we like We're going to import. How are you getting these ingredients together? Are you at a factory where you're like working together with food scientists, or are you in your kitchen literally like mixing shit? You've got a great factory partner. They are up in Michigan, believe it or not, the, the candy factory. It is in Michigan. It's a funny place for it to be. And um we went up there and we were just partnering with our food scientists up there and cooking candy. Like I had never actually cooked candy before and it is such a precise, I mean, just like baking is, you know, you have to get the exact if you're off by like 1 point, the sugar can burn, the flavor comes out different. So it is the science of it is quite remarkable and going from the lab to production.

Lib actually works pretty well, and then you go into production with the lollipops. You got to do 3000 lollipops or so at a time. Totally doesn't scale. So then you got to kind of start over, try a new thing. It's been mind boggling. And then you give it to somebody and they're like, Man, I don't really like it. And you're just like, and then you give it to someone else and they're like, I love this. Oh, it's been a wild ride because I, I used to sell software for a living, way easier, not easier, but just different. You're like, does this solve X problem? It does. Cool. Buy this from me. This is like, put this in your mouth. Change what you do on a daily basis, you know, like, it's a, it's a, it's an intimate experience to play with someone's taste buds. Anyway, and we did that. And then honestly, we were rolling on a brand for a while. The brand, I mean, I can't, this is actually a fun thing to know. I got maybe 7 calls from friends who said, Ben, look, I need, I need to I need to talk to you. I hate the name. I need you to change it. It's not going to work. I love you too much to not tell you this. This is the stupidest name you've ever come up with, Lilik. And it was really then when I was like, OK, perfect. Great. The fact that that is come close to, you know, evoking that emotion. The brand, the brand, going back to what we were talking about like the unhinged part too, like Lilik has been, we, as we were kind of ideating on this concept.

The le and the lick, the like French, like kind of smug, sciencey, and then the lick, which is like this like. That was, we didn't plan that, uh, you know, just this like, like silly ridiculous, you know, and, and we, as we've been writing the brand copy for it, I've been thinking about the pinky in the brain. Do you guys remember that show? Like that is, that is the brand. It's just like this like smart scientist, goofy, goofy, smart and goofy lick. That's been a ride. So yeah, then we, we finally landed on it, trademarked and all that good stuff. And then it was just a matter of like really designing it and just scaling it. And that's here, here we are. I mean, this is my first rodeo, definitely not Savannah. She's done this many, many times. So it's been fun to have like a veteran on the squad. But right now, I mean, it's, it's going really well. Uh, you know, like it's not like Kim Kardashian explosive, but it's like strangers are buying it and buying it again.

You just need that first momentum, prove that people like it, then anything can scale with the time and marketing, I imagine. But it's like you got to get through that first hurdle of nothing to A little bit of a fan base. I feel like that's the hardest piece, right? That's good news for, for you, like, because you run a marketing agency, how do you think about launching, marketing? Like, as you scale, like, how do you develop this in your mind? It's funny because a lot of the, the brands that I work with are these like huge CPG brands that raised millions and millions of dollars. And um when Ben and I started this, we were really clear, like, we, number one, don't want to be, you know, um, Reporting to people and making decisions based on trying to like hit those numbers because that's always gonna, you know, I mean, the the thing about we were talking about like organic stuff, like there's already investors that are like, oh, well, you got to decrease your cost and so take away the organic like people don't care about that and we're like, yeah, but we do. And, you know, watching these other Companies that just have like taken on so much, so much capital, it's like, OK, that kind of changes how you, how you make business decisions. And for now, you know, we're scaling at a reasonable rate, and that's, that's how we want to do it. Yeah.

I mean, something that's been really fun to watch has been a lot of people have been signing up for subscriptions, which is like candidly kind of surprising. Like I, I didn't expect people to say like, hey, I want a lollipop a day, you know, like, totally. Like, I mean, if you have the choice, if you're already doing electrolyte powder every day, wouldn't you rather fucking do a lollipop on your way to work? I mean, you're preach, man, preach it. I was just, I was, I was a little surprised, but actually like a pretty significant portion of buyers are doing that. That's been exciting. And then the other thing that's really exciting is just seeing how many events are buying them. We're just seeing bulk orders come in like mass, and that's been really fun just to see people like throw parties with healthy lollipops, parties, concerts, kids volleyball tournaments. I mean, just like how people found you guys. Um, I mean, honestly, we're, we're doing a lot of like organic grassroots outreach to our friends. Luckily we have a really cool group of friends. Um, so that's been the first thing. Like we came up before we launched, part of our thing was the whole, the whole team. We said, OK, everybody go and make a list of 100 people. They don't have to have, you know, a million followers. They could have 1000 followers, but we want To make a list of people that we know that would be good spokespeople for these products, and we reached out to them and we were like, hey, if we send you guys some lollipops, would you share about it? And then they started doing that and then their friends started reaching out to us and then they were like, hey, we want to talk about your, your lollipops, we want, we want them.

Um, and again, it's just been 6 weeks. So it's like every week as we, as we meet as a team, we're like, holy cow, did you see so and so posted about this? And yeah, it's been cool. Like, not that follower count actually matters, but I have noticed every week a bigger follower count person has come in down and be like, hey, I love your lollipops. Can I get some? I'm like, Definitely, you know, like, whoa, like that person is kind of a big deal. I like follow them and think they're hilarious. So that's been. I feel like that's the best way to go with marketing right now is just having other people, micro influencers, regular people just talk about it. It's the best way. It's been really fun. I agree. But we look, you know, we wanted to also be able to like drive, you know, incremental sales. So we are doing paid ads. And I think in Savannah's really most like proficient in a lot of ways that like making sure we retain customers. So we're doing like. Like subscription gifts, including this fanny pack that I'm wearing right now, shameless plug here, you know, but like, you know, like fun ways to keep people on and and our game plan is to release flavors in a big way. So ideally like a flavor a month would be our dream and do that alongside influencers and make it really fun. Yeah, so hopefully that keeps people coming back because you know, Always want that new flavor, you know, try something new, and people love it. I mean, it's, it's an addictive thing when you, even when you see it like at the Brent Pella Peking festival, Daniel Walker had a bag of these, and he handed me one, handed Mary one, and then people from random people in the crowd were like.

What is that? What do you got there? Like, come over here and then, and then all of a sudden Daniel's surrounded by people that are like, Can I have one? Can I have one? He's just like, I just trying to hand him out as fast as possible. Yeah, it's, it's an addictive treat. We were, we were just talking about this, how like, I mean, I've been, I've been eating a chocolate milk one with my coffee on my walk every morning. And people see an adult human eating a lollipop and they don't, they always have a question. They're like, it doesn't compute. What are you? You're just like, it's 8 a.m. and you're like eating a lollipop. It's sassy. It's a little sassy. Yeah, I mean, you don't, you don't see people on a run eating a lollipop very often. So we get to, we get to brand your face, you know. It's very fancy. That's awesome. Do you have any pop-ups planned or anything like, we're trying to do so many like, yeah, we're we're doing so many. We're, uh, we're doing a NYC footy Governor, Governor's Island soccer tournament. We're really finding the athletics is like we, we, we love raves and stuff. Don't get me wrong, we want to get down with the raves. But honestly, who's picking this up the most are like moms and you know, wellness.

Yoga studios, Pilates studios, like how hard is it to get your kid to drink water, you know, and this is like the electrolytes that pair with what we, we are, by the way, water's best friend. We haven't mentioned that yet. We haven't talked about that. That's you should tell me about the tagline is unhinged a little bit. This is a little unhinged. Yeah. So, so the idea is this, and actually, The idea is this is that water actually, should they read them? I feel like you read one of them out loud. Would you mind? It's a little bit small. Pick one. Anyone? Yeah, whatever. I don't know what I'll grab a chocolate we're iterating on these, but this is definitely like the most unhinged thing we've done. OK, what am I reading? Oh, it's on the very top right here. So it's weirdly small. That's good. I have great eyesight. Great. Perfect. OK. Was that that was that. Yes, OK. Water got fancy with glass bottles and rare destinations recently, but I knew her when she was an. When she was just as awesome from the spigot or tap.

I keep her grounded. That's why I am water's best friend. So all of the flavors think that they're water's best friend. But water, of course, knows that you can have many best friends. Oh, do all the flavors have a different, a different thing. They're all a little bit unhinged. I should not read something. That's fair. Don't make Brent read on live on air crazy. OK, let's do. They don't destroy your brand in one read. No, I'm not gonna read it. I'm gonna eat it. They don't need to make sense, he's chocolate milk. He wants chocolate milk. I knew it. He's a chocolate milk kind of guy. He is. Can you read it? I can read it. Yeah, this one is pink lemonade. The, uh, yeah, all right, let's see here. I can't read it with these yellow glasses though. OK, that's really good. Water and I both promised each other that if we're not married by 40, we'll move somewhere warm, get some goats, and open a juice shack near the beach. That's how you know I'm really water's best friend. This is hilarious. I mean, I love these little Easter eggs. It's like a little silly, yeah, um, you know, we're always iterating on it. Each one's a little different, but you know. Uh, look, we, we wanted, we wanted to make it clear you can't just have a lollipop, you got to drink some water, drink water, totally, you know, but you know, you'd be surprised. People are like, cool, lollipop, I'm hydrated. It's like, no, no, no, no.

Yeah, hydration is electrolytes plus one. That's right. Yeah, you definitely have to. Worth noting, the World Health Organization also says that you should have a little bit of sugar. It helps accelerate the electrolytes into your body. So a little organic sugar doesn't hurt. It's good for you. And it's good for you. Exactly. So, you know, we wanted to just be a constant reminder that we are indeed water's best friend. And you know, look, the other thing about that is I also at least like a little hint to this is for best friends. I want you to give this to your best friends, get this for your bachelor party, get this for your ski trip. Like this is a sharing thing. It's meant to be fun. So it comes in 30 packs. So, yeah. It's it's a best friend thing. Your packaging is all really, really good. Like I've seen the boxes. Obviously the individual wrappers are really good. Is that, I mean, I know your expertise is in CPG Savannah. Is that something that You've specifically built yourself Ben actually did a whole, like, I would say the majority of the packaging, yeah, like, I mean, we've got, we've got designers and and people too, but like the, you know, the idea of there were, there were quite a few things on here I think they were my idea, but it's been such a team effort on all of the like big decisions like we are, we are really a collaborative team and um yeah that's let's call it out. I'm not, we're not paying anybody.

Like we're all working for equity here, but we meet twice a week. We, we crank all week, and we're doing it for like both the love of it and the promise of it. And it's like, as for me, it's like feels like it is a full-time job and Savannah is like a full-time job. I mean, don't get me wrong, she's got her day hustle. to pay the bills, but like this, she's moonlighting on this and same with everyone on the team, and we just have, we have a lot of people who care a lot about this. And that's been kind of at least the vibe of the business is like, you know, offer equity and say run as fast as you can. And people are doing that. And that's been really fun. Yeah. How big, how big is your team? Who'd you bring on? Oh my gosh, how many people do we have now? So honestly, on a, uh, including, we have some freelancers, of course, and but like ballpark, it's like, like 1213 people. But again, like, not, we're not paying anybody really, you know, like here and there. That's cool. What are the rules that people are running? We have ops. Someone who's running ops, give a big shout out to Jerry's running ops. We have someone running brand. Naomi's running brand. By the way, it's actually more fun. Everybody has, we don't.

Everyone has a flavor. And that's actually their code name. I am orange, which is why I'm wearing the orange hat right now. Savannah, savory. This is savory. Pina is Naomi Pina, salty is durian, mango is Megan, honey is Hanna. We have star fruit, which is Jen. My wife insisted on taking juicy for Julie. She's obviously a co-founder here and you know, one of our best salespeople. Um, who else do we have on the squad I'm missing. Um, coconut Claire, we've got, yeah, Anya, Waja melon. I mean, everyone's a, everyone's a different flavor. We have chocolate Mike is out there. Lolly, yeah, wild berry is a, is a marketing. This is why you need a flavor a month because you're gonna run out of flavor all your employees as you scale. But yeah, I mean, all the traditional things we have marketing, we have ops, customer experience, um. And yeah, a lot of growth. So we were kind of, we wanted to get the squad ready because we had a thought that if this started to work, we'd need to be ready to like just turn on the switch. The cool thing about this too is that uh all of the the founding team is like ex.

Cofounder not ex but like has founded something else. And so the and part of this is like another part of like living in Austin and just this like work-life balance like Ben was on a ski trip with his kids the week before we launched and I was like, That's the kind of energy that I have a business that I want to be in if like we understand what's important and like going on a ski trip with your kid is really freaking important and it and it's just still researching I mean I was yeah yeah yeah I mean it's, it's not like it's not like you were just like goofing around of course you were working but like. But it's still that balance, and, and I think you just had to see how they would hold up in the snow. Exactly. That was just field testing testing. No, but it's a great point. And we're, we're trying to live our lives. This is supposed to be a fun brand, and we've all done it before. So everyone knows how to be pretty efficient with their time. And yeah, it sounds like you guys got it really figured out. I'm curious people listening that want. To potentially try to put their own product together, whatever it is. How do you think about preparing? You just, you just test batches? Are there, do you need a site in place? Like how do you build the first foundational infrastructure to go, to not fuck it all up?

What a big question. Yeah, that's a big question. I mean, I think with food product, it definitely had to be taste and flavor. Like Ben was before we even had like the sticks and the pops. Like we're literally walking around with these little like candy pellets being like, here, try this like for months. I mean, I'd be a big shout out to Keychain. It's a new, it's a new platform. It's almost like um it's a marketplace of many mans and co-manufacturers. And that was really helpful. That's how we found ours. So I'd say if you are doing a food product, that's a great idea. I think there's also a bunch of like test kitchens finding a formulator was critical. Um, and I maybe I'd actually ask the question if you are, do you want to scale and be Big one, or do you want to just like put out some, not just, but you put out something that doesn't need to scale, because if you don't need to scale, you don't need that kind of like crazy co-manufacturer thing going on. You can actually, I have someone I know who's building an amazing granola brand and she's just doing it in her house, and I think she'll make a good amount of cash on it and doesn't need to scale in that way. What's the difference? What sets it apart from, yeah, I mean, just look, I get maybe it's maybe a number, right? Like if you want to be able to produce, you know, thousands a month of whatever unit versus You know, uh, probably under 1000 maybe isn't, you know, a month. It's a hard question like what is, where's that binary shift? But I think it's, it can be a question like, but if you do want to scale it per se, um, I would recommend, yeah, like finding a partner and finding a small batch manufacturer, and those do exist. America is amazing in that way that we have like lots of these, um.

I'd spent a lot of time on that part of it. And I'd also spent a lot of time looking at package manufacturers. I, I can't tell you how hard so much of scaling is the packaging and getting the right machines, getting the right, you know, 3, 3rd party logistics coordinators. It's just, that's hard stuff. And I would actually, my recommendation would be spend way more time than you think. Uh just to to illustrate this point. Many people encouraged us to launch the product online. And pretend that it was ready before as kind of like pre-orders, get your pre-orders, test the market. I actually am of the thinking that it's not a good plan. I, I, I think that I don't think it would have worked, and I think I would have had a false negative. I also think we would have wasted a lot of time building out materials. We actually tried it and we paused. We're just like, this is like a waste. Let's just, let's actually just like run the process. You know, obviously it takes resources, it takes time. Um, so that's a hard question, but I am, I'm dubious of the like launch trial thing. I think it's actually a false flag. Just go for it. And then reiterate as you go, reiterate. Yeah, I don't know. It's a hard question, but it's a, yeah, I think the other thing too is like, know your strengths. Like if you're spending so much time on something that you don't actually know how to do, and there are people that You can pay or ask for help or give them equity to do it better than you know that you can. I mean, that's a hard one too, because I think like the founder ego kind of can get in the way sometimes, but like there are definitely people.

Yeah, oh my gosh, double underline that. I am just, I would hopefully you'd agree, I am just not stingy with equity. I don't believe that gosh, like if someone's putting in their life force into something, like give them some piece of the business, give them incentive and give them a lot. And if that. I find that people jump much higher if they feel like ownership of something. I agree. Also, finding people like I'm all about finding people that are amazing. At stuff I just can't do because, and then, you know, you have a good connection with them, they can bring a whole another level of creativity, right? And then you get this really cool just growth that you just never could do. Right. And it just, then it becomes really fun. The tension, it can't disagreements drive innovation. You need that. In fact, Ben and I had a disagreement on Friday. What did we disagree on about sending the email? So we got our, we got one of our boxes like ready to be back in stock. It was like out of stock, right? And and Ben's like, let's wait till Monday, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, no, like let's launch it. It's ready to go. The warehouse can fulfill it.

So I ended up writing this just like quick copy email of like hey like Ben's out of town and he's not checking his email so like I'm just going rogue and like we're back in stock and we freaking crushed. Yeah, she just sent it she didn't even ask and it was cool like I loved it, but I checked back in and the sales were ridiculous. That's what went out to people to show. That's so cool. She just wrote a rogue email sent it. That's really cool. it and I was like, yeah, you're like, let's be mischievous with her and buy the product. Yeah, this, this is the best marketing is like people seeing behind the scenes of like, really what's going on. And we're talking about, you know, like, we're like brother and sister bickering on like how to, how to run the business, so funny, putting it on display. It was our best day of sales ever. So I stand corrected. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's been, you know, it's, it's a really good question. I got to just share like, I don't know how to pull something like this off. And like I really, I've always had such a romantic view of those that can. And I, I got, I remember this is just such a dream that people like it at all, you know, it's still every time we get an order, I'm like, oh my God, people like it. It's got to be a great feeling. It's unbelievable to make a product that you enjoy and you can share joy with other people and just to watch it grow. That's an amazing thing.

But make no mistake, I am watching you right now to see if you are enjoying that. Oh, I love it. Great. Thank God. Yeah, especially, yeah, salt with chocolates amazing. Who knew salt and chocolate. So sorry, it's so good. What a concept. Yeah, but there I would say, there is like a, I'm working on my codependence with you liking it. I'm working on being OK if you don't like that. It's a little hard. I, I want, you know, it's a baby and you've created it. It's, it's from you and there's a, there's a personal touch to it. If someone says no, it's, it's, I want to try the coffee 10 man, I, I, I think I left it in my coffee. How much caffeine is in the coffee? 50 mg. That's a cup of coffee. That's a cup of coffee. It's yummy too. I light cup of coffee. It's a light cup, but it's, that's good because if you wanted to eat like multiple. You're not going to overdose on the first one. I'm going to leave you guys with some. The lattes will be out, I think September. I'm excited. The latte, so good, so good. We're psyched about it. Yeah, this summer we're releasing three flavors lemon drop, wild berry, and watermelon. You guys, you have a lemon drop in your hand right now. I love the lemon drop.V1 working for you. I like it. Great. Very good. Um, and yeah, we're going to be releasing them alongside some influencers and trying to like have people really own it and give different personalities to them via the people that have released them.

So that's exciting too. What is like your Like, do not market in this way. The brand does not do this. We do not want like influencers like this. Number 1, we like this was a huge one. No sexual innuendos. Zero. We're a non-innuendo. Like you could do that so easy and we're like, no, that's just, it's like, yeah, it's low hanging fruit. It's gross. Um, we're not mean. We're not, we're not ever gonna be mean. That's one other one. We, we will get a little salty. We'll get salty. We salty. We'll get flirty but not sexy. We'll get salty but not mean. That's, those are, those are real. What do you mean salty? Give me an example. Uh, you know, like just a little, a little funny, like a little snide, a little, a little snide, but not mean, like posh, like you're a little, you're you're fine don't eat like a little French. Yeah, like Parisians think they're better than. Yeah, it's like a little French, but like never a little Gen X, a little bit, you know, but not me. We will never make fun. That's something very important.

What would be an example of being mean? Oh, you know, we, I mean, yeah. We, um, we, we've been building these characters. Oh yeah. Um, I am like the fun founder who does like tests and like it transports me into like a playground or something. But uh Savannah is a the wellness witch, and the wellness witch uses all sorts of what ingredients might you use in your, I mean, organic everything, herbs, like, oh, magic, a touch of whimsy, a touch of whimsy, right. And we actually made some videos and at the end of it, we realized we're actually poking a little too much fun at this character that it was actually a little mean like it was kind of making fun of her. They're not, they're not our alter egos. We're calling them our exaggerated egos. So like me in my real life, I am someone who like goes out into my garden and collects and dries herbs and then uses them in recipes, right? Ben is someone who's like ridiculous. ly funny and silly and like, I will go on a playground goes on a playground and and so all the time. And so these, these characters are just like the X degree of, you know, who we are as people and what we bring to the business. So, but we, but we don't want to make fun, right?

You don't want to make fun of other people who also share that archetype. Exactly. So it's like, that's a rail for us. Yeah. Are there any others that we just like are, I don't know, like we we keep, Keep some like Gen Zers on the team just to make sure we're not cringy, because I just don't know. I'm still a dad. So like, bear with me here. I'm trying my best. Is there anything else that we'd like, really don't care. I mean, look, it's got to be really fun. It's got to be silly. We call ourselves the official sponsors of play. So our goal is to find people who are playing. And just give them lollipops. So if you're out there, shameless plug here, and you're playing in a really fun way, we would love to send you some lollipops. It's true. You can go to our site. There's a little section that says, want, want some free lollipops, and we'll sponsor you. It matters to us. That's kind of how, that's how we're positioning. Um, and I guess the other thing I'd say is we really don't want, like, it's, we're going to get into functionals, we're going to get into caffeine, we're gonna get into breath, we're going to get into like, um, we don't know yet, you know, like calming things, but we're not going to get into drugs and we want to be stay really clear of drugs and like the rave scene. We love partying, we love dancing, but we wanted this brand to be a bit bigger than that, a bit more about wellness, about about play, more whimsical, not like party.

Your marketing isn't going to be. Hey, rolling balls, like, try a lollipop. We're not, yeah, and that doesn't really fit your brand anyways, exactly. But that, you know, as you can imagine, it was a decision we were all, we asked that a lot of times. Not that it doesn't work for that. Yeah, it definitely works. There's a use case there. There's a there's a there there we're gonna be testing. As far as brand in the company, you know, we're, we're staying in the, yeah, can I tell you what we're doing later? It's pretty fun, please. It's really fun. I'm actually dressed up for it to plug this. One of our buddies is having a birthday party, and he invited us to invite every single person to the birthday party to dress up as one of the flavors. And so I'm dressed up as orange. I'm gonna wear coconuts, and I'm gonna be coconut orange, my favorite flavor. And you're wearing a coconut bra. I might be wearing a coconut bra, not on camera. I haven't. I've got two. I've got like one that is a little, it's, it's sexy, not flirty for chocolate milk. OK, so I don't know. I didn't make sexy chocolate milk chocolate. How do you make chocolate chocolate milk? I'm curious what that looks like. OK, so anyway, all of our friends are dressing up.

I'm excited to see. I've recently seen somebody's pink lemonade that's really coming across beautifully. Um, I've seen a lot of chocolate milks, a lot of spicy mangoes will be coming. So we'll see. It'll be out on social, but that's we're doing that later today. So yeah, I don't know if that helps you understand what we're doing with the brand, but again, it totally does. It gives me a clear picture. Yeah, yeah, that's great. Yeah, and it's going to be a music video. Oh, that's right. We're turning it into a music video with your lady. Let me remind you, I should have mentioned the music video's premise is that water is going to host a party and it's so boring, because water just like doesn't have all of her friends there and then all of her friends show up, her best friends, and then it gets much more fun. And so we've already, of course, used an AI soundtrack to create all of the, oh, that's by the way, that's another one. Sorry, I, I should have remembered we're not doing that AI thing. I mean, don't get me wrong, we'll use AI sprinkled into like help edit things sometimes or whatever, like the packaging and like moves on the camera or something, maybe, yeah, we'll leverage it. We'll leverage it as a tool, but not as you're not gonna make like AI ads. I will not be making ads. We're, we're, we're putting a hard stand against that right now. We think it's stupid. I just, I think people can see through it and even if they couldn't see through it, I just don't want that. It's just not your brand. It's not our brand. We're IRL. We're real life.

And we want to be imperfect. We're imperfect. This is small batch manufacturing. You are not going to get a perfect lollipop. I don't know. I think this is pretty perfect. That's perfect, dude. I saw that alley oop. Don't you worry. Perfectly imperfect. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, that's another good one. Anyway, that's what we're doing later today if you guys are, you aren't doing anything. You got to wear costumes though. You got to dress up as fruit. I see you. I don't know. What do you think? Like a salted honey? Yeah, what's his flavor? I feel like salted honey. I feel like he might be a salted honey. Yeah, he's a salt. I could be a cream. He's a creamy Japanese roasted sweet potato. Oh my God, that's a good flavor. What do you think? Yeah, can we ask? Those are super popular in Japan. The roasted sweet potato as the next, like, like unhinged flavors. Like go out, lean outside of fruit, like tell me, like, give me like a crazy lollipop flavor taco. Just taco or like brisket. Yeah, dude, Austin one brisket, yeah, yeah, I love that. You know what I've been thinking about lately is a dill pickle, just a pickle lollipop that actually would do wasabi really well. Wasabi, wasabi pop, wasabi, wasabi lolly, wasabi, wasabi. Thank you.

Wasabi is a great one. Wasabi, and that's like the, yeah, that'll really, I feel like matcha could do matcha, like a matcha latte latte asking about matcha. We're not sure. I, yeah, yeah, maybe, yeah. Is there one that you definitely would want I feel like I don't really. Like a matcha latte, whatever, but like a lollipop might be good because the salty would make that matcha that's like too sweet. Like normally sweet would make it better. I just feel like matcha is like no one actually likes it. Well, Mary Mary loves it. Hot. Mary loves. Leave it to me to bring the hot in it. Yeah, I mean, the taste of matcha is not that great. It requires a lot of other ingredients to be good, right? I mean, so we could do that with, yeah, luckily this milk, a little honey, sweet rice, yeah, sweet rice milk. We've been playing with sweet rice milk. Yeah, yeah, very good, maybe like a sushi flavored. Oh, like a, you want a raw fish flavored. I like that. Yeah, yeah. You've really gone quite, you said unhinged, did you not? I want umami. I like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, umami, just umami.

mi flavored that actually it's already salty. It's already salty. It would be good broth flavor brothy dufa flavor, yeah, it's just broth and like cilantro and ramen, you know this is our, this is our uh our uh chicken ramen, beef ramen mamofuku, yeah, when you collab with kamole mamofuku lefuku lefuku, yeah, I do think so. When I was in Vietnam, I went to this little bar and they had a cocktail that was. Wait, was I in Vietnam? Yeah, yeah, it was. I forgot where I was. It was in Vietnam. They had a little bar and they had a pho cocktail, and I'm like, OK, well, we gotta see what that's all about. And they served it and it kind of looked like pho broth. It had like, it had cilantro and stuff in it, and it had a little tiny rice hat as the garnish. And it tasted exactly like fub broth, but it was, but it had booze, yeah, it had booze, and it tasted just like you're drinking a fub broth, but it was cold. No, it was cold. It was an iced cocktail. Do you want this? Yeah, it was delicious. Wow, yeah, it was incredible, fascinating. Yeah, and I think it would do well in a lollipop actually, yeah, if you beef broth or, like if you were sick and you're having the kid try to stay hydrated, it would be really good.

Interesting. Yeah, put a little like, like the little red. I just don't know emergency calling it pho would sell as well if you just did like bone beef bone broth or something. Vietnamese broth, yeah, even though it's the same thing, it's, it's the same thing, but I think people might just not realize that. I'm into it. I like where you guys went with this. You went with real meals, yeah. You want something substantial. She didn't say good flavors. Yeah, if you said next flavor, I'd say pineapple, but we tried, or strawberry and like grilled. We're trying, we, we really got it to taste like a grilled pineapple, which I really liked. I like that. But we had, we had to make a call. We had to make a call. Cherry limeade, lie. I was thinking that too, like a cherry pop could be kind of fun, like a cherry soda, like black cherry, black cherry. We got to cherry cola in the iteration, black cherry cream. Yeah, I mean, I think this is, this is our next frontier. It's just unhinged flavors. So we're gonna write these down. We'll send you guys a box if we choose your idea. Maybe you do like a contest and just whoever picks the most voted on one from people that follow, that's the one you make. Then you have to make, but then you might get it, you might end up with a Boaty McBoatface situation, you know what I mean? Do you know Bodie Boatface? Tell me.

It was some government, you know, Norway, maybe like that. They had a competent like a poll basically, and they're like, we have a new naval warship and we're gonna let you guys name it. And so they let the people name it and you could, anybody could enter a name and the people would vote on it and the top vote was Boaty Mcboatface and they had to print that on the side of the ship and now it still exists floating around the sea. I mean, it's a good name. It's 10 out of 10. Give the people what they want. I think we just make a Boydy McBoatface lollipop. Don't ask questions. The mystery flavor, mystery flavor, yeah. No, that's, I mean, I actually kind of like that idea. Just, I just get a, uh, just let the people speak and see what happens. Like maybe you start with, yeah, get everybody's things, start with like top 20 each week or two, they boil down and people can vote, yeah, like a Final 44. And that would actually build a lot of hype. That's good social media.

Yeah, I like people are competing to get votes because they want a flavor. Totally. You guys are hired. Come on on board. We're deciding you guys. I'm paying zero money. We get it, but we get equity lots. I get pictures of you guys in fruit outfits. OK, yeah, totally. Yeah, send those. Good enough. You got it. So, your guys is Backgrounds on this. I'm curious because like we're friends, but I don't know you guys that well. We've like partied together, hung out. I've, I've seen you DJ. You've seen me DJ. Oh, I've seen you DJ. Oh yes, but I don't know much about you. So I'm personally curious, like your background. You said you sold sales or sold sales. You sold software, and then like, did you have experience in business? Like, have you been a founder before? Is this your first run at this? Oh man, no. My, uh, my quick one, I, this will be my 5th business. I started my first one was a walking tour company, of free walking tours of Washington DC as a licensed tour guide. Then I was involved in the summit series with one of the founders of a big conference. Oh yeah, I know Summit. Then I was worked at Thrillist as their head of events for a couple of years. Then I started Splash. If you, I don't know if you're around for Splash that, were you around for those? Oh man, think of like paperless Post or Eventbrite, but way cooler. And basically every business bought it. So all the businesses were using Splash, you know it if you know it. And we built, I built.

For a decade and a half and we ended up selling it last year, 2 years ago to a big software company and then I worked at Shopify for a couple of years as a product manager, so I kind of got, got my CPG itch. Um, never been in CPG though. This is my first, this is my first real thing been in services and software. That's mine, Savannah. I, uh, I went to school for law and then really quickly decided that I didn't want to do that and then started my first. I, I taught myself how to code when I was like 21. Um, gosh, and Shopify was like just starting. This was, this was like 2014. Um, I've only ever had one real job. I've been an entrepreneur pretty much my entire life. So same, started tons of different businesses and then started the agency. So the agency just like helps CPG brands grow and retain customers and yeah, been, been doing that. I've got, got quite a few little little bit pretty much every brand. So it's been fun to have her on the team.

Yeah, I got some. Can you talk about the brands you've worked with? Um, sure, yeah, the one that kind of like launched my career was Snow teeth whitening. Yeah, built their, built their email program, worked with them for a really long time, and um got some really cool ones that we work with now, lineage provisions, everyday dose, um, serious skincare, subtle beauty. Um, where does a brand need to be to approach you guys to have you work with them? Uh, like revenue wise, we're just like where they are in the process and yeah, maybe revenue we, we actually work with tons of, of small brands too, like, um, it, it really is, is more just kind of like what I, what I was sharing earlier about how like if you know that you don't have a certain skill set and you can out you, you have the, you know, the, uh, budget to outsource that skill set, then. Do it. Um, and so there's, there's brands that we work with that are only doing, you know, $250,000 a year in sales that come and want to work with us as an agency and, and we work with them too.

What are the different things you do? Do you have like an intake process and then you identify what they need help with? How does that work? Yeah, exactly. I, it's funny, I've actually never done any out, uh, outside marketing for my own agency. We just get referred to people. Um, which has been great. Um, but yeah, then we, we basically just like look at their business from, from inside out and just kind of identify what we, what we think that their, their next steps, priorities should be, um, and then do a lot of like foundational flow setup, you know, auditing their backend Shopify systems, stuff like that. So what are the like common things you see that people need help with? Um, that you take over with or, you know, ideas, yeah, so I mean, my agency specifically, uh, we, we focus a lot around retention and so it's really that customer journey of, um, you know, so many, so many companies spend so much on getting that first customer, but then don't really have a lot of follow up on like what's happening in the in that back end process. So, like that's why, you know, Ben and I were talking about like, OK, subscriptions, like what, what happens after they're in our ecosystem? What happens after they make their first.

Purchase. How are we like right now we're literally like Ben and I, us individually are voice noting customers when they send us a DM on Instagram. We're like calling them if we have their phone number because like some of our orders got delayed or like the wrong box went out, you know, we're still kind of like we're 6 weeks in, we're working out the kinks and so it's really just bringing it back to that customer experience and if you can, you know, really making that special for customers. And do you only do products or do you have like if someone's selling software or you know, specifically the agency that I started is like Shopify, Clavio, Recharge, SCO like that is our niche niche customer. That's awesome. Yeah, which is like how we set up our our brand super helpful to have that on pretty ideal, ideal co-founder there. Yeah, I would say also just like, yeah, as you said, a huge focus on life cycle, just how long can you keep them? That seems to be her like bread and butter. It's really, really fun to have that.

What are your philosophies for that? Like when you come to a company or they come to you, and they need help building out the LTV and retention, do you have like your core principles for that? I do. Um, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it's it's it's like a couple of the things that we have touched on so far. Um, number one, Like, who are you as a brand? So many huge brands get so far into their business and they have like lost the plot in like what they were originally trying to do. And if you don't know what you're trying to do, that's going to come through in every single piece of marketing. So we were just talking last week on our our marketing call about how like every month I want to like make sure we're going over this brand. Voice brand development, like who's our customer? Who are we talking to? Who are we reaching? Because like, obviously, as you build a company, that's going to kind of shift with data and insights on like, who's actually buying our stuff and so just making sure that um that that brand, uh those brand promises really are stamped in and come through. That's, that's like truly the heart of what I think makes a good business.

When you Interview some of these businesses. Do you have key partners that you'll refer them to to help them with other pieces that you just don't work on? Totally. Yeah, who are some of those key people you refer to? Um, I mean, paid ads, like we don't, we don't do a ton of paid ads, which is why we like brought in an incredible. um, uh, paid media team. Shout out to Attention labs. Yeah so great Attention labs, um, you know, and, and like developer or like brand decks, we actually, we don't, we don't as much as we have done that for a little like, we don't really focus on that too much and in the business like building out a brand deck. We're kind of like, you know, we'll like to. Do the brand storytelling. There there's so many pieces to building business. Gosh, so many pieces. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Damn. Well, I guess the final thing I'm curious about is, I know you're 6 weeks in, but I know you've talked about, you talked a lot about like visioning, like what, what do you see the next 6 months. Yeah, the next 6 months or the next year of the lick. How do you, how do you want that to go? Do you have a vision for it?

I think if we can just get this thing settled, that'd be step one. What does settled look like? Settled just means that like this, the team is moving in the same direction and that people are buying the products in a consistent way, and then we feel really good about this, the flavors. I don't think we're even totally there on all the flavors. I think they're really close but not perfect. And then look, we want to be Willy Wonka. We want to be the you are Willy Wonka. Oh, say it again. We do. We want to actually like we, we have a belief that like candy shouldn't just be not good, like, sorry, candy shouldn't just be not bad for you. Like a lot of candies. Like this is like a little bit not bad for you harm reduction, right? But can it be good? It can be actually good for you. Like this is actually what you're putting in your body right now is a lot of potassium, a lot of magnesium, a lot of good sodium and organic honey. I mean, it's crazy is you can taste that it's actually good for you. Like sometimes candy. It leaves, not sometimes all the time you eat candy, it leaves that residue in your mouth that you feel shitty about. You're like, I, it's a reminder that you did something bad or your gut feels off in your gut feels off like this. I've been sucking on it this whole time and even in the past when I've had a little lick, you don't get that weird aftertaste in your mouth of I just ate a bunch of sugar and die. 10 tastes like I ate some honey. It's which is fantastic for you, which is great. And so like that concept, we think we can take that further. We we think that like candy, which we love, we love the expression.

Of it, the creativity, the play within it, and the taste, it should make you feel and your body feel really good. And so that's we're we're hoping that over the next 11, 2 years, 10 years, 50 years, we can build like a real healthy candy business. You might change the industry of candy altogether. We just might, yeah, you might get more healthy candy. We might. I mean, why shouldn't it? It's, it's, it is like it's such a poison factory. And like, I don't want to get on my high horse here, but like I was at the doctor's office yesterday. My kid got a shot. They put something in her body. And then on the way out they're like, Here you go. Here's some poison for you, you know, like, here's a lollipop with like all these dyes and gross like junk in it. I'm like, Isn't this a doctor? There's a customer for you. Yeah, I literally, I was just like, so honestly, yeah, same when you go to donate blood and they, you go in that room and it's filled with Oreos, cheese-it, Ritz, like muffins and you're like. Like, are you literally trying to put me into a fucking coma with sugar? It's like insane. They have no healthy food because they're probably like, oh, what if they get sick because there's bacteria on some fruit, which is fucking insane. So let's just give them this insane processed bullshit.

I couldn't agree with you more. It's just insane. And like, yeah, what if we change that? What if this was actually a very fun, successful, even lucrative candy business that made you feel good? Yeah, so my, my dream is that. You go to a doctor's office and instead of a box of dumb dumbs in the front, I don't know, whatever our coolest smart smarts, exactly, AKA the licks, exactly dumb dumbs, yeah, literally it's in the name, it's literally in the makes you dumb, just makes you stupid. Anyway, yeah. Any other, anything else that you would want to see in this world? Gosh, I mean, yeah, functional candy, more fun, you know, and, and, and honestly, yeah, talking a little bit about like building businesses too, I've kind of been thinking since we just talked about that, like, there's I'm so grateful to to work with you to like be surrounded by cool people that are building cool things and I just want to see more of that. I want more people to like go out and make an idea happen that it that like does good in the world. Like we're like, yeah, it's making candy and it's silly, but like this is doing something good and and it feels so good when you're working on something that feels.

That you know is going to be good in the world like that just feels good. It's fun. Yeah. So stay alive, make candy, change lives, do no harm. I'm in. Cool. So where people grab these if they want to grab them right now watching the show. www.enjoylilick.com or check us on Instagram at enjoy Lelick. It's le with L E, it's French. Lelick, it's pronounced le. What are the subscription options real quick? Um, subscription options, you can get one of any of the three flavor pack boxes. This is right now we, we iterate on this a little bit, but, um, for a month, a 30 day, 30 day pack, yeah, yeah. We'll be, we'll be releasing all sorts of flavors you can subscribe to soon though. So if you don't like one, you know, bear with us. We're gonna have like individual flavors. We'll have all sorts of options. Make your own. Yeah, send a, you know, upset voice note and you'll get a happy voice note back directly from you.

Just yell at us a little bit. We'll give, we'll give you guys a discount code too that your listeners can, yeah, yeah, we'll put it in the notes, put it, drop it in the notes. Keep them salty. Beautiful guys, thanks for having us. Thank you for coming. This was super fun and thank you for the little licks. These will probably last us a day. I can only stuck on it for so long and then I got a crunch on it and then I gotta go for another. You're one of those. You're one of those. How many licks does it take? Yeah, I don't last long. 2. I've only, I, I only lasted as long as I did right now because you guys are staring at me. I'm like, you can't just fucking crunch it immediately. That's what he says. I watched it. I watched the whole thing happen. Like I said, the sexual innuendos, it's just like it's too easy. They're there. It's too easy. Don't eat them. All right, my friends, cheers thank you cheers.