Kevin Gould - Founder and CEO of Kombo Ventures

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What is going on, everyone? Casey Adams here. Welcome back to the Rise of the Young podcast. On today's episode we have Kevin Gold here with us, founder and CEO of Combo Ventures. Kevin Gold is an entrepreneur, talent manager, brand builder and investor based in Los Angeles, California. He is the founder and CEO of Combo Ventures and is also a co founder of three direct to consumer brands, insert name here. A hair extensions and product brand, Wakeheart, a fragrance and scent brand aimed at Gen Z and young millennials and co founded with the Dolan twins, two of the largest digital influencers in the world and Glamtic, a leading magnetic eyeliner and lash brand. In 2019, Gold was named to Variety magazine's Dealmakers Impact list honoring top dealmakers in the entertainment industry and in 2020 was recognized by Business on their list of top investors in the influencer economy. Gold regularly speaks on panels and at events on new media, experiential marketing and the convergence of technology, entertainment and consumer branding. Before we dive into the episode, please take a moment to share this episode with a friend. Make sure you leave a five star review on itunes and if you're listening on Spotify, share this episode on your Instagram stories. TikTok tag myself tag Kevin G on Instagram. And with that being said, let's dive into the episode. All right, what is going on everyone? Casey Adams here. Welcome back to the Rise of the Young podcast. On today's episode, we have Kevin Gold here with. Here with us today from Combo Ventures. Thanks so much for coming on, Kevin.

Thanks for having me, Casey. Really excited to be here.

Yeah, so we've, we've been, I would say connected for quite some time now on Instagram and I've been looking forward to having you on the show. But for everyone that may not know what Combo Ventures is. I know that you guys have a ton of different portfolio companies, but also companies that you're, you guys are more actively involved with. I'd love for you to give the people some insight into what Combo Ventures is before we dive into it.

Yeah, sure. So by the way, really excited to be here. Thanks for having me on to give a little bit of context on Combo Ventures. So Combo has taken a few different forms over the years, but one side of the business operates as a digital talent management business where we're managing large YouTube creators and digital content creators. And we also do a lot of strategy work with brands primarily on influencer and content strategy. And then a few years ago I really wanted to start building my own brands and, and so a little over two years ago, launched my first brand. Today we, you know, I've co founded and co owned three different direct to consumer brands. One is in the women's hair space. It's called insert name here. I have two co founders, Sharon and Jordan on that brand. Another is called Glamnetic. It's a magnetic eyelash brand and sort of, we're expanding into everything, DIY beauty hacks. And then third was sort of done with, with with two influencers, the Dolan twins, who are two amazing, amazing guys. And it's a fragrance and scent brand for Gen Z called called Waycart.

Very cool, man. Yeah, man. I think it's fascinating and I know we touched on it briefly before we jumped into it, but you have different business partners and all these different ventures and you guys, like I said before, have a ton of companies that you've invested into. Like, where did this all start when it comes to like the first company a part of Combo Ventures? Because I'm sure it was a journey to get to the point where you are now.

Yeah, sure. I mean, look, I've been in LA now for I think almost 13 years and time flies. But quick story is, grew up in North Carolina.

I didn't know that. I'm from Virginia, so shout out.

Yeah, right next door. So, you know, grew up in North Carolina. Wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do. I got a business degree at the time and it was at a time where you couldn't just like go on YouTube and learn anything you wanted. Right. I feel it's an amazing time right now for someone in college or that's 18 that wants to learn anything, but at the time that wasn't really there yet. Knew I wanted to be in the entertainment business and so I ended up moving out to la. Ended up landing a gig in the mailroom at wme, which is one of the larger talent agencies out there. And I actually started. So the way it works, right, is you start in the mail room and you literally at the time I was like pushing around a mail card and they don't care where you went to college. It doesn't matter. It was, it was like wild. And then you become an assistant. And so I worked for a few different agents who repped a lot of big traditional actors. And I was working with like all the, you know, the young Hollywood traditional type actors. Pre digital.

Yep.

Saw that, you know, digital was like really coming up. At the time WME only had like a one person digital department. Now they've got 50 agents and saw a gap there and sort of decided to leave. And at the time I left with someone else and started what ended up being Combo Ventures, where at the time we were essentially working with early to mid stage startups and running all of their entertainment strategy. And the model was we take a retainer like an agency would, but I'd also take equity in the companies and then sort of parlay that to once I realized how hard it was to get into the companies, doubling down on investing in the companies as well.

Well, very cool, man. So you moved out to LA 12 years ago and then how long were you at that talent agency before you stepped out?

I was there a little over three, I think A little over three and a half years. And it was amazing experience. I think, like I always tell a lot of young people, like go into a company and learn. Like I learned so much there. I gained so many relationships in the entertainment space that I still have to this day. And you know, look, I got crushed. Like it was like I was working like 100 hours.

Yeah.

But it was an amazing experience and I totally love that I did it.

That's very cool, man. So with Combo Ventures, did you start off by, you said working on more so you would have like a agency, but then it shifted into starting your own brands. When did that come into play when it comes to launching your own brands?

Yeah, that's, that's actually like fairly recent in the life cycle of Combo. So that was a little over two years ago now. And a lot of it came from just working with all these influencers in the space. I saw the real scale that influencers could get on the commerce side by the reach they had and I just felt like there was this sort of white space where if you really know and understand the influencer side of things. And of course you have to have all the other things you need to do to build a successful E comm brand. There's a little bit of a competitive advantage there. And yes, so insert name here, which is the first brand we launched. It's the women's hair brand that launched around two years ago.

Okay, very cool, man. When did angel investing come into the picture? Because I know that you have quite the great portfolio of great companies, but when did that start coming into play?

So I've always sort of missed that risk factor. In my head. I'm someone who's willing to take lots of risk. And so when I was, when I, when I was really working with a lot of these early stage startups and I, you know, I obviously had them on like a retainer from the agency model.

Yep.

It's like, wait a second, why am I not investing in these companies? I need to double down. And so what I did was I took all, like, literally all the money except to pay rent back when I was 20, 23 or 24, and threw it back in as an angel investor in the company. And that's how it really. And it started small, man. I was doing like 10, 15k checks. And then it obviously built from there. And some of them really worked, some of them didn't work, but luckily I think the ones that worked worked more than the ones that didn't.

Yeah, I mean, what were some of the early companies that you got involved with? Because I know right now you guys have a handful of different brands, but what were some of the early ones that you bet on?

Yeah, one was gift. It was a digital gift card app that I think at the time was like the first app out there in the space nine years ago that you could send and receive digital gift cards. And it kind of comes back to like lifelong relationships that you make. Cj, who was the founder and CEO of that company, he ultimately ended up selling it to a big payment processor, First Data. But out of it, him and I became like really great friends. And cut to today, he's the founder and CEO of a company called Step, which is like essentially banking for Gen Z. And so it just kind of just shows like, you know, keeping great relationships is key. And it's fun to see like, you know, the relationships grow over nine or ten years.

Dude, that's so cool, man. And speaking of Step, I know that I've been seeing it everywhere recently. I know that we were talking about it in the DMs. You guys did a huge campaign with Charli D'. Amelio. And you guys are just crushing it from an influencer perspective product. I'd love for you to touch on that. What STEP is your involvement? When did you get involved? And most importantly, from the influencer side, I'd love to touch on just some of the campaigns that you guys are running because I'm seeing them everywhere right now.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So again, CJ's been a really good buddy of mine for a long time. He launched Step around two years ago. Building a bank, an actual bank, is really tough. He brought on some really great investors with Stripe and Will Smith. A number of other people came in and the combo side of the business, I'm fortunate to have a really amazing team on that side of the business. And we sort of sat down with STEP and figured out, you know, what's the right influencer strategy to launch, you know, Step into the ecosystem for Gen Z. So the news that you're mentioning with Charli d' Amelio coming on as a big partner of the brand and also her parents. Cause I think it's. There's like a real. There's a real lack of financial literacy and education for teens. Like, they just don't teach it in school. So that's, that's one of the main goals of Step, and that's what drew me to it. So I've been an angel investor essentially since day one, and I'm excited to have Step as a client on the combo side of the business.

That's very cool, man. And I wanted to touch on DraftKings. You said there's a wild story there. Were you an Angel Investor in DraftKings, or what's your involvement there?

Yeah, I mean, I've been an investor in DraftKings, man, for probably five years. Wow. And it just goes to show, I think a few things. One is it takes really resilient founders to get a company through tough times. When I invested in DraftKings, it was going great, and then all of a sudden, regulation hit in the gambling space. Right. And it was a whirlwind two to three years. And I don't think they could have stuck around if it wasn't for the management team they had in place and resiliency of the founders. And as an investor, sometimes it's not an easy ride up. I think that's what gets supported in the media a lot of times. But for a company like DraftKings, it was like a roller coaster up and down. And luckily, you know, it ended really up and they went public. About six months ago. But that was an exciting one, dude.

That's insane. And, like, I'd love to dive more deeper into that, like DraftKings as a. Going through the regulations and as an investor and someone that believes in a brand. What were some of the lessons that you learned through the struggles of that deal?

Yeah, I mean, look, I think that one. It's a little bit different than the businesses that I operate. Right. Because I'm in it. And I was more of a passive investor in DraftKings. But I do think, like, when I look at the thesis of everything I've invested in, again, it comes down to who are the founders? How are they going to pivot and navigate through this? I think there's a lot of parallels now to any entrepreneur that's going through Covid.

Right.

Like, anyone. Anyone that went through Covid would have never thought at the beginning of the year that their entire business strategy for 2020 probably went out the window and they had to be super resourceful, navigate very quickly and realize that changes are happening and just adjust. Right. So I think just companies, in order to survive, have to constantly be reinventing themselves and be super resourceful.

Yeah, no, absolutely, man. And I want to take a step back. So you said you're from North Carolina, you went to college. Where, where, where did you see your future when you were in your early twenties going to college? Like, did you have a plan to move to la? Because, you know, like, for everyone that's listening, you have your hands in a lot of things. You're crushing it in business. But I want to talk more about the. The journey of how you got to this point and what was the. What were the opportunities that led you to LA and what was your infrastructure like while growing up in North Carolina? Because I think that's super important.

Yeah, I mean, I had a really, really loose plan. And I think for me at the time, I was grasping for knowledge that I couldn't find. So again, like in this is like 2008, obviously, like, there was the Internet, but it wasn't as built out as it was today. There weren't. You know, if I were 18 at the time, I'd be listening to someone like you. Right. And taking advice from you. There wasn't the yous out there, right there. There wasn't other entrepreneurs to go look at. And so, you know, it was. It was talking to other, you know, entrepreneurs that I could find in North Carolina and talking to mentors, but I honestly didn't know. And I just sort of had an Intuition that I, you know, I thought I should be out in la and I, you know, I wanted to give it a shot and, you know, I just made the, you know, made the move.

Yeah.

But I think today, like, I just tell every young person, I'm like, man, you can learn anything you want on the Internet. And, like, don't miss that opportunity for knowledge that you can find on, you know, for anything you want to do on YouTube or, you know, on social.

Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to touch on just influencer marketing in 2020. How have you seen the industry shift, especially during COVID and the whole what everything happened, right, where brands are either spending less or spending more, depending on their resources. But what's your thoughts on where influencer marketing is and where it's going?

I finally think it's actually hit mainstream. And, you know, it's the last couple, even the last couple years, like, obviously, brands have gotten much more into it than were before. But the one thing I've seen over the last nine months is how quickly brands jumped into TikTok. I mean, five years ago, it took them forever to jump into YouTube. And you were just always trying to convince them the value of leveraging influencers. So I think that for the most part, brands have realized they need to work with influencers, but it's very binary still. There's some that do it really, really well, and then others that are just, like, grasping for air, that are trying to figure out what to do and they just can't keep up. The ones that are doing it really well have figured out that it has to run in parallel with everything else that you're doing from a. A content strategy, a social strategy, a paid media strategy. You can't look at, like, influencer marketing is just like an isolated thing. Right. It's definitely got a lot of advantages, but you need to run it in parallel with everything that else that you're doing as a. As a brand. And I think I'd say the last thing is that the pricing of influencers has adjusted a little bit more. I think five years ago, brands just had no clue how to price it and they were paying insane amounts of money. I think there's still some brands out there that do that, but brands have gotten a lot smarter about the way they're tracking ROI and just backing into the numbers. And so I think there's actually more deals now for influencers, but the rates that they're getting paid have been compressed a little bit from where they're at five years ago.

Yeah, that Makes sense. What's your advice to brands? Like, if there's someone listening that's an entrepreneur, has a brand, they want to dive into the influencer marketing space more. Like, how do you, like you said, audit and stay aligned with your brand mission? Where do you look for these influencers? Because I think that's a question that, you know, a lot of business owners want, want to know is like, how do you get in touch? Not only get in touch, but if you're, if you're someone that's just getting into the space that you're not too familiar with it, that would hire someone like yourself. Like, what is the strategy to have a great influencer strategy outside of just reaching out to them on Instagram, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I look, I think that is the place to sort of start. Like, I think, I think sometimes people think it's a little more complicated than it is. Right. And like for us, right on, on, you know, let's take like climatic or insert name here. Some of the brands that we do a lot of influencer work on in the beginning, you know, we were super scrappy. We didn't have a ton, I self funded everything. We didn't have a ton of capital to go, you know, pay a ton of influencers a lot of money. And so we were Sitting on Instagram DMing Micro influencers who we thought were authentic to our brand and we built out a pretty robust gifting strategy, you know, and we, and we really had to like back into which ones made sense and were worth it. And you have to really look at their engagement and it's obviously not just followers.

Yeah.

I think as a brand gets more, you know, scale, there's obviously a lot of tools they can use to search for influencers. But when you're like a solo entrepreneur or it's a team of two or three and you're super early, like you should be DMing 100 to 200 influencers a day and you're gonna have a certain percentage of hit rate of influencers that are gonna talk about your brand. You're gonna figure out the ones that pop and you either go find more people like them or you double down and actually hook them into like a bigger deal on an ongoing basis for your brand. So that would be my advice if you're trying to do it super low budget, super scrappy until you figure out what's right and then you can get into actually paying, you know, paying, you know, doing paid deals for influencers.

Yeah, totally. When it comes to the three brands, Glamtic, Waycart and insert name here, what was the, you know, beauty? Right. Getting into fragrance and hair extensions and just everything that's happening in that world. What was the reason behind that and what gave you that opportunity to dive into that space?

Yeah, you know, I've been fortunate through some past companies I'm invested in to have, you know, a little bit of a background in the beauty space. And I really, really like that world because of the communities that are built around, you know, around beauty. So I think if you look at brands in the beauty space that have really scaled, they have one thing in common which they all have really, really strong communities. And when I look to start all the brands, I looked for co founders that I thought had did an amazing job on, you know, community and culture building. And so for me, that's what really excites me. Outside of the fact that obviously beauty is a massive, you know, multi part business. Right. And a lot of times it's recession, recession proof. For me it really comes down to like the, you know, I've never seen communities.

Yeah.

Like in the beauty space.

When you say communities, what do you mean by that?

Like, I think a good example is if you go to, you know, either Glenn Medic or Instagram here on Instagram and you look at like the tagged photos.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Girls and women tagging us in photos and talking about how the hair or the lashes has changed their life. Right. We have really built out Facebook groups. I think one tip for any brand out there is there is so much value in Facebook groups still. I think everyone sort of writes off Facebook. It's an amazing platform for customer loyalty and we dive really deep in there. And when you dive into those groups and look at the customers that are connecting with each other, that's a community and that's really hard to build. Right. Like you can run ads all day, but to have that is super powerful.

Yeah. Like the loyal fan base that always comes back. And speaking of Facebook groups building culture, I think done this great. What's step one to do that? Right. If a brand has a product, they just launch. Like, how do you go about building that community right from the start when you have only a couple customers, you're just starting your brand. What was your strategy and what would you recommend?

Yeah, sure. So I think our strategy on each of the brands was the founders are really front and center and obviously look with the Dolan's early on, they're an anomaly in that they're really really big influencers.

Right.

But with Waycart, the goal for Waycart is for the brand to be bigger than the guys over the next couple years. Right. Because we don't want just be the Dolan's weight card brand. We want it to be Waycard and a standalone brand on insert name here. And Glam Medic Ann, who's my co founder on Glam Medic, Sharon and Jordan on inh, they have a following. They're essentially micro influencers. Right. But they really came out front and center and were authentic about the brand building process to their audience. And, and I think if founders are willing to do that, it goes a long way with the customer base. And then in parallel, we did a number of different things. Obviously the influencer strategy is key in getting other influencers to talk about it. Once we started getting customers doing just because gifts can go a long way. So we did this thing where once a month we actually will pick five random customers will like kind of creep on their ig, see what they see, what they're into. And like, for example, this one customer we saw, she loved poems. We created her custom poem book, sent it to her in an INH like package. Wasn't expecting it. And like those types of things like just go a long way. And she, you know what she did, she shared that with her entire audience. It got shared around on social and it just really like showed that the brand, you know, the brand cared about the customer. And for us that's, that's everything, right? Like the customer is everything.

I love that. And doing that, you know, that's what, just even hearing that it's the personal gift and the little things that they're unexpecting that really make it like that much more important to them, you know?

Absolutely.

When it comes to how you spend your time, I love to hear about, you know, how you manage all of this. You have a lot of different projects and you're in, you know, you have different companies that you're actively managing, investing into. What does your schedule look like and how do you manage all of this?

Yeah, it's funny, we did an official head count the other day and I think we're pushing close to 100 people now across everything. So by the way, that's been wild. Just with COVID and managing everything virtually, there is a lot going on, but I'm pretty hyper focused on placing my time in the places that are needed at different points in time. Right. So I'm thankful that I have really great co founders on each brand. And I have a really great team on combo that handles a lot of the day to day on these campaigns. And so I'm always conscious about how I'm splitting my time between the three different brands and the combo side of the business. And I've just learned to be really, really thoughtful. I have to be really thoughtful in my head about how I manage my time and not get caught in the weeds on too many things. You can only go deep in so many places. And so my time sort of ebbs and flows based on the different needs of the companies.

I love that. Is there one that particularly takes more time or would you say is really well spread out?

I think it's really well spread out. And again, I think it goes in ebbs and flows, I think. I think one thing I've been thinking a lot about for all of the brands and Covid really, really opened my eyes up to this, is this idea of a distributed global team. And I've been kind of really harping on this the last six months. And I finally. I met with a friend this weekend, and she told me about this phrase that a lot of management consulting firms use called follow the sun. And the whole idea of follow the sun is, you know, when the sun's setting here, you know, the sun's coming up somewhere else. And as a business, you can have 24, seven, sort of like asynchronous, uninterrupted relationship. And so a big push for me next year is thinking through how we build an amazing global team out. And it's not about. I think a lot of brands look at, like, global teams. It's just like sort of faceless people overseas. That's not how I see it. I want every person, like, I want every person that comes on board, whether they live in the US or the Philippines or India or wherever, to be part of the team, be part of the company culture, be excited about our brand. And, like, I'm incredibly excited to figure out how we can build that out. I just think it's gonna be really impactful for the business overall. So that's where a lot of my headspace is at right now.

I love that, man. And speaking on 100 people plus, well, first off, congrats on that. But when it comes to working with people remotely, like, what's been your experience on that, especially during this time where a lot of businesses have shifted to remote working, how have you managed that? And what's your strategy to just keep everyone aligned?

So pleasantly surprised. I think if you. Again, if you would Ask me that a year ago, I would have been like, this never would have worked. But I think our teams have done a really, really great job of staying focused, getting their work done. I think in a lot of ways, we're more efficient than, you know, than we were before meetings. When you, when you jump on a Zoom meeting, you know you have to have a purpose for the meeting. Right. And so the teams have gotten a lot better about that. I do think there is an element that you do miss in the office of just like, like water cooler talk. Right. And getting to know each other. Yeah, yeah. So we, Jordan, my co founder on inh, had this great idea on Slack. It's just like this plugin called Donut where it matches you up with new team members where you can kind of get to know them better. Because as we grow, there's a lot of people coming on board and there's a lot of people that haven't even met in person.

Right.

So keeping, like, the culture, we'll do, like happy hour Fridays on Zoom, and I think we're getting creative and I'm super proud of the teams on how everyone's adapted.

Very cool. That's awesome. What's the plugin called again?

It's called Donut. Donut. It's a plugin on Slack.

Okay.

It matches you up with a different team member that you may have not known as well. And you really do like a coffee. Like a Donut.

Yeah.

And a virtual coffee. And so that's helped a lot in terms of culture building and getting to know each other.

Very cool. I have not heard of that. I'm definitely going to check it out after this. Switching back to more. So angel investing. As an investor, how do you personally vet deals and what do you look for before making an investment?

Sure. So I generally steer towards early stage companies. Right. So maybe like it's a seed round, a series, a round typically won't go much farther past that. And so a lot of times it's a blend of. A lot of it's instinctual and you have to have a gut feeling and like a confidence and confidence in the founders. So a lot of it comes down to can these founders actually execute on this idea? Right. Balanced with, you know, obviously looking at the financials of the business, looking at the market size, looking at the competition. And so that's the thing I like about early stage is like, there's a lot of unknowns.

Yeah.

And, you know, look, you can dissect the financials all you want, but it really comes down to, you know, to really thinking through can these women or men or whoever the founders are, can they execute on their idea and take it the distance? And so that's really how I evaluate, you know, a lot of deals.

Very cool. So it's a founder first, right? It's that you, you're betting on the horse.

100%. 100%.

I love that man. And regarding the talent management, I know that we've, we've chatted about it briefly, but can you talk to me more about what you guys do from a talent management perspective?

Yeah, sure. So, you know, on the talent that we work with, we're really helping them think through 360, like what's their overall strategy? I think the larger digital influencers, you know, it's not just like you're cutting brand deals, you're thinking about what's the, you know, what are the long term businesses that they want to build. A lot of them have like commerce arms of things that they're building out. You know, SSSniperwolf is one of the, one of the talent we manage. She's got 22 million YouTube subs. And so we're helping someone like her think through like what's the holistic 360 strategy for her business. And I think for a lot of influencers too, it's like helping them think through where you get longevity. Because what I've seen over the last 10 years is there's a rise, fall sometimes rise again of influencers. And you know, I think obviously influencers are amazing content creators and they figured out a way to get people to listen to what they're projecting. But what they're projecting now may not necessarily translate a year from now. Right. And the space is moving quicker and quicker and quicker. And so it's constantly just helping them think through how to make sure they're staying ahead and hopefully on top.

Yeah, I love that. And speaking about the life cycle of influencers, what would you say creates longevity for an influencer and you know, some of the processes that you guys look forward to ensure that?

Sure. I mean, I think it's a, I think it's a few things. I think that obviously the content has to be relevant to their audience and they have to know, I think the successful influencers know what their audience wants to see and they do a really, really amazing job of delivering it. But again, that switches over time so they have to keep really up to speed on just what's happening, macro level in the space and where that content's being placed I think one of the hardest things about being an influencer today is you kind of have to be everywhere and anywhere now. And you're on TikTok. You got your TikTok strategy, IG strategy, you got your podcast strategy. I think the ones that really thrive long term, it honestly comes down to hard work. You know, I think a lot of people get burned out. It's a grind. And you know, I think there's a. There's certainly like the, you know, there's like the mental health aspect of it of like chasing likes and getting burned out. And so it does take a certain mental toughness to be an influencer and be in the game for a long time. I think they need to. It's really the basics of life. Right. It comes down not to be an influencer. How about being a good person? Rightevity. Being a good person goes a long way and that translates to their audience. Right. So there's a lot of parallels of being an influencer with just being successful in any other part of life. And there's obviously certain things from the content that you're delivering that you have to be on trend again and all those things. But it's very similar to how other people are successful in life. It's just slightly different when you're an influencer.

Yep. I love that. And last question before we wrap up, that is just with Combo Ventures and everything you're a part of, like what are you excited about that you'd want to share with the people today just with everything you have moving forward?

Yeah, I mean, I mean, first of all, I'm just thankful. Like I think, look, this year could have went a lot of ways. Luckily we're fortunate that got a big portion of the business that's in the E Comm space and another portion of the business that's on the influencer side. Both of those spaces right now are doing really, really well on the three brands. It's been massive growth this year. We'll end the year in the mid eight figures in revenue. I think we're looking to set 2021 up as a nine figure year for three brands. And the thing that I'm most proud of the teams about is that we didn't take on capital. We self funded this. That's really, really hard to do.

Totally.

I think it's going to make us stronger long term that we did that and we didn't go raise a lot of capital. And so I'm excited across the board, man. I'm sure there's going to be some other crazy things that pop up that we're going to have to navigate. That's life. That's like the startup world. And we'll be ready for whatever comes up.

Love that. And last thing, Kevin, where's the best place for everyone to follow you and to stay in touch with you after this interview?

Sure. So Instagram is just. Kevin G. LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn. It's Kevin Gould. My website's comboventures.com kombos with a K. And you know, you can follow all the brands. The brands as well. So ncername here. Akertlammetic. And that's the best way.

Perfect. Well, Kevin, thanks so much for coming on the show today, man. I really appreciate it.

Yeah, Casey, thanks for having me, man. It was at a great time.

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