140: How Your Ideas Can Change an Industry with Justin Lagosh

Today on Leveling Up. I'm so excited today because I'm talking to Justin Lagash and he is the managing director of Sunbutter. And why I'm extra excited to have him here today is I've been obsessed with Sunbutter. For those of you that follow me on my social media, I've been talking a lot about Sunbutter because in my household, not only am I dairy and grain free, but my daughter, who's 12, has a severe nut allergy. She's allergic to all nuts and it's been challenging. The only nut she's been able to have is almonds. And that's hard as a kid. It's hard as a kid. And my good friend Liana Warner Gray was out here filming with me and she introduced me in some of her fabulous recipes to sun butter. And I've ever since been obsessed. I've been sharing it on my stories, on all my platforms. My daughter loves it, all the things. And I was dying to know how this company even came about, how they got their messaging out there, how they exploded from something no one even heard of before. No one knew you could take sunflower seeds and turn it into a nut butter that tastes better than peanut butter, I think. So, Justin, I'm excited to chat with you today.

Thanks for having me here. I want to get that story out because this idea of making something to be used in place of nut butter out of a seed.

Yeah.

At a company where we say seeds are greater than nuts.

And you truly created everything from nothing, which is the theme of my podcast. And so we were talking a little bit before the show, but I want to go back a little bit because everyone listening does not know this. And I want to take everyone back to. Let's start with 2008. And you were just finishing school.

Sure. In 2008, I was finishing school in one of the worst economic times in recent history and coming out with a Bachelor's degree with three years of intern years experience, a good GPA student, athlete wrestling at North Dakota State and had 20 applications out in five states. Was going to a night class to finish up that spring. Had an opportunity to be introduced to the Sunbutter product for the first time. The former vice president of this product was showing labeling updates that they were planning on making. And I stayed after class to have a conversation with Dan.

He was showing it in the class.

In the class at North Dakota State, he was showing ideas of packaging concepts and updates. Stayed after the class and spoke with Dan Hoffland about All of the packaging updates that he was making and how they weren't good for the brand and why he should be more uniform in making something that people could recognize.

That was really bold of you, thinking back. I mean, if you're 2008 and you're applying for things, nothing is accepting you. But you're a good student, and you've got this expert coming in to talk about business. That takes a lot of courage and boldness to go and interrupt that.

Yeah, I had nothing to lose at the time was move back in with mom and dad or you better find an opportunity to go get a job. And so I've never been afraid of speaking my opinion, and I believed in it. So I let him. Let him know what my opinion was on it.

Were you nervous to tell him somebody comes in as a business expert and you're telling them your opinion?

I would have been in different times, but one of the things I look back now, 11 years later, is we haven't been through a time like that before. When your back's up against the wall, you'll try anything. And so, no, I said, well, I'm going to give it out and see if this works.

Yeah. So you gave him information. What did you tell him?

I told him that between all the different labels that you showed us, between your different products, it's hard to. Hard to see what brand it is. It's not the uniform logo. It's not the uniform placements. It's not uniform colors. There's so much you can tell in a cleaner story on this label. And I believe in the product, but how you're positioning it right now isn't getting to enough people. And by the way, would you buy some signage for the local softball tournament that I'm selling advertising for at the time?

Because that's gonna help ye hidden agenda. You wanted to sell your signage advertising.

The business card I gave him was for my internship for the Red River Valley Softball Association.

That's funny.

That's how he contacted me.

And did he get. Did he sponsor that?

No, no, I didn't get the sale on the signage. You know, it was a small division of Red River Commodities at the time. But he said, I got your information. I had to call you. I'm not going to buy anything from you, but would you like to talk about a job?

Oh, my gosh, that's awesome. I love that. So he didn't take any offense at your information on the labeling or what should be changed?

No, he and always has been very open. He understands that Hiring. He always told me, every person you hired to work for you better be smarter than the person before.

Okay.

Because if you hire people that aren't as smart as you or at the same level, you're never going to level up. Yeah, you should hire people better than you. He goes, and deep in your career, you should be able to show up at 9 and leave at 3 and know that the company is getting stronger because you're doing that very smart.

Love that. Love that. So you were positioning this. He ends up. You're not even positioning it. To have a job with Sunbutter, you didn't know. You're just adding value. You want him to sponsor your thing.

I was trying to sell advertising. I was trying to get by and make a buck because I made commission on selling too. And I'm a poor college kid. I'm ready to graduate. I've got a student loan debt coming. I don't have a real interview yet. No, I had no idea. It was no posted job. It was just, hey, by the way, that we think this guy could add value.

Wow. So did they offer you a job right away? What happens?

This was on a Tuesday night. Wednesday at 9am I got a phone call from Dan Hofflin. He said, I would like to talk to you about interviewing for a national sales position. I'm going, national sales position for this? I go, I don't know what that means. And he's like, well, don't worry, it's not that big of a thing yet, but can you come in for an interview? And I came in for an interview on Wednesday afternoon. I said, I can get in there after class. Today was a half hour late. Google Maps in 2008 did not find the industrial park that is red over commodities. I come in sweating, wearing a suit and tie in a agricultural commodity type of an office where no one wears suit and ties, sweating profusely a half hour late, going, well, this is a fun exercise, but there's no way I'm getting this job. And had a really good interview. And on Friday morning at 9am, got a call, said, we'd like to make an offer to you.

Oh, my gosh.

And by the way, are you free on Saturday to be in Chicago selling this stuff?

Wow. Now, did you know anything about sales? I know you were selling the advertising or stuff, but did you. Were you trained in sales?

No. And I think. I think they sensed a certain level of sales DNA and they said, we don't have a formal training program. We don't know if this brand Is really going to make it yet or not? It's fairly new. So let's take a shot on you and see what you can do. We'll put you in front of people in Chicago.

Wow. So what's crazy about this is it's like almost like they didn't even fully believe in their own vision yet.

No, no. They said, you know, this is not supposed to be a retail product. We're just. We're a processor. We're a co packer, We're a manufacturer. We're a procurement company. We don't do finished consumer packaged goods, and we definitely don't do branding. And here we are going to Chicago on my third day on the job saying we're gonna go sell this brand.

Okay. So I want to get into how you even figured out how to sell it, like, how you went. But before I do that, let's back up for a minute. Tell me the sun butter story. Like, how did it even come about?

So back in the late 90s and early 2000s, Red river commodities, which is the owner of the registered Sunbutter trademark, is a big sunflower processor. And they exported a lot of their processed sunflower kernel overseas for use in bakeries. And development of sunflower crop in the Ukraine and other areas overseas became better and better. Government subsidies for growers. And so it got cheaper when you take the freight out of it. And so we had procured a lot of sunflower kernel, our sunflower crop, that we would take the shell off and make kernel out of, because that's what's inside the shell. And now we had no place to go with that. We had a crop that was too small and round because what you get in a bag for Inchel is not what we use to make sunbutter. And so what do you do with all this extra sunflower crop that you're no longer exporting? Because that market shrunk. And my former boss, Dan Hoffman, went to the president at the time and said, I' a niece with a peanut allergy. I've got this idea. How about we make kernel here and then we roast it and grind it into sunflower butter, and we use that in place of peanut butter. And I'm going to go to the usda. I'm going to try to sell it into the. Into the school systems and as an ingredient for other food manufacturers. But don't worry, I won't brand it.

That's so funny. So it's almost like he just wanted. What was that about? What do you think the reason is that he didn't want to brand it or he didn't want to really. He wasn't.

Well, the core competencies of Red River Commodities were procurement, processing, agriculture, value added. But they were. Their core competency was never in putting in a end package or getting marketing behind a consumer package. Good. And so they understood the amount of investment in marketing dollars and personnel, et cetera, to go do that. And it was. We were kind of, I like to say the redheaded stepchild because I got kind of red hair. Not really. Yeah. Strawberry blonde. And that wasn't the position of the company at the time.

Yeah.

I think things have changed a little bit today. Definitely.

But it's amazing listening to that because I think this is such a common thing. Like somebody has an idea, they think it's a good idea, but they don't think it's good enough. Like it's. They don't have a big enough vision for it. But look, it just is such a simple thing and somebody else sees a big vision for it and look what happens.

And a big kudos to Dan Hoffland for swimming upstream. Yeah, you're. That's not a core competency of the company. You're bold enough to say, I'm going to try this and if it doesn't work, I won't have a job and then take a shot on it and get something started and do something. That was not a core competency of the company.

And the drive. Do you think the driving core there was was because of the nut allergy that he was aware of or what was the. What do you think was driving that?

For sure. And his mindset of I better do something with what we procured.

Yeah.

Because if you're long on positions, if you get into agriculturalism trading and you're not moving it totally. It's on your book. I mean, it's good for the company. So he's trying to think of ways to add value.

So it almost started by accident. Like.

Yeah.

Was anybody else making sunflower seed butter?

Was this something not in the 2000s, but back in the. In the mid-80s and another North Dakota company, actually the owner of another national in Shell Sunflower brand, had. Had tried making sunflower butter and tried distributing it locally and even down in the Minneapolis market, and it didn't work.

Must have been their branding.

Yeah, yeah, they. They did use the Sunbutter brand. I have not seen what the packaging looked like then.

Okay. But it was called Sunbutter.

But it was called Sunbutter. So another fun fact is that we actually called that company that owned the brand and said, we're going to do this. Can we use it? Can we use this brand that you own? Yeah, it didn't work. You can have it.

And they just signed it over like that. Wow. Amazing. Have you heard from them since?

We, we actually. Red River Commodities still. Still is a small sunflower community is very small. And so we do work for each other. Yet we still, we still work in our company. Like, if they are over capacity on roasting in shell or vice versa, we'll help each other out. So we still know the company.

They could have asked for royalty fee.

Yep. Yeah. But again, they were. They are. They were past it if we couldn't do it.

Yeah, I get that. I've been over things before. I totally get it. So. Okay, that. What a fat. What a fascinating story there. So take us back now to where I cut you off before. Like, how did you start selling it? Like, where did you even start? Like, because their branding was a mess at the time. It wasn't there. You saw the vision almost bigger than they did. How did you start? How did you get it off?

So I started with listening and their positioning was, we are going to be a solution for those that have peanut allergies and those that have nut allergies. In whole, we're going to make lives more similar to those that can have the PB and J's of the world. And that's going to make their life easier. And so we're going to focus on that household, that family, and offer that niche solution to them. And I thought that is gold because I can buy into that, the kindness, the adding value to that household, connecting with that consumer who's going to be very passionate and be your enthusiast about it. That will work. But now we just have four or 500 or, you know, a few hundred points of distribution. Just because the governor of North Dakota came to your front lawn and said, held up a jar we weren't supposed to make that we hand labeled and said, this is the future of North Dakota. Well, that got us into the, you know, Dakotas in Minneapolis market, literally back of pickup. That's how we got there until distributors finally called us back and said, oh, we'll take some. And that's about where I started.

And so, so this is what I love about this. And I hope listeners are picking up on this. So many people get into business to make money. Like that's their only agenda. I just want to make money. And they're like, where do I go to make money. What I see over and over again that works is purpose driven business. So when there is a purpose to something, there's a passion, there's something bigger than our own agenda. That's what tends to work. And you just pointed all that out. You said this was a solution. There was a huge purpose behind it. There's tons of kids now with nut allergies. The schools are dealing. It's become a crisis. Really. The nut allergy thing, I don't remember this when I was a kid. And all of a sudden it's this huge thing. So the idea that you were really, truly leading with purpose, I believe is what really helped launch this.

It's our first core value. So as we build our team out now we have to have someone that buys into that purpose. Our purpose is first and foremost to make sure we make something that is safe for those with nut allergies. And so we don't take anywhere along the way, all the way from procurement of all inputs into our facility that's completely free from the top eight food allergens today to really make a product that can be trusted. Next is. It has to taste good.

Yeah.

And what we're running into today is once success has been built, people that are getting in to make money are getting in to make money. And you take shortcuts to make money. Especially if you're starting with a white space in between you. And you don't make as high quality products. They don't taste the same. And what we've created with our Sun Butter brand is it's really the Kleenex of the peanut free category. Anything that's not peanut butter or sun butter in a lot of people's minds. And that's not true if it doesn't say Sun Butter. It's not totally because we take. Have taken the steps to perfect it over 17 years. Those brands that started four or five years ago are making products that don't taste good that really give our brand indirectly a bad name.

Makes sense. Makes sense. How did you. So you had this purpose, you had this vision. And when you went out to sell, were you first rebranding everything for them or were you just selling the vision to people?

You know, we, we went through a rebrand, right When I came on board, it cleaned everything up. We had this, I call it the Crayola color effect.

Okay.

Because we were selling to families and households with kids that were affected by nut allergies. So all of our products had primary colors.

Wondering why it looks like you guys can't see them if you're just listening to audio. But like, each one has a different color top.

Yep.

I already ate your organic one. But that was the green one.

That's a green one.

Right, but so it's. I was. I never knew that.

So it's like you look at a box of Crayola crayons and they're all different colors. So they're all different formulas. And that was going to resonate with kids. We had a gradient blue background, so it looked like a sky. And then you have a logo with red and yellow and white. And then you have the color lid that matches the variety. And you call out what it was at the time. We called it sunflower spread at the time. And so it was catching the child's attention. Usually on the bottom shelf, walking by through the grocery store. Mom, I want this because it's colorful.

So smart. How'd you come up with that? That's brilliant. So simple, but it's brilliant.

It came back to starting with the consumer. Who is going to use this? The kids are going to ask mom to use it. Who's going to buy it? Well, Mom's going to buy it. And how is mom going to buy it? Well, the kids are going to want it.

Justin, this is, it's so simple, but it's brilliant. I mean, you think about it, who actually leads with that? Most people. Most people listening that are launching their own brand, they're just thinking, what do they like?

Yep.

I'm guilty. I'm like, I like pink. Let's make everything pink. But that doesn't mean my consumer likes pink.

Focus groups of ones run into trouble quite a bit. And, and I think that's. And, and you're in it to make money and you try to go too fast. You don't understand your consumer well enough. And you, you assume you know what they want.

Do you. Did you learn this from school? Like, how did you. Is it because you were young and right out of school that this was like, present or where did you figure this stuff out?

I, I've always loved consumer behavior. I, I took a lot of courses like that in school, had great professors, some that have went on to be deans of business in different colleges. And I, their, their testing of knowledge was very actionable case studies. But I really think just my, my passion for consumer insights, how the brain works, where people look, what's their why? Because that's part of sales DNA too.

Yes. For sure.

You decide how do you solve their problem.

Yes. And I love that you're saying this, by the way, because I've done over 130 interviews on this podcast and I will tell you, so many entrepreneurs never went to college. It's a. It's a common theme. They're like, they didn't. And I get it, they didn't. But I. What you're. You actually like took your college information and you applied it and made it your own, and it works. So those of you listening that have been poo pooing college, look this. Actually, if it wasn't for that, I don't know that you would have been in this spot.

Absolutely not. Something like that. I needed to have a forum or an environment or a platform. Whether it's a startup or whether it's the hard knocks of entrepreneurial business, or whether it's getting a job right out of high school and then taking your passion and applying yourself to it, you're going to get the same type of feedback. But I was given an opportunity there. College isn't for everyone and it's become way overpriced and not economic for a lot of people today. But you can take your passion that you got to start there. What am I passionate about? I'm passionate about consumer behavior. I should probably be in sales and marketing.

Yes. Yeah.

And if you don't know what you're passionate about, you better find that before you get into a career.

Totally. And I went to college too, and my degree was Health and Human performance and with a heavy emphasis on therapy. And I'll tell you, I use all of that that I learned. So I don't necessarily think college is a bad thing at all. Okay. So any ups and downs along the way, I want to hear about those because I'm sure it wasn't all like a bed of roses or a bed of sunflowers.

Lots of ups and downs. And there continue to be. Growth is explosive when we figure that out. And at the time, peanut allergies were doubling every third year by the center of duty. I've got my own hypothesis on why I think helicopter parenting, drone parenting, whatever you want to call it, in overuse of sterilization, sanitizing people's immune systems and air filtration systems, and the clean bubble type of child world. It's an immune disorder. An anaphylactic reaction to penis is an immune disorder. Some of it is passed through, but it's a sensitivity to a reaction to a protein. And if your immune system is regularly exposed to, you know, like I said, I wiped my hands off of my jeans and ate A sandwich. Growing up, I got antibodies against a lot of stuff that today's children don't. And so my immune system has been exposed to some of those things.

Yeah, that's interesting. I've always wondered why my daughter. Because her dad and I both were like huge peanut eaters, you know, And I'm like, how is my daughter allergic to nuts? But what you just said triggered something because I was going through a divorce when I was pregnant with her. I wonder if that stress created that immune response. That's interesting.

And then that is a lot of autoimmune are caused by stress. I mean, they are. And so probably in womb they could be too.

Interesting. Wow. Penelope, if you're listening, I'm sorry. I hope I didn't screw you up.

Well, you don't. You got some better now, so.

Yeah, we have some. We're all good. It's all good. Don't worry about it. So other. Okay, so that. That's interesting. So you had. So this was just coming about what were some setbacks that you had building this? Because I'm imagining that not everyone opened you with welcome arms and said, let's do this.

Because what we were doing we weren't supposed to do to begin with. But then it was okay because consumers were buying more of it. We were getting more presence in the grocery channels and distributors. We were growing the business. High percentage growth. We're doing something right or we're just really lucky. And for a lot of years, you guys just must be really lucky, right? How was this happening? And so we were able to run a good business and. But then going to ask for marketing dollars, that was a like a foreign language. How do I get this message out here? And I got to spend money to get this out here in 2008, 9, 10. And so they said, well, here's a little bit of money because they wanted.

You to sell first to bring in more so you can then spend marketing.

Right? Yeah. Build it and then they will come type of deal. We'll chicken or egg type of mentality. How.

And there was no social media then, so.

But I bless.

You know, it's actually social media. It was just starting though.

It was just starting.

Much relevance.

I set up our Amazon store 30 days into my job.

Wow.

So we were at zero on Amazon in 2008. Now it's a top five customer. That's incredible. That's one of those things of making it available because I know there's going to be gatekeepers and distribution. Right. And now, you know, going into Building out our e Commerce in 2020 here to do that. But the, the downs were we didn't have a whole lot of money to support explosive growth.

Okay.

Because it was not well understood we were something different than the rest of the company. So we literally got what they were okay with losing. You know, if you go to the casino, you say, I'm going to bring what I'm willing to lose. That's the type of funding that we got to spend on marketing. Because marketing was this thing that no one really widely understood. Not that they didn't want to support the brand, but they didn't know enough about it as a. As a group yet. So we had to be very careful with that. And so we, we stayed focused on. And I think it helped in a way that food allergy community went to a lot of events, food allergy resources, education events. That's why I asked how you, you know, before the show, how you became aware of it. And we really spent all of our time talking to the food allergy community. Sampling and allergy clinics.

Sure.

Going to American Academy of asthma and immunology conferences. That's a mouthful. Quad AI. But we were, we were meeting with allergists and saying, hey, we've got this thing and this might be recommended that way. And so on a low budget, how do we make those dollars work to get exposure in this very focused core?

I like that I've told clients before when we've helped clients with branding as to go deeper on a smaller avatar. And I think I see companies do that wrong all the time, where they just want to please everybody. Like, let's go after everybody. Which until you're at the point you are you really. That's the wrong way. I do believe in going deep and small, very specific with who you're focused on.

Fifteen straight years of that. Fifteen, all we did was talk to food allergy households, food allergy moms and kids. And that I think was about perfect. If we would have went five, would have been too soon, would have been 10. It would have been too soon.

And if you've gone to everybody, it wouldn't have worked either. Because if you had gone to people without allergies, if somebody liked peanut butter better or whatever, it could have been.

Messed everything up with our, with our marketing budget and with our packaging and our distribution. If we would have said we taste better, we're packaged better, and we're healthy, we would have got lost and it would have been the end of it.

Okay. Some other questions that I was asking you before we recorded that. I want to ask now because I know listeners are probably wondering, is anyone ever allergic to sunflower seeds?

Yes, they are. It's a, you know, common misnomer. It's in the bottom 2% of all food allergies. And some of these food allergy statistics inadvertently go into these allergy conferences. I kind of pick up on, you know, sitting in on them, but not very common at all. But they can develop. And so. And if you have a sunflower algae, it typically is severe. So, you know, we are free from the top eight. So that's over 90% of food allergies, but this falls in the bottom 2%.

Is there a correlation between people are allergic to sunflower seeds and nuts?

No, not. Not that I'm aware of.

Okay, so it's just like saying you have a shellfish allergy is not related to nut allergy.

Right.

It could be totally separate.

Unlike the proven correlation between peanuts and tree nuts. There. There's a. There's a crossover there. On the low end, it's about a 25 or 1 and 4 crossover. If you've got a peanut allergy, you have a tree nut allergy. So with your daughter, you got lucky.

Yes.

If that wasn't a crossover.

Yeah, she's not allergic to tree nuts, but she has all. Well, all regular nuts.

Right.

Interesting. So do you recommend that kids, when you're talking to somebody who has kids with allergies, if they're allergic to all nuts, do you advise they get tested for sunflower seeds, or is that not necessary?

First, it's not very common. I would talk to your allergist about it, and some will and some won't just because it's so uncommon. But if your plan is to really incorporate some butter into a regular diet, which we. We hope you can and do, I think it's smart to do that, because if you do have a reaction, it could be severe.

Totally. Totally. Okay. And I'll say my daughter is literally allergic to all nuts, and she has no problem with sunflower seeds. So. So that's.

And it's a seed. It's not a nut like a tree nut, and it's not a legume like a peanut.

Yeah, that makes sense.

So it's a different type of protein, which is why there's not a lot of crossover.

That makes sense. That makes sense. Now the next question is taste test with kids. What do you see kids thinking of sunbutter? Because I just can speak on my own kid.

If done correctly, it's 9 out of 10.

Okay.

If it's how you present it, if you put it out. Blind taste test for someone that's used to eating peanuts. Again, not on the allergy, kid, but in the environment. This is a funny taste in peanut butter.

Yeah.

But if you put it out in a baseball glove and say, this is supposed to taste like a handful of sunflower seeds.

Yeah.

Oh, it does taste like sunflower seeds. That's good. You don't find very many people that frown at a sunflower or don't like the taste of sunflower seeds. Right. So if you present it, this is what it should taste like. It's what it's made out of. And try not to make it something it's not. If you use the peanut butter crutch, you're going to have a certain amount that go, it doesn't taste like peanut butter.

By the way, I'm going to link up in the show notes a recipe that Liana Warner Gray told me about that I'm obsessed with. Now. You take like you could do Rocket Cow, or you can just buy dark chocolate and mix it with it. Makes it like a peanut butter cup, but it's not peanut butter. And it's so good, you freeze them. The sunflower, the sun butter cups. So amazing. I love that she invented this.

Real food, simple ingredients, higher quality. And a lot of people don't love. You know, I'm not gonna name names, but the other peanut butter cups out there, right, they're not made from real peanut butter.

No, they like, they taste chemical. I mean, that used to be my obsession, by the way. But they do. They taste like chemically now to me.

Yeah, it's a lot of ingredients and they make something like a peanut butter inside, sort of like it.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's so good. This is such a good, good product I make. For those of you that have followed me on social media, I've been recently making a lot of recipes with it since I discovered it and am obsessed with it. It's a total staple of my diet. And it's super high in protein. And you can get the one without the sugar. You can get organic. It's amazing. It's amazing.

Appreciate that.

How? What do you see? Well, take us now to like. It's in stores everywhere. It's on Amazon. You said it's in the top five of Amazon.

Let's stop five for our retail customers of ours. And so we, we do about half our business now direct with grocery retailers. About half their distribution, where they have to pull it from A warehouse.

Tell me about that part. How did you get it into those big stores?

Well, I'm, I'm 33 as we're recording this podcast now, and I am under 200,000 miles from a million in the air. And I started at 22, so. Yeah, and that was my first job was grow this retail business. I've had a lot of help from some very great people that are now working the retail brand. I've got a fantastic director of retail sales now and a fantastic regional out west and we're hiring for a regional east right now that are helping do that Legwork, important legwork of getting in front of grocery stores and pitching the product, the story, the brand and where they can get it through distribution and growing that. But getting there was a lot of hard work. It didn't happen in one year, two year, three years.

Oh, I hope everyone really takes that in and it was you personally sharing the story and getting out there and understanding and serving a purpose.

You know, I like to say, hopefully there's a board game with categories and one of them is grocery store chains. Because we go to a store, like last night, our marketing guy Wyatt was out here with me and we were driving around like, well, we can go to Raoul's Vons Pavilions, you know, Stater Brothers. And he's like, how do you know all these grocery stores go? I've been to their headquarters. All of them.

Yeah.

And so it's, it's a lot of hard work. There's no easy way around that in the food business.

What I love too is that it's still, you never lost the family feel because of that. I mean, this is a huge company, but it still feels very family and small because of that.

Yeah. It's again, it starts with passion. Everyone doesn't come to work just to collect a paycheck. You know, we try to keep it from interview process all the way through. If you're going to come to work for us, you have to believe in our purpose.

Yeah.

You have to want to help families, whether it be with allergy and now with health needs and looking for healthier products. And you have to believe in the food and the product. If you don't believe in all those things and you, and you don't come to work saying, I hope I get a call or a letter today from someone that I helped, then it's the wrong company to work for.

So awesome. I love that. I love passion driven, purpose driven companies. It's amazing. It makes such a big difference. What do you See the future with Sunbutter, what do you think you'll expand into other products? What do you see?

Oh, I've got, you know, we talked a little bit and I get so excited about the, about the future. There's a lot of companies that are doing something similar. The taste, the health movement right now is fantastic. And so there's going to be partners and collaborations. We're doing a lot of them socially right now, and, you know, of that. But as we partner up with companies that are really good at making, you know, chocolates or they're really good at making sandwiches, they're really good at making, you know, other ingredients or other products in different categories, there's going to be an opportunity for us to expand. I see more a facility with more packaging into different categories. I see collaboration with other companies that can really expand distribution of the brand and an awareness. We're still in a general awareness. You're 17. There are still people in the health food market that have never heard of us.

Yeah, it's true a lot.

So as we drive that awareness, we are going to stay to our core, stay focused. We make sunflower butter and we believe we make the best sunflower butter in the world. You do, and we're gonna make sure we do that before we do anything else that we overextend ourselves on. If we're not the best at making a bar or a chocolate, we're not going to make a bar of chocolate. Could we find someone with the same purpose and core as we do that we trust to help make a bar of chocolate or something else like that? Yeah, yeah, I think we can. But we want to make sure we do what we've done for 17 years well without sacrificing as we grow as a company. And we do need to expand. Yeah, but we've got so much room to grow with just awareness of our base product right now. I don't want to overextend ourselves here we are 17 years in. We don't have bars, chocolates, mixes.

You stay focused. You stayed focused on your core message, your core product, and who you were serving. Which brings me to my next question. So, normally on my podcast, I asked this one specific question, but I'm going to flip it a little bit. I usually ask people to share if somebody's in a rough spot, what they like, if they are in their own personal rock bottom, how, what they would do to start shifting and creating everything from nothing. But I'm going to tweak that a little bit. If a business or A brand right now is listening and they've got a really good idea, a really good product and it's just not working. And you were going to give them some advice on how they can, what they need to be focused on to create everything from nothing and get their brand to take off. Since that's what you are a master of. What would you tell them?

Stop and ask yourself one question.

Okay.

You said if they got a really good product, they're trying to.

So they have an idea. They have a good idea. Just like Sun Butter was a good idea.

They've got a good idea and they don't know how to get it off. What's the fine good idea?

Start and say it's solving it solves a problem. That's a real problem for people like yours solved a real problem.

So number one, is that a real problem for most people? Is that their why? Okay, do you know who that's a problem for? Do you know why they would be interested in your idea?

Okay.

And if you can't, if you can't answer those questions, it's just a good idea for you and it's a problem. It's a problem that you think you found a solution to. But you or your company is not the consumer. So you have to look at it from who is this solving a problem for and are they interested, Would they be interested in a problem? Before you start investing in development and marketing and launching, you have to look at it and do your research. There's so many tools to do research out there today that used to be, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars to do or tens of thousands of dollars to do focus groups and to do and hire these big research firms. You know, we're, we found some different tools out there that utilize all that same data. And with AI technology today, you can do really affordable consumer insight research and find people's why if you think you know it, you might hear back, oh, that would not have worked.

Yeah, you can even just do a poll on social media and ask like who I. Okay, so you guys, he just saved you like hundreds of thousands of dollars right there with those three questions. That's brilliant because you could pay a branding consultant to take you through that. It would be lots and lots of money. So with the money he saved, you go buy some sunbutter and support the company.

Yeah, we. Every jar, you know, every jar, you know, it helps us and so we appreciate that. And again, we want to make a good tasting product for you and your family. One you can trust and we believe in it and all the people believe in it.

I do have one more question because I can't. It might be a detailed question because I'm so curious about this. I didn't know any of this. I was a fan of almonds before almond butter because that's the one that my daughter could have. What I've learned through Sunbutter and talking to Justin and can you touch on it? Because I don't want to mess up the stats.

Sure.

About water and the environment and what's happening with almonds versus sunflower.

Just in general, if you look at freshwater resources and what's required to, to grow the crops, an almond tree is much different than a sunflower plant. Sunflowers are very resilient crops, most recognizable for their flowers during bloom. But their root system can go up to 40ft deep to grab moisture out of the soil to grow. So they require little to no irrigation, fresh water resources to grow the crop. While almond trees require a lot of irrigation. We did a little look back in 2016, 2017 from the California Almond board of reported gallons of freshwater irrigation used for crop output. And then the USDA report of almond output in the state of California. There's a little division and you get down to the point, if you get down to pounds and ounces and down to an almond, 23 almonds to an ounce, you can take 1.1 gallons of freshwater irrigation to produce one almond.

That's amazing.

There's 23 almonds in every ounce of almond butter. And then you can imagine a 12 ounce jar. How many gallons of water it takes to do that. So again, water. It rains, aquifers get replenished, but it's a lot of water and it's growing at a rate that, you know, I laugh now when I, when I get the. Please reuse your towel all week. But yet 80% of. Yeah, 80% of the water consumption comes from, from agriculture. And the number one use of water in agriculture is almonds.

That's amazing. Thanks for sharing that. Okay, so I was gonna say where can people find it? You can find Sunbutter anywhere. I mean Amazon. It's in all the grocery stores now.

Yep. We're, you know, we're in Walmart, Target, Kroger, sprouts. Depending on what part of the country you are. We've got. If you go to sunbutter.com buy. Okay, we have a store locator that is updated every 10 days with Register sales.

So can they buy your website too?

We're gonna say January 2020. You'll be able to buy full cases from our website. We are still building out not individual jars, but full cases to make that available.

But I found it, I've seen it in stores everywhere. And you can also get it on Amazon.

And if you can't find the variety that you like or the one without the sugar on, ask for it.

Okay.

They can get. The store manager can order it from the same spot. They have the other ones on the shelf.

As you see, I'm missing the green top one because I eat the organic one and I eat it fast.

It's gone.

It's gone. As soon as I buy it.

Yeah, we'll get some more. Get some more out there.

So this was super helpful. This is awesome. Where can people find you? Personally, are you on social media?

Yeah, I'm. I'm on social media. My LinkedIn is. I'm very active on that daily. And then I, I engage with the brand.

What's your name on social? Does it go off of your name on social?

Yeah, Justin Lagash at. Justin Lagash is a. Is my, is my Instagram handle and at Sunbutter is our brand handle on all the platforms.

They've got a great experience Instagram page too, where they share tons of good recipes. You also follow their Instagram page, lots of yummy recipes, great meal ideas and snack ideas there.

Yep, absolutely.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah.