How a ‘Miracle Tree’ Launched a Multi-Million Dollar Superfood Brand

Hello and welcome to Conscious Design Podcast. I'm your host, Ian Peterman, and I help turn product ideas into sustainable 7-figure businesses. Join me for another episode where sustainability meets innovation and business savvy. Today we have Lisa Curtis. She's a founder and CEO of Kuli Kuli Foods, Where they're a leading brand pioneering the sustainable superfood Moringa. Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, so everybody loves a good origin story. So let's go back in time a bit to what got you into deciding, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take this on as a challenge, start a whole business and do this.

So we have to go way back in time because believe it or not, I've been running Kuli Kuli for over a decade. So I started this company after working with Moringa in the Peace Corps. And, you know, short version of a long story is I was in a very rural village. You can imagine no electricity, no running water. As a vegetarian, not a lot of healthy food. So I was eating like rice and Millet every day, and it was a diet that left me feeling really tired all the time. So I asked some of the women in my village's health center, you know, what can I eat to give me more nutrients, to just, you know, give my body the protein, calcium, iron, kind of everything I need to feel good? And they literally went over to this tree and pulled off the leaves and mixed it into this popular local snack called kuli-kuli and said, eat this. Eat this; it'll make you feel better. And I was like, what is this tree leaves? Like, I don't know. But you know, I was feeling really terrible, and I was like, okay, whatever. I'm gonna try it. I'll do it. And I did. I ate it every day, and after about a week, I was like, oh my goodness! I feel so different. Like I had so much more energy. I just felt my strength return. I felt you know my health had totally transformed in a way that I have never. felt before. And so I started doing a little research, like, what is this plant? You know, what did, what did they give me? And turned out that moringa grows all over the tropics. It thrives in hot, dry climates. So grows really well in places like Niger, you know, all over Africa, all over India. It's still in Ayurvedic medicine. It's the national vegetable of the Philippines. It's called the miracle tree or the tree of life or the drumstick tree. It has so many names and such cultural importance in so many countries, but nobody was really selling it in the US. And I started asking these women initially, like, what can I do to help them grow and use more of it locally? Because it was being pretty underutilized in my area. And the thing they really wanted from me was a way to sell it in the US. They're like, we're not going to grow a crop that we can't sell. Why don't you help us create a market for it? So I had I had no idea what I was getting into. You know, Peace Corps volunteers like, sure, no problem. Yeah, we got this. We can do it. Came back to the US and over a lot of trial and error and struggle, I managed to launch Kuli Kuli. And now we sell moringa and other climate-smart community-grown superfoods in about 11,000 stores across the US. So it's been a pretty wild journey.

Amazing. That is a journey going from Peace Corps It's a tree you're eating the leaves of to 11,000 stores. That is a large amount of progress even for 10 years. So now, so many questions about this, but I know you're in a lot of stores, but it's not even a super commonly known thing, I would say, yet. So even though you have arguably really good market coverage, At least it seems to me, it's not yet like a buzz, as much of a buzzword as getting as much attention, but you've had a lot of success.

Yeah. I mean, the really interesting thing about Moringa, and it's something that like honestly perplexes so many of our buyers because they're like, nobody knows what this is. There's no way it's going to sell. Like, this is what our whole conversation with Walmart was. They're like, I don't know what this is. Nobody knows what this is. Okay, I'll test you in like a couple hundred stores. And it sold really well. So then he expanded us to more and then he expanded us to more. And now we're in 3,500 stores. And the thing that I think a lot of people don't realize is that because this plant has such strong cultural significance to so many people, like so many folks in the Latinx community in the US are like, Oh, moringa, you take it to manage diabetes and manage your weight and like helps regulate blood sugar levels. Like my grandmother in Mexico has a tree and she eats a few leaves every day. And it's like, that's what she does. That's the like daily medicine for her. Or, you know, folks with ties to India say like, oh, the drumstick tree. Yeah, yeah, we use that in our sambar. It's so good for you. So stuff like that. So there's a lot of Americans with ties to other countries who know what Moringa is right away and pick it up. And that's been one of the coolest things about starting this business is that it has such a strong cultural significance to so many different cultures.

Right. So really, you're able to provide something that they haven't been able to have really without— maybe they're importing it themselves, but it's something that they had or their parents had unlimited access to almost, right? You create in your backyard and now You're able to go, hey, it's actually— you can go buy it here. You don't have to hope your grandma sends it to you from the tree in her yard.

I mean, I've literally had people tell me, they're like, oh yeah, every time I go to India, I like gather a bunch of leaves and I grind it up and I put it into a huge powder in my suitcase. Or, you know, same story with like Mexico or same story with like, you know, various countries in West Africa. And I'm like, well, you don't have to like import it yourself. Like, we've done the hard work for you. Like, here you go.

Amazing. Amazing. Now, kind of jumping back to early when you were first getting this, this in, obviously this took a while before you could get to Walmart giving you 3,500 stores. How did you go about that? Bringing this, obviously, you know, you and I weren't familiar about it 20 years ago. It was not, most people still aren't.

Yeah, I had no idea what it was. Absolutely. I was like, what is this? Tree leaf. I don't, I don't know. Sounds a little crazy. So I got back from Peace Corps. I was, you know, 25 when I got back. I was, uh, had never had a day job. I didn't really know what I was getting into, but it was like, I felt like I had committed to this, that I had made this promise that I was going to help this women's group in West Africa, like sell Moringa in the US. And so. First, I had to get some money to pay my rent. I got a day job at another startup, and that was actually a great education because while I was there, we went from like 4 employees to 40 people, and I raised a bunch of money and grew really fast. So I got kind of like a, you know, MBA from the school of hard knocks in like how to scale a startup really quickly. And in the background, I was trying to figure out like, how do I even go about importing importing this product to the US? Like, what does that look like? How do I sell it? What's like the best method to sell it in? So I ended up convincing a couple of my childhood friends of like, let's just try it. Let's just try to get some moringa here. Let's try to, let's like, you know, make a bunch of stuff in our home kitchens. We literally started there. Then we went to farmers markets and making it in a commercial kitchen. And we really saw it as like a test and learn of, okay, let's, like, basically my weekends became like all day Saturday, like making various things in this commercial kitchen and then all day Sunday selling them, but not just selling them, also like surveying people and saying, you know, what did you like? What did you not like? Writing down like basic demographics, like, oh, you know, women with children tend to be our best customers or things like that. Um, and that helped us get a really clear sense of our first product to launch and what our key customer was. And we actually took that data to Whole Foods in Northern California and they launched us.

Amazing. Yeah, I feel like Whole Foods is definitely the place to take a product like this and getting in is good.

For sure. They've been great partners to us.

Let's talk about the products, right? You have a, a range of products. It's not just, you know, some dried leaves in a tea bag option. Obviously it's still effective, right? And it doesn't— in the different variants, how did you go about figuring out what, what way was gonna sell best? Like what I'm assuming you tried quite a few in these farmer markets.

We tried a lot of things. We tried so many things. And actually the thing that we launched with is Not the thing that we sell the most of today. So we launched with bars because what we figured was like, people don't know what moringa is, but they know that they want like a lot of nutrition and bars are often where people go to get nutrition. And so we had this whole kind of like marketing thing that seemed to work about like half a cup of leafy greens in a bar gives you natural energy without caffeine.

Yeah.

Plus a huge boost of nutrients. And yeah, that was what we launched with. And, you know, we are actually, I haven't said this publicly anywhere, but we are about to kill off that product line. Oh my God. Because we are doing so much better with everything else. So our main product line is really powders that people add to smoothies, or you can even add some of them just to water. And then we have superfood gummies as well.

Interesting. When did you start launching Other and find out like powder was the way to go?

Yeah, I mean, I like stumbled my way into so much of this, but we had this wild opportunity like a year into our launch. I was the only full-time employee and we got on MSNBC's Morning Joe and literally like 2 weeks before this, We had decided to put moringa powder on our website just to test, and we had you know we had created like thirty thirty jars of moringa powder that we were selling on our website just as a test. And then we go on one of the most widely watched shows in America, and it our website almost crashed like it was insane. And we found like very clearly like you know there were like. A decent number of people who ordered bars, but the number of people that ordered powder blew us away. Like we thought nobody was going to know what this is. Nobody's going to know what to do with it. And we were clearly wrong. Like people really wanted like this super green powder to put in their smoothies or put in their cooking or, you know, make lattes with. And that gave us a pretty clear real-world test of like, okay, we got to launch this.

Yeah, almost crashing your website. That's a pretty heavy indicator.

Yes, absolutely. It's amazing.

I'm curious now, and I worked in food a little bit, but how did you go about getting the sourcing and processing? I know you had a commercial kitchen, right? You were doing it yourself, but I'm sure you're not back there making batches now. Anymore.

Yeah, I mean, I sort of learned pretty early on, I was like, wow, I could spend every waking hour in a kitchen making these products, or I could outsource that and focus 100% on selling them. And so we got a co-packer, which, you know, the manufacturer that makes our bars and also these other bars. I think the biggest challenge with that is they had like a pretty high minimum. And so, and, you know, required a lot of money. And I got back from Peace Corps with $2,000 in my bank account.

Yeah.

So we, we went and did a crowdfunding campaign. Actually, at the time we were the most popular food campaign that Indiegogo had ever had, which was pretty exciting. We Raised over $50,000 from 800 people from, I think, like 30 different countries. It was like amazingly global, which was very cool until we had to figure out how to ship all of that internationally. And then we're like, oh my God, that's hard. But it was a pretty—

The international interest though, that's, I would imagine, good kind of market info for you knowing that it's not just the US that's Wanting it.

Exactly. Yeah. And it is, it is something that I think, you know, resonates around the world.

Amazing. So you got Indiegogo, you were able to get the co-packer, and now I'm assuming that's kind of all— they're able to run all of that for you. You've been able to offload all that manufacturing, meet that demand now.

Yeah. And that basically gave us enough money to do our first manufacturing run.

Okay.

Then it was the name of the game became how do we sell all this product? And so literally my job for the first year was like going around to natural food store after natural food store, like being like, I'll do a demo, I'll pass out samples, I'll talk to customers and just selling us in. It was definitely not glamorous. And then Finally, we got to the point where we were doing really well in Whole Foods Northern California. And so they said, hey, we're going to expand you. So they expanded us to a couple more regions and then launched North America in 2014. And then 2016, we had a pretty amazing opportunity where the Clinton Foundation reached out to us and they said, hey, we're trying to find other trees that can help prevent all of this flooding and mudslides in Haiti. Because when, you know, when hurricanes come, because Haiti's been so deforested, just like entire hillsides will slide down. And so they were looking for trees that offer farmers immediate income so that they— it's worth their time to take care of the trees as opposed to like cutting it down and using the food for— or using the wood for fuel. So. They were like, we are interested in Moringa. We're interested in working with you. We were like, cool. Got this, these strong partnerships in West Africa. We're totally down to add on Haiti, but how about we do it in a way that we create like a new product made with Haitian Moringa and we bring in Whole Foods to launch it? So that was amazing because it was us just like punching way above our weight. We were 2 full-time people dealing with like You know, the head buyer at Whole Foods and like people at the Clinton Foundation were like, yeah, yeah, we know what we're doing. No problem. We got this. And so we, yeah, ended up launching these little, they were like superfood shots made with Haitian moringa that launched nationwide with Whole Foods in 2016. And they also launched our pure moringa powder as well.

Amazing. How did that go as a product, right? Not a powder, not a bar, it's a shot.

Yeah, um, we killed it actually. It's no longer available anywhere. Live and learn on a lot of these. It did okay. I think what we realized is like shots, people often are really grab and go. It's like an impulse purchase. And so they did really well if they were at checkout or if they were like in the cooler. But as a smaller brand, it was really hard to get command that shelf space. Yeah, didn't work as well as we'd hoped for.

Hey, it's Ian here. So glad you're enjoying this episode of Conscious Design. If you want the full scoop on conscious design, what it is, how we do it, how you can do it, then check out our book. We wrote it so creative entrepreneurs like you can code social and environmental responsibility right into your brand's DNA. You can download the first chapter for free. Link is in the description. Enjoy the rest of the episode. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share. Yeah, that shelf space is usually the most expensive shelf space or hardest to get into because it is so valuable. What's been your strategy in retail? It sounds like you do so much business through retail. How have you been able to make sure you have a good spot on shelves? Like, how have you gone about that? with a food brand?

Yeah, I mean, a good amount of it is like really building relationships with our retailers, like really trying to go the extra mile to ensure that we're creating products that we know will do well in their set, that we're really supporting them, that we're, you know, doing a lot of marketing to drive people into their stores, be that Email, TikTok, Instagram, whatever. And then I think it's also, we try to be ahead of the trend and try to like figure out, you know, what do consumers want and like how can we have products that do really well? And if we fail, which we've certainly done a lot of, like killing it off and moving on.

Yeah, I think it's one of those things that it can be hard to do, especially if you like the product, but being like when you say figure it out, if it's not doing well, Don't just keep it for fun. It's got to help the store and you and to be successful. Now, obviously you guys sell direct to consumer as well. You did Indiegogo, right? So you have this blend. How do you, like, what's your split? Is it, I would guess it's more on wholesale, but like, what's your, how has that gone and kind of balancing both of both those channels?

Yeah, we are definitely more of a brick-and-mortar retail brand. You know, the vast majority of our sales goes through 11,000 stores, you know, from Whole Foods to Walmart and lots of spots in between. We do have our own website. You know, we love having that direct, like, touchpoint with our customers. And we also do sell quite a bit on Amazon. But our main focus is through retail.

So even for you guys, at least, even being on Amazon, which is pretty, pretty ubiquitous, right? It's everywhere. Wholesale is, is bigger for you guys?

Yes. Yeah, definitely.

Okay. Do you know why? Is that— is it just where people are? It's a grab and go at the store.

I think most people still like to buy their groceries in store. Like, I think COVID, we saw a huge lift and we definitely saw some people who are, you know, Instacart, Amazon Prime. I'm never going into a store again. I'm going to get everything delivered.

Right.

You know, if my husband had his wherewithal, that would be us, but it's not because I like going into stores.

Going to stores.

Yeah, I love going to stores. I like, you know, I like the specific picking out of this peach and whatever, seeing things, seeing what looks interesting. And I think there's a lot of people who really like to pick out their own food.

Right. So you guys saw during COVID this massive spike, but you've seen that really taper off again. You're not Is it kind of back to what it was percent, like ratio-wise? Are you pretty—

Probably a little bit more. I would say, you know, sort of pre-COVID, e-commerce was probably like 10% of our sales. Then it went up to one point almost like a third of our sales, and then it's calmed down to 15 to 20%.

Okay, so yeah, ultimate change is not very You know, 5, 5, 10% change. That's not very—

Yeah.

Not a big difference now. Interesting. I think it's a good point though. I feel like a lot of other things people are way more okay buying online, non-food items. That category seems to be still very online, but I, it's a, I hadn't thought about this. So it's a good point is the food rather than Apparently your husband and I are okay not seeing the food first. Everyone else really wants to go see, I guess, probably touch and feel, experience a little more before choosing, yeah, I want to buy that as a food item.

A lot of people were that way for sure.

Yeah, it's always interesting to see how different market categories go. And this is one of those, like, food is an interesting It has its own behaviors around it compared to any other products for sure. Now, so you mentioned, probably mentioned the bars are going away, but you obviously have a ton of other products. Kind of, this has grown over the years, right? You started off with one product and now you have a few. What is your long-term vision for this? Is this— Do you have more food? Like, is this all— you're just gonna always be trying different foods, or kind of what's your thoughts on that?

Yeah, so I think for us, we're really interested in continuing to grow this platform that we've created. You know, in many ways, like, moringa didn't exist on the US market until we created this whole supply chain and created kind of this whole sales, marketing, operational arm to bring it here. And we think there are so many really interesting climate-smart, community-grown superfoods, particularly on the African continent, that we can do the same thing with, that we can bring them here, that there's so much that, you know, we can do to benefit those communities, benefit the planet, and also benefit consumers. here with these like amazing nutritional foods.

So you're looking beyond, you know, just— so moringa is great, but that's really just one of these superfoods that you're, you know, exist out there. They aren't in the US market really, correct?

Yeah, so actually our product line today, about a third of the products don't have moringa in them, but they have other cool superfoods like Baobab and hibiscus and cacao. A lot of really interesting ingredients out there.

How do you go about, you know, this is obviously started with Peace Corps Africa. You're making this, you know, a really good win-win scenario. How do you go about building that? Because building a good supply chain is a challenge to do. It's a challenge to do it even if you're not ethical. It still takes a whole bunch of work. So doing it ethically and doing it for a win-win for everyone, has a lot more work to it. I guess, what have you learned along the way in actually being able to build one successfully?

Yeah, so I think we've, I mean, we've learned a lot about how to source ingredients, how to build these partnerships, how to really have these relationships grow over time. I think we have you know, learned a lot about what consumers like and don't like. And I think we've continued to get better with each of our innovations. Like we're making products that are even tastier, even more functional, you know, even more colorful and like lots of, lots of benefits. And then, yeah, I think we're also just kind of getting, we have a better sense of like where these products can go. How do we form relationships? with these retailers where we can innovate together and they can kind of give us a vision for their set and we can give them a vision of like, hey, here's what some of our farmer partners are growing. This would actually be great as a gut health product, that kind of thing.

I love that. I love that there's so many different— you're bringing in more, right? You started off with one and you're growing it. And it's, you know, you're working in Haiti. Is that something that you see more of? Because I thought it was very interesting. They're looking for a crop, right? Something that's— yeah, we need the trees to hold the hills together, but we also need it to be a crop. Are you seeing or have more people come to you about this kind of thing of, hey, we need to add in these areas that can grow it, crops that are unique, that have a, have a marketability that you can bring as that partner?

Yeah, so we definitely get a lot of different nonprofits and some organizations like USAID and others reaching out, and we're, you know, always open to talking about it and figuring out if there's some way to partner. Because I think the problem that so many of them have had is like, oh, here's this super nutritious climate-smart plant. Hey farmers, you should all grow moringa. And then all these farmers plant moringa, and then they realize they have nowhere to sell moringa because the demand isn't there. And so I think a lot of organizations have really moved to like, okay, let's figure out what is economically viable and good for the planet and good for nutrition.

Yeah, that makes— I mean, that's a Smarter, right? Make sure there's a market first for your crop before you go, because I would imagine the trees take a little bit to grow before you can harvest them, right?

So Moringa is actually very cool in the sense that it can grow from seed to tree in just 3 months. So it's an amazingly fast turnaround. It's like one of the fastest growing trees in the world, and you can start harvesting leaves At like 3 or 4 months, and you can harvest them every 3 to 4 months after that.

Oh, so this is a— you don't have to wait once. It's not a once-a-year kind of crop. This is like a year-round harvesting.

Yeah, that's one of the things that a lot of organizations really like, because when you think of, you know, tree planting and like, let's go to this place that needs more trees and let's plant all these trees, often those trees take years to bear fruit. And so if you have a lot of people living in poverty living near these trees, they're gonna be like, well, why would I wait, you know, 3 years for this plant to produce mangoes when my kids are starving and I need to cut it down and sell it for what, fuel, you know, like sell it, make charcoal out of it or something like that. So we get a lot of conversations along those lines.

Interesting. I've never heard of a tree growing that fast. That's really impressive to grow in just 3 months.

Yeah, no, look it up. It's a cool plant.

I will. I will now, because I'm— I work in other fibers and people are always trying to look for different plants and things that'll grow not in 3 years, that don't take years and years to grow and mature and then do what you do, what we want it to do. So that's, that's great that, that, that does that. Yeah, this is, this is amazing. You mentioned a couple times, you know, being sustainable in terms of like growing and things like that. I'm curious, how do you go about defining that and what makes, other than obviously being really quick, right? Quick growing is, that's, that's great. But is there other properties in these superfood groups that you are helping you select and go, yeah, they're superfood and they're really sustainable? Like, how do you categorize that?

Yeah, so I would say we look at it pretty holistically. So from a crop perspective, we don't want crops that require a ton of water. I think in a changing climate, we need climate-smart crops. So Moringa, Baobab, Blue Kamau, Cacao, they're all Great for that. We also want crops that can be grown with other plants. So, you know, all of our farmers grow Moringa regeneratively, meaning that they're growing other plants alongside it, and they are really, you know, deepening the health of the soil and the soil's ability to store carbon as they grow these plants. And then we also look, you know, for— the sort of like what I think of as the basics, like organic certified, like are the fair labor practices, like all of that side of things as well. And then we do a lot in our operations to ensure that we are also being as climate conscious as we possibly can. So we did a carbon audit a few years ago. I thought our biggest use of carbon was going to be, you know, sending shiploads of Moringa from Uganda to California. It's not. It was actually our packaging.

Oh, really?

So we transitioned all of our packaging to be post-consumer recycled plastic. So we're basically upcycling about 180,000 water bottles per year.

Oh, wow.

Which is a lot. Yeah, pretty exciting. And we are the single largest purchaser of PCR, post-consumer recycled plastic. The leading, one of the leading grain printers in the country. So we're, you know, kind of at the like bleeding edge of like, how do we get more sustainable packaging out there? Right.

All right. I love that. That's, that's crazy to think about, right? Because most people are with you. They're like, oh, obviously it's, it's the container ship going halfway around the world. That's obviously got to be the biggest drain is transportation. But yeah, people don't always think about the packaging and the impact that that can have because we really focus— we like to focus on the product. We're like, oh, it's super— it's organic, it's great, right? The product is good. And because we throw away the packaging, right? It's not what we think of when we think of the product itself. So yeah, it's interesting. Interesting to find that out. So you did that analysis. You've obviously made some changes, right? Is that kind of how do you go about that now? Is this something that you're like, all right, we'll kind of keep going and there's always stuff to improve, but how are you going about that side of things?

Yeah, so we are continuously evaluating our supply chain and figuring out how can we be more sustainable? How can we do things better? One of the things we did recently is we realized, you know, a lot of our farmer partners aren't actually growing enough Moringa to fill a full container load. And so they were shipping, you know, like not full containers to us, which is a waste of money. And certainly, you know, from an emissions perspective, not a great thing. So we now implemented a new system where we're actually aggregating product in Germany, and then having it all come over together to— and that helps our farmers get paid faster because, you know, previously we'd pay some upfront and then we'd pay the balance once it arrives in California, which can be a 2 to 3 month journey. And now it's like a 2 to 3 week journey from kind of shipping, it being received, and then we can pay.

Got it. So it makes it more efficient for everyone, really. It makes it better.

Yeah, exactly. More efficient for everyone. Yeah. And then I think we are constantly evaluating the sustainability of the different ingredients we're sourcing and always trying to understand, is there something better we can do? We've been sourcing organic Ceylon cinnamon for a long time and we Just tried to like, okay, let's actually, let's, let's go a bar higher and let's go to fair trade, even though it's not going to be on the packaging. And like nobody else is going to know, we still want to constantly be going for the next level and really hitting what we think of as the gold standard for being a socially responsible business.

I love that. Yeah. There's so much to the supply chain. You know, the average person that buys a product, but they don't have to, and they, and honestly, they shouldn't have to think about all those things. But it's good when companies like you are going out. Well, no one will really know, at least right now, no one will really know, but we're going to be picking these better options. And the more I talk to people and there's so many more, so much more transparency around supply chains, I think it's a good, you know, some people have the attitude of like, oh, well, if we don't see it, it doesn't matter yet. And eventually we'll all, I think. those supply chains will be a little bit more transparent and we'll all see those things a little bit more. So being ahead of the curve and also being okay with it being— it's step by step. I think it would be impossible for you to have 10 years ago just launched with the supply chain you have now, let alone what you want it to be in the future.

Amazing. Yeah, it's definitely a step by step. I think that's something that I tell other founders I think there's a lot of folks who come to me and they're like, hey, I have this great superfood that I'm working with in Fiji and I want to launch it onto the US market. How do I do that? I want to like launch Whole Foods nationwide and, you know, Walmart nationwide and I'm ready to go and I just need to raise a bunch of money to do it.

Okay.

Like step by step, like, you know, what is the smallest possible step possible way that you can prove that what you're selling consumers actually want? Like, how do you do that on a $1,000 budget? You know, how do you get people to try this and see if they like it? Then how do you get into one store and how do you make that one store super successful? And then how do you take that sales story and go to a bigger chain and get, you know, all of one region and then another region? I just think the overnight success doesn't really exist. There's always a backstory.

No, there's always— people would look at you and go, oh, it's great. You're super successful. And then you go, well, but it's been 10 years.

It's been 10 years. Yeah. It's been most of my adult life, which is amazing. And I'm so grateful for it. But It's not been easy.

Yeah, well, it's a journey. It's a journey and you got to be okay with it. I think like what's happened to you, right? You've kept at it. You kept making good decisions. You've learned a lot. You moved on from the mistakes. And I think that's— or not even mistakes, right? It wasn't a mistake launching your first product. It's just not your best one. And that's okay. It's still— it got you to where you are now. Like it got you into stores. It got it right attention. It, it served its purpose. And being okay with that is, I find the one people that are successful like you generally are, they're okay with those. They're okay with it not being perfect. I'll forget the exact quote, but it's like, basically if you wait till it's perfect, then it's too late. You've missed your window. So just jump in there.

I like that. Only real failure in life is the failure to try.

Yes, that one. And there's another, the only way to fail is to quit is the other.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or my favorite version of that is startups don't fail, founders quit.

I like that. I haven't heard that one before.

Now we can trade these back and forth all day.

There we go. Yes, those are, they're great. And this has been really great. I love your products. It's congratulations on your overnight 10-year success. It's great to see that this has come about and you have more to come. To wrap up though, for everybody who's listening, where can they find you? What's the best— we mentioned a couple, Whole Foods, Walmart, but I know you're in more. Contact you if somebody wants to grow these trees or work with you on the—

So our website has all of the info of all of the stores that we're in. kulikulifoods.com. K-U-L-I-K-U-L-I-F-O-O-D-S. Kulikuli Foods. Also happy to offer all the listeners of this podcast a 20% discount, so just put in Conscious Design at checkout and you'll get 20% off your order. Um, and we are also on Amazon, also Whole Foods, Sprouts, Walmart, a lot of other retailers. We are in that supplement aisle. So if you look for the green superfoods, that is where you'll find us.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Lisa. This has been really fun. Love what you're doing. Thanks for being on the show.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

And that wraps up another episode of the Conscious Design Podcast. If today's episode inspired you to bring your product idea to life and turn it into a sustainable 7-figure business, Visit petermanfirm.com or click the link below. Your ideas have the power to change the world, and we're here to help make that happen. Thank you for joining us, and I'll see you on the next episode.