Part 2 - How To Reach The Top 1% of Entrepreneur Podcasts

Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell. What was the motivation behind you extricating yourself from running everything and moving to.

I can't get too much into it right now, but yeah, I mean I had run the company successfully for 17 years and again I'm still a major shareholder and, and still on, on the board, but unfortunately I can't get too much into that topic.

So other things came up where you needed your time? Seemed like. Yeah.

And frankly over the past couple years since this happened, I've been also working on my podcast and really growing that. The podcast is now in the top 1% of entrepreneur podcasts in the world, where I'm interviewing founders who, who are really helping me think about even a lot of stuff that I talk about around empathetic leadership and being authentic and why do people follow other people? But I also think that I enjoy the puzzle, right. And the early days of the puzzle. I like getting puzzles where I don't have the picture right where I'm like trying to figure out what is this. And that's another thing that I've noticed about entrepreneurs over the years too, and I didn't know this early on about myself, but I do now is that there are stages of entrepreneurship that some people are better at than others. There are some people that can't hit or I shouldn't say can't, but don't really enjoy the early days. Right. Once you hit 10 million, then put me in. But there's. And I think that it's a rare breed that you can have an entrepreneur take it to hundreds of millions, which is what we did with hint that what Steve Jobs did with Apple as well. So I think that finding out what people are good at and what they enjoy I think is such a key piece for, you know, have you done any entrepreneur and company.

I'm sure you've done projections on how big is this water market? I mean your annual revenue is up to what now?

I mean we're private still, but hundreds of millions of dollars.

Hundreds of millions of dollars. How big? I mean, is it a market that you can go in other countries as it are? Maybe you already are.

Totally. And in fact it's interesting that you mentioned that we have not done that hind has not gone into other countries. But one of the things that I remember talking to the guys at Vitamin Water early On a friend introduced us and Sky. Mike Rapoli, who was the president of Vitamin Water, I remember him saying, really focus on the US like the rest of the countries. It's not saying that there's nothing going on in those countries, but from a consumer product standpoint, focus on the US and until you get how big, certain. And I was. He was like, I don't know, like hundreds of millions of dollars before you do that. I think that the difference between a product like Hint and a product like Vitamin Water or some of these healthy perception products that are out there, that are not really water at all, they're probably closer to a soda or a diet soda, is that there are. My purpose in developing Hint was to help people get healthy and stay healthy.

And.

And today, everything that has happened in the US around diabetes and obesity rates and all of these things, they're now happening throughout the world. And the US is a couple of years ahead. And so if we could get into those countries with a product like Hint, maybe we could actually change health in those countries before they're running into dealing with Ozempic and everything else that we're looking at today. So I think there's a big market for that.

Yeah, that's that focus on the main thing and the ripple effect, the flywheel type thing, the 80, 20 rule. But then it's like the 80% of the 20%, which is the 4%. You focus on the core and then it'll ripple out. Good.

Yeah. Because, I mean, in the US we were building as this health problem was happening. I mean, diet sweeteners. I believed early on in the early 2000s, that diet sweeteners were actually doing the reverse of what most consumers believed. And I saw it firsthand. I had gained a ton of weight by drinking diet soda. And once I stopped drinking diet soda, I had weight just falling off. And I was like, what? Like, this is bizarre. Why is this happening to me? And what I realized, though, is I was thirsty, right? So I wasn't drinking anything anymore because I lived on Diet Coke in particular. And so I started looking at drinking water, and I never really liked the taste of water. And I would do everything. I'd carbonate it. I just. I'm like, this is so boring. So I started slicing up fruit and throwing it in water, and I thought, this is all I really need. I don't need sweeteners. I don't need anything else in the drink. And that's how Hint was developed.

Yeah.

Again, I didn't think, I'm going to go take on big soda or the diet sweetener industry as perhaps I'm known to some today. What I thought of it as is if I could just go out and give people what I've seen, then that would be like, that would hit my heart. Right. That would be generous. Right. That I would do that. But the difference between what I see today and sort of what I weathered as I'm growing hint over the years is that we actually see what's coming to a lot of these parts of the world. And in the Middle east, for example, just like they've got shortages of water for sure. But then in addition they've got this massive problem with diabetes and obesity and they're addicted to diet sweeteners and that's where we were. So if we could actually get there before knowing the information that we know from the US like I think that'd be really interesting.

Yes. And talk about your for a minute about the podcast and were you doing the podcast? Wonder if you had started the podcast when we had our other interview.

You know it was, I had started it almost eight years ago, but it was really. I didn't even call it a podcast. I was interviewing people, creating video and somewhat using it for LinkedIn but wasn't really. They didn't have reels back in then. They didn't have all these different platforms. And so when Covid everybody went on Zoom Riverside, whatever, that's when I decided we could make this happen and it'll be a lot easier. I don't have to actually go into people's offices and because again I was running a company and trying to actually do this podcast. But it goes back to kind of what keeps me going and what gives me energy, which is if I can actually create and help people through creations and through information, through stuff that I've seen firsthand myself that has worked, then that's an amazing life. Right like that to me feels, that feels really good and makes me super happy. And if I can interview people that are going to also bring people information that and experiences that maybe they haven't had, but maybe they can listen to and pick up their some pieces from these experiences, that would be amazing.

Well, let's talk about your eight year journey into the podcast more or less project. And for most of us the podcasting is not a big money maker. It's something we do to give back. And like you say, you get it energizes you and if your audience is growing, you feel like you're, you're helping. It's a way of Giving back. I think we all want to give back to some extent, so add value that those type of things. So as you've gone through this project of your podcast and taking it to the top 1%, what it tell us about that journey? What have you learned? How has that evolved business evolution of the podcast?

Yeah. Well, I think first of all, I mostly focus on, I would say 90% of my guests are founders, and many of them are the CEOs of the companies. But I would say that the founder story and the founder drive and what makes them tick is really how the podcast has ended up to really what it's ended up evolving into. So I think when I first started eight years ago, it was like, okay, I know a bunch of actually, I know a bunch of cool women who are running companies. I'm going to focus on them. And I felt like the podcast was. I had no idea what I was doing. There was just no focus on if.

Anybody'S going to listen, you know.

Right. And what I realized, what I mean, I would say that 95% of the time, this is when I know I'm doing an okay job of interviewing people. 95% of the time, people my guests say to me, I've never been asked that question.

Yeah.

And I'm like, bingo, Right at that point. And it's. The reason is going back to your point about people who are writing books, who haven't been operators is I'm an operator.

Right?

Right. And I remember those days where, you know. And I think that when you have somebody like that interviewing another operator, it's like they know you've been in the trenches, you've been through the mud, you've had those hard days. Right. Where you've got to put your best smile on, but you're not sure you're going to make it. Right. And I think that is kind of the key that I've seen that this podcast has evolved into, because a lot of people that I'm talking to do not have or haven't been asked the typical questions just because I'm curious and that curiosity is coming out in these interviews. They end up saying things that they've never talked about.

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Yeah, no, I remember. I mean, there's so many stories that are so memorable. But Chip Wilson, who's the founder, Lululemon, we're having this conversation on the podcast and he said, women build boards differently than men. And I was like, okay, here we go, right? Like, what's he gonna say?

Yeah.

And they don't edit the podcast. So I'm like, I hope he's gonna be careful because this could be messy. But he said when women are building boards, they put, they're very methodical about who they put on. They're like, okay, I need one person from finance, I need another person who's built, who's a brand person, marketing person. All these different people, men, they want to make sure that they've got people who are going to vote the same way. And he said. And I'm like, oh my gosh. And he said, no one has ever asked me. And again, it's just his opinion, but I personally think he's pretty spot on. And he said, and unfortunately, that's why women who are founding companies or who are building out their boards end up losing. Which is really like an interesting question or interesting statement.

They weren't building it to get the votes.

They were building to do what's right for shareholders. Right. And for the company.

Right.

And so it's fascinating. Another one, if you Want to hear some of the more interesting. So another one, Eugene Rem, who I don't know if you know Rumble fitness.

Sure.

It's a boxing.

Right.

So Eugene came on, actually right at the beginning of COVID and we were supposed to meet live in New York. And then I was leaving New York, and I said, hey, if you're open to it, let's do it on Zoom. He said, sure. So the night before, he was the first gym to close down. Even before New York mandated that all gyms be shut, he was the first. And there were a lot of fitness studios in New York City that were just angry at him because he said, I don't know how to box virtually. Like, it just. It's a contact sport. It just doesn't make sense. And so anyway, with that, he laid off all his staff. Like before people were even thinking about this. I'm like, there's a lot of people. I have a few friends who own fitness businesses in New York City, and they think you jumped the gun. And he went on to talk about. He said. I can't remember his exact quote, but he said, if they had been through what I had been through, then they would understand. And I said, so I want unpack that. Like, I'm so curious about what you mean. And he said, 2008, 2009, he owned a bunch of nightclubs, and he figured that, oh, it's not going to last very long. Everything's going to be fine. So he continued to pay his employees, and the majority of his consumers were Wall street executives. They weren't coming.

Yeah.

And he went bankrupt.

Wow.

And he said, I'm not going back there again. And he said, so every. He's a serial entrepreneur. Every great leader, if they have a situation that they can learn from, it's going to be very difficult for anyone to tell them, especially if it went in a direction that they couldn't change in some way. So he said, I was cutting my losses early because I don't want that pain anymore. And I was like, that is so. Wow. I mean, we got off. And I actually said to him, I'm like, are you sure that you want me to run this episode? I know there's a lot going on in the world right now. He's like, no. And you know why I want you to run it? Because I want to go back and see years later when we're out of this if I was right. And I'm like, that is so powerful. Right? And again, maybe people haven't had that situation, but I think that plug some other situation. I'm sure you've got them. I've got them. Where you're going to learn from something, and pretty much no one's going to be able to tell you that you should do it differently because you have been in the trenches and you've seen it.

Well, we're, you know, I think we're all obviously products of the experiences we've been through and the lessons we've learned from that. And some are happy lessons. A lot of them have left scars. I think a lot of times we forget about those things, though. You know what I'm saying? That they're in our DNA. They burn us so hard, they become part of our DNA, and we instinctively steer around anything that would allow us to get in that situation again. Can you think back to anything you've gone through that maybe has had that effect on you and how you run your business, kept you out of going overboard in a certain direction or get taught because, you know, when you're in charge, everybody's tried to talk into things. They're always trying to spend your money.

Well, I mean, I think that. Yeah, it's. It's an interesting question. I think that. I remember the first few products that we launched at hint. Consumers. We asked consumers, we said, so what are the flavors that we should launch? Right? And there were some crazy ones, right, like peanut butter, water, or. And what we realized, we actually thought that we. We took a lot of that consumer feedback and we thought, okay, let's. Let's launch a hibiscus water. Let's do. And we did that. But what we learned is the exact same. The top flavors are the exact same flavor or exact same fruits that are in the bestseller category in the fruits and section in the grocery store. It's not brain surgery, right? Consumers will tell you, I want different. But the reality is, and again, coin a Steve Jobs term, don't ask the consumer what they want. Show them. Tell them what they want and why they want it.

Well, I think vanilla is still the number one selling ice cream.

Exactly. And you know what? That's another point, right? Like, I think this concept of different and unique. It sounds good. Yeah, but. But, like, don't take away the core flavors. Don't take away vanilla. Right. You've got to have the staples there and continue to build from there. I mean, I have so many stories like that. Be willing to say no to grocers. If you. If I remember hearing a story about. It was one of the. One of the new toothpaste brands. I can't. Might have been Tom's of Maine. Somebody had told me this story that they learned. And we learned the hard way because we didn't really listen exactly. Because we thought, well, it's toothpaste, it's not really water. But I think unless they have like eight SKUs going into a grocery store, that they would say no. And you get so excited when somebody, like a Walmart or Target or somebody says to somebody big that you've aspired to do business with forever, like, well, I'm going to get one skew and then it'll get bigger from there. You're going to die on the shelf with one skew? Yeah, you won't have enough space. And you'll have.

You won't be seen. Right. You won't be.

You won't be seen. And so the response back from a buyer will be, yeah, didn't work.

Yeah.

And it'll be harder for you to get back in than instead, I always say to entrepreneurs, focus on getting that example placed in some store and show velocity where it worked up against who they're going to put you next to. And don't go have it in your head that unless, whatever that number is, unless I get 5 SKUs on the shelf, I don't want you to kick me out. So I need to have at least five SKUs, and if I don't have that much space, then this isn't going to work and you shouldn't give me a test. And that sounds crazy to so many entrepreneurs because they're like, I'm going to get my shot in Walmart or I'm going to get my shot in Costco or Target. But if you don't have the right mix in the ice cream, if they don't have vanilla, but they have blueberry hibiscus and all these crazy flavors, it's not going to work. You got to have a mix of the core flavors and also enough space or it won't work. So don't be afraid to say no. Instead, know that you're going to get your shot if you can actually show in the data that it works the way that you're selling.

Great advice, Great advice. I'd like to thank you for listening to part two of this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. Timing is everything. You may feel that now is a time to get moving forward so you can do something even greater with your life. Now, if that sounds like you, I've got a free training video to show you how that transformation can take place. Getting introduced to how the cycle of success works has been a major transforming event for so many current million dollar earners. And that's exactly what this video is all about. And yes, it's completely free. Join us at the video at widelawnwinning. Com and thanks for being part of our community.