The Retail Journey
Welcome to the Retail Journey where we will cover important topics, interview industry stakeholders, and address emerging trends as we journey through our mission of helping our listeners thrive in retail. Your hosts for this show are CEO James Harris and CGO Charles Greathouse.
The Retail Journey
Revolutionizing Health Supplements with TruLabs' CEO Brandon Pogue
Embark on a flavor-packed journey with Brandon Pogue, CEO of TruLabs, as he shares the remarkable pivot from construction and real estate to the burgeoning industry of natural health products. Brandon recounts how a passion for palatable supplements led to the creation of TruLabs, where great taste meets potent efficacy. You'll be privy to the innovative steps taken to produce a unique pre-workout system that tackles fatigue head-on. As our conversation unfolds, learn how he infuses his work and personal life with faith-based principles, from the pages of "The Imitation of Christ" to the chicken coop in his backyard.
We'll also take a closer look at the strategic decisions that have propelled TruLabs forward, especially the bold move into retail during a time when e-commerce seemed king. Brandon’s insights into adapting to market trends, and his anecdotal tales from a record-setting Sam's Club Roadshow, will have you reconsidering what it means to engage customers and capitalize on chance encounters. He paints a vivid picture of a brand that goes beyond mere transactions, offering a sensory experience that resonates with consumers and challenges the norms of shopping.
Finally, we pull back the curtain on the vibrant work culture at TruLabs and the ethos that drives their brand. Brandon describes an environment that emulates an extended family, where joy and utility of products go hand in hand. He also gives a nod to future innovations, the importance of product presentation, and the excitement of carving out new territories in a competitive landscape. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or just curious about the intersection of business and wellness, this episode promises a blend of practical wisdom, heartfelt values, and a vision for a healthier, taste-filled future.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Retail Journey podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Charles Greathouse.
Speaker 2:And I am James Harris, and today we're talking with Brandon Pogue, the founder and CEO of True Labs. Welcome to the Retail Journey.
Speaker 3:Thank you for the invite.
Speaker 2:I have been looking forward to this conversation. We've had a few short ones, and every time I walk away wanting more.
Speaker 3:Well, I think I was telling Charles earlier. I felt like it's this fraternity that I've joined in Arkansas and all of a sudden I feel like one of the brothers. Awesome, it's been very fun. That's great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, up here for a little retail visit to the local retailer Walmart.
Speaker 3:A couple of retail visits. Yeah, no joke. We've had a few while we're here and it's been a great trip.
Speaker 1:I'm thrilled to be able to also talk to you about your retail journey. That's right, We'd love to start with. All right, tell us a little bit about you, Brandon Pogue.
Speaker 3:Wow, well, that's a very loaded question. I don't think I can say much about that. Besides, I've been married for 21 years, so pretty much lost my identity 21 years ago and my wife, who is actually our CMO for our company we work alongside by side. She's actually a co-owner of the company with me, so we have had this amazing experience for so many years when I was in construction, then I was in real estate and then back in 2017, we got into the space that we're now and what was so fun? I remember coming home and it was like I would report to my wife like what I did at work that day. And now it's like she gets to do work with me and we have these deep, meaningful conversations and a lot of them are about true labs, and so that's been pretty amazing.
Speaker 3:In fact, the reason the journey really happened was because of the passion that her and I found toward holistic health, nutrition and dietary supplements. So many years ago. We were both on this journey to find out that there was a lot of power and a lot of benefit to natural health products and kind of getting away, sort of like, from a Western minded medicine background to where, like if you had an earache or something, you were going to go get a prescription right Antibiotics for an earache, right and so we started to find that supplements really could help the body and help heal the body. And the thing was, is that all the natural hippie supplements that we took, they all tasted really bad. I'm like, well, why would something that's good for you taste really bad? So that's where the idea of true labs came was let's make natural, holistic products that taste really, really good. So we put as much emphasis on efficacy and the naturalness of the products and the bioavailability of the products as we do on flavor, and I think that's what makes true lab stand out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and tasting it without reading the label, you would think it was all about flavor. It is an amazing product.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks, yeah, I think that's a. You know, we're on what I call our Gen 3 products. In fact, what we've been presenting the last couple of days were these new, innovative products, and when people say, wow, you've got no sugar, you've got no stevia, you've got no sucralose and it tastes this good, how do you do this? And so we've really been innovating. We're a very innovative company and the last six months, almost every Friday in our office, we've got a lab and so we spend, you know, the second part of our Friday is just innovating, innovating, innovating. And what's great is to see the amazing rapport with all the people that we had meetings with the last couple of days. Yeah Right, I mean, they would drink it and they'd be like, how? And they don't believe it. I mean we saw that this morning, you know. And so for us to use this, we've got a monk fruit version that has another type of a Rebem that's made from sugar and then some other things that we naturally put these amazing flavors together to have this experience. So you've got, you know, high bioavailability, meaningful like really good for your products. That tastes really, really good.
Speaker 3:And I think there's not many companies in the retail space that still keep innovation at the forefront of their mind. You know A lot of these companies will come out with one good product and then that one good product is what like? Blast them into the retail space and then it becomes all about the almighty dollar. We still keep the customer, the end customer, not, they're not just the retailer. We still keep the end customer in mind. It's like is this the best thing for them? And I think that's what makes true lives truly different.
Speaker 2:Well, and you can get flavor fatigue on something that you consume on a regular basis and just the variety that you continue to come out with. So the company started in 2017?.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we started innovating in 2017. So we really spent probably six months to a year just doing research. And you know, originally we started out with a pre-workout series which was kind of like the original idea was to invent. You talked about flavor fatigue, but really there was a pre-workout fatigue, most of the pre-workouts that you used to take back in the 90s. You say, hey, you can use this for 30 to 60 days, but after 36 to 60 days your kidneys need a break, yeah.
Speaker 3:Discontinue, discontinue, used for 14 days. Well, why would you do that, Like? Why would you take a product that you can only use for a certain amount of time or it starts being degenerative to your body? So we actually came out with a pre-workout system. So we had an A, b, c and a D formula and you could rotate and you could use those for a certain time and then you go to a different formula which was made of different ingredients, so you wouldn't just have pre-workout fatigue, which is the old one scoop, two scoop, three scoop and you don't fill it anymore. So we actually had four different versions of pre-workouts and we had two different flavors of each, and when we started out, we had eight different skews as a brand new company Right, that's a lot.
Speaker 3:But we sold that as an e-com, like. We were based on e-com and we really were a Shopify platform, right, and that was fun. But it was really fun to kind of get into more products with energy, with the sleep, with the protein, with hydrate, right. We just kept innovating and innovating. And I think what's so cool is when you get an underlying foundation of knowledge in this space. It's funny because your next invention can be better and then it can be better. And it can be better Like we've invented. We've presented some products in the last couple of days that I think are the best products that we've ever put out, and I think we'll just get better Like I can't imagine what we'll invent next year.
Speaker 1:I hear you know necessity is the mother of innovation. So when it came time to start this innovation journey 2017, you want to tell us a little bit about the impetus to create True Labs.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean no-transcript. What was interesting about this was, I think, discovering the holistic side of medicine, with the different doctors and practitioners that we were working with at the time, and what we do, different than anybody, and this is like I don't tell a whole lot of people. This is like we use muscle testing or kinesiology testing with every ingredient to the body to make sure it's good for you. So I'll give you an example. When we tested magnesium sources right, you've got different suppliers, you've got different type of magnesiums. They're bound with different things, right.
Speaker 3:One of the things that we actually did we actually went and found all these different like 60 different magnesiums and we tested them with the body on multiple people, because different people respond differently to each thing. So what's really interesting about this is my genetic makeup is so different from my wife's. I kind of probably represent 80% of the population and she probably represents 5% of the population right, and so if it works on me and her, then that's a really good basis. Then we can go test on 10 people, then we go test on 100, then we go test on 1000, right, and so what's really neat about that process and that model is once it works on us and then we go test it. Then we know it's going to be good as a stack. So of those 60 magnesiums we found the top two. So what?
Speaker 2:are you testing so they consume it? And then what's the test look like?
Speaker 3:So it's actually like. It's actually one of these things where you actually put next to your sternum and around you is like an energy field, and so a doctor or a chiropractor who's tested in this method, they can actually see if this is good, if it has a positive response, or if it has a negative response, right. So it's a real alternative way to testing things. But what's so great, it's non-invasive, so you don't have to like go get your blood drawn and do all this kind of stuff, right, and because of the way we do it, you can test it on a lot of people really fast. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. But we do that with every formula, with every ingredient, with every flavor that we put inside of True Labs. That's really so. You won't find any multidexion.
Speaker 3:You won't find any dextrose, any corn products, because that's going to disagree with everybody, because it's going to disagree with everybody, right, because your body can't absorb it, it's not good for you, and we actually found that with Stevia. So there's a lot of people say, oh well, we're an all-natural company, but they're using Stevia. And we found that Stevia actually caused liver enzyme activity to increase, right, which actually means it's causing your liver to break down.
Speaker 2:What do you mean there's a plant on the package? Yeah, I know, have you ever seen? Have you ever?
Speaker 3:seen Stevia root, so Stevia root. When you look at it, it looks like this dark sugary.
Speaker 2:I've actually ground it in my garden before.
Speaker 3:Okay, great, so have you seen the syrup from that? It comes from that. It's like a dark maple syrup, right? Yeah, well, when you look at the Stevia powder, it literally looks like cocaine, right?
Speaker 2:It's a white ionized powder.
Speaker 3:And people are like oh well, it's natural. It's all natural, Well, great. But just because it's all natural doesn't mean it's good for you, Right.
Speaker 2:Sugar's pretty natural.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is. So let's just keep eating sugar and sugar and sugar. You know, the average American in 1908 consumed less than a pound, or about a pound of sugar, and then today's average American is over 50 pounds of sugar a year. And so people talk about type one, type two. So you're a type one diabetic. We were talking about this earlier. So there's in America, there's 100 million either type one or type two diabetics inside the United States, and you know a population of what? 350, 400 million, so one in every four, right. So what we don't want to do is a growing, yeah, but what we, yeah, and it shouldn't be right. But what we don't want to do as a brand is we don't want to contribute or keep contributing to an epidemic, right, which is type type two.
Speaker 2:Really, you know type one's unavoidable right and we're about 10% of that total really type ones to type two.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so what's great is, if we want to be a brand that is the most far reaching and the most cast the widest net, we've got to include diabetics. I mean, you guys know from being in CPG there are certain diabetic buyers who buy just for diabetic categories. Right and so well. We can just include them on a general vitamins aisle or sports nutrition aisle with us.
Speaker 2:Well, and you'll find that, you know, there's always exceptions. There's, I'm sure, people out there that don't read labels, that have diabetes, but the ones that are managing their diabetes, we read more labels than probably anybody except maybe gluten and tolerant, because that there's so much hidden in there could be that you're going to feel in your body in a way where, if you got a healthy pancreas, you just it just happens. Yeah you don't realize? Yeah, what's going on?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's what's what's cool about us. I mean, you know we. There's a scripture we put on the bottom of our boxes.
Speaker 3:I want to ask you about that, yeah it's third, John, two, which is dear brothers, I pray that you're doing well physically, just as you are spiritually. And so when we look at doing things in products and projects, like we have a, we actually have a chaplain who prays for our products, our employees and our customers full time, right? Sweet old grandma, ladies, you know, she just knows how to pray and just ask the Lord for stuff, right. And so, like we want to, we want to be part of this movement where, you know, health and spirituality are intertwined, because I don't think you can do one without the other, right.
Speaker 3:And so we really want to kind of like no one can definitely limit the other, for sure Absolutely, but we want to be this movement like we want to inspire people to say look, we're not just here to take your dollar, but we want more for you than we want from you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right.
Speaker 3:And that's your true life is this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a quote. I'm not going to think of it offhand, it's been a while since I read it, but it's in the imitation of Christ. It's kind of a classic Catholic Christian book and it comments on you have to prioritize your physical wellness, because if you're sick you're not going to be able to go into the disciplines that the book was advising you to pursue.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so if you can't get off the couch, how can you go? And how can you go tell people about Jesus, right? You can't, right? So, and that's one thing a lot of Christians don't want to talk about Like, we can talk about pornography, we can talk about alcoholism, but we don't want to talk about health and wellness, right? Oh, my friend.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's not touch that one right.
Speaker 3:So I don't know what. I don't know if this thing is rated, right? Sorry, this podcast is rated, but I mean, it's just one of those things that people don't want to talk about.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think you know, maybe more Western than just Christian, but Christian too. Mental health is a part of health, Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And if you're health.
Speaker 2:If you're not consuming the right things and doing the right things with your body, it all suffers right and yeah, in fact, a lot of that I've been.
Speaker 3:I've been. I met this guy named Gabe Reckon. He's just, he's an absolute brain, but he's been talking a lot about folic acid, right? So when you look on flour on boxes and any kind of flour type product, a lot of reason that people want to be gluten free is because they don't like the way flour interacts with their body. Well, if they would just stop eating enriched flour, then actually they may not have to be as gluten-free as they think, and it's pretty interesting. So we've started cooking. I love, I love to cook, right, love to cook Pancakes. I love to cook crepes, but lately I've been making biscuits from scratch, right, and we talk about.
Speaker 3:And you know what I've been doing. I'll get biscuits and I'll get turkey sausage or sausage and I'll get cheese and I'll make eggs. We've got we raised chickens, right, I've got, I've got a hundred chickens at home. I don't know, don't ask me why, I just love it, but we actually raised chicken. So I'll have farm fresh eggs. I'll have turkey, I have biscuit and have some fresh grated cheese that we just cut off the block, you know, and it's the best breakfast.
Speaker 3:And since we're using flour that's not enriched, you know we're using organic. So if you look at organic flour, it's not enriched, non, you know, it's so much better and it tastes so much better. But I don't feel sick and I don't feel like, oh, oh, you know feeling right, yeah, we have a competitor who's like the monster in our space, that Big hydrate products, right, and I'm not gonna say their name, but you could probably guess who but whenever you drink it, it just sits in your stomach and feels oh, you know, it's got that. Yeah, kind of you can feel it in the bottom of your belly. Yeah, you know what I mean. And so if you'll look at non enriched flowers, it'll actually help.
Speaker 2:I'll do that. Yeah, I love it. Okay, more biscuits.
Speaker 3:Love the focus on, like you know, wellness overall, yeah it's not yeah, it's not just selling a product, right, this is. This isn't a. This is a journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, to move right. It's a movement. So, within the true lab, you all started as an e-com only business right and now, for the last one year 18 months, you're in retail.
Speaker 3:Yeah, what was really interesting, we were teamed up with the, with a pretty big influencer at the time that has a big, you know, youtube station, all that kind of stuff, and Right in the middle of Coven, whatever you want to say about that, right, I don't want to be political about it, but right in the middle of coven I'm like everybody's thinking that retail is dead and I remember people talking about stores closing and About e-com. Like everybody's get everything shipped to the door and I'm saying, man, this is the time, like you want to do something. When, when, when the flow is not going the way.
Speaker 3:Yeah you want to be first to market, and so I'm like this is the time we really need to go for retail.
Speaker 1:Swim upstream, swim upstream. Hmm, that feels like a Walmart Kind of a well and people were talking about retail being dead.
Speaker 3:I mean, I remember 2007. You know Walmart, or retail in general, is just blowing. They're buying everything on every corner 20 bucks a foot. You know every CVS and Eckerd they're all wage in war and all this kind of stuff and I remember seeing that market like that. But when 2020 has happened and everybody saying retails dead, I'm like this is the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, think how many direct-to-consumer brands had 18 months of glory and don't exist anymore. Exists as a shell of themselves.
Speaker 3:Man, it's such a great point, right, yeah, and I think we could have fallen into that trap not that it was a trap, but we could have focused in that area, right and we decided at that times like this would be a great time to get in retail. So we started to talk to a person that kind of helped us introduce to a couple relationships which led to a Sam's Club Roadshow, right.
Speaker 2:Those are fun. Oh, there are a lot of work, but there man, you want to talk about fun.
Speaker 3:We're talking about retail today, right? Oh yeah, so my wife and I, I've got a diesel Ford truck F 250, right, big old truck. Yeah and I buy this. I buy this trailer to Texas truck.
Speaker 3:That's a big old truck to small truck and so I buy this trailer from the Kyle foundation Chris Kyle, the American sniper guy, right, we buy it from their foundation. They were selling it and it's a like a race trailer. So we set up this race trailer and it's all wrapped with all their stuff. So we take it off and put our stickers on it and we started a roadshow and we did the roadshow ourselves. We didn't hire anybody or anything. We actually did ourselves. So we, our executive team, and then we started hiring people to come and ambassadors, you know, to kind of work the shows with us.
Speaker 3:But we were there and you know five, six different Sam's clubs, five, six different weeks Right in 2021, when they just started allowing sampling to happen again. So there was like no sampling allowed, maybe both, the table wasn't there, right, you couldn't go get your free cheese stick or whatever it was. Yeah, and they let us, because what we did? We put cups and we put a lid on top, and that was kind of to be safe. You know coven protocols, yeah, and we were passing out hydrate and energy Right there in the middle of Sam's clubs, and so what was interesting about that is we were doing Sam's clubs Ourselves.
Speaker 3:We do a Thursday, friday and a Saturday, and then we wouldn't do it on Sunday. So we were doing it for three days and we were setting like records per story, records of what we're selling. So, yeah, we the first, the first show, we did like $9,000 in three days of sales. That's fantastic. It was amazing. Yeah, in fact. In fact, kyle Eggers who was it was Michael Kirby's boss. We were with Michael last night at dinner. It was just cool to reconnect with him. But Kyle Eggers called, called up Michael. He said, hey, I See the research show for True Labs. How many stores are they selling in?
Speaker 1:They thought multiple stores.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that was one he goes there in one store. So we, we did our, we did, we went big and if we have to do that again and when we do it again We'll do it different. But we went in, set up a 10 by 10 metal lattice structure, had signs, had lights you know we had a. We were burning Oils, like oil diffusers, you know we had old diffusers, so we had lights and we had music going. So we had all five senses engaged. So somebody's pushing the little cart down and they look over and they're like man, this is not what Sam's looks like. I'm gonna do right basis like what's going on. So they've come in with curiosity, yeah, and then we'd sample and talk to them and, yeah, you know, help them out.
Speaker 1:Walk out hydrated or with more energy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, so what was cool is that we did like a number of those shows, and one of them we actually did was here in Bentonville, and so if you've got any owners or founders who want to figure out how to get in retail, yeah, right, here's what happened.
Speaker 1:We actually wrote showed to.
Speaker 3:Bentonville, you know, and we bought hotel rooms for our people and we were here for three days. There's a lot of expense with it, but at that, at that meeting I got named Steven on, who y'all know Was there with his wife and his kid and and he kind of came up to the, to the booth and you know, was really interested in. I mean we had, we had the, the aisle lock jammed, you know, with just people and just people. It was just cool because I think people in here in Bentonville when they see something that's new or different retail.
Speaker 3:Yeah they know, Because this is their background, this is the world right. So he comes in and then, and then he's a. He's walking out. I didn't get talked to him, so he's walking out. And I run to the door and somebody said, hey, you know you go meet this guy. So I end up talking there in the breezeway of the Bentonville Sampson like 45 minutes and just found out what a cool dude and create guy isn't on this kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:So he kind of, you know, started the ball rolling and called another buyer who's in the category that we were in and then mentioned that by that they should look at us. And then, you know, over course of time, we started to do emails back and forth and about six months goes by and you know I was kind of being slow to respond because we were working on some other internal issues that we had inside the tree lives at the time and I remember kind of like just kind of like yeah, I don't know if that one more things really gonna happen. You know, it's kind of blown it off, like I wasn't even really paying attention to it.
Speaker 2:It wasn't. It wasn't on the roadmap at that point it was.
Speaker 3:I mean it was. I was on the roadmap, but it's like I didn't understand how retail worked. I had no clue what was going on and I really wasn't getting the right guidance. Yeah, and finally the buyer who eventually, you know, ends up bringing us in, he's he kind of like emails me one day. He's like, hey, brandon, are you not interested in coming to Walmart? It's kind of like a brick-to-forehead moment, right, and I'm like, no, I really want to. He's like, well, I need this and this and this and this and this to even consider you guys right. And so I remember that whole journey and it took.
Speaker 3:It probably took about a year, a year and a half a courtship Before, like it actually happened. So what was really cool? I remember it was March 28th and I get in, I get an email from from this buyer and he's no longer with with Walmart now, but I get an email from him and he said, hey, we would like to present you guys in 1700 Walmart's and give you signature wings in 1700. And I remember seeing the email and I just put my hands on my face and I called my wife and I just had the biggest sports cry like I've ever had like, because, like you, you work, and you work and you work, and sometimes you don't see the fruit, but you always have faith that something's gonna happen, something's gonna bring.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah that God's gonna move in some way in your business when there's something about seeing a dream start to transpire. Yeah, that is a spiritual event it was, and, as a founder, like if you're, if you don't have gotten your business, first of all get gotten your business, it'll change everything. But the second thing is is like when you start to see that fruit and you start to see that stuff happen man, it was just so. It was so affirming yeah right, because I can't believe it, I mean.
Speaker 3:I remember buying the dot-com, the true labs dot-com. I paid like $3,500 for it. Nobody was spelling true, tru, right, it was all TRUE and all this kind of stuff. Nobody was even thinking about that. And it's just like step after step after step and to realize something from from nothing Now to something that's going into national retail, like I remember looking at the list and so after that they launched us in like 3800 stores, right. So we had 1700 signature wings and we had 3800 stores or something like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And I remember looking at all the places our product were going and it was like we had two locations in Alaska, we had three locations in Hawaii. I mean I never done a road show up to Maine, but yeah, we had, we had products going all over the country. I'm just like I can't believe this. It's kind of mind-boggling. But then I was like, oh, holy crap, what are we gonna do? Because we really didn't have anybody help helping us. Yeah, like really, you know who was giving us any analytics at that point you're a hundred percent DTC we were.
Speaker 3:We were all DTC, right. So then it was like I got in the guy who's still with me. My CEO, who had been with Nature Nates hunting company for for many, many years, had taken him from, like you know, zero to 80 million in rev right, and so I get him in and he knows a lot, a lot about retail and he's like you know what you really need to get some other people on the team. So we started filling positions and we're running on EOS, like you guys are yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so that really helped entrepreneurial operating well.
Speaker 3:It really. It really clarified who should be on the team and who shouldn't, because we had some people on the team at that, the time. That didn't need to be. There's a great, great Quote, and it says people are like chapters in a book, but not all characters make it to the end of the story. Mm-hmm, and for us that was true, mm-hmm. I've had a lot of people on this journey as we started, but not all of them are supposed to be with us till the end.
Speaker 3:Yeah you know what I mean. Yeah, and so I Hire on him. And then I hire on a big sales VP you guys know him. But Jim McGinnis, who was here last couple of days and the guy's been in you know CPG for for 30 years yeah well, he would always talk in CPG, cpg. 18 months ago I didn't know what CPG stood for.
Speaker 3:That's you, so I mean, you know and and now you know we've got amazing people, we've got amazing banking relationship, we've got all these things lined up and and the thing that we really were missing and I'm not just saying this because you got me on your podcast, but was a full-service brokerage team right. We've got brokers working on other retailers. We're in like six different retailers now. We'll be in 16 by the end of next year. Yeah, but for the Walmart account, which was our biggest account, we really need somebody. It's kind of like you're flying blind right, like I'm a pilot, a flyer on universe.
Speaker 3:I fly airplanes right, but you're only as good as your instruments, and if you can't trust your instruments, you really don't know where you're going, and that's kind of us. So now that you guys are on board, it really feels like we've got a good set of instruments. You've got, you know, six pack. Yeah, we can look at there and say this is where we're going. I love that part of the six well.
Speaker 1:It's an honor to you know, serve alongside you and get to help customers experience the True labs difference. It's been fun to get in their root cause, figure out what's going on when you you think about the journey. I don't want to Try to rewrite any kind of history or whatnot, but in your experience, going from the just do it yourself to when do you need to bring in help or other folks, what advice would you have to other entrepreneurs out there?
Speaker 3:Yeah, good question. Do it sooner than I did?
Speaker 2:Amen, yeah, there was a lot of.
Speaker 3:There was a lot of nights that you know, I look at the. You know, look at the same back man. How are we gonna do this? Yeah, and, and I always believe that there was a way.
Speaker 3:But, um, you know, we met, we met you guys at NACDS this year yep, and I Was like man, I kind of like those guys, you know, like they're fun to talk to the personable. But just because somebody's fun to talk to a person doesn't mean they're really good at what they do. Yeah, right. But then we started to kind of interview you guys and vet y'all and for us it was like, yeah, these guys really know what they're doing. And what was really evident was spending the last couple of days with you guys here in Bentonville. It was like we'd go into the hall and, you know, you'd go off and you'd be talking to somebody else over, you know, and then Matt would be talking to somebody else over here that he knew and it's like, okay, these guys really kind of know what's up, and going through those conversations and you guys having sat on the other side of the table and now sitting with us, it's just been, it's been phenomenal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the power. I'm a good team.
Speaker 3:Yeah, one team, one dream, the obvious thing to point out there is.
Speaker 2:I wasn't in the room like that's. Charles and his team and they're you know they're they're best in the business, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been a lot of fun so, speaking of NACDS and kind of some of the human story, that we spent some time at your booth and we had similar reaction. I had a similar reaction. Walk away, he's like I, I would really like to work with, with those people, yeah, but there's, there's, you know, there's business, and then there's, like human business, and human business is the exception, it's not the rule. There's, you know, a lot of products, a lot of good products, a lot of, a lot of neat companies, but you all, you seemed I don't want to say family, because family can be dysfunctional, but you seem like you really cared for one another and that there was something different going on there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Like cared, care for somebody like in a step, cousin, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. I know like like the story of how Jim came to you and how that that was very providential and what it worked out, and that I don't. I don't know exactly what question I'm asking, but I kind of want to go into that because that's what I walked away with was like no, there's something special going on there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 1:I'd say it's a culture question. Yeah yeah right, cuz the culture is evident at True Labs that it's more than just hey, we're here to to make money and and sell products in the CPG industry.
Speaker 3:You know what's what's really cool about the EOS method for us and I keep tagging them but it's the fact that I can get in my box, that I need to be in and I can go do what I do, which is establish our culture, yeah, set the vision and then innovate right and inspire. So if I can do that and if I have other people that can take care of the other Elements and like we hired a new person today and I knew that we were gonna maybe hire him, but he calls me and he's like, hey, so excited to be on the team. Like I just signed my papers and, man, you know, I'm so excited. I'm like what are you talking about? I was like it's official is like, yeah, I didn't. You saw the email. I'm like, no, I don't see the email, but it was. It's great because our team is starting to it's running.
Speaker 3:It's really running it. Yeah, it's like a well-oiled machine. Yeah, that's beautiful and and for me to be able to stay in my box and do what I'm doing. So one of the big things that we do is is establish that culture and you know I get this from my dad. My dad, if he really really likes you, He'll kind of jab at you sometimes.
Speaker 3:You know He'll kind of like he'll kind of play with you, because that's the way he shows affection, and so I I do that too with people. You know we've had a lot of fun cutting up the last couple of days and you know we had, we had our, we went mountain biking yesterday.
Speaker 1:We sure did. You know, Bentonville is the mountain bike capital of the world. If you had comes up on those putt, yeah, it's trademark.
Speaker 3:So and my sales VP, who's 62 years old, who's a road biker like can road bike with anybody, jumps on a mountain bike and follows your guidance we had a great time. We had a great time to explore everybody lives and pulls an OTV, which I didn't know what that mean, but he went over the over the bars over the bars.
Speaker 1:That's not how you. You'll want to ride? Yeah, a mountain bike.
Speaker 3:But what I love was is that he was willing to do it. He was willing to follow and he's willing to have fun and take himself out of his, out of his comfort zone. Right, and when people are inspired and when people Feel like they're a meaningful part of a team, they're in. Yeah, right, even if you're taking them on a black diamond in Bentonville and he's never done mountain biking before in his life he's in, and so I think you know establishing that culture like one of our core values is fun, hmm and if we're not having fun?
Speaker 3:we know we don't need to do this anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, like that yeah funds underrated, sometimes Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I think it is it's, it's a, it needs to be 40% of my life and my mind like or it's just dull you know, yeah, and if you're having fun, you're usually with other people that you care about. Yeah what's your what's? What are you creating? What's the future of true labs, where you aim the?
Speaker 3:future of true labs is bright. Right, it's really bright. I love what we're doing with our hydrate category. There's a lot of innovation that's going on there. It's it's not just a hydrate product. We've got a lot of offshoots of hydrate that are coming out and I I know what we're doing, which I don't want to announce it yet on on your podcast right, which I would but I Think what we're doing is so innovative that when people see it, they're gonna be like wow, we should have thought of that. Yeah, why didn't we think of that? And when they try it, they're gonna be like and how do we replicate this? Because it is so, so tasty and it's so good for you. It's gonna be really neat to see what the future holds and I think you know if you can invent a product that people need and that they want and that they enjoy. It's not like just selling aspirin or Advil's like man I need to take this.
Speaker 2:You need to enjoy it.
Speaker 3:But if you take something that you, that you enjoy and that you need and that you know is better for you, mm-hmm, that's, that's the goal, right yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a sweet spot. I love it. So what advice would you give to your you know, first-year entrepreneurial journey Self, now knowing what you know at this point in the retail journey?
Speaker 3:So you, I think, establishing a time that you focus on your business and that you can do what you need to do.
Speaker 3:So for me, you know, when I wake up at 5.30 in the morning from 5.30 to about 6.15, I'm literally like reading my Bible or I'm thinking about where does God want me to go with this business, like where does he think that this thing? And so I'm studying my Bible and I'm doing praise worship time, and then I've established a routine from going in that to to working out with a group, and I've got a group of guys that come and meet at True Labs every day. We meet there from about 6.30 to about 8. Right, we'll stretch and talk for 30 minutes, but I've got these amazing men that are around me, that sharpen me, that make me better and that also helped me on those really really hard days. Right, any founder is going to have really really bad days and for me I've had a lot of those. But to keep going and to have grit and to have determination to say, you know what I believe that God's best is in front of me and not behind me.
Speaker 2:And to know what to keep doing and what to change. Yeah, like those are some of the hardest decisions.
Speaker 3:Well, and I think you know when it boils down to it. If you can take that decision and put it in boiling water, it becomes really clear if that's something that you need to do or not. Like this is the way we need to go and this is the way we don't. And so to get like those little decisions, just little course corrections, and then to just have determination and to never give up. For me it's like you know, I tell people this all the time look, I'm going to stay doing True Labs until God tells me to quit. I'm going to stay on it like a junkyard dog. I'm going to bite and not let go Right.
Speaker 3:And people are like, what's your strategy? What's your exit plan? Like you know, I don't have a strategy, I don't have an exit plan. Like I want to keep doing this because it's fun, it's exciting, we're helping people, we're getting testimonies about our products. You know how it helps people and you know how people can sleep better, how they can, you know, be hydrated and not cramp anymore, and all these amazing things. And so, while it's fun and while I'm called to be here, I just want to keep doing it. So you know, you're going to have those good days and you're going to have the bad days, but just keep going, don't stop.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And then get the right people on the right on the team as soon as you can. For me, that was huge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's awesome. So we're about there on time. We've got a couple of lightning round questions for you right after that Got it.
Speaker 3:What are you?
Speaker 2:reading right now or what have you read recently that was meaningful.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of books. I'm rereading John Eldridge's Wild at Heart. I've got a book club that we meet every Wednesday. We meet in a bunch of like social media influencers and we're going through this book. But it's the first time I read it in like 20 years. So it's kind of neat to see a book that you read 20 years ago in the different meaning.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Wild at Heart's phenomenal Becoming a King by Morgan Snyder Phenomenal book. We just finished that one. And then there was a little short book called the Mayanliness of Christ and it talks about how Jesus was the ultimate provider and protector and nobody ever talks about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, the Good Reco that Becoming a King was a good one. It's a really good one. I took your advice, read it and, yeah, super meaningful, that was a softball. Next question Biggest failure in retail.
Speaker 3:In retail only I've had so many failures. You can have it if you'd like to expand the audience here, I'm happy to. Well, one thing that we did last year in retail that really hurt us was that we were designing a signature wing and we weren't really thinking about how it was going to sit on shelf. The signature wing was kind of like the important part Right. So we had the 1700 signature wings or power wings, whatever you want to call them and to put the most density on them, we did a gusseted bag.
Speaker 3:But we did a gusseted bag that was only one inch wide at the bottom, which was great if you're hanging it, but when you put it on shelf it would just go flat. Yeah, right, so we had. And then also the problems that we had with this bag was that it was getting sideways on a lot of shelves when they didn't have room for it. The stockers would just not put it in there correctly, so we were missing a lot of opportunity facings. Oh yeah, so I think that's the biggest retail mistake that we made. We transitioned into boxes, into a box design, and that's gone over quite a bit better.
Speaker 1:That's a very common e-commerce digitally native brand problem. When you've got the, you know you're going to ship it to a customer. You get unlimited shelf online.
Speaker 2:That's great. It's such a different function when it's coming in the mail. My advice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you got to pay attention to what would it look like in a dimly and fluorescently lit retail environment surrounded by hundreds of other products, where a customer is distracted in a hurry and is going to potentially look at your product for four seconds while they're running. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Fluorescent lights completely affect the way that your bag looks. We've got another retailer that ran up in the mid regions and we've got a flavor that we've never launched anywhere here in the South, and it's a green lemon lime flavor, and it just does not have enough contrast on it right now. So it's something that we're going to have to fix, but you know, get that fluorescent light. Man, it's such a challenge, that's fun.
Speaker 2:What's the mantra, what's the motto for 2024, for True Labs and for you.
Speaker 3:I think for 2024 it's to keep expanding right. So you have years in business where you go and if you'll you know I'm doing a lot of biblical references today, but if you look at the Israelites and the Bible, when they go and they take over Jericho, they don't just go and immediately take over all over Israel, they just take over Jericho and they establish. So I feel like this year was a year of establishing and then next year is a year of expansion and then that'll probably be an established year. So we kind of keep taking territory and we establish. And the Bible is really cool. It talks about this. It says I will give you fields to harvest where you did not plant and you'll reap and vineyards where you did not sow.
Speaker 3:Right, and so I feel like we're having some of the advantage of our category, which is in the hyper explosion category, and the brand that's leading us right now, which it's okay brand I'm not going to say anything about it, but they're they're, they're paving the way for us to come in behind them and just be a number two or number three player in the space, which I have no problem with that, because what's great is is, once people try our product and they compare it to that other product, we just we'll just take their market share.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's exciting, brandon. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:So very good it's been really good, you bet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, appreciate you joining us.
Speaker 3:Well, thanks for being part of our team. I know, um, and I'm not trying to plug you guys and this- is not paid.
Speaker 2:We're thrilled about it. It's not paid, it's not sponsored.
Speaker 3:Right, but you guys, um, there's a really bright future with us, so thanks for being on our team.
Speaker 2:Yeah, appreciate it. It's our pleasure and thank you for joining us. As always, you can listen to all of our podcasts at highimpactanalyticscom or on Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you very much.
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