Growing with New Outlets VS “Spray and Pray” Marketing with Entrepreneur Samy Kobrosly

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weddell. And before we get started, if you want to know exactly how to win again and again, go to Wydell on winning.com webinar now to watch something I've put together for you. Now let's get going into this episode of Million Dollar Mastermind.

I'm back with Sammy co Brosley, and he is the snack man. And it's going to be fun to see how many varieties, new snacks he comes up with. We all benefit when Sammy stays in there and comes up with new things because let's face it, how many Cheetos can you eat in your life? How many potato chips? I mean, it gets boring after a while. You like new stuff, you know, and it's nice to have some new options. And Sammy is committed to keep those rolling our way. Sammy, we talked last time about getting the deal at Shark Tank and how that exploded and stuff like that. What did you do that you think was really, really smart, that you got the biggest boost from that experience? Meeting Mark Cuban, getting, getting your hands on the money, get the exposure? What did you do that gave you the biggest. Allowed you to accelerate away from that experience with the maximum possible growth?

Yeah, clearly we still have a lot of growing left to do on our part. But I think that what we had done is we had utilized that Shark Tank experience and not thinking, well, this is it, guys, we've made it. But thinking, all right, well, what is this going to do immediately for us? And then how can we capitalize on that and keep it? Because you're still going to need more wins down the line, you know what I mean? So at that point, we didn't really have any sort of E commerce or any sort of online presence except for our website, you know, and Thrive Market. But we realized, okay, this is a great opportunity. Like, we need to get Amazon up. We need to get, you know, our own Shopify up. We need to get all this up and running before this opportunity because this is a way that we can. This is how we could really grasp that opportunity and use it to our best right now. Right. The fact of the matter is we could talk about the stores we were in, but are people really gonna be watching the show and then remember that when they're at the grocery store next week? This is our chance. We've always been talking about get on E. Comm but we didn't want the slow roll. And we didn't know this, but we knew that if this does well, we should actually have a pretty solid E commerce business that will actually pay. So we can join and work with other partners and people that maybe understand it more than us just sitting here and shipping out stuff directly to Amazon FBA ourselves, you know, and so we teamed up and you know, getting that up and running and getting it up and running the correct and proper way has not only been, you know, super helpful as far as, you know, growth is concerned, but also extremely helpful as far as, you know, making sure that we didn't trip over ourselves, making sure that we didn't have all these crazy out of stocks, making sure that, you know, we didn't all of a sudden we knew enough about the ins and outs of Amazon to not mess it up that first time around. Because people don't realize that, you know, any retailer, whether it's online or in or you know, brick and mortar, you got one shot. You know, when you mess up that one chance, it's going to be really hard for you to come back.

Absolutely.

And so that's what we've kind of focused on.

It's like a rock band, you know, they have, they lay an egg with their first album or two and then nobody wants to talk to them. You, they're back mowing lawns and working in restaurants and sweeping leaves up. The thing is, you described your focus and another way of saying that was you want to expand your outlets to a large extent. You can break down all growth in business to expanding outlets where people have access. Pretty soon you're gonna reach a limit to how many albums you're gonna sell out of your mom's garage with your rock band or outta your one store or outta your one brewery. The chips out of one location. Pretty soon you're gonna max out like McDonald's. That's why they don't have one big monster Tesla size factory. That's where they sell McDonald's out one place in the United States. You know, they're not going to sell that many McDonald's but if they take and get those little thousand square foot, 1500 square foot facilities and cover the country with them, now you have unlimited growth. And so what you were doing was expanding your outlets where people could get their hands on your snacks and your, you know, plus the name would be in front of more people on a more regular basis. That's what people. That was a distribution phase with the distribution phase, which you've done so well on is like where Coca Cola, they had the thing. Once they knew they had a good product, their race was to get where? You know where. No matter where you went in the United States, you never had, like, when you got thirsty, you never had to go more than 50 steps where you could find a Coke machine, if it's a. A drugstore, a gas station, every floor of every building of every hotel or whatever, that. And then once they did that, it was innovation. Once you're at that place, maybe you've had 50 cokes the last 50 times you went. Maybe now you want to try orange drink, root beer, you know, so the lemon type thing. So. And so what you're doing, you hit the outlet lever, and you're also hitting the innovation lever, coming up with new ideas and things like that. And that's a formula that can take you a long way, isn't that right?

Yeah. I think that when you talk about that formula especially, I think for us, it's really, you know, focusing on our backyard, like, making sure that we're winning here. You know what I mean? Like, you want to be ubiquitous, right? And, like, especially when you're a small. When you're a small company, you only have limited marketing dollars, right? And so Coca Cola. Yeah, they're everywhere now. But let's be honest, if you really look at it, they started off, like, you know, in the Atlanta area, right. And they started off, like, saturating that Atlanta market. Right. They went up north a little bit more, and then they saturated that market, and they found a bottle up there that could do this, you know, like.

Yeah.

And that's kind of what we're doing. You got to, like, slowly grow because you only have limited marketing dollars. And so if you're there and you're trying to get a thousand people out of 250 million to listen to you, that's not good chances. You know what I mean? But now if I'm trying to get a thousand people out of only the 10 million in this region. All right, now we're got. Now we're talking. That's a little bit more achievable. You know what I mean? You're not.

Right.

Especially when you're talking about advertising nowadays, right? With Facebook and Instagram and all the social media advertising. Like, you can't sit there and have a national campaign because no one's gonna. You're not gonna get anything from it. Yeah, you focus that campaign and you focus your growth in the region that you're doing well in. And like, yes, we are sold and bought, you know, throughout the United States. But, you know, if you come to the Mid Atlantic Northeast, like, you're gonna find us in a lot more places, you know, and really focusing on that backyard and making sure that we win in our backyard and making sure that we're growing it smart, not just growing like the spray and pray is what we call that, you know?

Right.

Yeah. You know, just like, let me get a bunch of things, just hope that some one of them works. Like, no, I think a lot of that is, you know, that's thankful to our CEO Kevin Blessing. Like, you know, his strategy and, you know, and his mindset of going in here is like, we need to be thoughtful in our growth, not just grow at all expenses. You know what I mean? Because you had those companies that raise millions of millions and millions and millions of dollars, and they're spending millions and millions and millions of dollars. You know what I mean? Like, right, right. We don't want to do that. We don't want to dilute everyone down. Like, we know that we can actually raise some money, use it intelligently, use it smartly, focus it on avenues that we know we can grow on and grow that on the water that way, and then start growing that way.

You know, hey, listen, there's a lot of information online, but there aren't a lot of people who have actually done something. In my case, I've actually built a successful business, has accrued over $5 billion in assets under management, and has done well even during trying times. Now, if you want to know exactly how I've done this, go to Whiteellumwinning.com webinar Now, I've compressed a decade of learning into five short weeks. Just for those of you who want to give yourself an incredible advantage and are tired of waiting and watching others.

Move up, it's amazing when you understand that concept, when you can look at the advertising that's done on billboards, magazine, tv, online, and see the ad agencies that don't even understand that principle. There's just no target to what they're talking about. They're just saying nonsense things. I've got a car. We believe in freedom and green trees. And now I'm gonna go buy a Hyundai. What's the connection there? You know, not singly, not Hyundai. All you Hyundai lovers, that was just the first one that came. But when you go, you know, we all have internal principles that we use to keep ourselves on track. Because success is a discipline. You know, you gotta, you know, like Jerry Seinfeld talking about comedy, said some comedians, he said, these newer comedians, I said, I hear people say, you know, if I don't Feel like, you know, if I don't feel funny today, I'm not going to write jokes. He said, if I don't feel funny, if I'm not in a good mood, he said, I'm just not going to go and do any standup or go to the comedy club or anything like that. And he said, if I waited until I felt good, I'd never write one joke. I'd never go at any comedy club. He said it talks about the difference between an amateur and a pro. An amateur can do it at a high level, and sometimes we'll do it and we'll go out and beat a professional. Like, even in tennis, you know, an amateur can beat in golf or tennis, can't beat on a given day, but the professional is going to win 99 times out of 100 because they do. They have taken that skill, they've developed and moved it and combined it with the mental toughness and discipline to where they're going to do things that's going to cause them to be successful. Whether they feel they know what to do, when to do it, how to do it, but then they do it consistently where they feel like it or not. And for that to stay on that kind of track, you've got to have things in your mind they kind of like guide, you know, like guide rails, you know, it's like, no, no, no. I go over there, you know, because people will throw. People will throw stupidity at you. Well meaning stupidity at you all the time. The wrong advice comes constantly. So how do you stay on track, man?

So our guide rails here are snacklands, is that we're very, very firm believers in Murphy's Law, okay? Like, if it's gonna go wrong, it's gonna go effing wrong. And we believe that, like, that nothing ever goes right. And so we don't go into any situation, any day thinking, like, hey, today's gonna be a good day. And like, we yell at people all the time, like, if our CEOs like, Guys, look at this, huh? Solid start to the day. Today's gonna be great. We go like, not. You just said it's gonna be a good day. Like something's gonna go wrong. And so, like, I wake up every day like, you know, if I was, you know, like if I was a performer, they say the show must go on, right? Like, yeah, or the show must go wrong, you know, so these hearts and wreck. And like, that's how I feel. Like, oh, something's gonna go wrong today. And so as long as I'm Ready for it as long as I'm willing to do it. Like, I know that. So, like, not every day is going to be a perfect I feel funny day, right?

Yeah.

So I know that I have to be there ready to tell jokes anyways, right? Yeah, I know that. Whether or not it's a great day, like, I have to be there, so. Oh, shit, my microphone doesn't work. Like, okay, I just gotta yell my jokes tonight. Like, machines are gonna break back there. Like, things are not gonna happen. Like, supplies are gonna show up late. People are gonna be sick or not coming at all or quit. You know what I mean? Like, there's always gonna be hurdle that's thrown at you. And so I just go in every day. Like, I wake up, I look at my phone first thing, and I go, all right, have any missed phone calls or texts that are frantic? So looks like. It looks like the day hasn't gone wrong yet, but I know it's gonna happen at some point. And then I go to work and I continue working. I do my day to stay, and sooner or later I go, ah, there it is. All right, that's the mess up today. That's what we got to fix today. And, you know, if you go with that mentality, it makes the best days so much better than if you go in every day, be like, today's gonna be great, and it's horrible. People come home, they go, I had the worst day ever. I go, you only had the worst day ever because you thought you were going to have the best day ever. If you're going every day thinking you're going to have the worst day ever, even the worst day ever is still just like a normal day. You know what I mean?

It's a. Sooner or later, you got to realize everything is accomplished in spite of something going wrong or a lot of something's going wrong. So once you realize it's not my job to avoid having things go wrong, it's my job to make sure they don't stay wrong.

Yeah. To be. They go, sammy, we just had a customer say this. X, Y, and Z. I go, well, luckily, I know that's not true. This is actually what it is. Here's what you guys need to write back. Then this will calm them down. They go, oh, wow. How'd you know that? Because that's my job. My job is to know that. To know the one answer to the question that no one else knows. You know, the testament to our team and how great they are is how they have learned so much that I don't get like an email every randomly from like the marketing people or from this, like, hey, man, what's this? And I was like, oh, dude. Yeah, I did that like years ago. All right. Yeah, we need this for FDA factory registration. I remember.

You know what I mean?

That's it.

What are you. Of all the great things that's happened to you since you started this, what do you take the most joy or satisfaction or just means the most to you that you were able to do one of those things? Which one stands out to you? Because I know it's going to be what happens next and all of that. But there are milestones that, like, I just can't believe this happened. You know, one thing is going to China and things like that.

Yeah, I know. But I still, to this day, like, nothing makes me feel better. Nothing makes me feel like I've accomplished more. Nothing makes me prouder than when someone goes, oh, dude, these things are dope. Oh, man, these things taste great. I just. I just had him in my. My kid ate the whole bag. And I was like, yeah, bud, that's all right. Like, that's what makes you coming back for more. You know what I mean? Like, I haven't changed the world yet. I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna change the world. I'm not gonna cure any crazy geopolitical problem. But the fact is I can give you a good delicious snack. I can make your day, like 1% better with that. And that's made me super happy. Like, that's all I want to do, you know?

Well, I mean, you said it. Well, you hit the nail on the head, Sammy. So much fun to talk to you. Now here's.

Let's.

Let's get a deal. Number one. Two deals. Number one, when I come through your area, I'm going to give you a call and stick my head in and take a quick peek around your factory and you can kind of show me the thing live if you're agreeing.

Anytime you're in D.C. area and you want to come to the snack. Three, brother, you just hit me up.

And the other thing is, I know the next 12 months, you know, six to 12 months are going to be mind blowing for you in terms of the thing, you know, not just the success you have, but the things you're going to learn and the excitement you're going to gain about your life and understanding what's happening to you and being able to continue to make more of a positive impact with the decisions and the responses you have, and that can only come from, you know, mileage. And so I'm looking forward to that for you and looking forward to us getting back down the road and seeing kind of throw these things up in the air and see. See what we're learning, man. Thank you, man.

Right now. I appreciate that. I hope everything that you said comes true, but right now I'm focused on, like, the broken electrical outlet I got to fix in the corner over there.

All right, thanks so much, Sam.

We'll talk to you, man.

This has been really bright in my afternoon, and I hope you've enjoyed it.

Absolutely.

Likewise, if you enjoyed what you've heard and are dead serious about finding out for yourself exactly how this works in the real world. I've taken the most valuable business lessons I've learned over 40 years and put them into something for you to watch. Go to whiteellawinning.com webinar now in order to move up as fast as possible. I'm Larry Wydell, and I run the Million Dollar Mastermind. Go, go, go.