We Loved It To Death

Greg and Brian finally sit down to unpack the real story behind the rise, chaos, lessons, and aftermath of building Tessemae’s.

From creating one of the most disruptive clean-food brands in America to navigating manufacturing disasters, investor pressure, scaling mistakes, leadership challenges, and losing control of the company. This conversation goes far deeper than the typical entrepreneur success story. 

The brothers discuss:

• What they would do differently today
• Why quality mattered more than profit
• How they helped change the clean eating movement
• The realities of scaling too fast
• The importance of pressure-testing ideas
• Why trusting the wrong people can destroy momentum
• And how discipline, coaching, competition, and family helped them survive the chaos

This episode also explores:

• Entrepreneurship and identity
• Investor dynamics
• Leadership under pressure
• And the emotional side of building something meaningful

Because the truth is—

success isn’t just about building something valuable.

It’s about building a life, a family, and a mindset strong enough to survive when things fall apart.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What went wrong in the Testy Maze journey? And as we were mapping out everything that went wrong, we we trusted people. The wrong people, invented clean manufacturing, tried to get people to copack it, they couldn't do it, they wouldn't do it, and then we grew too fast.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

They turned their mom's famous salad dressing into a multi-million dollar business.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Our price point was too low. You know, we were trying to provide clean food for everyone. That was our main theme. If we were to start a salad dressing company today, what would we do differently?

SPEAKER_01 0:36

I mean, the first thing I would do is never let it be Greg Vetter Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Uh I've got Brian Vetter, middle brother, aka diggs. And initially we were going to talk about uh what went wrong in the Tessie Mays journey. And as we were mapping out everything that went wrong, which is actually too long for a podcast, that's why I wrote a book about it. I think the audio book is what nine hours long. Those are all the things that went wrong. Uh, we also have a very different perspective from a Monday morning quarterback perspective on what did go wrong. Um and so maybe we'll talk about some of that stuff, maybe we won't. Uh, but trying to find the examples of why we were successful, I think, is interesting versus other brands that didn't go down in a dumpster fire that are currently doing well. And one of the main talking points was this co-packing situation, which I think is interesting because it goes back to how dedicated we were to quality. And a lot of these brands today, um, they have a copacker, and so they get to buy a finished good, and you can finance a finished good, and then you know what your margins are versus you know, you've got this finished good, it's already made, it's packaged, it's boxed, it's shipped to a distributor. You know how much money you have every single case. There aren't crackheads showing up and turning your floor scrubber into a mustard bomb, and you buy your shit and you scale accordingly, and your copacker tells you how much volume you have and what the capacity is, and that's your growth plan moving forward. And if you can't make it, you don't sell it. And our journey was the complete opposite. We invented clean manufacturing, we tried to get people to copack it, they couldn't do it, they wouldn't do it, they didn't believe fresh garlic was safe. Um, they wanted citric acid, they wanted natural flavor, they wanted water, they wanted thickening agents, they wanted all this crazy shit. And I think if you were to, I guess, really boil it all down of like why did we take the risks that we took, because we tried to do all that shit. We tried to find a copacker for a while. We tried to find a small, reasonable, certified kitchen manufacturing space to make it to meet demand. We had the entire state of Maryland, every county of economic development working on our behalf to try and find it. And the only thing that we found that was a perishable food manufacturing facility was the one we took, which was in Essex, Maryland, which was a crab cake factory that had uh gone under maybe that place is just bad juju. We walked into a demonic house of evil. Um, and so when you look back, it's like, well, we could have just used a copacker and methodically grew it. It's like, well, we tried to do that. And then we grew too fast. Yeah, we did. And our price point was too low, and it should have been higher. It was. And so as we dissect all of this stuff, you know, we were trying to provide clean food for everyone. That was like our main theme. Because like our we had a nonprofit for food deserts, they didn't have access to clean food called crop circles. We'd go in, do a whole deal, a festival is actually really cool. Kendrick Lamar came to the one in Compton. But as we look back on lessons learned, and maybe that's what it is, it's not so much what do we do wrong, because there's a lot of that. But you brought up a point which was like if we were to start a salad dressing company today, which someone just called me about that earlier this week, um, what would we do differently? How do you think about starting a salad dressing company today versus what we did?

SPEAKER_01 5:27

I mean, the first thing I would do is never let it be refrigerated.

unknown 5:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

Very true. And then the second thing I would do differently is create a national brand through regional conventional grocery that partnered with regional natural grocery, because we went region by region by region, exclusive to Whole Foods for five-ish years. Then we got the call from Safeway, and then all of a sudden, before we had even sold in a conventional grocery store or the exclusive national organic company. No, we weren't even organic yet. That wasn't until Kroger.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Yeah, we were not we were the clean, non-GMO five ingredient that congealed still.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Yeah, olive oil. And so our saying was if it doesn't congeal, it's not real. Yep. Whole Foods isn't selling their data at the time. Correct. So then when we did a region by region data pool for the Safeway meeting and showed the team how much we were selling, they were like, So if you do that in 1200 doors, you will be the number one selling salad dressing, period, in produce. Yep. So obviously that didn't go so well. A lot of buyer change, a lot of demo and rule change. And so I think if you bite off like a Publix, an HEB, a Wegmans, those are really the three powerhouses that I think you can go to. Meyer. Yeah. Yeah, that would probably be like the next one. And then there's a couple other, but post-COVID, it's kind of weird because everything's been consolidated. Yep. So I would say, and I love to say, get in where you fit in, right? I think Mo, you taught me that. Yeah. Get in where you fit in. And they're like swimwear, I think's the other one. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. Small thing to a giant is definitely another one you gave me. Ain't nothing but something to get used to. So, anyways, I think I would have taken that approach, but I didn't even know what most of these grocery stores were. I didn't even know what a Kroger was when we started.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

Because we don't have Krogers around here.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

Right. So I think I definitely would have done that. And then the other thing I would have done is just been way more confident in saying no.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Well, yes, but that would also require a crystal ball. Well, you asked me today. No, today. And I'm not gonna argue about your perspective on the past or what it would be today, but I will say it's difficult to look back on everything that we know today because we tried to do all of that in the beginning. And so there's this weird tension when you have this conversation where it's like, dude, we should have used a co-packer and just bought a finished good. It's like we tried. Like we tried to go to fresh market, remember? We tried to go like a couple other those East Coast guys, and they just kind of weren't even in on the clean eating thing yet. And they had no velocity that was worth it. Right. But we were like, we were taking the correct steps initially, and so then you're kind of left with this weird situation where it's like okay, nothing now is going right. You know, like we're trying to cope. Do you leverage your dad's house and start a manufacturing facility? No. No, we did it, but no, because you look at all of these companies that can kind of methodically scale and allocate their resources intelligently, and it's like they have a manufacturing partner, they have a set rate of what that's gonna cost per case, they order the cases, the cases show up in distribution, it goes into the retail store. They're a marketing sale, and they're basically a marketing sales and quality arm, right? Let's make sure they're hitting our quality standards, let's make sure we're selling into the right spots. Let's call it a day. Yeah. We were doing three different companies' jobs at once. Yes. You sold like you were a broker, best broker ever. True. We manufactured like we were a copacker, because we were just to ourselves. We did all of our own branding, marketing, branding, and marketing. Then, so four, then we set up a national demo company to demo our stuff because we had a standard of how people should be in store, communicating to the customer, because that was so important for us to change the behavior. And now, you know, copackers can make it now because clean eating is a normal thing, and organic is a normal thing, and we have figured out the processes for how to make stuff without thickening agents and what you can do instead of using citric acid and all this other stuff. And you look back and you're like, well, fuck man.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Like we tried to do all that, we didn't want to do the main 36,000 square foot manufacturing plant with 60 Whole Foods Doors at the time. Right. That's a little crazy. But here's the other thing I want people to know that are listening is we lost a war on paper as far as the control of the company, the way we raise money, but we did not lose the war on building the the number one selling organic dressing in the U.S. We smashed. We absolutely dominated the we we spearheaded the clean eating movement. Yeah. When we so 2016, we had a 75 share of the organic dressing company, a market in organic dressing market in produce. So refrigerated dressing. Yep. Then we launched Shelf Stable, which initially was smashing. Yeah. Well, just smashing in general.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Well, I'm just saying, because then COVID came.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

Yeah, right. So then COVID came, slowed down some of the resets, but you take that data and extend it throughout, and then you think about what Ultra Fresh Foods is now today. A lot of those formulas influenced kind of like the ability for people during COVID to gain access to fresh food from a global supply chain. And so I don't want people to think that just because we lost the war on paper, we didn't lose the actual battle, right? Like we won that.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Well, we changed the way sauce and dressing is manufactured, and then obviously we've taken that innovative approach into other companies that we have created and launched. And so sticking on this concept of if you were to do it today, what would you do differently? The other thing I think we did really wrong was well, I guess there's two things. One, we thought we didn't think organic was a trend, but everyone is screaming in our face that it's just a trend and it's going to go away like everybody else. So you need to go faster, faster. You need to get into more doors faster because this is a small window of time. Now organic is like it's a commodity, it's a standard. It's yeah, no shit. But at the time, no one believed it was going to be anything. They didn't think people would pay up for it, they didn't think people cared. And and so I think that is one of the issues where we were listening too much to outside people instead of trusting our common sense instincts on like this isn't gonna go away. It's better for you and it tastes better.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

And they were all convincing us for an exit, but we were having to build a hundred-year brand infrastructure-wise. Yeah, I yes, that is very true, right? And so it's like, yeah, someone come, writes us a check, wonderful, because we're going fast, but at the same time, it's like, you're not taking the anti-caking agents out of mustard seed in Canada in 90 days. That's going to take a little bit of time. And then as you think about all the buyers, so I actually had a call the other day from a very large retailer who was like, Are you guys ever going to get back in dressing again? And I kind of laughed and I'm like, No. And they were like, the category is dead since you guys left. Yeah. Tessie Maze. Everyone just takes your label and tries to rip it off. Yep. Then they try to take your formulas and product flavor names, rip it off. Which they're doing. Yeah. They all take it. Every one of every name. Dude, there's four different companies right now that have pitched our original, like what do we call it? Our elite eight. Four vinaigretts, four creamies. Yep. And that was the whole category. And so those were elite. Dude, we were 85% of organic dressing manufacturing in the US. We were bigger and better than everybody.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

And so it well, and it tasted better. It wasn't, it wasn't just a fad. It was like people, like I still get people who will send me a note and go, like, please bring back the the funniest one is lemon Chesapeake. I was gonna say lemon Chesapeake. Dude. And then the Chesapeake mayo. That shit was unbelievable. All right. Well, we're we digress. You were you were talking about um kind of categorical growth. Someone called you, you should get back into the dressing scene because the category is dead.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

Yeah. And I kind of laughed and and said, You helped kill it. What they did. And so I'm like, you are so scared uh that your organic was overperforming in units and underperforming in your penny profit margin or whatever they call it.

SPEAKER_00 17:07

Well, it was also all the fucking store brand bullshit. How many conversations do we have about that?

SPEAKER_01 17:13

Yeah. So then private label, I was like, okay, you want us to do private label, great. Why don't we do this? You come up with a private label organic and you sell it for $2.99, and we'll raise our price to $6.99, and we will still outperform you dollar for dollar, unit for unit, because no one's going to pay up for a standard that tastes like shit. Yep. So I sit here thinking about like just conceptually where the industry has gone and who got it right, who got it wrong, or whatever. The reality is the salad dressing category, the sauce category, they need us back to disrupt and blow this thing up again because it's it's a wall of Me Too bullshit. Yep. In every action. And it doesn't taste good. Uh well, that's why no one's buying it. Right. So you have this whole movement of wellness happening, and because the categories are dying in fresh food and the big foods buying up all the smaller private equity backed guys, then you've got the GLP ones of the world just killing people from the inside out. Because to be fair, it all kind of tastes like shit. Yeah. So unless it's gonna taste good, which is where my plug for Alt the Fresh Foods comes in, and the new homegrown produce brand coming to a store near you. Um it kind of dawned on me that maybe we do need to get back in the game and get after it.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

Well, I do think you know, we have a great avocado oil brand we're gonna launch. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

And then I think with real avocado oil, yeah, not dyed canola oil from China.

unknown 19:01

China.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

Uh and I think that that could eventually be a dressing brand. I talked to um a woman earlier in this in the week, and she's you know, an influencer, nutritionist, uh, chef type person. She wants to get into the dressing game. And so I was just kind of talking her through this is how it's done. And so the things that you like, the calories per serving are this because they made a decision that they want the calorie per serving is more important than flavor. She thinks that? No, no. This is like, I like this brand, I like this brand, you know. I'm like, okay. It's this calorie per serving because that's what they care about.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Because if you use real food, that's not the calorie per serving.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

Right.

SPEAKER_00 20:01

So that's why the first ingredient's water.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Right.

SPEAKER_00 20:03

Because they're going water, avocado oil, other ingredients, thickening agent to bind it all. It's probably gonna break in the fridge if it's real avocado oil. Yeah. And so, like, you just gotta make the decision of is this what you want? And if so, that's fine. Dope brand, we'll create it. You run with it. If you want to recreate the Tessie Mays vibe, then you gotta you gotta take a different approach. Yeah. And I I do think it's interesting, and this is true with anything, like you can feel, and you hear this a lot in like southern cooking or cooking when someone talks about their grandmother's cooking, like you could taste the love in it. Yeah, you could feel the energy and and the love in our products. Yes, the brand was special, the our consumers were special because they bought in. Everything we were doing, you could see and taste and smell that this was something different and special. Now it's not. I don't care how many flavors it comes out with, it's uh I I don't sense it.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

Yeah. I mean, nobody is better than Tessie Mays still. No one can recreate Tessie Mays still. Yep. The group that has it now is just royally fucking it up. And the other piece that I think is really interesting about wellness and kind of the trend of fresh food, etc., you're talking about this echo chuck chamber of two and a half percent of households in America. Yep. This whole wellness world is stuck in this little baby bubble still. Because usually it doesn't taste good, right? And so what I would do and what I want to do. And what I think we should do is we need to go after not the Hidden Valley ranches of the world because Clorox is manipulating people's tongues like some very impressive uh food scientists that they are. But I think you have to go after a Ken's. Because Ken's has the majority of the market share in the 97.5% households. They have Sweet Baby Rays, they have Ken's Steakhouse Dressing. That is a massive category, but everybody keeps going over here, being like, oh, we've got this better for you product that will never scale, but potentially it would. And we know it doesn't. We ran out of humans at 2.5% of the American households.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Yeah, and I think that that's interesting. I also want to talk about like we were so die hard on quality. And that actually, and because we were talking about well, well, we should have co-packed it.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

Who was gonna do it? No one had done it before. We invented clean manufacturing, they rewrote the process for how you can legally make dressing.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

And people still to this day can't do it.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Right. But it it's one of these things where it was like and I don't know if I would change that. Because it was the only thing that made it, it's the only thing that made us special.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

Yeah. Because everything I'd have bought a better machine. Oh fuck, the machines. I would have gotten two more mechanics versus a broker. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

No, I think again, I think we if we could go back in time in a couple areas, more efficient machine, less salespeople, because I'll tell you, man, we had a massive payroll. We had a lot of people making a shitload of money. And nobody, and this isn't me giving you props because you're my brother, because in retrospect, or in reality, it would almost be the opposite. I have yet to meet someone that walks into a meeting and gets the yes, like you.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

Mo on the podcasting, you make that noise like the DJ does boom boom boom.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

But it's real. Yeah, that's true. Find find me a person. You won't. And we this goes back to listening to other people. You know, like you go and you met the head of this giant company that does billions of dollars, and he wants to come in and be a consultant for us because he's the most intelligent salesperson that's ever lived. And here's the platform, and here's this, and here's that. They just gave it away for free. Anyone can give something away for free.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

Yeah. And then you just pay to convince people they need it, even though they don't.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

But it was like in the beginning, when it was me and you selling, and then it was you selling, we were getting real yeses with real relationships, with reasonable price points that we were able to live into and scale. Yeah. And when we started bringing in the pros, that was one of the things that it was kind of the beginning of the end, because it was like we're wasting money making it, we're not making any money because we're we're always running a promo, and these guys need this promo, and these guys need this promo, these guys are bogos, these guys are this, and the next thing you know, you know, we're making a million bucks a dressing and we're losing a hundred bucks, and you're like, this is not good. Now, in theory, at the time, people are selling for top-line sales. So if our top line sales number kept going and that moment in time stayed true to its behavioral pattern, right, that could have been good. It wasn't. But as we look at doing things differently now, and there is no true answer because like this fucking happened with us with Ulta, where we brought in no investors, we owned the whole thing ourselves, we protected everything. And then instead of an outside investor, it was an internal employee that fucked us.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

And so it is this interesting thing where everybody's looking for a silver bullet. Yeah. They all want this map. Here's my map for you to scale to a hundred million. Come to my seminar and I'll give you the map. Yeah. There isn't a fucking map, man. No. Now we can help you not make some dumb mistakes. I think about that one chocolate guy that called me years ago. And I called you after the call. And he remember what was the only difference? He was using like coconut sugar or something. I think it yeah, coconut sugar, that's right. Yeah. It was like chocolate, coconut sugar. And because it was coconut sugar, it was like it was primal or some shit. And we were like, oh, do you have to like process it differently? He's like, no. But I'm gonna start my own manufacturing plant. I'm like, we're like, wait, what? Can't you just tell a copacker to make your chocolate and just use coconut sugar? And he was like, nah, it's gotta be different. I'm like, how? How does it need to be different? And he's like, it just does. He's like, so I'm raising 750 grand to open this facility. I'm like, don't do that, man. Like, we opened a facility because we tried to find a co-packer and literally couldn't. And when we tried to use it, they made it taste like stank garlic asshole. And that isn't good on lettuce people.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

It's not, it is not good. Well, the other thing to that point I was thinking about is when we did sign up for the facility, which it was what it was, we kind of had a five-year ticking time bomb to to get enough boxes through that building to make it work. And so the beauty of that was we had very specific growth goals. Yeah, and then we we worked backwards from it like to the second. Yeah. And we hit them. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We don't miss. We don't miss. And we will do anything at all costs to get it done, including smoking cigarettes in the Star Wars bar.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

One of my favorites.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Dude, I've had more people have texted me about that. They're like, bro, you're willing to smoke cigarettes to close a deal. I'm like, you have no idea what I'll do to close a deal.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

My joke is people were like, You think Brian's gonna close this deal? I'm like, Brian will start a second family to close this fucking deal.

SPEAKER_01 29:19

Yeah. But I do love you, Claire, more than anyone. But we got bills to pay.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

Uh yeah. So I I guess the other piece we should talk on on things we did wrong. We trusted some bad people. Yep. And I don't really know how you can. I I've tried. I created a filter. I go through my filter now of looking for red flags, behavioral red flags, visual red flags, you know, your the little tests, like go out to a meal with them, see how they treat the treat the waiter, are they in shape? Do they have a similar belief system uh that you do, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But you just at the end of the day, you really do not know. I mean, most people don't even have control over their own stomachs for six hours, let alone another person.

SPEAKER_01 30:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

And so that part still hurts because you go back to that moment where it is like sunshine and rainbows and 72 degrees with a slight breeze, and you're like, they're gonna help us do it. We found someone that can actually help us do it.

SPEAKER_01 30:49

Well, and I think the other thing in hindsight is we chose the people we chose because they knew we knew that we had more information than they did on the topic in the category, and they couldn't really influence us to change the brand, the ingredients, the recipe. And then the strategic private equity guys that we stood steered clear of, which in in hindsight, I think is our biggest mistake we ever made. They they knew everything. They are the puppet masters behind the scene calling the shots, and they could have helped us strategically avoid the unnecessary thing that we had to learn because we had the keys to the castle, we had the money, we had the team, we had the knowledge, and all these guys could do is kind of be our hype guy in a sense, but at the same time, when we called to get help from them, oh, I got a Nokia salesman, he could sell anything to anybody, he'll put structure to you guys. I go on one meeting with that dude, and I'm like, Greg, fuck this nerd. Like, no shot. And so I think about that a lot. I don't think I've ever said this out loud to anybody, let alone on a podcast, or to even you. I still think that was the biggest mistake we ever made was defending our ingredients and our brand and our mission to the death, which ended up loving it to death. Like we loved it to death.

SPEAKER_00 32:29

Yeah. I mean, I don't I think when you really boil it down to every fight and every battle and every margin sacrifice and every manufacturing innovation that we literally created ourselves, it was to maintain the quality of the product at all costs. And a part of me is proud of us for doing that because we changed food and the way that people eat food and kind of how people view health, right? Like how many we had an entire hallway a hundred yards long, maybe not a hundred yards, fifty yards long, of love letters and thank you letters of people saying, My kid can eat eat ranch dressing now, you've completely changed our lives for the better. My husband lost 30 pounds doing this diet because he can use your lemon Chesapeake dressing on everything that he eats. And so that part is great. But if we had taken the shortcuts and fucking used thickening agents and found some fucking copacker somewhere that can make a hundred a minute instead of we were making, I don't know, twenty a minute or something like that, um, things may have been different.

SPEAKER_01 34:03

Yeah, well, and I I'm talking more along the lines of you're gonna get in fights with your investors and you're gonna get in intense battles with your board as you scale, like we did no matter what. We were doing with people that had no fucking idea how to help us, but yet they were talking the same amount of shit and putting the same amount of pressure on us as a strategic private equity guy could have done with more context into why they're saying no or why they're saying go.

SPEAKER_00 34:34

Yeah, I agree with that. I think the other part, well, the reason we didn't do that is we wanted Complete control. We wanted control, and we also wanted the playbook. We didn't want to be figureheads at the time.

SPEAKER_01 34:49

Which we became anyway.

SPEAKER_00 34:51

Well, we became I think we were on the fucking most wanted posters. We're not figureheads. Well, we yeah. Um interesting turn of events, yes, interesting turn of events. But again, yeah, I mean, if we had a crystal ball, yeah, you do it in this exact moment. This is when you take it, they'll help guide you. Greg, Brian, Matt, guess what? You do want to be figureheads. Yeah, you do want to own this much, you do just want to show up to food shows, yeah. You do want to just be a marketing model for fucking handouts and the website. Uh we wouldn't be building what we're building today.

SPEAKER_01 35:30

Right.

SPEAKER_00 35:31

But that may be because we're retired. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

Idle, I don't so here's what's also interesting that I think is funny. Nobody actually knows what has happened or what happened at scale. Maybe a one-off person does here and there, but we don't ever not get the credit for Tessie Mays. But we fucking built that. Well, no, I know. But like I walk around in my heart of hearts knowing that we didn't finish the play. Yeah, we didn't. Um, but I also know that it's still sitting there, and what, four years later? Yeah, maybe a little longer. Yeah, four and a half years later, five years later.

SPEAKER_00 36:19

I think it was twenty one, mid-21.

SPEAKER_01 36:26

Yeah. So since mid-21, not one sauce or dressing has innovated anything. The category, which is the phone call I got, is down year over year with no innovation. And yet we still have every single one of our consumers where they can find it, because the group that bought it has lost half of the distribution, yeah, which is just pathetic. Um, but yeah, like I guess like if I were to give myself advice, which I kept thinking about in preparation for this, what would I have done differently? I would have surrounded myself with more people that were gonna pressure test us and not try to change what we were doing.

SPEAKER_00 37:16

I that is great advice because the pressure test we do a good job of with each other. Yes, that's all we do. Yeah, it's not shut the fuck up, it's well why. Yeah, well, why? Well, why?

SPEAKER_01 37:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:33

And then it's like we're we're trying to make sure, and I talked to Mo about this the other day, about the importance of having a culture that only focuses on getting the right answer, and it it doesn't have to be yours. Yeah, the goal is to not have it be yours, and then you've hired the right people. Well, because like we just want to win. Yep. It does not have to be our answer. In the grand scheme of the world, in a perfect day, lay by the pool, pick up the phone, give a couple approvals, a couple words of wisdom.

SPEAKER_01 38:14

Lol Pilates, Lol Pilates, go on a walk, pick up my kids, hang out, go low on the golf course. Just a couple birdies for the kid.

SPEAKER_00 38:27

Yeah. But uh, yeah, man. But it's the pre I I like that. I like the pressure testing thing. Um, people tried to do that, but I felt like it was in a manipulation type scenario where they're like, I'm gonna pretend like I'm pressure testing, and in reality, I'm gonna try and like get them to do this.

SPEAKER_01 38:49

All they were trying to do the whole time was steal the company. Well, obviously, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:53

Because then they actually took action on that. Yeah. And and tried to do it.

SPEAKER_01 38:59

Oh, it's uh it's too nice outside to kind of think through some of this, but thank God it's nice outside. So when I think through this, uh at least it's nice out. And you go on a nice walk. Do love a good walk. And it's Thursday. Had my high rocks class this morning. How was that? Excellent. I uh I'm in a new training block. And so if there's one thing I wouldn't change about the past 20 years in this fight, is maintaining the morning routine uh that allows you to handle anything and all things. Yep. Because you can lose everything material possession-wise, and if you still have your morning routine, your faith, your belief, your support system, your health, your health, uh, you're creating this moat around you that you know we're never gonna give up. Yeah, we called it L at Tessie Maze, right? There's no doubt about that one. Sorry about that. Uh to all the Tessie Maze fans, we'll be back with something new. I do know that. But what's cool is the consistent ass whooping we received. Uh, if you keep molding that ass whooping into like learnings, then physically, emotionally, mentally, you can handle so much, it's kind of insane.

SPEAKER_00 40:21

And so it is insane. And I do completely agree with you that being able to maintain elite discipline in chaos allowed us to have as much clarity as we probably could chemically have while managing cortisol and everything else. Yeah. Um, and it has allowed us to innovate and create other stuff and be good dads and be good husbands and always be there for our kids. I mean, I think that's the most proud part I am of everything that happened is like our kids never received the negative side of that. Right? Like, we were present. Yeah. We were coaching their sports, we were having dinner together, we were celebrating holidays to the best of our abilities, we were doing all of the stuff, and it was never, you know, like you and I and and Matt and our wives, like they obviously understood what we were dealing with and going through, but being able to kind of keep perspective of what actually matters through it all, and I say this all the time, it's like the real pillars of success are owning your time, having a soul that you're proud of, having health that you're proud of, and your children's love. Because you can't buy any of those.

SPEAKER_01 42:05

Yeah, no, it doesn't matter how many companies you sell, and that's hard hat ham sandwich mode. Okay, like you gotta show up ready for that ass whooping across those because that's a full effort every single day, every day, and the other thing that I like about that is you get to avoid the money hungry uh professionals out there who have none of that, so they fill their time with just money, and yeah, I mean, to a certain degree, I can I get it.

SPEAKER_00 42:39

Um, it's it's cool for a little bit, and then you're like, the car's cool, yeah, but it needs a fucking oil change. The yacht's cool, but there's a fucking storm.

SPEAKER_01 42:52

Yeah, and you always are dealing with people anyway. Like, we roll some of the time with some wildly uh successful people with all the money in the world. I'm like, yo, how's this? How's that? They're like, you know, my gardener is beefing with my property manager, and my cook never shows up. And I'm looking at this guy, I'm like, bro, you know you could cut your own grass and cook your own food. He goes, Brian, I've been rich for seven generations. I don't even know what you're saying. That's not a data point that processes in this mind.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

That is the great part of where we're at, where it's like uh 50 Cent. I guess, is it P. Diddy's son who's talking shit to him right now?

SPEAKER_01 43:39

I don't know. I'm not on social media.

SPEAKER_00 43:41

Somebody's talking shit to 50 cent. Yeah. And he goes, Boy, I've been rich three separate times. He goes through, he goes, I've been in drinks, I've been in the rap game, I've been in business, I've done this, I've done that. Shut your fucking mouth.

SPEAKER_01 44:02

I still like the saying, uh, grown enough not to put rims on it. I think that was Jay-Z wonder. Yeah. Yeah. Well, nonetheless, it's like grown enough not to put rims on it. It's like, hell yeah, you're doing it for the right reason. Yes. And the other thing that this journey has brought to me is at the highest of highs outside looking in, we were the brokest we've ever been. Yeah, it's true. And then at the lowest of lows, uh Well, probably a little after that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:39

Well, a little after the lowest of the lows.

SPEAKER_01 44:43

Yeah. But it's always that, like, I I'll I guess I'll bucket. We'll put some parentheses over a moment in time where you're like, hey Claire, you think you can get that credit card from your dad again? She's like, nope, you told me to give it back. Figure it out, Brian.

SPEAKER_00 44:59

No, but I your point is correct, which is when we were out of the Tessie May spotlight and into other stuff that almost nobody cared about, we were the wealthiest we've ever been and the happiest.

SPEAKER_01 45:16

And everybody thought the world had collapsed on us because publicly people were ripping us for X, Y, and Z, even though they had no idea what was going on.

SPEAKER_00 45:24

Well, nobody ever has any fucking idea what's going on. But that's that's what I think I wish I would have known.

SPEAKER_01 45:32

Yeah. And I operated in, I guess I was like, I felt this responsibility to live into everybody else's demands of us, especially when we got investors. Yeah, for sure. Right. And I was I wasn't changing who I was. I was trying to get better. I was trying to evolve. I was trying to be this person that I felt like I could become if I worked hard enough. Yep. And we worked very hard at uh ourselves and being leaders and people and all that sort of thing. But at the same time, I never like took a step back and was like, I mean, Brian, you're pretty cool as it is. Like you've pulled off some great stuff. It was only ever not good enough, not good enough, not good enough. And now I'm 41. Maybe last Thursday, and I'm not even kidding when I say this, I have finally been able to let go of the day after 6:30-ish, where I've never been able to let go of the day at any point in time, no matter what bullshit I say. Well, so I have a great morning routine. Yeah. Get myself right for the day. And our dad calls it the Brian three-stage rocket booster. Right? So I get in the rocket ship, aka I go to the gym and I light that engine. And then once the engine goes, then we put somewhere between six and nine hundred milligrams of caffeine on top throughout the day. Yes. And that thing goes white flame, blue flame. Then every 90 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 47:12

I think it goes blue flame, white flame.

SPEAKER_01 47:14

Yep, something like that. Yeah. But you know, I'm not a scientist. So nonetheless. Uh I digress. Yeah. Then, thanks to the fine folks who found out that nicotine helps get rid of COVID, Greg, and whoever else did that. Uh, I'm now on, I would call it a 90-minute two milligram nicer gum routine. Hell yeah. That is so electric. If you don't chew nicer, and I'm not sponsored by Nicarette, I'm not even allowed to say this, probably. Get yourself some. Get yourself some.

SPEAKER_00 47:53

Uh I second that. And um, and I forgot to finish my stereo like you say you let go of the day at 6 30 to the first time.

SPEAKER_01 48:02

Finally let go. Because I also was out of coaching for five years because I couldn't take how woke and soft parents became.

SPEAKER_00 48:12

They yes, they're pathetic.

SPEAKER_01 48:14

And Claire, my wife, was like, Brian, I really think you should get back into coaching. And I was like, I really think you should stop saying that. Because I can't take this delusional soft nonsense anymore. It's it's the unless people accept the 10,000 hour rule, I can't help them. And I'm giving them my time, I'm giving them my energy, and I'm getting nothing back for it. You're getting people talking shit. Yeah, and it's like, what does he think? He knows everything. It's like, oh, I don't know. Maybe I was a professional athlete and I got a full division one scholarship to go to college. Like, maybe he knows something. Um, but the fat dad that played in high school knows better. Oh, yeah, the old knock need. Uh, anyways, we're gonna be positive here. Good things come to good people. Remember that. So, anyways, I come out of practice these days, and I'm coaching my youngest son's uh sixes lacrosse team, and they're undefeated. Thank you very much. And then I'm also coaching my oldest son's seventh grade lacrosse team, the St. Mary Saints, that are also undefeated. Big game today versus BL. And so what I realized was I was missing like my love language, which is competing on a field in sports. And I was trying to fill it with like uh high rocks training and uh strength and conditioning and wellness and being a good person and all that stuff. But like in my heart of heart, I am a step on your throat, rip your fucking face off, and then once the whistle's done at the end, I'll dap you up, we'll go get some snacks, and I love you again. Yeah. But when I don't have that ability to influence athletes to compete with class, right? Which I wasn't great at growing up. I was competing to beat you, to embarrass you, and then to let you know what time it was at all times.

SPEAKER_00 50:13

Yes, I was there for it.

SPEAKER_01 50:15

And then as I've gotten older, I was like, oh, Mike Singletary, be where your feet are. So I'm teaching these kids like you're gonna run through a kid's face, and that's gonna hurt him. And his mom's gonna be very sad and she's gonna be mean to you about it. You did your job. She just wishes her son did it or her daughter did it. And so I really, really didn't understand how much it's in me to coach and to teach and to compete. And the the itch that that scratches for me now allows me to be outside for at least an hour or two, three days a week, four days a week. Um, I have to be perfect throughout the day because when I go to practice, these little seven-year-olds don't care about my problems from working. I can't bring my phone because I'm teaching them hand placement, how to switch hands, how to compete, how to get hit with a pipe, uh, and it's okay and awesome. And they're hysterically crying. I'm like, you did great, dude. Like you wore that check. Um, and so I slowly went back into coaching against what I thought was gonna be um just the same bullshit with the same parents chirping, but I took a different approach. I didn't try to become the commissioner, the head coach. Uh, everyone's strength and condition. I didn't try to do the whole thing. And I'm not a great selfish person. I'm not selfish at all. I'll give you the shirt off my back if you need it, although most people don't know that. And so what I said to Claire is like, I'll do this because I want to help Roxeter and I want to help Richardson. I'm not gonna do it to help all these other kids. I'm not gonna pay for their food, their gear, their parents' lessons. I'm not gonna do any of it. And it feels very weird to say that out loud, like how selfish I'm being coaching right now and how specific I am to helping my own children. But then what's funny is I've been able to help the other kids just as much because I'm gonna give them a full effort when I'm there and present, because that's what I've signed up to, and I'm not giving them anything else because I just don't have time to do that, so I don't feel bad about it either. And so the other night I got done on a game and I was just like, we'll check my email tomorrow. And I have never had the ability to do that, ever. Yeah, and I'm 41. So it's it's kind of cool to have that feeling of like I'm not even gonna be relevant looking at an email now anyway. Yeah. So that that that's a long-winded way of saying it, but it's a serious evolution in my life that I think will be an amazing gift to the world because now when I come to work, they're getting full speed. Instead of me just being like 75% all the time, I'm a hundred or nothing. I'm fuck yes or no again.

SPEAKER_00 53:13

Which I lost, which is interesting because everybody gets to that in their own way at their own time. I was forced into that, where like I had to shut my phone off at a specific time because it was consuming me. Yeah. And I was like, okay, I'm I'm retarded right now. Yeah, I can't fucking see straight. My eyes are crossing. Yeah, I'm shutting this thing down. Yeah, I'm only coaching my kids, spending time with them, eating dinner, going like I gotta recharge the battery. And the coaching thing's interesting because I love it just as much as you do, and I hate parents just as much as you do. And it's really funny because um I think it was Jake Caraway. He's like, No, no, it was Brett Bedard. I saw Brett Bedard, and he goes, You fucking creating the next generation of just elite motherfuckers, and I was like, No, I'm not. He's like, What are you talking about? He's like, I live my whole life based on this shit. He's like, What are you talking about? I was like, dude, I'm trying, and these fucking kids are so soft, and these parents are so soft. And he's like, Are you kidding me? I was like, I'm not kidding you, man. Like, they're not built like you know, so I guess the Woodalls and the Brett Madars, they're 29. 29-ish, 30-ish, right in there. So I think 08, 09, 10. Yep. And um, that was a wonderful little moment in time. Look at Pat Spencer, he's in the NBA. Yep. And Richie went to Alabama, yeah. Um, played football, and Jake led Georgetown for points. And up for the tour, Tom. Woodall was the number one draft pick. Yep. Tommy Miller played at the Naval Academy. I mean, like, the list goes on and on and on of dudes that wanted a standard, their dads wanted the standard for their sons. Everybody was locked in. They were more than willing to tell the week to shut the fuck up.

SPEAKER_02 55:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:34

And we produced a series of dudes that were just grown-ass fucking men that happened to be in middle school.

SPEAKER_01 55:44

Yeah. I'll never forget, and this will be an unnamed kid he rolled up on his mom, who was sipping on a big gulp diet coke, and he just spiked it out of her hand. It was like, that's for quitters, mom. And I was like, Oh, this is not gonna be good.

SPEAKER_00 56:02

Dude, we were giving kids nutrition plans in fucking 08.

SPEAKER_01 56:07

Yeah, no doubt. And then, and this is more of a joke than anything, but like, we even made Kevin Fox good.

SPEAKER_00 56:15

It's so true. When I named him to the county all-star team, and that other kid didn't get it, and his dad, who was a cop, called me and said he was coming to my house with a gun to fucking kill me. Yeah. And then Kevin Fox heard about it, and he was like, Coach, I can't believe the dad said he was gonna fucking kill you. I go, You deserved it, man. Yeah, you were the hardest worker and the most tenacious little bastard I have ever seen. And that is your spot on that team. Yeah. And uh, you know, he went on to have a great career at Penn State. Yeah, so many people.

SPEAKER_01 56:54

And just got married last weekend. Shout out. A girl said yes to Gavin Fox. So that's the shout-out for you, Foxy, even though I know you're crying right now.

SPEAKER_00 57:04

But yeah, I mean, there's so many uh elite dudes. Charlie Ulmer. Oh, that's a great one, dude. I mean, that little guy sole captain at Harvard. Yeah, but I mean, like in middle school, like barely made that A-team, would get his fucking ass beat every practice.

SPEAKER_01 57:27

Non-crying tears that turned into crying tears. Because I coach, I'm not sad, I'm just a little overwhelmed, but I'm gonna keep going, okay?

SPEAKER_00 57:36

Well, they were like, hell yeah, brother. Hell yeah. And he just turned out to be such a stud.

SPEAKER_01 57:41

Yeah, he's a winner.

SPEAKER_00 57:43

And that is the part of coaching that I love, nothing more, is those dads still text us.

SPEAKER_01 57:53

Yeah, and our saying is do work. It was do work.

SPEAKER_00 57:59

Yeah, do work. And we still to this day when we see each other, like do work. And um, they would go out, hard hat, ham sandwich, and beat the shit out of dudes and run like nobody has ever run before because we ran those dudes like they were pro athletes. I'll never forget. And uh Judge Tom Miller still brings it up when it was torrential downpour, but no lightning. At Bates Middle. At Bates Middle. Oh my god. And like we are talking, it's raining cats and dogs.

SPEAKER_01 58:31

Yeah, you can't see outside, and there's puddles on a track.

SPEAKER_00 58:34

And so all the moms and dads think practice is over. I'm like, send those boys out with the running shoes. We're doing timed eight hundreds. And these kids come out, and it's an hour and a half of fucking running on the track, and I'll actually never forget it because Richie Pettibone had been training at peak. Yeah. And, you know, was slow, ended up getting fast, but had built the engine to just go. And so we're like fucking 45 minutes into torrential downpour running, kids are puking. We're running this, I think we were doing 400s at the time, and fucking big Richie Pettibone is just fucking hammering around a turn and his dad's screaming. He's like, do what? And uh, but then the best of all of that, to bring it full circle, Ben Rubior's the head coach at St. Mary's, they hadn't won an MIA championship since I think '96. Probably. And he calls me.

unknown 59:43

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 59:44

And he's like, What the fuck did you do to these kids? Because they're all, I think they're all seniors that year. I go, why?

unknown 59:51

Why?

SPEAKER_00 59:52

He goes, I'm trying to run these dudes, and they look at me straight in my face, go, This is nothing compared to Coach Vetter's practices. I go, dog. Ruby or insane, dude.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:04

That dude, he could self-hyperventilate pre-game. Dude, my favorite is Kyle Dixon would be like, dude, we'd be on campus at a party. Rubier's like, hold my backpack. I gotta time myself to get home, see as fast as I go, go, and he would just take all sprinting across campus. I love that guy. I hope he's doing well. Yeah, I'm sure he is. He's a winner.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:26

But to to bring this whole thing back full circle. The things that we did wrong, the things that we did right, if we were to start a salad dressing company again today, it's hard to choose the things that you would really do differently outside of, I guess, in this kind of exact phrase is like, I don't think I would do anything the same. Yeah. Is the only way I can describe looking back on that.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:01

The only thing I would have done the same is defended the ingredients like we didn't, because we changed food in a lot of people's lives for the better. Yep. And then what I would have absolutely changed is never let any of those douchebags get close to us and just go on strategic private equity because we didn't realize how impressive it was to be recruited by those guys to join their funds. Yep. And we thought they were just trying to manipulate us, and boy, were we wrong. No, we got the playbook now. Yeah, now we're our own deal, so hell yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:36

Hell yeah. Well, this is the Greg Vetter Podcast. We've got Brian Vetter here, a fan favorite. Come on. And uh, we'll see you all next time.