Ecommerce the RIGHT way with Andreas Düss, Co-Founder Boreal Botanical

Hello and welcome to E Commerce Growth Stories. This is your hostess with the mostest, Juliana Jackson, aka the CLV lady. And also I am the Chief Evangelist for OmniConvert.

And this is Valentin Radu, CEO of OmniConvert. Thank you for tuning in today for a new episode of E Commerce Growth Stories.

Do you like snooping around?

I know I do. I don't know. Did you ever wonder what Sony company.

Uses to power their e commerce business?

Or Coca Cola?

Or Motorola or other big names in E commerce and retail? Well, today the secret is gonna be revealed and I'm talking about Vitex. Vitex is the first and only fully integrated commerce marketplace and OMS solution that offers fastest time to revenue and no upgrades like ever. So if you're an E Commerce brand and you're looking to to find a software that can really become a powerhouse to your business, providing you the best go to market speed, flexibility, daily updates and reports, and overall platform stability and agility. You really have to check these guys out. So make sure you go to visit vtex.com that's vtex.com today and give that.

E commerce business a bo back live with another episode of Ecommerce Growth Stories. It's Thursday and the lightning right now doesn't help Juliana. It matches my soul. For whoever is listening to this, I have a very bad light at the moment, but I'm hoping to, you know, brighten up the mood and my soul because I have a special guest here today joining myself and Valentin. I got Andrea's deuce, I hope I'm gonna. I'm saying your name right, right.

Close enough, close enough. It's all good.

Okay, so I have Andreas Deuce because it has like a new with the little, you know, dots and Andreas is the co founder of Boreal Botanic. So this guy I saw, I met this guy six, seven months ago. There you go. He's for who's listening. He's pointing his beverages. I met this guy six, seven months ago on LinkedIn. Of course, he blew my mind because he's one of the five founders that I can count that ever talked about product market fit, that ever talked about customer lifetime value, that ever talked about research and actually having a strategy, not just spending money on ads. Andres, super happy to have you today. How are you doing?

I'm really well. Thanks for having me here. I mean product market fit to just jump right in. I am one of the founders of Boreal and I, you know, introduce our drinks perhaps a little bit later. But I'm also A co founder of a marketing agency. I'm from Toronto in Canada. Well, I'm originally from Germany and then I lived in the UK for a long time and then we moved on to Canada. I'm one of the co founders of a marketing agency that specializes in working with food and drink clients. And so as a result of this, I have an awful lot of access to data and I. Within Nourish Marketing, I run a section called Nourish Nurture. And Nourish Nurture specializes in helping food startups get off the ground and become successful now in North America. Within the first five years of their life, 82% of all new businesses, specifically food startups, they fail. And out of these 82%, 47%, 47% of all that, they fail. So nearly half they fail because they don't achieve product market fit. And this is why product market fit is so. Is so important, right? And it cannot be. Valentine had enough. He's not listening to this nonsense.

No, I think his headphones died.

It's like, enough of this.

No, go on. Because I was, I was, I was digging what you were. You were saying. So you're saying that a lot of these companies fail. This 40% of companies fail because they do not achieve product market fit.

47%. Juliana. Half. Call it half. And product market fit, for those who don't know what this is, because it's one of those marketing words. Product market fit is a fancy word for saying solving a consumer problem, right? I mean, people buy products to solve a problem. And there is this all this old saying, nobody buys a quarter inch drill, everybody buys a quarter inch hole. Nobody buys a lawnmower, everybody buys a green lawn, right? And so people buy products to solve problems. If your product doesn't solve a consumer problem, then you don't have a company, you have a hobby at best.

Like that, an expensive hobby.

Well, okay, Valentine, you're so absolutely right. We had. I'm not going to name any names because I don't want to embarrass anybody, but we had people come to us or two years ago and they had taken their retirement funds out, they had taken their children's education fund and they wanted to put it into a business that was making a product that had 500 other me too products already in market and their product was indistinguishable from, you know, all the other products. And the reason they wanted to do this is because all their neighbors and all the people who cared about them, people who loved them, told them how wonderful this product Was, oh, this is wonderful. You should bring it to market. Never, ever take advice from people who love you because they will lie to you.

Depending on the advice and the topic, I might, I might add here, Andrea, not in business, right?

People who love you will lie to you because they don't want to hurt your feelings, right. And because they genuinely like your tomato sauce or they like their cookie that you, they like your chocolate chip cookie. They like all of these things that you're making. But they will, you know, they, they are not the people to listen to if you want to make sure that you're solving a consumer problem. So when we started with, with, with this, I mean Boreal as a company, what we do, we brew alcohol free, sugar free tonics out of medicinal mushrooms, functional mushrooms. This one here contains lion's mane. We have another one with Rishi which helps with relaxation and immunity. And we have another one with chaga chaga energizers. For us, our product market fit is very simple and it's expressed in our, it's expressed in our tagline is simple drink something better. Something that doesn't, you know, it's for people who don't want to drink alcohol, which is growing and people who are interested in functional food, which is another market segment that's growing, specifically people interested in functional mushrooms. I don't know what this is like in Europe. I'm not familiar with the European numbers.

We're still alcoholics here. We still like to get pissed.

Surprisingly enough, a lot of this is starting in the UK and the Brits are not known for the moderation. Traditionally when it comes to alcohol, they.

Sure, that's why they're set up already.

So from a product marketplace, we started this company not because I got interested in mushrooms or no particular other reason. We started this company because we saw a consumer problem that needed solving, which is what do you drink if you don't want a beer, but you also don't want to coke and you don't want something that's full of sugar and you don't want to look like that sad guy who's not drinking, right? So product market fit. I was really surprised, Juliana, when you reacted so strongly about Product market Fit because for me it's one of the foundations of getting a business right. Like if you don't have product market fit, you know, as Valentine was saying, you have an expensive hobby if you're lucky.

I was surprised because I think since I started working with Valentin, which is actually two years ago, right, very soon, two years ago, I've spoken with maybe 500, 600 brands over the last two years. And besides yourself, I think the other person that I heard product market fit was Thomas from Turmeric. Right, Valentin, Yeah. And I think that's also in food.

And drinks and also about drinking something better.

Better, yeah.

He.

He has this turmeric shots. He's actually a football player in Premier League in the uk. Amazing guy. And yeah, I mean, just you and him so far that I have talking about this. And you know, it's funny because it prompts me with a question. A lot of people consider that if they're selling a product and they got a lot of reviews for that product, they consider it as product market fit. But like, in a way, the best, I guess, proof to know that you have product market fit is repeat purchases from the same person. But if someone just buys from you one time and never come back and you could have 3,000 reviews, it doesn't mean anything because the ultimate vote is you, you know, replenishing and consuming that product. Right?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, repeat purchases are the be all and end all. That's the proof of you having solved somebody's problem. Right? Because, I mean, people will try, they'll give all kinds of things a try, purchase them once, and then the experience is kind of, heh, right, it's me. And then. And then they move on to the next thing. And especially right now where it is so unbelievably easy to flirt with different brands and flirt with different products. Right. People are really trying things out in the craft brewing, the alcohol craft brewing industry. There's some interesting consumer data out there. With large beer brands like the mainstream beer brands, people tend to be brand loyal. So they buy Budweiser or they buy, you know, whatever, it doesn't matter. Right? I mean, those mainstream beer brands, people tend to be loyal within craft beer, people tend to be loyal to craft beer as a category. So they don't cut any of the big brews, but within the craft brewing category, they bounce around and they pick up the beer that they really like that particular day or that they feel fits that occasion. So really getting repeat, getting brand loyalty and repeat customers is incredibly important. That's the proof at the end of the day.

I agree. But I wanna, I wanna ask you something. So how did you come up with, you know, boreal botanic, botanical, what, you know, what was your defining moment? Right. How did you know that this is the need in the market? Did you do any type of research? So I know you were posting something about Your wife. And how did you come up with this? But I'm just assuming that. No, not everyone is just following you, like myself on LinkedIn. So tell me the story of how this came on, this came about.

So a bunch of things came together. I've got three young kids, a little bit old enough, but I had at the time, and what, three years ago, they were still a bit younger. And I noticed that even small amounts of alcohol were really affecting my sleep. Like, you know, I have a beer or two in the evening, I'd wake up at 3 o' clock in the morning. I couldn't go back to sleep till 5. And I looked into this and I was like, oh, that's interesting. So that's what alcohol does. And this how, you know, how sugar gets metabolized and when your liver kicks in. And then I came across the book Sober Curious by Ruby Warrington. And I thought that was really interesting because she goes into the entire medicinal thing, what alcohol does, the effects it has, how it affects your hormonal household, how it affects the reward center in your brain, all of these things. And so I said to my wife, I'm going to do 30 days without alcohol completely and see if I notice any changes. And after 30 days, I noticed I was sleeping a lot better. I was a lot less grumpy. There was a lot less grumpy old man syndrome happening.

I wasn't much.

I was more patient with my kids, but I was generally just the kind of a person that I was happier with being myself. And so, you know, this may sound strange to Eastern Europeans, but, like, alcohol had never been that important to me in my life. Like, it hasn't, you know, it didn't play a gigantic, a large role in my life. And so I just say, well, screw it, I'm just not going to drink for a while. And it wasn't like a, I'm going to be sober for the rest of my life. Like, I still have a glass of champagne at Christmas or my wife's birthday or, you know, if somebody has a really nice wine, I'll have a glass. I'll have, I'll try it.

Yeah.

Generally speaking, I just don't drink alcohol anymore. At the same time, was getting really interested in functional mushrooms and the benefits of functional mushrooms. And, you know, it's one of those things that in folk medicine has been around for thousands of years, but we've forgotten about it. I mean, you know, chaga in Russia and in Siberia is part of mainstream cancer treatment, right? Lion's mane and turkey Tail are really supportive when it comes to lion's mane specifically, they're powerful nootropics, so they help the brain build new pathways. And there's the solid research behind this, like Queen's University here in Kingston in Canada has spent years researching the nootropic qualities of lion's mane. So there are all these things happening that can help you feel your best and can help you perform best and can help you relax, but without any of the side effects of alcohol. And so I put the two things together because I work in food, because I have a background in food, I was very lucky that I knew an awful lot of people. I spoke to a friend of mine who's in food production and I said, look, if I put a brand together, do you want to see if we can put something together here that turns into a product? And that took us about a year, sorry. Of exploration and working together and testing and failing miserably and taking bad advice and talking to the wrong people and. And finally we had something, we said, you know, we think there's something there. We took it to a distributor and said, look, if we can bring, if we can make this, would you sell it? And there was one guy at the distribution company who said, not only this, but I want this, we need this. This is the next best thing. So if you make it, I'll take it. And so we started making it and we launched officially in February this year. February, late February this year. And we're now distributed across Canada in independent and health food. And we're just about to dip our toes into the US market and expanding on there. So that is pretty much the backstory. So the backstory for me, you know, when I work with entrepreneurs and help them launch their food business, my advice to them is always, if you imagine a Venn diagram, and on the one side it sort of says, this is what I care about and this is what I'm good at. And on the other side it says, this is a consumer problem that needs solving. And then you overlap them in the middle is where you should start your business. Right. Because starting a business is really hard. So if you start a business you don't care about, then it's really difficult to work those 18 hour days that frequently you need to work to make sure you get the business off the ground.

I agree. And I think this is what separates, you know, just classic brands by purpose brands. Me and Valentin, since, you know, seeing so many clients and so many users, we just realized that for a brand for e commerce company, to really be interested in the things that you're talking about in customer lifetime value optimization, in customers, in engagement and so on, you have to have a purpose. Because if you're just there to burn money on ads and get clients and just sell. I think even if me and Valentin told the most beautiful story about customer lifetime value, no one is going to listen to it because it doesn't stick to who they are and what's their mindset. And I know you are one of the most active people in the CPG community because I don't have time for that Slack group. I wish I had more time for that Slack group because I'm everywhere, as you know. But I always. When you talk or when you're on Clubhouse, I always appreciate listening to you. So I wanted to ask you, do you think that the people that are entering the CPG industry, the vertical, I mean, the entry barrier is not that hard. You know, it's not that big. It's kind of easy to get into this industry. And as you said, there's a lot of me too products. How do you think they are ready to, you know, to compete in this market? Because a lot of them miss on the, you know, most important part, the way you're structured as a company to make money or your processes and procedures and resources allocation. So a lot of people try to compete on prices or try to compete on discounts and promotions, but the actual part, that's not competable, it's actually the core of the business. So what are you advising these people that are entering, how they can build the core to survive, just like how you did?

Yeah, I mean, one of the first things that we did, I have two partners in the company. The first partner is our COO and he was also experienced with food formulation. So he takes care of the formulation of the drink and the production of the drink. I take care of the sales and the marketing and the brand building. And then one of the very first things we did after we had our initial structure in place and after we had our initial distribution agreements in place, we. We had a financial guy buy himself into the company. We did evaluation at the time of about a million dollars for the company, even though we hadn't. We hadn't made a single sale, but we had contracts in place that supported that valuation. He purchased himself a minority slice of the company. And as. And the. Apart from a cash injection, part of the value he brought in was two years of CFO services that we don't have to pay for get. You know, I Cannot possibly overstate the boring and how important it is you need to get your financials under control. I was again, you know, I work with, on I have, I wear two hats, right? The entrepreneur and working with entrepreneurs. I was talking to a really nice entrepreneur yesterday. A lovely product, a really good idea and no profitability whatsoever for the next. Just impossible to be profitable with the business model that he was presenting to me. And I said well how are you making money? Like how much are you making on this? And he says well I'm making about a dollar a pop a product, right. And I said to myself before or after you paid for your own time? And he said oh no, I'm not paying myself. And I said well again, you know, you don't have a business, you have a hobby, which is nice if that's what you can, if you can support yourself in another way. But it is so important to make sure that you have a path to profitability. And at the beginning that's not always easy because you may have to buy smaller quantity ingredients than you'd like. You may have to pay more for manufacturing than you'd like, right? Because it's smaller, it's smaller quantities, etc, etc etc and that's fine. The first year, perhaps the first two years if you have that kind of Runway you don't have to worry terribly about being profitable make you know, taking money out of the company. But you need to have a path to profitability and that past the profitability needs to be realistic. And one thing I see time after time after time and even we got caught with this are unexpected expenses, right. That are just thrown at you from a variety of.

What are some example of those unexpected expenses? Because I'm going to you right now, tell me.

I mean, you know, you talk a lot in your, in your profession and your focus is a lot about direct to consumer, right. We as a company are actually not DTC focused, we're retail focused. Yeah, but we have a dtc, you know. Yeah, we have a DTC presence. So shipping how much it's going to cost us to ship stuff. Especially in a country like Canada where you have like, you know, a total of 500 people live in an area, you know, like five times the size of Europe. It's expensive to get stuff to people, right?

What you guys have their purolator, right in Canada?

Yeah, I heard some things. Product freezing in winter. We lost 50% of our product in February. We had to stop shipping in February because due to Covid it took longer. And so product would Stand in trucks in minus 30 degrees in Edmonton, it would freeze and explode. Right? And people were. And it wasn't just us. I mean there were so many drinks companies and they all had to stop shipping. And so we had to replace because we couldn't just say, well sorry, sucks to be you. You paid for it. It's not our responsibility anymore. You know, we had to say, look, we sorry this happened, we're going to send you free replacement. So now we lost, we lost the, the product. We lost the initial shipping fee, we lost the initial packaging cost and we have to write new product, new packaging, new shipping fee and get the whole thing out. Plus the time we have to spend on customer service apologizing to people. You know that the stuff arrived and it was soaked.

Yes. But Andreas, regarding your direct to consumer approach, it's clear that if you want to get into this game, you need to do the math properly. And of course you need to take into account the unexpected costs however you are playing in this field. And my question for you is regarding your. How do you, how do you see, let's say, the opportunities to tap into your initial cohort of super consumers. So the ones that started, the ones that loved your product, the ones that waited for the replacement in February, how do you tap into this initial audience and how do you suggest to other entrepreneurs and e commerce people to improve customer lifetime value?

You know what, there is really no magic to this, right? And then the first thing I suggest is don't sell shit. And you'll be surprised how many people sell. I mean there are a whole bunch of drinks on the market and that's coming on the market then that are full of spurious claims. There is one particular drink, it claimed that drinking it would be the equivalent of 30 minutes of meditation. And I looked at the ingredient list, there were some, there were some good ingredients in there, you know, some, some botanicals. But we call these, we call these drinks internally our name for this unicorn piss. You know, they, they sort of make a promise. They're all in sort of, you know, cans that look the same. They have this sort of, you know, pastel colored cans and sans serif typefaces kind of stuff and people buy them once and then never again because they don't fulfill their brand promise. So when you're selling a product that's made with integrity and made with a story, you know, chaga that we're selling, for example, this is wild harvested, which means, you know, we basically collected in the forest of Northern Ontario and it's Them being used to brew this drink, it actually does give you an energy boost. We don't make this claim because we can't, because Health Canada and the, you know, the FDA don't like these things. But when I drink it, I experience an energy boost. You need to connect with a group of people that share your values, and then you need to relentlessly communicate these values, and then you need to deliver product that deliver against these values. Right? So if you're saying we're creating products, for example, I'll give you an example. We got, we recently changed our ingredient deck. We had an ingredient on there was basically natural flavors. And we had this on there for two reasons. A, because we didn't want to give our entire formulation away. And B, there was a legal requirement to do this, or so we thought. And we got pushback from nutritionists saying, you know, natural flavors. People are hiding stuff behind us. What are you hiding? I said, we're not hiding anything. You know, we just, we are legally required to call these ingredients a natural flavor. And then we took some legal advice and we talked to our, we talked to some of our suppliers and we found a way to actually, we're. Rather than natural flavors, what we're putting in there was a distillate of blueberries. So blueberries get distilled and then that distillate is full of blueberry flavor, but you don't have any sugar left in it. And that distillate is something that we're using in one of our drinks. And so we checked out if that was something we can put on our ingredient list. And it turned out that it was legal to put it there. And so now we're putting this on there. So this policy of radical transparency about what we do and how we create things, not trying to hide a sweetener, not trying to hide a nasty ingredient, just because it's, it's easier, right? And it makes an easier formulation. That's really important. You need to find a commonly shared value as people. I had a. One of the things that I love is the amount of user generated content we're getting on social where people are sharing their experiences, right? And people saying, look, I just bought 24 cans. Join my cult. You know, I can't live without, without the Rishi anymore. And the second I read words like I can't live without this anymore, then I know we've done something right.

That's awesome.

And I still cannot rule, right? That's the first advice. What's the second? I'm following through I mean, no, but that was genius. You're on LinkedIn already.

Yeah. You're quoted for life with that.

Yeah. So let me know the second advice for people wanted to improve customer lifetime value.

I, I think be human is really important, right? I mean we have a, we have an email drip after somebody purchases the first time from us like everybody else. Right?

And.

The first time you buy the first email you get is not an invitation to buy again. It's not a discount offer. It's none of those things. Actually, I don't believe in discounts. That's another thing we can talk about if you're interested. I think discounts are horrible.

I'd love to talk about it. Yeah.

So the first thing that we do is we introduce ourselves. This is where the product is brewed, this is who we are, this is where we're from. If you have any questions, here's my personal email address. Let us know what you think of the, of the drinks, the good, the bad, the ugly. Let us think how long it took us, you know, if it ever takes us too long to deliver to you guys, here's my phone number. Give me a call. Text me. I have been surprised by how many people are actually texting us and asking questions via text because text is such a personal medium, right? And I've always been wary about using text and brand to consumer communication because I hate it when brands text me as it feels intrusive. But by making our number available and people choosing to text us, I've been blown away by the volume of texts we've been receiving. So be human is really important. Be the person behind it, make yourself available. And when people have a question, answer it within five minutes and don't say, you know, don't use corporate language like we had a, we had a request a couple of days ago and you learn from your consumers so much it's not even funny, right? We had a request a couple of days ago where somebody said, hey, I'd like to buy a subscription. We offer a subscription, but your current subscription offerings aren't serving my needs because I don't have much storage space. I don't want to buy every 30 days. And I said to her, well, how often do you want to buy? And she said, well, every week. And I was like, why on earth didn't we think of that?

Right?

We just put it out there, 30 days, 60 days. And I think quite frankly that's because we did it because everybody else does it, right? 30 days, 60 days because of the.

Shipment costs or Whatever. I think there are many aspects over here and people which are, let's say, aware about the environment, will. Would actually think that you're not caring about the environment because. Because of that. So there are many angles at the same. At the same problem. Yeah.

You know, but I was blown away.

Yeah.

By this. And it took us 10 minutes to implement. Right now people can buy every seven days, every. Every 15 days, 30 and every 60 days.

That's great. Yeah. So, Andreas, how are you making sure that people feel that you're human?

Our tone of voice, availability, our social is very, very much.

Is it something that you're constantly tracking? I mean, we are here. I've had this love ahead relationship with NPS back in 2000, I think in 2011 I got it. And since then I'm a lifetime fan of the nps. What's your take on this and how are you tracking the customer experience and if the customers think that you're human?

Well, you know what I mean. I track the customer experience frequently by calling them. As simple as that. Yeah.

Because your size allows you to. But let's talk in the near, from the hundreds.

I think in a year I'll still do the same. I see no reason not to do this ever. Yeah, I honestly don't. I had.

Well, the sample size, the statistical significance will argue with you because you're. You. You can't be a one man army. I mean, I don't know if you have 100,000 orders per week, then yeah, fair.

But you can still take the temperature.

Yeah.

You know, I was really blown away recently. We had an email. We've been really lucky. Like people have been coming to us and saying, we want to sell your product. And one of the people that came to us, we got emails from two brands. One was Amazon, the other one was Walmart, and saying, we want you on our digital platform and we'd like to help you. Amazon is complex, I'm going to say. I'm going to use the word complex. And they have their rules and they're not necessarily easy to understand. And I think they know this because I recently got a survey from them where the questions basically were saying, we hear we're being really hard to use. Do you agree? Yes or no? Walmart, strangely enough, was the most human interaction I have ever had in my entire life with such a large company. We are not even a rounding error with a rounding error on a rounding error on a rounding error on their spreadsheet. We have a personal account manager. My emails to them get answered within half an hour, if I have a problem, somebody calls me and helps us, you know, helps us set stuff up. The experience of onboarding with Walmart has been a masterclass in being human. Despite being a large huge corporation, they.

Function on customer lifetime value too. And RFM and everything that we're talking about.

I've been singing their praises with everybody I've been meeting just because they have been. The experience of onboarding with them has been second to none. You know, I called out their team on LinkedIn and they responded.

Excellent. Andreas. If we are to get to the third advice, because my hidden agenda is to make sure that we're getting some memorable quotes from you. What's, what's your.

About being or maintaining building customer lifetime value?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Keep innovating, right? Don't, don't rest on your laurels. Don't just sit back and say, you know, I've done my bit, we need to, you know, and that's it. I think it's really important. Like in the first, in the first three, four months of our, since launch, we have iterated at an absolute breakneck speed and we have spent a lot of money optimizing and iterating and I can't see that stop. I think it's really important. Listen, learn, iterate. One of the first iterations we made and customer lifetime value doesn't. I'm going to use this from a retail example. Our first case box, like the case size orator were 24 cans. And we did this because it was convenient, easy and cheap to produce a flat shrink wrapped out. Retailers, especially small retailers, hated it because now they have to store all these cans and they have to buy a lot of cans. So we iterated down to 12 to a product of 12. Like now that they can buy cases of 12 cardboard, recyclable, no more plastic, all the good stuff. Then we heard from consumers, we love your product. And we're observing that people were going to supermarkets, they bought our products there, they sampled the product there and then they went online. And because we offer free shipping on 12 cans and more, they were buying their volume stuff from us because that you could have just get a chip. So they bought 12, 24, 36 cans. And they also told us, you know what, when I'm shopping in the supermarkets, I'd like to buy more than what I'm buying because I need it that day. But it's a pain in the Proverbial to pack 24 of these cans into, you know, my shopping basket. I don't Want to do that? Can't you guys offer boxes? The reason we didn't offer boxes initially is because we looked at the costs of it and said, geez, that's another expense we have to put on and we need to make sure we stay profitable. Because this came back from the consumer. We looked at it again. We made send out more emails, made more phone calls, and we found a way to make it happen. So just, you know, it's. Launching a product is really exhausting. Finding a manufacturer, getting the right insurance, getting your formulation done. And there is this. And again, I see this with people I work with. They get their stuff into retail, they get their stuff into distribution and they go, oh. And then they do nothing for a while because they're so freaking exhausted. It's been such a hard journey. And I always tell to them that is the biggest mistake you can make because in the first year after launch, the consumer will tell you all the things, all the options where you fucked up and you don't even know it. Right? You're not solving the problem you think you were solving. You're not doing it in a way that's the most consumer friendly. Using language the consumer doesn't understand. You have a flavor the consumer doesn't love. And if you are, if you go out of your way, if you start listening to the consumer, if you make yourself available, if you call people, calling people, I'm aging myself here. But calling people is one of the most underrated tools you can possibly do. Because nobody calls anybody anymore.

You know, absolutely.

Everybody's like, I'm gonna email you, we're gonna text you, I'm gonna message you on Facebook, on WhatsApp or on LinkedIn. Like, you know, I have 15 freaking messages to follow just in case somebody. And then I still miss people. So I message, I keep messaging you, I say, where, where are you messaging me that nobody has ever heard of? And so just call me, pick up the damn phone, dial my number, it's everywhere. And give me a call, I'll pick up, I don't mind what time of day. So what I'm saying is calling people is the most under tools and learning about whether your product is actually, if you have the product market which you thought you had, or whether it's not, talk to people, have that personal connection and then learn, learn, learn, learn, learn. And before you enter this race, be aware that the first year after launch, I think that's your opportunity to fine tune, right? Because some of the things we iterated in the last couple of Months. We can, and we could, because we're only in small stores right now. We're not at a Loblaws right now. We're not at, you know, Costco right now. If you would have done the same thing with them, they would have looked at us and say, you guys are Muppets. Like, you can't do this. This is a complete. Like, you know, we have to get you fresh into our planograms. We have to get you fresh into our systems. But because we did it very much at the beginning when we were perhaps at five stores or 10, and those were friends of ours who liked the product, they gave us feedback, and they helped us iterate. So never rest on your laurels. Always keep an eye on things. And again, this is something. When I work with my clients, my students, you know, I'm a huge believer in getting people to fill out a SWOT analysis. And again, you know, I've seen people come to me and they say, here's my SWOT analysis. No proud. And I said, well, how old is this? And I saw it's about five years old. And I said, well, it's worth it. Like, five years ago, the world was such a different place. So, I mean, it's been a very long answer. Valentin, I'm sorry about this, but my.

He can keep up. He's used to me. I speak like this all the time. I trained him.

You know, be nimble, be agile, and learn, learn, learn, learn. And then act on your learning.

I love it. So just to make sure that I understand something, proverbial means. S. Right.

Sorry.

You said earlier that, you know, it hits you in the proverbial. Does that mean it hits you in the ass?

Yes, it does.

Okay, cool. Just. Just for everyone that's listening. Started to make sure, because I'm gonna. I'm totally stealing that. You're on mute, Valentin. Of course.

Still on mood.

You're still on mute.

Did you mute him?

No. Why would I do that?

I don't know. Trying to get rid of it.

Are you back, Valentin? You're back.

I'm back.

It's great. Great live television. Good stuff. So I'm curious. You said that you talk a lot about talking to customers, and based on what you're saying, I know you're tickling my ear and Valentin's ear like you're whispering in our ears that you're a fan of the jobs to be done methodology. Is that right?

Sorry. What's up? To Valentin or myself?

No, to you.

Oh, sorry. I'm sorry.

No, I was saying, oh, my bad, my bad is my Internet, of course, because everything happens when you're live. So I'm used to it. So I was saying that based on how you are speaking about the importance of talking to customers, I can sense that you are a fan of the jobs to be done methodology.

Yes, absolutely.

How did you heard about it? How did you get into it.

Really? I mean, I've been working in marketing, first in tech and then in food for like 20 years. Right. And I've always been a great fan of understanding like that. This whole idea of understanding a consumer problem has always been at the forefront of my mind. And so it's not something I honestly can't. It's just the way I think. Like there wasn't a moment where I said I had this great epiphany, you know, it's like, oh, well, this is things, this is how things are going to be. And aren't I a genius? I'm always slightly puzzled how people can't think like that. Like, I'm always sort of slightly confused when people don't think like that. So that's, that's really what it comes down to. You know, I, I'm, I have a big, I have a big sign in, in my office and it just says, be clear, not clever. You know, if your grandmother, if your grandmother can't understand what you're talking about, then you're not talking clearly enough. If you're using buzzwords, then you're being lazy. You're being too lazy to explain things clearly, right? Yeah. And I think one of the things, you know, as I'm getting a little bit older, I've lost the fear of making a fool out of myself, you know, And I can't tell you how many meetings I've been in where I was sitting in a meeting and I had no idea what people were talking about. There was somebody giving a presentation and I just don't know what they meant. And the words made no sense to me. And like, you know, 15 years ago when I was like, I don't know, you're in your 20s, you're too embarrassed to say anything because your assumption is I'm stupid, right? Your automatic assumption is like, I'm stupid. I'm not getting this, I'm not understanding this. And now when I don't get it, I say, excuse me, I have no idea what this means. Can you explain this to me? Nine times out of 10, the person who is giving the presentation has no idea what they're talking about. And if you start pushing, it's just a sort of the string of words that sound good together but have no meaning whatsoever. Right. So that, for me, it's my personal mission to not allow this in any of my companies. I was looking, I was approving a newsletter earlier on, and I think I must have removed about 15 buzzwords and say, you know, remove, remove, remove, remove, replace. And, and I have, like, I have a little, A little, little code and say rph and it stands for replace with human.

I love that. I love that.

Andres, I think you're, you're. You're such an authentic speaker. Besides being an entrepreneur. I think it's inspiring to see that entrepreneurs are actually getting without being, let's say, so sophisticated and using this, these buzzwords. However we saw that is this trend to talk in acronyms and in, let's say, new trends and so on. And I think this bullshit detector that the customers have are actually stopping those people to be understood at the end of the day because this, let's say, wave of being trendy or being in the new hype, let's say. And anyway, it's refreshing to see that. I have one last question for you, which is not regarding your, let's say, entrepreneurial journey, but it's your human journey. I sense that behind this, let's say, authentic leader, which is innovating, which is thriving, which is struggling, which is learning from his own mistakes, there's say, person that got through, through a lot to get here. And my question is, what was the number one mistake that you've did in the past and that allowed you to become who you are right now and what you've learned out of that experience.

Biggest mistake is that you think you have to be somebody you're not. You know, and that goes into this entire thing. I mean, it's. When I started working in advertising and I started working in London at Ogilvy Great Agency, it was really difficult for me at least, and perhaps not so much for other people to trust myself, because you are constantly surrounded by people who, whether through projection or fact, let you know that they are cleverer than you or they are more, you know, they are higher up. And there is a constant scrambling up, up that ladder. Yeah. And when you're young or when I was young, I just didn't have that detector at all. You know, I was just constantly impressed and frequently intimidated by these people. And it took me an awfully long time, a really, really, really long time to realize that everybody, almost everybody, maybe Richard Branson doesn't but that 99%, 99.9% of all people really have no clear idea about anything. And they're just making it up as they're going along frequently, not always trying to be the best they can. And once you start realizing this and internalizing this, then the fear for me, you know, it was really liber. I said earlier on I lost my fear of sounding stupid and I lost it when I asked my first stupid question. And I was really quite young and I was, I was sitting on the board of. I had been elected to the board of a non for profit. And I thought, you know, that was a real thing, that was like a status symbol for me. And so I was sitting on this board and I was listening to the presentation of the, the, the person running it and I had no idea what she was talking about. Like not, not even the slightest. I didn't say anything. And afterwards I expressed to another board member who I trusted, I said, look, I didn't understand this, like, you know, what was she talking about? And then the sport member, who was quite a bit older, he was in his 60s, he looked at me and said, since Andreas, I had no idea either. And I was like, oh my God, why didn't you say something? You know, And I said, well, I thought it was just me. And I said, are you crazy? Like I've been looking up to you. You're like this hero of mine and you're telling me like, you know, you're just as clueless as I am. And that for me was a real breakthrough moment, right, where I said to myself, well, I'm never going to do this again. And it turned out that the person who was presenting was hiding information and was using complex language to hide that information. And you know, that's why nobody. And everybody around the table was nodding and saying, oh, amazing, fantastic. And nobody had the faintest idea what she was actually talking about. That for me was a real, was a real breakthrough. I can't stress there is a Buddhist principle, I think, Juliana, you're familiar with it, of beginner's eyes approaching things with beginner's eyes. And what this means is approach new things without any preconceived notion of any kind, if you can, and judge them for what they are. And I always try and do this, I fail miserably many, many, many, many times in doing this. But it's a good thing to keep in mind, right? You approach people with beginners eyes and not judging them by what they look like, sound like where they come from, but you can also approach situation with beginners eyes and say, well, why can't I make a drink out of mushrooms? Just because nobody's done this before and just because, you know, it's, it's mushrooms, why can't I do this? Let's just give this a shot. And so losing the fear of sounding stupid was really important in my life. And learning about the principle of beginner's eyes and approaching things without fear, without prejudice and without preconceived notion, that's for me personally, I'm not suggesting that's true for everybody, but for me personally, that's really important.

Yeah, I have to support you on that. It's actually a personal aha moment that I got actually three days ago in the mornings. I have this privilege of living near a forest. So besides being all about technology, data, whatever, entrepreneurship, I have this privilege to live near a forest. And I'm taking my morning walk and runs with my wife. So we go out there, we see the sunrise and I was looking at her, she had this light on her. And I realized this, this, this thing, what if I would be teleported, you know, like spawned in, into this moment and I can see this beautiful creature that is my wife. What I would be doing differently if I'm just spawned right now, here I'm, I'm leaving and it's like play, you know what I would be doing differently instead of getting this, let's say past experience, having this, let's say normal way of looking at things. And for me it was such an eye opening moment when I got there. And I felt like I need to do this every time. I need to always wonder what I would be doing differently if I would be spawned into this very moment. And I can leave this moment without the past, without the present, say assumptions, without anything that I got from the past, without this backpack of experiences. But live just today, just very moment. Because at the end it's all about the present moment. It's not about the past nor the future. Because the future is just an assumption. We are struggling to keep it, to make it, to tweak the reality to our, let's say, desires. While the past is just a memory. You know, we, if we lose our memory, what who we are anymore.

Absolutely, I agree. It's getting very deep. Juliana, what do you have to say?

I was, I was actually, I was actually thinking about finding stuff. This is who I am. This is who I am. Like I was thinking like, look at these rich guys. While I'm here living in the Jungle of the concrete jacket. I was like, look at them talking about life and meditating. And I'm here like, yeah, no, I'm kidding. No, I think I also approach the same thing, you know, I approach it the same way. I'm very candid, and I try to, you know, start with, you know, new eyes, with everyone that I meet. I don't judge. I mean, I do judge if you end up being stupid all the time.

Yeah.

Like, if you end up being stupid, it's over.

But.

But listen, listen.

Judgment free.

Just give me a chance. Give me a chance.

Those Rishi mushrooms, he can see through you, Juliana. Yes. In the last 30 years. Nothing you can do about it.

No. But I think we're very similar Vietnamese and. Oh, my God. So I was thinking of asking Valentin that should I approach, like this, my job? Because Valentin just promoted me recently, and I'm shitting scared of this job. I'm trying not to think about anything when I go to the office every day, but, like, everything is just piling up. So I wanted to. Now that Valentin is giving life advices, I'm just gonna approach my job every day without thinking about the past anymore. Just living in the present. Yeah. No, I think it's cool. And thank you, Andres, for coming. I'm silly, of course. This is. You got. You probably are used to me by now, you know, from what you see from the exterior. I'm the same in the interior. Thank you for coming today. Thank you for sharing with us. You are amazing. This went great. I can't wait to publish the episode and. Yeah, I mean, how can people find you? I always forget to ask this. How can people find you?

You can find me on LinkedIn. That's probably the easiest way to find me. Give me 30 seconds to sort of Valentine. If there's one thing I wanted to mention that I see an awful lot in things, discounts. I'm going to be really quick about this. I see so many people trying to build their brand by discounting. And I was in a CPG group a couple of days back, and somebody said, you know, what do you think of this when you buy one and it's like $19, and then you buy, I think, four or something, and it's like 14 bucks. And there was like, this complicated discount structure. And I said to him, all this tells me is that your product is worth 14 bucks. That's all it tells me. Doesn't tell me that. And it tells me I shouldn't be paying 19 bucks for it because you're Ripping me off. Don't do that. The steepest discount that we open, that we're offering at boreal is 7%. It's 7% because people react more to an uneven number than to an even number. So if you have to offer discount, don't offer 10%. Don't ever offer 10% or 8% or 6%. Make it 5, 7, 9, or 11. You get a far higher reaction to this kind of thing. Uneven numbers create more of a reaction. And even numbers. And ideally, don't discount. Right. We use discounts incredibly sparingly and as low as possible because the drink we make costs for that to make, because it's expensive to make, because we use real ingredients and it dilutes your. It dilutes your brand. So give us your email. We'll give you 10% off. Every single DTC brand I've ever been to has the same pop up in the first three seconds before I know what you're actually all about, which is really, really useful because nobody ever fills that out. Right. And then the first thing you're telling me is your product is worth 10% less than what you're selling it for. Yeah, that's the first thing. So don't build your brand on discounts, and that's that. Sorry, I don't mean to.

No, we're not gonna end here, Andres, because what you've stated is actually synthesized so beautifully by BJ Fogg. I'm a huge fan of BJ Fogg's work, and he states something incredible regarding. I mean, and pretty simple. People, in order to buy something, whatever, need to change their behavior, need to trade money, which is their work, for something that they. They are aspiring to. And if you increase the motivation by making it cheaper, you're not gonna make them feel that the value is actually there. So you are sweetening the deal by incentivizing and diminishing the friction. But the motivation is not gonna get higher because of that. It's actually gonna be lower because of that, because they are not going to aspire and to actually get it. And that's what the Apple is playing. Tesla is playing. This is the game. If the value is there, I'm gonna freaking make the investment and see what's all about. If you keep on saying, now it's 10% and then it's 20% and then it's 8%, what you're telling me, of course, is that you're trying to cheat. That's what you're doing. If I was stupid not to subscribe to that pop up or if I wasn't in the random control test, then I would be getting it at the full price, which makes me a stupid. Right. That's how you start your relationship with me. That's the kind of brand that you are.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, if you're solving a consumer problem, if you have product market fit, if you're doing this at a fair price, you don't need to discount and you shouldn't discount. You know, find other ways. Sorry, I'm gonna switch that off. Sorry about that. There we go. You know, if you solve, if you have product market fit, if you're solving a consumer problem, you should never have to discount. If you are discount if you want to reduce their friction. Free shipping, even free shipping isn't as important as people think it is. But faster shipping, I say a thank you card, a personal thank you card delivered with your order is way more effective than a 10% discount.

100%. The unboxing experience is very important. You know, it's a touch, you know, a real touch. Something that you can see, something that you can grasp. We love that.

It comes back to the things we've been talking about and I can talk about this forever, so you just have to cut me off at some point. It comes back to the importance of being human.

Yeah, right.

Everybody and their dog. Like 99% of all DTC websites have the same discount structure and they're all doing it because everybody else is doing it. Nobody takes five minutes to think about this. Okay, but why are we offering discounts again? And the answer cannot be because everybody else is doing it.

No one is gonna know how to answer to that because everyone is doing it.

Yeah, everyone is doing it. So why can't we?

And I think, and I think that's a good way to, you know, end and say that all the direct to consumer websites look like arcade arcades right now with all the pop ups and the spin the wheels. That's how it is right now. Thank you, Andreas for coming.

Valentine. Do you think, do you feel she's trying to get rid of us?

No, we have a call in one minute. Honestly, like, we have a call in one minute.

One of us should. That's for sure. Yeah. Anyways, so you've been great and you are great and you will be great because you are. Thank you for, for being here with us. Maybe we'll meet each other again in the future. Thank you for your presence and your, your, your advices. If, if you want to share your last thoughts with our audience. There you go.

You know what? I think we're done. And Juliana is already shaking on the other side. I can see her. She needs to get out of here. Thanks for having me, guys. It's been a real pleasure.

Thank you for coming and thanks, everyone, for listening.

Bye.

This podcast was brought to you by Vitex. Vitex is the first and only fully integrated E commerce marketplace and OMS solution that offers fastest time to revenue and no upgrades ever. So go ahead, check them out. Vtex.com.