Ep. 20 - Message In A Jar with Matt Dunaj | Gross To Net

Most people meet a finance chief only after the interesting decisions are already made — he's the one who tells you whether you can afford them. Matt Dunaj has spent his career sitting exactly where those trades get made: as CFO at Follow Your Heart through its sale to Danone, as CFO/COO at Fly By Jing during its hypergrowth chili crisp era, and now as CFO at SWG Brands, the vertically integrated sexual-wellness group behind Hello Cake, Wet Lubricants, and Trigg Laboratories. Three categories that have almost nothing in common on paper, and one person who's been at the financial controls of all of them.

We get into how he actually reads a company on day one (the answer starts with the balance sheet, not the P&L), what nearly a decade inside a fifty-year-old plant-based pioneer teaches you that job-hopping can't, why the most successful month at a growing CPG brand can be the most painful one for cash, what changes when "filling a jar of vegan mayonnaise" turns into "filling a bottle of personal lubricant," and how to actually make demand-planning decisions before a Walmart pipefill when no math makes you certain. Along the way: a hobby that started as cactus collecting and ended in marriage, a meadow scythed by hand, a broken-TV recording that ended up sounding like music, and the fruit bowl analogy still running culture at companies Matt hasn't worked at in years.

Matt also calls himself The CFO Guy, which most people in his seat would never do — and the reason why is the most honest thing said in the episode. Find Matt on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-dunaj/. Gross to Net is hosted by George Milton — find him at https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-milton-a8348956/. If this one resonated, the easiest thing you can do is share it with one operator who needs to hear it.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Most people meet the finance chief only after the interesting decisions get made. He's the guy who tells you whether you can afford them or not. But every number on a PL is a choice about what a company is willing to trade. And today's guest has spent his whole career sitting exactly where those trades get made. He learned the craft, auditing books at a big four firm, then spent nearly a decade inside a 50-year-old plant-based pioneer, whom I love, long enough to help steer it into the arms of a multinational and see up close what a mission gains and what it quietly gives up when it finally gets the resources it always wanted. He left that for the opposite end of the spectrum, a four-year-old venture-backed Chili Crist brand growing fast enough to outrun its own systems, where he once made the case for cutting prices instead of raising them, and now he's betting on vertical integration in one of the hardest categories in all of consumer goods to build in sexual wellness, where the reward for owning the entire stack is profitability and the price is owning every problem as well. He calls himself the CFO guy, which undersells it, I think, across legacy CPG, hyper-growth D2C, and a roll-up still taking shape. He's become a connoisseur of the trade-off itself, what you're really optimizing for, and what the optimizing costs. This is Gross to Net. I'm George Milton, and my guest today is Matt Dunay. Welcome, Matt. Thank you, George. Awesome. How much of that intro was accurate? Two holy shit, man. The highest I've ever gotten. Well, welcome, man.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

I'd like to take that script and like incorporate that into my LinkedIn bio if I can.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Yeah, absolutely. I'll I'm uh actually doing a service now where like if you come on my podcast, I'll write your LinkedIn bio for you for free.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Can you post for me as well?

SPEAKER_00 2:05

I will post for you. Yeah. I'm also gonna, I think for you, there I'm gonna AI image like you on a horse with like a bow and arrow or something. I love it. Like a very Legolas kind of vibe. I'm ready for it. I get a legoless vibe from you. Do you forget that?

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Yeah, yeah. I had to choose an emoji for my like you know, avatar in my previous company, and I chose the wizard emoji. I felt like it was fitting.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

So that's pretty good. Yeah. And I think you I think you are a wizard. Can we I there's a lot to talk about, Matt. I I know we've rescheduled this a couple of times, and I'm happy to have you here. That this is not a video podcast. I will probably clip some like videos for social, but like the first thing that I'm struck by is that you've got a whole like I like a whole electronic music setup right behind you for making all kinds of noise. Like I am honestly kind of jealous of of all the stuff. Can you tell me about all the music stuff you got behind you right now?

SPEAKER_01 3:05

Yeah, absolutely. So I got I've been into music for a really long time, like ever since I was a kid. My my mom actually got a degree in piano performance before she got her accounting degree, which, you know, both of those things tend to run in the family, both the numbers and the music. And my grandmother was like an organ player and a piano teacher for her whole life. So I've been around music since I was a kid. And I got I've been into synthesizers for a while too, but you know, it started mostly guitar, stringed instruments, playing in a punk band. But uh started to get into synthesizers when I was more into like playing music by myself. I found that like the tinkering you could do with this type of instrument was a lot different than the tinkering you would do in like a punk setting, per se. And so this is like kind of, I would say nearly the final form of my synthesizer obsession. I've really scratched to the the bottom of, I think, as deep as you can go into this hobby, including making some of my own synthesizers. And so these are mostly boutique machines that have been made by individual people who have small companies and they bring their creative visions to life through electronic circuits. And each of them has like a really interesting ethos beneath the surface that's kind of like expressed through the way the control voltage moves through the system. And there's also like really interesting ways to connect everything together, and so they can in some ways talk to each other, control each other, and create feedback loops and and ways to interact that don't even involve my intervention. So there's some really cool like small boutique stuff, and then some stuff that I've kind of DIY'd that comes from a long history of synthesizer DIY. I'm not like inventing these circuits. I'm I'm taking some very well-known circuits and building them myself into the configuration that works for me. And uh yeah, it it helps me kind of turn off the numbers brain at the end of the day and get into like a musical world that's been just really important for me throughout my life. Yeah, that's amazing, man.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

So the the break, the like uh break that we put in the middle, I always put some like indie music in there or something. So like if if we if we could put if I could put your music in the middle, that would be cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

Music is a stretch. Music is a stretch.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Hey, dude, I still think it's I still think it's mu yeah, I don't know if we've talked about this, but I got I got into college originally with an electronic music scholarship, which is which was strange back in the back in like 2000. That was like a strange thing. I had a that we had a guy, uh this dude named Michael Angel, who was a big like synth guy. He would like do all these orca I don't know what he's doing today, but like he would do all these crazy like orchestrations, and they would do this thing where like the symphony would come perform with his like synths. It was it was wild, man. Yeah. It is like a long history. I've never ever gotten into like building yeah, I've never gotten into like building synths, so I'm guessing your algorithm probably knows that about you pretty well.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Yeah, it does. I wish there was more content. Um to be honest, it's still like hidden in the depths of Discord channels mostly. And you know, the world of forums online, it's it's not the same as it used to be. Like information on on the forums of the day, it's all kind of migrated to Reddit, and it's just not the same. But uh, but yeah, I found my Discords and my community to stay connected with the scene.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Yeah, that's awesome, man. I want to talk about accounting and about business a little bit. Yeah. And then we'll circle back to uh we'll circle back to music multiple times because it's fascinating to me. You studied both accounting and psychology, is that right? It's true, yes. I did. Double major? Double major, double major.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

I started off in psychology and did it because I was really interested in like this numbers thing with people. It was psychology, it was one of those like general-ed classes that I just took. And then I was like, oh wait, like you're supposed to actually take multiple classes that have a theme that then lead to a degree. Like, oh, like I should try to organize this effort into something that's gonna result in something. And I was lucky to have taken a psychology class with a pretty young professor at UC Santa Barbara, and then I realized that like, oh, one of the ways to like accomplish this degree is you go do kind of research assistance with a professor. And that sounded more fun to me than like stacking on more general ed classes. So I got to like pursue some research with this professor in a way where I was like super connected with the surveys, the studies, the process. And it was all numbers, like it's all spreadsheets and data sets, and like that was the part that got me most excited about the the work to be done. And like, not just the numbers, but the stories that were like emerging into these papers. And I was like, oh, like all that data led to this, like that's pretty cool. But then I also realized that you have to go to grad school if you want to do anything with that degree, and I was like, wait a minute, like that's not what I was intending here. But I was far enough along in the psychology degree that I didn't want to give it up either. So accounting runs in my family, and so I was like, yeah, let me give that a shot as one that could be like job worthy immediately with a bachelor's degree without having to do any higher education. And I was like, oh wait, yeah, here's the numbers. Like this is where they live. So yeah, I was lucky to be able to kind of bring both those together. And the psychology degree, it's not like, you know, it wasn't like analyzing people. It was really like analyzing data and that comes from people, so to speak. But it's actually like really connected in my mind.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Yeah, I mean, that's really interesting to me. I think it is all connected and I'm interested, like when you I'm gonna skip around a little bit if that's okay. Of course. Like when when you walk into a company which you've done a handful of times, like at a pretty high level, like what what are the things like what are the things that you're trying to uncover? Like day one, you walk into a company, let's say you let's say you walk into Yellowbird on day one, or you know, any of the companies that you've been at, SWG day one, like what what are the like data sets that you're like, I want to get my hands on these five things. This is what I want to uncover so that I know how to proceed. Yeah. It's a great question.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

I really I see a company as an organism and it's something that's always changing and has so much dynamic interaction where you poke one thing, another thing pops out. And so I'm I'm trying to understand that entity, that organism. Like, how does it survive? How did it grow up? What was its childhood, its adolescence, where is it at in its journey, and how does it function? And you know, cash in many ways is the ultimate lag metric of how a company is functioning. And so I tend to follow the cash journey and I want to know how much of it do we have, how much of it have we had, where did it come from, where does it go? And so I really try to like think about how do we make money, where do we spend money, and how do we make decisions around those dollars, and then ultimately, like how do you keep track of it and what systems in place are there to like follow that flow. So I I think it's like a an entity, you know. Obviously, like an entity is a a corporation is an entity, right? But it's more like a sentient entity that I want to get to know and like buddy up with and understand like how does this thing function? So my my like entry point is usually cash because it's the ultimate like scorecard at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

Yeah, that's right. I think that's interesting. That's an interesting framing, and it's very like it's very like psych major of you to think. But it is it is interesting to like think like like to do the the kind of like visualization exercise of like you're looking at the PNL like you're watching like the vitals of a person hooked up to machines, right? And it's like hey, do I have to give do I have to keep giving this person infusions to keep it alive? How do I how do I get them stable? If they are stable, like how do we optimize these things? Like it's uh like looking at your PL like you're I don't know. I I feel like I've seen PLs get approached by a lot of people as this like static thing, like, oh, we're taking a snapshot of the business, and it's like, well, you're kind of watching its heartbeat and its blood pressure and it's whatever.

SPEAKER_01 11:57

Yeah, the snapshots are important for sure, and like measuring the snapshots over time. Yeah, like your vitals chart. But um but yeah, it's also like those snapshots can be so arbitrary, like the starting point, the ending point, whether you got a deposit today or whether you spent a big amount tomorrow. And so the flow, I think, is probably the most important essence of the company that kind of tells you the momentum, the direction, the challenges, the constraints.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Yeah. How what do you what do you think, like having done this a number of times, what are uh let me figure out how to ask this question. What what are s what are maybe like one or two of the most, I'll put it in quotes, expensive things that maybe don't show up easily on the PL, like maybe things that are second order inferences or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

Yeah. I think like to have a good PL, you have to have a good balance sheet. And I think that a lot of teams can spend a lot of time and energy and effort and understanding their P ⁇ L and like everything from gross to net and then all the way down. But I found that like the real, the real meat of the company is on the balance sheet, and that's where there's also a lot of risk. I've tend to gravitate towards the balance sheet first because just mathematically, if you get your balance sheet correct and substantiated, then the PL will be right too. Now you can get some classifications or categorizations wrong or put things in the wrong bucket, but you can't have an accurate PL with an inaccurate balance sheet. It's functionally impossible. You can find that you're lying to yourself about inventory dollars, about accounts receivable, about assets that are unsubstantiated that really represent expenses that need to be written off, or about understated liabilities and things that aren't on the balance sheet but should be things that might pop up instead of being accrued for, things that um might not be anticipated. And so I take like a real, I really put a lot of value in the balance sheet as like the the most important starting point to have an accurate PL. And then from there you get to like slice and dice the changes in the balance sheet into meaningful PL decisions. And like ultimately the PL does become more of the the pulse, the the flow, like the energy of the company. But gotta have that solid foundation of a good balance sheet. And I think that's where a lot of people can find maybe not, maybe not. I wouldn't come in and say, like, oh look, we have to spend a million dollars of cash today, but I might come in and say, you thought you were a million dollars more profitable than you were because you have all these assets on your balance sheet that just don't exist that we have to write off and get rid of.

SPEAKER_00 14:37

Yeah.

unknown 14:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

So would you start like, do you like to start with the balance sheet? Are you starting to talk about cash? Like that would be on the balance.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

It's a cycle. I think in order to understand the balance sheet, you also got to understand the PL. But in terms of like where I would start digging first, yeah, probably like the assets on the balance sheet and making sure they're legit. And the liability side though, I do think like it's harder to know what's missing there unless you know what's happening on the PL. And so it's much easier to go to a balance sheet and say, oh, that asset doesn't exist, than it is to say we've under-accrued for a liability because you you don't know what you can't see. And that's where the PNL informs you. It's like, oh, well, that happened last March, like it's gonna happen again. So it's a bit of a cycle, I'd say, that bounces back and forth between the two.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Do you think that there's an argument to be made? I I saw somebody did this exercise for us like pretty early on. I haven't seen anybody do it since, but they put the PL and balance sheet on one page. I like it. Do you do you think that there have you ever done that? Do you think there's an because I I loved it because I was like, oh, okay. Like my my background is not, I did not, I did not start as a music major and then also become an accounting major. Right. I started as a music major and then also became a theater major. So very like like the like the principles of accounting were things that I had to learn much, much, much later. And so the the tie-in from from like balance sheet to P ⁇ L, like it once I saw it that one way, I was like, I always want these to be at least in the same workbook. They could be like separate tabs, but like I don't want to see I don't want to see the balance sheet by itself because it's like it doesn't exist by itself. It's the same as like I'm just gonna keep using your analogy of like of like looking at the you know the vitals of it of a living entity is like it's like just looking at like how many beats per minute is your heart without looking at any other without running a blood test and you know looking at your like respiratory oxygen levels or whatever, like it's just like one little thing that's like, oh, his heart rate, his resting heart rate is 52. He's healthy, be like, well, there's probably some other there's probably some other stuff. Like, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

I mean, I have put them on the same page, I don't frequently because it starts to get too big. Um I just have a really big monitor that helps with that. But yeah, it's um I also love to like divide by a thousand or like divide by whatever significant digit I can to get as few numbers on the page as possible, just simplifying, you know, like even if if you're dealing in thousands, like divide by a hundred. Like I think that our brains struggle to comprehend vast amounts of numbers, and the bigger the numbers get, the harder they are to like really internalize them, at least for me. So I think um I'm always looking to like pare down to like the minimum possible information to tell the story. And oftentimes that means like, yeah, putting two statements on one page or removing all the numbers that you can. And even just like instead of 4.2 million in sales this year, like it's just 4.2. You know, it just makes it a lot easier for me to ingest that level of detail.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

Yeah. Yeah, man, I agree with that. I see like uh whenever I try to read like what the government budget is, and they're like, oh, it's $1.8 trillion. I'm like, that's okay. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how to do that.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

I still feel like some equivalency of magnitude, right? Like recently we submitted for uh tariff refunds, and like tariffs were have been a huge topic for CFOs and operating teams for the last year plus now. And the like the magnitude of tariff refunds that or tariffs in general that but the government collected and as well as paying out, like I really struggled to like size that in my head and to figure out like how big is that. Um and it is pretty interesting if you go Google it. I won't you you can compare the amount of dollars spent out in tariff refunds to like amount spent on current conflicts and bombs being dropped and things like that. I don't have any perception of magnitude of those things either, but measuring things against each other is is one of the most helpful ways, I think, of like creating shape to those big numbers and those other things. And so even a PL and a balance sheet for a company in isolation, like what are you measuring against? And like, what's the goal? And like what are the benchmarks like to the vital sign? Now it's not just about that vital in isolation, but like how does it compare to what it should be and like magnitude? Magnitude's like an interesting thing to think about along a company journey as well. Like what's important today, the thousand dollars you might spend versus a company that's much more mature where somebody might even ignore a thousand dollar expense. Magnitude can change over time. Yeah, it's really interesting.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

Well, speaking of magnitude and things changing over time, like uh let's talk a little bit about Follow Your Heart. I don't know if you and I have talked a lot about this, but like Follow Your Heart was one of my uh like they're just one of my big brand crushes. Like the I talked to those guys before before we ever built a plant, I somehow got connected with those guys, and like it's just some guys that like in the 70s were like, hey, what if we made mayonnaise out of like it's just some hippies who were like, what if we made mayonnaise out of plants? Yeah. They kind of created that category, didn't they? They did, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

Bob Goldberg invented plant-based mayonnaise.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

And and they built a plant, and I think it was like solar powered and like recycled certified, like zero waste, like and I was talking to those guys like before we built our plant, and I was like, holy shit, like that and you came in, what year did you start Follow Your Heart?

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Like I was there in 2013, and so about maybe 40 years into their journey, and uh as you said earlier, I was there for about 10 years.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

So that's a pretty I mean 10 years is that's a that's a pretty long tenure nowadays. Like you you know, used to maybe expect to spend your whole career at one company, but 10 years I did.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

I did actually like I my house that I live in, I bought this house like four miles away from the Fall Your Heart factory. Yeah. Uh I was convinced that I was basically gonna live at that factory for the rest of my life. Uh another one of my hobby journeys in the past was growing and collecting cactus. And I actually built a cactus greenhouse on the campus of the Fall of Your Heart factory because you know I basically lived there. Um, so yeah, it was like an incredibly special place and time and people and environment. And those founders, Bob Goldberg and Paul Lewin, like they taught me like I'm still learning from them, I would say. Like there's still mentors in my head that I can have like full blown conversations with without even picking up the phone.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

Yeah. That is that so it sounds like that's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Yeah. I mean it it could be a whole it could be like a four hour episode for sure. Like the story of like the origin of Folly Your Heart, Bob and Paul, a college. Buddies, went through the Vietnam War together and like dispersed and got disconnected, but then came back together in California after the war, became vegetarians because of the war through recognizing the connection of violence with people and with the food system. And went from like slinging veggie sprout sandwiches in the back of a Johnny Weiss Mueller vitamin shop to yeah, defining a new category at mass grocery and retail. And so I got to join, like they were established when I joined, but the plant-based wave just like accelerated and grew incredibly between like 2013 and 2020. And that time period was just super exciting to be like, gotta build a new line, gotta buy a new building, gotta launch a new product, gotta like grow the team and figure out how to keep the culture alive. And these cactuses. That was very important too. Sorry, cacti. The cacti alive. I like cactuses, it's fine, you know. It's like some answers, whatever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

Yeah, that's it. It's such a cool company and such a cool story. And just knowing what I know about you, I can like the I don't even have to ask like what were you attracted to about that company? Like I think it's it's pretty obvious, like, and I can understand like I I would have wanted to work there my whole life too. Like that's it's just such a cool thing. But you were there for almost 10 years, right? Like that you spent a while there. So I I imagine that like maybe more than any other company, you've seen you saw a lot change, a lot grow, the industry was changing, uh there, you know, the needs of the company were changing. Were some of the things that kind of you learned from having that much tenure at a company that maybe somebody bouncing CFO role to CFO role is maybe not gonna pick up if you're like average tenure is 18 months or 24 months.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

Yeah. I think like I really got to learn every nook and cranny of the business. And I think like the better you get to know something, the better you can help support it and like understand its needs and where it's at. And so like, like literally everything, like everything from like a pest trap in the corner of a warehouse to like, you know, a $40 invoice to like, you know, getting sued and having to deal with lawyers and then like wild successes that you can't even keep up with. Like I think that the I think like patience, you know, the long tenure somewhere and like where you can see patience play out. I think it is very difficult for a CFO to like enjoy the rewards of patience because there's so much pressure and speed and targets and goals. And at follow your heart, you know, we had no outside investors. It was just entirely bootstrapped by these guys over the course of decades. And so the environment that they created was the one that they wanted. And I also learned that you can create and shape your environment. And I learned that from them. And I feel like I've tried to carry that with me in terms of not trying to change people and obviously like trying to find the right people who are in the environment who thrive in that environment and can support it. But I really saw those founders like shape the environment around them to be conducive to what they wanted in their lives and what they wanted for their business, and then everything else just fell into place. They have an analogy at Follow Your Heart. I might even have a little card on my desk I could show you. I do. It's the top card. So we we had this thing at Follow Your Heart called the fruit bowl, and I'll show you. You can see it's just a fruit bowl. And the fruit inside is the content, those are your people. The bowl itself is the context, the rules, the policies. And we had like a drawing of this fruit bowl up behind the um, I got all fuzzy there. It's okay. Uh, we had a drawing of that fruit bowl up behind the CEO and CFO's desk at Follow Your Heart. And it was just a reminder that if you really focus on that bowl and you really focus on the context and the rules and the policies and the why, and then you pick really beautiful fruit, then the fruit's gonna self-organize within that bowl. You don't have to worry so much about races and org charts and who does what. You can create a structure where that self-generates with the right kind of context to hold it all together. So that's probably my best lesson. I have it on this deck of cards at the top of my desk.

SPEAKER_00 26:32

I like that. I like that little fruit bowl. Can you send me a picture of that fruit bowl?

SPEAKER_01 26:36

Yeah, 100%. It's I got like a whole deck of cards from Folly Heart that's got all kinds of rules and and cool ideas, but the fruit bowl's on the top right now. I always put the card most relevant to my current journey on the top so that it can be top.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

Tell me about this deck of cards, because you just hold it held it up briefly. Is it like what is the deck of cards like rules or like content from the uh yeah?

SPEAKER_01 27:00

I'm gonna hear one second. Let me try this.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

Do I like blurry? I like blurry, don't I? It's okay, right? Yeah, you're a little blurry.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

Maybe it's because I held that card up and it focused on it.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

It's because you're up in the mountains on the satellite internet. Oh, good enough, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:16

Uh so the cards comes from a program that's kind of like quasi-self-help, quasi-business program. You can think these like entrepreneurial programs that were popular in America in like the late 80s, early 90s. Founders of Follow Your Heart were really into one of those programs. The program that they were into was based on the teachings of Buckminster Fuller, who is an architect writer. He was kind of like the elder statesman of the hippie movement back in the 60s and 70s. And so uh the program's called Money in You. Uh it's got some controversy associated with it. There's an article about Tony Robbins and his rise to notoriety, and he went through the Money in You program. And so it's, you know, it's an interesting program. Uh, but I did learn a lot from it. And these cards are kind of like takeaways from that Money in You program that Bob and Paul at Follow Your Heart used to define their own internal company culture for Follow Your Heart. So it's got things like tell the whole truth with compassion. For things to change first, I must change. Pay yourself first. The keys to cooperation. Um, and so these are my little personal reminders that I can shuffle around and surface to the top of the deck the card that is most helpful for me in that given day.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

Yeah. I wish somebody had told me pay yourself first many years ago. That's a hard one to do. It's really important.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

It's really important, you know. Like gotta put that life mask on yourself before you put it on someone else.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

Yeah. And if our listeners made it this long, they just like, hey, pay yourself first. Yeah, pay yourself first.

SPEAKER_01 28:47

Yeah, if you can't show up full and uh happy and ready to serve, then um, it's really hard for others to follow you.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

So support yourself. Yeah, support yourself. I feel like that's a good time for us to take a break. Sounds good. I told you I was gonna maybe go make a espresso. I'm gonna go run as fast as I can and make an espresso.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

I'm gonna try to like not be blurry anymore.

SPEAKER_00 29:08

Yeah, try to try to not be blurry, man. Why are you so I assume that you're blurry in real life and that's not just a connection thing. Okay, I think I got it. Hopefully, we're about to hear a Matt Dunay original in the break. Stick with us. We'll be right back. We're talking with Matt Dunay, and you just heard Electric Boogaloo Robot Flower by Matt Dunay. I'm just kidding. I don't know. Can you tell us a little bit about the track we just heard, Matt? That was actually a broken television that I recorded. Oh, dude. It's it was so melodic and just and disturbing. Like it opened up something within my mind. Um that was fresh and new. We were talking about Follow Your Heart, and you were at you were at Follow Your Heart through COVID too, right?

SPEAKER_01 30:49

Yeah, yeah, it was. It was. That was really interesting. I have a photo of myself sitting in our office with everything. Like we covered everything in plastic because like, why not? I don't know, keep it clean. Like we didn't know what we were doing.

SPEAKER_02 31:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:03

And there's a photo of me like wearing like the blue nitrile gloves in an office covered in plastic, and I've got my mask on, and I'm filling out the PPP loan on my computer. And uh I actually look back at that photo occasionally about like, wow, what a what a crazy time. Because we really needed that PPP loan. We wouldn't have been able to make payroll without it.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

So yeah, same. Yeah. Same. Yeah. I was probably at the same time over here in my blue nitro gloves filling out that PPP loan. But you also got really into some strange instruments during COVID too, right? To go back and talk about music more.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

Yeah, I did. I got into banjo during COVID as like my first non-guitar stringed instrument. And of course, banjo is like super similar to guitar, but it was very different. Like the technique was very different. And so it gave me like a new mechanical, physical, you know, dexterous thing to work on, uh, coordinated thing to work on. And so really enjoyed playing banjo. And then banjo, interestingly enough, led me to a Chinese instrument. Um, while I was working for Flyby Jing and traveling to China, I became introduced to this instrument called the Gucci. This is my Gucci. Oh my god, you've got one. Yeah, I got a Gucci from like this incredible maker in the countryside of Chengdu. And like, I mean, it's it's a piece of art. It's an incredible, it's it's nearly a religious experience playing that thing. But um, but yeah, I've actually like I perceived this uh very interesting connection between like southern Appalachian mountain music, like the banjo, and this like ancient Chinese ritual music from the Gucci. And so I've worked to like play some Gucci songs on the banjo, and I haven't yet been able to figure out how to play any banjo songs on the Gucci, but uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

The Gucci it looks a lot bigger and harder to kind of like dance around than the banjo.

SPEAKER_01 33:00

It is, and you can't really like yeah, if people are hollering and stomping while you're playing the Gucci, you can't really hear it as well. It's a bit of a quieter instrument, a more introspective one. But um, but they're both mountain instruments, like they're for Solitude in the Mountains, and so there's there's some interesting connection there. I'm trying to figure it out.

SPEAKER_00 33:18

Can can you I mean you've got some uh craftsmanship chops. Like, have you ever thought about making a crossover instrument?

SPEAKER_01 33:27

Yeah, yeah, I have like ornamental gourds or like another interesting uh I've I haven't grown them yet, but I'm preparing to grow ornamental gourds. I have a gourd banjo. There are also gourd flutes in China called Hulusa that I have one of as well. And so there's there's something with gourds that I would like to make something with. And I've actually I started that journey. I made this noise-making gourd little character. Oh wow. And uh is it did you build a build speakers into that gourd? Yeah, yeah, those are speakers there, and like these are buttons and touch nodes, uh, and then it's got like this PCB board stuff in the back there.

SPEAKER_00 34:06

That's wild, man. This get you can't you might not be able to see this, but this gourd has speakers on it, it's got volume knobs, it's got buttons. This is the wildest gourd I've ever seen. Yeah. So yeah, can you make noise out of it right now, or does it yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:23

It needs a nine-volt battery. I have a video of it I could send you for sure. Okay. I don't know if I have a nine-volt battery.

SPEAKER_00 34:28

I'm canceling the rest of the questions that I have on my list. We're just gonna we're just gonna do a segment I call Matt's hobbies. Yeah. What other what other hobbies do you have that like you literally just had within reach a gourd that's been made into a musical instrument? So like I'm canceling the rest of my questions about finance and CPG. Like, what other hobbies do you have?

SPEAKER_01 34:53

Well, cactus was big. I met my wife through cactus. Uh, we were both part of the cactus collecting community, and that's what brought us together. What's interesting is that like after we came together via cactus, our mutual interest in cactus really faded. And like it was an an interesting recognition that like we both still love cactus, but um the hobby can be, you know, lifetime passion. It could also be part of a journey that like brings you to a destination. And at some point you move on from the hobby and you pick up another one. So cactus was really big for me, but I do feel like it brought me, you know, the love of my life in a way that like came to fruition. I was like, oh, like I'm complete with cactus now. The circle. My grandfather built an airplane and I flew it from Georgia to California. I don't fly anymore. It's very expensive and it takes a lot of time to do it safely. So it's something I might pick up again later in life. And but yeah, I'd say like now it's it's mostly like work can be a hobby too for me. Sure. I can go through like phases where work is my hobby. And when that happens, I do try to intentionally invest in like the non-work hobby time as well. That's like one of the synthesizers that I built this year was like a project that I put on my own plate so that I would have something else to do that I I knew I would be prone to becoming obsessed with my new job. And I am, yeah. But I had to like divert some of that obsession into a non-final outlet. And so yeah, mostly music, gardening, plants, cactus, flying airplanes, like those are probably the biggest ones I could uh point a finger at.

SPEAKER_00 36:28

Well, I feel like I I mean you're you're kind of drawing a picture to me of uh what I would call a balanced life. I love a weird hobby. Yeah. But I I do think that it's I mean, I personally think that it's important to go find things. How should I say this correctly? Like to build yourself out of a bunch of different pieces. So if one of those pieces falls off, you're not you're not nothing. Like I like the idea of building yourself from a lot of different pieces.

SPEAKER_01 36:59

Yeah, yeah. That's a really interesting way to think about it. I don't think I've ever considered it that way. I feel like sometimes I feel like my hobbies aren't even my choice. Like it becomes this like uh unavoidable pull that just sucks me in like a gravity. But always in hindsight, you can attribute meaning to it in a way that connects the dots to like other parts of your life for sure.

SPEAKER_00 37:20

Well, I think it's so interesting, and I know that this is like some of this is a function of of I guess like our like m more modern society where you have, you know, like we were talking earlier about like the bulletin boards on the internet. I was on like I was on the bulletin boards of the early internet where you had a dial-up modem and you'd just dial up to a bulletin board service, right? You would like go directly to the bulletin board and like mom, hang up the phone.

SPEAKER_01 37:47

Yeah, hang up the phone.

SPEAKER_00 37:48

Did you have a dial-up modem? Are you like dial-up modem age? Okay, yeah, yeah. So so like the but the ability to just get like lost in this in this really like narrow, deep chasm of whatever it is, like professional, you know, whistling or just you know, what a cactus. Like it's just like there's so many, there's so much that like modern society, kind of and the computer internet, where you're like, I can go down these like really strange, twisting, like if I get even like minutely interested in something, like I know that there's this deep cavern below the you know my surface level interest that like if I want to, I could go, I could dive down to a thousand feet in this hobby.

SPEAKER_01 38:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:35

And I don't have to live there, but like it's interesting to see what's at the bottom of that.

SPEAKER_01 38:40

Yeah, yeah. And I think the deeper the hole or the chasm, like the more exciting to me in some ways. So yeah. Yeah, you can like carve your own path through those chasms too. It's uh yeah, the unknown, like learning, I think is really important to me too. Like learning something new and challenging myself, trying to do something new. And so I think a hobby is a great vessel for like some safe personal challenges where, like, you know, like you said, failure in a hobby or like a learning moment in a hobby doesn't necessarily invalidate who you are as a person. And it can be a lot safer and easier to like stumble, fall, or fail in a hobby than in your job. And so it's a great place to like experiment and find your boundaries and find your bandwidth. And yeah, like find the connections too. Like I could be uh I one of my hobbies last year was scything my meadow. Like I got a scythe to manually mow my meadow instead of having to go out and use a weed whacker. And as I was scything, I was thinking all about like, you know, how that related to work and like you gotta go through it once and you gotta go back again, and I have to go check all my systems. And like this makes me think of like a point that I could share with a colleague, and I'm telling people about weeds now, and yeah, like uh it's it's important, I think, to be able to like divert your brain energy into another bucket because then it reconfigures and pops back out in a way that helps you elsewhere too.

SPEAKER_00 39:58

Yeah, I love that. I it's gonna be everything within me to not name this episode Scything My Meadow. Yeah, I love that.

SPEAKER_01 40:05

And it's almost scything season. I'm like about ready to sharpen that thing up. Uh, you know what?

SPEAKER_00 40:10

I was just having the same thought. It's almost scything season. I was thinking that this morning, we're so close to scything season. Everybody get your scythes out. Yeah. We gotta get ready to go. Wet your stones. Wet your stones, get your scyth out. We gotta get ready to go. Can we talk about so you were at Flyby Jing? You guys, I assume, and I I don't want to ask any like proprietary stuff, sure, but just just from being at a and I and I've met Jing a handful of times. I like her, and I think they you know did a cool thing with that brand, really like bringing something Asian and cultural and real to like mainstream America is like a I think a pretty amazing feat. It was in itself. And I know that I know that they got crushed by tariffs, so that was hugely painful for them. But like I know from like my experience that there are these phases in business where you're like, crap, these systems don't work the way that they used to. So my broad question here is like without like uh you know, because I'm not asking for like the proprietary information of any company that you've ever worked for, but like what what were some of the things that you had to like right size if it if you're comfortable talking about it? Yeah. Um it's just an interesting topic for me, right? Like, yeah, how do you like a million dollar company versus a hundred million dollar company, like they're very different, and you're right sizing those systems and processes all along the way.

SPEAKER_01 41:39

Yeah, yeah. I think like one of the one of the most universally challenging ones for food and especially within CPG is just the inventory, demand planning, and procurement processes. And at Fly by Jing, it was especially challenging because of longer than normal lead times sourcing food from China. The other like really interesting food safety and quality components to that journey too, like taking food from another system and another culture and integrating it into America. It's not as easy as just like slapping the US English label on something. There's a lot of work that goes into it. But the more universal challenge is probably just like, how do I know how much inventory to buy, by when, and not too much, so that I don't end up throwing it all away. And it's especially challenging to do that in like in an environment where you have no foundation to measure against, where like, for example, we're shipping to Walmart for the first time. And you do the best you can to engage with your customers, your retailers and consumers, even to get a sense of how much of this stuff are we going to need and buy when in order to be successful here. But that part of a business of a CPG food business, like procurement and the cash involved in that and not buying too much and dealing with the pendulum swinging from being out of stock to being too heavy and finding the middle ground, just procurement and inventory management systems are probably the biggest system opportunity that I think I've needed to roll up my sleeves and dig into. And that's one that's also very um there's no science to it. It's very much an art. It is very much an art.

SPEAKER_00 43:19

Yeah. I mean, I agree with that. And I know that anybody who is like an early to mid-stage CPG operator who's listening is like feels it in their in their heart and in their gut, is that like and maybe we maybe we could talk about it for a few minutes, just this idea of you know, your uh most successful month can be your it can be your hardest on cash. Yeah. And and and this idea of like demand planning going into like a grow like a brand that's scaling. And and I'll say some of the issues that we've had, because you know, we're we're manufacturing in the US, but we're working with, you know, we're uh one of our big things is like fresh produce, so we're working with. Farmers were working with fresh inputs, so we're not we're not ordering from manufacturers in China, like that's its own special, like crazy thing that that that's crazy. That's a crazy thing, right? Like really hard to manage, but like we are still having to deal with all this like inventory, like how much fresh can I keep on the floor? Because that's not gonna last very long, right? I have to convert it to a finished good basically to preserve it. So like we're kind of like preserving, you know, we're a preservation company in a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_02 44:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:33

We're val value added, where it's like, okay, if we don't preserve these peppers and these carrots and onions into this final product, then we've got a week to then we have to throw them away. Right. But if we convert them to the final product, that becomes more expensive. We've now put more, you know, it's more expensive to like the more labor I put into it, the further along you get to finished good, yeah, the more expensive it gets, and the more risky it is. That's like, okay, I have a longer time before I now I've converted into something that's shelf stable. Have a longer time before you have to throw it away, but it's not infinite. And I'm also sitting on that inventory that's like the most painful thing is to be like is to be like, oh man, we're tight on cash. Two million dollars in inventory though. Right. Right. Like the only thing that you can do with two million dollars in inventory is go sell it to cut, you know, like yeah, exactly. There's not a lot you can do with like a finished jar of Chili Crisp, right?

SPEAKER_01 45:31

Well, you can get someone to loan you money based on the value of your finished jar of Chili Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 45:36

That's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:37

So there's certain things you can do to leverage your inventory, and that gets into some, you know, CFO type stuff with your ABLs and your unsecured and secured lines of credit. But those are complex and challenging things to manage in their own right. You know, just dealing with how much to make is like a journey in and of itself. And then you're going to add on the complexity of like leveraging your inventory dollars with a borrowing base you're submitting to a bank and dealing with covenants and personal guarantees. And, you know, I do think that um like the CFO role is one of like a trust building role. Like it it requires trust. Like there's the dollars, like it's the life of the company. It's it's like the the lifeline, the blood. And so a lot of trust is necessary to like be in that role. But um, but yeah, I think like with all those things with the inventory management, with the cash, with the leverage, whatever it is, like I think it's also about not having like there's no expert, there's no right answer. It's about coming to like a team consensus and like building alignment with systems so that everybody can kind of hold hands and take the leap together. And it also requires a lot of belief, you know, like it requires a lot of belief to wake up and and build inventory for a sale that hasn't happened yet. And you can look at all your charts and your demand plans and say, like, oh yeah, you know, that'll happen. But yeah, the belief component of it, I think, is a really important factor there that you have to acknowledge. And yeah, it's sharing the weight and not doing it alone and not for trying to be a hero and not trying to be a savior, but instead of like trying to create that environment and that system and that structure so everybody can carry the weight together and both the wins and the losses, the successes and the challenges, and doing it together, winning as a team and losing as a team, and not like blaming a demand planner or a salesperson or a buyer or whatever it is. Like, I think that's what makes it more fun too.

SPEAKER_00 47:32

Yeah. Um, what what do you think? Like, how how were you guys thinking about it, like process-wise? I I've seen it done a lot of ways. We've done it a handful of different ways, but like talking about this, like, okay, we're gonna go from 5,000 doors this year, and maybe the plan is to be in 10,000 doors next year, and you've got your category meetings coming up, and you know that like just it just as a for instance timeline, you might have a category meeting in July. They're gonna make a planogram decision in late November, and then they're gonna want it on the shelf, let's say, in March. Right. And so you've got, you know, you go in and you have a meeting with Target or Publix or Walmart or whoever, and you're gonna come away, like the salesperson is gonna come away with like a how did that meeting? They're gonna come away with a vibe. And so, like, we're there, there's like a whole industry, there's billions of dollars that are getting spent on inventory around like what was the vibe of that meeting. Yeah, because they can't commit in the meeting. Most of the time, they can't commit in the meeting. So, no, there are there are outlier cases where like a buyer commits in a meeting or like says, like, hey, this is 99% yes, we just gotta dot a few T's, cross a few I's. I said that backwards, but you know, dot the T's, dot your T's, people. So you can have a pretty good indication, but like the average is probably more just average, where you're just like the meeting was okay. They didn't say yes, they didn't say no, we're not sure. And they come back and like maybe hand that to you or hand that to a director of ops, and you're all having a meeting about it. And I've been in a bunch of these meetings. I how did it go? Pretty good, right? And some salespeople, like salespeople are optimistic in general, right? Like, yeah, some so and so sometimes like the operations team or the finance team is having to handicap what you know the how optimistic the sales team was. Right. Right. How how did you guys handle that? Because you gotta think about like, okay, we gotta wait till November, but if we've got a three-month lead time on this product, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:46

More often than not, we were running production orders in anticipation of pipe fills without any PO in hand. And it's easy to be like, yeah, you know, it's real when the PO lands, and like that's true. It's not real until the PO lands. And even then, you gotta think about sell-through, and you gotta think about markdowns, and you gotta think about like, did they buy the right amount? Are they gonna be out of stock? There's just so much that the PO doesn't even provide clarity for. So what we did to handle it is I'd say like a few things. One is trying to simplify the conversation so that you can meet the whole team where they're at. Just recognizing that like not everybody needs to know how cute your formula is and what your math is to get there. But if you can communicate it in terms of like, we have to buy this, buy this date, it's gonna cost this much money. And this is what will happen if it's too much, and this is what will happen if it's not enough. I think trying to like simplify the decision to the point where like everyone on the team, regardless of financial SNOP, demand planning or inventory management background, can at least understand like the business context and like the the ups and the downs and the ifs this then the if that then this type conversation. But like getting it to like a as simple as possible and like meeting everybody where they're at to align on that conversation, I think is super important. And that means like, you know, guess changing the mode of communication, the language you use with the salesperson versus the inventory planner versus the CEO versus the board and the investors. But again, too, it's like not just simplifying the decision, but um sharing the decision and like not having one sole owner, but like really building alignment of like this is what we're doing, this is why we're doing it, this is what will happen if it goes well, this is what will happen if it doesn't go well. Um and then ultimately like it's that belief. Like you really do have to take a leap of faith. And I think some teams stumble with wanting accuracy and they want real numbers and they want to know how much target's gonna order. Well, the truth is you're not gonna know, and you're gonna have to make decisions and in the absence of firm information. And I think just acknowledging that and like surfacing that as a constraint or as like a guardrail can help you take that leap of faith. And then, like, what are the implications of that leap of faith? Do we have the cash to do this? Do we need financing for this? What if the PO falls through? Do we have an alternative channel that we could sell it through? But belief is probably the most important component of any business success, but it can't be blind belief or like unsubstantiated belief. Like, gotta have the good vibes from that salesperson coming out of that meeting. You don't want them to be like, I don't know. They hated it. Okay, well let's run it and hope they take it anyway. Right. But yeah, it's probably a combination of like simplification and decision sharing, and then just ultimately like belief that it's gonna work.

SPEAKER_00 52:47

I've I've had like uh I've had like probability adjusted pipeline stuff kind of pushed on me a handful of times. I think that I like it for a more mature business. Right. And I think that like what what probability adjusted pipeline means is like, okay, this tar, you know, if we get the thumbs up for the target business, it's probably two million dollars of annual business and we feel 50% confident about it. That means we're gonna plan for a million dollars. That really can fuck up like a pardon my French, it can it can really fuck up a small stage business because you could be like, you could have all your eggs in the probability adjusted pipeline, even if you're handicapping it at 50%, you might have $10 million of maybe this will happen business. But it's like it's either gonna be a yes or it's gonna be a no. It's not gonna be like like I'm not gonna get 50% of the target business. I'm either gonna get it or I'm not gonna get it.

SPEAKER_02 53:47

Right.

SPEAKER_00 53:47

So like if I've got a ton of that stuff in the pipeline, yeah, I've got to start ordering some stuff. Like I'm gonna get some of the business, but it's like I think probability, do you do you did you guys ever do probability adjusted? Like, is that something you'd have done at any of your companies?

SPEAKER_01 54:04

No, I do think like it's it can be a helpful tool to like try to match a top-down budget to a bottoms-up budget if you're thinking in broad strokes. But but I agree with you, probability adjusted for demand planning, especially if it's like a new retailer, like, oh, we're expanding into Walmart, we're expanding into Target. Like it's just impossible, I think, um, to use like any sort of to be honest, like any math really, like it's gonna be fake. You're just making it up.

SPEAKER_02 54:33

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 54:34

I do think it's like engagement with the buyer, you know, making sure that they're aware of where you're at in your journey and what your process is and what means what success looks like for you, and getting aligned on what quantities could look like and what if this goes well and what if this doesn't. I think as well, too, like I've seen in um many of the businesses that I'm attracted to, like there's this foundational diversification that the founders that I've worked with have ejected into like the like the day one DNA of what they do. So, and it's you know still a leap of faith. You know, a Walmart pipe fill that doesn't come to fruition would be very challenging to sell through on your D2C channel.

SPEAKER_00 55:16

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 55:17

But you got a D2C channel. Like you could do something. Um, you learn to you learn to risk mitigate with like the plan B, plan C, plan D. And, you know, I I just I think there's a lot of uh a lot of value in that diversification. Like you have to make big bets. You can't spread yourself too thin. You can't put each of your eggs in a different basket. I really do believe in making like concentrated bets to have outsized wins. But at the same time, like yeah, um some diversification can be really nice to temper that risk. And that could also just mean like we have a really strong partnership with Grocery Outlet or with Miss Fitzmarket. And you know, we have another avenue to reach new customers if this one doesn't play out to our the way that we planned it. So that can be just another tool.

SPEAKER_00 56:10

You do have to take those big bets. Like it's it's kind of like, hey, if you're a if you're a million-dollar brand trying to be a $50 million brand, you're gonna have to take some really big bets. Oh yeah, you know, some really big swings.

SPEAKER_01 56:23

Yeah, and if you try to diversify diversify too much, you will never break through the threshold and you won't have enough product to sell the target in the Walmart. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 56:31

Well, let's let's pivot because I do want to spend a little bit of time talking about SWG and kind of like after Flyby Ging, you came over into sexual wellness, which I think is is uh it's a category that I don't know a ton about, but it is it's got its own set of like challenges. Um there's regulatory like you guys are kind of regulated supplements in some ways, kind of like actually medical devices, medical devices, like yeah, yeah. Tell me about making the leap over to sexual wellness group.

unknown 57:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:03

And like what like what were some of the things that you had to learn about that sector that were just different from like coming from condiments? Like I wouldn't even know where to start.

SPEAKER_01 57:13

Yeah. I think that's what got me really excited about it was that there was so much to learn. But the amount of familiarity and overlap, I'd say is like just as big as the bucket of new things to learn. And you'd be shocked at how similar filling a jar of vegan mayonnaise is to filling a bottle of personal lubricant. In many ways, it's operational. Yeah. Same equipment, same processes, same structure, same production plan. And many times same customers, maybe not same consumers, although there's definitely overlap there too. But you know, same retailers, same distributors. But there was enough of that familiarity to make me feel like I could really bring something meaningful to the table. But then enough newness that I felt like I could like scratch that obsessive hobby, tinkering itch to like dive into something that I knew nothing about and could really like obsess over.

SPEAKER_02 58:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:08

So that's what got me super excited about it. I'd say some of the things I've learned are that um, yeah, like the personal lubricants are more highly regulated than food in many ways. They're registered with the FDA as class two medical devices. And that has a lot to do with some of the marketing claims that we can make around the products with respect to what functional benefits they have for people who use them, as well as things like condom compatibility that are very important for like, you know, health and safety for consumers. So that was a big learning for sure. I'd say that uh the stigma of the category is another thing that's like it was super interesting to me as I approached the job. And it's one that's like from the outside in, uh, people have questions. And like I've noticed as I've both contemplated joining SWG and then after joining, that different people have very different reactions to like the sexual wellness category. And that really validated my belief that there's like a big opportunity here. I think that when there's that kind of tension or like uh yeah, the friction, friction loop, you know, solve for for your friction challenges. But uh yeah, I think that like that consumer tension is a really big opportunity. And it indicated to me personally that there were some uh cultural headwinds, that headwinds can always flip to tailwinds. And that like built a belief in me that we had something to build here that was beyond just like selling more lube and that actually had like an opportunity to connect to a larger cultural shift. And that is a theme that carries back as well through Fly by Jing and through Follow Your Heart with respect to like putting something more than just ingredients into a jar, like putting a belief into a jar, putting an ethos into a jar, putting a message into the jar that we believe like energetically moves from like our intention all the way to the consumer's home. Yeah, I think that that like through line became super clear for me. And like that perceived um stigma with the category, like nearly immediately dissolved for me the moment that I was in the seat and I was in the chair, and I'm like, that's fully in the rear view, and like it's it's an interesting moment to like look back on. I've only been in my role for less than six months. Um but I've like I feel like I've fully internalized it already and like I've made it um I've I've found the connection point between SWG's mission and kind of my personal goals in terms of how to connect consumer products to like peace on earth, basically.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:52

Yeah, dude. Well, I think that's a big like I was thinking about this ahead of like our uh getting on this getting on this call that there is this through line, and I like the uh you said message in a jar, I'm gonna say message in a bottle, but like the you know, like follow your heart is like it is betting on is betting on like plant-based becoming a wave that pe that people ride, right? Like flywijing is essentially betting on there being more cultural diversity in America's food supply. Exactly. And we've seen like we've seen that with we've seen that with Asian leaning brands, and we've seen it with like Hispanic leaning brands, and there have been like, you know, M ⁇ A activity that's that's represented like, hey, this is a this there's a big tailwind now in these cultural shifts that are happening. And like it, I I think this I thought the same thing with like SWG where you're like, hey, it is kind of like it's weird to think that sexual wellness is like a is a headwind category, but we're you know, like there's there's a lot culturally where we're like very repressed about even talking about that, right? But like then you can look at the numbers, and I'm sure you did this, like you looked at the numbers, you can look at the category numbers, and you're like, holy shit, like there's a there's there's more people buying this category than comfortable talking about the category. Yes, 100%. And that's interesting, that's so interesting to me. And probably it sounds like it is to you as well, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:19

Yeah, the consumer insight opportunity I think is huge, and um, that's part of my journey that I'm still like really early on here with SWG is like better understanding that consumer insight. Because I think it is one too, where it it's just such a universal experience and need in terms of the problems that we're trying to solve with our products, that it cuts through like such a large swath of different people. And like the need state, I think is much more varied than some of the other products that I've worked with in the past, where it's like, you know, with chili crisp, like you know, you're gonna put it on your food and you're gonna make your food a little bit tastier. You know, with vegan mayonnaise, you're gonna put it on your sandwich, you're gonna have a delicious sandwich that doesn't have any eggs in it. Um, and I think that like it's easy to simplify our products down, our sexual wellness products down into like, well, you know, you use them in the bedroom. But but there's just so much more to it and to that like consumer journey of that need state that I'm still learning, that I think we're still learning, and that I think retailers are still learning because yeah, it's like a a very unique cultural and societal topic that uh I think some people have like no boundaries or barriers with, and others do. And I think that leads to like that really interesting tension that can create unique challenges for a business.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:43

Yeah. The f the the funny thing is, and maybe this is not hard to believe, but I've I've talked with another CFO at sexual at a sexual wellness brand, and it's some of the same stuff that you're saying is like it is a really interesting opportunity. It's I want to pivot really quick because I we're we are running out of time. You're the CFO guy, right? Yeah. I yeah, tell me about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:06

Like that. Yeah. Well, uh I found that like the CFO job can be very lonely for me.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:14

Yeah, I was gonna say there's a lot of like CFOs that are functionally invisible. Right. And and it kind of seems like the nature of the city. And I think like it is.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:26

And I think it's like, and sometimes that's like a response to the challenge of the job. Like it can be very difficult to maintain that balance of like personal emotion versus like the hard reality of cash in the bank account.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:39

And so I think that it's very tempting to like kind of hold that and like to yeah, be the be the hero that can connect the dots between the cash and the bank account and where the business is at. And but I found for me personally that like my antidote to that loneliness is to just share what I'm doing and where I'm at. I've also found that like for me personally, numbers and just my ability to translate them from like a data set to a story is a a tool that I've been able to use to connect with people, to like have human connections with people that are really just like under the guise of a SNOP call. But it's like, you know, like talking to friends and like using this as a context to like get to know people better and to support people on a common journey. So yeah, I think I like to talk about what I'm doing and like try to share what I'm doing with other people and just try to take a my own personal approach to being a CFO because a lot of it's just a selfish need to balance the challenge of the job. And some of it's as well, like the selfish need to like force some friends into my life and be like, you know, my controller is one of my best friends. You know, we've we worked together for a long time, and you know, it it just forms like a much better work relationship, I think, when you can open your heart and And share the challenges and the wins and the successes and do it together as a team. So yeah, I think like my desire to um broadcast, you know, my CFO life is one that comes from like a desire to connect with people and to, you know, not only share the weight of my job, but you know, uh I think the people connections, like the things you look back on and you don't remember, you know, your SNOP call, but you remember like the conversations you had with people about getting there together. So yeah, I think uh I just like to open up my heart to people so that we can grow together. And for me, it's just more fun that way.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:42

Yeah, I love that, man. I feel like that's a good place to to leave this. But let's I want to ask where uh where can people follow you? Where can people find more Matt?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:53

Yeah, follow me on LinkedIn. I'm uh Matt Danay, D-U-N-A-J. And I uh I go through posting phases, but I think you offered to be my ghostwriter on LinkedIn earlier in this episode, so maybe you'll see me in a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:07

Yeah, we've got that in we've got that.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:10

Yeah. Yeah, follow me on LinkedIn and on the Ghost ToNet podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:13

Yeah, thank you. I'll put I'll post the link to your LinkedIn down below. I really want you to start writing a sub stack. I'm not gonna push you to towards it, but I just want more more of my uh more of my cool like uh CPG thought leader friends to be on to be uh to be off LinkedIn. I need that push.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:30

I should do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:31

I absolutely should. Matt Dunay, thank you so much for being here. Thank you everybody for listening uh to me talking to my buddy, Matt. And obviously, you should give Gross to Net like 18 stars out of five. Follow us, subscribe, all of those sorts of things, and uh we'll be back with more great conversations with great people. Uh till next time. I love you. Bye.