Ep. 17: Brooks Powell, Founder & CEO of Cheers
In Episode 17, James and Sean talk shop with Brooks Powell, Founder & CEO of the #1 alcohol-related health & wellness product, Cheers.
We cover:
-Launching health & wellness products that are early in their clinical evidence life cycle -The science behind the product, why it works, and what the average alcohol consumer gets wrong biologically
-The value of building "in the open" and how a founder-led content marketing strategy can unlock retail distribution
-Chronicling his experience from Shark Tank from application to vetting to pitching before the Sharks and how it created a sales surge
-The power of manifesting your goals and building a company culture around that
Brooks packs a punch with his genuine disposition and deep knowledge of his brand and the science behind it.
Show Transcript:
Welcome to Brand Busters with your hosts, James Schwyn and Sean Lee. Together, we bust open the latest in CPG, retail media, and life, or whatever the we want. And for today's episode, we got something special cooked up for you. Extra spicy. Take it away, Sean.
Awesome. Welcome back everybody to the latest episode. We have a treat for you guys today. Hopefully, if you're hungover, we can, get you a remedy for that today. But we've got Brooks Powell, who's the founder and CEO of the brand Cheers.
Cheers was founded in 2014 while he was a student at Princeton. Cheers has amassed over half a 1000000 customers, achieved big box retail distribution, secured patents, and appeared on Shark Tank, which I'm sure we'll have great stories about, and stands as the number one alcohol related health and wellness product that's currently available on Amazon today. Their mission is bringing people together through promoting fun, responsible, and health conscious alcohol consumption. And as I get older, I probably need as much of this product as I can get because, when the kids wake up at 7 AM, I am not feeling too great after a night of, wine or tequila. So with with further ado, we'll we'll jump in and, have a great conversation with Brooks.
So, Brooks, one one thing I have to ask you. It's been a trend with our guests that we have people with Ivy League backgrounds who wanna punish themselves by starting a CPG brand. Like, what do you what do you think that is? Why what is it that draws people from the Ivy League to just wanna jump in and found a consumer goods brand? I have no idea.
I mean, I think I think brands are sexy. I think that's that's part of the reason people get into brands. For me, that wasn't quite my story. My plan coming out of Princeton was actually to become a Baptist minister. And so you may be wondering how the heck someone goes from Baptist minister to to hangover tycoon.
You know, anytime someone says there's 2 types of people in this world, you know, obviously, the world's not that black and white. But, I I generally find that there are some people who want to go into business and they're searching for an idea. Right? I do think there are other people that they come across an idea that so impassions them that they have no choice but to start a business around it. And I'm the latter.
So I came across dihydromyercetin, which is the main ingredient in Cheers. We then, you know, combined it with cysteine and was able to get a patent on that. But I came around came across dihydromy restin when I was a sophomore at Princeton. I was actually a religion major studying Christian ethics. Princeton wants you to be a well rounded individual, take classes outside of your major.
I picked a neuroscience class. Midterm project was write a 12 page paper on a drug of your choice. I picked alcohol. It was, you know, a fun project. Right?
The professor's like, well, if this person can explain how a drug messes up your brain and gets you addicted and gets you high, you know, they've probably been paying attention in class. That just put me at the right place at the right time to be on Google Scholar right as this article, called dihydromyrestin as a novel anti intoxication medication was published. And basically this was like the first major western study into this flavonoid called dihydromyrestin in relation to alcohol even though people in eastern countries, had been using this as like a tea for for centuries, specifically actually, millennia. 40 at least 45 100 years, written in the first pharmacopoeia ever as a hangover treatment, good for your liver, use it after alcohol. Well, this study basically showed that dihydromycin binds to the same brain receptor that alcohol binds to.
And you could prevent rats becoming alcoholic. You could essentially take alcoholic rats back down to baseline levels of alcohol consumption. And, oh, yeah. Rats given DHM showed no signs of hangovers. And that to me was fascinating because I was always kind of a capitalist at heart.
And, you know, the idea of being able to do good and make money at the same time was was always, like, a really interesting concept. And this was would be a product that people want and would also be good for society. So I brought the idea to a few Princeton professors. They said, yeah. Things that happen in this receptor in rats translate really well to humans and, really spent the next 3 years in between classes trying to figure out supply chain laws, branding, raising money so that I could go full time on this business when I graduated.
Man. And going back to that, I mean, how did you did did your study suffer as a result? Did you find yourself, like, still maintaining the academic marks, while launching a brand, or did you feel like you you went a little bit off the wagon in kinda pursuit of your passion? Both. I mean, I think, you know, it's funny.
You actually can write a nice tight essay, when you don't have much time. You know, you kinda get down to the the brass tacks of things quicker. No. It was a challenge. I took 1 year off to start Cheers, and, you know, I wanted to be like Mark Zuckerberg.
I wanted to be an Ivy League dropout and have a really successful business. The problem was I didn't get far enough in my year off to, actually be able to go out on my own. So my parents were like, you can't stay here any longer. You gotta go back to school, you know, so going back to college was a way of getting, room and board again so I could keep working on Cheers. And it was funny after spending a year in the real world trying to build cheers, you know, you just look at school with such a different lens.
And none of my classmates had that lens. Like, they would be like, oh my gosh. I have this quiz coming up or midterms. And, like, once you've been on the outside of prison, you know, things just look a whole lot different. Right?
So I'd be negotiating with professors and stuff. Like, it was like, you know, you just you were doing things that, a student in the real world. Yeah. Exactly. Well, as a customer of Cheers, for probably about the last year, I can verify that you prioritize education kind of throughout the pre and post purchase process or customer journey.
Probably better than most brands that I purchased from, I actually kept, so I've got for those of you that are are watching on YouTube versus listening, I actually have the Cheers Restore product right here. This is my kind of go to after, a couple drinks at night. It does make a material difference the next day. You can absolutely verify that. But, the pamphlets, I mean, I hold on.
I don't hold on to most, like, product information, like packaging after I buy it. I kinda throw it away. I held on to yours for a while. I mean, going into, like, how the liver metabolizes alcohol. It's actually alcohol is not the problem, but the acetaldehyde, which is actually way more toxic for you.
So we're seeing this trend with a couple of brands. I'll stop bearing the the lead here with this question. But, like, this concept, like, edutainment, and, like, video, like, how how are you? How are cheers thinking about educating, you know, I think a problem at the surface and a lot of consumers are aware of, but maybe not understand the science behind it. Like, what are the mechanisms beyond your packaging that you're trying to kind of bring this message to prospective customers?
Yeah. So a few by the way, do you have that packet, the on you? I I don't have it on me right now. I wanted to see which one it was. Hopefully, you got our new newest one, our our quick start guide, which is, like, literally, I mean, like, a book quality It is.
Type type thing. And, you know, we're able to get those things produced for, like, I don't know, 25¢ or something. It's like the best 25¢ that you could add to a box. But, I mean, we're doing it at the scale of, like, a 100000 of these little booklets each time. So what we have found is is two things are true.
The first thing is that despite the fact that half of Americans drink alcohol, almost none of them understand what's actually happening when you drink alcohol biologically. Right? There are so many wives tales around what makes you feel better the day after drinking alcohol. There's so many, things that are just repeated over and over again. Like, oh, the only thing that can help you is water and time.
Like, there's just, like, despite the fact that everyone drinks alcohol, no one knows a whole lot about it. And then the second thing that we realized is that nobody trusts brands in our category. So when we I remember when I was filing the patent, the first patent for Cheers, I found over a 100 tombstones in the English language of people that have tried to start hangover prevention brands and failed. And I think there's two reasons for that. 1, you know, just like, sort of in the the world you have before, you know, BC and AD.
Right? There's kind of before DHM and after DHM. So before DHM, these hangover products just didn't work. And then after DHM, they could work, but it was still gonna be very hard to get consumers to want to buy them because they've tried so many products in the past that never worked. They kind of burnt out.
They're like, nope. Tried those products before. They don't work. So what we did is we paired a working product with a very scientific messaging, to sell it. And it was so funny.
We worked with, like, branding agencies. I wasted a quarter of $1,000,000 right after we raised $22,000,000 from venture capital investors. Like, oh, you have to go to a branding agency. This is back when Red Antler was, you know, doing like Casper mattress and Yeah. You know, back when, like, you know, in that era, spending half a $1,000,000 or a quarter of a $1,000,000 to, like, brand something seemed like a really good investment.
And it's funny, it's like go look at all the brands that Red Antler did and most of them are are cataclysmic failures now. Right? And the irony is you probably had, you've got good people that work at those branding places, but a lot of it was probably punted to like the 22 to 24 year old right out of school anyway, that was doing the bulk of the work for you. So it's probably not that much different than what you and a copywriter and a designer could have done on your own. Yeah.
And I I think now moving forward in my career so I'll I'll back up to this. They always say, oh, science doesn't sell. Science doesn't sell. Science doesn't sell. And so we didn't do in the early days a whole lot of science stuff and we didn't have a big unlock in the business until we really just tried to start explaining how our products work, scientifically.
And Facebook and Instagram allows for 89 seconds in an ad, and we use all 89 seconds. I already talk pretty fast, and then we actually speed my voice up to 1.25x in most cases. So it's like it's coming at you fast and we use all the scientific charts and really try to explain these concepts. They're like, hey, the main two reasons that you feel bad the day after drinking alcohol are because of short term alcohol withdrawal and acetaldehyde exposure. And here's how our product helps with both of those.
And that's been a very big unlock for our business. But I think it's I think you made a really key point there, which is historically, like, I'll be the first to admit, like, all these hangover remedies just feel like weird gas station pills. Right? Like, something that you'd buy, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. Most likely isn't going to work.
Right? So you've already got that huge barrier that you have to overcome. And you have consumers, I would say, even within the past decade, long form podcast, everything else is becoming more popular. So I think you have consumers who wanna learn, who wanna research, who wanna understand the science behind something, and you've got a category that people don't understand. Right?
I drink a bottle of wine. I feel terrible the next day. I've never really thought why. I just know, like, you know, there's implications of drinking alcohol. I'm hungover.
So I think if you can explain that, like, why you get hungover and then why your product scientifically, you know, solves that, it it helps you overcome that, like, weird gas station pill barrier and kinda plays on the trend that consumers are probably smarter than a lot of big brands give them credit for. And I think that's the trend you see with long form podcasts and everything else. People wanna learn about a topic and and go a little bit deeper, especially if it's a a real problem or pain point that they have. Yeah. I think the other thing that's been really great about sort of the long form podcast thing is is, yes, consumers wanna go deeper, but specifically in the dietary supplement space, I mean, I I think, like, people like Peter Attia, like, the longevity doctors, like, when you think about what by the time things actually make it mainstream, like, it's so funny.
I mean, when I would I think about this. I was, you know, 22 years old in 2014 running around saying all the doctors who say that the only way you can get over a hangover is water and time are wrong. You know what I mean? Like, it's like and now it's funny. We actually on the, National Institute of Health's, page on alcohol, they have a section called what is hangovers.
And they've actually said hangovers are actually 6 things, Mini withdraw, acetaldehyde exposure, sleep disturbances, so on and so forth. It's oh, inflammation. I can't remember the way they list them, but if you actually go bucket them, really, like, inflammation is gonna be directly tied to acetaldehyde exposure and sleep disturbances are gonna be directly tied to short term alcohol withdrawal. So really, you could bucket it into dehydration, short term alcohol withdrawal, acetaldehyde exposure. But 10 years ago, there was none of that.
And if you ask doctors, like, how do you get over a hangover? They just say, oh, just hydrate better. And there's no clinical evidence for anything else. Well, I think the Peter Attias of the world have done such a good job of explaining that just because something is early in its clinical evidence life cycle doesn't mean it doesn't work. It just hasn't been proved to the level that doctors are recommending it for the general public.
And so what that leads to is everyone's seen that graph of, like, early adopters, early majority, late majority, so on and so forth. You know, the Peter Attias of the world are like those early adopters that then help you get the early majority. You know, then the brand has enough money to launch its first clinical study. You know, then you have that clinical study and then you can kinda get the late majority and this really works its way into culture and you see, you know, way higher ACV and retailers bringing it in and, so on and so forth. So yeah.
I mean, I think we got lucky that long form podcast became a thing and that some consumers are getting more intelligent. I wouldn't say all of them. Well, I I I think, you know, something you brought up earlier. I think maybe the the notion that the kind of more the products that were maybe trying to innovate in the space before you came along and some of the research, a lot of skepticism, a lot of and you see this in performance supplements. I do a lot like from creatine and pre workout and nitric oxide and whatever else, but there's a lot of like snake oil type products out there.
One of the things you're doing, I think, well, so more of an observation and there will be a question, is just the nature of you as the founder building in the open and being very transparent about this process. I think you're seeing this trend play out on LinkedIn. You know, Sean Riley being very, you know, from dude wipes, seem very, like, what, just himself, and putting it out there. But you're kind of, in some ways, putting your neck out there as the founder, making yourself accessible, for, you know, what could be a contested category in a lot of ways. But, I guess, talk to talk to us a little bit about why you feel like it's important to build in build out in the open.
I mean, you've done this with your booth and your most recent trade show at NACDS, so your team is working. I I think I've seen how you time block your calendar. You're, a new father as well, so balancing, like, this transition in life. I think, you know, there's nothing that's been off the table from what I've observed. So why do you feel like that's important, and how do you feel that's benefited your business?
Yeah. I think Sean Reilly was the reason we got on to LinkedIn, and I had no idea that the LinkedIn strategy would just work so well. So, basically, I mean, two things happened. I became a huge Sean Reilly fan, and then we went to the 1st NACDS TSE, that National Association of Chain Drug Stores Total Store Expo, which is a mouthful, but once you've said it a bunch of times, it rolls off the tongue. And what I realized is that a lot of these merchants in the food, drug, mass, and club channel spend a lot of time on LinkedIn.
And so I kinda connected those things. I said, you know what? I think we should start posting on LinkedIn all the time. And when you start posting on LinkedIn, I mean, things are fine for, like, the first, like, week or 2. And man, you get to the 3rd week and you're like, the hell am I gonna talk about?
So you end up getting to this place where it's like, what am I gonna talk about? And you just kinda look around the office and look around your life and you're like, alright. I guess I'll snap a photo of that and then talk about why we're doing that. And so, I think, you know, it's extremely beneficial to to post on LinkedIn and sort of show the behind the scenes of building your business. But that's why you see so much of the stuff where I literally take, you know, screenshots of my laptop and what my calendar looks like this week and, like, talk about, you know, why it's hard to build a CPG brand in our space and and all of that.
I think the other big thing that's a really interesting switch is I I don't know what year it started. Maybe it's around, like, 2015, but I think in, like, the 1900, you'd always have a brand that you would then attach celebrities to. Right? And you have no idea who the heck the founder of Kellogg's is other than, you know, his last name's probably Kellogg's. And you have no idea why they're making the decisions that they're making or what they're doing and why.
But now, like, think about like an Elon Musk, you know, you kinda have direct access to his brain because he's posting on x about, like, challenges are they're having with the Cybertruck production or like their vision for the model 3 or whatever. And so I think what's really fun is that founders are starting to be founders and CEOs and management teams are starting to become celebrities. And I think that's a really good thing because I think when you pair the management team with the brand, it leads to far more consumer trust. I even think, like, it was actually fascinating, you know, Southwest had that big screw up where, like, their computers went down and they they had to, like, manually figure out how to get all the freaking stewardess teams, steward and stewardess teams onto all these flights and do it manually and everything. And and, you know, the CEO basically, like, just came out and was like, yeah.
Here's what's happening. Here's what we're trying to do about it. And was just, like, super forthcoming. I think consumers want to understand who's actually building the brands and why they're making the decisions that they make, and that that makes you want to purchase those products. It's all part of the brand.
Yeah. I 100% agree. I was in the mid 2000 tens. I was at Procter and Gamble in their ventures group. I founded a brand called Xevo.
For them, that's a natural insect control brand. And I remember at the time, we were selling it on Shopify. I made a big point that the r and d people, myself, others were gonna be kind of the face of the brand. So, like, having about us and the website, why we care about this category, like, how it affects our lives and our choices and our kids. And then even, like, emails would come from us, would be videos of us talking.
Advertisements would have us included in it talking about the product. And I think it was such a radical departure from typical big company, which is we have all this money. Let's just get a a slick ad created, and then just blast it out everywhere on TV or or or on social media. And it was really a departure of thinking. And there were a ton of people that pushed back.
They're like, well, should we have individual people tied to this? I'm like, I I think you need to to build trust. People wanna know the even if it's not, a true founder, they wanna know who's working on it and are those people trustworthy and why are they working on the business and, you know, it it it's it's that extra layer of credibility that I think for the better part of the 1900, you just didn't see brands ever do that, nor did consumers really question or care. I think it is a great trend. I think it is a good for society trend that people know the people making their products.
Like, I I don't know why that would be a bad thing. I I I do know there are risks to it. So one example is, I remember the founder of Ghost, you know, Ghost Energy, like the the energy drink. They do a lot of stuff where, you know, they're putting, Sour Patch Kids. Like, they're doing a lot of licensing deals, and that's, like, where they're coming with their flavors.
And he's like, yeah, the beauty is we don't have to use celebrities and like we have no risk because you never have to worry about Tony the Tiger saying something racist or something. And you're like, well, yes. Okay. That is a risk, you know, to attaching a brand to people. But I I I feel like the benefits far outweigh the risks.
Absolutely. And I think, especially if it's you're talking about the founder or the CEO, I I think it creates a, a good type of maybe accountability as well. Like, your your persona, your public perception now, like, you you are now more accessible, which, you know, creates a lure with the brand, but also, like, you're held to a higher stand, which also means you're gonna kinda covet and really make, I I think, be even more intentional decisions that you're making for building the company. So I think it's a win win all around. And I like, to your point, good for society, absolutely agree.
You, can I add one more point to that, James? Yeah. Absolutely. Found, yes. Building in public, there are the risks to it that, like, you could offend somebody or, like, I would say, you know, 99% of the time it's been good for us.
We have, like, one example of it being bad for us that I I can't share. Just someone took, took something out of context, took it the wrong way, and then, like, that's just they wrote us off as that's our story or something. Always always gonna be a risk when you're building in public, though. But what we have found is that when people start to understand your character and it's just kind of building over time, even if you were to say something wrong, you'd go, well, look, I've known Brooks for a long time. I followed him for a long time.
Like, I know that's not what he meant. Or you know what I mean? They're willing to extend grace to you because they have the fuller picture of you as a human being. And I actually say that building in public can derisk you in that regards because then people won't take things out of context because they just have more context on you as a as a manager, and person. Yeah.
Now I go ahead, John. I think it makes a ton of sense. And and just like wrapping up 1 I wanted to circle back to something that you said that was really important in this building in public space of what you and Sean Sean Reilly dude wipes do. Like, building in public on LinkedIn, I think is incredibly important. I would argue that for the most part, LinkedIn is probably 95% of people that are on pretty frequently, but they're just consuming content and kinda lurking.
They're not producing content. So if you can really hit your target audience that are the buyers, the retailers, people working at big companies, or even, you know, suppliers that you may have not known that you could work with, I would encourage a lot of people to do that because I think it's an untapped market, especially for for b to b business, where most people are just consuming and are creating. So if you do create, you can really stand out. Whereas, you know, Twitter or x is just kind of a sea of noise. You you have to get more egregious and more outrageous to stand out.
The amount of distribution we've won because of LinkedIn. Like, I will post something about how we're seeing how meta ads are affecting retail sales in a specific channel. And then a buyer within then within that channel says, wow. That really resonated with me and makes sense. I'd like to take you from a 1000 doors to 3,000 doors.
I mean, it is like we have a a press release that we put out every single day, like, on our business, that all the merchants, you know, see. Sometimes I'll just post a picture of, like, look at our cool modular display. Here's how we did it. And we'll have a merchant reach out and say, hey. Can I have 300 of those for Christmas?
Awesome. And so yeah. You one mentor of ours said you don't need to boil the ocean. And so it's funny, like, you know, our LinkedIn post I'd I'd say my average LinkedIn post is, you know, somewhere between 510,000 views. But those 510,000 views are always like the 10,000 most important people to the health beauty care industry.
Right? It's like all the merchants, all the brokers, all the suppliers that, you know you know, deal in this space. And that's really cool. It it you this isn't like TikTok where you're just trying to get a 1000000 views from random consumers. It's like even if you have a post that has 200 views, if those 200 views are the right 200 people, the right 200 decision makers, that's extremely powerful.
Yeah. Yes. I I think and and, Sean, there's a question that you had that I think might be interesting to to go on. I think just about, like, the the medical community and some like that validation. I think as you're talking about having the right audience, Sean, I I think that would be really interesting to hit on right now.
Yeah. As you as you're on the board of doctor Knows Best, there's probably some correlation there from kind of that that community support. Yeah. For sure. Like, in in Brooks for for reference, I'm on the the board of a company called Doctor Knows Best.
It's a think of it as like a snot sucker for babies, but, like, supercharged. It's like a hospital grade nasal aspirator that was founded by this really great ENT. But for that brand, credentialing his credentialing since he's a world renowned ENT, other doctors really has been huge for their credibility and making them seem, you know, highly recommended, big and popular. Just looking at your website too, it seems like even on the product pages, you have things that pop up that say a 159 doctors recommended this product to their patients. How has that played a role in your strategy, and and how do you think about credentialing and getting the medical community involved in recommending, you know, a hangover supplement, which, you know, not all doctors wanna recommend supplements that aren't tried and true or pushed by big pharma.
Well, it's even harder for us because, you know, to recommend a hangover supplement would almost feel like you're recommending something that's like, oh, drink more. So there's like a whole ethical issue. If you really look at Cheers' development, it started with sell the science. So basically, really explain how these products work, but, and that would work that worked for the early adopters. Right?
Because they could think from first principles and go, okay. I realized that Brooks Powell is a, you know, 31 year old who was a religion major at Princeton, and doesn't have credentials. Like, there's nothing that being a religion major has to do with understanding, things about our alcohol metabolism. Right? But they could actually listen to the science and go, yes.
That makes sense. I'm gonna buy this product. Now as we're, you know, expanding from, you know, 10,000,000 in revenue to, you know, trying to get to sort of this internal goal of a 100 k per day by May of next year. I don't know if we'll get there, but, that's kind of our internal goal. You start to need you need credentialed people to say what you are already saying.
And so a big initiative that we launched really 2 quarters 2 or 3 quarters ago that just takes a few quarters to, like, actually get the doctors involved and everything was let's keep selling the science, but let's start using doctors to say exactly what we were already saying. And then that would increase conversion rates. And so we've brought on a few equity holding medical doctors, as spokespersons into the company, from a variety of different backgrounds, and then obviously different demos too. And then now, yeah, we we just launched with FrontRow. FrontRow basically, gets doctors to recommend products publicly on a website, and then you're allowed to then put that number of doctors that are recommending your products publicly, on your website.
And, yeah, we're adding, like, 25, per day and or sorry, 25 doctors per week and accelerating, which is Yeah. Which is pretty sweet. And so that and then we'll launch like a clinical study too. But, yeah, it's all part of doctorifying the brand and really selling the science and and and trying to get people to understand that, hey, this products this is how it works. This is why it's good for you, and this is why you should take it.
I'd say with the doctors, explaining alcohol metabolism isn't the challenge. The challenge is explaining to them that Cheers as a brand is about smarter drinking, not about get wasted and feel fine the next day. Yeah. And so it's so funny. It's like ethics almost always becomes the conversation topic that I have with doctors, not the science.
The science is easy. It's just subjective. It's the ethics piece of, hey, people drink alcohol. The smartest way to drink is not drink at all. The second smartest way would be to drink less and then use a product like Cheers.
And then I have to convince these doctors that we are not going to get people to drink more. We're actually trying to get them to drink less and and drink in a smarter way. And that comes back to the building in public when you literally have years now. Now we have years of proof that this is our brand. This is what we're trying to do.
This is our vision. You know, the doctors can go, okay. Wow. I actually believe Brooks is gonna do what he says he's gonna do. Yeah.
And and and Brooks, I wanna just, I guess, affirm you in that because, I think even when we traded emails, we're initially coordinating this. Like, my use case. Right? Mid thirties, father of 2 boys. Like, my use case of cheers and for, like, the last plus year, when I'm going to I'm in in the East Coast, but I'm going to Las Vegas for a conference, so different time zone.
I'm doing breakfasts, at, you know, 6:30, 7 AM. You're going to successive happy hours with, other client partners, brokers, and dinner. This is not me just going out on the town. I'm a dad. I've got responsibilities that's, hey.
I my schedule is packed when I'm traveling for work, and drinking is gonna be a component of that, responsibly so. But if I'm gonna be losing sleep in a different time zone, you know, over caffeinated and indulging in in some drinks with dinner, like, this does make a difference. So I think for that that, like, working professional that still needs to, like, tap into that extra gear and just having a better foundation for the following day. Like, for me, that's a use case of tears. This isn't just like, hey.
Go willy nilly. Go wild, and this is gonna fix your hangover and just endorse that behavior. Like, if that's what you wanna do, great. But I think this the use case is is far different and more to the tune of the one that I cited. Yeah.
And I've got I've got 3 young kids and I drink way less now than I than I would even if I'm going out to dinner. It's like maybe I'll have a drink or 2 drinks. Before maybe I'd have like 3 drinks, but now I'm like, I don't wanna not be my best in the morning when they wake up at 7 AM. And then by midday, I'm I'm kind of dragging. So the board that I can do, you know, to make myself perform better, maybe, you know, even if I am having 2 drinks, I still feel it the next day just because of the demands of, you know, running a business, having multiple kids, constantly being on the go.
So I agree with you. It's like if you can frame it that way, that's how you can get doctors on board because their patients are already doing it. So why not make their patients feel a little bit better? And I think it's great from a marketing framework too. If you think of a copy pitch or a landing page or even advertisement, it's the context of or the concept of stop, hold, close.
Like, having all these doctors that are rapidly showing up on your site, you know, a 159, maybe it's 200, 300 soon. That's the close part. Right? Like, you've sold them on the science. People may be skeptical, but now they see, hey.
300 doctors recommend this. Like, I'm gonna add it to my cart and actually make the purchase. Yeah. But And by the end of this year, it'll be thousands of doctors. Well well, James, Sean, thank you for Frank, thank you for affirming that use case, and putting such eloquent words to it.
You know, we always like to say is that as you get older, less and less alcohol makes you feel worse and worse. And there's there's still so many people that believe out there. If you drink responsibly, you won't feel bad the next day. And that's just objectively not true. I mean, maybe they're, you know, genetic mutants and we should try to clone them or something.
But, one thing that has helped us immensely is wearable devices because people can see that 2 glass 2 glasses of wine well within responsible drinking. Two glasses of wine before bed and you were gonna sleep way worse, and your sleep score is gonna be way worse, and your readiness score the next day is gonna be way worse. And that's actually, the basis for a clinical study we're about to embark on, which is take a few 100 people. Ideally, it would be a crossover design because you wouldn't believe how much genetics affects how alcohol affects people. Probably related to that same GABA receptor that some people really like alcohol.
Some people don't see it. Some people really benefit from Cheers. Some other people don't see as much benefit. There's a huge genetic component to this. But anyways, you can take you know, the idea is that you can take Cheers and you will see differences in your, in your your sleep markers, using wearable you know, clinically validated wearable devices, and and that's what we hope to prove with this study.
That's awesome. Is is you think about as you think about kind of pitching and awareness and and credibility, you guys were on Shark Tank. I don't believe that you got you got picked up or funded by Shark Tank, but can you tell us about that experience? I mean, I'm sure just being on there and having a national audience had to be huge for the brand even if you don't get, Mark Cuban or mister Wonderful to write the check. How did how was that process for you guys, and and how has it been post Shark Tank?
Being on Shark Tank was worth at least $1,000,000. Like, if, if Shark Tank gave us the opportunity to go back on and they said, but you have to pay for it, I would, without seconds hesitation, write them a $1,000,000 check to go back on the show, because it brings so much exposure to the business. I think we sold that year I think we would have sold about 3 or 4,000,000 dollars. But because of Shark Tank, we sold 7,000,000 that year Huge. In revenue.
Where to start? So the process of Shark Tank is pretty long and arduous, and I would say there's 2 tracks. There is the open call track, and then there is the you got invited track. And I can't say too much. They make you sign all this paperwork that says you won't tell them how sort of the sausage sausage is made, but I'll I'll say what I think is is fine to say.
We got really lucky. I had always wanted to be on Shark Tank. I see it, like, as part of the American dream. It's like one of those, like, very cool, like, entrepreneurial moments. I'd say it's like a probably a top five experience in my life, like, getting married, having a baby, winning the state championship, like swimming.
Like, these are you know, going on Shark Tank is like one of the coolest moments of my life. They had actually called all the Ivy League schools, and I think just a whole lot of schools, and said, hey. We're looking for student entrepreneurs, to be on Shark Tank. Do you have anyone interesting that's building a business on your campus right now? And so they just called a whole bunch of schools.
Well, one day I just got an email from someone at the university saying, hey. We got, like, called by Shark Tank's cast one of their casting managers. Do you wanna talk with them? Obviously, the answer was heck yes. And then that kicked off that kicked off a goodness.
That was probably a 15 month process, I think. A 15 month process of fill out this paperwork, send in this video submission. You know, we film every year. We film in June June, and then we film again in September. They call them pods.
You wanna be in the June pod because the June pod is where they fill up, like, 75 percent of the episodes. And then the September pod is for, like, you know, back filling, you know, the rest of the season's episodes. One story that's really interesting is they actually kicked us out of the Shark Tank process, twice. The first one was they said, hey. We're owned by Disney.
This Disney's, you know, a Christian company. We think a hangover, isn't isn't, like, fitting for our audience or whatever. And I said, well, I just wrote a 90 page paper on a Christian theology of alcohol and, you know, in the preface, there is an explanation of how I founded Cheers and why I did it and why I think it's good for society. And I could explain like that on Shark Tank and they're like, okay. We'll let you keep going through the casting process.
That was like number 1. Number 2 was like we were getting close. Like we were down, you know, they they start with about 60 I think back then it was 65,000 applicants, and then they'll only air a 100 companies per season. Right? 44 companies per episode.
Usually, seasons are 25 episodes. So I I think the math is, like, it's 5 times harder to get on Shark Tank than it is to get into Princeton. Wild. And so, anyways, we were kinda down to, like, the last few hundred people. This is, like, really where they're gonna decide who they're gonna buy flights and hotels for and fly out to LA for for filming.
And I get a call, and the casting manager, by the way, get they get really attached to you. Be be they they represent Shark Tank. They do not represent you. But it is clear that the casting managers want their people. Like, there's, you know, dozens of casting managers.
They really want their contestants to be on the show, right? Not the other casting managers' contestants. And so, her name was Jen. And Jen calls me and she says, hey, Brooks. I got really bad news.
As you know, Mark Cuban doesn't like dietary supplements. The producers have basically told us to to go any any company that we're trying to bring to them that's a dietary supplement, Mark said that he'll just ruin the episode, so don't even bring them out. Like, I doesn't don't even film. And that was that, like, I remember I was eating dinner at a Chinese restaurant, with my wife, and I was like, well, don't don't do anything yet. Let me just I gotta think.
Like, let me can I send you an email in the morning? She's like, yeah. I mean, but, like, it's not the decision's already made. It's not gonna work. So I stayed up all night and I wrote a screenplay, like a mock screenplay.
Mark Cuban's gonna say this, I'm gonna say this. Mark will say this, I'll say this. Mark would say this, I'd say this. And I wrote it like literally in the screenplay font everything. That's awesome.
I send it to her the next morning and she's like sends back an email saying like thanks, like I'll send it to the executive producers but like don't get your hopes up. Like, that's the email. A few weeks later, I get a call. And this is one of those any news is good news because we're, like, out of the process. And she says, hey, I guess the executive producers read what you sent to them because I've been instructed to book your flights for LA.
So what they do is filming takes like 5 this is a September pod. Filming takes like 4 or 5 days. But the day before they start filming, they get all the people in that pod and put them in a big room, and they basically, like, read you your Miranda rights. Like, here's what's gonna happen. You know, here's, this additional contract that you're signing.
Here's what's gonna happen after Shark Tank, yada yada yada. And then what they would do, is 1 by 1 in front of the entire audience, they would call you up. You would give your pitch, like your little 62nd pitch to the executive producers, and then they would tell you a few things, and then they would send you back to your hotel and tell you what time to show back up for filming. And so I give my pitch, and then the the, I can't think of his name. It's not Mark Burnett, but it's the name right above Mark Burnett when they roll the like, the Shark Tank is his baby.
Yeah. He says, Brooks, I've been casting for Shark Tank now for 9 seasons, and you're the first person to ever write me a screenplay of my own show. I think you and Mark Cuban are gonna get in one hell of a fight. We're gonna have the cameras rolling and let's make some show business. That's awesome.
That's amazing. And so, yeah, that thing isn't scripted. You get out there. You film for an hour. What you see is what you get.
They you know, from that hour long filming session, you you have unlike other shows where it's, like, very manufactured, really it's just you and the sharks and, you know, you're on set and all the lights are there, so you can't see the audience. Like, you can't see the cameras or anything. I mean, it really feels like you're in the room with them. I mean, because you are. Like, there's no one else there.
But they'll film for an hour, and then they'll figure out how to cut that down into the most interesting 8 to 12 minutes. Sometimes they do that fairly. Sometimes they do that unfairly. I would say that they did a pretty good job of capturing, what actually happened during our episode. Oh, that's amazing.
You love to hear you love to hear the stories of kind of behind the scenes of how that stuff works, especially when all you see is the end product, which is the 5 to 10 minute, clip. There's, there's one thing. I I was doing some digging on your profile, and there's just some things that, like, add up that I think kinda feed into this. So, for those of you, that again maybe that are watching, I I think, Brooks, you do a great job. I love how you, like, just manifesting things, like, talking about, hey.
It's gonna be thousands of doctors. You have got a coffee mug that says a 100 k a day. Just having the kind of these, like, tangible examples and, like, real goals. You have a quote. I think it goes back to even, like, your high school experience.
You can't control the average of your life, but can't control the trend line of your life. Can you talk to the audience about that and how you kind of incorporate that and everything that you're doing with Cheers now? Absolutely. So I was a extremely good swimmer in high school, but I was kind of an average academic. It took me a little bit, so really what happened is I became a sophomore or sorry, became a Christian my sophomore year, and that really changed everything for me.
So, you know, for my life, there's kind of pre Christianity, post Christianity. And pre Christianity, I had really not seen as much value to my life. And post Christianity, it was like, oh my gosh. I only get one chance at this thing. I gotta make the most of it.
Like, life matters. You know, let's do something. And so my freshman year of high school, I finished I don't know what my GPA was, but I finished that year ranked a 125th out of, like, 425 students. I then was always a really good swimmer, very, I I won the state championship in the 50 freestyle 3 years in a row with my senior year breaking the state record. And so I pretty much had the opportunity to go to any school I wanted so long as I had good enough academics to then get into that school.
Despite being as good as I was, there was no chance in heck I would actually be good enough to go to the Olympics because during my era of swimming, they only send 2 people per event. And if you're not Michael Phelps or Ryan Lochte, who was like world record holder and world record holder runner-up, you weren't going to the Olympics. And so anyways, I knew I wanted to go to a school that swimming could get me into, a school that was better than I could get into on my own. And so I wanted to get into Princeton, and and it came time to write your college essay. And what I said is and I remember, you know, you talk with all these recruiters and all this stuff, and they say, hey.
Look. Your your GPA and your SAT and your ACT, they're just they're they're not there. You probably have a pretty low even with us supporting us, you have a pretty low likelihood of getting into Princeton. And so I'm thinking through my college essay, like, what could I do that would impress these people? And, I actually went and looked.
I finished by my senior year, I finished 11th out of those 425 people. And so I took my GPA from year after year and basically found if you deleted my freshman year GPA, I would have actually been valedictorian in high school. And so every year my GPA got better. And I said the argument I made in my Princeton application was do not look at my average GPA. Look at the trend line of my GPA.
And I think, yeah, my freshman and sophomore year at Princeton are gonna be pretty hard, but I think I'm gonna get the hang of it by my junior and senior year and I'm gonna keep with this trend line for the rest of my life. So please take a chance on me. And I guess the argument worked because they ended up accepting me. But what I've really noticed is that there are people that will graduate an Ivy League University or they'll get to some spot in life, and they'll just kinda quit improving. Right?
Like, they just don't have that drive to just keep becoming better and better and better. It's like they get the degree and I think that just that degree speaks for them. And so what I really like to look for in friends that I surround myself with, you know, people we bring onto our team, other founders that I I get closely connected with is not what have they done and are they resting on their laurels, but where are they going? Like, what are their motivations? Where are they gonna be in 10 years?
And do I wanna be with them on that journey? And so I really, really like to look at the trend line of someone's life rather than just what they've done in the past. I think that's awesome advice and really an inspirational story too. And I think it goes back to you writing the screenplay for Shark Tank. Just, you know, taking your shot.
Like, you took the shot at Princeton. You made the argument. You took the shot with Shark Tank and made the argument. I think it's the same as your pitching buyers at retail, everything else. An amazingly inspiring story and really thankful that you you came on to to tell it.
But I think that's about our time for today. But if you have any final thoughts, I'll let you Yeah. I'd add one thought. I think people are afraid to make their motivations known. And I'm not sure why that's the case.
But I have you know, a lot of people like to keep their goals and stuff private. I think when you make your goals public and you tell people what you're trying to achieve, what you'll find is that well intention yes. There are ill intentioned people who could use that against you. But the benefit of well intentioned people understanding what you're trying to achieve in life and then helping connect those dots for you and wanting to support you in that journey far outweighs anything else. So I think it it makes all the sense in the world to make your goals known, and ask people if they would help you on it because I think most people want to help you on things.
And so, and even when people come to me and say, hey. I'm trying to do this. Could you help with this? Like, absolutely. I would help you with it.
You know what I mean? And it just it's kind of that that, benevolent circle of life, that I think you'll find in in good industries. That's great. I think that's a great final parting thought. And for the audience here, if you want to, please connect with Brooks on LinkedIn, connect with James and I.
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It helps to get traction in the algorithm. Thanks again for for tuning in, Brooks. We really appreciate your time. I think phenomenally inspiring advice and story, and I'm sure we'll be checking in with you again in the future when you achieve all these goals. And, you know, it's, Cheers becomes the next $1,000,000,000 brand.
That'd be cool. James James, Sean, thanks so much for having me. This was a lot of fun and, look forward to doing it again or tuning into the show and seeing who you bring on next. Perfect. Thanks, Brooks.
Yeah. Cool. Thanks, Brooks.