BrandBusters Ep. 26: Mike Rosinus & Julia Botsford, Father-Daughter Founders of GoHydrate
In Episode 26 of BrandBusters, James and Sean sit down with Mike Rosinus and Julia Botsford, the father-daughter duo behind GoHydrate, the clean hydration brand redefining what’s in your water. With Mike’s background in private equity and Julia’s 15+ years in big CPG at Kraft Heinz and Mars Food, they’ve turned a family hobby into a fast-growing DTC brand that’s competing in one of the most crowded categories in CPG.
In this episode, we dive into:
The decade-long journey of GoHydrate—from Wall Street to wellness—and how a pivot away from creatine led to a rebrand and product overhaul
Why GoHydrate ditched traditional retail for a DTC-first model, and how they built a tight tech stack to support subscriptions, CRM, and rapid innovation
Julia’s lessons from big CPG and what she had to unlearn to thrive in the startup world
Building a high-performing influencer strategy: how they scaled up, what failed, and the ROI-driven toolkit that sets top creators apart
The GoHydrate formula advantage—great taste, zero junk, and five essential electrolytes with vitamin D—and why low sodium is a brand differentiator
Fail fast, but not reckless: how Mike and Julia evaluate channels like Meta, Amazon, and TikTok (spoiler: not all hyped platforms pay off)
The dynamics of working as a family team, including how trust, ownership, and hard-earned lessons shape their decision-making every day
Mike and Julia bring sharp insight, vulnerability, and no-BS advice on what it takes to scale a bootstrapped wellness brand in today’s noisy market. If you’re navigating the DTC game, influencer marketing, or thinking about a CPG pivot, this episode’s packed with valuable takeaways.
Follow GoHydrate on social and check out their clean hydration line at gohydrate.com. Don’t forget to subscribe to BrandBusters on YouTube, LinkedIn, X, or wherever you get your podcasts!
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 of Brandbusters. And we have a father daughter duo today that founded a company that I think everybody's really gonna enjoy the conversation with. It's Mike and Julia Rocinas who are cofounders of the leading clean hydration brand Go Hydrate. Combining Mike's experience in private equity and finance with Julia's brand building and big CPG experience, these two make for a dynamic father daughter daughter duo, and we're extremely excited to talk to them today.
Thank you guys for both joining us. Yeah. My pleasure. You're welcome. Perfect.
Well, to start, the I think a lot of listeners may not know that the story of GoHydrate actually goes back a decade plus, going behind eleven years now with MeStrang. So talk to us about the origin story of GoHydrate and really that pivot from what the brand originally was. So I'll do this one, Julia. The the origin was very simple. We had a colleague on Wall Street, which is where I worked my whole career, he owned he was a biochemist and he had this little company that made a product.
It was a powder. It had an ingredient in it that was called creatine. It's still out there as an ingredient. It tasted really good, and and it had these electrolytes, and it was a it was an it was an early stage thing that he didn't do anything with. So I said, you know, my son and I were working with him.
We said, look, we're interested in this thing. We we wanna buy it. So there's an old commercial going way back to nineteen seventies where a fellow named Victor Cayenne, very famous fella back in the day, owned the New England Patriots. He bought Remington Shavers, and he used to put a commercial on TV that said he liked the company so much that he bought it. He liked the product so much that he bought it.
So we like this product. We bought it, and then we ran it for a few years as a father, son thing, hobby. He really is a hobby. Everyone in our family is athletic and healthy wellness focused people. And and Julia came along with lots of experience in CPG and said, you guys are doing this all wrong.
So in 2019, Julia hooked up with us, and this answers your question about the origin. We shut down the whole process that we had, father and son, and we reinvented the company. And that's how we got started with Go Hybrid. Yeah. That's one way to put it.
Yeah. That's that's yeah. Twenty eight 2018, I think it was, actually, which is crazy to think about. But, yeah, we we pushed pause, you know, through market research and talking to consumers. We realized creatine was real polarizing.
Right? It's not an ingredient that that is easy to understand. Now it's interesting. We're now seeing it kinda get some buzz and some traction back, and we have some of our OG fans kinda asking us, are you bringing us back? But, you know, as a marketer, I realized explaining it was a mouthful, and it wasn't it wasn't helping.
It was hurting us more than it was helping. So we we put the the stop on that, and we reformulated it. And with our doctor on our board, we have a medical doctor who sits on our board of directors, reformulated the product to add vitamin d. So for those not familiar, vitamin d is essential for all humans, and most of us are deficient. And there was a gap in the marketplace that had a product like ours with a functional additive of something like vitamin d.
So we've been making it as that version since 2018. And we changed the name. So it's really important. One of these things So the name was terrible. We didn't you know, father, son didn't have an idea how to do that.
Julia comes in and says, we're changing the name. We got a much better name with GoHydrate. Yeah. And and we can tell you the things we did. So from an operating perspective, perspective, I can go into we did a lot of things on the operating side that your listeners are probably gonna be interested in and and tell you and then Julia can go how we build the brand because building the brand from zero is what your listeners are want want to know.
Yeah. Julia, and what what's what's been your background in in consumer goods, and and how did it help when you when you came into the to your your brother and your father and and help them revamp the brand? Yeah. Good question. I mean, I've been in the industry for nearly fifteen years.
I've worked, large companies, Kraft Heinz, Mars Food, and I have always had this expertise of of building brands through creative storytelling and through consumer research and data. And I've been fortunate enough to work on some of the world's biggest brands on really the front lines with my specialty being sort of new media. So I I have sort of carved out this niche for myself where I really work from an integrated lens across multiple disciplines, always looking at the consumer and looking at the trends. And so, that's been really, really helpful because I have this big CPG lens at which I see things, but then I'm, you know, managing my own dollars with GoHydrate effectively. And I have to to really ask, you know, difficult questions of how this can translate to our business.
Because spoiler alert, it doesn't always translate. You know, the big CPG playbook and the startup entrepreneurial playbooks are actually very different. Yeah. CPG is catching up and wanting to borrow from our playbook, I would say. So it's been a really, really interesting, you know, few years working across both.
That's great. What were there any were there any things that you had that were hard kind of coming from the big CP tier world, trying to initially apply it to to go hydrate or anything you had to kind of unlearn or lessons that you wish you would have learned quicker trying to to make that transition? Yeah. Good question. First thing that comes to mind, of course, is money.
As an entrepreneur and and start up, you know, we are not dealing with multimillion dollars in budgets that are coming from, you know, a Kraft Heinz. That's just not the nature of our business. Also, people. We are a very scrappy team. My dad and I manage the business every single day, but we have an army of contractors and, you know, freelancers that help us, but we don't have a single full time employee.
So we don't have have that that you have at CPG. So that was something that we've had to to boot shop and learn, and we're in a really, really great place now. Again, we have a really great trusted team. The other thing that I've had to you know, we learned the hard way, I would say, and this might cause my dad some trauma. But in 2021, we we did Expo West.
And if for those not familiar with Expo West, it's actually coming up very soon. It is the biggest, essentially, CPG trade show in the world. It is about a mile of food brands, drink brands showcasing their product to people. And what can happen in in, startup world is you get a lot of people coming to you with a lot of opinions, and you pay them all for their opinions. And every single person tells you, this is it.
This is the end all be all. You have to do it. You have to be at expo. And, you know, my brand background was everyone's at expo. So, you know, we we built a beautiful booth.
We went out to Orange County. My dad and I, you know, we we did the game. We talked the talk, and it was a big fat failure. And it was we were not in the right position. We were not where we should have been.
And the reason why, and is those conferences and expos and showcases and dances are for brands that already have established retail presence. They don't really tell you that. But what's happening at those shows is your Whole Foods buyer, for example, they're not really coming to shop for the most part. They are coming to meet their existing customers, and they're seeing what's new. What do you got?
You know, what can you show me? They're really not coming to shop. And that was the mistake we made. So if you're listening and you're a startup, do not waste your time on expo. It is a song and dance that you will never see an ROI until you're until you're on shelf.
And it's quite expensive too. Right? To have to pay for the food and get your hit your spot. It is. It is.
And, for us, which is not so fun, is our booth is beautiful and and wonderful, but it's in our old branding. So, we went through a massive rebrand in 2023, '20 '4, and now it's essentially not helpful to us. So Yeah. I know that was a really nice to hear. But We've we've talked to we've talked to a ton of founders that that share similar sentiment, which is until you're big enough, until you're ready, don't go to Expo West or don't get enamored by spending the money up front because you're probably not gonna get a ton of new business or retail distribution just by showing up.
Nope. Nope. Not gonna work. Yeah. There's there's kind of a theme, like, when you're starting up an emerging brand, like, kind of, Will Metz, who we actually had on from IQ Bar, probably about a year ago, actually.
Kinda speaks about, like, kind of puzzle like, basically solving puzzles versus, like, waging wars and, like, the big established brands who have the war chest and all the dry powder. They can get to the wars of attrition, do the big activations. The emerging brands need to really focus on, like, what is product market fit? Who's our, like, niche demographic? Like, what do we do better than anyone else?
And really hone in on satisfying that group and kind of building this ground swell. And And then you can kinda use that momentum then to kind of feed, the growth in those bigger activations. But you can't you have to really hedge your bets and pick kinda which thing you're gonna invest in at the right time. Otherwise, it's gonna be, you know, a massive outlay outlay with very little, if not a negative ROI. No.
It's for sure. And I think what we've really focused on as a sort of bootstrapped brand that is all self funded, by the way, we we look at sort of let's do 80% marketing spend with what works. Right? Let's scale. Let's optimize 80%.
Let's do 20% test. We never wanna put all of our cash and money into a test. Right? It's it's gonna hurt us too much. And then we can scale, and we can also fail fast.
I always say fail fast. We have to look at, what did this work? Okay. It didn't. Move on.
Like, let's go to the next thing. Let's try the next thing. And maybe it's just going back to the basics. And right now, we're in a really, you know, interesting economic market, and we're looking at things very differently. And we're making decisions about, you know, the future of the business and where marketing goes very, very closely and strategically, and seeing, you know, what is going to help us in this market and climate.
And, you know, right now, it's probably really a ninety ten split of 90% what's working and 10% testing to just, you know, be smart right now. So when you say feel feel fast, that probably looks a lot different. With big CPG, feeling fast in, like, a big established conglomerate might might be, like, failing fast might be, like, one to three years. Right. Yep.
Correct. For for the so, for, failing fast in, like, an emerging brand, like, how fast is that? Is that monthly? Is that quarterly? And I'm sure there's some nuance here, but, like, how should other founders be thinking about that?
I mean, it's it's it depends on on your pipeline. So for us, you can fail fast in innovation. You can fail fast in your marketing tactics. One thing that we probably have failed a little bit slow on actually is one of our flavors is not as strong as the others. And we're learning that through consumer sentiment and feedback that it's not a best seller, and it's in our best selling box.
So we're actually gonna pivot, and we're gonna take that out, and we're gonna put something else in. And that probably took us a little bit too long. That was probably about a two year failure. But, otherwise, if they'll fast is let's look at the influencer market. Right?
We work with a lot of influencers from, you know, micro to macro, and they don't pull their weight. They're out. There's no one year contract. There's no let's try it again next month. If you don't do what you're hired to do, we're not keeping you.
We're not paying you. Of course, we honor our contracts, and we'll pay you for your contract, but we're not extending you, and we're not we're not gonna try to see what happens next. And a lot of brands on the big CPG side, you know, we get locked into these bigger contracts. We have people that we have to work with for a certain period of time. And, you know, as you see things change, that partner can just can be a thorn in your side.
It's not helping you, and you're kinda stuck. Even with big CPG, like, we we would always, like, whether it's a TV creative or even, like Mhmm. Instagram, Facebook creative, like, you get you get enamored by the creative and you might hang on to it too long even if it's not performing very well or you don't have enough volume of creative that you're testing to even know if it's there are better alternatives out there? Absolutely. And we're really into AB testing now too, and we're getting a lot smarter with that to especially with Amazon, which is a big part of our business to AB test.
We also have a amazing growth agency that we work with that has a test farm where they're constantly churning out test content, and I'm responsible for feeding that. So I give them different UGC and creators. And, you know, we all see as we're scrolling, you know, very few things are gonna stop us in our tracks now. I call that thumb stopping thumb stopping content, and it's very hard to achieve these days. And so we have to constantly be feeding it new things.
Otherwise, it's just gonna get stale. I think that's great advice. Yeah. Yeah. So the the hydration category has obviously erupted.
It's large. There's a ton of players. I know big companies like Unilever bought Liquid I v. There's there's a lot out there. When you guys were pivoting the business, how did you assess what gaps were out there, and and how did you know which which angle you wanted to take in in the hydration market?
Yeah. I can answer this one first, and, dad, feel free to jump in. You know, as I mentioned earlier with the creatine switch, right, we we saw an opportunity for a functional beverage that tasted good first and foremost. You'd be shocked to find that a lot of these don't taste good. And through a lot of research, we find that people just drink them because they think they need to, and that's what's offered, and they don't know any better.
And we went on taste. So the minute you taste us, you're hooked likely. And so that was the first thing that we thought as being really important. The second was fillers and and sugar and junk and excess sodium. All of these drinks, you know, for the most part claim to be an electrolyte drink, but they have maybe one or two electrolytes.
They are loaded with an ingredient called silicon dioxide, dioxide, which is essentially, spoiler, sand. That's why these packets seem really full. They seem like you're getting a lot, know you're drinking sand. There's also a ton of sugar. And then a big ingredient that is getting a lot more traction these days is sodium.
So sodium is a silent killer. Right? It is in everything we consume all day long. Right? So when you're chugging a packet of a competitor that shall not be named, that has 500 to a thousand milligrams of sodium when your recommended daily intake is about 2,500.
So with one drink, you've had a quarter of your sodium for the day, and, you know, you're probably gonna exceed. So we really worked hard to make our formula taste good, to be functional, and to be balanced. It's actually something that you can enjoy, and moms and dads and parents can feel safe to give to their kids. You know, it's friendly for all ages. That was really, really important to us.
And we feel like we've we've we've done well with that. That's great. So we we spent a lot of money on the formulation process. You know, we have our department, and we went out there and we did taste tests, and we kept mixing stuff and throwing stuff. It's it's you have spent time on all this.
It doesn't just happen. And when you were in the early days doing all that, were were you using consultants or contractors for the r and d? Did you have a contract manufacturer that you're using their r and d people? How did you go about that process for people who might be in in a similar stage just getting started now? Okay.
So this is important. This is important for your listeners. This when we started, we had pretty much two commands that were handling it. We have one who was the r and d department, and they would acquire the raw materials, and then they would send the and then they would send the raw materials to another command who would lend it. And that co man would pack it Yep.
And and ship it to our warehouse. So we shut down the first part, and it's all in one now. It reduces cost, and it reduces hassle because shipping the raws from one place to another is a whole lot more complicated than having the same place is gonna blend it. Yeah. Actually order it.
Completely agree. And formulate it so they know exactly what they're looking for, that when it comes in, they know who it's for, all this lots less confusion. And supply chain is so confusing in many ways. This is an important feature of our company. It also cut a cost significantly.
Yeah. So it's all in one house. There's a full scale r and d department in this command. They obviously have other customers than we do than we, and and that's been been a big help for us. Mhmm.
And they're fast and nimble. I think that's a huge differentiator between having a co packer and having a large CPG company. You know, I work on innovation where it can take a year just to get a test or a sample, and we can get a sample in essentially seventy two hours. So we can call them, say, hey. We wanna try this flavor.
Hey. We wanna try this. You know? Hey. What do we think about subbing vitamin d for this ingredient?
And they do it. And that helps us go to market fast. And we have a lot of things up our sleeve because of that. Yeah. We've doubled our flavor profiles in the last eighteen to twenty four months, and we're gonna be adding many more flavors.
But I wanna make sure your audience understands we are a DTC company. Some some people are scratching their heads saying, I've never seen you in my store. We're not in the store. We don't really wanna be in the store. Yeah.
I would agree with that. We have our own, DTC storefront in our in our website, and we have our Amazon and our Walmart.com channels. That's great. And and, you know, the store thing, if you wanna go into it, we can tell you some things about stores that your listeners might find interesting. Yeah.
And what, what what tech stack do you guys use for your website? Are you on I presume you're on Shopify. Is Yes. The platform? Yeah.
We've always been on Shopify. That's been our number one. We just switched to, recharge subscriptions, which has been fantastic, for our subscription model, which is a big part of our business as well. We use Smile Rewards, which is great for our customers to get rewarded. We've got Klaviyo is our CRM, so that's been awesome.
Lots of opportunity there, and everything's really super integrated. So we've got a great tech stack. We've got a great team also that helps to manage it, with me. So that goes to our growth team. And then, you know, they look at, we've just started with a new well, Amazon agency as well.
Hello. And, you know, using things like Qualtrics and things like that. So getting a lot smarter and sharper with our tech stack. That's great. That's important.
And and, obviously, d to c d to c lends itself well to to failing fast and learning quickly because you can launch something, you can get reviews, you can you can really see what's what's selling in in in benchmark it versus everything else you have. Yep. In the early days, so you you you did a lot of r and d work. You were working with the Comans. You got the flavor profiles.
Right? You used your background in consumer research. How did you kind of then prove out in those early days this is working? Like, what were the metrics when you first started selling that that said, hey. This pivot's worked.
We think there's heat here, and it gave you enough data to continue to invest in it. Absolutely. I would say we looked at our repeat customer rate first and foremost. We looked at, reviews. Right?
So, good and bad. We wanted to see what wasn't working, and we wanted to see what was resonating and working with consumers. And we then started to look at okay. But back then, we didn't have a subscription program. So we started to see people buying it in bulk, wanting it all the time.
So, you know, then we pivoted. Okay. Let's give them a subscription program. So we're looking at that, looking at churn rate on subscribers, looking at, you know, also growth of our social channels. Are people finding us?
Are they engaging with us? A lot of our early days and and still is through word-of-mouth and influencer marketing. So we've run massive influencer campaigns, and that's a lot of people have found us and tried us. We also have run big sampling events. We're local to Chicago, so we've really sort of tried to to get that community to find us and love us.
And, you know, we spent many a day in fitness studios sampling and and getting people to try us and taste us because as I said before, and I'll, you know, keep saying is, like, it tastes really freaking good. And if it tastes really good, you're gonna wanna drink it. And if you're gonna drink it a lot, you're gonna buy it a lot. So, you know, that was hugely important to have people try us and sample it because we try it, we love it. But if you don't love it and you're a consumer, you're not gonna buy it.
So That's great. Yeah. I think on that topic of social proof, obviously, I think we're we're absolutely in the era, of, like, access and information and social credibility, with, influencers and social. What's been some of the biggest findings for you, on the influencer side in terms of, like, how can you how are you sourcing and vetting the right influencers for your brand at the right stage? And, actually, I think a lot of people don't think about, like, the appropriate sampling budget around that.
And actually, the the influencer briefs to turn one piece of UGC into, like, 10. So where have been some of the levers there? Because I think a lot of brands are trying to figure this out right now in the wake of, like, TikTok shop and all these other affiliate channels that are really blowing up. Oh, wow. That could be an entire podcast.
But what I will say is that has been the biggest learning and the biggest growth driver for us at the same time. So, you know, we used to run a massive influencer marketing campaign every single month, you know, single month, you know, spending 5 figures a month on influencers. And for a long time, it worked. This is, you know, this is what was working. We had many posts.
It was all stories based. I will say if you're considering influencer marketing, make it as easy for the consumer as possible. And that is a story because they can click and buy right from there. And that is a story because they can click and buy right from there. And so that's that's what we did.
We ran these massive programs and we would be like I said, we would do 80% of influencers that worked, 20% we would test. And we had some big failures in testing and we had failures, that cost a lot of money. And, you know, they were people that you, you know, if names you would know. And the point is, you know, getting that top talent isn't always gonna convert. You know?
Yeah. It feeds parts of your funnel and it feeds traffic and that and that stuff, but it's may not convert. And for us, like we said, conversion is key and having people actually buy and and and and try it. So that was really fascinating for us. And then, you know, about twelve to eighteen months ago, we started noticing a shift.
We started seeing influencers convert less and less and less. And, you know, there's obviously macro trends going on. There's there's a lot of uncertainty in the world, and and I think people are being a lot more cautious. And so we as a brand are also being a lot more cautious. So right now, our influencer program is very different.
It is working with only a select few at a time to to, you know, make our dollars work harder for us and and seeing, you know, how that can work. But with an influencer program, you have to look at it as, you know, yes, it's an ROI driver, and it can be a direct conversion, you know, channel for you. It's also awareness. It's also getting other people to look and see your brand and and understand who you are. But it has to also be the right look and feel.
You know, like I said before, thumb stopping content. A lot of influencer content is not necessarily gonna stop you in your tracks. So we're learning certain hooks and and ways that we can get people to to care about us, frankly, because there's a lot of people out there now. So you've gotta be very smart with your influencer program. And just because somebody has a hundred thousand followers does not mean they're gonna convert.
You've gotta be smarter than that. How hands on are you guys with the with the the toolkits that you give them? Obviously, you're you're sending them samples that they can use in their content. But are you giving them example scripts, example hooks, example content that they can use? Like, how how granular or detailed do you recommend people get Yeah.
When they're when they're giving toolkits to influencers, and how much leeway do you give to the influencer? Depends on who the influencer is. So like I said, we work with some of our friendlies every single month, and they know our brand inside and out. We don't even actually review their content anymore, which, is wonderful. It's a great place to be.
They're an extension of our brand. They know how to talk about us. They know what to do, and it converts. Other people right now, I'm actually, you know, working on some testing some new partners, much more hands on. They get a full brief from me.
They you know, I talk them through our brand, who we are, our brand guidelines. And to your point, I also talk them through different hooks. So we have a an an entire deck that we share of winning hooks and winning things to talk about and examples so they can see, like, this is the tone we're going for. This is the the vibe. We don't want you to be, you know, reading off of a script.
We don't want you to be in a dark room. Like, it has to feel very organic and natural. And so, yeah, early new new influencers, very prescriptive. Our friendlies and OGs, they can essentially do whatever they want because it works. That's great.
And I think Yeah. Just to reiterate that for our audience, I think a lot of people think influencer is, you know, you send them product and then it just converts. But but it's not always that way. I think the level of detail that you're you're citing is really the level of rigor that needs to go in to get the most out of influencers. And like you said, they're not all gonna work, but the more you can set them up for success, the better shot you have.
Because a lot of people will send product out and then be like, this influencer program failed. But when you really peel back the idea and they didn't really give them a ton of guidance or the content that got created wasn't very good. And and and it's really on the brand owner, whoever's driving it, to make sure that you're getting the most out of your influencers. Absolutely. I mean, you think about it.
These people, it's their job to to influence and create content. So they've got 15 other brands they're working on. So for you, your brand is is your number one, but for them, it's not the number one. So they need to know exactly what you're looking for for it to be successful. Great.
Yeah. And I think another trend that we see with kind of emerging and challenger brands is just, like, the cognitive burden. Right? So your every fire is on your shoulders. You don't have this team to distribute to.
You can't delegate to anyone else. It it's you. Mhmm. So how do you balance working on the business and in the business simultaneously, to make sure that you're pushing it forward, but not getting so sucked in and getting tunnel vision that you're still kind of keeping abreast of, like, where the new developments and new, market entrants? That's a great question.
My dad and I, you know, we're very lucky to work together, and I think we're in a really unique position where he's not a boss per se, and he's not some scary figurehead at your company that you need to go have a scary conversation with and prep for. It's my dad. So we can have pretty real conversation, and and we're able to actually talk through stuff and have challenging conversations. And we do a very good job of sort of level setting each other on, you know, this is the reality. This is what's going on, and sort of bringing each other kind of back down if we're if we're spiraling on something, because we can have that really off the cuff inform informal conversation.
But I always say in order to be a good marketer, you never stop learning and being a student of the world. And I say that in in two fold. Like, you have to be reading the trades and you have to be seeing what's out there. I took it a step further and even got my master's in integrated marketing because I just couldn't get enough. But you have to take it a step further and you have to actually consume things.
So I always say I am a consumer as well, and, you know, I'm buying things that I see. I'm testing our competitors. I'm following the influencers that are out there. I'm looking at the trends because I need to understand what's happening to the market. You know, I always joke that my job is my phone and my job is social media.
I have to see what's happening, you know, because otherwise, I'm not gonna be able to to apply it. You can't spend so much time in the business that you don't that you're not around the business and that in, you know, the world that it exists in. So it's very important. That's great. And just kind of another another question on that.
From from when you got started and kind of proved out the business to now, I imagine some of your marketing mix has changed. I'm assuming it's probably pretty heavy meta, maybe Google, maybe some TikTok, probably heavy Amazon advertising. How has it changed over the years, and are there any channels that you're particularly excited about now or that you're doubling down on? Oh, good question. You know, like I said, we've really been steady with our mix because it's worked, and we've taken on very little, risk with things.
The influencer space, as I mentioned, has changed a lot, and we've dialed down significantly on that. And we've channeled that money into the business and the innovation and into meta. One channel that was really fascinating for us that kinda fell flat was TikTok. So another thing, everyone, TikTok, TikTok, TikTok. You've gotta be on TikTok.
If you're not on TikTok, you know, everything's gonna end. And we tried. And we had great content. We had a great team doing it, and it was not working. And so we said, okay.
We're not gonna keep this as part of our channel. We're gonna put that money back into Meta. But Meta is also changing all the time. So we are constantly evaluating our channels, and seeing what is going to work for us. You know?
But at the end of the day, we are a per we're hyper focused on performance marketing. We're hyper focused on conversion driving tactics. If we don't see ROI or conversion, you know, it is a much bigger risk for us. We recently were just evaluating a large scale sponsorship that we ultimately said no to, because it would have been further away from us from a conversion, and we're not there yet. And that's okay.
I think as a brand, it's okay to not be ready for everything. And that is also a big piece of learning. Like I said, like, we will you will have people come at you from every single angle telling you, like, this is where your money has to go. This is the thing. This is the end all be all.
And like, I'm here to say, it's not. And you have to do what's best for your dollars because if you're, you know, doing a million things and you have no control over what's happening, it is going to be very difficult to evaluate. Yeah. And I think that's good good observation, especially on the TikTok piece. I mean, James, how many people we had on now?
I think one has had outsized success on TikTok. Almost everybody else we talked to has not had the same one. Feel better. Or or any at all. Yeah.
I sit on the board of a couple companies. I would say in the everyone we talk to, it still goes back to most people are succeeding with Meta and Amazon advertising. Some some succeed with TikTok. There are a variety of factors there. Some of it, I think, might be a little bit of luck too.
Mhmm. And then Google seems to be challenging, as more people are always searching on on Amazon and and less on on Google for at least the CPG product companies that we're talking to. Yeah. No. That's absolutely absolutely fair.
Yeah. We are, we're trying to monitor this, as an agency currently right now. And kinda what is the role that TikTok plays in the overall marketplaces, and how does that have halo effect? There is gonna be with Amazon, next month where they're actually integrating with TikTok. We're gonna see empty banner ads that can now drive traffic from TikTok shop, to Amazon.
So now anyone that's been hesitant, I think now a lot of brands are gonna be reevaluating. So it's really interesting on the agency perspective where we're trying to activations, but then we have to pull back. But then a new development comes up, so now we have to go test it again. So it's it's exciting. I wanna pull your hair out sometimes trying to keep on top of these things, but I always the moving target with TikTok.
It is, but we're lucky to have a great agency to help us through it. So Hey. Happy happy to be there. Yeah. Well, I I love there's always, I love different, like, unique angles, you know, and couple trends with, like, other founders that we've had.
We've had Shark Tank alums. We've had veterans. We've had people that have gone through or liquidity events prior to come on, and you are first, like, family duo combo on on on the podcast. So, for some families, you know, family business can be really tough and difficult. I know Mike is really intense and just a real driver.
Yeah. Very. Yeah. I'm kidding. But, like, Mike, what wanna hear from you.
Like, what's it like building, with your family? Like, as a dad, you know, my kids are, you know, four and six. Sean's got three kids, all young. But, like, how is it to, like, you know, see your kid grow up, you know, over the course of, like, thirty plus years and then, like, get to build something with them now? There's nothing better.
It's pretty much easy, Nancy. The one thing you can do when you're working with one of your kids is they're not kids. They're full grown adults, but their their family is you can trust them. And, if we have a problem or there's some priorities that we need to focus on, I don't have to repeat myself. You know, I've managed hundreds of people in the corporate world in my life, and repeating myself was kind of a a a regular function of getting the message out.
Here, the message is the same for both of us because Julie owns the company. It was nothing more connecting between the managers and the company than ownership. %. And and we we we both own it, so it it's everything we do matters. Mhmm.
And, sure, we get into battles because I will I will I will cut off something that's not generating returns on on investment in five seconds. And Julia is like, give it some time. And so, I I've learned a lot from her. I know nothing. I'm the original Sergeant Schultz here.
I know nothing about CPG. And now I've learned a lot. Now I read every trade magazine, every possible sort of consultant summaries and reviews on what's going on in the industry, and I can't get enough of it. And that's all because Julia taught me sort of the ropes. Well, vice versa.
You know, like I said, I I always say it's worked with us is because we're the yin and the yang. His background is not mine, and mine is not his. And so the learning goes both ways. You know, when I was in grad school and taking accounting courses and and sharpening my my financial acumen, he was the biggest resource and help. And it also was for me those moments of, like, oh, this isn't that confusing or complicated.
I can speak both sides now. Right? And now I'm really interested in finance, and I'm interested in what's happening with the numbers. And so we've really been able to share and to learn. But, yeah, there's been battles.
There's been it's not just, like, sunshine and roses because it's my dad. Like, there's there's still difficult conversations. But at the end of the day, like, we're so invested emotionally and financially too that it's it's everything is for the business. And we've gotten really sharp and and smart at making decisions that, if it doesn't drive the business forward, it will not happen. And, it took a lot of time and some failures to get there, though.
But it's it's been the biggest joy of my life. I didn't think I would ever be able to work with my dad and and have that and grow a company and be successful. And, you know, it's been incredible. I feel so, so lucky and fortunate to be able to do that. That's great.
In one, we'll probably end on this one, but one thing we always ask people was in your entire journey, was there ever that kind of oh, shit moment where you didn't know if the company was gonna make it or something that you thought was unrecoverable that you're able to overcome? Oh. So that we're not gonna make a thing, knock on wood, has never come up because we don't leverage the company. We don't have lots of employees. We don't have huge payroll to make.
Everybody's on contract. So if we have a problem, we have thirty days to get out, and we don't want overhead. No beanbag chairs, no ping pong tables, none of that. No offices. So everything goes into building the company and making it available to our customers.
All we care about is our customer gets what they want, and we have enough of it to give them. We sell out a lot, and that's, you know, other challenge in managing CPGs, making enough to anticipate demand. And so we we we we we deal with that. But, Julia can give you a few moments, but we've never had the almost failure moment. That's great.
No. No almost failures. I mean, of course, COVID COVID was a hard time for everybody, but we like, we mentioned, our our supply chain is so ship shape that we were able to to to to work through that very well. You know, but that was still not a oh, crap. We're going under a moment.
You know? Hang on. But we've had, like I said, small failures. You know, we've had those big influencers that have just been, like, a complete bomb when all signs pointed to they would be successful. And those are tough hits because those are expensive expensive influencers that we're paying cash, and we got nothing from them.
You know? That that's a really hard pill to swallow, when every single dollar is accounted for. You know? Big CPG can absorb that easily. They don't care, but we we don't absorb that as easily.
I would also say, you know, the right partners is key. We've had some failures in who we've worked with. We've had people we've trusted that we shouldn't have trusted. You know, we've had, some learnings there. And so we keep a very, very close group of people that we work with.
We evaluate every conversation very, very closely. You know, everybody wants to come take your money. Every single person wants to come try to sell you some, like, big idea, say that they're the magic piece to your puzzle, and, you know, they're gonna take you to the moon. And you have to have a very, very strong bullshit meter in this business. Forgive my French there.
But, like, I cannot stress that enough. I can count I I don't have enough fingers and toes to count on how many times that meter has gone through the roof, and it is, like, get away as fast as possible. But some have snuck in. You know? And that's the reality.
Some have snuck in. We've had to learn the hard way on those conversations. And, but being what's I think the best part of all of that is that it's our family. It's our business. It is my dad I'm talking to at the end of the day, and there is no sugarcoating those conversations.
And it's it's you're on the same page. So we're very fortunate to keep growing and grow fast and to to keep building the business the way that we've been able to. Good. Well, Mike, Julia, thank you so much. This was, I I I've enjoyed working with you both and then also just just a great conversation today.
I think you gave a lot of, just just a lot of value added nuggets in here that I think people that are trying to navigate the same territory, maybe a few steps behind you all, that I think you can help blend them in their path and their journey to kind of building, their brands out. So thank you again. Absolutely. Our pleasure. Thanks for having us, guys.
Yeah. Thank you, guys. And I'll I'll end with this. Have fun. Thank you.
Yeah. I'll end with this as I always say, James and I don't monetize this podcast, so we do it purely for our learning. We enjoy the conversations, and we wanna share the the knowledge with all of our listeners. So if you found this valuable today, please share it with your colleagues, your friends, your family. You can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube, or generally wherever you're gonna get your podcasts.
And thank you for joining today, and thanks, Mike and and Julia, for being great guests. Our pleasure. Thanks, guys. Hey. Thank you, guys.