Jon Pierre Francia: The Go-To-Market Strategy Behind Life Cider’s Retail Breakthrough

Welcome to Go to Market, a podcast for RevOps, sales, and marketing leaders to dive deep into industry insights and best practices. Go to Market is sponsored by Fulcast and Silicon Slopes. I am so excited to welcome today Jean-Pierre Francia, founder and president of LifeCyder. Jean-Pierre, how are you?

I'm doing great. Thank you. How are you today?

I'm doing great. Thank you so much for joining the podcast today. There's— I had a great time meeting you at Failed Fest. That was a fabulous conference that we both met at, and it was a lot of fun. And thank you for coming on the podcast to share your story.

Happy to. Yeah, I met some amazing, amazing people there. It was a great day. You obviously being chief among them, some great, some great folks that came. That was just fun meeting a lot of great people, local people, and actually some people from around the country.

Yeah, that's how I felt too. It was really a, a neat conference. So, uh, JP, it was really fun to meet you and learn a little bit about your background, but for the education and edification of our listeners, tell us a little bit of how you got started in your business and entrepreneurship. Clearly you are, you know, at the top of your game. You've, your LifeCider business is in hundreds of Walmarts and you've got this incredible thriving business, but how did you get started?

Well, I, I accidental touristed into this company. I've created a lot of other things in the past and frankly my health was really bad. I was, I have this little thing next to me. I don't, I'll just pull it here, but you can see this. Physical. There's some before and afters, right? So that was me 11 years ago, 12 years ago, and I was overweight, but very sick, much sicker than I should have been for the 60+ pounds extra I had on. I had severe acid reflux and I'd had it for basically a decade.

Oh, wow.

And there's really two types of acid reflux and people don't really realize that they likely have one of them and it's called hypochlorhydria. That's too little acid, even though it burns like you have too much acid, it's a lack of acid. So just the gases and bubbles bubbling up around the food it can't digest because you don't have enough and it destroys the esophageal valve in your throat. And so I took every pill you could imagine for a decade and all the, you know, different antacids and they didn't work. And so one night I had, I drowned in my sleep. I had so much reflux come up, it went in my lungs and I drowned and almost died. And when I survived, my grandmother said, why didn't you tell me? I was like, well, I was overweight and embarrassed. I just eat bad food. I don't, I don't take good care of myself. You know, I was a college athlete in football and baseball and I used to be in really good shape. And then I just, you know, life took over. And so I said, grandma, cause she said, what I want you to do is start drinking watered down apple cider vinegar. Why would I drink more acid? I have acid reflux. And she said, a lot of people don't have enough acid. And she didn't know what it was called, but they now call that hypochlorhydria. And I was like, okay, grandma. So I started putting a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar in some water and I used it with every meal. And within, I don't know, 3 weeks, my acid reflux, which had been severe, was gone. It handled it. And I was like, okay, wow. So I realized I was a vinegar lifer and I started to try and make it taste better. And I had a background in restaurants and other things. So I had to kind of have a bit of a culinary background and I made it taste good enough that I could stand doing it. And what's interesting is my weight started to come down too. And I didn't know why. And I don't know that back then, you know, 11 years ago, 10 years ago, there was a lot of clinical data on the why of apple cider vinegar. But if you remind, I'll tell you why. Apple cider vinegar has acetic acid.

Mm-hmm.

Acetic acid does two things for people like me with hypochloridria, which is probably 70 million-ish Americans have hypochloridria and don't realize it.

Mm-hmm.

That extra acetic acid from apple cider vinegar with the meal gives you enough acid to digest your food better, which means acid reflux is, is tamed or eliminated in, in a lot of people. Secondly, acetic acid for the general population, people without acid reflux. Why acetic acid? A tablespoon of acetic acid with a meal will raise your insulin sensitivity by on average 45%. It's 30 to 60%, but just say average of 45%. What does that mean? People think, oh, is that a good thing? Yeah, it's a good thing. The higher insulin sensitivity, the less insulin you secrete with that meal. Oh, what is insulin? Insulin is the fat storage hormone. Okay. So every time insulin's secreted, your body says, well, red alert, let's deal with this blood sugar spike. Let's store everything except the sugar as fat. We'll just store it and get to it later. Let's just get this blood sugar spike down. So, you know, there's been clinical trials on, on apple cider vinegar and, and one, this is anecdotal, but it kind of goes to the clinical trial. And we've done this with several people who wear constant glucose monitors. You can eat a Snickers bar and watch your insulin spike, how high it is and how long the tail is. And then you can eat a same, same person, eat a Snickers bar with a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar with it. That spike is typically half as high and half as long.

What? That's amazing.

So vinegar is kind of nature's GLP-1, right? It's, it's really, it's managing the blood sugar. So, yeah. So for me, I started making this concoction. It was in the fridge. It was there for years. And one day I noticed it was disappearing and I was like, what is happening? And I asked my family, who's drinking my healthy juice? They all were. They all liked it. I was like, guys, I don't wanna make this every day cuz I'd make a vat of it and have a pain in the butt to make. And they weren't gonna stop. So I thought I would, uh, try and discourage them. So I started dumping vitamins, capsules, vitamin C and zinc and squeezing in D3 and B12. And I thought it would taste, you know, not nearly as good because of all that vitamins I was sticking in there. But if they were going to drink it, darn it, they're going to take their vitamins because they're bad at that. You couldn't taste it. So long story short, I realized this could be a product, but did nothing with it for a long time. And finally, one day my brother and I ordered in some organic flavors and started doing, dropping them in my little concoction and just playing, you know, mad scientists. And then we thought, well, let's see how it is carbonated. It was great. We thought, okay, we're going to be beverage titans. And so that was 2018, like early 2018. Took me 5 months to realize I was not cut out for beverage. This is the big boys and girls table. This is, this is where the big kids sit. And it's billions, millions of dollars to start and all the right people and relationships. And I didn't have those. So I shut it down. Didn't do anything with it for years. And then I got talked into sending some to a friend of mine in Arizona who had a distributor friend. His, and his friend got it the day he got it, he called me, said, JP, we can sell the heck out of this. Gave us the courage to try. And so Life Cider was born and I actually gonna show you can number 1. That was December of '22.

Oh my gosh.

As original brand. And then I got invited to compete at BevNet, which is the new beverage showdown in Manhattan. As this new Nobody brand. And I made it to the finals, made a huge splash. And like the head buyer for Whole Foods, the senior person at Sprouts, and a senior VP at Coke all said, we love your product, but that label's confusing because you think it's going to drink some apple juice and some lemonade. Fix that before you go to market.

Yeah.

So within 3 months, we had created the new version, Tangy Tart and Sweet, because let kind of informs you when you're gonna drink something more tart and change the branding. So it was a little more yoga mom, a little more less aw shucks country town lemonade.

Yeah. Yeah.

Went to market and started making some real progress and getting some retail and something crazy happened. I, uh, a friend of mine's son plays for the Dallas Cowboys, Brock Hoffman. And I knew Brock had severe acid reflux and had for years. So I sent him a bunch of Life Cider. And drank one with every meal. And he called my CEO after like 10 days and said, bro, I just bought a mattress. And my CEO's like, what? Why are you calling me about a mattress? He goes, I can sleep laying down. I've been sleeping in a La-Z-Boy for 5 years. 'Cause these guys, linemen in, in the NFL and a lot of major big athletes, athletes in general, they eat a lot of food. A lineman in the NFL on average will eat 12,000 calories a day.

Wow.

So they have digestive issues. Almost all of them. So he said, he calls him, asked, reflux is gone. I want to invest. And a bunch of his buddies on the Cowboys want to invest. And then a couple of his other buddies that he knew from college and other NFL teams invested. So we ended up with all these NFL linemen as investors.

No way.

And then the craziest thing was another friend of mine, one of her friends is the top supplement scientist in the world. You can look him up, Shawn Wells, look up Shawn Wells. And he has like 45 or more patents on really important ingredients as supplements. So a lot of the major supplements in the world right now are patented by Shawn. He's known internationally as an ingredientologist. And he said, we met and he said, JP, let's take your regular Life Cider and let's make an energy drink version. And I was like, bro, the world doesn't need another caffeinated beverage.

But actually it does. And that's the one I had. And that's the one I love.

Yeah. But, and he said, JP, this isn't caffeine. This is paraxanthine. So most your audience won't know that word yet, but look it up. Paraxanthine. I'll show you how it's spelled. You can look on the can. Paraxanthine. Look up paraxanthine and look at the clinical research on it. And, and I was like, okay, what's paraxanthine, John? Paraxanthine is what caffeine, one of the 3 things caffeine turns into in your body. When you eat or drink caffeine, your liver has to metabolize it.

Mm-hmm.

And it turns into 3 things. The, the, the important one, like 85% of what caffeine turns into is paraxanthine. That is the energy. That's the part that makes you feel good and feel up. But there's a really bad thing that comes from caffeine. It's called theophylline. Theophylline is what gives you jitters and shakes and anxiousness and elevated heart rate. And for a lot of people, stomach issues, like kind of stomach cramps. It just doesn't make you feel good. So Shawn owns the patent on Infinity Paraxanthine, which is the only clinically tested paraxanthine in the world. And the data on it's incredible, like literally 30% less cognitive errors in a clinical trial between caffeinated athletes and athletes on paraxanthine. A caffeinated athlete after consuming caffeine and then doing a pre-race cognitive, pre-race cognitive test, then either caffeine, placebo, or ca— or paraxanthine. Then a 12-kilometer race on a treadmill, and then a post-race cognitive test. The caffeinated athletes had 20% more mistakes than placebo, and the paraxanthine athletes had 10% less mistakes than placebo. It was a 30-point delta in cognitive errors. So what of your listeners doesn't want either themselves or their friends or their employees or to not to have 30% less errors. So I reluctantly, initially he told me about this and I love the science, but didn't have the money to go jump into the energy drink business. You know, you're fighting against the real true behemoths. But I made a small batch just for my NFL players the previous season. I said, here you go guys, thank you for the money you've invested. Appreciate it. I'm not asking for more. We'll just focus on LifeCider, but I made you a small batch. They all called me within a week. Expletives deleted. They all basically said, JP, this is incredible. Here's some more money. Let's go. So we raised some more money really quickly. And so LifeCider X was born. So this is still an apple cider vinegar drink with a tablespoon, just like, you know, original. So this is what we call OG, and this is now in 1,242 Walmarts. And then LifeCider X is our energy drink with paraxanthine, a huge focus stack of alpha GPC. For focus. So like, you notice you drink this, you feel good. And then I'll tell you how most people say, and then you tell me if you agree, you feel good, you feel up within like 15, 20 minutes, and you feel just like you got a great night's sleep for 3.5, 4 hours. And then when it's out, it just kind of goes away gently. There's not a crash. Is that—

there's no crash. That's true. That's what I experienced myself. It was just— it just felt good. And you just wanted to like grab a couple more from my purse on the way out. It's a lot of fun. So, you know, what are the lessons here that people listening to the podcast can learn from you when it comes to going to market? Number one, you gotta have a killer product, right? Yeah. Number two, the science of it matters, right? What else can people learn from your story if somebody is, you know, thinking about being an entrepreneur? What would you tell them?

Um, well, for me, I'll tell you, I, I don't believe in no. I just, it doesn't cross my mind. I feel like once I get to, my brain goes through the pros and cons and of doing something. And then, and I, once I believe in it, I just believe in it. And I, even if I don't know all the answers, I just go and I figure it out. And I know a lot of major CEOs have said the same thing, like some, you can't be be paralyzed by, you know, information overload. You just have to make the best gut decision you can and go. So I, I just haven't been afraid to go try.

I love that.

It's just get up in the morning and go make it happen and figure it out along the way. And, and then surround yourself with good people. I've had other companies I've started and, you know, chosen poorly in terms of the partners. Right now I have incredible partners. I have a great cast of people around me. My CEO is a major major player in retail. He's done billions and billions of dollars in sales and billions of dollars in exits. And my COOs, she's incredible. Like, I just— our marketing team. So it's really fortunate right now to have good people around me who believe. I mean, we really have something incredible. I mean, just for example, so OG, right, our LifeCider Original, which is now Walmart. This is basically like an Olipop, Poppi, Culture Pop. This is a healthy soda. But when you look at, when you look at, and this is kind of fun actually. Actually, here's the iteration. This is great. Original Lifesaver was 54 calories. Yeah. 40. So 50, basically 50 calories. And then what we actually went to market with had 30 calories. And this was a little vinegar forward, right? If you've had these at Harmons, cuz these are Harmons, they're about to be replaced by the new ones. We've had this, it's kind of the kombucha crowd, right? It's a little vinegar forward, kind of got that bite to it. Yeah, it sold okay, but new OG just tastes like it. Did you try these? Did you get a chance?

Oh yeah, they're, they're good too. Yeah, I focused on the X because I was tired. Yeah, but those ones were really delicious.

So I guess the lesson here is we've iterated, we've iterated and, and pivoted very quickly and figured out— we've, I guess, failed fast, right? That's a term, fail fast. So we failed fast and really have Now, what is an absolute winner, it fits perfectly in the conversation with all the new healthy sodas. But oh, I was gonna show you this. Look at our calorie count now.

Yeah. But that—

we're 15 calories and this tastes so much better than this. This, this had erythritol in it and monk fruit and also our honey. We, we found a, a proprietary blend of stevia and I'm a stevia hater. I gotta tell you, I never liked stevia. Always Sean Wells, the same guy who created all the other ingredients. For our supplement line. He created Sweet Vantage Stevia, and this stevia with the honey, as you know, they tasted great. So we've iterated fast, and we've been fortunate to have, you know, met Shawn and be able to have the energy side. So realistically, we're kind of a company that's, you know, Poppy Olipop on one side and, you know, Celsius and Alani Nu on the other. So with products that I'm so proud of, So yeah, I, in answer to your question, fail fast. Don't be afraid and try and find the best people you can to surround yourself with. And also when you're raising money, strategic money and take smart money. Don't, don't, a dollar's not a dollar. Like every dollar's not the same. How's that?

That, that's well, very well said. Well, thank you so much. I love learning about your entrepreneurial journey through your story. I think there were just a ton of lessons that I took from that. Just my last question for you is, how do you stay at the top of your game like you are now? How do you stay motivated and pushing forward and in your right state of entrepreneurial mind? Is it, it could be anything from like a book you read or yoga class or, or what, what do you do to stay at the top?

Well, a few things. Obviously when my health had slid the way it did for a long time, now it's such a priority. I go to the gym every night. Like I came home last night, we had, I was at Retail Collective for the last couple days, which is a bunch of, you know, it's a great thing that Jeremy Brockbank puts on every year in Salt Lake. It's a huge cast of really top CEOs and, you know, I'm the kind of more newbie to that crowd, but it's really exciting to see guys who have succeeded at that level. So I came home, I was tired, got home at 8 o'clock and I still went to the gym. So it is an absolute priority to me. I just get it done. That's item one. Item two is what gets me out of bed in the morning is I've raised a lot of money from some really good people, and I feel such, such a responsibility to make this a success. But so I want to be a success for them, but also really, I'm on a mission. I grew up with a dad that was diabetic. He didn't manage his blood sugar well. I had paramedics at my house in my teenage years more times than I could count, saving his life. In the middle of the night, 2:00 AM, 3:00 AM, 4:00 AM, just terrifying. So the fact that apple cider vinegar, acetic acid can do what it can do for blood sugar management, that it can truly help. That's part of my mission is let people know, hey, this inexorable march towards diabetes that we are on, and certainly Latin America's on, there's a way to stop it. Reduce the sugar and manage the sugar you do have better. Apple cider vinegar can do that. And we find that we found a way to make it taste great.

I love it. So you're taking care of yourself by going to the gym at night. You're taking care of your investors, putting that top of mind, helping you get out of bed. But, and then, you know, for, for people, you've got a very strong why and you've got a very strong reason that this needs to succeed. And I love how you articulated that. That was awesome.

There's really two pieces to it. There's the blood sugar part for diabetes, and there's also the digestion. As I've been on the street doing Man on the Street interviews and letting people try it and shooting videos, I'm blown away at how many people, either them or their mom or their dad or their brother or sister or grandparents, have had severe acid reflux forever. And they've taken all those different supplements or, you know, all those different pills and doesn't work. And so part of my mission with the blood sugar is the digestion. Let people know. So I'm on an apple cider vinegar mission to the world because we finally made it taste good. And I, we will likely sell to a strategic earlier than you might otherwise want. And there's a reason for that. I think I shouldn't say this out loud. I want a major player that can put it in, you know, 400,000 doors, you know, and we're going to get it in, you know, 20, 30, 40,000 doors. We're going to get a lot of places.

But we need to get product on a global scale, on a global stage, so you can get that health benefit out to the most people as quickly as possible.

So we'll accelerate and we'll have a sale and it'll be nice and everybody will have a nice return. But to be able to look back 20 years from now and know that LifeCider was everywhere and actually made a difference. I mean, the number of emails I get and texts from customers and Instagram messages, dude, this changed my life. Either your energy drink or just your vinegar drink, they changed my life. So I would love to, you know, have that on my, uh, I don't know, my, my tombstone, right? He really made a difference.

Absolutely.

That's, that's the mission. And we'll, we'll do the business part as best we can and grow it as fast as we can and find the right strategic that loves the mission and won't ruin the product and will, and put it everywhere. Uh, although everywhere's already happening. North Africa and the Middle East, we already have a distributor and they're going crazy. Mexico is coming on board.

So it's, that's exciting.

It's kind of crazy.

That's really cool. Well, congratulations on everything and thank Thank you again for joining the podcast. It's such a pleasure to be able to chat with you, learn so much from you, and I really appreciate the time that you spent, you know, educating me and our listeners on how business gets done. So thank you so much, JP.

Love it. Thank you so much.

Business. Yes, that's business. Business. Yes, that's business.