Allison Ellsworth on Going Viral, Shark Tank, and the Rise of Poppi

Your story is amazing, to be honest.

Thank you.

And it's also a consumer business focus story, which honestly, startup land kind of, it always sort of starts to skew towards the business and, you know, B2G, government, that kind of stuff. And but there is still plenty of room to to create really amazing consumer businesses, but it is a different playbook, right? And I think even— you're dressed like a can of Poppi soda.

Always.

Always. And one of the things that I was always the most fascinated about was just, you know, your background. Was it oil and gas? It was—

yes, oil and gas research had absolutely nothing to do with CBG. Nothing, nothing. So yeah, if you want, I can jump in. Yeah, so, so excited to be here today. But I started Poppy a few years ago. I would say, gosh, I was— I don't want to date myself, but back in, I would say, 2018. And previous to that, I am a Texas girl, so I love doing this here in Austin. Thank you. But after college, I went on the road and I started working in oil and gas research. And for anybody that knows or is People from Texas might have heard of like what a landman is. I worked in seismic exploration and basically just spent a lot of time negotiating with city councils and government entities and landowners. And what I learned through that process is I never had a boss. I didn't work in a cubicle. So, it kind of gave me this like feeling of being an entrepreneur but not. I met my husband on the road. We started working together. But during that whole process, for anyone that's traveled a lot, I had horrible stomach problems and skin problems. And this is back before like all the craze of looking at nutritional panels. And I remember going to doctors and they couldn't tell me what was going on. And so I did what we are all guilty of and I Googled my symptoms and I read about apple cider vinegar. So who here has ever taken a shot of apple cider vinegar? Okay, keep your hands up. Now, who does it every single day consistently for a year? Okay, we have two crazies in the crowd. But what's wild is I was like, okay, I love this product, I love the way it makes me feel, but I hated the taste. And so for me it was like, I went to my kitchen, I created Poppi. And what I love about that is I had this problem, there was nothing, and so I created a solution. And when I did that, it was for a personal problem. It wasn't, I wasn't like, I'm gonna get rich, I'm gonna start a business. It was like in mason jars in my kitchen, tinkering, right? My husband was like, "Oh my goodness, this is wonderful. You should share this with our neighbors and friends." We wanted to start a family. We ended up getting pregnant. I was like 3 months pregnant. I was not wanting to go back on the road, so I was— I can't sit still. I was like, "Let's take this to the local farmers market." And at the local farmers market, Whole Foods is out of Austin. They were coming by the booth and they were like, "Nothing like this is in Whole Foods." I mean, we didn't have nutritional panels. Literally on our thing. So we got into Whole Foods and then obviously the next step in the American dream is you go on Shark Tank. Stood in line, went on Shark Tank. I was pregnant with our second. It was wild through that whole process. It took about 6 months. I ended up going on the show Shark Tank, got a deal. I was 9 months pregnant, had the baby 10 days later.

Stop you for one second. 9 months pregnant?

Yes. And I did fly and, you know, it was totally fine. I promise.

On Shark Tank? Guys, just—

Oh, well, thank you. Don't let children stop you from living your dreams.

I just want to make sure that detail gets in there because that was just an amazing thing. And the original, it was Mother Beverage.

It was Mother Beverage. And so once we got a deal on Shark Tank, that was when we decided to go through the rebrand and rename it Poppi. So we had a great product, but up until that point, we didn't have a brand. So we didn't know who we were. We had no mission, value, purpose, positioning, who our consumer was. At that point, I was like trying to get caps on bottles while my kids are strapped to me while working two jobs. You know, like we've all been there. So, it was exciting to go through the rebrand, but the early days were a little rough. So—

Yeah. And I know, I mean, literally the— it's a huge brand now. Is it the number one selling soda on Amazon?

Yeah, so Poppi is the number one selling soda on Amazon, outsells all the big boys. But more so than that, we're the second fastest growing beverage in the history of beverage. The only other beverage that's grown faster than Poppi is Monster. And in 5 short years, I'm also the only female in CPG of a brand this size ever in the history, right? So thank you. I'm not doing this to get claps, but it is crazy to see just like the explosive growth. Something can have. There was no category like this 5 years ago. There was nothing in a grocery store like this 5 years ago. We created a whole new category in just 5 short years. Yeah, and I am very proud of it for sure.

This new category stuff, right? We're all entrepreneurs here. Blue Ocean Strategy, whatever you want to call it, right? It's like, don't try to compete, create an entirely new market. You did this grinding at farmers markets solely, right, to the point now where you've created such a blue ocean new product category. Coca-Cola, all these people are coming in to compete with you. So number one, I just want to like say it literally is music to at least most investors' ears, right? It's like, hey, we're not trying to take a little slice of this pie. We are growing this pie and creating a new market category. 0.001% of startups are actually able to pull that kind of thing off. Is there— and I know there's no secret sauce to it, it's probably a combination of luck, perseverance, a lot of different things, but it really is the goal investors here is to find entrepreneurs that can actually do it and the entrepreneurs to actually do it themselves. Any guidance you can provide on that?

So, I think the beauty back then is we had no idea what we were doing or getting into and I think a lot of people, if you know like what your TAM is and you're doing something on an ROI and you're trying to figure it out and you have like a playbook of how people have done it before, you just are going to be like everybody else, right? And so for me, I don't have a background in traditional marketing. I kind of would just like throw stuff against the wall and see what worked. I wasn't scared to make really big, quick decisions and just kind of see what happened. And I do think we launched Poppi in March of 2020. 2020, right when COVID hit. And it kind of forced us from the beginning to be that way because if you think of it, we're a beverage company. We— the world is shut down. You can't sample your product. You can't share it with anyone. So, it forced us to be digital first from day one. So much so that even grocery stores were more concerned with getting toilet paper on the shelf than restocking, right, our new product that had just launched. So, I think that's another really big piece if you want to be successful nowadays is kind of you can't do the playbook from the past. You have to be a digital-first brand. You have to think differently and not be scared to do things differently, if that makes sense.

Yeah. Well, yeah, if you're creating something different, totally new, if you follow those existing playbooks. And for you, there wasn't a playbook. No playbook, yeah. You started using TikTok. Were you a big user of TikTok when that started becoming a thing for you?

Well, TikTok was so new, right? So it wasn't something that like really any other brands previously had opportunity to really get there. I mean, basically there was Instagram, which was like your website, and Twitter. But the whole movement within video really changed the landscape for brands. And so I think for me, I remember our board and our Shark and everyone being like, don't get on TikTok, that's for young dancers. And I'm a 38-year-old mom of 3. Lovely. I love saying I'm like super cool to Gen Z, but I don't have to dance often. Sometimes I do, but not often. But I was just like, I want to make taco recipes that paired with Poppi. I was going to do trends. I was going to do trends. I was just so like, why would I not do everything I could as a founder to get as many Poppis in people's hands as possible? It was free, right? It was just my time. So for me, like, that's— I think a lot of entrepreneurs have that grid of like, do whatever it takes. And for me, I was like, this is silly. It's this huge platform, a ton of people to talk to, like, why not? And then we did go viral, like very viral. I have over like 2 billion views on my face on TikTok. And yeah, like a third of the platform has seen my face 7 times, so much so that they're like, we get it, like we get it. Yeah.

And okay, so With a lot of our entrepreneurs, right, it's always the saying is move fast and break things. And for a lot of them, it's, hey, put up a first product, put up a landing page. These are all things that are significantly harder and more complicated to do than literally just put up a TikTok post, right?

Yeah. Not only can you put up a TikTok post or a social post or do these things, is you shouldn't overthink it. To your point, you can put up 3 a day, you can put up 1 a week. I think the goal is just to get something up, right? You can— what I always say, I always like break it down into the rules of 3. So for For me, I'll do a video of like why I started Poppi, which you guys kind of heard. And then I'll do a product, you know, like, hey, this is our ingredients in our can. Hey, this is a trending sound about our ingredients in our can. And hey, here's something also just a short story with text over it and me like thinking, right? And you can get that all up within 10 minutes. Sometimes I'll do on stage with stuff like this, I will be able to in a minute or less get 3 TikToks done and get them all posted within a minute. And I think if you can like take the biggest piece of advice is like don't overthink it and just get something up.

Right. And literally it's also, I know we had a speaker yesterday too talking about just especially as a new company, as a startup, the founder is kind of the face of the company and you're a pretty like a persona.

No, I—

Do you think it's for everybody?

You know, I think there's a lot of people that are scared to do it. And they always are waiting for the right time. So for me, it's like I'll have someone say, well, I don't have my logo done, or I don't know. Get online and ask. Ask, which logo do you guys like? You might only get 2 views, then you'll get 200 views, and then now I have over 2 billion views, right? So I think like to me, that's always just like an excuse, I think a little bit. And if you don't want to be the face nowadays, you don't have to, right? You can have someone else do it. You can do product stuff. You can do copy. There's ways to do— like, for us, we do recipe videos and restocking of fridges that don't have my face on it, right? And you— there's voiceovers. There's so many different ways you can, like, think about it. There's companies you can hire to do it. But if you can do it yourself, you're going to build brand equity. Your community is going to get to know you, and they feel like they're part of that community, and it's special.

Right. And I'd like to take a couple of questions here in a couple of minutes. But yeah, one thing, so you were throwing a lot of stuff against the wall with social media, right? So I know we do have B2C founders here today. And again, it's, it's, I always just get caught up on this speaking to so many founders that are afraid. Again, not even launching a product, but even just putting out a social post. What if somebody thinks it's stupid? What if I offend somebody? What if nobody looks at it? Whatever. All of these things, and I'm sure the number you probably put out a lot of posts that nobody looked at in the beginning, or I don't know, maybe said some mean stuff to you.

Or make fun of my voice. I sound stupid. Like, I just like, who cares? You know what I mean? Like, okay, hater, go hate. Like, at least I'm making some noise and now you know about us. So for me, it's definitely that. And I think people think it's virality happens overnight. It's months, if not years, of work that you have to dedicate and make it a priority, right? So for me, it's from top down. We don't leave it up to some young kid, um, that's trying to think of stuff. Like, I'm every day online trying to figure out, like, what's trending, how can I relate back within culture of something relevant in that moment. Um, so much so that it's part of the DNA at Poppy. So, like, we get our entire company together once a year, over 220 employees, And within the schedule, we have breaks to create TikToks. And it's so much so that like our CEO's in them, our CFO, like people want to be part of this like cultural digital-first DNA that we've really like created with Poppy. So it is the future. It's not going away. The sooner you lean in, the better.

Awesome. A lot of the stuff that you're doing with brand to B2C, you guys do a lot of merch. That's also something I think for a lot of startups will look at that and say, okay, well, this is like fuzzy stuff, ROI. How am I going to like track that's actually like what's going on within the business? How do you guys look at that as part of the building the brand and the story strategy?

Yeah. So, we've always just wanted to be brand first. And a lot of people might be like, yeah, yeah, we've heard that before. But the way that I like to liken it to, and no hate to the brands we're about to say, to say, but like, I want to be like a Nike that's aspirational and inspirational. Just do it, right? An emotional feeling versus some other brands are like, my shoes work this way because of the soles. Like, so the difference of a brand and a product, right? So you want to always speak to your, um, whatever you're doing as a brand and not just like, hey, this is a prebiotic soda. This is— we can create merch so much so that we just launched our own clothing line with in all Targets across the nation as a soda company, right? And it was because a few years ago, I remember everyone, you need branded merch for your sales team. For me, I was like, oh, this stuff is just so boring. And it wasn't a thing, it was just so ugly, honestly. Once again, everyone's like, Alison, don't waste your time on it. I was like, okay, it's fine. I reached out, we manufacture cut, sew, dye, inside at Poppy now we have an apparel, team, right? That's separate from what we did at Target. We do hype drops a year. So it's so viral. It's gone so viral online, and it's a soda brand so much we did a New York Fashion Week pop-up. We had Vogue at a soda company's New York Fashion Week pop-up. We had 50 Cent perform. We had celebrities and all of these things. So it's this thing that you can't really measure, and that's okay. So we're building long-term brand equity that people want to be a part of. It's part of culture. It's part of community. It's creative. And I have no idea the ROI on it, and that's okay. It's okay. It's okay, you guys. But it's working, obviously.

So, and I would think too, when building literally a new product line, a blue ocean strategy kind of business, yeah, it's not about, oh, it's this many calories, oh, or it has this much sodium, or whatever. It's not about the bullet points. It's not about the features. It's about It's about the feeling. It's about all of that, right? And you guys have done that organically from day one. And I feel like now, is it— do you see that as sort of like a moat and as your ability to continue growing when you have— a lot of people are coming for you.

Yeah, but it's fun to be the first and number one in the category. But I will say, I love that we have competition. Competition is good. It creates category.

It validates.

It validates the category. It's okay. Like, I love other entrepreneurs and other people. Like, did you see so-and-so did this? And I'm like, that's incredible. People are innovating. We started a movement, right? Like, I welcome it because it's what that does for us in particular in the grocery store. If you're one product, like, the grocery store doesn't know where to put you. But if it is a category, we now have what is called the modern soda set. In every grocery store that we basically created and worked with the retailers on like, how do you— where do we put you guys? Well, let's create a destination. So it's good, competition's good. And another thing is people might be like, oh, someone's already done it, a candle, right? Or whatever it is. It's okay, be the best candle you can be and then become number one, you know what I mean? So it's like, never let that stop you from like wanting to create something. Just What's your hook to be a little bit different and better?

Right. Okay. So I have two final questions and I think we'll have time for maybe two or three questions from the crowd. So if anybody wants to get questions ready, let me know. So a couple years ago, at what point did you, and I think I read in an interview, it was like, okay, now we need to sort of professionalize, right? And your chief brand officer, at some point you brought in some people to CEOs, C-level people to take it to the next level. At what point was that sort of a trigger for you to know that it was time?

Look, as an entrepreneur, we don't like to let go. We have big egos and I don't like people telling me what to do. But I realized we had something very special at Poppi and we were growing so wildly fast. That it just like we couldn't do it on our own. So instead of resisting that, we wanted to be part of the solution. So we took, it was me and my husband who's the other founder, and we went to our board and we're like, we need help and we want to bring in a CEO. Me personally, I never want to be a CEO. I do not want to deal with all of that stuff. I love working in the creative world, but it was really hard for, say, my husband, right, to step down. But it was our decision and it's so much easier if you're a part of that decision, it's not forced upon you. So much so that now once it came in, it was a little rough at first, I will say, like I said, I don't like being told what to do. But once we like really learned that and we worked through that process, it's unbelievable. We have an incredible people, team, platform, CFO, like the best data-driven anything we could ever ask for. And I could never have put that in place, right? In 5 short years. So I went through that about, I would say, a year and a half ago when we brought in a CMO, right? It was the same process, but I was like, okay, I'm going to be part of this. How do we support and keep who Poppy is while bringing in other people to support to make it special? So change is hard, but it's not always bad, and you don't want it forced upon you. Be part of it and get ahead of it, if that makes sense.

It is super hard to let go.

Yes. And it feels good afterwards. So, like, once you get it and you're like, oh, my baby's taken care of, and you can, like, go on vacation for the first time in, like, 6 years, it feels great, right? So, like—

That sounds nice.

Ah, it's like, oh, wow, I can go to my kid's school thing at 3 o'clock now, right? Like, it feels good and it's okay.

Okay, and I have one final question and then we'll get to audience questions. It's a question I always like to end when we're speaking with this audience. It's basically just zoom back to when you were— when it was Mother Beverage, you making these concoctions. I think I saw you had the baby in a swaddle as you were mixing these concoctions in your kitchen, selling them at farmers markets, eventually becoming what this brand is today. If you were to go back to that point and you could tell yourself something about what was ahead, I'm like glad that I just didn't know half the stuff I know now.

Genuinely, right? I didn't know what a P&L was. I didn't know what trade spend was, above the line, like all of the things that everyone feels like you need to know. So like looking back, I used to be like, how am I going to be successful without knowing these things? Like you don't have to know everything and you can learn along the way. So I was pretty hard on myself at the beginning of like, almost imposter syndrome of like, we're having so much success, but I don't know half the stuff you guys are saying, especially in CBG. There's like 100 things. They're like, what's DST? And this is— ACV is not apple cider vinegar for any that know that. But so for me, like looking back, it's like, it's okay, you don't know everything, but take opportunity to learn it, right? And don't just like bury your head in the sand. And like, if you want to keep up, like spend the time to learn it as you go and surround yourself with people that can help you. And it's okay.

Okay. Yeah. A lot of times in the beginning, it's sort of information overload. It's just building something that people want. Did you even need spreadsheets? It's like, okay, how many?

Exactly. Well, we didn't even do marketing. Like, to your point, like, I think I was pregnant and I like went in labor on the bottling line, was back on the line 2 weeks later with a baby strapped to me. Like, we didn't have time to build the brand. Right? So I think that's a lot of things people do at the beginning. They're just like getting your product out. Like take a second to step back and like, what are you doing? How do you talk to your consumer? Like the stuff that usually you don't make time for, like that stuff falls to the bottom. But if anything, it's the most important, right? So take time for that at the beginning is definitely something too. I look back and I was like, oh, we could have spent a little bit more time on the brand at the beginning. So.

Amazing. Does anybody have any questions? I think we have one. Hello, Justin.

Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. So as I mentioned to you when I met you, I said I love your outfit. And so I wanted to say that again, echoing Jonathan's comment. So looking back, what do you think in your personal traits that have helped you to get to where you are? And what are some of the things that you always try to be more self-aware and so on? Love to hear your thoughts. It's funny. So I think it was a question he was even going to ask me. It's like my favorite quote is like, if you hear no, you're talking to the wrong person. That is like me in a nutshell. So if someone tells me something like no in the company, before it was great. I could go over and do what I want. Now, as we're a big organization, and if I hear no from like a certain department and I'm like not getting my way, it's probably not the best to skip over and just get my way, right? So like it's a double-edged sword. I'll just ask nicely and still get my way, but it's like, but it's through team. It's working. So like a personal trait is like that can be really good at the beginning as an entrepreneur, but then through growth, And as the company scales, it's maybe not the best. And I've had to learn, like, let the team do it, right? So, it changes in stages of the company. But I think any entrepreneur has a little crazy in them too. So, don't lose the crazy.

And yeah. And I just want to repeat that quote too because I love it. It's, if you're getting a no, you're talking to the wrong person. Right? And that sort of also allows you to take ownership of like, okay, well, if I'm talking to the right person, how— or if I'm talking to the wrong person, how do I talk to the right person? Where are they? Why aren't I talking to them?

And the quote is from the most badass female ever, Miss Kris Jenner. And if that makes sense, look how successful she's made all her kids.

So awesome. We have more questions.

Yeah, hi, thank you. Just, I guess, any specific advice for other women or underrepresented founders in the room? Yeah, so my biggest piece of advice, I get this question a lot, is there's actually like a movement right now that we're seeing within female entrepreneurship that's like nothing I've ever seen. So much so that like people want it, right? There's this like need from the retailers to communities and support systems. So, I just always recommend getting involved. And I'm always like, I guess it didn't like hit me until recently of like where I'm at as a female founder. And I never like thought of myself like this trailblazer, like these things. I was just working and just focused, right? Like I always say, this is the time for female entrepreneurs and don't feel like you're that way. 'cause this is our time, right? And get community around you. I think that's what's really special.

Let's clap for that, guys. Okay, we'll do one final question.

Hello.

Hi, Allison, thank you so much. Really love what you've created. Congratulations on all your success. My name's Antonia. I am the founder of DigiRoot, which is a height-adjustable tablet case for kids. It is not a new category, but it's a disruptor in the already existing category because there was no height-adjustable tablet case out there. So what I'm doing is creating a new product. I've invented it that supports our kids' positive posture. And just like you, I center around community, and we I have a small but growing community. I'm based out of Bermuda. And so my question is, I know you're a big advocate for social media. What— were there any key tactics that you did in the beginning that assisted you with your growth organically other than just sort of showing up authentically?

Yeah, so a big piece too early on is probably for the first year and a half, we never did a paid ad. We never had a PR company. A lot of people think you have to get some big expensive PR company in and like spend a bunch of money on Google. Like to the day, we have never— I think we spent like $5,000 on Google Ads. Like literally nothing. So a lot of people think it's like, oh, it's this whole pay-to-play game. I think a really big piece that goes into the social ecosystem that people don't talk about enough is gifting. So it is an influencer creator world that we're living in right now, and no one cares what what celebrities are saying anymore. Like, it's cherry on top, but it's not going to do anything for your business to get some celebrity investor or do any of that stuff. Gift your product to people that will talk about it and go viral. That is going to be such an amazing way for you to use your marketing dollars. You look at your shipping cost as marketing dollars, right? The shipping cost and whatever your COGS are to get that product out. And it, it can be someone with 5,000— a mom with 5,000 followers. Doesn't have to be someone with a million. Honestly, it's better if it's not a million. You're not going to see ROI on that either. That's just brand awareness. So, I think that's really part of the social ecosystem is to like have other people talking about your brand within the community and like really double down on that. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you so much, Allison.

Of course. Thank you guys so much.