806. Creating a Consumer Product That Supports Your Lifestyle with Chris “Bernie” Bernard

And another thank you to Butcherbox for supporting my show. Every month Butcherbox ships a curated selection of high quality meat right to your home. Right now Butcherbox is offering new members a 10 to 14 pound turkey for free in their first box. Just go to butcherbox.comlori to sign up. And thanks to Gusto for supporting my podcast. Running a small business is hard work. Fortunately Gusto makes payroll easy and Gusto offers flexible benefits, simple onboarding and so much more. Get 3 months free when you run your first payroll@gusto.com Lori.

Putting yourself in the room with really smart people that balance your strengths and your weaknesses is keys to success.

Welcome to the Earn your happy podcast. I'm Lori Harder, Founder of Light Pink, best selling author, three time fitness world champion and I'm a crazy, multi passionate entrepreneur. My journey has taken me everywhere from being a broke waitress, barista, retails associate and personal trainer with massive anxiety and no belief in myself to later becoming a multi millionaire in love with my life. In 2007, my husband and I lost everything. We found ourselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt at rock bottom. We had no ideas and I had.

No education to fall back on. This is when I found personal development.

And learned could about business. Not by choice, but because I realized no one was coming to save me. The conversations on this podcast are going to let you know that you're not.

Alone and that we all feel like we don't know what we're doing.

We're going to give you the tools to help you face your fears, take action, start your business and grow those massive dreams that are keeping you up at night. It's time to create a life that you can't hide from and put so, so much on the line that your higher self is forced to come out. You're going to stop waiting for someone to approve of you, and you're going to anoint yourself. Because I'm obsessed about building businesses that give women a platform, I want to feature you. So if you text the word podcast to 310-496-8363, you can get your questions answered on our Q and A segment.

Along with a shout out.

And if you rate, review and subscribe to this podcast podcast, we're choosing someone every month to get coached and featured on our show. It just might be you.

So let's get started.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. I'm so excited you're here. If you guys have not gone to lightpink.com yet or followed us at Drink Light Pink and gone to the link in our bio in order to get a chance to win our sweepstakes that we are running. It is $2800 worth of prizes and one year supply of free light pink.

When we launch.

If you just go to Inklight Pink on Instagram and go to the link in our bio, enter the sweepstakes and then we send you the holiday guide which is all about saving you time, saving you money and just really enjoying some browsing online shopping, supporting women's businesses, supporting small businesses, exclusive discounts. Go get that preset that I've been using if you want your Instagram feed and all your holiday pictures to look absolutely amazing. You guys, we literally created the cutest holiday preset for you. Not to mention there is a free membership to PowerhouseWomen community in their three months free. What you guys know that is my bestie's community. It is growing like crazy because of all of the value she's offering. So definitely go enter the sweepstakes and you will immediately be able to access and download our light pink holiday guide. And today on the podcast I have Chris Bernard. He is a CPG expert and investor with over 20 years experience in apparel, outdoor and packaged foods. Having successfully navigated the better for you snacking space with protein packed snack brand Buff Bake, Bernie has now shifted his insights to the condition specific market identifying mood and mental well being as the next big frontier in food and beverage mind. Right Seeks to lead the good mood food movement via a platform of tasty snacks supporting beverages that support your mental well being. And I really loved chatting with him because you guys obviously know that I am building light pink. And if you are interested in building a CPG company or just want to apply some of the things that he has said to your company, your business, your personal brand, There are so many powerful insights in here if you are interested in really building anything. This man is a marketing genius, he's a networking genius and you can definitely take a lot of these tips and apply them to anything that you are creating.

So let's get started. Welcome to the show. Chris slash Bernie. Apparently I just learned that's your. That's your other nickname as well.

There you go.

Oh my gosh. I'm so excited to have you on the show. Thank you for coming on.

I'm excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

So I get really, really just at the thought of being able to ask another founder or a founder who's done so many incredible things in their career. I get so excited to be able to ask you questions. Because not only is it gonna help so many people on this podcast, but selfishly, I also get to learn so much. So I would love for you to share a little bit about what companies you have founded and where you really started, where these different ideas came from.

Yeah, I mean, I look at my career as an entrepreneur all the way back to when I was in elementary school selling skateboard products and supplies to my friends. And I always enjoyed, like, the selling part of things and the pitch. You know, I went through high school and college without a lot of direction as to what I wanted to do or who I wanted to be. I didn't have, you know, someone in my life pushing me towards something specific that, you know, some of my friends, like doctor, lawyer, engineers.

That wasn't me.

It was never me. I ended up putting myself through college by working in a snowboard shop who was super passionate about snow sports. I loved it. I ended up getting a job as a independent sales rep for Burton Snowboards, which were.

And that was a pretty coveted job, wasn't it?

Coveted? I mean, there were 10 reps across the U.S. north America, and it was a very, very difficult job to come across, especially with a company of such stature within the industry.

I don't know if you know this, but I've snowboarded since I was like a wee, wee, wee child.

What mountains did you grow up going?

Well, very small mountains. But I grew up in Market, Michigan, and I went literally five days a week growing up my entire life snowboarding. So I was, like, obsessed. Everything snowboarding. So I loved this part of your story and kind of. Kind of like lived that life. So I knew all about it. So that makes me question, you know, if you didn't, how did you. How did you get into a position like that? Did you. Which I think will relate to everything entrepreneurial and what you do now. But, like, to be able to sell yourself into a position like that without having necessarily experience or a big past in that. Correct.

None. None. None as a sales rep, you know, but I did know. I knew snowboarding. I knew I was passionate about it. And I was the, you know, the manager of the store. And the vice president of sales came in, and he's like, hey, Chris, want to ask some questions? And I shared with him from my heart how I felt about the brand and direction and what I thought would be great. And the next day he called me and said, hey, we've got some opportunity if you're ever interested. We want to keep you on the radar. And sure Enough. About a month and a half later, he called me and said, hey, we're looking for a rep. And I did my best to put together what I thought would lead to success in that territory as a rep. I put it all on the line. I held back nothing because I've never so excited about something in my entire life. And when they said yes to me after passing over several top tier reps within the industry, it was like winning lottery. And it was just this path that took me, you know, it built confidence within me. It helped shape like, you know, this fear around, okay, now what the hell do I do to build this thing? I need to build a team. I need to get, you know, everyone health insurance and operationally payroll and set up.

You didn't know any of this stuff before, so did you ask people or how did you dissect that?

Of course, you know, you find people that are successful and you find a way to bring them value so that in turn you can just absorb from them as much as you possibly can.

Did you figure that out by like watching your parents or how did you figure that out? Because that usually takes a long time for people to figure out and you were just like moving really fast.

It was just one of those things where like, you see who's doing it well and you just run to it. You run to it, you emulate what works. Because this is all science. It's science, right? It's like, you know, if you put energy into something, you're going to get energy out of something. So if this guy's winning, he's doing something right, Right? How do I learn from that?

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I always love that phrase and it's so basic. But success leaves clues like look at everything that they did and if you can't see what they did, try to figure out how you can see it. Like so huge. That's why I'm, that's why I'm studying you right now. So it's great. I'm literally like, I hope I leave to come bring your brain on here. We're just gonna learn. We're gonna learn some more. Okay, So I love this. And we'll keep going down the road of how you got to where you are now. And I know you had an amazing company in between that as well. But something that I want to ask a little bit more about was the willingness that you had to share what you wanted, like, share your goals, share what you thought. You're talking to somebody in. You had said Burton, correct?

Yeah, Burton. Yeah.

You were talking to one of the highest people in Burton, saying how they could make the company better. Most people would not have the guts or the nerve to, number one, share that. And number two, hold nothing back that you want. Proclaim exactly what it is that you want, and that's how people start showing up and helping you. So what would you tell people right now to do if they have a big dream or goal like that and they get these little windows of opportunity?

Yeah, I'd say put it on the line. Go for it. Don't hold back. Literally, anything is possible. Anything is possible. Just go for it. And it's so simple. It's so simple, but it's taking the step to do that. Imagine telling someone like Jake Burton or his next person down like, you're not doing this right. I think that this might be better, and here's why. You need to be able to substantiate it. But that takes a lot of guts to do that. And it's just. It's finding that. That window and that opportunity and then just going for it.

Oh, my God. Okay, so just real quick, put me in that room. When you did that, was it like, hey, do you mind if I share something? Or was it like, you know, I'm.

Not sure how, like, how did you get.

I wish I could just, like, be a fly on the wall in there.

I think I might have had an unfair advantage in this situation because at the time, mentally, I was really excited about another brand within the industry. It was called Ride Snowboards, and they were, like, young and up and coming brand, really cool things. And that rep of that brand had invested a lot of time and energy into me, which was great. He was a great mentor. He actually helped guide me into getting, as I got the opportunity to interview for the Burton role. He helped guide me into that position as, you know, putting some of the profile and opportunity together to get the job. But what that gave me was, like, I was really excited about that, so I had nothing to hold back about Burton. And it's like, here's what's happening over here. Here's what the opportunity looks like. I felt really confident in sharing my opinion at that time.

Well, that is a beautiful point. Because if you feel. I mean, I think that's such a. It's such a great point because if you feel. Sometimes I think when we are relying on something for our happiness or an outcome, that's when we mess it all up. It's like we can want the thing really bad, but also it's kind of like I've had to develop this mantra as an entrepreneur like this or something better just in life in general. Otherwise you're gonna hinge way too much on that one thing. And if it falls through or breaks, which we all know it does that, right? It's like you're gonna feel just like a failure. And, you know, everything fails and you have to just. I don't know, is there a mantra that you kind of use or something in your head that just makes you be able to. Makes your risk tolerance higher?

You know, for me, like, it's just like our time here is limited and you don't wait for tomorrow. You just, you just do it. Just do it. Do the scary stuff. You talk about it all the time. You know, it's like you have to put yourself out there. And I think when you have expectations that are set too high, that creates opportunity to fail. It's taking small steps. I do that with my kids all the time. And, you know, they all play sports and I expect very little from them because otherwise sets these big goals and they just are not reachable. I'd rather they.

Get your shoes on, go outside and play.

Let's start there and then let's see what happens. So it's, it's just setting appropriate expectations of yourself and the opportunity that you're with.

Oh, man. I mean, I still do that. I'm just like, okay, you eventually want to work out, but how about we just start with tying your shoes?

It's true.

We do it as adults.

Yeah, I'm going to go for a five mile run tomorrow.

No, no, you're not.

Maybe, maybe if I could get from here to the end of the block and back, that's a win. And if I happen to go further. Fucking did great.

Yes, totally. That's exactly how I was today, actually, on the treadmill. I was like, okay, just try. Get one mile done. And then if you want to stay on, you can. And I did. So proud of myself. Okay, so tell me about the move out of when you went from Burton into the next Opportunity.

So I was with Burton for 16 years and it was, it was an independent agency. So it was my business that represented. So I had other smaller brands under my company that we represented. So Burton made up 95% of it. It was a huge part. That was for my family. Burton was my family. It was my home. I was very close to Jake and Donna, the owners, and it was my everything. It became my identity. So when the time came and the market starts shifting and you're like, maybe I need to try something else before the rug gets pulled out from underneath me and the opportunity shifts without me shifting. Let me start thinking about a change. I exited, I believe it was 2016, I think, and this is probably something I wouldn't recommend to other entrepreneurs. I jump as fast as I could into something else without giving a little bit of Runway to just the cool down thought process. What's important to me, what's next? I got excited about an opportunity. A friend of mine who had left Burton a few years prior started a small little startup making nut butters and protein cookies. And I loved the concept and what they were doing and I thought I could bring a lot of value to it. So I wasn't an initial founder, but I came in shortly after he and our other partner founded the business. And the company was called Buff Baked and it was protein enhanced snacks and it was nut butters and cookies. Protein Cookies invested a significant amount of money into that company. I came in and ran it as a CEO and we grew it pretty fast. We scaled very quickly, making probably every single mistake you could make in cpu. Every single mistake you could make.

I'm so grateful to hear that. Can't keep going.

You're gonna do it and you gotta do it because that's how else you're gonna learn.

Yeah, it's true.

And I shouldn't even call mistakes anywhere. There was like, every single thing I did was a learning lesson and a lesson well learned that we will try to avoid with this next endeavor. But it was a great run. You know, I got my PhD in the food space.

How long was that one? How long were you in that one?

Three years.

Oh, that's pretty quick.

Four years. Sorry, four years. It was pretty quick. I put my time in. It was where I wanted to put some money and build and learn. And that's just what I did. And it was a great opportunity to build something within the food space, which I love foods. I'm a foodie. I love snacking, I'm big snack. And I just, I love this Unchartered territory of like opportunity that I could take all these really cool things that I learned over the years with building and marketing brand like snowboarding and infuse it into this food space. And we did that very successfully. We brought on some really great investors, strategic partners. We landed some incredible accounts, Whole food, Food sprouts, Publix.

It was just, it was an endless.

Opportunity of just building something. Building nothing into something.

Oh my gosh. There are so many questions about the building nothing into something. In just those first couple years around creating something, did you already know what kind of your zone of genius was that you were bringing to that company initially? Did you walk in and say, this is what I'm going to offer. And then did it end up being the same? Or did you notice that you had other skill sets that really came to the surface to help move it forward?

I knew what I wanted to bring to the company and that was like going out and getting sales. Because I feel I can build relationships quickly at the sales level. I can position the product, I can help build the tools to go out and sell, and I can build a team. That's what I did. But what I realized that I was really good at was investor relationships and going out and selling the vision and the idea and the brand and the business itself. Okay. And we ended up bringing in some incredible strategic partners, one of which was 7 11, who invested into the company as part of their up and coming brand strategies, which was a great one. We brought in a great company out of New York called Excel Foods who really believe in the brand and the idea and the concept. But it was just, you know, really building the story and going out selling this, this vision.

There are so many challenges to business that I don't want starting to be.

One of them for you.

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Let's take a quick break because I have to tell you something that's going.

To save you time and make your life easier.

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For people listening because we have a lot of entrepreneurs and then first time entrepreneurs and people who want to raise money or people who want to raise next level money. And you're really talking about going out and selling that vision and what it looks like and what it takes. And that also being a major role in the company that could technically be one of the main and only roles is keeping people within the vision and selling it, continuing to do that with partnerships and things like that. So what does that actually look like when you're going out and do it? So you're like, well, Excel and 711 and all of these incredible companies, but.

What did that look like for you.

For prep work and for like when you met them? And I know that you're really great with relationships, but for people who even you know, I'm great with relationships but I kind of needed a lead in to understand what that looks like. When I'm asking those people.

I think that that's where finding mentors in the space that have done it before, understanding what path to success looks like, knowing what the expectation is, how long does it take to raise money? What can I expect from the process, understanding every step of what that looks like. And I think every industry is different. Every industry has investor stuff, specific investors that private equity groups or venture capitalists or angels that focus specifically on certain industries. Or categories. Simply googling and trying to find those lists of people that invest in those spaces is an important part of it. But I think understanding the landscape first is probably your most important tool.

So good. Why do you love creating these types of products? Why do you love cpg?

I just think I love on the go snacking. I love the idea of quick, easy to use. The manufacturing. That is actually another part that became relevant to me that I'm really good on the manufacturing side. Identifying co packers. Oh wow. Manufacturers, ingredient suppliers and then leveraging them for pricing and value and understanding what scale looks like.

Just so sad. You're not for hire. To somebody who has like a CBG product. I'm like, oh yeah, anytime you guys.

Need that longer, great.

We can talk about all those really exciting things. Just kidding. Actually it is exciting once you're in it.

It's just like these puzzles that you're trying to.

It's such a puzzle puzzle.

Well, if you like puzzles, like this is a great one. I think the manufacturing side is a.

Really exciting part of the CPG business. And I think that's one of the reasons that continues to draw me in R and D developing the products. I mean how many rounds have you developed of light pink? It's waiting for that next one to come through and that opening that can and trying it for the first time and the fifth time or the 13th time and it's so exciting.

It really is. And I think especially coming from more of the digital space because I did all events online courses and then books, but that's even still more. You're not really holding the product as much with a book. It still feels very digital when you're writing it and all the different things and the edits back and forth. So going into a product is like one of the hardest things I've ever done in my entire life. I thought that I've done hard things and I think it's like I just wanna. It feels so different. Every day is something new. It's not only something new that you're learning, but it's new decisions and putting together new teams. And I have so much. I really, really look up to people who have done anything in the product space and been successful because like you said, it is a puzzle piece. But I also wanna point out like this, this massive personal development piece, you have to be extremely patient. You have to look at. And this is true with everything. But this is next level of. I want to know about your tolerance for. Not a lot of times you don't Know the next step or you're pivoting or something didn't work and how you thought it was going to be is 100% different. Or it's just there's a million things every single day that you are solving. So how do you go about looking at all? I just find that there's a lot more moving parts that can break, I guess is the easy way to say it to people. So how do you go about looking at problems? Because you can't look at them as problems. You almost have to become this different mindset of looking at all the things. So how do you deal with that?

I go into everything with the new mentality of starting slow and failing fast. If you can fail fast and move and just pick yourself up and move on to the next thing and get it right on the next round or the next round, it just. It's an easier way of building a business. I think that you need to know you're gonna fail. You're gonna fail a lot, you're gonna fall down, you're gonna make mistakes, you're gonna hire the wrong person or the wrong agency. We've already done it. I've made these mistakes. I've already done it with minrate. And it's just. Just don't let it linger. Fail fast and move on to the next thing.

So when you see something that is either going wrong or a wrong hire or something within that just anything going wrong, let's talk about either someone you hired or someone that you're working with. How fast is that turnaround time and what does that look like?

So for me, I used to try to fix it. Everything was fixable. You could change someone. If you're not getting it the right way, it's gonna change if your management style change or. I used to think it was something I was doing wrong. But when it's not a right fit, normally it's from the beginning. When you have that sense in your gut, it's not a right fit and it's time to move on. And you just move on quickly.

Just learned that lesson and did it quickly. I was so proud of myself.

Which honestly is a really hard and humbling experience.

It's actually awful.

It's awful. It's terrible. I don't like letting people go. And that was part of the reason why I held on to so many things for too long in my life. But being able to identify and put the company's needs before anything else is the most important thing.

So much of what you're saying, I'M realizing the more that we just surround ourselves with mentors and we surround ourselves with other people doing the same thing, it makes your comeback rate so much faster. Because where I used to beat myself up, like, oh, I feel bad I did that, or should I have let all the second guessing. Instead you get on with Chris, Bernard, Bernie. I'm going to say all three names. Instead, you get on with Bernie, who says, no, that's normal. Forgive yourself faster. Then you're over it and you can move on to the next thing. So who you surround yourself with is so important. So I'd love to hear a little bit about just who have you surrounded yourself with while you're building these different things? Who, who do you make sure that you go to? Or, you know, when you have these big questions? Or are you listening? Are you listening to podcasts? Are you listening to reading books? What are you doing?

I'm reading books. I'm listening to a lot more podcasts. I mean, I get my feel of Chris and Lori Harder, Lewis House, all the names. You know, it's just like you take bits and pieces from all the podcasts and start to put that together. But for me, it's.

You know, there's certain people in my.

Life over the years that, you know, have been there for me since my days at Burton. One of them is a gentleman by the name of Laurent Vignon. Little French guy. He was with Burton for, you know, 27 years, had the most. One of the most decorated careers in the industry, ran an $85 million territory for the brand, and one of the most successful people I knew. And I. I used to look at him like, man, this guy is just like, he's touched. He's got the golden touch. Anything he did was successful, and I attributed a lot of it to luck, but it wasn't. He never cut corners. He always jumped in with two feet, and he gave it his all. And he does it with everything that he is. And he's also someone that, no matter what it was, he'd always stop to help me with my problem, make an intro, put me in the right position. And I was like, is he doing it for me or was he doing it for himself? I think he was doing it for both. But also, it brought him pleasure to help other people. And I've always lived by that. If someone needs advice, if someone needs help, I'm gonna give it to you. Because you never know. I don't want anything in return. But for me, it's the. It's the feel good of Helping someone achieve their goals. I love that, you know, something comes a bit later down the road. Great. Not great. So Laurent was a big one. And then now with Mindwright, I mean, Rob Dyrdek, Bryan Atlas, his crew, the people that he surrounded himself with, have become that system for me. And it's a room filled with very intelligent people driven by the passion of building businesses. And that is something that I've never experienced in my entire life.

Okay, so we're going to dive into that because you just talked a little bit about your new company. But yes, literally, I'm like, Rob needs to put out podcasts faster. I don't think he even knows. It's probably a little bit scary, the level of obsessed with how his brain works. I am, because I'm just like, I love.

Don't drive yourself crazy.

Oh my God, he's like brilliant. I just could listen and learn all day long. And I felt when I listened to your podcast with him and I was like, I just want to sit and learn from. I think that's the thing is when you start to find for me product companies, I think is the reason I was born. And I didn't realize that until now. And it's like, how have I not been sitting in on these conversations before? And they're so layered and you'll never know everything. And I think that's why I love it so much, is you will always be humbled and you will always be new, depending on what you're doing. And then right when you think you know what you're doing, the landscape changes and the consumer changes.

Exactly.

It's crazy.

And then Covid hits and then the presidential election. It's always something. It's always something.

Yeah. And I think that's been really, I think, powerful for everyone is to just to realize that I think one of the biggest lessons with CPG has just been the amount of flexibility and pivoting that we need to be open to as human beings in general, whether, you know, you have a full time job, a career, or whether you're an entrepreneur. But I want to talk about mind right? So tell me about this new venture that you're doing right now, because I literally just ate a mind right bar before this.

Well, you know, MindRight is the brainchild of an entrepreneur looking to support his lifestyle and career with products that support mood, energy and focus, which for me are my pillars of being successful. If I don't feel good and I don't have the energy to do something and I'm not focused on It. I just can't get my mind right. And it's very hard to achieve your goals when those things are lacking. And I dove into research around ways to improve your mood. By the way, when you turn 40, shit changes and you slow down and you start to have all sorts of new anxieties or thoughts or your mentality shifts, your mindset changes. And I wasn't even aware of it until I had a few failures, and I'm like, what changed? And to me, it was like, okay, I was a little bit heavier. That changed. But it was really my mindset, and I lost my focus on what was driving me to be successful through my days of Burton. You know, that passion, that fire that I had, where did it go? And it was this mindset, and I found myself complaining a lot. And my poor wife would feel the brunt of that, God bless her. And so she's like, literally just need to shut up and fix it. Right?

Sometimes those are the best. Like, Chris has had a few moments like that with me where he's done that for me, and I'm like, you asshole. And then I'm like, thank you so much.

Like, later, you know, I mean, she didn't hold back, but, like, she was right. And I realized, like, your.

How you feel and. And what you want to be and where you are, it really is up to you. And I had the control to change.

And, you know, one of the things.

That I was not doing and it was. My exercise was gone, my diet was.

Shit, I was drinking a lot, I wasn't sleeping well.

And those are the pillars of feeling good and drive your energy, and they drive your focus. So exercise, sleep, and then diet and nutrition. And I really. I wanted to build something that supported my lifestyle.

So I was introduced to Rob Dyrdek.

And I went to him as, like. I didn't really understand why he wanted to meet. He was apparently looking for entrepreneurs with ideas. I wasn't really in on that whole concept of what he was looking for.

And he.

And I just hit it off. And I think ultimately I understood he was looking for an idea. And I brought him this concept around food and ingredients that help drive your cognitive function, your mood. And he loved it. He loved it because he, too, is always looking to build into brands that support his lifestyle or that are organic to him. And as an entrepreneur who doesn't want more energy, more, feel good, more, it's the best.

It's the only way, like you're saying.

For sure, it's the only way.

You cannot feel like Shit and be successful.

You can't.

No. It changes my. Like, on the weekends, it changes all of my decision making because I'm like, I can't build this on Monday if I don't take care of myself over the weekend 100%.

My wife and I just talked about that very same thing. You're right. And there's moments where you have to slip, and that's okay too, but you just have to make sure that you get back on.

It does happen. Don't get me wrong. It does happen.

I had to go. I went to Cabo this weekend for 40th, and this morning I woke up, I'm like, oh, man, this is gonna be hard, but let's do this. I just. I got out, I went for my run. It was the hardest thing I ever did, and it just knew it. Yeah. But I'm just sweating the Cabo.

For real.

For real. So I lost my train of thought. Oh, Rob.

Yep, Rob.

So Rob's excited. Rob's in. Rob invests. We pulled the trigger. In February of 2020, we signed a contract together to become partners to build the world's greatest brain platform, Brain Food platform, that the world has ever known. And we set out and we started with design and the elements that build into the naming process of the brand. And we landed on Mindwright and just. It was funny because we had three other names before it, and Mindwright was always an afterthought. And then one day we just started thinking about it and it was like, just can't do anything until you get your mind right. And it's just like, just made so much sense all of a sudden. And Mind Right was born. And now we're trying to build out a platform of food and beverage products that support your mood, energy and focus.

Okay, so you started with Bars?

Yep, we started with Bars.

That was the original original.

That was the original original. I think that we chose a category that was low barrier to entry. We had some manufacturing relationships. It would be easy to build from there with the goal of building out a really, really cool suite of products to support that.

So how do you know when to go to the next product? So is there like a. Is it just gonna be, you know, we have this one nailed and now we can move on to the next one. What does that look like?

I think for us, it's different because we're choosing to remain digitally native for as long as we can. We wanna sell online, we wanna win on Amazon. We wanna win direct to consumer.

We want to look at other e.

Comm platforms to partner with. And that means more SKUs and more SKUs for us will happen more frequently than they normally would at retail. At retail you want to take time, you want to be cautious of the retail partnerships you enter into because once you're on shelf, you need to support yourself through and that takes a lot of work and energy. We're taking that work and energy and we're building it into ads to build the brand and the platform. So it's just a different way of building the business. So for us, right now, we're four months in on the bars, they're performing well. We have a new flavor launching this week.

You're going to say what it is.

Chocolate Sea Salt.

Oh God, so good.

Chocolate sea salt is coming this week, which we're excited about. It's delicious. But we have five other products that we're testing right now, and we're testing in a few different ways with our current consumer base. We're asking them to take surveys and understand what excites them, what their needs are, what their daily routine looks like. We're running ads on paid channels to see, click through rates and email acquisition and then we're understanding we're doing competitive analysis against other categories to make sure that what we're building makes sense.

Let's take one minute to talk about Gusto.

It's the end of the year and.

It always feels like there is so much administrative work to get done to keep things simple, organized and best of all, cool, quick. I trust Gusto to keep me on track and compliant with all my HR benefits and needs. I've teamed up with Gusto and they're offering you three months free when you run your first payroll@gusto.com Lori as we head into the new year and ensure all 2021 is squared away for tax purposes, I love that Gusto keeps all employee documentation so organized. It stores W2s and 1099s and also automatically files and pays state, local and federal payroll taxes. It's also the same for all my employees. From their perspective, they too can access all important documentation in one place. And with the holiday season coming up, they can also track their working hours and request time off. Did I mention that Gusto also offers easy to run payroll and expert HR support? On average, it takes 11 minutes to run your payroll with Gusto, but for a small business like my own, it literally takes seconds. Gusto truly is a one stop shop and online solution to manage Payroll, benefits and HR. To get acquainted with Gusto, we're giving you three months free when you run your first payroll@gusto.com Lori Go ahead and give it a try, you guys@gusto.com Lori now let's get back to the episode.

Now, I know it's a million different things, you know, especially when you're, you're doing your product, launching it digitally or selling it digitally, it's a million different components that go into like creating this thing we call sales. So what have you found? Because you came from another CPG company and what have you found has been some of the biggest, maybe outlets that have paid off for you.

For me, it's really Amazon. I think it's such an easy platform that was very much enhanced through Covid. I mean, the need for convenience and home delivery, the adoption rate skyrocketed. Right. Like all the late adopters figured that shit out.

Yeah, real fast.

Market's like crazy. There's no food, there isn't toilet paper. I need to figure this out. And I think the adoption rate exploded and Amazon and home delivery now is more important than ever. And you've got reviews, you've got next day delivery, you've got all the convenience and the luxury of understanding that life cycle of that purchase. And I think it's a really easy way to buy products and for us to test products because you can fail quickly. Whether something's working or not, you're going to know within three months and you can pivot, shift and make adjustments. And I think if you can build there, you can build direct to consumer.

And I think as you build confidence.

In the customer and you start to build repeat purchases, they come to you, to your website to understand you a little bit more, learn more about the brand and then we have a direct relationship with them. I think Amazon is a really good, great place to begin in cpt.

So just for people who maybe don't know anything about it, reasons you wouldn't go on Amazon, potentially cost of doing business with them, cost.

Obviously Amazon referral fees are expensive, but you can make the case that going into retail is expensive. There's a lot of costs and trade spend that goes into that. The other reason is once you give them control of your products, you lose a touch point to the customer. You don't get to speak directly to the customer, you don't have access to them. Which also the same case can be made at retail.

Do you collect their info through Amazon or.

No, you don't, you can't.

Oh man. But still, that is if the end goal is getting the bar or the drink or the thing into the consumer's hands. So they try it and you acquire that customer then. And that's something you wouldn't have been able to do or you would have had to pay a lot of money to get to them through ads or marketing. Yeah. So there's a lot of pros and cons. I think it's mostly all pros.

Mostly all pros. And the final con could potentially be, and this is the science behind Amazon, is understanding the shipping costs and logistics cost of the product. If it's heavier, if it's not, if the price isn't in value with the weight per cost of shipping, then you could have some challenges there. So understanding the dimensions of your packaging, the weight versus shipping costs are all keys to success on Amazon.

What has been a huge lesson that you have brought from your past company into this one that you feel has just been game changing for starting this new one?

I think, I mean, right off the top, the partnerships, if you intend to bring on a partner, they need to bring an equal amount of shared value to the company. Those terms and those conditions need to be laid out very clearly up front so that you know what you bring to the table and you know what they bring to the table. I think if you go in and like, we'll figure this out and we'll talk about who owns what later on down the road, it is a recipe for disaster. I think putting yourself in the room with really smart people that balance your strengths and your weaknesses is keys to success when you're considering a partner.

Yeah, I think, I mean, building anything with people is in the beginning, I was like, oh yeah, I'm gonna build a team or this will be great, but I can build that down the road. I was like, the second that I saw the scopes of work, I was like, there's no way I can't find people who either I'm going to partner with or who I need to hire faster who are better than me. Building the team has been number one. So I want to hear a little bit about how you've built your team. Did you find people from your past, CBG company or how did that all up?

Yeah, I haven't brought anyone in from my past CPG company. I've brought in people that I've worked with over the years in other capacities. Whether it's parallel to something else I've done that they know they've had success in their role. I found someone from my past who's very strong with Amazon product development and Strategic business growth. We've been talking about up having him come in.

We set our boundaries up front very.

Very quickly, early on, right before we said, let's do this.

Okay, wait, what does that look like? Because those are the conversations I want.

To know when you said, yeah, this is what I bring to the table. These are the things that I'm going to work on and focus on. These are the promises that I can make. These are the things that I cannot do. And it was just very, very clearly laid out, and it was driven by him, which was like a dream. So if you can find an employee that could come with a clear set of expectations and boundaries, I think that's amazing, and it's almost something that I might incorporate into how I hire in the future. I might ask that future hire to do the same thing. Share with me your expectations and your boundaries. So I'm clear up front. Oh, all the way down until, like, hey, if you need to reach me after hours, like, here's why and how in the weekends, or this is. This is when I'm working. And it was great.

Oh, my God, that is so powerful. Because there's no questions at all. And you also know if you're up for it from the beginning or not, like, you're not going to have a surprise, which is so powerful. So did you and did you have conversations like that with Rob?

I did. And I think early on, when we negotiated our contract together, I had some asks, which, normally, who the hell would try to negotiate with Rob Dyrdek? And he's giving you this opportunity to build your dream. But I had a few asks of him, and I think. And he's just so amazing and excited to build that. He's like, yeah, I'm into that. And those are great expectations. And we did set a clear roadmap up front, and he tests and validates and understands where you're going to land five years from now. I think that was a really important part of the relationship.

I think that's so important, no matter the reason I asked. That is because there is that place where I think sometimes we get these, like, really big opportunities. And I've had moments in the past in my career where it's like, oh, my God. I just.

You.

You don't even. You don't want to say anything for fear of losing it, but a lot of times you don't show up your best if you don't get to say those particular things, like, hey, I'm great at this, or this way of communicating doesn't work best with me. So just reminding people, like it can be a great opportunity and you can still show up with, with your needs or expressing your needs and I think they'll respect that more. Like I'm sure. I think the people who are like true leaders, like I'm sure Rob was like, that's freaking awesome that now I know how to communicate with you and how to be. So what is your biggest, what is your biggest lesson right now that comes to the top of your mind on building this business? Like what's happened recently that just feels like in the forefront of your mind. That felt like a beautiful, a beautiful lesson. Maybe it came from challenges because they always do.

Yeah. You know, I think for me it's.

When you're building your own business, you.

Need to put yourself out there.

You can't expect to hire someone else and have them put themselves out there for you.

It has to be you.

And I think I keep looking at agencies for answers. Answers are here. And building my team internally. And I think being hesitant to make mistakes and hire the right people, it always comes back to haunt. And that's still to this day we talked about earlier. It's like hiring slow, firing fast or exiting fast is a really important part.

I'm literally dying right now because this is my question for today. That exact thing is what I'm going through. So I'm literally like I am right there with you in this very moment and it's like really the realization of the vision, casting, you know, and all of those things.

So. Okay. And it's hard for me.

It's not something I'm comfortable with at all. It's hard and I just personally I'm trying to put myself out there more, especially when it comes to talking about the brand.

So what would be your ideal like scenario and places to be and out there? What does out there look like?

Just I think obviously social media for us because it's where all the eyeballs are right now. It's our fastest way to talk to people. I think it's understanding, like how am I relevant to you or to our audience that would be interested in mind? Right. What's the story I need to be telling and how is that story relevant without feeling like, you know, this 40 year old, that of four kids that's trying to pitch a product. I want it to be relevant and exciting to our audience.

Oh my God. I'm like, okay, so unsolicited. But I will tell you so the value that I am obsessed with that I see you bringing Is the creative process. I think that whether you sit on all of these different panels of entrepreneurship, I know that getting the product out there is. If they fall in love with you and the learnings, it's really in your message. It's like the product will go like it just does. I see it all the time. I'll listen to somebody and just value what they're saying, and then I end up being a consumer because I'm so obsessed with the story or what they're doing or whatever that looks like. So I think there's a lot of ways for product, but that's really honestly what I'm trying to figure out and focus on, too, with mine. And I'm doing so much R and D with. With the current audience. It's interesting, isn't it? It's just like, what do you want from me? Tell me, because I want to show up. Yeah.

And that's. For me, it goes back to why we're doing this. Mind, right, is a lifestyle. It's literally a lifestyle of preparing your mindset so that you can be a little bit closer to whatever your sex is, your success looks like. And I think for us, it's sharing stories from people like yourself, our community of other entrepreneurs, of people that are focused on their growth and their mindset, and telling stories of success and tidbits of information that help support that. I think it lends well to the idea of getting mine right.

Yeah. I think your product to me, is, you know, the things that you're talking about. Your brand supports everything that you want to support people with. So literally, what you're doing.

So you're in our toolbox of being successful in our everyday hustle.

Totally. And I think that's the pitch. It's like you. You know, it's just. It's amazing because you create these products that help support entrepreneurs. And here's the entrepreneurial story. Or entrepreneurs or whomever, Anyone who wants to do something more right.

The happy hustler. Right.

I love that. Okay, so what is your favorite thing about yourself?

I have good intuition. It's almost freaky. Like, I can tell something about someone very quickly, whether it's right or wrong or good fit or not good fit. Someone I'll be. Right away. Right away. I get a very strong sense from people.

Got heart, solar plexus. Where do you. Do you feel it in your body?

I feel it in my body. I feel it in my. I feel it in my heart. Like, I just know. And it's almost a conviction, like, well.

That Helps guide your decisions. Right.

I've used it in business and everything I do, and I think it's my light. It's led me to some great places.

I love that. So if you've ever listened to this podcast, we actually talk probably about 60% about intuition in decisions, and I totally made that percentage up right now. But definitely a lot about intuition because it's a fast decision maker. And then you collect your data after that as well. It's just you have to trust something with this because you do have to move quickly. So you're either going to be out there collecting data that is going to be all. You can find data for good, you can find data for bad. And it's kind of like you have to end up just deciding what you're trusting and then getting the feedback from that. So what do you do when you make a decision that you're like, oh, I felt that one in my gut, but maybe it was about this. Maybe it didn't turn out the way you wanted, but then you extract the lesson. So I think intuition is interesting because it doesn't always get you what you want, but it gets you the lesson you needed.

Yeah, yeah. It's not what you want, it's what you needed that's equally as important.

How did you learn to trust that? Has that been since you were a little kid or what?

Since I was a little kid, yeah. You know, I think my mom had it rough when we were growing up, and she was working all the time. And I think that that's where some of my work ethic came from, was my mom. She wasn't there to guide me because she had to work because my dad wasn't around. I saw this in her. And I had to make decisions for me and my brother because we were home alone a lot. So I just like, you know, you just feel what's right and you just go with it. And I think for me, it's almost how I'm successful in a few other things that I'm decent at in life, which is cooking. I think it should taste like this, and I go with my gut, and it came out great. You use that intuition into little pockets of your life. For me, it's worked.

You just trust yourself after you've done it enough and you kind of start to understand what the process is. So real quick, how do you forgive yourself when it doesn't go right for people who maybe are like, whoa, I've never really. Maybe all the Virgos out there who are like, they need all the Data first before they can trust their intuition. What would be a quick tip if there is one, on starting to trust your gut?

I think if you've trusted your gut or you failed or whatever, I think it's getting a small win. A small win starts to build your confidence back. And I think your gut lends really well to helping identify what those small wins could be. And just, just win. It could be the smallest thing in the world, but everything adds up. Everything keeps adding up. You know, the other thing that I've done over the years too is I've always taken into account of what my worst case scenario is. And like, when you think about failure, right, like, it's so stressful and it's the worst. I'm gonna lose my house, I'm gonna lose this, I'm gonna, I have no money, the collection guy's coming. But when I think about my true worst case scenario, and this is not for everyone, because someone's worst case scenario is much worse than mine. But for me, it's living around the corner with my wonderful Hispanic in laws, eating the best Mexican food you've ever eaten in a loving, very religious home. That's my worst case scenario. I can deal with that. So from there, everything else is a win.

Oh my gosh, I love that. I actually think that's why I've been able to be successful, is that I got to live in a worst case scenario. And we still found happiness in it. Well, not terrible, just we lost everything and had to borrow money and be in debt and all of the things and it was awful and we figured it out. So I always think back to them, like, okay, babe, if we talking to my husband, like, if we have to go back to that, could we do it again? Like, and we're like, yeah, I guess we'd rebuild.

It would suck.

It'd be real bad, and we would just do it all over again. So I think that's so powerful is to when you can make peace with that. And I've had to do that with this company. Like, okay, what if you lose investors money? What will that look like? Well, I'd work again to try to figure out how to get that back or whatever that looks like it. Just doing that has freed me up so much instead of avoiding it. And I think that's a big thing that people do is they just don't let themselves think about the solutions around the potential of, okay, well what if it fails? What would that, you know, what would you do? How would you support yourself? And then when you figure out those answers, you're like free to fly. So then you don't have to be weighed down by that. I love that so much. Okay, well, I could talk to you all day long and I want to respect your time. So I'm literally like, wow, where did that time go? This was amazing. So Bernie, because I'm going to call you that now because all your friends do. Where can we find you? Follow you, get the bars, all of the things support you because now we just want to support all of your everything that you're doing.

I appreciate that so much. Well, we're available on getminright.com we're available on Amazon. You can find us on social mediatminright. And yeah, you wanna follow me? I'm CS Bernie.

You guys, they are so good. Literally we just ordered so we have bars all the time. Come to the house. And we just ordered five more boxes. I just got them and the first box is almost gone. It's only been two days. We do have my brother in law and his girlfriend living in the house right now while they're doing their remodel. So they're not lasting in the house. So I will tell you, this is a huge mind right bar family. So I guess we're all extremely focused and happy and satisfied. So, so grateful for you.

I appreciate it. And look out for the chocolate seesaw. I'll send you some next week. It's amazing.

Oh, I will be looking out. I will be stocking it, so that's great.

All right.

So grateful for you. You guys definitely make sure to tag him, let him know what your biggest takeaway was from this because it's always so much fun to actually see the value for the guests that they gave. So make sure you tag him, let him know. And also just go check out the bars because they are freaking amazing. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. Until next time, earn your happy.

Bye. Bye, Sam.