Four Loko's Jaisen Freeman (The Brand Too Bold To Break)

We were really the first cancel culture brand. We never raised a dollar. It was just the 3 of us. And Jeff's dad, my partner, found Jamie Dimon's email, emailed him and said, Jamie, my son started this business. I've been a loyal customer of the bank. You know, I'm trying to refinance my house to help my son build his business, build the American dream. And within 24 hours, he got an email saying, love it. It was something I could never even imagine. But my favorite story to tell is—

He built a brand that disrupted an entire industry and turned Four Loko into a cultural phenomenon. Meet Jason Freeman, the fearless co-founder and co-CEO of Fusion Projects.

This is the story behind the legend.

The amount of money we were making was— when someone walked in the store, we're like, I want everyone to know what we do. We have to stand out in this sea of colors. Saturday Night Live did a 2-minute skit on Four Loko, and it became so big. Companies were really scared. We were getting to the consumer without even spending money, and they were like, what the hell is this? There's no rules with Loko. We're for everybody.

You cultivated a very authentic community from the beginning. Like, what's your playbook for creating a great community?

Our first one is like entrepreneur spirit. We give people The authority to make decisions. And then I think the second thing is, this is an interesting one.

Welcome everybody to episode 4 of the Zeitgeist Podcast.

I could not be more excited for this episode with my very, very good friend, Jason Freeman. the godfather of one of the most iconic brands of all time, Four Loko, and the founder CEO of Fusion Projects, which is the company behind brands like Momita's and many other ones that we'll talk about today. Jason, so excited to have you. Welcome to the pod.

Thank you. It's a pleasure. I'm happy you're doing this. This is right where you should be.

Love it. So let's go all the way back. Obviously, you had You had the idea for Four Loko originally while you were playing hockey at Ohio State. 4-year letter winner. Former captain of Ohio State.

The Ohio State.

The Ohio State University. Talk to me about young Jason, even prior to that. Like, when did you first know you were gonna be an entrepreneur? What were some of the early ventures maybe you had at school before this? Let's start with the OG Jay.

Yeah. I mean, listen, my first, And I think all young hockey players, I'm sure you had this, is like, I'm going to play in the NHL, right? And I got a scholarship to go to Ohio State. It was a great experience. I got to play in the minor leagues for a little bit. But then, you know, I think reality at some point has to set in. I mean, listen, we as entrepreneurs are, you know, we're optimists. But at this point, I got injured and I was like, you know what? I'm going to wake up and be 40 playing minor league hockey. It's probably, probably not the path that I want. And not that that's a bad path.

You don't want the Reggie Dunlap path.

Yeah, listen, that's— it's not— I'm not putting that down. It just— I knew that wasn't for me. I knew there was something different. And I don't ever, you know, wonder, did I, did I give it a shot, right? I did everything I could. It just wasn't timing or whatever. I was— maybe it wasn't what teams needed, whatever it was. So Ohio State, um, has a great athletics program, obviously anchored by the football team. But if you go play pro, You can come back at any time and get your scholarship to finish school because they really want you to graduate.

Amazing.

And so I came back, finished school, and then on top of that, I got to do accelerated program to get my MBA at the same time and got it paid for. So I was like, this is perfect. And, you know, I didn't really have a lot of ventures because sports took up a lot of my time. But I feel like that is the basis of entrepreneurship. You're building yourself, your body, your brand, everything, your team, your team, team culture. I mean, Honestly, our company culture is a lot like a locker room, you know, in a good way. Not, not the Trump locker rooms, but in a good way, right? And so I think I always knew that I didn't want to work for somebody and I wanted to kind of create my own destiny. And I think that's very similar to being an athlete. So there's 3 of us that started the company. We were friends in school and Originally, we were thinking about starting a vodka, but there were so many vodkas on the market. But all of our friends were drinking Red Bull vodka. And we're like, okay, this makes sense. And the first genesis was actually not Four Loko. I think this is important for a lot of entrepreneurs. And I know you can relate with this as well. The first iteration of our product was terrible. It was called Four. And I think my partner Jeff was like the only customer, right? It was terrible tasting. We didn't know anything about it. We just rushed to get a product to market. And we thought, oh, everyone's gonna love it because it's us, right? And we got a dose of reality real quick. But I think we never raised a dollar, and it was just the 3 of us.

And what was the product specifically?

It was caffeine, alcohol, and then we had this great idea to add wormwood oil, which was the active ingredient in absinthe. And it was supposed to be an aphrodisiac. So we thought, like, people are gonna love this.

So is it 4? 'Cause there are 4 ingredients.

There's 4 ingredients, yes. There's actually 5 ingredients, but, you know, we went to Ohio State, so.

The Ohio State.

The Ohio State, of course. Not known for the math program.

All right, so you have your first MVP product. Yep. You try it, doesn't work.

Yeah.

But you learn things. Yes. And specifically, when you're founding a company with people, you learned what their skill sets were, what their strengths and weaknesses.

Yes.

What did you learn about that founding team at that moment? Yeah. And what green shoots did you see that helped ensure that you would have, or at least give you the confidence to say, Hey, I think there could be success here, as opposed to, you know, I'm gonna keep playing in the minor leagues and think I'm gonna make the show and it's never gonna happen.

Yeah, I think, I think there's, there's a couple genesis there. One is, um, we saw the products that were on the market and we knew— well, I don't know if we knew, we felt we could do better, right? I think that's, that's generally one of the, like, the, the common themes of entrepreneurs, like, okay, there's something there, but I think I can do it better this way, right? And I think a lot of the products around the market were, were, were being targeted towards us. I mean, we were our consumers at the time, which, which helped a lot, right? We were marketing to ourselves and creating for ourselves. But these products were being created by people that had no idea about anything about our lifestyles. You got to remember, this is, you know, we talk about this, we're going to be 21 next year, so we're going to be legal drinking age. Four Loko is going to be legal drinking age next year.

Um, well, and it, it aligns perfectly with my High school and college career.

College career. College career. And so I think, you know, at that time, you got to remember, there's not a— there wasn't a lot of data. Things are very different. The world has evolved a lot as far as targeting consumers and understanding consumers. So you have people making products, you know, for 21 to 25-year-olds that had no idea of their lifestyles. We knew, right? And people were drinking stuff just because, you know, it got them drunk and it was a good price. And so we thought we could elevate that, actually make a brand. Make something that people were proud of holding. And so the next genesis of Four was called Four Maxed. And what we found was craft beer was starting to emerge and higher alcohol was starting to become popular. Right. And not, not just like Steel Reserve or those type of drinks. This was actually like, you know, expensive beer was, you know, 8%, 9%, 10% alcohol. And we saw that that was something, a lane that we could play in. So we upped the alcohol from 6% to 10%. And the sales doubled. So, all right, we got something here. We got something. Things are moving. And the only reason this happened was because it was still only the 3 of us. So we were going and doing the sales. We were in the stores. We're talking to consumers and we're seeing literally what people are buying day in, day out.

And was this mostly like in Columbus at this point, or were you starting to get some—

We were really just in Ohio. We started to kind of creep into a couple other states because we needed cash flow. But we weren't really getting— we weren't getting rebuys. It was just like pipeline fill. It was just to keep us afloat, right? But as we're doing that, we're learning, we're seeing what's happening, what's selling, boom, boom, boom. What's the next iteration? And what we saw was the big cans, 24-ounce cans, is what people really, what they wanted.

And it was iconic. Yes. And it still is.

Yes. And then we raised the alcohol percentage to 12.5%. I don't wanna say the most that we could do, though. We raised it to the most that we could do that would still taste good, right? Where we could still get a good flavor profile. And this is about 2 years in, and it was instant. Like, it was instant. Now, I don't wanna say it was instant. You gotta remember, again, as we talk about like a timepiece, you know, we were on Facebook because— So

this is like 2010?

This is like 2008, 2009.

Okay. Yeah. So which lines up perfectly because my first business was running all the nightlife at Duke.

Yes.

And every single night before I'd go out, right, I'd have an orange Four Loko. Right. That was my— that was, you know, I wouldn't drink it all at my parties, but I would have one before to get it going.

Yes.

And I couldn't have done what I did without your product.

You're welcome. You owe me some of your equity in Cameo because you wouldn't be here without me.

Sure.

But you're right. And so what we found and what we learned was exactly what you're talking about, what Four Loko is. And one of the things that we look at when we create new brands is what occasion are we owning, right? What's the occasion? And Four Loko is the pregame occasion. It is $3, right? And I'm gonna get 75% of the way I wanna get to. Yeah. And now I can go to the bar, or the game or the nightclub and spend $15 on one drink instead of 6 drinks, right? And so we're very specific on that lane, and we know the lane that we play, and we've been very consistent with it, you know, going through. But back to the timepiece, again, we can't— we're trying to confirm this right now, but I think we were the first brand on Facebook because we were in college and we had accounts, right? And so we—

Interesting, because Julie just said she was one of the first, or she was the first on Twitter. Yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah.

But totally, right? I remember that era. Part of the reason my first business worked was because I was '06 from high school. So I was the first grade that had Facebook the whole way. So every person I knew— Was on there. And it was still a closed loop, right? Because back then when you graduated, you got an alum account so you could stay on. But for the 4 years that I had my business, I had a Facebook group of 17,000 college kids at Duke, UNC, and NC State. and the bar owners didn't have access. So we would say, show up here, and people came.

And at the time, I don't think we actually knew how powerful that was or what it was going to be. And so, you know, that's how we got the information out to our friends and, and to people that were interested. And we just started building that, that following. And then again, you got to remember, YouTube starts becoming big. I mean, this is, this is pre-Instagram, right? So, um, there was a rap group in Cleveland that out of the blue did a song about Four Loko, Loko on That Loko. And it got— it still has millions and millions of views. And you gotta remember, in 2009—

Yeah, yeah.

Millions of views on YouTube is, is like, it's like a hundred, you know, hundreds of millions now. And this thing took off, and then it just started where it became cool to have it in your hand, to have it here. And so, you know, that goes back to the genesis of the can. You know, we didn't have money, we didn't raise a dollar. We got an SBA loan. I had some money from playing. We opened up credit cards, cash advanced some money. So, you know, what we had to do is when someone walked in the store, we're like, we would sit like even in our office now, if you walk in, it's a cooler, like walking into the store. I want everyone to know what we do, right? It's very specific and how the product sits on the shelf and what you see. And so we're like, we have to stand out in this sea of colors. And so camo came up and we're like, this is an iconic look. I mean, we never knew that it was gonna be street cool and now it's our own thing. army cool. It's like, you know, camo is like— I think— I don't think we knew what it would become, but it also— we knew we needed something different.

What were some of the ideas that didn't make it? Or like, as you were going through that process originally, what were— what were some of the other ideas that you had that stick out?

Well, I, I don't think— I mean, we had different names for the product.

Um, what were some of those other ones?

Oh man, I mean, you gotta remember, we're college kids, so they were just— they were just god-awful. It was like Diesel, and it was like very like hardcore male, you know what I mean? Like And thank God we didn't—

Cameo's first name was Power Move.

OK. All right. I think Cameo's a little better.

A little better.

Yeah.

Shout out to John Galanis for coming up with the name. His birthday yesterday.

Yes. So it's a fun process. And I think when you're young, you just don't know any different. And I think it wasn't easier, but it was better because all of our friends were our core consumers. And we're like, hey, what do you think of this? And they're your boys. And they're like, that sucks, dude. We're like, try this. This is a drink. This is terrible. You know, so we got, we had, we didn't know we were doing research, but we were doing research, right? It was very like crude and like unscientific, but it was actually very directional.

And then as you're, you know, you're on campus, you've got this brand, rappers are starting to talk about it. And it's funny, just side note, when I went to go create the reels today for you coming in, there's like 50 different Four Loko songs on Instagram. It's actually amazing. Yes. I would assume like a lot of it was handing out cans. And talk to me about some of those like really unscalable things that you did early to just like start building a following and get people to try the product. And you knew once they tried it, they were hooked. Especially Four Loko, not just Four Loko.

Yeah, I mean, with alcohol, you obviously can't do what you like just pop up in a park and hand stuff out. But we would have parties. And we do a lot more stuff. You know, we were on campus, so there's a couple of big liquor stores. You know, we'd make sure displays were up. We'd make sure we're in there during the like hot hours, like talking to people. And it was really just kind of hand-to-hand combat. I think a lot of our stuff, though, was, was social. I mean, that was, that was again emerging. And we were just, we just hit it hard because it was free and we knew it. And everyone else in the industry was so late to the game there. You know, I mean, people were still doing print ads. You know, when we— At that time. At that time, right? So for us, and there was no algorithm and everyone was seeing everything you posted, right? So it's so much harder now, as you know, like to do these types of things and it's so much more crowded. Like timing is everything with brands. And, you know, I think it would be a lot more difficult to stand out today than it was back then. We'd have to do— have something different. But I think, I think the other thing that goes is you talk about the 54 Loko songs and the reels and all the things. We never wanted to. We were very specific about this. We never wanted to control our brand, and we're still to this day. Like, I'll give you an example. We work with like FaZe Clan, right? And you know, they're one of the biggest streamers, gamers, and they've worked with brands before. And like, "What do you want us to do?" We're like,

"Well, be you."

What the fuck? What are you talking about? What are you gonna do? And how do we fit into that?

Right, right, right.

Right. And I think a lot of companies and brands get stuck in this. Like, here's our brief, and like, make sure this is this way, and the can is this way, and this, and it just. Defeats the purpose of actually having partnerships, and we wanted user-generated content, which it is troves of it out there. And it's it's we're for everybody, you know, like we're literally for everybody. And my my favorite story to tell is during the election we made these hats, and they're super bright red hats, and they say "Make America Loco Again." And so I wear it, and I'm walking through O'Hare Airport. And people would be, you know, 20 feet away and I would just get the dirtiest looks, right? Just like, and then they get close and they read the hat and they start laughing, right? And then once they start laughing, they're like, wait, what side are you on? Right? And that's, that's for Loco. We just unapologetically us. We don't give a fuck like who it is, what it is. We're for everybody. Right. And so that's what we wanted the brand to be. And I think that's kind of like who we are. And it's just like, we will, there's no rules with Loco. And that's why the brand I think has become iconic and funny, 'cause people see through the bullshit.

Yeah, and I think of so many of the brands that I admire right now, whether it's Liquid Death or whether it's— Yes, very similar. Sean from Dude Wipes, we had him on the first episode of the pod. It really was like creating this product and then letting the users kind of tell the story and be the brand advocates. And he's taken it as far as his most recent product is a 2-wipe It's a Dude Wipe with 2 wipes in it. And it's because John Mayer sent them a DM and literally said, I love the product, but brother, we live in a 2-wipe world. So then they started packaging 2 Dude Wipes together. That's amazing. It's amazing, right? But like, what— so you're getting this early traction, you're getting the street cred, you're in rap songs, people are wearing shirts, it's popping up in pop culture. cultivated a very authentic community from the beginning, and that community still comes today. What lessons do you have for others that are trying to cultivate that community? Because everyone's talking about community, but so many people try to force-feed it. Like, what's your playbook for creating a great community?

Look, I think, I think number one, we should talk about like Dudebops responsiveness, right? I mean, again, we can't take every idea that everyone has, but at least you're responding to them and, you know, send them some swag or send them something like, hey, we appreciate your comment, we're going to look into it. We also have, and this is real, like, we have so much data. We do a lot of research, right? And I don't do research to be like, what's the next flavor, blah, blah, blah. I do research as like confirmation bias. Like, okay, are we thinking the right way? But I actually, when we look at the things that we're doing, we asked our consumers who wants to be like on the Four Loko panel. And so, you know, we'll ask them questions, we'll get them involved, we'll get them engaged, and they kind of help get to pick flavors. And so, you know, now this, this creates this like sense of I have a voice in the brand that I have. And then the third thing is, and I'm sure you get this a lot, we get so many people are like, hey, will you sponsor me? Right. And they're not— I mean, are they? I mean, everyone's an influencer today, I guess, like even without being it. And we're like, yeah, we'll sponsor you. You got to do this, this, this. And you get, you know, quarterly swag and, you know, we get— you get All these different benefits, and it's a very simple thing that people just love to be a part of, right? And it's like the hats and the shirts, and like it's simple stuff. But I think what happens is people start to look at like, okay, what's the cost of this? What's the ROI? Is there a cap? Like you start doing these these finance terms into actually building community, and that's when you get in trouble. Of course. you can't have an unlimited budget on this stuff and you have to have some parameters. But some things, there's just not going to be a financial ROI on it. And you got to understand those things and be very engaged. And then I think third is my partner Jeff and I, like, we are heavily engaged with— I mean, our first consumer is our employees, right? Our second consumer is our distributors. Our third consumer is our retailers. And then our fourth consumer is actually the actual people buying the product. Wow. And so we're engaged with all of those heavily. They're all part of our, of our community. And I think you can't, you can't just look at the end consumer. There's so many people in between that have to be part of that, talking about you, building you up, and, and talk— and, and they're your advocates out there in the real world.

So this thing's snowballing now. Yeah. Right? You're in Ohio, you're starting to creep in other states. Yeah. And then all of a sudden it fucking explodes. Yeah. Talk to me about that time.

Yeah, listen, there's nothing that will prepare you for it. And, and I think You know, I think you can you can understand this. It is it is exciting and scary and weird and imposter syndrome and all these types of things at the same time. I think for us it was a little different because we went from you know me opening every credit card that I possibly could, cash advancing money just to make payroll and be like oh the checks in the mail oh you know like all kinds of shit like. to like signing off on a purchase order, you know, for $30 million of inventory, right? And like, you think you're ready for that, but you're just never, you're never actually, 'cause we don't, you didn't have that money at the time, right? Right. We didn't even have a line of credit, you know? So I think, I think, I think back to sports, it just prepares you for these moments of just like, okay, Here we go. We're gonna— what's the next door that's gonna open and close in my face? And you gotta remember, I mean, my partner Jeff and I, we, we didn't take a salary. We put every dollar we had in. Um, we ran out of money right when Four Loko started to move. And you gotta remember, this is 2008, 2009, financial crisis.

Yep.

No one is writing checks, right? Banks are locked up. No one's doing anything. No one will give us a dollar. And so We went to our friends, nobody would do it, and we eventually went to our families. And our families aren't— they're middle-class families. And my mom and parents borrowed against their 401. They had $100,000, and they gave us what we could. And Jeff's dad, my partner, it's a great story. He went to refinance his house, get a home equity line of credit to give us money to get through. And because of the financial crisis, Chase denied him. And he had this house for like 30 years, right? He's been a customer of the bank. He found Jamie Dimon's email, emailed him and said, Jamie, my son started this business. I've been a loyal customer of the bank, you know, military service. And, you know, I'm trying to refinance my house to help my son build his, build his business, build the American dream. And within 24 hours, he got an email saying, Bob, don't worry about it. Somebody's going to contact you.

Wow.

And I don't know if it was him, but Again, back to building community and whatever it is. Someone was— this is a random guy, doesn't mean anything to the bank— emailing and get a response right back. And then we got that money that helped us get through.

And it's such a good lesson, right? Right. Like, the busiest people in the world often are the people that respond the quickest too.

100%. 100%.

Yeah. And, you know, I, I think about that. So long story short, the money comes in. Yes. Right? Yes. You make payroll. You make payroll. We start to get—

we start to get a little, little, you know, I got— I get a little salary, you know, I got a little expense account. Starting to feel good about myself, and then it just—I mean, the amount of money we were making was—it was something I could never even imagine. And you know,

it was like the scene in in Scarface where you know, dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun. They got the telephone.

Yes, hundred percent. Everyone's laughing, you know. And so we took our—we took our first vacation, and we went to Greece. And, you know, Jeff and I were sitting there and we're like, this is too easy, man. This can't, this can't be this easy. You know, like, I mean, we were, you know, Saturday Night Live did a 2-minute skit on Four Loko, right? Like every night show. And the problem is the social media influence and amplification at that time. We were really the first cancel culture brand and it became so big. And I think the other Companies were really scared because we were doing the things, A, they didn't know how to do. We were getting to the consumer without even spending money.

Right.

Right. And they're like, what the hell is this? Right. And they didn't, they didn't have the capabilities nor the know-how to figure out what was going on. And then you have, you know, lawmakers who are older, don't understand it, and they're seeing stuff on YouTube. People are probably misusing the product or whatever. And they're like, this is, this is illegal, right? This is bad. And so we, we, it was only about, it was less than a year that we were making money. And then, you know, we got every single, you know, agency, everything went in. Now, going back to the product itself, alcohol is one of the highly highest regulated industries in the US, right? Food, alcohol, pharmaceutical. There's so many level approvals, and on top of that, not only you need federal approval, you need state approval. So, you know, they started this this theory that we were making an illegal product, and it was wasn't safe, and it wasn't all this stuff. And it's like, okay, we went through this pro we went through this process, and the mistake we made, I think it was our naivety. We thought that everyone would love our story, you know, like. 2, you know, middle-class kids, bootstrapped up, building

the American

dream, the American dream that everyone talks about, right? We're like, oh, everyone's gonna be happy for us. And then you got there and no one's fucking happy for you. No, because you're taking away from their business, right? And there's always going to be a competitive response.

And do you think, do you think Big Liquor was behind that?

Look, uh, am I a conspiracy theorist? No. But yes, I mean, at the end of the day, it was too concerted of an effort. And, you know, look, Chuck Schumer is holding a press conference saying like this product's marketing to kids, right? Like, and not realizing like he's actually advertising for us.

Yeah,

right. Like,

full disclaimer, I didn't actually have it in high school.

Yes, exactly. So, you know, that, that was, that was the hard part. So here's the kicker of the whole thing. We got a letter from the FDA who does not regulate alcohol. There's a totally separate body that regulates alcohol. And basically what they said was, we don't know if mixing caffeine and alcohol is safe. Okay? And in our jurisdiction, it's the first time they've ever ruled on alcohol ever. And it's because they said, you're using synthetic caffeine, which we consider a food additive, as opposed to naturally occurring caffeine. Right? So that was their big distinction. So this created a whole bunch of like, you know, basically like hysteria. It's like, is it safe? Is it not? Can we sell this? Can we not? Right. And so we were like, all right, listen, we built a brand that's bigger than caffeine. Let's just wind down this product and then we'll make a new version without caffeine, right? And that's not what happened. Like, everyone started to get really, like, scared. Like, of course, like, Walmart's like, we're not selling this anymore. Like, we're not gonna be involved in any of this controversy. We had distributors with millions of dollars of inventory, right? So we said, all right, this is what we're going to do.

I actually remember we threw a like RIP Four Loko party at Shooters.

Yeah.

I, I didn't know you at that point, right? But I probably interacted with you or someone on your team. 100%. And we got like all of the Four Loko that was available in like central North Carolina, added up at Shooters 2 nightclub. And we threw an RIP Four Loko party, 'cause it was the last day you could have the old stuff.

Yeah, yeah, and there was vigils in Times Square. There's a guy— It

was like a funeral.

There's a guy, Eddie Wang, he's like, he had a show Fresh Off the Boat. He was a big guy at Vice. He had a restaurant in New York and he decided to go against the laws and create a Four Loko party. They arrested him. It was like prohibition style. They like came in, it was like, it was hysteria. Like there was accounts in California who were ordering full truckloads and then airlifting it to China because the Chinese market was super interested in the product, right? So it was just all this mass hysteria and just misinformation. And so basically we decided is we had $30+ million in inventory in the market that we said, all right, you know what, we're going to Pick this up, bring it in. We're going to remake the product because we knew the consumer was there without caffeine. And we obviously didn't have $30 million to pay. So we had to figure out a deal where like, hey, we'll pay you on new invoices moving forward. And because the demand was there, but I think some of the retailers rightfully so got scared. It took us about 18 months to pay that back. So we were $35 million in the hole. Our bank sent us a letter saying, we don't do business with people like you. You have 3 days to get out of the bank. We don't have a lot of credit. We're just trying to collect and pay.

Right.

So nobody would bank us because of headline risk. And thank God, the private bank in Chicago, which is CIBC now, they took a flyer on us. They were great. I mean, obviously, they didn't give us a lot of credit, but they at least let us collect and pay. So, we thought we were out of it. And then we had about 90 lawsuits filed against us, 2 class actions, people making ridiculous claims of what happened with Four Loko. And then our insurance company said, oh, you're selling an illegal product, we're not going to cover you. So, we paid about $30 million of settlements— Out of cash. Out of cash flow, without a line of credit, without an investment, right, on top of paying back the inventory. And it took us about, took us about 3 years to kind of get in the thing. And what happened was we started a brand called Not Your Father's Root Beer. And it's same kind of trajectory as Four Loko. And we only really had it in the Midwest. And Pabst Brewing Company, the owner came in and he really wanted the brand. We didn't really want to sell it, but it was a way for us to get out of all of our past debts and allow us to kind of just move forward. And so we sold the brand to them. And that was, you know, that was a critical point because I realized it's like, oh, we can do more than just one thing, right? And we have built this great go-to-market strategy, network, sales team, distribution, retail execution. We can do other things that are complementary. So.

All right. Take me back. To that lowest point. The lawsuits are there. Chuck Schumer's press conference. Yeah. Everybody's coming for you. You're getting debanked. You're getting kicked out of your insurance. Talk to me about how you approach your top 3 constituents, as you talked about. What was— what, what did you do to, to keep the ship sailing on the employee side? Yeah. What did you tell your distributors? And like, how did you salvage it with the retailers in that period?

Yeah, look, I think as entrepreneurs, this was a learning experience for me. I think as entrepreneurs, especially when you're building, I mean, I hate this term, but fake it till you make it. But you're constantly, you're playing on the edge of dream and reality.

Or being an outward success and internal failure.

Yeah, exactly. But you're playing this edge of dream and reality, right? Where you're like, I know we can get there. We're not there yet, but I got to make people believe we can get there. Right. And so you're constantly, you're constantly talking a little bit ahead of where reality is. Right. And you can't get too far out of there. But I think what I learned in this experience was, is just, is, is people are smart and you can't bullshit people. You can, you can do it for a little while, but you can't, you can't do it for very long. And I think for us, we're— my partner, we're very humble, like, you know what I mean? Like, and we just were honest. Here's what's going on. Here's what we know. Here's what we don't know. This is what we're going to do. And it was first, it was pretty much every day we're talking to the team, we're talking to the team, we're getting everyone's opinions, feedback. What should we do? What did this person say? What do you guys think? Right. And so I think involving people in that process is super important because I think a lot of times, especially when you're in these worlds, you want to keep it very tight because you're scared of people getting information and then being like, oh shit, this— the sink is— or the, the ship is sinking. But when you actually get people in the boat, you got more paddles, and they, and they, they come up with solutions. Yeah, you may lose some people, but those weren't your people to begin with, totally right. And, and so we were just very communicative. I think especially with your customers, face-to-face meetings. I got out— we got on planes who are big guys and said, hey, I know you got a lot of inventory. There's 2 ways this can go. We either run a business Or we get through this. Yeah, yeah. And it was almost better that it was $35 million and not like $300,000, you know what I mean? Because it was like, if it was $300,000, see you guys later.

That's all the banks learned during the financial crisis, right?

Right, right. So I think that was important. And then the retailers— look, retailers always, they'll always come back. There is some pain in the beginning, right? And some people that said, we're not dealing with you, but Once you have a consistent story and message and you come with real data and facts, you eventually get back there. Like even Benny's, it took a little time, you know, like, and I understand that they're, you know, it's a family business and they want to make sure where they're at. They're now a great customer and great partner for us, right? So I think seeing that long-term play, but also understanding to be very, very honest. And I think keeping your employees up to date with what's going on, understanding the hole we're in. Right? And we lost a couple people. We actually lost one guy who came back 2 years later and was like, I made the biggest mistake leaving, you know? And so I think that for me, what I learned in that situation is just communication and honesty with people and getting their feedback because they're the ones actually dealing with the real stuff out there as well.

Moments like that, in my experience, and Cameo's gone through, you know, its fair share of those as well, it really highlights the core values that you have. And those values are either going to withstand the test or They're not. And sometimes through these periods, new ones— some need to go, some need to stay. Talk to me about the core values you had and how, if at all, did they change or really cement themselves through the adversity?

Yeah, I think, listen, I mean, you know, we have some key core values. I think the ones— I mean, our first one is like entrepreneur spirit. We give people the authority to make decisions, right? And I think people feel empowered that it is their company. I think that's super, super important. I would say it's not my company, it's our company, right? Because I can't do this by myself, right? So I think people feel empowered, and we empowered them during this time with the right information. So when people were asking them, they weren't, you know, like, oh, you're working that company that's doing that illegal stuff? Well, no, actually, here's, here's the true story, right? And here's what, here's what's happening, right? I think, um, I think honesty, which It's such a kicked-around word, but it's like honesty in the fact of like, these are the true facts as we know them right now, and this is what our message is going to be externally. And everyone is saying and on the same page, and, and not only on the same page but believing the message because they know the truth behind it, right? And then I think, I think accountability is the most important. We were accountable, right? Hey, this stuff happened, but this is our problem, right? And we're gonna fix this. But we need you to be a good partner with us as we move through and fix this. And then I think transparency was important. We had a huge— this is an interesting one. We had a huge conference probably 3 weeks after this happened. It's our biggest conference of the year. All of our customers and distributors there. And it's in San Diego at like the, I don't know, the Hyatt Regency or whatever. Right. And we're like, we can't stay in that hotel. We owe these guys $30 million. So we stayed at like the Best Western down the street and we made it known that we were staying there and walking, you know, to the, you know, to the hotel. And our biggest competitor at the time was staying at the hotel, pulled up in a Mercedes 600SL in like, you know, golded out, draped out suit. And you could just tell that like people see, see that and they understand what your values are very much at that time. And to this day, this created the best relationships I have with these distributors, customers. To this day, they know If something goes wrong, we're going to take care of it. And we stand on that every day.

Talk to me about the competitive landscape at that point. I remember there was kind of this Cambrian explosion of all of these alcohol plus caffeine businesses at that time. Juice was one. There were a few other— Sparks. They came hot and heavy once you guys had your initial success. Talk about kind of the going from a kind of category creation and being the Kleenex in the space to suddenly, you know, you're fighting for shelf space, you're fighting tooth and nail. And we can talk more about this with Mameda as well, because I think certainly—

It's an even harder one.

It's been even harder there. But what did you— talk about the competition. What'd you learn from that? And how'd your team respond?

Yeah, I think that we really, in those times, I mean, we were aware of competition, but it wasn't a focus. We were focused on what we wanted to do, what we wanted to accomplish, how we wanted to go to market. We were aware what they were doing. And I think probably naively, again, this is back to Having this vision and this confidence, we knew we were better than they were, right? We just knew—

Better product.

We knew we were going to do a better product. We knew that our go-to-market strategy was better. We knew we had—

More loyal customers.

More loyal customers. We had the social following that they didn't have. We knew that we were doing things. They'd been out longer than us, though, and they had a little more— they had more money. They had more— You know, they had more experience, but I think for us, we weren't really focused on them. We were just focused on us, right? And I think that sounds easy to do, and it is sometimes hard when you walk in a store and you see their product everywhere and you're not your product. But it was just like, this is our lane. We're focused here. We didn't spend a lot of time on the competition, to be honest with you.

So you mentioned early data has been a really important part of your business, not just from a confirmation bias, but really knowing and Knowing your customers. Something we think a lot about at Cameo is owning, not renting your audience. Just like you have to have the CRM and the social to speak to your consumers, the talent on Cameo increasingly in a world now where the algorithms are dominating and it's not a follower graph anymore, it's harder than ever to stick out through the normal means. Talk to me about how you went about collecting data because You know, a lot of times with alcohol companies especially, they're going into Binny's, they're buying it in the store there. Like, you're not— there's— because of alcohol uniquely, you're not able to sell direct. So how did you end up building up this, you know, database? And talk to me about that.

Yeah. So I think in the beginning it was, it was organic because it was, you know, Facebook, then Instagram, TikTok.

Like, who's following us?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just that was just the basic data. Who is our, who is our core demographic, right? And then as things progressed, Nielsen, which is NIQ, they're heavily involved in alcohol. So we buy a lot of data. And I think we were really crawling for a very long time. We were buying it, but we were just like, oh, this is cool to know. And then it's like, you saw it on a PowerPoint presentation. You're like, oh, that's cool. And then you moved on, right?

Right.

And then I think probably about 5 years ago, we decided like, okay, This is a huge competitive advantage, right? And for us, we really got to put some time, effort, and money in this. And now we have a department of 10 people. This is all they do. And really for us, it helps our sales and marketing team on where to spend money, where to spend their time, are we doing the right things, and looking on return on investment. And I would say we're average anywhere from 7 to 15% growth every year. And I would say we're on the high end of that now because we're super data-focused. And we're still barely walking, you know what I mean? But it takes a long time for an organization to wrap their head around that. And we've just been really consistent. And now people are seeing it like, oh, this is affecting my paycheck.

Yeah. What are the handful of examples where you got the data and you made a decision you wouldn't have made otherwise, or you killed something that you were trying to launch?

Well, I would think the better one for us is for our sales team, right? For example, we have an area sales manager in Raleigh, right? And he's going to all the bars and liquor stores and package stores or whatever it may be. And before, it was just kind of like, okay, I'm going to go to these stores. I'm going to work in Durham this day. I'm going to work in Raleigh this day. Then I'm going to go over to Charlotte. It was just kind of random, right? Yeah. And now, we kind of gamified it for them. It's like USA is one of our like biggest growing products, Four Loko USA, right? And so this should be in every single store.

Right.

The rate of sale is hands down higher than any other product that we have, right? And so he now opens up his iPad in the morning and it gives him the 20 accounts that don't have USA and how much Four Loko they sell. And now all he does is just go to those 20 accounts and make sure that this product gets sold in there. And now the rotation goes up. That is the biggest piece. And we have guys that are killing it on commission because they're just, they're, they're, I mean, I hate to say it now, the robots are like, doo doo doo doo doo doo doo, I'm going there, right? And so I think that is super important on a broader scale of like a Nielsen NIQ data where you gotta kind of piece the puzzles together. I think that was genesis of Mamitas where it was, you know, White Claw and Truly jumped out of the gates and look, we, we probably missed it. Right. And I think everyone chased those tails. And for us it was like, all right, this, this game is over. How do we— whenever a new category forms, you usually have a high end and a low end and a, you know, and White Claw and Truly are kind of that. I mean, it's, it's beer where people think it's not. Yeah. So we're like, okay, this is gonna, this is gonna evolve. What's the next evolution? And so again, pulling together low calorie, low sugar trends of tequila and nobody else was doing it. High Noon had just started and they were owning Vodka. And they still own vodka. Listen, they tried tequila and failed, right? So they own it. So we're like, what lane can we own? And let's try to own this lane, right? And that, that was really from, really from the data.

So building an iconic brand is so hard. And in a world now where, you know, you can go to Lovable or you could go to Grok or ChatGPT and say, here's what it is, name me, create a brand.

Yeah.

I believe elite taste is always going to matter in a world where the 75th percentile work and below could be automated out. Yes. But at the highest end, the difference between the branding working or not, that's going to be differentiated. And in Mamita, it's like right from the start, it was so clear that not only was it taking on tequila sodas, something that everybody orders in the bar anyways, but The branding was excellent. You found the right partners and people like Brody. Talk to me about that brand. You guys have the idea. You see what the Nielsen data says. How do you go action it and go bring this to market?

Yeah, I think there's a couple of different iterations here. We generally don't use big marketing agencies. And we decided to go outside to get one. And of course, the playbook is like, Okay, your consumer for Four Loko is 21 to 25. Let's expand it to 28, and then you're going to have double revenue, right? It's like, it's a very simple math formula. It just doesn't work, right? And expanding that consumer base from 25 to 28 actually alienates the 21 to 23.

Right.

Right. And so we're like, we can't do that. But there's still a lot of our consumers who, once they age out of Four Loko, they still want something else. And we still can use a similar playbook But, you know, a similar setup, but, you know, kind of along the lines of the same playbook. And that's kind of what happened with Mamitas, right? We had blank slate. Mamitas is one of my favorite beaches in Playa del Carmen. The name was great. The branding was great. Everything just came together and everyone was just like, it was just really exciting. And so, you know, the team just went crazy because everything has been for local, for local, which is, which is great. Right. But it's like, you're just trying to think of the most craziest fucking thing you can do, right? And this was very specific. It's cool. The branding is good. Branding. Elevated, right? We can drink it every day. Right, right. You know what I mean? So I think everyone got really excited about it, me as well. And then we started to look out and seeing all these, obviously after Casamigos, every celebrity wanted their own brand, right? So We had a— we have a lot— we still have a lot of inbound, and it's slowing down now because I think people realize how hard it is. And I was having a conversation with a friend, and he was like, hey, have you ever talked to Brody before? And I was like, no, but I kind of was like, judged him based on what you think his online appearance is, right? Right, right. Which we do with everybody. He's like, no, you guys should have a conversation. He's like, I feel like you guys would be like best friends. And I was like, really? We had a Zoom for— it was supposed to be like 20 minutes. We were on for like 2 hours. Like, he's to this day one of my closest friends beyond doing this. But the thing for him was he wanted to be authentic based on like the stuff his family's done, you know? But then he's watched them create so much like value and wealth, and he's been like— he's kind of shied away from it because he didn't want to be that. Yeah. And he's like, I just want something that's authentic to me that makes sense, like that I

love.

Yeah, that I love. And he's like, so let me try the product. He's like, he called me, he's like, I love this fucking product. I love it. I'm gonna die for this product. And so he was a little scared to put it out to his, to his base. And he did one post and everyone's like, oh my God, what is that? It was like, and it's back to one of these things about authentic partnerships and all the partners that we have, whether creators or musicians or whatever. I sit down with them and Jeff and we sit down one-on-one and if we don't have a If we don't have a vibe, then I don't think there's going to be a there there. Okay, maybe we'll do a sponsored post or whatever, but we're not going to do a partnership with you unless you and I are going to have a relationship so we can have conversations. And I think that comes out when someone is a paid kind of promoter versus like you're part of the brand. He's given ideas and he's like, hey, we should do this. Let me do a merch drop. It fits within his lifestyle. He's a surfer. He's super healthy, right? Like The brand is cool. So those kind of things were super important for us. And when they're

saying we,

they're saying we, you know, the best thing happened. And it was interesting. My mom said something. She was like, someone was like, why do people keep saying it's Brody Jenner's brand? And I'm like, that is the greatest thing that could ever happen.

Right?

Right. Like, I want everybody to think that, right? Because, because it is. It's part, it's part of him and it's part of our partners. And when people start saying we versus Oh, that's Jason's thing. Like, I don't— like, it's not my thing, it's our thing, right? And that's again back to community and people being involved, and it's authentic. When he posts about it, you can tell it's not forced, right?

So what did you learn? Obviously that's been an amazing partnership. Yeah, on both sides, right? There's many that don't work out.

Oh, I've had them.

You've had them? Yeah, we've all had them, right? Talk to me about if you're an entrepreneur, you're, you know, trying to get the first talent that you're working with, first celebrity, first influencer. What are the signs? We talked about the signs that, you know, it's right. They're using we, you know, the 20-minute Zoom call. You don't— neither of you want to get off 2 hours later, right? There's just like a very demonstrated use. Talk to me about the early signs when it isn't going to go right and like what that looks like and how you get out of those type of situations without, without like causing permanent brand damage.

Yeah. Well, I'll give a new-to-world brand example. Most of the partnerships we've had with Loco and Mamitas have been good, but we met John Daly about 10 years ago, and he's like, I want to do this brand. He's like, everyone's making money off my name. And he's just, he's like the most authentic guy. He's the guy you think he is.

Yep.

He's great. He's amazing.

We work with him too.

Yeah, he's awesome. And so we're like, okay, there's an opportunity here. And this was kind of our first foray into caffeine after Loco, because we were going to do hard tea, lemonade, you know, John Daly. Everything from the can to the plan to the retailers, everything was— we had it locked and dialed, right? And there was nothing. And this is kind of when Twisted Tea was taking its rise. And, you know, look, we did everything right. We spent money. We did incentive for consumers and for distributors and retailers to go to John's house and golf for the weekend, which was the most amazing thing.

Right.

He was super engaged. It just didn't work. And sometimes it's just, it doesn't work. And I think as opposed to like keeping throwing money on it and throwing money on it and throwing money on it, you know, I just called John. I was like, hey, man, listen, we did, we did X, Y, and Z and we're not seeing the pull. We're not seeing the pull at retail. Something is missing in how we're connecting with the consumer of yours. Maybe they're not shopping where we're selling. Maybe we're not targeting correctly. And, you know, he's like, listen, man, I really appreciate you doing this because in the past I just won't hear from them. Or,

you know, we took the shot.

Yeah, we took the shot, man. And we did everything we can, like take the IP back. And he's now got a new thing, Good Boy Vodka. Yeah, that's doing really well. Like it was— maybe it wasn't the right time or whatever. But again, I think this goes back to honesty, transparency, and communication with these partners and being like, hey, look, This is what we did, but it's not working, right? Like, maybe it's time we shut up shop and just know what that moment is. And you can tell from data response and rotation whether it is or isn't.

Have you guys built, as you've launched multiple brands, multiple SKUs, have you guys developed a framework of how to know when to kill something?

No. It's difficult because, again, that world we play between dream and reality.

Yes.

Right? And you're like, well, OK. In six months, this is going to happen. You know what I mean? And you're you're you're you're constantly six months ahead. Look, I think the most important thing back to communication, transparency, honesty is the people on the front lines know, right? And they can't be scared to be like, we need to change this. We need to alter our approach, or we need to get out of this, right? And I need it honest and I need it real.

Yeah,

right. Because, okay, this is not working. What can we change? Let's tweak. Let's, let's, let's, let's readjust. Let's fix the plane in flight. If we try this, we try this. If we tried multiple things, we've tried all of our levers and we pulled all our levers from marketing, from pricing to packaging to promotion to all these things, and it's still not working, then you just got to be honest, right? As much as you love something, it's just, it's just not there. But I think your people have to feel confident telling you this is not working.

And there's some real institutional courage needed for that.

Yes.

You have to have a culture where people can speak up.

Yes.

You have to have a culture where— and it's not like, hey, I'm making excuses for why the job that I'm doing or the project I'm in charge of isn't thriving. And that's something that gets cultivated day in and day out.

Yeah.

And, you know, when you think about your own leadership style, like, you've had so much good there and so many great people have come out of your org to go do other great things or to just stay with you for a long time and thrive. Like, how do you, how do you think about nurturing that?

Look, I think, I think one of the things that Jeff and I my co-founder, we do really well is we make people feel comfortable. And you can always— I know everyone has this— I hate that, like, again, these clichés like open-door policy and all that. But, you know, we have one-on-one check-ins. And this is— it takes a lot of time. They're 15 minutes. But we do it with every single employee at 6 months, a year, And then every year after, right? And we just, we hammer them out in like a couple weeks, right? It's 15 minutes. We have super confidential and people love that little connection. And we also get so much information where they feel comfortable. If they feel comfortable there, then they feel comfortable actually being out there and coming back to us. And then I think the second thing is we're like proponents like If someone wants to go somewhere else and do something different, like my president, my chief legal officer both went to Heineken, you know? And yeah, like, of course, that's, you don't love that, but like, I'm happy that they're able to now step up to that different level international company, big thing. And I'm happy for them, right? And they're always welcome back. Right? We've had people leave and they're like— we had a guy leave on a Friday and then Tuesday he's like, I made a mistake. No, no, that one we didn't let him back. That one was too quick, right? But over time, I would, I would definitely, you know, the opportunity is there to come back. And I think, I think, you know, I, you know, and I don't know him well enough. He preaches this enough, Gary Vee. I don't know if it's reality in his companies, but he's like, you work for them, they don't work for you. You know what I mean? Like, that, that is really the culture. And I would say that people feel in our, in our company, like, like, I'm like, what do you need from me? Right? Like, what can I do to help you achieve the things that you need to achieve for you to make money for yourself and your family and better your career? And I, I think most of our employees know that, and they'll call me like, hey, I need you to call this guy because I've tried X, Y, and Z, and I need you to come over the top. And I'm like, let's go, I'm in, right? And they have to feel comfortable doing that. Like you said, being like, okay, it's not a failure, right? It's not a failure. You tried everything you could. Sometimes I have to come in and smash one on the head, and that's that's a fun job for me. You know what I mean? That's a fun job. But they have to feel comfortable being like feeling like they failed something, right?

One thing we've talked a lot about on the podcast so far are kind of marquee marketing stunts or these like moments, especially when you didn't have anything. Yes. to like go and do, you know, big— make big moves in a way that might be really scalable or not scalable depending on what it is. Yeah. What were some of those early like stunting things that you look back on and it's great? Like a good example for us, early days, we could not hire an engineer for the life of us. So we ended up renting an airplane and flew it over Facebook headquarters. And it's one of those planes with like the banner and it said, tell Mark you quit, right? I don't know that we got any like hires from that, but it was just one of those moments where our brand came alive. Yeah. Another one I remember, there was a girl, this was like year 1. She, she bought a Cameo for like $30 and then she wrote in and she's like, hey, I'm in college. I was drunk coming back from the bar. I don't have like, I need a refund on this. Even though I bought the Cameo, it's great. I literally won't have like, be able to eat And our team, like, got her address and sent her a month's worth of ramen. Right. So those were those moments that really created Cameo. Yes. Tell me about some of the ones you guys have had over the history for the different brands.

Yeah, look, there's a couple that stand out and I think they're important. And also, you know, I think our brands are very complementary. We probably don't have data on this, but the amount of times someone probably drank a Four Loko and then bought a Cameo for one of their friends is— there's probably high— there's probably good data on that for sure. We started one of the first influencers. I think he's probably the original influencer, The Fat Jewish, right? And met Josh, actually super smart.

One of the first really early on.

Yeah, yeah, he was the first. He was the first one that actually got it. Yeah, he understood how to like, how to work it, right? And so we started working together and he's like, well, how do we work together? I was like, again, back to him, like, what is it like? What is something you really want to do that you can't do right now? He's like, All right. So we rented this little room in Chinatown. It was probably like a 5 by 5 foot room, white-walled. He's sitting in a, in a folding chair with his hair all up, just in the room. There's cameras everywhere, cameras on the wall, and there's 2 ropes on the ceiling. And so he posted, whoever brings me a Four Loko has a chance to win $10,000. And so we didn't know like what the response is. You know, it's middle of Chinatown. We gave the address. It was fifth. No, it was a minute and fifty-seven seconds later.

Someone was there.

Someone was there, right? And so we got all the you know we got her ringing the bell, coming up the stairs, walking down the hallway, and she walks in. She's like, "What the hell is going on in here?" And he's just sitting there. He's like, "What's up?" No, he's like. There's 2 strings up here. You got to pick which one to pull. And one was a whole bunch of cold cuts like salami, turkey, ham. The other one was a whole bunch of ones. And she picked the right one. All the ones came filtering down. She's crying. It's like a whole thing. He just gets up and walks out. And then she's telling her story. It was paying for her kids' like school. She worked down the street at Chase Bank. It was, it was a great story. So that was a fun one. The second one that comes to mind was a recent one that we did. And this one was more, again, more full loco and fun. It was around the election. Like, you know, again, we're just like, we just wanna like mess with people around the election. And so we hired Riley Reid, who is, I don't know, what would you call her? A creator?

Creator.

A creator. And we had her run for president. And basically she's like, you're fucked either way, so you might as well just vote for me. And then we made koozies out of fists and they sold out in like literally 30 seconds. Yeah. So again, we can get away with things like that because we don't take ourselves too seriously. Right. Right. And that was a relatively— and she just wanted to do it because it was fun. It was a relatively inexpensive campaign. But those, those are some of the fun ones that stand out.

What's the, what's the one that ended up you didn't do for whatever reason? that you still wish you're like, God, fuck, I wish we had done that?

You know, the crazy thing is, I think after the government stuff and the lawsuits and everything, like, it was, it, you know, it was a lot of stress. And we just, there was, we just wanted to stay under the radar.

Yeah.

Because we were so, it was like so overwhelming. And I'm not a, like, you know me, I'm not a very public person personally.

Right.

So for me, it was a lot, you know. So there was just so many iterations of stuff that we really like wanted to do, and we just kind of were like, all right, let's pump the brakes for a little bit here, you know what I mean? Like, let's just keep it— let's keep it down. Um, but I think, um, I can't think of one in particular. So,

so one last question that we ask everybody, and this has been absolutely fantastic: your death row meal.

Yeah.

So I want you— you can pick like Pick different items from different places. Yeah. And you get to have, uh, it's a 4-top, so you can bring 3 people dead or alive. Yeah. Who's there and what are you guys grubbing on?

Yeah, listen, um—

I know what you're drinking.

Yeah, of course, we're drinking a Four Loko with side of mamitas. Uh, um, I think that I'm gonna make this for me. I think if you have guests, you should probably think about them, but if this is my last meal—

Yeah, it's your last meal.

I have my— one of my biggest weaknesses is sweets. So it's just going to be like a frickin gluttony of ice cream and cookies and cakes and candies and sugar. Like, just like literally scooping sugar up and putting it in my mouth. Yeah, because I'm going down. And then maybe a side of chicken parm. But who's going to— who's going to be there?

Sure, Dr. Grossman's going to be really excited about that.

Yes. He'll love it. Hey, if I'm going down, I'm going down either way. Who's going to sit at the table? I think that I'd probably like to have a last meal with 2 of my grandmothers who were very influential in my life. I think it would be good for me. I don't know if I would see them thereafter or not, but I think it'd be good to have a last meal with them. And then I think The third person would be— man, you stumped me. I think the third person would probably be someone like Martin Luther King. Like, just, are these stories real? Have we been fed like fake stories? Like, give— I want to hear like the real stuff. Right? Like, what did you go through? How did you— because adversity stuff of that, like, is such another level to me. And understanding, like, I always think— we always think our stuff— and it is for us, it's tough, we went through a lot of shit, right? But the shit that other people actually had to go through, when your life's at risk, when your family's life's at risk, to go through those things and to hear those stories, that, that, that stuff's motivating for me.

I mean, I remember when Cameo went viral for Negative reasons the first time. Brett Favre got tricked into making this anti-Semitic cameo, and it was like national news. I'm on NBC Nightly News, ABC, etc., all after. And the big thing for us at that point, if if Brett had got canceled and lost his Wrangler ad, that would have capped forever. Like, who could join? Who could join? So this was truly an existential moment.

Yes.

And who did I get to spend that night with? Rishi actually had me over his house. Oh, it's perfect, right? One of our really good friends. And, and Rishi had just started going through all of his shit. Yeah. And he's interviewing me for YPO. We're at his house drinking scotch, right? And I remember literally being like, in the whole world, I don't know if there's anyone I'd rather be with than you right now, right? So I think it's so, it's so relevant. Uh, Jason, thank you so much. Real quick before we're done. Yeah. Talk about what's next for you guys. Like, anything you want to highlight? Like, what should we be looking out for?

Yeah, look, I think, I think, uh, for our industry, obviously for Loco, we've expanded internationally, um, which, um, has been crazy. We just entered our 30th country, Australia, uh, your favorite country.

My favorite country now.

Um, and so really understanding international business, which is back to a quick entrepreneurial point of it, Like, it is, it's so hard to start a business, but we take for granted that we get to start it in this country, I think, a lot. And obviously there's issues here, whatever, but working in other countries, I am like, wow, you know what I mean? Like, and I think we, we take for granted the opportunity that we have that you can do something here overnight. Yeah, it's gonna be hard. People are trying to knock you down, but we're, we, the, the problems we have in other countries they are so much more complicated than the problems here. Just even getting up and running, it's impossible. So it's something I'm very, very grateful for. I think there's always—

Well, that's why we got to make America loco again.

Right, right, right. I think Four Loko, we always come out with— we got some new innovations, new flavors. Packaging innovation's big now. This is a Tetra Pak that we're coming out with. We have espresso martini and mamitas. We have some other things. I always have a list about 10 things that we're considering. One may see the light of day. Look, Delta-9 THC is a big conversation piece right now. We're circling around that, trying to figure out where the government's gonna play on that. You know, we don't wanna be in the government's sights again, but maybe that's just where we're comfortable, so maybe we should. I don't know. I guess we're good at it. But I think for us, we're just gonna keep creating fun stuff. Like, we're never gonna make a 97-point Cabernet wine, right? But we'll do a canned wine with Fat Jewish called Babe, right? So it's finding those little moments and pieces where we can kind of enter ourself and have an occasion and a dialogue with the consumer that's different than what's happening.

Well, Jason, thank you for everything. And as a proud Mimitas investor, that one is about as good as it gets. So go try it out. Thank you so much. Thank you, man. This was great. And this was so much fun.

Appreciate it. Thanks.