Ep. 18 - Create Your Own Adventure with Katie Horgan | Gross To Net

Katie Horgan spent six years as a Marine Corps logistics officer, running truck convoys in Iraq and coordinating operations for a ship-based crisis response force in the Pacific. After earning her MBA at Columbia, she dove into the NYC startup world, holding operations roles at Plated during its explosive meal kit growth phase, then at Crave Crush and SelfMade. When that last role ended abruptly, she made the leap to working for herself, cold emailing brands from her personal Gmail and slowly building what would become Bravo CPG, a fractional operations firm that has now worked with more than 225 growth-stage CPG brands and grown to a team of 32.

In this conversation, Katie and George dig into the real mechanics of going from fired to founder, including the year it took her to figure out how to describe what she was even selling, the Gary Vee-inspired cold outreach strategy that landed her first clients, and the uncomfortable inflection points where she had to choose between a comfortable lifestyle business and pushing for something bigger. Katie shares what she's seen go wrong across hundreds of brands, from hiring senior leaders who end up as shipping clerks to the chronic disconnect between sales, ops and finance that quietly bleeds margin. She also introduces a framework borrowed from her military days: the distinction between "current ops" and "future ops," and why almost no startup has anyone dedicated to thinking 12 months ahead.

The episode wraps with Katie's van life adventures in her Sprinter van Bessie, a dubious ChatGPT tax strategy, and the question every van lifer dreads. You can find Katie on LinkedIn or at bravocpg.com, or email her directly at katie@bravocpg.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Gross to Nut, the podcast where I talk to entrepreneurs, artists, writers, and thinkers about what they optimize for in their businesses and lives. I'm your host and the co-founder of Yellowbird Foods, George Milton. There is a version of operations that people, I think, imagine exists in CPG. We got spreadsheets and shipping labels, maybe a warehouse walkthrough, and then there's a version that actually exists: a co-man who ghosts you the week before a Whole Foods launch, a 3PL that ships the wrong SKU to your biggest retailer, a demand plan built on vibes instead of data. Today's guest built an entire company around fixing that particular gap, a fractional operations firm that has embedded with more than 225 growth stage CPG brands, bringing the kind of operational discipline you might not expect from a former Marine Corps logistics officer who once ran truck convoys through Iraq. Please welcome the founder and CEO of Bravo CPG, Katie Horgan. What's up, Katie?

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Hello, thank you for having me. Happy to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Thanks for coming. Thanks for coming. How is your day going? How's your day going today?

SPEAKER_00 1:28

It's going great. I'm looking out over the river in Bend, Oregon, into like a forest of trees. So I got a great view, which always puts me in a good mood. So today is a good day.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

What is the weather like in Bend today? It's getting warm down here in Austin.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

So it's in the 50s. Uh we had a pop of hot weather a few weeks ago, so everybody thought it was summer, but it has not held. So we're back down in the 50s with some rain, but still still pretty pleasant.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Nice. Well, uh Katie, we've we've known each other for a little while. Um, I don't know if we've ever talked as deeply about uh CBG ops as we're gonna talk today. So let me let me maybe start with getting some timeline stuff uh correct because I did my research, but I want to make sure because the internet doesn't know everything. You were uh you came into the Marines through uh our Navy R O T C is that right? So you're Marine from 2006 to 2012-ish.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Uh this is gonna be an incredibly broad and reductionist question, but what was that like?

SPEAKER_00 2:36

It was great. Um, it I will say I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I made that decision. I was 19 years old. Um, it was challenging. The further away I get from it, the more it kind of unfolds, which is maybe like what growing up is looking back and realizing why you did things and what they really meant for your life. But incredibly challenging, especially as a woman, especially as an officer. Um, but very formative, gave me structure. Like I can do hard things is is the big takeaway. And I met some, I mean, amazing friends, and the network continues to unfold, like just an incredible group of people that make that crazy decision. We all had something in common to do that. So it was great at a high level.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

Yeah, and you were a uh platoon commander, is that right?

SPEAKER_00 3:24

I was, yeah. I was a logistics officer. You don't actually get to choose your job in the military, you get to give preferences and then they align them with the needs of the core. So I actually did get my first choice. So I was logistics, and they put me in motor T. So initially I was a truck platoon commander. Um and then uh my second stint, I did about six and a half years. You usually rotate after three or four. My second stint was as an operations officer. So in that role, I was running operations for a logistics battalion. So we had like trucks, we had explosive ordnance, communication, medical, like all the support functions required for the front lines. So yeah, the first half was like trucks, and the second half was leading operations for a broader logistics battalion with like a huge set of capa capabilities. The second job was more fun, more variety than just trucks.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

Gotcha. And it's like I it's like kind of high uh like high intensity stuff. Like the demands are pretty uh are pretty high over there. The expectations are pretty high. It's not like I mean being late for a Walmart shipment is a big deal, but I but I imagine you were dealing with some you know higher uh volatility.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

Yeah. It even even in the non-combat environment, it it's risky. Like even in um, you know, you're using heavy equipment, there's there's weapons, there's like a lot of moving parts on the ground, in the air, and also like on the sea. Like the second job I had, we were on, we were on ships, like we were a ship-based crisis response force. So when you're unloading things, you're literally dropping gear out of the back of a ship, uh, strapping trucks to a boat, taking the boat to the shore, and there's just a lot of room for uh accidents. So it was very high risk, and there's just a lot of a lot of moving parts. Um, and things change pretty quickly, so you have to be able to react.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Um, yeah, stakes are a little different.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

So you went not immediately, you were you were in the Marine Corps for about six years, and then you joined Plated as director of operations in 2014.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

So I went to business school from 2012 to 2014. That's gotcha. Yeah, that brought me out to New York, and that's a common move for people coming out of the military because we have no idea like what a real job is and what jobs are out there. So business school is a great chance to to consider your options. And I found startups and I did end up in a logistics role. Actually, the guy who hired me took a chance on me because I didn't have any real world experience in in the civilian sector, and he uh one of the CEOs of Plated, one of one of the founders of Plated was a Marine. So he took a chance on me and gave me a job as director of logistics at Plated out of school.

unknown 6:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Gotcha. Yeah, that's awesome. Where where did you get your MBA? I think I have a I have a gap uh in my research.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Columbia.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Columbia. Yes. Thank God they let me in.

unknown 6:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

It was a great program, great friends, yeah, great network.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

Were there were there a lot of were there a lot of folks that you went to that you were in the Marines with who were doing business school or talking about uh I imagine those conversations as you get up to the end of your kind of contract or whatever and you're not renewing. I I imagine those contracts of like what are you gonna do as a civilian are happening.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

It's yeah, it was kind of funny because people look down on folks who are making the jump, like, oh, you're not gonna continue, but everyone's doing it. It's just a matter of when you do it. I mean, most people don't stay in the Marine Corps for an entire career. So it was pretty common, especially on the officer side, to go to business school. It's kind of like a bridge. Like here's a here's two years, you're you're technically still moving forward, but you're you know, you have the chance to look around. So um, yeah, I applied to two schools. Harvard did not call me back. That's okay. Columbia's a grade school, so they they let me in. I actually got in like a week before my second deployment. So I went on that deployment knowing I had a place to go and like that there was like a plan, you know, when I got back, which was helpful.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

I bet that feels good.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Yeah, it is a relief for sure.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

It is it is hard to be um it is hard to be rudderless it in in any in any phase of life. And I think that like one of the things like when I talk to people who are entrepreneurs, like there is that that's a conversation of like how uh how comfortable are you being rudderless for some period of time? How comfortable are you like building the ship, building the rudder, whatever? So um you kind of got out into civilian life, you had uh I'm not gonna call Colombia a soft landing because I'm sure that it was I'm sure there was a lot of stuff that you had to that you had to learn. But like what what was that like kind of like coming out of uh coming out of the Marines? Did you feel like did you feel your life slow down or speed up, I guess, when you went to Colombia?

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Um, well, it was it was actually a soft landing in some ways because you have this powerhouse branding behind you, you have a program, go here, you do this, like this is how you recruit, these are the options. Like this, you you plug into this network that is extremely powerful and there's a plan. Like it's a two-year program, and here's all of your options. So it was a soft landing in some regards. I will say, like, from a culture perspective, it was difficult. Like, I knew my place in the military. I I knew my rank, I knew what my responsibilities were, I knew what was expected of me. I'd received training, and I stepped into this environment where I like had no idea how to be successful. And a lot of the vets actually had similar problems. We were all kind of angry, like for various reasons. And we also didn't know how to talk about ourselves. So we were trying to go into job interviews, and we were having trouble because the military, particularly the Marine Corps, tells you not to talk about yourself. It is like you're in service of the organization, of your Marines, like you're not touting yourself, but in an interview, you have to do that. So there was like a learning curve, and then also just like I had a sense of purpose. I knew my place in the organization. I was part of something bigger, and I came out into like a every person for themselves situation, which is that's most of the world and a lot of life. And it was a hard adjustment. I was like, what's my purpose? What am I doing here? This all kind of feels fake. Um, so it took it took a few years to adjust to that.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Yeah, I got it. Um and I imagine that's probably that's probably pretty common folks coming out of a branch of military service and having to kind of relearn the way because I'd say even for even for people who don't do a military stunt, like it is like self-promotion is really hard. It's you know, I I think that there are I've met people who are who have varying levels of comfort with it, right? Like really, really blowing your own horn. There there's some people like there's some people that do really do really good at that part and do really good at like promoting themselves, that they kind of end up like people get paid to the extent that they are good at promoting themselves a lot of times, and and careers. And and then there's a lot of times where you have I think you also end up with really, really talented people, maybe the most talented people who are devoting all of their energy towards their craft, their their position, their kind of like specialty, and maybe don't know how to talk about it as well. So that's tough for everybody, but especially if you're in a you know, if you're in an organization like that. Let me let me walk through a little bit of your other career because you you you started you started kind of your you know career, career, you know, in operations at Plated around 2014. Uh, you know, you have the you've got the military experience, you've got now uh, you know, you're you're you're MBA and um you're at Plated as a director of operations. And you spend several years kind of like doing like higher level like director, like VP operations roles um at a at a few different companies. We we could walk through some of them, but you were you're at plated, I think you did what crave crush self-made.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

Yeah, I could yeah, I could do a high high level wave tops. Um at Plated, I did, I was initially responsible for like the outbound logistics. So I was negotiating contracts with shipping partners, trying to figure out how to get those costs down, and I also did like procurement of packaging and some like a little bit of process development. So that was really my experience at Plated was like logistics, you know, and procurement focused. And then at Crave Crush, I was the only operations person. It was a small brand, it was pre-launch, like in the supplement space. So I did all the back end stuff to get us through launch. I didn't do like product development. We had a scientist on the staff and they had like IP and stuff, but everything to like get it made, get it, you know, out the door. And then self-made was actually an agency. So I was head of operations, but it it did brand management and content creation for small businesses focused on Instagram. So operations there meant owning a team of, we had a team of like 40 image editors in image editors in Jakarta, and we had brand managers and we had copywriters. So it was like a team of 100 people, but it was doing a service. It was delivering a service, totally different, different space. So if you look backwards, like where I am now, I had like logistics operations agency. And if you put all those things combined, like you can kind of see how I got here if you're trying to like make sense of it.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

I'm trying to make sense of it. This is this whole podcast is just me trying to make sense of what it is. What are you doing, Katie? Um, but you did so you start no, that's good. That's good. So self-made is you're you know, you're managing uh you're managing folks who are dealing, you're dealing with multiple brands. That was kind of your first experience. Like we've got kind of a list of brands, we've got a roster of brands that we work with.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Um I was I was asked to leave, uh, self-made. Um the the role wasn't really necessary and they were working on some product market fit and it just it wasn't the right fit. So I was asked to leave. Um, and I took it really hard and I decided I was gonna work for myself for a period of time because I had had like two pretty challenging roles out of the three. And I just thought, you know, let me go create my own adventure and see if I can do it better or somehow create, you know, an opportunity for myself instead of tucking up under someone else's organization. So I started doing like independent contracting work. Lavaine Bakery was actually one of my first clients in in New York, which is like a famous bakery. It was like capacity planning for them. And I I shook my business school tree really hard. And I was like, hey, I'm doing some consulting work. Does anyone have some leads? And that's how I got my first set of clients. And it was just me for the first like probably two years doing like basically um fractional operations work for brands.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

Gotcha. It I don't know, I I don't know how much this it probably gets talked about enough, but like getting fired is the worst. Like I've been I mean, I've been fired from so I think a lot of people who end up starting their own thing have like been fired from plenty of things.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Like I took it really hard. And right before that happened, like I knew there was like a lack of alignment, and I thought it was my fault. And I was I had literally just a couple weeks before that doubled down, and I'm like, I'm gonna make this work, I'm gonna do my best. But at the end of the day, like, yeah, there were some things I could have done better, but it was just really a lack of alignment between myself, the leadership, and also the needs of the organization. Like they didn't need a me. So me doubling down on contributing was the wrong thing for both sides.

SPEAKER_01 15:27

Contributing more of what they didn't need any of.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

Exactly. And I think that's the hard thing about startups, right? Like the needs change. Like the business that I came into needed to pivot very quickly after I got there. And that's just the nature of companies is you have a different business every 12 to 18 months. And so a role that you may create may no longer be a fit. The person you put in that role may no longer be a fit.

SPEAKER_02 15:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

But I took it really per it took it, it probably took me a year, a year and a half to get over that.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

Yeah. Uh let's do a little bit of therapy about that right now. No, just kidding. But the the I mean, it's it's like that's it, it is like to take that and then turn it into basically your own practice. You didn't do that overnight, right? But like um, can we talk just just for a minute about the ability uh or of like putting yourself out there? Like it takes courage to do that. So like where did you like how did you kind of turn the emotion that like the the emotional kind of punch in the gut of uh they don't want me at this job, which can really, really quickly turn into like I don't know if I have any value anywhere. What is my value? Like that's tough. That's at least anytime I've gotten fired from something, I you know, I quickly for to protect my ego had to be like, oh, it's probably them, not me.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

Like, yeah. I mean, I think um I I have always had an entrepreneur streak, and I think something was running in the background that was like this was the kick you needed. It's easy to say that now from my perspective, but I think like some part of me knew that at the time, and it was like, okay, just get going, and you're gonna have to find your own path forward. Um, and this was like 2018, so it was pre-COVID. Um and I I was listening to a lot of Gary V at the time. You know who Gary V is?

SPEAKER_01 17:23

Oh, everybody knows who Gary V is for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

So this is like 20, 2017, 2018, and he was basically like, find a niche and go hard. And like he's like reps, reps, reps. So I'm listening to this guy, and I basically just started sending finding brands online and sending them cold emails. Like I was like, okay, I'm gonna do like a hundred a month. And it was literally from my personal Gmail, and I tested a bunch of different like subject lines and like and I was I was I would always link my LinkedIn, which I think there was like social proof, like the Marine Corps, the Columbia plated, like some of those brand names helped me stand out. So I just did a lot of cold outreach and I was listening to Gary B. So it was kind of out of necessity. Um and um just not I'm not really good at standing still either. So I think like moving forward and just trying to make something work is good for me, like personally and professionally. So I just started.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

I just started.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Yeah, anything any anytime I talk to entrepreneurial people, they are terrible at standing still. Um and it probably a probably like a a personality flaw in some in some regards. Or it's like sometimes it's nice to stand still, but like, yeah, it's hard. It's hard to do. I agree with you.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

It might go might go crazy. Well, and also I think like, and I don't know how much you want to put, I don't know how much I want to say like for public consumption, but just for context, like I had two really bad experiences out of those three companies I mentioned. Like I felt like I thought I knew what I was getting myself into, and when I got in there, it was not what I was expecting. So coming out of that last experience, I actually kind of felt like I couldn't trust my own judgment to pick a boss, to pick a company. Like, you know, and when I go, I I do go all in, like I commit. I'm especially when I'm responsible for managing people, I commit. So I I really felt like I had to take a break because I didn't trust myself to choose the next right thing. Yeah. So I felt like I had no other option than to create my own adventure because I couldn't trust myself to pick the thing, you know.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

I don't know if it's about trusting, I don't know if it's about trusting yourself. There is this thing that I could only describe as like as like employment selection theater where like candidates kind of put out what they think somebody wants to hear and like hiring managers do the same thing where it's like you're crafting you're crafting a job, you're kind of always writing the same, like every company's kind of writing the same stuff about their job, you know, like no company's gonna tell you that there's no culture or that the culture's bad, or that or that their meetings are toxic. You know what I mean? Like if they could just if they put that, if they put that, that's why that's why stuff like Glassdoor exists, so you can go be like, what's it really like over at you know?

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you it's a sales process on both sides, and like as I've grown my company, it we have gotten so much better at setting the right expectations. Like, let me tell you what I can give you. And if that aligns with what you want, great. But it is a sales process. So I would say, like, the other thing that propelled me in the beginning was just like, okay, I I whether it was true or not, I felt like I couldn't make the right choice from a team perspective for the next role. So I was like, okay, let me just do this myself. I'm not just gonna create my own mess, you know.

SPEAKER_01 20:35

Well, my my next question is gonna be there because there are you know, people, uh plenty of people in the world, plenty of people that listen to this podcast who are already entrepreneurs who are already doing it, but then there's uh you know, that that set of people who is saying, like, I'd like to be, or I am, or I have my own thing that I want to do, you know, and it might be people who are at a job right now, or maybe I mean, I don't know, uh, I don't know if you've heard about this, but the job market is all messed up.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

So so I'm sure there's there's plenty of people right now who are like who have found themselves maybe recently unemployed or are concerned that that's coming. Um there there's a uh I mean we I had a I have had a couple of guests on here who have who have talked uh who have talked specifically about like the shift that's happening in work where there's more people like I I'll just say like within CPG, like the you know, Yellowbird Mike, you know, brand that I am the found one of the founders of, we you know, the the the kind of like common knowledge was, you know, eight years ago, if you raised money, it was like you go hire for the company that you want to be a year from now or eighteen months from now. And now the common knowledge has switched pretty pretty d drastically to like deal with that with fractional right. We We don't want to add all the overhead because you don't know what's going to happen. And like that, it's just like the the the whole paradigm has shifted as far as like how we're thinking about hiring and growing and how we're thinking about employment. So there's probably all that to say, there's probably a lot of people who are thinking about this exact thing right now, the thing you were thinking about back in, you know, 2017, 2018. Uh you talk about you talked about like, okay, I sent all these cold emails out, and I'm sure that like the first cold email that you sent out was like the it was like it was probably A, the worst, and it was probably it was probably B, like if you you could probably go back and find it, right? But it's it was probably I I would imagine I I'm this is this is a question, right? Was it do you feel like you represented yourself the best in that email? Like how how long did it take you to figure out how to tell somebody what it was that you were gonna offer as an independent contributor?

SPEAKER_00 23:01

Uh I mean, I think it probably took a year to really get it. And I can still I I wonder what the first one was, but the what I settled on was the title, the subject line was Hoping to Connect exclamation point. Okay. It was almost like a warm intro from someone. So yeah, the body of the email, and then I kind of tried to figure out like, you know, using my LinkedIn, like, hey, I'm a real person, this is some information about me, like listing other brands I'd worked with, like like points of social proof in the email. So probably a year. Um and I think again with the Gary V, it was my my approach was like just if you do a whole bunch, something will land. And I didn't know, like, I mean, that's like a funnel, right? But like I didn't know what the numbers were, so I just started putting it out there and and hoping something would come back and eventually it did. I am shocked. I am shocked that people took calls with me. I'm shocked that I like got business from that. And my next step was actually to hire a woman in Serbia who was in my LinkedIn and was doing the same thing, but through LinkedIn. This is again like 2018, 2019, before like things have gotten a lot harder.

SPEAKER_02 24:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

You know, I don't know that you could do what I did today because it's gotten harder. But she was prospecting in LinkedIn and again, again, using my social proof. And that was probably like year two was year one was email, year two was LinkedIn. And I just I just didn't stop. I was like, just keep going. Because every now and then I'd get a hit and I'm like, it does work, it's just a numbers game, right?

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Yeah. I I mean I think that I think that's kind of true everywhere. And I know that that kind of prospecting, like just the fact that everybody can do that, can do a bunch of quote unquote reps with AI is like it changes, I mean it changes the it changes the proposition for somebody who's going out there trying to kind of cold call for a living if I'm starting an agent if I'm starting an agency from scratch, which I'm not right, I'm not starting an agency agency from scratch, but like the ability to like go out there and do something and have like having the social proof is great, having the LinkedIn is great, but that's freaking hard. So you attribute a lot, you attribute that to just reps and being like, I'm not gonna take like were did you have did you have in your mind like I am gonna go hard at this and if I don't have any results in six months, then I'm gonna go apply for a job? Or like what was the what was this what were you giving yourself a were you giving yourself an out or did you just say this is who I am, this is what I do now?

SPEAKER_00 25:38

You know, I don't think there was a plan. There was actually another project I was kind of working on. It was around like co-packer searches. Like there actually are companies and tools that have propped up around this, and it was really like, why is it so hard to find a copacker? There should be like a service that you could just type it in and get the answer. So that I actually gave like a six month time frame to. And while I was doing that, I was simultaneously just trying to generate business for myself. I did not give myself a goal or a timeline. And this is like an oversimplification, but like at some point, like pretty soon in the within the first year or so, it started to work enough where I didn't consider like, oh, if it doesn't work by this, like it was already working before I had that conversation with myself. Um but there was never a plan to to build an agency. I just wanted to replace my salary. That was my initial goal, is like, can I do this for myself?

SPEAKER_01 26:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Um that's great. Hey, congratulations. I don't know if I've ever said that, but congrats. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

You have, you have. Yes, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

Yeah, um, that that's a big move. It's a it is one that I think that uh whether you're running a business, running a brand, doing a you know, personal project, um, and I'll put this uh I'll put this podcast just in the category of like doing a project where it's like uh hey, that like I know for a fact that unless you're already a celebrity and you know, you're like even Joe Rogan didn't have a million downloads on his first episode, right? So like pretty much anything that you do, it's there's there's an amount of doing it that probably starts to get uncomfortable before you before you have before you have a hit even, you know. And I don't know when you considered it when you considered it like a success when you're like, hey, this is working. Like, do you remember like how many clients did you get before you were like, this is working? Was it one?

SPEAKER_00 27:36

Um I do, I mean, the first inflection point I can really well, the first time like someone bought something from me after I cold contacted them on LinkedIn, like someone I didn't know, I was like, oh my gosh, this actually works. Like I can't, I can't, I literally can't believe this. If I could do it once, I can do it again. And then the second and the first real inflection point was I basically was doing all these motions to try to get more sales, and I kept saying yes, and eventually I had more business than I could handle. And I couldn't say no, so it just it forced me to hire. So that's how I hired my first person. Is I think I got to like six clients, which is too many. Like for anyone who's done fractional, like three or four is really the max, depending on the size of the projects. And I said yes, said yes to five and six, and I was like, I don't know how I'm gonna do this. This is more than me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

Yeah. That's uh where do you do you remember how long you had been kind of chipping at it before you had before you said, now I must make a decision to hire a clients.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

I think it was about two years because it was I think I made my first hire. It was after COVID started, so mid 2020. So I was a little over two years in. And my first move was basically to hire another me and then take a percentage of their earnings. Like another director level person.

SPEAKER_01 28:56

Gotcha. Um, yeah, I mean, that's a big move. You as soon as you hire somebody, you have now like you're saying it's a business and not just a kind of independent I mean, I'm just an independent contractor. Now you're a boss, now you're a boss again.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Yeah. Yeah, yes. So uh and then it it actually ended up having like a snowball effect because I hired him, and then I was like, oh my gosh, I have to go find enough work for this person. So I have to go back out and try to find the work. And then I got more work than I had to hire again, and then back to the sale. So it was kind of became like a self-reinforcing function.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Yeah. Yeah, that's how business works sometimes. That that's cool. I I am uh I don't know. I think I there's this thing that I know happened with me. I I don't know if I've asked enough people if this is to know if this is universal, but the first time somebody bought something that I made and and I sold, and it wasn't like this is somebody else's project that I'm doing, you know what I mean? Because like you can have a sales job where you sell somebody else's stuff like all year and you're just like, okay, fine. And then the first time you sell or I think for me, like the first time I sold something that was like my thing, and somebody was like, Yeah, I'll buy it. I was like, wait, would you really? Really? Are you sure?

SPEAKER_02 30:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

You're like, yeah, you you're trying to sell it, right? There did that did you feel that at all? Is that just a me thing?

SPEAKER_00 30:23

Um I think sometimes I I don't know exactly when it was, but I do occasionally I don't know how to exactly to describe it in like a word or a phrase, but the idea that somebody would trust me, trust me and buy for me, and then someone else is doing the work, like they're extending trust to my ability to like build the right organization and hire the right people. So I don't know if that's the same thing, but I do experience that something. Like I sometimes I can't believe that somebody would trust me with their business. And they're not even trusting me. It's one layer deeper because they're trusting that I've built the right team and structures to handle this. So it's really an extension of trust that goes beyond me. Um, I do remember, like, this isn't the exact same example, but like when I realized I'd created something, I mean, like as the revenue grew and I realized like I got to a point where I'd actually replaced my own market salary and um I wasn't actually working full time, that was definitely an inflection point. So I realized I was kind of running, I was really only running the organization. Like I could do it in 10 to 20 hours a week, but the margin was enough to cover my salary. That was pretty meaningful. And another uh point of realization was the first time we gave somebody parental leave. Like we created an organization, and because we are less than 50 people, we're not subject to FMLA. So anything we give the employee is just what we decide to give them. And again, it's it's not six months, like we're not Walmart, but like when we had the first person go out, we created the parental leave policy, we gave her, you know, what we could give her, as much as we could give her. And I was like, wow, we created a company that like gave somebody parental leave. That's crazy. That was definitely a wow, a wow moment. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:06

I love that. I've had that same experience because we did our first parental leave was like well below 50 employees. We were not required to do it. And it was like a yeah, you know, from an employee standpoint, they're just like it's it's like, well, what's the parental leave policy? And you're like, oh shit, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 32:25

Let me go make one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

Let me go make one. Well, I want to dig in. We're we're I want to take a quick break, but when we come back, I want to I want to dig on on some of the things that you've optimized your life for because I think that um uh I want to talk about your your van uh and we're gonna talk about we're gonna talk about your van's name, and then I want to talk about some of the things that you've uh seen uh through all these hundreds of companies and their operations. Be right back.

SPEAKER_02 32:47

Stick with us, and I'm gonna go to the body.

SPEAKER_01 34:41

Uh the benefit of growing a business and putting practices in place and hiring people and all of that sort of stuff. So let me ask you this question that I s know some of the answer to already, but like what does that kind of like allow you to do with your life and what is it like what does it allow you to optimize for beyond just like business growth? Like what I I guess what I'm asking is like are your goals to be a billion-dollar agency or are they something else?

SPEAKER_00 35:15

Yeah, so my goals change. Um, have you ever heard someone say like the goal line is always twice as far away as where you are right now? Have you ever heard that?

SPEAKER_01 35:26

Yeah, I've heard two.

SPEAKER_00 35:28

Yeah, so it it it it shifts, it shifts. I'm sure there's lots of ways to say that. But initially I just wanted to provide for myself and not be beholden to someone else, right? So I wanted to create, like basically replace my market salary. Um, and then when I got to about 10 people in the organization, what I wanted to do was separate my my income from my time. So my next goal was like, how do I work 10 to 20 hours a week? Basically, like a lifestyle business. And it's it's large enough that it's providing for me without me having to actually do the much work if I choose to, um, while not being so large that it then becomes another job in and of itself. But then, so I actually hit that goal. I hit that goal, I don't know when it was, like maybe 2022-ish. And I looked around and I remember thinking, like, I don't actually have that much to do, and this isn't that hard. And I could have stopped, and I tell people who ask me how to do what I did that that's a place that you want to stop, depending on your goals. Like, that's like the right mix of you're getting money, you're you're separating your time from your income and your management burden, and the overhead is not so large that it then becomes something else. I did not stop. I'm competitive, and I just kept going. So I went from 10 to 25 people. And in that, in that uh effort, I started to think about what it would look like to exit, um to have a meaningful exit, um, which for me would be, you know, a financial outcome that would allow me to choose like when and how I work. So my goal actually moved to the freedom to choose when and how or if I work. And in order to get there, I need to get larger as an organization. Um, from 10 to 25, it was definitely a shift. Like we needed some more management support. And now we're actually at 32 people, which is crazy. So we're going from like 25 to 50. So yeah, the the new goal, the the goal still remains to have an exit that allows me to choose when and how I work and to also create those opportunities within my organization, like other people that want to choose when and how to work. I want to create those four. So there's some there's some non-like financial goals that are more kind of personal and like mission-driven at this point. I may have gotten off topic there. I don't really know. No, no, very much.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

Yeah, very on topic. I did see you black out. I did see your eyes kind of glaze over.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

Yeah, I was like, where am I going? I was like, get the thread, okay.

SPEAKER_01 37:50

No, but that's I mean, I I mean you had that, and you mentioned this earlier, that like uh inability to kind of stand still, right? Like you you wanted to keep pushing, and I think that that's in the that that is in the nature of like entrepreneurs as well as the like, hey, I'm not wherever I am, I'm not quite satisfied. Like I could be doing, I could be going better, faster, stronger, right? Um, etc. And and I do think uh I do think that that's like there is some goal out there for ev for everybody. And I'm will I am willing to make a bold statement about this that everybody has the goal of being financially independent in the way that like they are working or doing things because they choose to and not because they are uh and not because they are enslaved to their mortgage, to their education, to what their water bill, their food bill. Like I I I would venture to say that that's everybody's goal is to have some amount of like not even stability, right? Because there are people with jobs and careers who have quote unquote stability, but they know that they have to keep their chains to the desk, they're chained to the you know, to the to the hospital admin team, whatever, whatever their career is, they're kind of chained to it if they want to keep living, right? If they want to keep a roof over their head and they want their kids to go to college. And so like what you're expressing, I think, is a is a pretty universal desire, right? To have the ability to choose um what you do with your time. And it's like even if you choose, like I know for a fact, like just knowing you, that if you had a billion dollars in in your bank account, you would still be doing productive work, but it would feel different because you were choosing to like you were fully choosing to do that, right?

SPEAKER_00 39:41

Yes. Yes. And I think like the older I get, uh the further I go along in my career and also in my life, like what gives me meaning is being able to help other people achieve the things that I've achieved. Like, not that I'm like all the way at the finish line and things can be taken away at any point. I know that. Um, but I think like the work that I'm more interested in doing and that I would do, I'm doing it now, but like I would do more of it once I exit would be around helping other people come up, you know, like the meaning and purpose-driven work of that.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

Yeah. Well, let's do a little bit of that right now. I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you the questions uh of like how we've talked about like how you started, like you have to create a big funnel, you have to, and you know, I doing it now is certainly different than doing it in 2018. But what what are some of the you know, like I do a little bit of like advising of smaller food brands. I'm sure that you do some amount of advising of like people who are like, I want to start my own practice.

SPEAKER_00 40:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:44

How do you sort of guide people?

SPEAKER_00 40:47

Yeah, so my advice has changed over the years because, like you said, things are different than they used to be. You can't just, you know, blast people in on LinkedIn and have responses. There's there's a lot of chatter. So what I tell people is that you should expect it to take three years before you can replace your market salary. Because a lot of people get excited, like, and I'm talking specifically about someone who might want to do, you know, consulting work or independent contracting work for brands or any company. Um, you get an initial set of clients from your network, you get really excited, like I can make this work. What but the first difficult moment comes when you lose one or two clients and you have not been building your pipeline, so you don't have anything to replace it. And then you start to realize that sales and marketing is actually a full-time job. So now you have two jobs, do the work and also find the work. And so it I have seen that it takes two or three years to really try to figure out what is the right way to have a pipeline that's kind of ready or kind of warm so that you're able to backfill and then maintain your client and your income. And I used to say two years, but now I say three because there's just a lot more people who are fractional X, Y, and Z. There's a lot more competition, right? Um, so it's harder to land some of those contracts. So yeah, I say basically take three years to replace your market salary. Like your personal network is your starting point, at least it was for me. Um that's gonna be your first set of clients. And then for the first few years, like I would take pretty much a call with pretty much anyone who you think could potentially help you in the future. It's not gonna yield results right now, but I think over the last eight years, I've talked to thousands, literally thousands of people. Um, and that has a flywheel effect. Like you just got to keep putting in the reps. And I've gotten more judicious as I've gone along because now I don't have as much time as I used to. Um, and I feel more confident in like the structure we've built. And I try to, you know, if I know that this is not the right thing for me and I can't add value to that person, I will say no. But in the beginning, I would talk to pretty much anyone that can remember you at some point.

SPEAKER_01 42:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:50

How how do you think too about like because I know that your situation of kind of coming into um it maybe maybe what I'll call freelancer consulting, kind of like uh before you before it was uh a pra like a practice with other employees? You uh you were, I guess, unemployed aside from the work you were doing independently, right? Yes. I I imagine you're talking to some people who are employed and are thinking about how do I how do I create something while I still have a job? Do you talk to those people any differently? Like what what what if somebody comes to you and says, like, this, I how do I do this, how do I do this in stealth mode or how do I whatever?

SPEAKER_00 43:33

Like, I mean, most of our uh I would say two-thirds of our team right now is um well, actually, two thirds of our team is contractors for a variety of reasons, but I'd say probably a third of those people have other jobs and they just want a project on the side because they want to, some of it's they want more income, but I'd say some of it's also that they want they want like diversity of experiences, they want exposure to other brands, like they

SPEAKER_01 44:00

want to work on kind of different things and in the remote environment you can take a side gig and like take a call during the middle of the day no one's gonna notice so yeah it's pretty common it's like a pretty common part of our team is folks who have like a full-time job gotcha yeah gotcha um the talking about breadth of experience I want to talk a little bit about uh so Bravo CPG that's your brand um and you guys have worked with hundreds at this point of CPG brands right now is it all CPG is it all CPG it's like 100% CPG yes it started out only food and beverage because that was my background and experience and then it it kind of uh expanded from there so I would say about a quarter of the work we do is outside of traditional CPG would I which I would consider just food and bev.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

So we do supplements, beauty personal care products, we've done apparel, um home goods, very limited electronics. Um but yeah it's it's very right now it's pretty heavily food beverage wellness and personal care products.

SPEAKER_01 45:11

Gotcha. So are you uh I mean it's it is my guess that you're solving a lot of the same problems for brands in the same kind of like stages. Like I'm guessing if you're fractional you might be dealing with folks anywhere from like I don't know three million to fifty million something like that. Maybe not doing a ton of work for 500 million dollar brands but I could be wrong.

SPEAKER_00 45:35

Our our ICP is five to fifty but we do have uh a lot of folks who are you know in the one or two million dollar range we've also surprisingly this surprises me just from a budget perspective but we've done a lot of work with pre-launch brands in the last year or two that's been like a much larger percentage of our client base. And then we've also done like I'd say like less than 10% of our clients are in the 100 million plus but we have worked with some small with some larger brands the use cases are different and a lot of times it's like temp coverage it's not like an ongoing thing. It's a very specific use case. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:08

Yeah I gotcha. So are are you dealing with a lot of the same kind of like early to mid-stage problems like do you find that there's five to ten problems that pop up over and over again yes uh cash flow is a huge problem which has implications for operations so like sales is running ahead of where finance can reasonably keep up so that is definitely a common problem it's not ops you know it's not only ops but it affects operations um and it kind of hamstrings what you can do.

SPEAKER_00 46:40

So yeah great I want to have the top of the line command I want to have the the sexy packaging but you can't actually like cash flow is is real, right? Your budget is real. I mean from a planning perspective that's another common thing that we see and I mean as you're growing if you're new if it's a new brand or if it's like a rapidly growing brand there's just not maybe sometimes there's not enough historical data or things are changing so fast that you're not able to really represent that in a model. And there are tools there are strategies but sometimes something's gonna pop up and like hit you in the face that you didn't expect and it can blow blow your entire plan. Another thing I see that's pretty common is folks hiring like a director or a VP level person. They they want a leader, which I understand, but what they end up without is a doer. So then you have like the senior level person who's also booking freight shipments and it's it's is like distracted from the planning. They get pulled into the the day-to-day and the fires so I would say that we see people hiring over hiring in the earlier stages when maybe they'd be best off with like a really strong manager or associate level person. Those are just a few things that that we see um and I guess the last thing I would say is like the link between sales ops and finance ops are ops like the is like the redheaded stepchild. You know it seems like an afterthought people don't want to invest in it. It's not a it's not a revenue driver um it's it's perceived as like a cost center and it's like not a problem per se, but it's a it's a cost center it's not a revenue driver so it doesn't get as much attention. And that link between sales ops and finance a lot of times brands do not have strong leaders in each of those departments so they're not cross talking and coordinating as effectively as as maybe they could yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:25

I would I mean I put marketing in there I know that sales ops and finance uh I probably add marketing in too but but yeah I agree with you that happens I mean that does happen a lot where you're not fully aligned um across the orgs. Are you let let's em let's imagine that you were starting a uh a CPG company let's say let let's just let's just let's say it's a shelf stable uh sna you're creating a snack brand how would you like how would you think about uh how would you think about building out your org I I saw I will say that I saw and interacted with a post that you had put on LinkedIn about co-manufacturers and the and just specifically the post was like talking about like uh you know I think a one to three million dollar brand basically like a startup brand like a really early stage um CPG brand and the the question was around like how do you think about like your manufacturing like do you do a turnkey do you have a command do you do some manufacturing and just have it co-packed somewhere like do you do full self-manufacturing um and it's a complicated question because there's so many things that go into it but let me just ask you like if you're starting a brand from scratch how are you thinking about building your org? How are you thinking about build just and and I'm just these are just kind of pattern recognition because you've done hundreds of speaking of reps like you've done a bunch of reps I've had like one I've had one really heavy rep and you've done a bunch of reps so like how would you think about building it if it was if you were starting a brand today I might have a controversial answer to this question.

SPEAKER_00 50:08

There's like a two part answer. The first part is I it depends on whether you're raising money. I think like the VC model enables and supports different behaviors and decisions. I really am starting like the older I get the more I'm thinking like why would you build a company that can't be profitable on its own you know so if you're gonna build a brand that you are self-funding that needs to be profitable I think I'd have a different set of answers. That's a lot less common these days and you can really only go as fast as your profitability allows in that case that's that's almost no one these days because everyone wants to go big and fast. But if you have a V if you have the VC backed model I think it's really important to understand this is like a blanket statement understand if you have a product that people actually want that you can make for a price point that they will actually pay. And that seems obvious but I feel like a lot of people haven't actually done the work to validate that before they go in hard. There's a lot of really passionate people in CPG and that's like exciting like a lot of people have like a personal story connected to their brand like why they started it they started to solve a personal problem et cetera et cetera but I sometimes see and feel that people skip over like the business question like can this be a viable business and what am I willing to get up give up in terms of ownership and like all the things that go along with investors and boards and all that what am I willing to give up to get where I want to go that's kind of like a blanket statement. I would say early stages having a really strong finance partner to help you model out what the business is actually going to look like, how much cash you're gonna need and to really get tight and understanding your cost structure which flows into like you know raising money and debt you know using debt and all that stuff I think that's that's probably the first thing I would tell people to do. And then operations and sales would probably be the second thing. On the op side you don't need a full-time person initially like that's part of our value prop, right? Like can you can you pull forward access to 10 hours a week or however much of someone's time who's seen it before like yeah the products are different but there's a lot of very common pitfalls that someone can help you look out for and and someone who knows how to connect the dots is really helpful. And then on the sales side this is really kind of out of my lane but like choosing the right partner with the right structure we've seen people get burned by brokers who have like a commission based model or very high fixed fees that can really just not be a fit. So I would say in the beginning stages like getting access to senior expertise so you can set up the right structure, get into the right relationships in each of those core areas would probably be the first thing. And that can be on an advisor or a fractional basis.

SPEAKER_01 52:55

And then I think you want a really strong ops manager in there to make sure the day to day is running costs are kept in check and like things are actually fulfilled on time because another thing we see is people selling into some of these major retailers like great opportunity we got target Walmart whatever it is and they can't actually fulfill it on time for a cost that makes sense which kind of blows the opportunity or it makes use of the opportunity at a loss which is maybe worse arguably that's so that's so common.

SPEAKER_00 53:25

That's like very common. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:28

Yeah well operations can be like a cost center but it's also like has the ability to be a like a an efficiency center to like we talk about it um at Yellowbird it's like that's there's nothing else especially when you start to achieve a little bit of scale there's nothing else that can give you that can deliver savings like like knowing what you're doing on the operation side.

SPEAKER_00 53:53

And I just it's it's interesting to me that I don't the emphasis isn't really there. And I in you know from a sales perspective when I'm talking to people like getting people to understand that investing now in operations and processes and like knowledge gives you a more profitable business later. Like that those dots aren't connected because it's it's not as easy as not like this is easy, but hiring an Amazon agency and paying them 10K a month and getting 20 like that's an easy that's an easy connect connection to make ops is like it's long it's not a straight line and um a lot of times you only see the impact if like something blows up.

SPEAKER_01 54:30

Yeah I mean it's you you can uh you can gain a lot through uh not I mean not just ops but having that like you were saying earlier um having the access to um to some of that knowledge and the ability to strategize about your business like at a higher level and and you're right like people do hire somebody senior too early right and they either have somebody senior who they're overpaying to go spend 95% of that person's time as the doer right like to now they've got to be the shipping clerk like if you've got your if you're a if you're a young brand a million dollar brand and you've hired a quote unquote VP of operations and you're paying them VP of operations salary and then they spend 95% of their time as a shipping clerk like you're overpaying for a shipping clerk and that person might not be actually well suited to be a cer shipping clerk. Right? True you might have somebody you might have somebody who whose skill set is an executive skill set which doesn't mean that executives can't be doers but it's like you you also have people who's like their their core skill set is let me let me do really hard strategy work at a really high level right and and not let me be a shipping clerk every day all day.

SPEAKER_00 55:51

Right and and they're not the same it's in yeah it's it's not the same skill set. And I I will say like I've had the experience like when so I was at played which was was my first job out of business school we didn't like really have a head of operations. I think we had a VP but he it wasn't really working and we actually ended up having a gap there was no ops leader for nine months and then they eventually hired this guy who was a COO like a true COO I know we've joked about what is a true COO. Like this guy had like gray hair he was like in his 50s and he came in and I cannot even describe to you the shift that he brought into that organization because he had been there before he knew what to expect and he got everyone on the same page he got sales, ops, finance marketing in the same room and put us all on the same program and it was like transformational. So I think like you don't it it could be a full-time hire it could be a fractional person it could be an advisor but like just get getting someone in the room who's done it before like CPG is not rocket science. Like yes there are nuances to different products but there are similar pitfalls regardless of product types that if you have someone who's been around the block a few times that person can save you save you from yourself for lack of a better way to say it.

SPEAKER_01 57:01

So yeah we yeah we've had we have had a few of those experiences where you get somebody who's senior and you know the which implies a certain level of I don't know it plays a certain level of like actual maturity where you've been there and you've done it um and you've really gotten in some reps and you've seen everything that can go wrong. So you're like because people at startups are frantic a lot of times like there's a lot of like you don't know where the you're you're still trying to figure out the market fit product market fit because even if you've done some work before you're a million dollar brand you don't know how broad that product market fit is like there there are a lot of brand there are a lot of brands that can do a million dollars selling at like a natural co-op grocery stores or just D to C that like maybe that maybe they're pitching to investors or planning for it to be a million a hundred million dollar brand but you're still trying to figure out that product market fit you're still kind of in uh you're responding to stuff so like having somebody having somebody who can keep their cool and can kind of like guide you through that and whether you're talking sales or ops or marketing or fine I think finance is a great example that you used is that you need to really have like a strong uh financial model coming out of the gate one other thing I've seen people struggle with that I I only named it like two weeks ago like specifically named it like so in the military in operations you actually have two departments like this is oversimplifying it but you we had what we would call current ops which is focused on what is happening right now and in like in the next week.

SPEAKER_00 58:40

And then you had future ops which is a separate department and they're looking out several months or or however long and I I just had this realization a few a few weeks ago that like that is one of the main problems in startups. There is no separation you have one person trying to do both and inevitably that person who's supposed to be thinking further out gets sucked into the fire or the disaster of the day and there's nobody focusing on future ops. And a lot of um like that is what the senior higher level people are supposed to be doing but from a budget perspective from like an org structure perspective a lot of times they just don't there's no room in the budget for someone to totally be dedicated to future ops. Fractional can be like it can it can be a good fit for that but like if I was to tell a brand how to really you know try to nail it I'd say like have someone literally focus on future planning who's not you know worrying about where the Costco shipment is. But that's that's that's not something we see.

SPEAKER_01 59:35

Yeah that's pretty novel.

SPEAKER_00 59:36

I've I've literally never heard that but think about if you had someone who like literally the only job was to look 12 months ahead but I mean from a budget perspective a lot of times you can't afford that right tough.

SPEAKER_01 59:48

That's tough. But that's one of the problems they're gonna be like oh 12 months from now I see you being out of money because you've paid all these you're paying all these people to think about the future all the time. Yeah but it would certainly help it would certainly help I agree with you I mean I think that that's you know that's been uh you know as as as participating as a senior executive at a small growth brand it is we it is weird to be an ex like a senior executive at a really small brand to be because your title you're are do you is your title sorry I had LinkedIn pulled up is your title CEO is that so actually I called myself owner only until about a year ago because I feel like I didn't rate a CEO founder title and I don't know what happened around year six or seven I was like I've I've taken my lumps I've earned my stripes and I changed my title so yes I I am now stepped into the CEO and founder title. Yeah uh yeah I mean it took me it took me a while before I put that on my business card like years before I was like put that on my business card because it is weird to be like to be a brand that's got maybe like $200,000 in annual sales and to be like I have the same job title as you know Mark Zuckerberg.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:04

Right. And I think those terms get overused like everyone's a CEO everyone's a founder you know yeah it felt weird to me so well let me I I do want to make sure that I spend a little bit of time talking about your van can we talk about your van we can her name is Bessie yes she is a sprinter van she has dark blue gray um I had I've been wanting one for a couple years and last year I went through some personal stuff and was really kind of at a moment of burnout and somehow found it in me to take a six week break and right before I did that I bought this van. I'd been looking around on the internet to buy a van I found this guy named Mitchell in Montana who builds out vans. I knew I didn't build it myself Montana Mitchell's great highly recommend him Montana Mitch Montana Mitch he's just like a one man show out there. But anyway so I I found him and within about three weeks I I I bought it like sight unseen on the internet. I actually did have a friend who lives nearby who went to see and make sure it wasn't on an internet scam. But yeah I I I bought it in June uh of last year flew out to Montana to pick it up and it's uh it's a normal length sprinter van they have some that are extended like that are 170 inches mine's 144 um and yeah I lived out of it for the summer two and a half months I took I took a six week break from work which was amazing and I was very fortunate to be able to do that but I took Bestial over Montana we went through Wyoming Oregon we went up uh up the coast uh the Oregon coast which is I am shocked to be saying this as a Californian but like the most stunning place I think I've been in in the US it just like blew me away and I also did the northern coast of California like the Redwoods um I've also taken it down to San Diego TBD where I go this year but it is like every time I'm in that thing I just think about the people who came over on the Oregon Trail and like like the hardship in this van it's got solar it's got like a stove you know it's got two showers it's got hot water it's it's it's just incredible and it just needs to be self-sufficient. You're not gonna die of dysentery like I'm not gonna die of Oregon trail that's literally what I think of I'm like I'm I these people would be shocked but anyways it's such a it's the nicest thing I've ever done for myself hands down the tree.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:29

Yeah I can't wait to see this van. I've only seen pictures of it um but this is the kind of kids this is the kind of life you can build for yourself if you get out there nurture some leads yes and I don't know if you want to include this but I actually set up a separate LLC and I bought the van under the LLC so I could um maybe do some tax strategy because you can't rent out vans there's something called outdoorsy which is like the Airbnb for vans and trailers and things.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:00

So my goal is to rent it out a few times a year and then you know generate some losses in the business to then offset my income that chat GPT helped me with that one. But pro tip you can you can you can only offset uh you can only use passive losses to offset passive income. So initially I thought I could use it to offset my Bravo income but that's not true because my Bravo income is active.

unknown 1:04:22

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:22

So ChatGPT is not always right.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:24

Yeah that the if the if you take one thing from this episode please double check chat GPT's tax and business advice.

unknown 1:04:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:34

It's not always right. It's not always right.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:37

Uh I'll really hey I want to rent the van I want to rent the van from you.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:41

You can borrow it and you know what I I love Bessie as my safe space. I love um letting people borrow it. Like it's supposed to it's not supposed to sit there. So like I'm very not precious with things like that. Like I want people to borrow my homes and my vehicles and my vans. So you're welcome to borrow it for free for a case of hot sauce for a case of hot sauce.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:00

I give you I'll give you two deal deal Katie aside from uh aside from uh traveling around the country in Bessie I no I the the only I guess question that I would have because I know a bunch of people who've done van life where um I'm gonna leave this in where do you poop? Where do you go?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:19

So thank you for asking my van actually does not have a bathroom I have like a compost toilet for emergencies but you really just park somewhere where there's a bathroom like you park at a campsite or if you're parking if you're somewhere around town you just there's there's so many resources that are invisible to the average person. Like living in the van I realize like there's laundry there's bathrooms there's showers at the gym like you basically just kind of plan around it or you stay at a campsite.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:47

So it's just living in your car but it's bigger and bas it has a stove in it, yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:52

It has a stove and it has it has an emergency toilet but it's only for emergencies.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:56

So you know I guess you could probably say that every Car has an emergency toilet. Like in an emergency, you could figure it out. Um you could. That's gross. To net the podcast, which you've been listening to.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:10

On that note, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:12

No, seriously, thank you for coming. Thank you for coming on. When when you are not in Bessie and you're not running uh you're not running Bravo CPG, what kind of stuff really uh really gets you going? What's the what's the stuff that you'd love doing?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:28

Yeah, I love I love reading. I read all sorts of stuff. I love biographies, like like not like self-help, but like, you know, like personal growth and improvement and fiction, all sorts of books. I'm a huge reader. I probably read like two or three books a month. Um I volunteer. Uh I volunteer with senior citizens. I have like some senior citizen buddies out here that I spend time with. Um I have two nieces who I love. They're six and nine, so they're really fun ages. So I try to go see my family. Um and being in the Pacific Northwest, um, hiking, I love hiking. There's a million lakes up here. Every time I turn around, I find a new waterfall or a new lake. So I like to spend a lot of time outside. Um and yeah, just hanging out, hanging out with my friends, you know? People like you.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:12

Oh. Thank you. That's very nice. Where where can people find more about you and more about BravoCPG? How do we find you?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:22

Um, the on the interwebs. Uh, we have a new VP of growth who has made our website look very amazing. So BravoCPG.com. Um, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. Um, or if you want to email me, you can email me at Katie at BravoCPG.com.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:39

Oh man, you just got so much spam as soon as you saw that. You just got so much all the week.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:45

We'll see who who listens all the way to the end. We'll see.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:48

Yeah, we'll know. You'll have to let me know because I don't otherwise have a way to know. Uh, speaking of listening all the way to the end, guys, you did it. Whoever's hearing this, you freaking did it. Uh, thank you so much for joining us, Katie. Thank you everybody for joining us here week after week. You can hear these um every Monday. We have great conversations with entrepreneurs and operators and thinkers and artists and just cool people who I like and you will too. Subscribe and like and give us like, I don't know, 17 stars out of five, I think. Uh, thanks for joining us. I love you. Bye bye.