Gary Vaynerchuk Former Employee is a Branding GENIUS - Full Interview | My First Million 06/03/2020

One of my old bosses, I used to work, I was the creative director at VaynerMedia, so Gary Vaynerchuk was like my boss essentially. What's up, Sam?

And we have a guest, Mike Cesario. Welcome, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks, guys.

There's a lot of crazy stuff going on right now. This, we'll have this hour to be a little bit of an escape. We talked about everything going on last podcast, I think. Let's, we'll try to make this like just a, at least a 45-minute, 50-minute escape for people. And we can kind of talk about some interesting stuff.

Yeah, exactly. It does kind of feel silly to be like, oh, here's some business ideas when like, you know, the whole world is really, you know, in a tilt, whether it's through coronavirus or the different protests that are going on. But like you said, I think, you know, for me, I'm like glued to Twitter and the news and all this stuff all day. Then, you know, by 7, 8 PM, I just need a break. I go walk my dog and I go listen to some mindless stuff about sports or whatever else, just to, you know, just to calm my mind. And so hopefully we could be that for some people where a bit of a diversion or a bit of an escape from the heaviness that's going on. So, you know, Mike, I'm glad you're here.

We—

you have a product that we've talked about on the podcast before. Which is Liquid Death. So, okay, if somebody doesn't know what Liquid Death is, give them the what is Liquid Death, and then we're gonna talk about how you started that, and then we're gonna brainstorm some cool ideas and spaces around, around what you do.

Sure. So, I mean, I guess at the heart of what Liquid Death really is, we're really just completely trying to change the way healthy food and beverages are marketed. At the end of the day, most of the most hilarious memorable ad campaigns that you ask most people about of the last 10 years, they'll tell you Bud Light, Dos Equis, Snickers, Doritos, Skittles, like all junk food and alcohol. That's the funniest, most memorable kind of youth culture owning, and energy drinks like Red Bull. That's like the most—

Old Spice, let's not leave Old Spice out.

Well, it's not really a food or beverage, but yes, but yeah, it's like all it's all junk food and alcohol that does all the funniest, coolest youth culture marketing, whereas healthy food is traditionally marketed to like mom, and it's quiet, and it's responsible, or it's like, look better, wear, you know, show, you know, fitness models, you know, drinking bottles of water. Like, it's a very different— they don't use fun to market, whereas unhealthy beverages, stuff like that, like, they want to own fun. So we're basically doing that with water. So we want to be able to take the healthiest thing you can drink that most people don't drink enough of and brand it and build a, you know, a cool, you know, thing around it where it's something that you feel totally comfortable drinking a Liquid Death in a bar or at a house party, right, a music festival or at work or in the gym, and just making it more fun to walk around and have a water, right?

And you definitely made headlines when you raised all that money because everyone was like This is such a silly idea and they raised all this money. I didn't—

I—

I don't remember the reason I thought it was a stupid reason. I mean, it seemed like an awesome company and totally worthy of going big. But so it kind of worked, right? Like, you definitely ruffled some feathers and I think that's good.

No, yeah, I think, you know, I always bring up, you know, I— one of the— you know, I listen to the the Reid Hoffman podcast a lot, the— Masters of Scale. Masters of Scale, yeah. And it's like, I love that he always pushes. He's like, truly innovative ideas are almost comical at first. Because if it seems like it makes a lot of sense right now, it probably means there's 4 other companies that have been working on it for 5 years already. It's like the things that are truly unique and innovative almost don't make any sense at first or seem laughable. And I think that's kind of the case of Liquid Death. I think it's like, we're really— trying to disrupt the category in a way that's not just disruption for the sake of disruption. You know, I think it's like we strongly believe that, and I don't think it's something hard to understand, in a, in a category where almost all the products themselves are perceived as the same, you know, people aren't assuming, I only drink Fiji because it's got 0.75 more electrolytes than Smartwater, which has 0.5, and the pH is 7.7 instead of 7.0. Most people assume water is the same. It's more of a brand play. And we believe if we can make you laugh, we have a way better chance at you giving us your $1.69 than the faceless brand next to us who's trying to shout at you, electrolytes, electrolytes. They're like, guys, this all seems like snake oil to me. I feel like there's real human beings behind Liquid Death that I'd want to have a beer with. So I'd rather give you my $1.69.

And let's talk a little bit about the form factor. So it's a tall can is what I've seen. Are there other form factors?

No, it's just a tall can.

Tall can, which is cool. The branding of it is sort of like, you know, almost like heavy metal or punk rock. How do you describe it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, I think at the end of the day you would, you would say we're like an alternative punk metal inspired design and vibe. I think the way I like to think about our brand is like we're a professional wrestler Like, it's all theater and fun, and no one thinks it's trying to be real. Like, no one thinks The Undertaker is really an evil guy from the dead who likes metal. No, it's a character, and it's fun to like have a character. Yeah, and that's kind of what— that's how we think about it. Like, we're just playing this fun— sorry a second— we're just playing this fun character.

It's fun to choose to believe that, yeah, that this is what it is and not take it too seriously. And you're right, like, you know, if you're at a bar or a music festival and you choose water, you feel like you're choosing, you're opting out of the fun. And in fact, they'll sort of, you know, they'll make you feel that way. You know, you'll get the small plastic rinky-dink cup with a baby straw, right? Versus if you ordered an alcoholic drink or something else.

It's kind of, that's actually a good point. I mean, I don't drink and I still go to bars and I always felt like, I used to order Sprites with lime in it because I was like, uh, I don't want to—

looks like a gin and tonic.

Yeah, I'm like, I don't want to make people feel uncomfortable. What— so I'll just— even though I don't like to drink soda, like, I'll drink it anyway. And I don't want to have an O'Doul's because I'm like, uh, then everyone's just gonna like— it's just gonna come up. And so it is a great alternative to that.

And so, Mike, I'm curious, where does this idea come from?

So I think this was really just like a culmination of all my passions and experience sort of like converged into one, you know. It's like I grew up in high school playing in punk rock and metal bands and skateboarding, and, you know, I would do all the show flyers and album art and stuff for our bands, which kind of got like the entrepreneurial probably side of things because like, you know, we're booking shows and we're selling merch and like we're pressing records and doing all that kind of stuff. Then I got into a career of like graphic design, which led into advertising. So then I was like an advertising creative director for a long time, and I worked on big brands like Nestlé and Toyota and Volkswagen and Naked Juice and all this kind of stuff. So I think I got a good sense of where I think big companies, uh, screw up, I guess, like where I think they're short-sighted. Like, I can't tell you how many boardrooms I've been in where I'm trying to convince people that Social media isn't some like niche little thing you add on to your business. Like, it is the internet now. When you say I'm going on the internet, 9 times out of 10 you're going on social media. Yeah. You know, it's like, I think a lot of brands are just way behind the ball to understand what it really takes to be successful in the social environment. Like, your little social posts aren't just competing against other beverages. You're competing against influencers who are uncensored and can do crazy off-the-wall stuff. You're competing against— you're competing against everything awesome on the internet when you're scrolling through your feed. That's what your marketing is competing against. So when you really think about it that way, do you really think your little ad that seems like a typical beverage thing is going to actually stand out in someone's quick scrolling feed amongst all this other amazing stuff? Probably not. So I think the bar for what stuff needs to be is way higher. And I think that's what I built Liquid Death around. Like, we think about marketing like entertainment. I don't ever want to put something in your feed that feels like marketing. I want it to feel like actual entertainment that made you laugh, or it was the funniest thing that you maybe saw that morning that you want to share with your friends or whatever. That like, we're never just sticking marketing in your face. Like, it's always going to entertain you. Or it's gonna do something of value that it gives you.

I've got a question. I've got a question.

Hold on one sec, Sam. I'm looking at their Facebook ads right now, and what you're saying is true. So here's the two ads I see. I wish I could show this through a podcast. I'm gonna show this to your ears, but there's a giant can of Liquid Death in front of a mountain, and it says, "This is dumb, don't buy this." And then there's another one that's like, I don't even know what you would call this. It's like the Mountain from Game of Thrones, but instead of his head is a can of Liquid Death. Liquid Death erupting from his head, muscular body, and he's standing in a grocery store aisle holding an axe, and it just says, "Liquid Death is available nationwide in Whole Foods." So I wanna ask a question about that, but first, is there any indication, is there anything you can give me that shows, or the listeners, how big this business is?

Like what size you guys are?

Yeah, why should we care about what you say? Is it working or not?

I want you to like impress people.

Yeah, I mean, I can't get into like specific kind of sales numbers, but since we launched national in Whole Foods, basically we launched the day the pandemic started. So we went into Whole Foods March 15th, and basically even though we've been in a pandemic where they've had like 80% decreased store traffic and everything else going on, We've had insane growth in Whole Foods and we're now the fastest growing water brand in Whole Foods right now.

And you've raised like how much money to make this? 9, 10 million?

Uh, grand total since the very beginning of everything, I think we've raised around, uh, $12 total right now.

So great. Okay, so we kind of have an idea a little bit about sizing. When you look at— when you were looking at this business and what to start, was that your perspective? Which is, what is something that— I mean, it sounds like you're into health and that type of stuff. What is something that is like good for you but has shit marketing and how can I build a business around that? Was that your perspective?

Uh, in a nutshell, I think it really came from, you know, you know, when I grew up playing in punk bands and metal bands and stuff like that, I was still, and a lot of my friends in that world were very much into health. Like, I was a vegetarian at age 16. A lot of my friends in that scene were. More of my friends were even vegan. A lot of them, like, you know, didn't drink alcohol. I do, and I think that's one thing that we've been, like, misbranded as, like, Liquid Death, it's water for the straight edge crowd. That is not what we're trying to do. I think it's something that's been adopted by them for, you know, the reasons of, yeah, it is more fun to walk around in a bar if you don't want to drink. Than something like this. But I think another thing that the health food industry does that I don't think we want to do is we don't want to be preachy to people. We don't want to say, "You should be doing this, and you shouldn't be drinking this, and you shouldn't be doing that." Like, we're like, "Hey, you want to go rip some shots at a bar? Fine, but maybe take a break and have a water for an hour," you know? Or like, "Hey, you want to, uh, smoke weed or whatever? It's like, great. Like, maybe hydrate while you're doing it," you know?

Right.

Even if like, hey, you want to go buy a Monster energy drink or whatever, great. Maybe buy a water too and have a water after you just pound a bunch of sugar and caffeine.

That's the good news. Anybody who does any lifestyle also drinks water. And so you compare to any lifestyle that you want. It sounds like you guys are trying to do that. Let me ask you, like, you've said some kind of abstract ways, like, you know, we felt this was missing, blah, blah, blah. But I want you to like rewind and make it real. So like, take us back to the moment you have the idea. What's going on? Where are you? Where does the idea come from? Who are you talking to? And then like, how did it turn into something?

Sure. So as, as you know, in the world of, of rock and roll, punk metal, whatever, the only brands that have invested in trying to own that culture have been energy drinks, primarily Monster. So Monster was sponsoring the Vans Warped Tour with all the punk bands. They sponsor all these different metal bands like You don't see that with many other brands doing that. And that's— I graduated high school in 2000, so that's when I think you're really starting to see that swell up. And a lot of my friends were in bands. We were at, uh, the Vans Warped Tour that was sponsored by Monster back in— I think it was like around 2007, somewhere around there. I was in Denver working for an agency there went and hung out at the Warped Tour with my friends, you know, they took me backstage, we're hanging out with like all the bands, you know, the band's tour buses, and I saw that they had like huge stacks of Monster that these guys are all drinking, and I was like, "How are you guys pounding energy drinks right now, like in the hot sun? Like, it's like 98 degrees." And they're like, "No dude, it's water." And it was like, Monster gives all the bands they look like Monster cans, but at the bottom it says tour water because they know that none of these bands are going to drink this stuff in the sun. So bands on stage are pounding what look like energy drinks to all these kids, but it's really just water. I remember thinking like, that's so fucked up. Like, you know, like, you know, and I think that was the moment where I— where it kind of started me down the path of Oh, like, why isn't stuff like water, like, marketed in a cool way like this? And it was like, when you actually had a freezing cold can of water, it's just more refreshing to you psychologically, right? There's actually a, uh, Popular Science, I think it was, they, they did this study where they showed that temperature was the number one quencher of thirst neurologically. Which is why, like, if you're really thirsty and you suck on an ice cube, it actually kind of quenches your thirst a little bit, even though no water is actually absorbing into your body, right? So I think there was just like— that was sort of the aha moment for me where I started thinking about why isn't that healthier things? Because none of us, none of my friends hanging out, wanted to actually drink energy drinks. Like, we just wanted to drink water, um, or beer, you know. But it's like, of course you're a band, you got to make money, you're touring. So of course you got to take the checks from these companies and, and you know, they, they, they play ball to a certain extent, but that's where I think the idea really started.

And what other verticals did you explore that you think would also work for this? Did you explore any other products that you think like, oh, there's definitely, there's definitely opportunity here if you do what we're doing, but in this, this thing or that thing.

So it's funny what— so that, so that Warped Tour thing happened in, yeah, like around 2007, 2008, where I started thinking about that. But then it was a couple, like maybe 2 years later, I was living in San Francisco and I actually developed a spirits brand on my own called Western Grace. And it was basically brandy. So it was like, hey, how do we make brandy cool? Because I had brandy It was really good. I'm like, why don't people drink more of this? It's just like whiskey without the burn. But every brandy bottle literally in the, in the liquor store had dust on it. It was like what your grandfather drank, or some trying to be replica of French luxury with cursive golden text on the bottle. But it was more similar taste profile-wise to a whiskey, which was the biggest, fastest growing spirit. So I had this idea to create a brandy that felt more like a whiskey and felt cool. And sure enough, like, I found a brandy distillery in Northern California who were like, oh my god, we've been waiting for someone to try to make brandy like mass and cool for like 20 years. So they were like, hey, we'll make the brandy for you. Then I went and found some spirit industry folks who helped create Hendrick's Gin and Sailor Jerry Rum to kind of come on board. They thought it was really interesting, and then All of a sudden we have a brandy company and I moved back to my hometown of Philadelphia where my partners were. And we basically like, I was only a couple years out of ad school, no entrepreneurial experience, no liquor industry experience. And we started building this brandy company and, um, it's still around today. They're in probably 80 bars in LA. They're all over Austin. They're in Nashville, they're in Florida. But I left the brand a little bit early on because I just, me and the Spirits folks we brought in kind of like didn't see eye to eye on a couple things from a marketing level. So I said, hey, you guys keep growing it from here. I'm gonna kind of go do my own thing and, you know, I'll keep my little chunk of vested equity and best of luck to you guys, like no hard feelings. I'm sure you'll do great with it. And then went to work for an agency in Tennessee that a friend of mine started called Humanaut, where I started doing a bunch of— well, Humanaut and I, we did a bunch of funny work for the organic world. We did this campaign called Save the Bros, the first organic protein shake, and we did this funny viral video that just went bananas. And it was like the first time that like humor had really been done like in the world of organic. And that was like the reinforcement of the Warped Tour thing where it's like, right, like, why aren't more health brands like playing with the kind of humor and irreverent internet stuff that these other, you know, unhealthy things are doing? And then that's really where I started building the nuts and bolts of Liquid Death and figuring out the production and coming up with the branding. And then it was, I think, maybe 2 years after that was when we officially kind of launched it.

That's, that's pretty cool. Do you, do you think that there's still opportunity for that? I mean, cause when you go to 7-Eleven, I mean, I live in San Francisco. I'm in Austin right now. There's 7-Elevens everywhere is, and it's only Muscle Milk is the only, uh, that's the only, uh, protein-based drink. Uh, and that is similar to your analogy of like an, that's like an Evian or a Fiji or something like a mass brand.

Well, I think if I'm, if I'm not wrong, I think it'd be more like taking cottage cheese and making cottage cheese fun than it is Muscle Milk or the kind of protein shakes which are already kind of like trying to mass market and, and get in with the sort of different lifestyles, uh, whereas, you know, some random product category where it is only trying to play it safe, non-internet-based marketing, those are the ones that you're talking about, right, Mike, where you think those have sort of a larger delta between what's out there and what could be out there.

Yeah, I want to hear which, which of which, if, if there are any others that do have that delta. That's what I'm getting at.

Yeah, it's tricky, and I think that's where it's a, um, so protein shakes, let's use that as an example. Protein shakes, if you think about who the protein shake consumer is probably predominantly male, like dudes trying, you know, bulking up a lot of the time, you know, at least in that world. And that's why Organic Valley, when they came to the agency, they knew that like all the ads they've been running, 'cause most of Organic Valley's products are milk and cheese and stuff that they sell at Whole Foods, all their commercials are like picturesque sunsets over family farms and our family farmers, they just care more than anyone. But they knew that when they launched an organic protein shake, it's a very different customer than the mom who's shopping at Whole Foods for their other products. So they wanted us to come in and say, hey, we know that it's like a muscle dude that we're selling this to who's typically not an organic, you know, big-time organic shopper. Maybe they are buying the tubs of, of, you know, protein powder at GNC. Or they're buying, you know, Muscle Milk. So they're like, we still want to appeal to that audience with this very, you know, a protein shake that's made by family farmers. So we did this whole funny video that's like, you know, if bros— like, all the chemical crazy shit that's in protein shakes, if bros keep drinking them, they might not last much longer and they'll go extinct. And like, who's going to bring the beer pong table when they're gone? And like, you know, like this whole idea of like, save a bro, get them on an organic protein shake. That was sort of like the funny idea that we had that went really, really well. And it's because the product, even though it was healthy, is still a liquid that wants to be drank by a consumer who identifies with the marketing. It's like if you just try to say, all right, we're gonna make an oat milk brand that feels, you know, badass and rock and roll, the oat milk customer probably isn't guys who ride Harley-Davidsons. Like, they're not drinking oat milk, but you're trying to market to them. So it's like, that's probably not going to work as well because you've got way more marketing education to do to try to convert new customers into something that they've never drank before. Water is different for us because everybody drinks water. We don't have to explain how to drink water, how to use it. Like, everybody drinks water, from Harley dudes to metal dudes to yoga moms to everybody. And now it's just about, from a demographic or psychographic standpoint, who just thinks this is a cool thing to be a part of their day with. You're not trying to convince them why they should drink water.

Right, gotcha. And so, uh, you also went through science, or how did science get involved? Because this, when I first heard about this, it was like, oh, this is coming out of science labs. Is that Did you bring the idea to them? Did you meet them and then incubate the idea?

How did that happen?

And then for people who don't know what we're talking about, Science is like this weird quasi-venture capital firm, but also like a weird incubator. They launched Dollar Shave Club and a variety of things, or it helped— correct— weird combo of like company builder and investor.

Based out of LA.

Yep. Yeah, so we launched Liquid Death in a bit of a backwards way than most, I think, beverage brands launch, which was we launched a year before we met Scions. We launched Liquid Death on social media before we ever had product because we knew that with such a crazy idea like Liquid Death there's nobody who's writing me a check for the idea of Liquid Death. They're like, you're— this is stupid, you're crazy, like, who would ever buy this? It's a negative name, it says death, retailers will never carry it, yada yada yada. So I knew that I had to prove it out as a concept on social first before I could actually make people feel like I'm de-risking this thing a bit to actually raise. So we designed the can to look like a 3D realistic can. We shot a $1,500 video and then we just put it on Facebook. No Twitter, no Instagram, just Facebook. We put maybe, I don't know, $3,000 in paid media behind the video. And then cut to 3 months later, we have more Facebook followers than Awkwafina. The video has 3 million views. We've got a range of DMs from Hi, I am a 7-Eleven franchisee in the Midwest. How do I get this in my stores? Or, hi, I'm the biggest non-alcoholic beverage distributor in New York City called Big Geyser. How do we talk to a sales representative to distribute this? And we didn't even have product yet, right? Or no idea of how we were even going to really make it. So then I used all of that social traction and distributor interest and retailer interest to then start raising a small friends and family round so we could actually produce physical product. Because with cans, The minimums are really, really high. Like, quarter million cans is the lowest you can actually produce with a can manufacturer. So it's a little bit capital intensive just to even start playing the game.

How much is a quarter million? How much— a quarter of a million of product, what would that cost? I mean, if you're just starting, what would that cost?

I mean, it all depends what you're filling in there, but I mean, I mean, yeah, I mean, you're, you're talking $150, $200, $250 grand just to like kind of get started probably, you know, doing cans. So yeah, once we then kind of raised a little bit, we started producing cans. We bottle, or I should say we can and source our water in Austria in the Alps. Once we had physical cans that people could see—

Let me ask you, What does that mean? Whenever people are like, oh, this is, you know, spring water from this mountain, it's like, you know, my head is always like, this is BS. What does this mean?

Does that matter?

Like, A, is this true? B, does that matter? So like, why do you go get your water from Austria in the Alps?

Like, what is that?

Is that branding? Is that like, is there something about water that I don't know? Like, why do you have to go there to get your water?

So What I mean, let's be totally honest, water for the most point— part, I should say, for most people is water. Yeah, like if you had people try to— even, even water snobs, if you had them blind taste test Fiji versus Evian versus whatever, can they really tell the difference? Probably not, right?

But I've done this test many times as an Evian drinker. Evian versus— so Evian and Fiji are taste similar to me. Evian versus Crystal Geyser like it tastes different. I've bet money and I've got it right before.

That's interesting. But yeah, I think the things that make water— that affect the taste of water are the natural minerals and how much of them there are in the water, and the pH of the water. Is it more acidic? Is it more basic? And what those minerals are affect how acidic or how basic it is. So when you— for us, our water comes from the Alps, and it literally goes right from the mountain into the can. Obviously it goes through filters and things that filter out debris and all of that, and then we put it through like a pasteurization process that makes sure everything, you know, it's all clean and good to go. But everything in that water is— that's the natural mineral profile of the water that has been built up over probably hundreds of years in the mountains. and it's like, you know, naturally alkaline at 7.8 or 7.9 pH. It's got a nice mineral level, nice mouth feel when you're drinking it because of the level of minerals. So that comes right off that way. It's all— everything's natural about it. Almost every major water brand in the U.S., um, whether that's Smartwater, Essentia, Aquafina, Dasani, um, most of those brands They're using, you know, this tap from the— that then they reverse osmosis, which strips everything out of water, all the natural minerals, all the bad stuff, everything. So it's literally just like empty water. Then they have to add in minerals back in to kind of make it taste good. So they'll add in the natural things that occur in water, but just kind of artificially with just doing it at the factory. To kind of make something that has a decent pH and a decent mineral profile that tastes good. So those are kind of the two options. When you say something is spring water, it's very strict from the FDA of what that has to be. Like, to call it spring water, you cannot alter the original mineral profile of the water. So even if you take it off the mountain, if you put it through reverse osmosis and it strips out the natural minerals and you add them back in, you can't call it spring water anymore because you've altered the original.

Thing.

So, you know, our water, like I said, that, that, that's kind of how we think about it. Um, everything we have in our water is natural. That's how it comes off the mountain. It's kind of its own perfect thing. We don't have to go through the whole process of like using municipal tap water from the factory, stripping everything out, adding stuff in, and kind of like creating a water. Right now, that's— that's okay.

And, you know, I've never actually had Liquid Death. Um, it's flat water though, right? It's not sparkling and it's not flavored.

We have a sparkling version, but we have a still and a sparkling. Yeah.

And, um, and so you, uh, sorry, just to sort of finish it, so you, you took that, you know, you raised a little bit, you did the social media to prove, hey, we can build a fun brand that people resonate with. Then you figured out, okay, to produce the minimum run, I'm going to need a couple hundred grand. To get this thing off the ground, and you raised kind of the friends and family round. Uh, that was from Science, or afterwards Science came about and they wrote a bigger check?

We raised the friends and family round just to basically cover like a super limited, you know, the smallest run of product we could do, right? And then once I finally had a physical can of Liquid Death for the first time, which was probably around October of 2018, we had a, a guy that we knew who knew someone at Science who said, hey, you guys should really talk to Science, like, they'd probably be all over this. So we went and met with Science and brought them a physical can, and once someone could really hold it and it wasn't just like us showing digital images from social, it made it way different. It just like, they understood the magic of it and how cool this would be walking around with this, or how into this people would be. So then we, that's when we kind of decided to do a deal with Science. And over the next 2 months after that, they helped us gear up our D2C launch where we launched online in January of last year.

And do you think this will be mostly D2C? You think this will be retail? How do you think about that? Obviously you're doing both. Where do you think is the kind of bulk of the business gonna come from?

I think we've always known it was gonna be retail from the beginning. We just didn't know how soon do you start really pushing into retail. Water is something that you don't wanna just order on the internet. Like you wanna be able to buy a water when you're thirsty somewhere. So it's just naturally a retail play versus like, you know, something like maybe like a Soylent, that's like a meal replacement thing. You could order those to your front door because it's not like you just randomly deciding to go get one of those. but now they're pushing into retail as well.

What's your pitch on how big this gets? And the way I like these pitches is kind of like bottoms up. So it's like, you know, rather than saying, you know, well, Vitaminwater sold for this much, so maybe we can get that much or more because blah, blah, blah. But like bottoms up being like, you know, there's this many grocery stores. I don't know if you think that way, but like, do you, do you have that sort of analysis of like, I think this gets this big because I can say that there's this many venues or this many grocery stores or this much Do you see demand of this? So I think we can, you know, when we grow up, we can become this big. Do you think that way or how do you approach that?

Yeah, I think it's a combination of things. I mean, one, you can obviously start at what is the size of the bottled water market, which in 2019, the bottled water market in the US alone was $20 billion. Wow. For just bottled water. Still water made up a little under $15 billion of that $20. And sparkling is about $3.5 billion of that $20 billion. So it's a massive market.

What's the rest, flavored?

Uh, like private label. Okay. Um, yeah, and flavored stuff in there. Um, the biggest retail, uh, in terms of doors, uh, channel is convenience stores. There's like over 150,000 convenience stores And then I think there's maybe, I don't know, I think there's maybe 30,000 grocery stores or something like that. And then restaurants and on-premise, like restaurants and bars, there's about a million in the US. So you can start looking at, you know, velocities of what certain water brands do in convenience stores. We can look at some of our velocities that we're seeing and what they could grow to. And yeah, you can really start to like forecast out how big this gets, but it's like, you know, well-performing water brands just in 7-Eleven can be doing $50 million in sales just in 7-Eleven in scan sales for like, you know, you know, a decent water brand, and that's just 7-Eleven.

Who are the top 3?

The top water brands, uh, in terms of scale are, as you could probably imagine, like Aquafina and Dasani. They're both over $1 billion.

And it's on— those are owned by, uh, Nestlé and, uh, or who are those owned by?

Pepsi.

Aquafina is Pepsi, Dasani is Coke.

Okay, wow. Okay, that's—

and then Nestlé is the other big one. Nestlé has a couple brands like Nestlé Pure Life and kind of the more budget, um, uh, Value Water. And yeah, they're another— they're over a billion as well.

Who owns that? How— who owns and how much? So Fiji's owned by Wonderful Brands. They're down near you in LA, right? Or I don't know if you're in LA, but in LA, how much— how much revenue do you think Fiji and Evian does? I think Fiji's a privately owned company. Is Evian public?

I don't know. Um, I don't know the exact numbers. I've seen a couple things, so I can't really comment if they're if they're accurate or not, but I assume that Fiji, Evian, they're probably somewhere around like $500 million a year, something like that, I would guess.

What would the margin on that be? So, um, is it as big as I would think?

Um, it's not as big as you think really, because the retailers, they want the most margin on bottled water. Like, they want to mark up bottled water higher than almost any other beverage that they have in the store. So the retailer wants a lot of margin, then you've got distributors that need their margin. So it's like, you really get down, it's not like bottled water is some like insane margin for suppliers than other products, you know? Like energy drinks probably getting more margin than water is.

Which I think the conception is, dude, they're just bottling water. That's like, you know, you're like selling air. But in reality, the margin is probably I would guess sub-30%, not above 30% is my guess.

Yeah, I think in most beverage, they say a target, like really solid margin for beverage would be like 40%. That's like— 50% is like you're killing it. Right. And then it's like, I think you get down to 30% is probably on the low end of what you want.

So when I used to own a chain of hot dog stands in Nashville, and when it was real, it was called Southern Sam's, wieners as big as a baby's arm and, and I would crush it on bottled water. In the daytime, bottled water would cost $2 or $3. And at nighttime when everyone's drunk, you definitely add a little bit more to it. I think from Restaurant Depot, I think a bottle of water was 14 cents or like, or it was like stupid. And so I like the hot dogs would like make a little bit of money. I would make it, you can make $1,000 a day off bottled water. That was where the money was at was the bottled water. Yeah, that was definitely—

if you need a sales guy, you got Sam here.

Yeah, man, I was hawking water like crazy. That was where it was at.

Like, we had this question which was, if you had to make $1,000 tomorrow but I stripped you of all your kind of like current income streams and your current business, how would you go try to make $1,000 in a week or whatever? And I think Sam's was, I would go to a hot place, I would buy water for 14 cents and go sell them in front of a stadium or something like that.

In a corner, like at, uh, at the, um, at the stoplight. Like, yeah, because like people don't care about the water, they more so care about the convenience. Like, oh fuck it, it's right here. It's—

and I totally overthought it and I was like, well, I guess I would create this online store. And I was like, nah, it's too slow, too complicated.

I would— dude, I would, I would be like a vendor at a, uh, like a concert series, like the summer concert series that Cities has. I, I swear to God, I would make $1,000 a day in bottled water sales. You just, you know, that's not every day, but you crush it at those concerts just selling bottled water. That was where I would make a killing. What other opportunities have you seen that if you weren't starting this business, you would be very interested in? Like things that you've discovered along the way?

There's two questions, right? Because our audience, the listeners for this, right? We got hundreds of thousands of listeners who are going to hear this and they're all entrepreneurial types. But really, you know, it's not like they're gonna go and do one of these things, but they just love to hear different perspectives. It's like, you operate in the world very few of us even think about on a daily basis, so you're seeing things and seeing opportunities, thinking about things that we don't see, which is why you came up with this idea to begin with. And so they really do love to hear kind of like, you know, I've always thought you could do this, and it doesn't have to be a great idea. It could be a, you know, I just noticed that this thing really crushes it, or these are kind of backwards, I think it might be fun to try this. Do you have anything that's in, that could complete that sentence?

Yeah, I mean, that is a tough one. Like, I mean, I guess obviously like you're always looking for white space, right? I think where I was really inspired most by my point of view on business and branding is from Virgin, like Richard Branson. What, you know, early in my advertising career when I worked in San Francisco, the main account that I worked on was Virgin America, the airline. So I got like super deep into Virgin and I read, you know, Richard Branson books and I just loved that their model was like, we go and try to find a stale category and we make the one really cool, fun brand within that category where it almost changes the category, where the rest of the category almost has to start adapting. Like airlines. Like, nobody was excited to get on an airplane or eat airplane food or anything, and then they were the first ones to make planes with like neon blue lighting and like, you know, TVs in every seat, which now is like a common thing in every airline now, right? So it was like that really inspired my way of looking at where I would look for things that were like, what is something that like you said, like cottage cheese, like what is something that is extremely boring or like what's a category that just nobody cares about where you can't think of one cool brand in? And obviously like if it's something that seems like it could still have appeal, it's just the victim of poor brands not getting it and, you know, just not innovating or whatever it might be and you see an opportunity, hey, this is actually could be a thing that people really would love, It's just been stuck in this like doldrums of branding for so long that it needs something. Because at the end of the day, especially with packaged goods, like branding is so much more important than most suppliers or companies think. Right. You know, because most companies are started by business people in the most part. It's like someone with an MBA, someone who understands the nuts and bolts of building a business. It's rare that businesses are started by creative people. Like artists and people that are, you know, graphic designers and stuff. Like, it's two different things. And usually what happens is the business folks think really rationally, like, okay, my product contains this, so the name of the product should be about that, and I should list all the rational reasons why someone should buy this. Yeah, right. It's like, and then that gets them a certain part of the way, but then they end up hiring a creative agency to get all these creative thinkers in to build a story around this boring thing to make people actually actually care about. So what I think is interesting is when you have creative people at the very beginning of the process where it's like just considering what the company should be, what the name should be, what the product should even look like, will someone even care about whatever it is you're selling? Because I think the creative people do have a good sense of culturally what's going on, what's cool, what do people care about, what's the climate. Business people, not so much. I feel like they're more in like the nuts and bolts and weeds of like numbers and manufacturing, which is hugely important, which is why there's so many brands that never get the creative side, but still they just become these logistical Swiss Army knives that still get acquired. But it's like, just imagine if they had great creative too. You might be a $2 billion brand. Right.

You know, I, speaking of water, I'm good friends with this guy, Scott Harrison from Charity:water. Have you ever met Scott?

Yeah, I've never met him. I heard of the brand.

And so you've heard of the brand because I think they've done a phenomenal job with the brand. And so this is just like we were thinking when we're just brainstorming, oh, what's another category in a grocery store that you could do this with? Which is definitely a totally legit brainstorm we can do. But this is a very different analogy. But I think he did the same thing. So Scott was a party promoter, like you came from a punk rock background, then ads, and then you went into this CPG space, which is not the maybe the most conventional path. He's a party promoter, club promoter in New York for 10 years, convincing dudes to buy $3,000 bottles of Grey Goose that they know you could go buy for $50 across the street to get table service, right? And so then he goes and he sort of has a come-to-Jesus moment, goes to Africa, decides I'm gonna take the next step in giving back. but all he knows is how to promote parties. All he knows is cool. And so he reinvented charity as a cool brand. And he has this quote he does when he like tells his story, which is, it's a quote from someone talking about philanthropy. And they say, man, imagine if we could sell charity with 1/10 of the finesse that brands sell toothpaste. Like, imagine if we had 1/10 of their marketing power that they do, they use on toothpaste. Imagine how much good we could do in the world. And so that's basically what he did, where he was like, all right, I'm gonna make a brand that actually stands for these 3 things, and I'm gonna have awesome design, 'cause every charity website sucks, and it looks like they hired their 8th grade cousin to build it for them, and I'm gonna do these with influencers, I'm gonna do these print campaigns, et cetera, et cetera, and he's now been raising over $150 million for the cause. He's one of the fastest growing and best charities out there because he did what you did, which is, He applied cool to a category that was totally uncool before.

Yeah, no, totally. And I think there's so many different places where you can think about, you know, I think cool is a weird word because it's like, it could be taken so many ways. I think it's like, it's less about cool, but it's like, how do you make it interesting? Or how do you make it like desirable? Like, I have to have this. Right.

You know, but that's what I want to know. I mean, I want to go back to that first question that Sean kind of dismissed a little, whereas like, what else is in that category? Because I think that that's, that's really, that's intriguing to me. I mean, are there things that you've explored, or you're like, you know, uh, this actually is one of those categories. I'm busy now, but that would be interesting for someone to change that category.

I think we're even thinking about that with Liquid Death too. Like, I think Liquid Death, you know, is so much bigger than just a water company. Like, at the end of the day, like, I think we think about ourselves as like a pop culture factory. Like, we just made— we released a Liquid Death vinyl record recently. I don't know if you guys saw that, but it was like, in less than 2 weeks, we sold 700 vinyl records. Which is like more than most metal bands actually sell when they release a record on a major metal label. And it was like this funny idea where we took social media hate comments and made them the lyrics to this metal album. And it's like, wow, a water company now just became a record label for a minute. And it's like, I think about all these other places where there could be innovation that tied to our general mission of like health. That's like, Do we, like, what if Liquid Death creates like a chain of heavy metal yoga studios, you know, where it's like people who want to do yoga but they don't want to listen to Yanni when they're doing it, like, is there some room for like some kind of cool, like, how do you make it a totally new kind of like fitness experience?

You could do like Tough Guy multivitamins if you needed to, right? You could take a healthy product, multivitamins, and be like, okay, cool.

It's kind of interesting actually, you know, rainbows and Care Bears.

Like maybe we could just make this form factor a little different, brand a little different, right?

To speak to a different audience who's, you know, so you guys have raised, let's say 10, I forget the number, $10 or $12 million. You're not huge yet. You're definitely still getting going. How do you decide? So like at my company, we have a brand that people know and people just, We make stuff, people will buy it. But in my head, I'm always like, I don't want to make other stuff. Let's just like focus on what we're doing and kick ass at that, and then maybe eventually expand. Whereas you've done these little experiments like the vinyl record, and maybe you're also trying to, uh, maybe you weren't joking with your heavy metal yoga thing. In my head, I'm like, no, no, no, fuck that, focus. What, uh, do you have like a, like logistically, how do you decide where to throw budget at and throw money at in order to So let me ask you this.

So this, this is what I mean. All these other products that we could potentially make that actually sell or actually succeed, they double as marketing for the water, you know?

Yeah, it's just marketing that's profitable.

It's profitable. Exactly. It's like we made a vinyl record. I can't tell you how many eyeballs that got Liquid Death on from people reposting the album, sharing the album, talking about it. and that album for us to execute, including printing the vinyl, cost us $12,000. Oh, and we've already made all of our money back and more.

How much staff did you have work on that?

What's that?

How much staff? Who worked on it? Like, you also— did you—

we hired a guy that we knew that was a friend of a friend who's an incredible metal musician who wrote the whole album. His name's Gus Rios. He wrote and recorded the whole album. His buddy mixed the whole album, and his buddy mixed stuff for Justin Bieber and all these other guys. So we got the whole album recorded, we made a commercial for it, maybe $2,000 on stock footage, and my wife edited the video. So I was like, you know, that's all, that's all we launched with. It was a little launch video made with stock footage, and we pressed records and sold the records in our merch store. And it's like all that stuff adds together. That's why it's like, what would it cost to start, let's call it a chain of 5 small heavy metal yoga studios in LA? Like small little studios, not a lot going on. You find some, you know, some instructors, like maybe you could actually build that out for, call it 500 grand, let's just say. Like, you could make, you could build a 5-chain yoga studio, heavy metal yoga studio chain, for $500 grand. What does $500 grand buy you if you try to run one TV spot during the fucking Oscars? Like, maybe you get a 30-second spot? And what's gonna see more lift and brand evangelism for your brand, running one $500,000 commercial during the Oscars, or building a chain of 5 heavy metal yoga studios in LA that gets talked about by every publication. Heavy metal yoga studio launches in LA, people actually go to it, everyone who goes takes photos and shares and talks. It's like, that's a way smarter way to spend your money, and you might actually make some of it back if it's a good enough business model, you know.

This is like Elon selling flamethrowers, right? Yeah, he is the, you know, sort of Iron Man trying to be a badass, rockets, and, you know, drilling into underground and electric sports cars. So he comes out with a flamethrower for $700, I think it was, and he sold— I don't know, I think he sold like millions of dollars.

A shit ton.

A shit ton.

I think it was $10 million.

And the whole thing is basically just being like, you know, feeding the evangelism, like you said, of the cult of Elon, of, yeah, life should be a little more badass. We need a little more fire, a little more speed, and a little more like, you know, uh, rocketry to, to in our, in our lives. And so it fits the brand.

Yeah, and it's like, you know, when you curate your own new experiences or whatever for the brand, you can also control what goes on there. So at all these yoga studios, it's going to be cool. There's a Liquid Death, there's the water there, right? You know, it's like, it all kind of can work together.

My takeaway from this whole podcast is I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do a handful of— I'm not gonna launch a yoga studio, but a $12,000 vinyl release or something like of that scale is super interesting. I need to do more of that. Do you have one person on your team who does these odd things, or is this just a project that you lead and coordinate?

So we work with— we do have creative agencies that we work with, most of which are run by my friends who I knew from the industry. They've got small little startups. And what's nice about Liquid Death is because we want to do such cool different things, people are willing to kind of work at a nice homey rate because like they want that thing up for their reel. We're not just asking them to make something.

And you're crazy enough to be— well, you're open enough to like try that weird shit.

They need to go to Nestlé and say, hey, look at this amazing thing we did with Liquid Death, and they want the Nestlé check, not the Liquid Death check, right? But they need you to get the Nestlé check.

Well, they're doing the same thing that you're— they're doing They're doing the same thing what you're doing with the vinyl. They're like, ah, it'll maybe pay for itself, but it's also marketing.

Right, right, right, exactly. So yeah, I mean, we get a lot of, you know, smart creative people that are throwing ideas into the mix, but, you know, at the end of the day, like, you know, I'm a very creative-focused CEO. I think we've built like a nice team around us that like is really smart with operations and supply chain and that kind of stuff it's not so much my strong suit, and I can, you know, focus more on the brand and creative side, which, you know, Liquid Death, it's really a brand play, you know, like, and that it's so important, and I think building out all these fun things we're talking about of like, how do you build this brand that has such an evangelist audience to it and that continues to grow, like, that's really the focus.

This is great.

We're coming up on the hour, Sam. Did you have anything else?

No, I'm taking notes. I'm gonna write an email to my team and I'm like, 'cause I have, I'm also creative, but I definitely am like fiscally conservative and I'm like, no, no, no, we gotta focus on the cash cow. But I'm like, you're right. This dumb shit that seems dumb, but it's awesome. You can do that for way cheaper than you think.

Yeah, I guess it's just like always think like one of my old bosses, I used to work, I was the creative director at VaynerMedia. So Gary Vaynerchuk was like my boss essentially. And you know, I learned a lot from him in terms of like marketing is really just about day trading attention. Like marketing is all about attention and attention has different costs to it. The price for a billboard, you're paying so much per eyeball that sees it. It's like, yes, it could be effective, but you're overpaying for it versus create a yoga studio in LA. You might generate even more eyeballs and attention at a way, way lower spend. So I think it's just always thinking about who— how do I get attention for my brand? And what are all the different possible ways that you can get attention? What's like the most cost-efficient ways to get that attention?

And I have to ask, was it awesome or not awesome working for him? Is the guy the real deal or what?

I love Gary. I think he's like an incredible human being. Like, you know, I've worked for a lot of corporate folks and I think there's a lot of egos, there's people who don't care, and I think Gary like truly cares. Like, even if you're gonna tell him you're quitting, like, he's gonna be like, oh, awesome, like, do you need any help finding your next thing? You know, like, he's just like, he cares. And I think that's what he's built his whole company on is like, you can build a massive company with like, a compassionate point of view on your people and not just being some like tyrant kind of.

Do you think there's any, anything about Gary? Because he's a very public presence, right? He's personally out there a lot. Um, and you know, anytime you personally put yourself out there, you're putting a part of you out there, not the whole thing. Is there anything that either people don't really know about him or is a misconception that you've seen about him? Is there anything like that?

I would say that like just talking, like, just talking with him normally one-to-one is obviously the volume isn't as loud as it is when he's on camera, you know, because at the end of the day, like, he's an entertainer to a degree, right?

Yeah.

Now he's an educational business entertainer, but he's entertaining to watch, like the way he talks, like how his passion is, like how he's smart. Like, there's plenty of business people who say smart things but not maybe as many that are like animated on camera. So it's like in a way he's kind of playing, you know, a bit of his character, but it's like off camera, like he's way more mellow, I would say, than most people think.

Like, you know, he's, you know, I was on his podcast or like that, I forget whatever it's called, and he was very nice. And I had— we— he turned it up slowly, but yeah, it was definitely just— yeah, he had it. He wasn't on right away. He had to— he had to get amped a little.

That's awesome. All right, well, Mike, we'll wrap it up. Where should people follow you, find you, if they want to hear more thoughts or Liquid Death? You know, give people— shout out where people can get more of what they got today.

Yeah, I mean, most everything happening with Liquid Death is on Instagram, so follow us. It's @liquiddeath on Instagram, you know, @liquiddeath on Twitter, and liquiddeath.com is our site. And yeah, that's it.

Awesome. This is awesome. I'm looking at it right now. Thanks for taking the time, man. This is badass.

Yeah, I got a bunch of—

No, thank you guys, appreciate it.

Sorry if my typing is something you can hear on the podcast, 'cause while he was talking, I was like, I need to write this down. I had 3 ideas while you were talking, not exactly what you said, but you inspired something while you were talking. I was like, I gotta write this down because we're gonna do this, and if we don't do this, like, I'm gonna regret it. So apologies if everyone here is typing.

Yeah, I do the same thing. I'm like looking up everything you're saying.

That's a, that's a sign of a good podcast though.

And it's all about speed. Like, that's the one thing I always push. It's like the idea shelf life these days is very short. Like, if you have a cool idea right now, if you don't make it tomorrow, someone else is probably making it TV, you know, it's like that's just the reality. Right on.

All right, Mike, thank you so much for coming on.

All right, thanks guys, take care.

Thank you.