How Matt McLean Financed Uncle Matt’s Through Growth, Crisis, PE, and a Buyback

Taking “Florida” off a Florida citrus label sounds like a branding tweak until you live it. Matt McLean, founder of Uncle Matt’s Organics and a fourth-generation citrus grower, walks us through the real cost of building an organic orange juice company when nature, cash flow, and supply chains refuse to cooperate. From the early days of learning juice quality through an import-export brokerage to launching a perishable CPG product with short shelf life and tight working capital, Matt shares what it actually takes to survive the cash conversion cycle.

We dig into what “organic” means on the farm, why European demand tipped him off early, and how he financed growth with a mix of scrappy self-funding, a small family loan, and eventually a borrowing-base line of credit. Then the story turns: Publix becomes a breakthrough, the business expands into fresh organic citrus, and private equity helps professionalize operations with KPIs, board discipline, and longer-term planning.

The biggest curveball is citrus greening, an industry-wide crisis that forces a global sourcing pivot across Mexico, Texas, California, and beyond. Matt also tells the wild second act: selling the company to Dean Foods, facing their bankruptcy as COVID hits, and choosing to buy the brand back through a one and final sealed bid, then rebuilding with aligned investors, Farm Credit financing, and a new Texas manufacturing footprint that unlocks faster innovation in teas, lemonades, and more.

If you like founder stories with real numbers, hard trade-offs, and practical financing lessons, subscribe, share this with a builder friend, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Connect with Keith on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithkohler1/

Transcript

Welcome And Why Matt

Keith Kohler 0:04

Hi everyone, it's Keith Kohler here, your financing man, and welcome to this latest episode of How I Financed It. Again, by way of background, what I do as your financing man is I get you the right financing at the right time. That's Transaction Me. And I meet you where you are and guide you along your financing journey, and that's Transformation Me. So transaction plus transformation equals financing man. Today's episode is really going to be quite interesting, I expect, because for the first time I have someone who comes from a farming background who later moved into consumer packaged goods. And this is someone who is deeply ingrained in the state of Florida, multi-generational family business and family farmer. So I can't wait to see what comes up today. I've been wanting to talk to this person for quite some time because I've admired him and his products. And I can't wait to bring him to the how I financed it stage. So would you please help me welcome Matt McLean from Uncle Matt's Organics? Matt, welcome.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Hi Keith. Thanks for having me on today. Yeah, really nice. Yeah, thank you very much.

Keith Kohler 1:17

Yeah, I think now, Matt, I've known you probably at least a dozen years, I think, since I would say that we've been in the industry a while together.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

So feel great. You're the money man.

Keith Kohler 1:30

I try to be. Um, you know, I think I'm effective most of the time. Sometimes there's things that don't work out, but for the most part, I do find ways to make that happen for people. And that's great. Again, really excited to have you because all during this time and for many years, I've been able to witness a little bit of the direct directly with you, what your growth has looked like, but also seeing you on social media, seeing you out in the marketplace, of course, have picked up a few of your products in store. So I'm really grateful that you said yes and you agreed to join us. So um the way I start out, Matt, is I would love to share uh with

A Florida Citrus Legacy Becomes A Brand

Keith Kohler 2:05

our audience, friend, in your words, a bit about the origin story of Uncle Matt's.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Yeah, sure, that'd be great. Um, first off, thank you for the business. Appreciate you buying our product. Thank you for that.

SPEAKER_03 2:15

It's great, it's the best.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Yeah, never say never forget to say thanks. Um, but yeah, uh how we started, I'm fourth generation Florida citrus grower. Um, actually seventh generation Floridian. So been here too long. Uh, we are just west of Orlando, a little town called Claremont. It um was started as an agriculture town, mostly all citrus. Uh the freezes came in '83, '85, and 1989 and wiped out the industry in this area for the most part. A lot of it moved south. So we lost about 300,000 acres in um those three freezes. And most of it moved further south, Hole County, Highlands County, um, other places. But my great-grandfather, he came here in the late 1800s and he was moved to Bartow. He had citrus, cattle, turpentine, vegetables, and he passed along the love of citrus to my granddad, who passed it to my dad, who passed it to myself. And so I grew up in the citrus industry here in Claremont in Lake County. Uh, was working in the groves for my dad, doing all kinds of different things, and uh decided, hey, there's got to be a better way in life. And I went to college to get out of citrus, get out of agriculture. I'd seen the devastation in the 80s and said, hey, that's a little too risky. So maybe I can do something else. And I got a degree in business um uh with a special in finance and a minor economics. And when I got out of college, it was just one of those things, um, the opportunities in life and uh where I was uh led. I had some sales opportunities and software and business forms and things like that. And and I just it didn't feel right. Uh so uh my mom came to me and said, Hey, I've um, or dad actually came to me and said, Hey, I've got a German customer. Uh, he is a grower down in Wachula, and he has bottling friends over in Germany, and so he's looking for somebody to help him take uh go to the different juice plants in Florida and buy the uh juice. We'll put it on a boat, and then he can sell it over to the bottlers in Germany. And I was really young, and that sounded so exciting, and I said, Hey, that's sounds like a lot better than selling business forms or software. Uh, and so I started a little import-export business, and he and I did that very successfully from 90 uh January of 94 when I started it, all the way until you know 1999 when I started Uncle Matt's. And in between, there is where I really learned uh the um juice business. I learned the bricks acid ratio, different quality, oil levels, varieties, all kinds of different aspects of what makes a great tasting juice, and then also learned valuable skills on just how to be an entrepreneur and run a business and grow it and interact with people. And so I self-financed it. Uh, lived off of, you know, rented a place with my brother and didn't have much expenses at that time. And I had a German customer who asked about organic, and he said, Hey, I'd like to find some organic grapefruit juice. I didn't know anything about the organic industry. Yeah, and I came back.

Keith Kohler 5:28

That was right in the beginning in 98.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

That was probably 97, 96, 97. He asked about it. I didn't uh start Uncle Matt's until June of 1999. It it took me a while, a couple years of, hey, should I do this? Uh, what is organic? And you know, is there even that in the marketplace in the U.S.? And so that was my my aha moment was there was no organic Tropicana. I'd also, in the uh in that time period, talked to my grandfather and my father about could we farm organic in Florida and what was it like to farm uh before pesticides? And my grandfather just chuckled. He said, Of course we can grow organic. That's how we did it before pesticides. Uh, we did a lot of great things. We uh used cover crops, we uh had compost. Uh we worked to grow both ways, and um, you know, we didn't have Roundup. We didn't have herbicides. So it gave me the confidence that, hey, we could grow this, we can grow organic in Florida. And so if I if I felt we could have the supply, then I felt there would be a demand because in Europe, most of the time the food trends would start over there and then they would eventually make it across to the U.S. And so if organic was beginning to trend over in Germany, I thought, hey, this could be something that would eventually work in the U.S. And then really became passionate about um farming without pesticides when I talked to my grandfather and my father, and they both uh said, Hey, we when we farmed without pesticides, there were a lot of good methods, there were a lot of good things that worked. Um, it just got displaced by synthetic fertilizers and pesticides when it came. And so at that point in my grandfather's life, he was preaching to go back to a lot of those methods because we had become way too dependent on pesticides and way too dependent on just single-factor analysis. And you weren't really looking holistically like, well, why is the disease here? Why can't the tree defend itself? Uh, so yeah, that's how I began. And in June of '99, I started with just one little pulp free orange juice skew and sold it here locally in central Florida, and then it uh blossomed from there.

Keith Kohler 7:37

Matt, that's really fascinating. Uh, there's several aspects of that story that I find really captivating, and I'd love to revisit a couple of them if I may.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Absolutely. It was a long intro, I'm sorry.

Keith Kohler 7:48

No, it was perfect. It was just right. Um, fourth generation, I'm wondering because um I worked with lots of family businesses where you know there maybe was a grandfather or a mother or someone that started it, right? Yours is unique, is in that it's four generations and then seven generations in Florida. I'm curious again. You you alluded a little bit like, hey, I went to study something different, I wasn't sure. Did you feel any family pressure to really stay in the citrus industry? Were you feeling called to it more, or can you describe a little bit more of that? Because a lot of our founders find themselves in this situation.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

You know, because I grew up in it, and I literally had uh my dad, my brother, my grandfather, I had three uncles that were all dedicated um into the citrus business. I was just surrounded by it. So I really I felt comfortable in it. Um, I knew that, you know, if we could carry on that to the to my generation and further, that that would be something special. Uh, but I I didn't feel like I had to do it. They there was not family pressure that this is what you needed to do. My my father and grandfather were, you know, they were wonderful uh parents and grandparents from that standpoint. Um, you know, whatever God led me is where you know my path was going to take me. And so it led me right back into citrus. And uh, you know, I've carried that uh purpose with me from when my first uh conversations with my grandfather, and he talked about, you know, we should farm this way because it would be better for the environment, and we're our own worst enemy, um, you know, because we have too many reliance around pesticides. And so that you know stuck with me. And today, 26 going on 27 years later, I still have that motivate me when I come to work every day.

Keith Kohler 9:40

I love that because I do think probably when you've talked to other family businesses, many other recent generations might have felt more pressure or might have felt compelled to do it for any number of reasons. Whether, hey, I have to live the life that's expected of me, or I have to honor this, or oh no, it's the money, or X, Y, Z, right? So I think that's fantastic that you really felt it was really your own decision. And yet you felt very inspired by the the contributions of all your family members.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

Yeah, and I think the fact that you know, my father and grandfather, when those freezes happened, they lost everything uh that they owned. They had amassed 600 acres of citrus groves, and literally in in one cold night, Christmas Eve 1983, uh, it went from a great asset to a massive liability. Uh they they owned they owed money to the banks on them, and they wound up having to sell all of that land off. And so I think when I came to my decision of what route I was going to take, there you know, they knew that hey, agriculture, it's risky. You're you're only you can only control so much. Um, but the fact that I I really grew up in it and I loved it. And there is there, there's um if you love change, you will love agriculture because there's no two seasons the same.

Keith Kohler 10:59

No, not one can be anywhere nearly identical of the other, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:03

And my grandfather told me that said, You're if you love change, you will love this industry, and he was right.

Keith Kohler 11:09

Well, I think what you demonstrated is certainly you you understood risk and you understood resiliency because you had it portrayed to you by um your grandfather and your father. And I had not realized, Matt, that it was 83, 85, and 89 as a kid growing up in Los Angeles. I do remember hearing of it once, but I didn't remember three times. And I'm sorry, so sorry that happened to your family.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

Yeah, it's uh not just us, a whole lot of people. It uh it changed, it changed our um central Florida area for a lot forever, uh, because a lot of it didn't get replanted. At one point, the banks would no longer lend you money after 85 freeze. They said, hey, if you're yeah, the second one, they were like, hey, after if you're north of I-4, which I-4 is about 30 minutes south of here. If you're north of that, so Orlando, that whole area, uh, we're not gonna loan you money anymore because it's too risky for coal. And so it from there, we started instead of planting citrus, we planted homes and developments.

Keith Kohler 12:14

Uh yeah, that's what you've seen.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

Yeah, that's what happened, that's what happened to this area. So it it really changed the lifestyle around here, went from uh agriculture and and mostly agrarian to more just uh the tourist industry, the uh the theme parks, and being a commuter uh city for those theme parks in Orlando.

Keith Kohler 12:37

I mean, it really is quite interesting. I-4 did form kind of that natural barrier for all of our listeners and viewers. That's the highway across Florida that goes from Tampa to Taytona Beach, and it's an interesting kind of diagonal line.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

Yeah, an east-west.

Keith Kohler 12:52

Yeah, and not now you're telling me in agriculture, it's referred to off very often politically, too, about the I-4 court or what it might be things like that. So it's really an interesting um for us.

What Organic Means In Practice

Keith Kohler 13:05

I'd love to go back just on one other quick thing to Matt. Organic, um, I think for some people out there, sometimes they get confused about what it really means. You alerted us to the use of pesticides versus not the use of pesticides. Is it as straightforward as that, or are there more layers and nuanced elements to it?

SPEAKER_01 13:24

Yeah, I mean, it's basically you can have organic pesticides, right? I mean, um, that are derived from natural products. So, like neem oil, it comes from the neem uh fruit. Uh, it's an organic pesticide from a standpoint that it will repel uh insects and bugs. Uh, you can get organic pyrethrins that will actually um on contact kill some of the bugs. Uh, you can do different vinegar sprays, uh, they make different types of vinegar concentrates that act like a contact herbicide, uh, but organic. So it's it's basically uh things that are derived from Mother Nature, that are not genetically modified, uh, that are not synthetic. Uh, that is what uh is organic farming and what organic uh products, pesticides, herbicides, any of those things that you would put out on the groves or in any kind of agriculture, uh, that's what they are. So, you know, much safer for you if you come in contact with them. Also, uh much safer for the environment from leaching into the aquifer or you know, contaminating a waterway or something like that. Now, of course, you can overuse anything. Uh, and so if you're an organic farmer that puts on you know 50 tons of composted manure, that's probably not wise. Uh, you can have overuses now, it's not allowed to do that, but just giving you examples.

Keith Kohler 14:49

That's brilliant. I really appreciate that clarification because I think for a lot of people, they might have misconceptions or might think one way about it or another. Um I was also fascinated by one additional point, and that's that um organic, you had said um Europe was creating the trends, right? Um organic, and then so the the German person who brought that up for you was organic already well rooted in in European countries or in Germany, and then hey, you were going to be the first doing it in the US?

SPEAKER_01 15:20

Yeah, so what he called it biologic, uh, it had become uh a new trend for them, right? So it was just starting to uh get roots in uh Germany and parts of France, and so uh he was a small bottler in southern Germany and he wanted to start bottling some organic juice, and so I'd like, hey, that's very interesting. Uh, I like the concept and I think it it makes sense, you know, the less synthetics and the less pesticides you can put in your body or on the environment just made sense to me. Uh, pretty simple. Um, and so when I came back to the US and it had it had started in the US in different fields, you know, organic dairy had begun, but nobody had done an organic orange juice. And so um, if I would have started in '97, I would have been the first. But it took me a couple of years to figure out I had no experience in food, no, no experience in CPG, no experience in branding. My uh father and grandfather had always been um growers, farmers. That's that's what we were, that's what our expertise was. It wasn't in marketing, it wasn't in branding. It would have, you know, we had never had a product on the shelf in a supermarket. So it took me a couple of years to figure all that out, get a co-pactor, what am I going to name this company? Um, you know, what kind of package and look and logo and all those kind of things. It took a while to figure that piece out. But once I did, I was off and running so June of '99. By then I was the third organic orange juice brand in the US. So I had two other Matt. You made the product. Yeah. So I was like, uh, okay, but I was young and dumb and didn't know any better. Um, so I was a Me 3, not a Me Two, but a Mi Three. Horizon Organic Milk had beat me to it, and they were a very formidable opponent. Um, and Pavich, uh, who was a large organic grape grower and produce, they had also beat me to it. Um, and so those those two on a national scale were already off and running, and um, so I had to follow them.

Self-Funding A Perishable CPG Launch

Keith Kohler 17:27

So when you entered the market, um, you knew you were gonna start locally, right? And and start out small. Can you give us a sense of where where did you initially sell your product and how did it grow from there? And you told me it was self-financed, and uh yes, you got that one.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

Yeah, so right out of the gate, um I was able to finance the beginning of it because of the import-export company. I was uh pretty successful with the stuff we were doing. We did over five million dollars annually of just brokering juice to Europe and the Middle East. That's a big number. That's a big number for a young kid who started with nothing. Uh, the only problem was that gentleman he wound up uh getting out of the wanting to get out of the business, and he wanted to abruptly get out of the business. So he basically uh uh you know stuck me with a lot of product over in Europe that I had to fire sale. And I would have I would have had to file bankruptcy if I didn't have good relationships and our family didn't have uh you know good integrity. I went to those uh Florida processors and said, hey, look, if you work with me, I will eventually be able to sell the remaining products we have in the inventory over there. Um and they did, which was great, and we paid them all back um over time, which was great. Um, but that was the first stage uh overcoming you know that gentleman. But then I also had um companies over in the Middle East uh in UAE where I had started selling uh frozen concentrate to some of their dairies, and so that was a really good business, and those two um uh gave me the freedom to launch Uncle Matt's and finance it myself in the beginning. Now, when I started growing larger and larger, then I needed to get a little bit more creative with financing, and my parents came in and uh loaned me some money off of their home equity line of credit, which uh was about 20 grand, but that 20 grand felt like 2 million to help me with just packaging and stuff as I grew the company. Um, but locally I started with um Gooding Supermarket, it was an upscale chain here in Central Florida. I think they had 14 or 15 stores. I started also with Chamberlain's, which was a natural food supermarket uh chain. They had about 10 stores here in Central Florida area, and then um Alberts Organics, which was a produce, one of the very first uh organic produce distributors, and they went up and down the East Coast, and so between those three, it gave me just enough business where I could sell uh my minimum run that I had to make. I had to make, I think it was 600, about 600 cases, six to eight hundred cases every time, and it was perishable. So I had a short shelf life. I had about 35 days to get it out the door before my date code was too short and uh and the uh retailer wouldn't take it. So it was a fast and furious game, and I had to really hustle because I would lose money if it went out of uh date code because it would have to be destroyed or given to the food bank. Um, so that was that was my early beginnings. If I had to do it over again, I'm like, whoo, would I really do perishable? Uh yeah, I don't know.

Keith Kohler 20:42

So that cash conversion cycle, right? You're you're you're starting, you're doing all the investments in the growing season, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:50

And then I was buying orange juice. I was buying finished orange juice. I had found several growers that were able to supply me with fruit that we would get processed into juice. So I was getting juice delivered, uh, and then we would bottle it right there, and then I would typically get I could get paid in 21, anywhere from 14 to 30 days. So I had a little cash crunch uh if I had a longer payment window because I needed to pay for the orange juice and the grower and stuff. My co-packer would give me 30 days, but it was a tight little window, very tight window.

Keith Kohler 21:27

And so between your initial investment and your parents' help with the HELOC, how far did that get you in your journey?

SPEAKER_01 21:34

It probably got me three or four years.

Keith Kohler 21:38

That's astonishing.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

I mean, that's really I was very efficient with capital, like uber efficient. Um, and I still had my import export business selling into uh Europe and the Middle East, and so you know that was funding. Um that that helped fund some of the additional cash flow, and then I eventually was able to get my own line of credit. Um and and work off of it from there. So it was great.

Keith Kohler 22:05

Was that line of credit with a commercial, a local commercial bank?

SPEAKER_01 22:09

Yeah, it was a local bank. Just one of the local lenders here in the um community that I knew for a long time, Bank First. And I think they don't even exist anymore. They've since sold over three different times. Like every community bank, right? Like every community bank, right? In the beginning, I had the little community bank uh that gave me enough on you know accounts receivable and enough on inventory of you know packaging that I had uh to to finance the thing and get it rolling.

Keith Kohler 22:39

So yeah, again, so they provided a line of credit based on a borrowing base, right?

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Correct.

unknown 22:44

Correct.

Keith Kohler 22:45

Yeah, so for everyone's edification, a borrowing base is based on a percentage of accounts receivable aged less than 90 days, and then a percentage of inventory. And I think you had mentioned just now, Matt, they were even advancing on packaging.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

Um if I had, I mean, they would give me a little bit on packaging that I had in place, um, but mostly it was you know, finished product that was ready to ship, it was in the warehouse, or any product, any juice that I had already purchased and it was stored. So if it was in frozen drums, uh, they would loan on that inventory uh as well.

Keith Kohler 23:20

So that's tremendous. Uh, not everybody gets that, right? Especially in what you're saying in perishables. I thought it was an extraordinary accomplishment to get the lending on what we might call the raw materials, right? And some amount on packaging. So that was clearly a great win. And that line of credit took you probably many places, and then you kept adding store count, right?

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Correct, yeah. And so then eventually it got where I was able to cash flow myself. I was figured out, you know, if I can get 45-day terms, you know, then that's even better. Uh, and then get them to pay me. A lot of supermarkets will pay you, you know, if you take a one or two percent discount, they'll pay you in 14 days, 14 to 21 days. So you can I could then make my uh turns pretty good. I had really uh short days' sales outstanding, your DSO. Um, you know, a perishable uh I was selling shoes, and so we could turn it pretty quick.

Keith Kohler 24:19

Yes, your velocities were huge, right? Um that's right, they fly off the shelf versus I think some of our peers in the package goods industries would be excited to get two units per store per week. Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

And in some categories, but you're better with perishable, yeah, better with perishable and smaller runs. I mean, anybody start now, try to get the smallest, you know, minimum run you can make. Don't think, you know, don't explode and get way too much inventory because it's just tied up and just sitting there.

Keith Kohler 24:51

Yeah, and just I'll touch on that one other thing. So you had mentioned a lot of retailers were happy to pay 10 to 14 days with a discount. Was that something you led with in your negotiations to get placements, or is it something they requested, or maybe a mix of both?

SPEAKER_01 25:06

Um, you know, I knew that I would need uh the terms, it would be great. So I would throw that out there. I mean, I think I had one account that offered it in the beginning. I was like, oh, you can you can get paid earlier for just like one or two percent discount. Okay. Um, so that was great. Now, of course, we wish we don't need any discount. We're like, no, we want the one or two percent. We don't, we've got plenty of cash flow, we're good, you know. And you you uh have to have, you know, I think a uh an act of Congress to overturn some of those two percent discount allowances. You can't get them off of your contract.

Keith Kohler 25:43

No, and today some of them are there, and they might not still even pay you within that window, but still take the two percent.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

It's more like 21 days. Uh, you know, you you think they're gonna pay you 14 and they pay you in like 17, 20. Like, okay.

Keith Kohler 25:59

No, Matt. So, Matt, you're in the early 2000s, right? When you got that credit line and you were growing your store count. Um, you soon became a national brand, didn't you?

The Publix Breakthrough And Rapid Scaling

SPEAKER_01 26:09

So we started in '99. Um the our first big win was Publix, and that was in 2001. They literally had called on them for two years and tried to get in uh their stores. Uh, you know, I shopped there all the time. All of my family shopped there. Generations have shopped it, but you live in Florida, it's Publix, right?

Keith Kohler 26:30

That's it. Just like in Texas, it's H E B.

SPEAKER_01 26:33

It's H E B, exactly. And so everybody has their regional, you know, you have Michigan, you got Myron, Michigan, you got Market Basket up in North East. I mean, everybody's got their little regional guy, Harris Teeter in the Carolinas where people grew up, and that's what they they had. Uh, and Publix was us, and they were they're big, they're big uh for me. So he um we called for two years. I the guy probably should have filed a restraining order against me because I was I was just so young and dumb. I didn't know any better, and so I literally would just call the guy all the time, and you know, he's like, Okay, Matt, now listen, we're gonna have a review, and then that's when you'll get your chance. Okay, you don't need to call me all the time. I will, and he was just very polite, you know, like a very professional like Publix buyers and publics are and he was very gracious to a very young kid that didn't know any better. Um, so after two years calling on him, um, finally got in Publix. He literally called me on 9-11. I had just watched the first tower fall. Uh, the one employee I had, she was from New York, and she was bawling. I had to console her, and I told her, Hey, you need to go home. Uh, because she had some friends that she thought may have been working in the uh the trade, yeah, in one of the towers that day. Um, luckily she did not, but um anyway, so I was dealing with emotionally, like, wow, what is going on? And uh he calls and it's like, hey Matt, on a really bad day, I'm gonna give you some really good news. Publix is gonna finally bring you in. You know, I was I was probably just speechless for about 10 seconds, like, wow, it's processing, you know, knowing this is really gonna change my life. Um, this is, you know, at that time I think they had 800, 900 stores. Today they have 1400, soon to be 1500. And I knew like this was it. Uh, it's just that whole next level of brand awareness, whole next level of capacity, whole next level of um just leverage with uh being able to buy more caps and labels and buy just everything, right? Freight would go down, all of that. Uh, bigger runs, less, you know, more efficiency, less shrink, all of those things. Um, and it was one of those moments you just go, you know, wow, you know, thank you, Lord. Um, here we go to the next level. And um, so off I went. And then so that really cemented that phase, so the next kind of plateau

Expanding Into Organic Fresh Fruit

SPEAKER_01 29:01

business. And then from there, uh, I started in 2002 uh the fresh fruit side. So we, you know, juice wasn't uh challenging enough. Uh we had to also get into something more, right? You know, why not get into you know all of the fresh fruit that we potentially could you know sell as Uncle Matt's that was organic? Uh and so we saw that opportunity. I saw that and said, Hey, and people had asked me for a while, hey, why don't you do fresh fruit? Why don't you do fresh fruit? Especially Albert's organics. You know, we need more supply, we need more, you know, growers in Florida. And I said, Well, you know, we are a grower background, I'm gonna go out there and see what I can find. And so we started using uh the family's connections and started approaching other growers. At that point, my dad had all of three acres in his backyard left from the freezes, and we converted that to organic. We had one other gentleman that had a fairly good-sized grove over in Vero Beach, and we uh worked with him uh to market his fruit. He had grapefruit, and I think he had some navels. We said, Hey, if if you'll come on board with us, uh we will um give you, you know, all the proceeds less a marketing fee of you know like 10 or 12 percent. And he said, Okay, let's try that. And so we started returning him really good money, and we quickly began uh developing out a whole fresh fruit company, and we eventually became uh the largest grower, organic uh citrus grower in Florida, and the largest organic fresh fruit uh shipper and factor in Florida. So at one point I thought I want to be the organic sun kiss of fresh fruit, and then the organic tropicana of juice, and that was the model that we were really growing, and um it was growing pretty rapidly. And so my dad and brother were the agronomist, they would go out and help people transition their growth to organic, and it would take three years from your last prohibited substance.

Keith Kohler 30:58

Three years, okay.

SPEAKER_01 30:59

Three years, so you had to really plan long term, like, okay, you know, if they just put out Roundup, it's three years from this date. We signed the affidavit, and now we start, you know, taking care of it organically. And so we formed another company, uh, an Uncle Matt's AG. And so my my dad and brother and a whole ag team came on. We had you know over 20 people we employed, you know, five different tractors, we had you know, uh fertilizer spreaders, compost spreaders, we had all kinds of equipment, everything, and we took care of everything that we transitioned to organic. So we grew it all, uh, we marketed it all, we certified it all, and uh we had a great thing going. And we had private equity that then came in. We we merged the two companies together. So Uncle Matt's uh juice company and Uncle Matt's fresh fruit company were separate. My mom and I were the juice, and then uh myself, my brother, my brother-in-law, my father were the fresh fruit company. And in 2009, we finally merged them together and just said, you know what? We're it's uh it's a little odd. I'm trying to you know wear too many hats here as a juice guy. I'm trying to buy the eliminations of the fresh fruit company, but I own part of that. And like we just need to merge these two together, and we have one one Uncle Matt's organic, and that's that's what we did, uh, which is great. And the company just kept growing and growing. Uh, we had wonderful partners uh at Haynes City Citrus Growers. They were our co-packer for uh fresh fruit. Uh they were a co-op there at Haynes City. Uh great people. We kept uh slowly but surely converting their conventional growers to organic. At one point, I think we were a third of their revenue coming out of that uh 100-year-old co-op. And um, so things were going

Private Equity Brings Professional Discipline

SPEAKER_01 32:46

well. So well, we took money, we took private equity, we took on a minority uh private equity group in 2012. They were out of Colorado, so Greenmont Um Capital. There were a lot of kind of OG organic enthusiasts that have been in the industry a long time. I kind of joke on, you know, people joke it's the boulder mafia out there. Uh, but they were a lot of the people that started the organic industry, the Mark Retzeloffs, the Barney Feinblooms, the uh Moe Siegel, some of the real early pioneers uh in organic were kind of based out of that uh area, and they all uh put money in Greenmont. And so Greenmont invested in us. We felt it was time to get professional from just a mom and pop company. So they came on. Uh Mark Retzloff, the founder of Horizon uh Milk, joined our board. Uh Todd Woolison, the founder of Izzy Soda, joined our board, and now we started having uh you know monthly board meetings and started talking about KPIs, you know, key performance indicators and really looking at a business with a balance sheet and a cash flow and a PL and you know, thinking three and five years uh strategic plans and those kind of things. And so um we had a tiger by the tail, which is great. So we had uh private equity money that came in to help with the brand, and then uh on the growing side, we um worked with uh some institutional investors, and so we had institutional money, a group out of uh Pinnacle, which was out of Indiana, which worked with different um pension funds uh up in the Midwest, and they invested a lot in agriculture, and so we were able to work with them to fund the groves uh that we purchased and to convert to organic. So we as a family we wound up uh purchasing about 600 acres of grow. We converted it to organic. Uh things were going well, and we had the runway to go as much as 5,000 acres with this group, and they were to that amount, yeah. To that amount. Uh the same we could have scaled with Hain City to scale it. We were um co-packing with a bottler to bottle our juice over on the east coast, and we had uh Southern Gardens down in Cluiston that was processing our fruit. They were um juicing it for us, they were storing it in the off season, uh and they were a great um partner that could scale to as as big as we wanted.

Citrus Greening Forces A Painful Pivot

SPEAKER_01 35:16

And then in 2015, Keith, the little Asian citrus silate insect shows up in Florida, and well, he showed up before then, but he started showing up in the groves and he started showing up in the fruit quality in 2015. I'll never forget. We start processing our early season oranges and our bricks are lower, and there's a little bit of bitter note. I thought, ooh, this isn't good. I think that is greening. I think that citrus greening showing up in the fruit, and then you could see it in the trees, you could taste it in the juice, and I thought, ooh, this is if we can't solve this like immediately, this game's not gonna end well. Uh, we were highly leveraged, um, we had partners that were relying on us, and we needed production per acre for the whole game to work. And this bug uh was not curable, conventional organic, and we were one of the last ones to get infected. Our groves, uh, groves around us were you know getting infected quicker, uh, but ours were more resilient, but they were still uh not um resistant. And so 2015, we finally had to take all Florida off of our label, and that was a really tough moment for me as a fourth generation Florida citrus grower. We had the Florida sunshine tree, it was all Florida, and we were very proud. And I never thought I would have to say product of USA and Mexico. At that time, I had to call my friends in Mexico and say, Hey, I know you've been trying to sell me juice for the last you know decade, and I've said no thanks, no thanks. Well, I'm finally gonna need you because our product is not tasting as good. And if we don't solve greening, uh we're gonna need you a lot long term. And so we wound up uh that was right. I was uh I could I could tell the future, we have not solved it. Um those 1500 acres are now uh down to about 20, and they're just for research and development.

Keith Kohler 37:35

A lot there, Matt, and in these last few minutes. Um sorry about that. No, no, it's no, it's perfect. I love you're a fantastic natural storyteller, and it just flows so easily for you. Um when I think about what you just mentioned about hey, removing that all Florida, I'm sure that was a moment, right?

SPEAKER_01 37:54

And um big moment, man. I mean, a real come to Jesus moment on on numeral numerous levels. One, uh the pride of just being all Florida and then having to import, and then two, knowing that the company uh was about to dramatically change, and the livelihood of the growers that we were supporting was going to change, and potentially our company was going to go out of business if we were not able to pivot uh and pivot quickly from this. Um luckily it all played out and we were able to pivot quick enough, and we were able to, you know, eventually work with other areas to import product that was still organic and high quality. Um but it didn't change the fact that it uh devastated our growers, um, us included. We had to sell off our 600 acres. Uh, we had to pay off um uh a lot of uh debt uh to get out of because of some long-term commitments we had around that. And so it was tough.

Keith Kohler 39:11

Yeah. Matt, was that debt in addition to the bank that had given you the revolving line of credit? Was it additional things that you're taking on in addition to that?

SPEAKER_01 39:19

Yeah, so we we had had some other uh we had some other lenders at that time uh that were working with us, and they were great to help us work through it and not say, hey, we need you to work out of it. We had actually sold the groves that we had bought and leased them back, long-term leased them back. And we had to buy our way out of those leases, and then those groves eventually got sold off for a lot less than what we sold them for. Um, and that's disappointing for everybody that was involved there, uh, because the people that were that we had worked with and with our partners, the institutional people, they were friends of ours. Um and they were good people, and we had uh, you know, they relied on us and we relied on them. And you know, I never forget him saying, you know what, uh, we're gonna get out of this thing. And uh first loss is the best loss, is what they had learned in agriculture over the years. If we keep chasing it, hoping that you find a cure, you know, hoping you, you know, next season we'll find a cure, it'll get better or get a better. He said we will wind up losing way more money than if we just cut our losses and the first loss is the best loss. And he was right, he would have lost, we would have lost a whole lot more money chasing it further. Uh, because still today, you know, 2026, 11 years later, the industry is probably from 750,000 acres now to 50,000 of acres it's actually producing, and people are legitimately trying to farm it and and stay afloat on citrus. And from a peak 20 years ago of 250 million boxes of oranges in Florida, we now produce 10 to 15 million boxes. Oh wow, and even that quality is still, you know, not top-notch, and uh pains me to say that. Um, so a lot has changed.

Keith Kohler 41:22

It became a real global supply chain, right? And um even from Mexico, I know Brazil because I lived there, so yeah, okay, another big supplier.

SPEAKER_01 41:31

Yeah, so Florida is ground zero for the disease, citrus graining disease. It's a bacterial infection, the little bug comes, it feeds on the leaf. Uh, if the bug is infected already with the disease in its gut, it transmits it into the tree, it goes into the phloem, the main artery of the citrus tree, and then it eventually clogs up uh that main artery, so it's like you have a heart attack uh as a human. And so uh hence the term greening, the fruit doesn't mature because it can't get enough water and nutrients, and it just stays green and then falls off, and the tree eventually you know dies from some you know malnutrition or some other disease that it can't fight because it doesn't uh have the the capability to. Uh and so that's what's happening uh from a uh you know scientific standpoint to the trees, and Florida's ground zero. Uh, we have now since moved globally. We sourced from both coasts of Mexico, we source from southern Texas, uh, we source from California, Peru, Brazil, Morocco, Spain. Morocco and Spain. Morocco, yeah. They have a wonderful citrus industry in Morocco. Um, Morocco and Spain, most of the Europeans are all fresh fruit, and they supply Europe with fresh fruit. Um, so you know, uh getting in and getting juice is um is new to them, but it's still very good quality. Um, if you go to very hot, arid regions around the globe where they're growing citrus, the little vector, the the insect does not like to grow there, and the bacteria cannot um uh withstand really hot, dry weather. So 105, 110 degrees, it naturally kills the bacteria in the tree. So that's why you see in yeah, so in California, Central Valley, Southern Texas, parts of Mexico, um, it gets really hot and it can do that.

Keith Kohler 43:33

Um, so I think it's like one small period of that type of temperature or weather eradicate it for some longer period of time.

SPEAKER_01 43:42

Three to five days, probably, I think is what some data shows. It eradicates it, and then you know, it can get reinfected, but it'll just eradicate it again. Where in Florida we we can you know stop the the silid and keep it at bay, but it only takes one to infect you, and there's no Never a period where we clean out the tree because we don't get you know 105, 110. We'll get 95 to 100, uh, but it's really humid and it's not the same effect on the tree.

Keith Kohler 44:12

So that's really such an interesting lesson. Nothing I had ever been aware of.

SPEAKER_01 44:17

Us either. We are we're learning a lot, Keith. We're learning a lot.

Keith Kohler 44:23

I wanted to just touch on one other thing too, Matt. Um, private equity in general. I think probably all our viewers and our listeners would have perceptions between everywhere it's good and it's bad and all of that. And I think one of the things I find interesting is yeah, you you put together two solid relationships with different private equity firms for different reasons. And I wonder if you can just touch briefly on that. When you were doing that, yeah, you had all your family members here. Did everyone have different ideas? Was it easy to get alignment among you all about these are the deal terms where we want to do?

SPEAKER_01 44:58

Or yeah, how would you kind of describe it? The good news is um we had a good friend, uh Aubrey Hornsby, uh, who that's what he did for a living. And so he helped us find uh the right partners, similar to yourself, Keith, where the right private equity group and the right institutional group, he was able to help us uh introduce us to uh uh the right people, and forever grateful for Aubrey for doing that. Um, today you would go out and if you want to do a raise or something, you get an investment bank. Um, and he was a very boutique you know guy at that time uh that would help uh find uh partners. And so he

Exiting The Business Then Dean Foods Collapses

SPEAKER_01 45:38

helped us do that. There is a a second part to the story because by uh 2017, uh Greenmont had reached five years, and they they had been a great partner. We had grown you know 25% you know annually uh for plus on average every year, and so we had a good good run. And they came in and said, hey, it's we would like to to exit if we could. And so we started looking for an exit partner for them as a minority, and we just wound up uh getting much better offers to sell the whole company, and whoo, that was a whole nother decision, right? I mean, this was our baby, you know, this is this is my life. Uh, I thought at one time maybe it was generational, multi-generational. But we told Greening Squarely in front of us and said, Hey, you know what? It's a really good offer. Uh, we should probably exit, we should um go ahead and and sell the company. So we thought about a long term and prayed about it, and just felt it was the right direction for us uh at that time, and we sold sold the company. Um, everybody had a nice windfall, bigger than we've ever had in our lifetimes, and so that was a really awesome moment. Um, we bonused a lot of employees, um a lot of money, uh, tithed a lot to the community and to my church, which is cool.

Keith Kohler 47:03

I really appreciate you saying those last two things, Matt, of yeah, missing employees and yeah, importance of you of your spiritual life and how grateful you felt for that. So, thank you for it.

SPEAKER_01 47:15

So right to do, you know. Um, they were along on that journey with me. Um, people in community. I mean, just it was it's just cool. I mean, a lot of people, um, I don't know if they realize that um when you sell, you know, give back, give back to those that helped you. It's just um so makes it worth it. So cool. Uh, and so then so we sold it to Dean Foods, um, the largest publicly traded dairy, okay, traded on Nasdaq, $8 billion of revenue, uh, billion with a B. Uh, 17,000 employees, 6,000 trucks running up and down across the country, uh, 70 plus dairy plants. And so this little brand, we were 20 million in sales, you know. We plug into this thing. Um, and I was just amazed by it. I mean, this little mom and pop company, now I'm plugged into this thing. I sign on a three-year employment agreement to stay on and help steward the brand to get as far as it could good, uh, could get. Uh, my wife and I were the two that they retained. She's doing marketing. I'm doing uh, you know, running the company. I keep my dad and brother on from an agronomy standpoint to keep uh finding research, trying to figure out a cure for citrus greening. So we've got that still family Euclideus there. Well, Dean Foods falls into some real uh hardship and problems. They had a lot of debt, dairy was crashing, uh, they couldn't close plants fast enough, they were losing a lot of volume, and then Walmart decided to open their own dairy and do their own private label milk, and Walmart was 2 billion of the 8 billion in sales. So there so there it was, and and not saying anything bad about Walmart, they gave them plenty of time in advance and notice and all that, and they still did uh business, uh a lot of business with um with Dean Foods. Uh so they tried to be a good partner as they were um transitioning through that, and there were many other factors that cause their demise. And so you know, right at the beginning of the pandemic, they file, you know, November of 2019, they filed bankruptcy. Uh, it's chaos uh around the world of just you know, COVID starts hitting. And I'm going, can I uh is how do I get Uncle Matt's out of that thing? Is it is it going with there was a stalking horse bidder? So DFA, Dairy Farmers of America, came in and said, Hey, we'll buy basically everything. Uh, and if it goes to the auction, we're the stalking horse, and you'll have to outbid us. And so it took us a while to figure out are they buying Uncle Matt's too? Do they want the juice brand? Because they were a dairy, and so we originally we eventually found out that the brand was available. Like, huh, okay. So talked to my wife, and she's like, Boy, honey, I I don't know. Do we want to do this again? You know, there was a lot of uh headaches and heartbreaks uh to get to a nice exit where we all won. Um and so, you know, again, we we just thought about it, prayed about it, and said, I don't know. I think at the at the right price, and it's bankruptcy, you know, that it's right. I think we could, you know, I still have a lot. I could do, I could do this my entire life. I this just doesn't feel like work for me. I love it. Um, but I had to, you know, make sure my wife was on board too, uh, because I honor her wishes, and she said, you know, all right, let's let's do it again, but but this time, you know, can we do it with other besides family? I don't want to lose somebody else's money. I don't want to lose it, you know, if if family, if we we just had a big win and the odds of us, you know, winning twice are not near as good. So maybe we, you know, if we're gonna do it, let's do it with you know professional investors. So if they lose their money, it's not that big of a deal as if we lose families' money. And I thought, you know, you that's that's wise. Um and quite honestly, the the family was, you know, hey, they they didn't want to take that big risk either. Like, yeah, okay, we won. Yeah, there was you know, greening's still there, there's still all kinds of headwinds, and then and so we went out and we quickly raised some money, uh, hired uh Nancy Rosenswig. She was a good friend with Values Aligned Capital. Um, talked with her briefly. She was a friend of Mark Retzloff's, and she said, Hey, I think I can find some private equity and some high net worth people and some uh uh people that would really align with you. And I said, Well, what do you have? And that's what she uh quickly brought some people that actually I knew, industry friends. I didn't think uh to go through the Rolodex as quickly and like what she did, but you know, we had uh Andrew Abraham with Organe, uh Nicole Dawes from late July, they're friends of mine and organic uh pioneers. Gary Herschberg was called. You know, you can't get more organic than Gary. Uh, and so he had a network of some friends uh as well, and so off

Winning The One Shot Bid To Buy Back

SPEAKER_01 52:36

we went. We raised I raised the amount of money. I said, hey, we've we're gonna start here, it's an auction, so we'll start low around this level, is where I think we'll bid. And you know, we've raised it enough money that we can be this high. Um, but the higher we go, you know, the more my wife and I would be deluded, uh, because we were only gonna put so much money in. And so the judge then comes back and says, because of COVID, we're gonna make this instead of an auction, uh, one and final bid.

Keith Kohler 53:07

Like, oh my god, like a sealed bid thing, and sealed bid, you only get one chance.

SPEAKER_01 53:12

And I'm like, holy cow. All right, so and this happened uh only after I'm about $300,000 in attorney fees. Like crap.

Keith Kohler 53:21

Yeah, of course. Now you know it, right?

SPEAKER_01 53:23

Right. So now I'm like, well, okay. Um, if I really was gonna be in the in the auction room, what was the highest bid that I would put in? Um, and so that's what we wound up submitting. Um, but it wasn't where I was gonna start. I was gonna start a lot lower, a lot lower. Darn it, but it's still we bought it back. Uh so we bought it back uh out of bankruptcy, and it was a great deal. Uh, we basically got it for the asset value of what was there. Um, and off to the next chapter in life we went. My wife, I went to bed, um, and my wife said, You're not gonna stay up because the auction was going all day and all through the night. I said, No, I'm not going to stay up. You know, if uh if God wants me to have this thing back, I'm gonna wake up and it'll be ours. Uh, if not, great, we'll go back to doing something else. You know, I'll go farm. Um, and so she you know nudges me like four in the morning, honey. I'm like, what? She's like, We got the company back. I'm like, we won the bid? She's like, Yeah. I'm like, I'm like, all right, off we go. So I got up, ran around the house, you know, danced and screamed and off we went. So it's been been a lot of fun.

Keith Kohler 54:44

And Matt, so from that time to now, um did the private equity money get you all the way there, or did you re-establish relationships with lines of credit?

SPEAKER_01 54:53

So we uh we were um we worked with some very good uh farm credit, he's been a wonderful partner.

Keith Kohler 55:01

That's what I remember when we talked about that.

SPEAKER_01 55:04

That's right. Yeah, you were part you were part of those discussions of trying to figure out how to finance this whole thing.

Keith Kohler 55:08

I remember, yeah. And I was so excited when you introduced me to farm credit, it was my first exposure to that. And I was astonished how favorable, if I'm recalling, how favorable the terms were.

SPEAKER_01 55:20

Very, very favorable. Um, if you're tied to agriculture, um, work with farm credit. They're a really good one, especially in the beginning. Uh, they will um be a great partner to help you grow, and we're still they're still our our main partner for that's exciting. Anything we do with line of credit or anything we do with uh manufacturing and and um uh things to grow the business. So that was they've been a wonderful partner there.

Keith Kohler 55:47

I love it. And you know, now today, Matt, when you think of what's next, you got the company back, you added new products, uh probably in more trade accounts. Where do you see the company going over the next few years?

Building A Texas Plant And New Beverages

SPEAKER_01 56:00

Well, what has been the most fun? Um, when we got it back two years in, COVID uh had just really uh hurt manufacturing. And uh all of our, I mean, I went from one copactor to then I needed three co-pactors, and we were you know spread out all over the country, sending stuff everywhere, and it just was uh really difficult to um operate as a business and continue to grow as rapidly as we were growing, and so we decided, hey, we're going to uh do our own manufacturing. And we had never been a manufacturer, never we had always worked with co-packers. We'd been either the grower or the marketer, we'd never been the heavy lifting in between, and so a different skill set. Uh, everybody always said, Man, oh, you don't want to do that. Oh, you're crazy. Oh, god, that's a lot of you you sure you know what you're doing? Um, and I thought, you know, this kind of sounds like when I first started the business, they told me the same thing, and uh, like, you know what, if you just find the right people um and you have a good process, um, you'll be able to do it. And so that's what I did. So we went and found good people uh to partner with, and we found a spot out in Texas because now you know, southern Texas and east coast of Mexico, we're getting a lot of our supply from. And so we domiciled right there outside of Dallas Fort Worth, a little town of called Mineral Wells. It was a water bottling facility, and this guy had a lot of excess uh space. And so we partnered in the beginning. I said, I'm gonna I'll put all the equipment in and I'll give you the plant manager and the QC manager, and you provide the rest of the labor and uh be my eyes and ears out there. And so we did, and then uh a year into that, um he had uh death in his family, and he just said, Hey, my plans have changed. Uh, I'm gonna give you a real good long-term uh lease on the place, lease option to buy. And so uh we're now in full control, and they're all our employees uh operating out there. I think we've got about 85, and uh it's great. Um love the manufacturing piece. It's now about efficiencies and yield and you know, uh capacity and you know, capex, all of the fun things. But I it's it's uh my kids call it my dad's dad's Disney World when I go out there.

Keith Kohler 58:25

That's Disney World.

SPEAKER_01 58:26

Okay, dad's Disney World. Um, because it's you know the shiny stuff, it's where our quality is is number one and where we can really control it. We can be very nimble now as our own self-manufacturing. We can do things that copactors definitely would not have allowed me to do, uh, and do it much quicker. Uh, one thing, we are now brewing our own tea. So we are, you know, uh we have retrofitted the plant, added some equipment, and we are, you know, fresh brewing tea, cold filling it and cold shipping it. So it's the freshest, best tasting stuff you'll get out there. Uh organic, sweet, unsweet. We do a delicious half and half of lemon juice, uh, lightly sweetened with agave. Uh, and now also herba mate. So bringing up fresh uh herba mate from uh Brazil and fresh brewing that it's pretty cool. So we've got uh an energy tea and soon to launch some other stuff. So things like that are fun in manufacturing, uh, where you can pivot beyond and grow beyond just our our base and core business, which is orange juice, uh and get into the uh lemonades, punches, and now uh fresh brewed tea.

Keith Kohler 59:40

Yeah, I really love what you said. It's such a clear thing that having your own manufacturing on a dime, you can stop the production run and try something fresh and samples and creating new flavors and products. And it sounds like a really exciting time. And you know, Matt, here we are. Our conversation has really taken us from those early beginnings of the family until where you are today. And the way I end how the how I finance it podcasts is with two questions, and I'd love to share those with

What We’re Proud Of And Advice For Founders

Keith Kohler 1:00:09

you now. And the first one is is what are you most proud of?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:14

Um, you know, I would say um that we have stayed true to being organic. You know, it's in my name, Uncle Matt's organic, and we have not wavered from that commitment and that integrity in the product. So we want to be consistently great with every batch, and it is stayed to organic. It's not half organic, it's not kind of organic. You know, we were pioneers back before the USDA seal was even there, but I would say just being able to continue to grow the impact of organic farming around the globe now, um, and farming without harmful synthetic uh pesticides, that's probably what I'm most proud of.

Keith Kohler 1:01:01

Shin Shirley, you're by your leadership, you've impacted and inspired, I'm sure, other farmers and other people in the industry to follow in your footsteps with that.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:11

I hope so. We uh try to uh encourage people and be an inspiration to show them that, hey, organic farming, you can make a living in it and there is a future in it.

Keith Kohler 1:01:22

That's beautiful. I think because sometimes people might think it's too expensive or it's a sacrifice, or I'm you know, any of those economic considerations that might just be noise, and you're proving to them by your example that no, this can be a way that works best. And thank you for that, Matt. And the last question I had is what would Matt today tell the young Matt when he was just starting out?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:48

Oh man. Um geez, be prepared for the ride of your life because it's gonna be something fun. Um, it's gonna be rewarding. Um, you know, be prepared. You're gonna hit valleys, you're gonna hit real real lows, and you're gonna hit real highs. So just be somewhere in the middle every day. You know, lean on your faith, uh, you'll get through it.

Keith Kohler 1:02:16

Yeah, I think that's the last line really works for me. Lean on your faith and you'll get through it. And uh I thank you for introducing that aspect of of yourself and your family here in our conversation today, because uh it can be an important component in addition to all the business aspects and the ups and downs. And as you said, it's the ride of your life. And Matt, I can't thank you enough for being a guest on the How I Financed It podcast and really appreciate what you yourself, all your family members, your generations of family members have done to feed and nourish people all around the globe. So thank you for all you do.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:52

Hey man, I really appreciate the time to tell my story and I appreciate what you're doing for people out there that need to find financing uh to get their businesses to the next level. Um, you were very gracious with me numerous times, and I appreciate your help.

Keith Kohler 1:03:08

Yeah, thank you, Matt. I'm inspired to do more work just like you've done. So this is Matt and Keith signing off on this latest edition of the How I Financed It podcast.

Connect With Keith On LinkedIn

Keith Kohler 1:03:17

Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of How I Financed It. I encourage you to reach out to me on LinkedIn at Keith Kohler1, and I look forward to connecting there.