How Neha Kumar Built a $200M CPG Empire by Moving FAST

Somebody asked me a little while ago, can you tell me about one of your biggest failures? And I was very confused when I got asked the question. I was like, where have I failed? If you're looking at a blip in time, of course you failed. If you're looking at a long enough timeline, each one of those failures turned into something else. They're not really failures. That's how all these series of things are in our life, on a long enough timeline. As long as you keep moving, you're moving somewhere. Foreign.

Welcome to the earn your happy podcast. I'm so excited to have you on.

I am so excited to be here. I mean, just the name of the podcast says it all.

Ooh, I'm so happy. It resonated. I have to tell you. It came to me literally. You know how certain things, like, certain phrases in your life just kind of stick? Before it was even a podcast, I was meditating one day, and the phrase, like, popped in. It was like, earn your happy. And then where it came from is that as a young kid, I used to feel really anxious and depressed because I used to not feel happy a lot of my life. And I thought that we were supposed to be born happy. And, you know, my family didn't have a lot of good habits, and we were an overweight family, and we really kind of just like, did not. We didn't move, we didn't exercise. And as soon as I started that as a teenager, I was like, oh, you actually have to earn your happy by moving, by eating well, by having community, by being around the right people, you know, by doing the things that you love.

And it just.

It's really, like, been this message for me through my whole life that if there's something off, there's something that we should be doing, taking an action that we should be doing in order to.

Make us that way.

So that's where the podcast came from.

That's so interesting, because I think it relates through personal and business across the board when you, you know, as human beings, we have a physical system, but then we also have a mental system. And when you work with integrity within your system, everything aligns and you can earn your happy. But you almost have to constantly work to keep things in alignment, to keep that momentum of the happy going as well. And it sounds like you've created that for yourself in your life, which is amazing.

Yeah, I mean, truly, it's. I mean, it's always a work in progress, but at least now, you know, it's empowering. You know, the formula, because it's how you live your life too. But it's really empowering to know that there is a formula, I think, for each of us individually. So, you know, you're one of those people who, when I, when I got to look at like all of the different things that you're doing, I can't wait to dig in because I know there's so many different poles towards, you know, so many things.

I want to know what's behind that.

So I think a great place to start would be to share what you're doing now and how you came into that.

Absolutely. We. So I currently have a company called Full Glass Wine and it is a direct to consumer wine roll up. And it's so interesting because the way things come out are not really how you think they're going to happen in life.

Never. Never.

Right. It's. It's always, it's kind of magical in a way though. And so watching everything come together has been really, really great. And I always, you know, someone said this to me when I was younger, it was in high school and I asked one of my teachers and I was so caught up in life and what do to do, what does my career need to look like? And he said, neha, it's not about what you want to do, it's about what you want to do next. And that really resonated and it took a lot of weight off of myself as well, that I don't need to have everything figured out. I just need to keep moving. Right. I need to keep earning my happy. And the thing is that in different periods of your life, it starts to change as well of what you thought was going to be your happy. So some years ago I had a fund, it was a small CPG fund. We also had a small wine business that we were kind of looking at. My partner and I, at the time that we had been working on and you know, I just kind of got into the space. I had worked in wine before as well and it was just really interesting. And you know, I teach undergrad as well at ucla. And so one of the things I'm teaching is, you know, we're always looking at interest rates because I teach accounting and finance. In 2020 and 2021, what was happening in the market was very interesting. Interest rates were so low, all time low. There's so much money floating around in the economy. And I thought, you know what? I don't have a crystal ball, but I have textbooks. And I've seen this, I've seen this come up over and over again when you look at periods of time in history and if interest rates stay this low for an extended period of time, where are the lagging economic indicators that are going to come up? So I thought, you know, these businesses are going to need additional capital. Some of them are going to need some creative ways to be structured. And I thought, let keep my eye out in the market for fun roll ups. I looked at beauty, I looked at pet food. Right. There are a bunch of different things in the space in cpg. And then I just, you know, one company, Wink, ended up filing for bankruptcy. And there was my partner, his name is Louis Amoroso. Him and I worked together in the past and we said, you know what, why don't we take a bunch of these companies, put them under one umbrella. They're great, great brands. They have so much energy behind them and let's put them under one umbrella and really just rocket them like rocket ship them. So in 18 months we did seven acquisitions, we acquired nine brands, we did a series A and then we also put a bank facility into place. And it has been a roller coaster of a ride. And in about three and a half weeks we'll be at two years and our company, you know, knock on wood. But it's, it's done really well so far.

Wow. So that's such a different business model than most people that I talk to are used to is like, oh, we're gonna go buy businesses that are gonna need money because they're maybe not doing well or they need, you know, they're missing something, but you see a pathway to help them be a lot more profitable. So for anybody listening, can you just first explain, just explain what a rollup is. You kind of, you kind of said it, but if they don't fully know.

No, absolutely, it's. So basically what we're doing is we're taking a series of different companies and then we're putting them under one umbrella. And what you said was actually perfect is, you know, all of them are great. They just might need to leverage, you know, a different type of a skill set for some of them. So we might have one that also has a phenomenal wine, let's say for a high end consumer. But people might, on an everyday basis or you know, different types of occasions want to have a certain type of wine at a lower price point. So now we can cross market the brands from one to another with the same email list. So it's essentially taking all the different companies, putting them under one umbrella and then they can leverage shared services so you can run the company more efficiently and thus make the company profitable very fast. We turn all the companies profitable within 90 to 120 days.

And what do you think does that? Because from a company's standpoint of, you know, they've been trying to make themselves profitable, obviously that's their goal and something's missing. What would you say are mean by looking at a company, you know that you have X that can make it profitable? Is it that is because you have a great email list. Is it because you guys have the best co, packers, manufacturers and deals? Like what all goes into that for you being so confident to go and know you can buy these companies and you're going to make them a success.

So there's two parts there. One is you said they all want to be profitable. I don't think that they all wanted to be profitable before. Right. And I just want to be careful about how I'm saying that as well. But it's just at the point in time, if you look at 20, 18, 19, kind of the heyday, the influencer strat, like influencer marketing, right. And then you look at 2020, 2021, where now you have interest rates are so low and there's so much money circulating in the economy, essentially at that point in time a lot of people were just motivated and it wasn't always on them. But it's also just, it was a sign of the times where investors were hyper focused on new customers coming in. It wasn't a focus on profitability of the company, it was a focus on new customer acquisition. So one is, you know, that's our focus is to be profitable. But all companies are looking at that now. Again, sign of the times, right? Before a few years ago it was customer acquisition, now it's profitability. So I just want to make sure everyone kind of gets benefit where it's due as well. Because everyone was thinking customer acquisition before.

But would you really quick for people to also because these were questions that I had that I did not know at all. Why would somebody not want to be profitable? Like what was the end goal for them? Just share, share that for everyone.

So if you have a business, let's just, we'll go make up an example here. Let's say that selling microphones, right? And let's say that your business is microphones. But then on top of the microphones, you're going to sell, you know, lighting, you're going to sell gear buttons, you're going to sell all of these different components with it. Somebody who comes in and buys it from Earn your happy a microphone. There's a good probability, let's say a 50% probability that's very high, that if you get a new customer, they're going to buy tons of other stuff from you. So in the early stages of companies that are receiving money from investors, investors might say, get as many people in the door as you can buying these microphones, because if you get 100 customers in, 200 customers in, a thousand customers, in the chance that they're going to now buy all those other products from you are very high. You almost want to think about it a little bit like, you know, razors, right. And the handlebars for razors, the disposable razor blades for shaving. Many people before, back in the day, Gillette, a long time ago, would give handlebars and some of the disposable razors away for free. Because the thing that actually cost money, where they made a lot of money off of a high margin product, were the replacement heads. You're okay with tons of people coming in the door and you're breaking even or losing money on that first purchase because people are going to buy so much other stuff. So in 2017, 2016, 2017 through 2021, the most important thing to a lot of people were how many people do you have coming in the door to buy a product, even if you're not making money or making as much money on that first order?

Okay, Yep. And then so back to the original question of, you know, what are the components that you see?

Yeah. So for us, one of the biggest things is scale. Right. So it gives us a lot of leverage with various different parties. So even if we're printing collateral material that goes into the boxes for the wines, if before we had, you know, if one of the companies has 100 things they're printing, but across seven different brands, we're printing 700. We get volume discounts. Right. So economies of scale is a very big thing. And we're in beverage. Right. So just beverage across the board is relatively speaking a lower margin product. So you make less money per unit that you sell as opposed to, let's say, beauty. Right. Or if. Look at nail polish. Right. The margin, the amount of money you make for each one of those units is very high. So if you have a lower margin product, usually you're looking at a volume play, usually not all the time, but. So you need to pick up a lot of volume to get to a certain point. We are going to do right now pretty close to 200 million in revenue this year in 2025. Wow.

What. What do you think has contributed to that?

Well, we grew through acquisitions.

Yeah.

So we've acquired all these different companies, and the majority of the companies that we acquired were the second half of last year. But we have, you know, a lot of company have shared services in the operations and accounting side. We also do shared services on the marketing side.

Is this, like, surprising to you, or when you got into it, did you think that it could grow this fast?

I mean, it's such a great question. When we got into this, we thought we were going to do one or two companies.

Oh, my gosh. You're like, all right, let's get a.

Couple of these together under one hood. And, you know, it would have been nice to. To do more for sure. But we also thought, we're going to have time. We're going to do it over a few years. We haven't even hit two years yet. We'll hit two years on June 1st.

Was it just because you saw signs of it going well, and you're like, what else? Like, what else?

And opportunistic. Right. And so companies also started coming to us and saying, listen, we want to get acquired. What could this look like? And so it's one of those things in the entrepreneurial space. And I know that, you know, this. Well, is sometimes, you know, it's. It's so cliche, but when opportunity knocks, you kind of have to jump because you don't know what's going to happen. So you can either pause and hesitate and think and say, well, what if this? What if that? Or you can just jump. Have you ever gone skydiving or bungee jumping?

Bungee jumping.

Okay, so I've gone skydiving. And I remember when I was going, you know, the first time I went skydiving, I was on the plane, and they had to kind of turn it around. So they took me up, right up to the edge.

Oh, God.

I was about to jump out. I was going tandem, and I was about to jump out, and then they're like, wait a minute. You can't go. There's a cloud formation coming in. But I looked. I had seen, like, I. You can't really see the bottom, but I looked down. Then it took them maybe three minutes to circle around to an area where there were less clouds. And I knew it was only three minutes, but I think those three minutes were the longest of my life. And then when I had to jump, it was the hardest thing. Once hesitation kicks in, it almost holds you back to another level, that if you think you can start to see that hesitation come into mind and you're like, you know what? I'm just going to go. I'm going to go. I promised myself just a couple years ago. I always thought I was waiting for the. You know, we're always waiting for the right moment to come up. Yep. I started to get some gray hair and I realized it's not about the gray hair. It's about the fact that we think we have all the time in the world, but life is really finite. And so whatever it is you want to do, you got to get out there and you got to take the leap. Kept on then thinking about that skydiving experience, and I thought, you know, I never wanted to post stuff online. I would have never done podcasts. I never wanted to do those things before because I wanted to make sure that I was ready, put together and proper where I presented myself. But the only thing that happened is just time passed. And so the last couple years, back to the acquisitions, instead of wondering, questioning, trying to make everything fit a perfect box, we thought, let's just give it a go. If something comes our way, let's give it everything we have. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. One of the acquisition. But we got to give it a go because the only thing that's just happening otherwise, these opportunities in time just pass you by. And it's kind of been magical to see all of these things come together. And it's been really fun.

That's so amazing. So we were kind of talking about this before, and I had asked you, you know, what, what would feel like a win? What are you most excited about? And you had mentioned, you know, the fact that you're teaching, which we'll get into. But first, I want to talk. I want to stay in this world of the full glass wine. And I want to know, like, does it feel like you're able to use a lot of your skill set and Zone of Genius in this particular area?

Yes. I love that. Zone of genius.

Have you read the Big Leap?

No.

Oh, my God. It's going to be one of your new favorite books on planet Earth. It's. I read it every year. It's by Gay Hendricks, but it defines Zone of Genius and it's. You'll love it. Continue.

That's actually so interesting. So I absolutely do. It's so interesting. I went to business school. When I graduated from business school, some of the concepts like, am I going to use this? I Worked in banking for years and then I went into the startup space. I've never seen everything come together so much in my life as it is right now. And it also makes the components like all these various things, so much fun. So I worked in banking a long time ago. I was there. I also was there during the 2009, 10, 11, 12.

My husband was in banking. Yep.

And that time there was so much volatility, there was so much going on. But what was so interesting is you could see in the market, you know, two companies that were selling a same or similar product and one would go under and one would make it through. Like the Great Recession. Right. The thing that made the company make it through was the one that had the right infrastructure in place, they had the right understanding of overall operations, they had the right relationships. Right. With their logistic people, with their co packers, with everyone across the board. And so that's something that I got to see on a day in, day out basis while I was working in banking. And I never thought that was going to come back. Help me out. And then I've been teaching accounting and finance for such a long time and my undergrad students will ask these questions and sometimes I'm like, why would you even ask that? But it causes you to think in a different way. And so as we've been going through all these transactions over the past just under two years, so many of these things have come up into play and the startup space as you know, is so, so fast. So having this, it's almost like this arsenal that I have of all of these moments of context and information have all tied in to helping me be able to move very, very quickly right now.

Yeah, that is huge for what you're doing. And also I love what you talked about earlier, about the hesitation because, man, the deeper you get into business too, I think the more you know, and the problem is the more you know, the easier it is to hesitate because you might want to stop and think longer or you can almost know too much. There is a bit of a magic about being a bit naive, like being in that startup phase of just like, move, move, move, keep going. Yeah, you know, I'm thinking about, I'm thinking about the type of business that you started. Do you think a lot more people right now because of the times are going to start? Like, is this an opportunity to roll different companies up? Is that what you're starting to see or.

Oh, we're seeing it across the board right now. So we ended up doing it earlier. I would like to say it was because we were really smart, but honestly it was just timing and it was. There's some things we've done that are really smart, but that was just opportunistic. Right. A lot of it is timing in the market and seeing what's going on as well. But absolutely, we're seeing it across the board. Like beauty is a really big one in cpg. You're seeing it in other beverage, non alcoholic beverages as well, sports drinks. We're seeing a lot of roll ups that have already happened and some that are well underway right now. Whenever there's volatility in the market, there's also opportunity and I think that's very exciting. And it's almost like a tilling of the soil. Right. Like every so many years the soil needs to be tilled and it's not a fun experience for everyone but it can be very cathartic and it's, it's therapeutic and then it causes the soil to turn, allowing for the nutrients to be refreshed so that better things can grow.

So if someone's a company right now who's like, I would love to start fresh or do something different, but I have this company, it's in a fairly good place but I'm not going to be able to, I don't see myself being able to push it through to what I once envisioned. How does somebody like that look for companies to roll them up into or shop them or whatever those words are for that?

Yeah, there's a couple different ways. Number one is just going out in the market and talking to people that have similar types of companies as yours. Because one is what if you want to, you know, merge with someone else? Because maybe you think I still want to keep doing this, but I just can't keep doing this the way that I've been doing it. So if you have, for example, a company where you're selling mics and you know we're just going to keep running with this example, you might say, listen, let me start to go ahead and work with people that have recording studios, right? Maybe there's people who come in and record certain amount of items, certain amount of content, but then they want to do some of it at home. And we could have a business where we're kind of doing some sort of a exchange or collaboration or rev share or revenue share on the products from the studio as well. So that's one way to do it. The second way to do it is you can talk to boutique bankers, especially if you're an early stage Company. I really like our bankers. They're called Silverwood Partners. They're based out of Boston. They're boutique and cpg. But there's a lot of different bankers out there as well. And you just need to kind of raise your hand up and talk to one of them. And they'll. A lot of them know each other, so if you're not the right fit for their group, they can recommend you to someone else and say, listen, I'm interested in selling my company. I know this might not be the big heyday victory of what I was hoping for, but I'm tired, or I want to do this with someone else, or I want to find other products that we could put under an umbrella. Do you know anyone looking to do a rollout? And there's a lot of people right now actively working on that in the market, like, across the country.

Yeah. I think it's such a great option for people, and a lot of people don't even necessarily know that it exists. And they're in that position where maybe they've put a lot of money in, but they're just not sure, you know, what to do next. Take on more money. Does that feel daunting? Would you rather just maybe, like you said, potential. Have the potential to work with someone or get bought by someone, depending on just how tired you are. Okay, so you also teach. You also get to teach right now, which is so incredible because you have so much value that you can get back from all of the different things.

That you've been doing.

So tell me a little bit about what you're teaching on right now.

I teach undergrad at ucla.

So cool. You're so cool.

Thank you. I. It is one of the. Besides being a mom to my two kids, it is one of the best things that I get to do, and I have been doing it for a very long time. I started at UCLA in 2013. Wow. And so I've been there for a minute. It's just really been a great journey overall. I've taught a variety of different classes under Anderson in the accounting program. And then right now, the class I'm doing this quarter is through the Price School of Entrepreneurship. So it's entrepreneurial accounting and finance. And what's so interesting about it is the questions and the things that will come up that the students will ask. And yes, I know you said I have a lot of value that I can add to these students, but honestly, they're the ones I feel like so much value to me. I earn my happy with them right.

We just talked about this today. That teaching is literally where I believe you learn the most. Not only from the student, but because also teaching back just requires so much. So what. What would you say you feel like, especially. I just feel like the last year or two, especially with, like, the young. The young people listen to me. I can't believe I'm using this language. But, you know, like, younger people, they're learning so fast because of how they're used to learning. What would you say are, like, some of your biggest learnings in the last year from them?

It's a reminder to constantly be present. So my students are so active in class, in participating and being a part of it, and it is so much fun to be able to watch them go through the concepts we go through in class and really go out there in the world and be excited. I came up with some activity the other day where I told them, I want you to reach out to two people. I want you to be bold. So I want you to reach out to two people in the next week who you would have never felt comfortable reaching out to. One of my students reached out to someone on Instagram. He DM'd him and the Dubai show, it's like a reality TV show from some of the people in Dubai, and he reached out to someone there. The guy went, the was like one of the main characters on the show, and this is just a couple weeks ago, and he said, I'm actually on my way to LA right now. Why don't we meet up and have coffee? Wow.

Okay.

So between the time from one class to another, my student reached out to someone, ended up on a reality TV show, ended up having coffee with them, and then came back to the class and got up in front of the room and talked to everybody about it. It's just there's something with these students that's going to come back to the skydiving story. And I don't know if they're undergrad or what it is, but you asked me, what. What do I learn from them? It's a reminder to be present and not hesitate. And it could be also because you said, by the time we get to our experience level, like mine and yours, we've so many data points, data points. Those data points can cause you to overthink. These students, they're 20, 21 years old, they just go, come up with some idea, something. They just go out and they do it, and they do it with this level of energy and excitement, and it almost just. It's like the naivete you were talking about, things just kind of happen. Yeah, totally.

I feel like whenever I can look back at my journey and like you looking back at yours, it's that, is that excitement and just trying things, throwing spaghetti at the wall and like see what sticks and not being attached to it, like not getting hurt by it or not getting like the feeling of like rejection or being too afraid of rejection. Would you say for you, like, what's been something for you that has helped you deal with rejection? Rejection? Is it because you've always been kind of like, have you always had partners? Have you done this in a group? Have you always done this in the type of setting that you're in? Even right now where you're teaching at college, where you're doing it all together, what would you say is kind of like something that almost protects you a bit from the rejection out there?

It's so interesting because when you started saying that, I didn't even realize I've been rejected because I thinking in my head and I'm like, where are moments in time I've been rejected? The truth is I'm probably rejected. Every day I'm pitching to someone, I'm looking for something, I'm trying to sell something. I'm trying to figure out some new collaboration for one of our brands. It's so interesting. I don't even hear it anymore. What I hear is this just isn't right for them and this might just not be right for them right now.

What do you think you focus on to do that?

Yeah, I think it's shifting your perspective. You've interviewed people before. I think it's really important for people to interview people because if you're interviewing for a job or interviewing for something, because when you meet candidates that aren't the right fit, you know that it's not that they're not the right fit. Is there something off with them? They just might not be the right fit for your company. They might not be the right fit because of where they are in their life. They might not. There's, there's a ton of different reasons. So when you realize there's a myriad of different reasons, something might not be the right fit. It's not personal anymore. It's just not the right fit.

Okay, so you get to work with a lot of college age students and you get to work with just a lot of business people in general. I can imagine where you're at right now. You can start to see traits immediately that are either going to be successful or not.

Yes.

Would you say, are three traits that you see in every business person that you feel has the potential to be successful.

One of the first ones, I would have never really thought about it years ago, but I've noticed it a lot in people nowadays and it's mover advantage. A lot of people think it's first mover advantage. This, that it's just mover advantage. People who take action. I had a student a year ago and she would just take action. She would come see me after at office hours. She would come and try to find me and, you know, scope me out at events. And then one time she said to me, I really want to work with you in some way, shape or form. She just, there's no plan, there's no nothing. And now she's my ta. Now she's going to start helping us with various projects. That full glass wine, it's just moving, having mover advantage. Second thing that I really think, you know, I can spot for people who. That really helps make them successful is presence. It's how you hold yourself, it's how you act, it's how you talk, it's the confidence level that you have even if you're sitting with someone at a meeting. It's the act of listening, how you move around. There's an executive presence that I've seen people have that makes a difference because not only do you know how to get people to listen to you, but you know how to listen to people, and that makes a really big difference. So that's the second one. And the third one for me is the easiest one. It's resilience. You have the ability to bounce back, not take things personally and keep moving. Those are the types of things that just really make a difference. Oh, my God.

Yes. I literally even. It's crazy. And that can be learned and that can grow. I do think you have to have a bit of it to start, like. But let me just tell you that has. That's been a muscle that has grown for me and it is. It's quite crazy. It's like what you said. You don't even know you're getting rejected because you've built up so much resilience that you're just like.

Like, yeah.

Was that a rejection? I don't.

It's kind of like failure. Somebody asked me a little while ago, can you tell me about one of your biggest failures? And I was very confused when I got asked the question, because I was like, where have I failed? Now I want to caveat that with, if you're looking At a blip in time, of course you failed. If you're looking at a long enough timeline, each one of those failures turned into something else. They're not really failures.

Oh, my. I couldn't. I literally got asked this the other day, and I felt kind of like a little bit of an asshole, because I was like, well, I tried a lot of things that didn't work, but I didn't fail.

I was. I was on a panel live, and they got asked the question, and I didn't know how to say, like, you know, I really haven't failed on anything. Freaking turned into something. But then when you. You take a step back, and I'm like, why do I think that way? Because I'm not hesitating. After there's a failure, it comes back to hesitation. You're just in motion. You're moving. You're like, this happened. It didn't work out. Got it. Let me try something else. Let me try something else. It's almost as if told you, hey, you know what I'm gonna give you, or, you know, let me try this. What's. If you could have any car in the world you want, what would that be? Me?

Yeah, Any car I want to build out a vintage Bronco. Got it.

What color would it be?

Light blue.

What about the interior color?

Like a tan, a tannish interior.

Oh, my God, that sounds gorgeous.

Thank you so much.

If I right now, outside of your house, that car is waiting there for you. The only thing is, I have a box, right. That's right outside the car, and it's one story high, which is very high, and it's like three, four feet wide, and it's full of keys to go find the key for it, and then you can have that car. So if you try the first 10, 50, 100, 100, 500 keys, you might not find the right key, but are you gonna stop? No. You get the car for free. You get it. Right, Right. That's. That's how I think about life. If I told you all of that, and every time you take a key and you go and try it, you're not going to sit there. I don't think you're going to sit there and go, this key didn't work.

It's horrible.

I don't like it. What was me. You're going to go, okay, next one. And then just judging by why, what I know of you as well, I think you'll come up with, like, an operational line. You're going to have, like, an assembly, like a line of people. And people are going to hand the key, Someone's going to try, someone's going to go, you're going to be like, how can we tag team this? Can we do one person on the driver's side, one person on the passenger side. Can we get this as quick as possible?

We'll be motivating them and they'll be doing it for everybody.

And I'll provide the wine. Right? So great.

I love, love this.

It's like a fun thing, but like, when you're in motion, you're not sitting there thinking, is this key the right key or the wrong key? You're just, okay, this one didn't work. What's the next one? What's the next one? And that's how all these series of things are in our life. And that's why people like you and I, when we look at it, we're like, wait, we didn't really fail, we just went on to the next thing or we tried it a different way. So if again, it's looking at it as a long enough timeline, because on a long enough timeline, as long as you keep moving, you're moving somewhere, which is.

I love that analogy. I'll have to use it. It makes, it makes so much sense. I think people too with. It sounds like, well, you are a teacher. I have like a teacher archetype. Like, I definitely love to teach Anything I learn. The first thing I want to do is pass it on and it helps me learn even more. We had chat about that, but I think when you're a teacher, failing doesn't really come into your brain much because imagine like teaching a young kid to ride a bike. And every time they stumbled, you're like, fail, fail, fail. You're like, no. Every time they stumble, you're like, oh, you're a little closer. Like, it's actually important for them to fall to the right because they have to learn what that felt like in their body to not do it again. It's actually important for them to follow the left. It's important for them to, like, fail so that they understand how to stay on. And so I feel like I've always looked at, okay, that option doesn't work. That didn't work.

That didn't work.

I think, you know, challenges just because I'm in such startup mode right now, I'm in the first year of a CPG company and it's like, I think once in a while, this is the first time that I've been like, the level in which things don't work. Like how many things don't work sometimes that you're like, oh wow, there's a whole lot of things that aren't working. To find the one that is working just because it's new, it just takes it. Sometimes that can take a little bit of a hit. But I have to remember, oh yeah, this is like everything. It's just. There's more keys in this pile.

Yeah, a lot of keys. Yes. It's just not making it mean anything.

Exactly. Not making it mean something. Because I think when we're new in something, I think that's the difference. So I'm analyzing, I'm trying to see why for the first time in a very long time I'm feeling a little challenged. But I think that you just nailed it. I think that in the beginning of something where maybe our skillset is a little bit different and we're back in something totally new again, it can be like, oh, does this mean I'm not good at this? Or does this mean that maybe I shouldn't have gone down this road? And usually it's like, no, you just need to keep adjusting, you know. So for you right now, like, what are you personally feeling like you're working on? Like, is there an area that you're challenged in that you're trying to grow in right now?

I mean, that's a really interesting question. I'm gonna actually have to think about that one. Yeah, yeah, I got one. All right. So an area that I've been working on recently for me really is also taking care of myself. There's, you know, I have a couple different buckets here. I have my full time. We have our company that we run. We currently have just under 90 employees. Wow. There's a lot of different moving pieces there as well. And so there's that. Then I have my teaching, which is, is so much fun and so rewarding. And then I have my family. I have two little kids, a 6 year old and a 4 year old. My husband, my in laws, my parents. You know, we have a wonderful, wonderful family and great friends. The one thing, so it's kind of, you know, it's like three big components here. The one thing that ends up getting lost at times is taking care of myself. And I used to think, or how my life was before many years ago was I could say, oh, I'm going to take a week and I'm going to decompress, or I'm going to take two full days. I'm in decompress. There's no way that's going to happen right now. Like I can look at the rest of this year and that's not going to happen. It's finding the moment. It's earning your happy, but it's finding the moments of happy and your pause in between when everything else is going on. So, and that's a challenge because what I need to do is be able to find, even if it's a 15 minute walk, the I'm going to take this 15 minutes. I'm going to go for myself. Everybody else can wait and I'm just gonna listen to the birds. I, I love hearing the sound of birds. I think it's very relaxing. And if it's, you know, right now I do. I have a performance coach and I have calls anywhere from one to three times a week. And that for me is something that has been really, really great because we'll come up with certain tasks, things I need to work on. But instead of saying what are you doing for the next week? We do what am I doing for the next 24 to 48 hours? Like bringing it into a shorter bite sized amount of time allows me the ability to be able to move quickly. And I'm sure you've heard this saying before, but how do you eat an elephant? It's one bite at a time because it can be very overwhelming. And so for myself, it's really remembering to take care of myself. Go work out, go for walks, whatever it is that makes me happy. One of the things I love doing is arts and crafts with my 4 year old. That's nice. She gets so into it. It makes me feel good. It's therapeutic to use my hands and make things and glue things and it's nice.

Yeah.

But this is a challenge.

Yeah. Especially it sounds like you're close to your family which is the, is the, is the biggest gift. But also it makes you want to spend time with them like in the, in the pockets of your day. It's like you're probably always with your.

In laws then or your parents are.

Making time or Sunday dinner or that extra time with your children. And it is important to go find those pockets for yourself. Especially if you're someone who needs that, who needs that time alone. And you have me intrigued with performance coach though. Like what exactly is that? So they have you, is that to move you forward in your business or life or just all of the things that you're focusing on?

I mean my business and life are all one.

Yeah.

So it's, it's all of the things that I'm focusing on, but it really is with an eye towards what am I looking to accomplish and what are the small steps towards making that happen. But when we're talking about what do I want to accomplish, it's again, not what do I want to accomplish in the next 10 years, it's what do I want to accomplish over the next 48 hours. Constant mergers and acquisitions mode. So it's around the clock. There's so many things going on and things can change very, very drastically, very quickly. And so for us, it's I want to make sure that I can keep an eye on the prize of what are the things that I want to get done, what do I want to make happen and to really kind of hit out all the noise because it's so easy as human beings to allow what other people are saying, what other people are doing, what's happening, kind of get into your sphere. And so working with someone on a dedicated basis like that, for me, in a consistent basis I should say is it really keeps me focused, which is made such a difference.

So do you work with this person like every couple days or do you text or do you get on a call?

So we only do phone calls. They're 30 minute phone calls and it's exactly 30 minutes. We will text when to coordinate them, but we typically do two to three a week. Sometimes my schedule can be challenging and we'll be doing one. I have had same coach for.

I.

Think it's been nine years now.

Wow, that's incredible. I've actually never heard of that exact style of coaching. And that resonates with me so deeply because I'm like, no, I need to like have somebody hold me accountable for the. For two days in a row. Like, no. You said you wanted to do that phone call. Nope. You needed to talk to that person. That is powerful. I feel like you could almost start that if you don't have a coach. I do feel like that is something you could do with a highly accountable friend.

Yes.

You know, every two days you put the goal for the 20. That is. Sorry, that is like game changing for me. Just so you know, like, I will.

Shoot him a text. So we don't do a lot over text because we want to minimize outcomes. Because then you, you just start going into, you know, this happened, this happened. It's very. And it's 30 minutes succinct, no going over nothing else. Not talking about why I'm bothered. It's what am I looking to accomplish? Because then you quickly, like, you're like squatting not squatting out. Trying to think of the word with flies. Right? You're kind of shooing them away, chewing, squashing. Yeah, right. You're kind of like, getting them out of the way really fast. Of the emotions, that of, oh, I'm really bothered. I don't want to make this happen. Is it ego or is it that I'm bothered by something? What is getting in the way of me trying to accomplish this component? Because a lot of it is personal at times. Right. And so what I'll do, though, is I'll shoot.

He'll.

He'll say to me, hey, in the next 48 hours, you got to accomplish this and get this done. We talked about it. And he'll say, just shoot me a text. I did it or I didn't do it. And if I couldn't do it right. So holding me accountable. And if I didn't do it, I'll say, hey, I didn't get this done, but I'm recommitting to getting it done by tomorrow. No, we don't put any meaning to it. You're not making it right or wrong.

I love that because it just. It makes you move. It literally is just gonna make you move. And when you really think about it, other things, I. I had a coach kind of like that, but we weren't. I mean, it was kind of like someone who didn't talk about emotion, so I just assumed we were never gonna do that. And it was one of the, like, best people for me, because it was like, oh, he doesn't care. So it was like. It's almost like when you know someone cares, you're going to talk about it. And it's almost like it can be an excuse. So with him, I was like, he doesn't care. It's not an excuse. And all he wants is the result. So this. It was very successful for me, and you're reminding me of that, so thank you so much. So anybody on here who. Sometimes we can get really caught up in, like, the needing to work through it, the needing to process it.

It.

Yes. I think there is a beautiful, very important place that you should process. But at the same time, I think that it doesn't have to stop you. I think you can still perform and still go process these things later or at that time, compartmentalize it. So. Yeah, I love that. I want to touch on this real quick before. Before we end, because you said that you had a year of.

Yes.

And I want to know what that has done for you. Tell me a Little bit about it. But I want to know what that did for you in business, because you do seem to be able to move through things with a lot of speed and without getting emotionally, you know, too emotionally attached to anything.

Of course, it's. It's so funny. That actually came from when I started to see some gray hair. Okay, son. He's six, so he was, like, four and a half, five at the time. And he was watching Willy Wonka, the one with Johnny Depp. And little kids watch things on repeat, like. Like over and over again. They watch an rp. So he was watching it. And there's a scene in Willy Wonka where Willy Wonka tells Charlie the impetus for him wanting to give out the golden tickets was he was on his annual haircut with his Oompa Loompa, and he saw a gray hair, and he, you know, was reminded again that life is finite. You think you have forever, but you need to think about, you know, what am I trying to accomplish? What do I want to do? Where am I trying to go? Because you don't have forever. And that. Because I was. Again, when you're hearing something over and over again on a daily basis, you really think about it. And my son was watching it. And then I had just had gray hair starting to come in. I'm like, you know what? I don't have all the time in the world. I say no to so many things. I want to go out there, and I want to say yes to all these things that are coming my way, whether it's a podcast, whether it's, we just got nominated for the. Or we're finalists at the Ernst Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Right. Somebody came and asked me, would you be interested if we nominated you? So here I'm just on the. Yes, yes, yes. And it's, you know what? We'll figure these things out. How do we fit all these things in? We will figure it out. And there's a quote in this book that I really love. It's called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hall. And there's a quote in there. I'm not gonna be able to, you know, quote it exactly, but it's something to the extent of start. And then the tools that you need will start to show themselves. And it was so powerful. And I've really noticed in the entrepreneurial journey, when you put yourself out there, you get ready, you go out there, you put your best face forward. It's so interesting. And when you say yes, there's such a powerful way that how things can come together. When you start to say yes and seeing everything come in, it has truly been remarkable seeing all these things happen just by saying yes.

What year was this?

This is last year. And carrying it on into this year.

Wow. Okay. But how do you decide? Because I know that you're really busy and you probably get a lot of opportunities, so do you say yes to everything or are you judging it off or basing it off of something?

I can't quite explain it. Yeah, but it's this. It's that same feeling that you get inside with that hesitation. If you're going skydiving and you want to jump, you're like, no, I shouldn't do it. It's that same hesitation when somebody asks you to do something and it's questioning yourself, am I good enough? And how am I gonna look? Is this gonna work? Am I put together yet? Have I figured everything out yet? So that's my criteria. If those kind of questions come into my mind, I immediately squash it and I say yes. The reason behind saying no or hesitating and thinking to say no is I'm questioning myself. Not for me is where I want to push those aside and jump on the yes. Okay.

Okay. So what I want to know from your yeses is what have you learned that was a no for you after saying yes?

That is a really, really good question.

It is that you're like, maybe not. I'm not sure about that one.

Yeah, I got two. Two things. One is making sure that you're prior. Like. Like no matter what, you're prioritizing your own health. So the things and go with the things that you have fun with. So, you know, the other day we were at the Beyonce concert. Amazing. And then Beyonce and her crew, like, they had this after party thing. I had a great time going to the concert. I knew that if I went, it's that listening to that inner voice without having any other sound of other people think things come into you. It's do I want to go to this other party? It's going to be a lot of fun. The great, like, the right people are going to be there. But I'm tired. So you know what? I'm at that point, I'm gonna go home. So I learned that before in the past so many months and last year, saying yes to that would just wear me out. Right. Because I have to wake up early and I have to do these things. So it's really listening to that gut reaction that's coming in there. And the more you start to pause you know that it's there. And I'm not saying it's like some hocus pocus magic or something that's coming in as a gut feeling. It's all these data points that you have from your history 3. Right. I just don't think a lot of us will actually take the time to acknowledge those data points. The second thing is, no matter how much you have from the outside world of to do something about certain hires, you gotta go with what you know about a business. Wrong hires are going to make your life difficult for an extended period of time. And I know you've heard that. I know all of us have heard that in some way, shape or form. And I had made a mistake during the course of this company. So in the past two years where we made a hire and we did it because of things other people were saying from the outside. And I'm like, you know what? If everyone is saying we got to make this work, it should be the right reason and let's say yes. And I should have said no. But it was one time. Yeah, it was a one time thing now where I will. So you asked me, right? What is something you said yes to where you're like, I'm not going to do that again. And I've learned from it that I should say no, that that's it.

What is something that you hope comes your way that you want to say yes to?

I don't know.

You got a lot of good stuff going on?

No, I mean, that's such a great question because I mean, if you don't have things that you know that you want, you're never going to end up getting them. It's kind of crazy how that works. It's like, you have to. And I think this was a really good reminder for me to sit and relist out because I had a list of things I wanted and they happened. Yeah, I need to sit back and recreate a list. Sorry, let me get back to this. So what are some things that I hope come my way? I love doing things with female entrepreneurs. I dad is a financial business planner and growing up it was just me and my younger sister. He would always teach us personal finance. Wanted to make sure that we can take care of ourselves, stands on, stand on our own feet and do things. I started doing a lot of things with female entrepreneurs and it morphed into us doing just fun events. So things I hope to come my way are continue things with community where we're having a great time, we're sharing ideas and really just being there for each other. I'm really fortunate. I have some of, I think I have some of the best people who are supporting me. If I did not have them around me, I would not be able to do what I do. They are my hype women to the max. So, you know what? Actually, you know what I hope comes my way?

My opportunity to be able to support.

And be a hype one hype woman for all of these people who've helped me out.

That's so fun. I totally get that. I resonate with that so deeply. Like when you get to have not only like such a great relationship, but get to use your, your skill set, you know, that you've gotten so good at so well, that's coming your way this year. You've put it out there, it's happening. It's going to happen super fast.

You're going to love it. It's going to blow your mind.

I'm so grateful for you. Thank you so much for coming on. What are you. What's something that you want to leave everybody with? Like what? These are a lot of, you know, big dreamers, they're entrepreneurs. What's something that you would love for them to know?

If I could go back and talk to myself when I was younger, the number one thing I would tell myself is to relish everything, even the ups and the downs. I know that's hard when you're in it, but you'll want a lot of those things back later. Like right now I might be tired or these things are going on and I'm sure in like 30 years I'll look back and say, remember when we were eating and we didn't have. We had real teeth.

Yeah. So, exactly.

But it's like all of these things, like, it truly is like we have the opportunity right now around us to just live, live this life. Is everything always the way it looks like in an Instagram post or on a movie or something? No, but like it's. You want to relish all these components of it. I remember getting fret and worried when I was younger about all these things. And now I look back and go, why was I worrying about those items? Like, you just get. Because at that time you think that's the world and you think that's everything. And so now what I do is every time I start to get caught up with stuff, I take a moment. Not 15 minute walk yet. I need. That's my challenge, I need to work on. But I take a moment and I say, isn't this A great challenge that I get to deal with. You know, I read this post this morning, and it said we don't have the right to complain about our plate being overly full when all we were trying to do was eat. And people will say, I have too much to do. I have too much going on. And it's like, wait a minute. This is. It is hard, don't get me wrong. But it's still a thing we get to go through.

That's such a good reminder.

Such a good reminder.

Because it's also the contrast. You know, the hard times are the ones we try to wish away, but they're also the things that make the good times good times.

Otherwise, you'd be flatlining if it was just constant.

Totally.

I know.

And we don't get to grow without them. Just don't get to meet that version of yourself that we pray to be one day, you know so well. You're a magical being. I'm so grateful that I got to chat with you and that I got to share you with everybody. So thank you so much for coming on. And where do you want us to go? Where should we follow you? What should we do next if we want more?

Well, I do have my Instagram handle, which is Neha T Kumar N E H A T K U M A R so you're welcome to follow me there or on LinkedIn. Amazing. And you guys will link.

We'll link all of your stuff up below as well, so you can go and check everything out there. And thank you guys so much for listening. And, as always, Earn, you're happy. Bye, everyone.

Bye.