Truly Made in America - with Founder of Red's Burritos Mike Adair

Season 6 | Episode 2
Featuring Mike Adair, Founder of Reds Burritos

What does it really take to walk away from success, bet on yourself, and build something bigger than a paycheck?

In Episode 2 of Season 6, host Jeff McGruder sits down with Mike Adair to discuss the entrepreneurial journey behind building Reds Burritos and the mindset required to grow from founder to leader.

Mike shares the pivotal moment he realized financial success alone wasn’t enough, why purpose matters, and how he made the leap into entrepreneurship. He also gives honest insight into one of the hardest lessons every business owner faces: learning to trust others, hire the right people, and let go in order to scale.

This episode is packed with real talk for entrepreneurs, leaders, and anyone navigating growth, risk, and the pursuit of fulfillment.

💡 In this episode:
 • Choosing passion over comfort
 • Building a business from the ground up
 • Why hiring is every founder’s growth challenge
 • Letting go to level up
 • Leadership lessons from scaling a brand
 • Betting on yourself when it matters most

🎧 Available next week on Buzzsprout, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all streaming platforms.

#WhatsTheMathematics #Podcast #MikeAdair #RedsBurritos #Entrepreneurship #Leadership #BusinessGrowth #FounderStory #SmallBusiness #NashvilleBusiness #BetOnYourself #PurposeDrivenSuccess #Season6

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:31

The first interview was with Brad George. Go back and check that out. Brad brought a lot of tech knowledge around the research healthcare industry. The company that they can sell for a billion dollars one day. And it's amazing that someone was that much focused in energy that they'd let's go ahead to Colombia to set up another operating. So if you need to really hear founders, you really got to check out Brad. This story is really amazing. But today we have Mike Adair. Mike is the founder of the second largest protoburrito brand in the world, Red Burrito. And one of the cool things about this particular episode is we get to hear from a manufacturer from the Gen X community, someone who's making something in America. Made in America. To be organic, be ready. Study accounting, study finance, model the market, understand economics, understanding basic will put you in a position to get your dream and build a hundred million downability. Hope you all enjoyed this episode too. So enjoy.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

That's about it.

SPEAKER_02 3:44

Turbulence? All that stuff. You just have to row through it. Yeah. Do you feel it up there? Yeah. Does it get rough?

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Yes. I mean, it's just think about the map. Like it's a smaller plane. So same wind, hit night. 3737 hit nine. Single engine. You're moving bouncing around more than you would. Like it's but you just gotta get used to it. Um they started off on the simulator, right? And then classes and the first day I was born. Um which was kind of crazy because I had no idea. Uh we went up, and then by the second day I was doing takeoffs and landings. Yeah, no. They weren't very pretty. But um now I've probably done 45 hours. I've probably done uh at least 150 takeoffs and landings.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

Yeah, my buddy DJ, he went through that and he has a little plane and he was wind is wind is yeah, and around here, man, I'm gonna respect the wind.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

Well, look, wind is not, it's just annoying. Right? Like if you're flying, it's not so much that you feel unsafe. It's just when you're bouncing around.

SPEAKER_02 5:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

It just makes it so much harder to do anything. Because you're like, you've got an iPad, you're trying to write on it, you're trying to navigate, you're trying to fly. Yeah. And wind is moving you all over the place. Yeah. And if you're not an autopilot, you're trying to do checklists, like it's just so so you usually are an autopilot is kind of a autopilot without autopilot, like and when you're learning how to fly, you really don't use autopilot. Okay. So like you're trying to do everything simultaneously, but um I don't know, I've got a lot more respect for policy states because there's you know, most commercial aircraft basically they get to 300, 400 feet, they need autopilot, and they don't touch anything until you know they adjust their course with knobs and whatnot, but there's constant radio traffic going on. Like without autopilot, flying would be so much more dangerous. Yeah, maybe say it saying that. Um, but like you know, crosswinds, like when you're landing, runways are set up into the prevailing winds, so like it'll be you know, runway two two zero, that is the direction. So you want to hold up. Yeah, I well, I don't know. Um she won't fly with me, so that makes it a little harder. For the convenience. If we go somewhere, I have to fly, and then they fly separately. I'm not so sure it makes sense. But I just love the freedom of being like, let's go to Florida today, right? Let's go to flew up to Bowling Green to play golf a couple weeks ago. Yeah. Went to tune, threw our golf bags in, did our pre-check, flew up there, we were there in 18 minutes, got to the FBO, they gave us arrived, went to the airport, played golf. They picked us up, flew home.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

Who'd you take? Who would I? My instructor. What a nice perk for him. Yeah. Uh we're rolling, man, so it's all good. Okay. So this is this is how this works, man. Work once the mathematics podcast is only for Gen X and Millennials, really. I mean, I'm really focusing on us and our stories and this climate we're in. Um, the silver tsunami that's happening in front of us, businesses are selling and just silver tsunami. The silver tsunamis baking boomers are handing over over silver trillion dollars of assets in the next few years, and and companies are moving, and so many of my friends are in business for themselves or that are a part of that. And so, some of the equity or some of the opportunities that are in that silver tsunami. So, this is just a good time to sit down with five minutes and talking to them about what's going on. And so I just thought this would be a great idea, also to give flowers to my friends who are doing amazing things. And so, this is the second installment of this and using AI to capture some of the conversations. And so it's an experiment, but it's fun. And it's good for me. If I continue to do this once or twice a month, I'll archive over the next 10 to 15 years as a bank of just people in the space. And so we'll see where it goes. I mean, it's not an opportunity to monetize, it's just more about archiving. And you'll you'll it was a keepsake, it'll be live online and you know, I'll put it on YouTube. So we'll have fun. So cool. So we'll get into it. Um, the opening, I do all the editing, so uh introduction. You just talk, bro. They'll know who you are when they hear your voice, and uh and I'll just kind of roll them up. No, we don't need them. Um the um this room is gonna be great. Business picks up really well. And then I'll do background. It'll it'll sound really good. Uh so I you know, but the way I like to do it, and then I'll just hop into kind of the beginning of like also being an entrepreneur, you know, and talk about just when you feel like that was a call for you.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Um yeah, it's a really good question. I've um I've had that question in this conversation uh a lot of times over the years. And you know, I think there's a lot of different kinds of entrepreneurs. Um, you know, and I'm always encouraging people not to, you know, everyone's like, I'm too risk, too risk averse, right? I'm too risk-averse to start business, I'm too risk reverse to start a business. And um, you know, I think being an entrepreneur doesn't necessarily mean that you start a business, right? I think it is it's more of a mindset of being entrepreneurial, whether in your personal life, in your business life. So I didn't grow up, you know, in like a family of entrepreneurs. This isn't like a you know a legacy thing. Like I think in hindsight, I realized my dad was was a little bit of an entrepreneur for sure. He had whenever he was, you know, at a job that he was not kind of in love with what he was doing or where he was at, we would walk, right? And and all of a sudden he'd be home for a while. It'd be like coaching on a football team, and I'd be like, Don't you have to go to work? Um and you know, and then he would start something or he would join a different organization. But we were fine, but he definitely planted a seed of, you know, I think walking away when, you know, it doesn't feel right or it's not the right thing for you. And so the other thing that happened was unfortunately he had massive brain aneurysms when I was, I just turned 14, um, and never got was mentally and physically disabled um for the next 20 years, and we had to take care of him uh in full-time health, and he uh eventually died uh probably 12 or 13 years ago now. And I grew up in southwestern Connecticut, which was a cometer town, like everyone got on the steel devil into New York City and their students died, um, and worked in finance, and so it was like a beautiful little place to grow up. There were only like 15,000 people in my town. So it was a small town, everyone knew everyone. Um but it was like in the countryside, it was quaint, and then you know, 45 minutes later you're in New York City, yeah. Which is which is obviously an amazing place, but you know, it was kind of like that was the career path um that everyone seemed to follow. And so I you know played sports in high school and wasn't thinking too much about what I wanted to do with my life, and ended up getting the opportunity to play across Boston College and uh had a great experience, love be that unfortunately they dropped the across programs, telling that put a timeline, put a uh put an end to my um to that career. But um, you know, we were always raised going to college was an opportunity to learn how to think, right? To develop as a human being, to experience the world, to have all of um, you know, to share experiences with our with other classmates, friends, you know, travel see the world, take interesting classes. You know, my parents were big advocates of don't go to college to learn something very specific, right? Like whether it's business or whether it's um, you know, some very specific task, unless you like want to be a doctor or something that's like you have to get a um, you know, a specific path to go down. So we ended up, my dad and my uncles, aunts, my brother and sister, all of us were history majors. Because history is like, I don't know, just kind of in the in the blood in the um, and we um all studied history, different kinds of history. And so I had the opportunity to take like so many cool history classes, and I could take them like whatever you know the the offering was that sounded interesting to me. Like it wasn't like a very specific, you know, Roman or um you know Asian, or it was kind of all over the board, and I got to take a lot of US history. And anyway, I just found it super fast fascinating. I was a psychology miner. Um, and for no other reason than that just sounded cool, and we got to take a bunch of fun classes. We like learned how to meditate and learn about you know how the human brain works. And so, you know, the downside of that is I graduated and I was like, Yeah, oh shit. Oh shit, yeah. That's right. Yeah, uh, what am I gonna do with my life? And I had a couple internships in in um, you know, in like marketing or in finance. I had uh I was an investment banker for um um uh I was an investment banker for um one of the biggest investment banks, not Justin Morgan, not Goldman. Um the other one. Um Sachs. Goldman Sachs. Oh, I guess that's yeah, they're sorry. Um I can't really don't quite get it, but uh I also worked for Fidelity for example. And um anyway, so I applied for a few um few jobs for companies that came to campus and ended up um going to work for a company called Putnam Investments, which you know was a money manager, they managed mutual funds, and so you know, come actually my first day of work was September 10th, 2001. Okay, so okay, day two was September 11th, which was uh yeah, which was obviously brutal. Uh a lot of people from my town um you know were killed. So it was a pretty traumatic beginning of my career. And in fact, I was offered two jobs when I graduated. One was in Boston, um, or in Andover, Massachusetts, and the other one was in Wolf Trade number two. And every single person from the film was killed. So if I uh thankfully did not take that job. Uh what a turn. Yeah, yeah. So uh I ended up, you know, going on this path in this finance career, and I was uh selling mutual funds, and it was a great experience because I was, you know, I was pretty young, so I graduated, 21, and you had to wear a suit and tie. Like I had to commute 40 miles up to Andover. I had a 1968 Fort Bronco with no top. So I was driving up on the highway with an umbrella when it was raining, snowing, like in my suit. And we had to go up at like, you know, five in the morning to get there before um you know, you you had to be on the phone by seven. So we had to go do uh presentations, like and you get videotaped, and then it was to critique the yeah. So it was a really good, you know, to practice like public speaking, and it was a selling job, so talking with other human beings, and you know, and in effect, selling is part of absolutely everything we can do. So um, you know, that I think is a great experience. And I was in Boston for about a year and a half, and then I took another opportunity to go in New York City. And um I, you know, was the first to show up, last to leave, made a million calls, tried to work my butt off. I never really loved the industry, but all I really knew was if you're gonna do something, do it 100%. 100%. Um I got pretty quickly got the opportunity to take on territory that you know, I think in hindsight no one wanted. Uh it was like 22 or 23, and they were like, hey, you want to move to Seattle? Uh and I was like, and they were like, if you move to Seattle in the next 72 hours, the opportunity is yours. And I was like, um, you know, in my mind embarrassed when I was a kid from Connecticut, I was like, the Coves, where the hell's Seattle? That's right. That's a long way. So long the north place. Um and I did, I got on the plane the next day to Seattle and I uh and lived there for the next four years. Um, and I was now um the reason I'm giving all this backstory is because I now was by myself, you know, 22, 23-year-old kid, um trying to figure out how to build a business. Right. And I worked for a company that was based out of Boston, uh, or based out of New York, excuse me. And obviously I had some support, but I covered Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Alaska, and all Western Canada, which is bigger than the United States.

SPEAKER_02 17:28

Was this a this was like wholesaling?

SPEAKER_00 17:30

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I was wholesaling mutual funds. Oh, yeah. A lot of state damage. A lot of state damage. Yes, right. Yep. Yep, yep. So I would go meet with financial advisors um all over that entire territory, and I was like in every small little town across uh all those beautiful states. And it was a really, really new experience. And I was learning how to build a business. And I, you know, I think um after a couple of years, really turned that territory around and it became a pretty good, successful business. Um, but like I had this seed that was growing of that was like, this career is not for me. Yeah, um, like I just don't love it. And um, and I think that combination with the fact that my dad had gotten sick when I was so young, that was like life is short. Like, who cares about the money? Who cares about anything? Like, if on your deathbed, do you want to look back and feel like I made a bunch of money, or did I do something I love? Um, you know, hopefully I was able to be really proud of who I was and you know make a little bit of a difference in the world. Yeah, and so I remember um just basically like struggling with this, and I called my boss one day and was like, I love you to death. I respect you tremendously, and I can't give you my heart and soul anymore in my mouth. And he's like, What? He's like, dude, you'll be retired at 36 years old. Yeah, you must have been crushing it. I was making like a half a million dollars a year. I don't know. It's I don't know, probably 24, 25. Yeah, that's about 26, yes, yes. Um yeah, and I was doing what you do when you don't love, you know, I had a penthouse apartment, I had a sports car, I had a truck, I had a motorcycle, and I was the biggest, yeah. You worked cool, it's I didn't know that's making that kind of job. I was so unfulfilled as a human being, but um you know, from the surface, yeah, you know, I looked like I was a man. Um and so I I did, I walked, and um, I just decided that I wanted to start a company, and I have no idea why. I have no idea what. It's a gut feeling, just a gut feeling right here. I wanted to have control over it, and I didn't care if I ever made any money. Um, and everyone, you know, and my girlfriend who's now my wife, and you know, my mom, my family were all like, Life? Yeah, like what were they staying? No, it's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Yeah. So they convinced me to apply to business school um to try and figure out what I was gonna do, what company I was gonna start. And so uh at the time I was working in finance and we'd read the Wall Street Journal because that's what people in finance do. And um, you know, and and I was also doing a ton of really cool, like I was fly fishing a lot. I was I was snowshoeing a lot of the time. Yeah, I was doing um, like I was snowboarding, I was fly fishing, I was snowshoeing, and I had adopted this amazing mud, this like reddish mangy wolf that um uh I named Red unoriginally because uh he was red. Yeah, he was like a Chesapeake red. Um, but I've always been getting asked my whole life if I'm related to Red and Bear, who's a really famous fireman in Texas who put out all the oil wall fires. That seems so interesting. But John Wing played in the movie.

SPEAKER_02 20:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

You remember when Saddam Hussein sent all the uh oils, the oil walls on fire on his way out? So they sent um Red Bear over there to put them all out. That's incorrect. So anyway, it turns out I'm not related to Red Bear. Uh at least I certainly don't think I am. But I thought I was funny naming my you know red dog Red, and now I'm like, well, now I'm related to Red Bear.

SPEAKER_03 21:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

And um anyway, so fast forward to quitting grad school, reading Wall Street Journal. Um the Tuck School business at Dartmouth was ranked number one. And I was like, I don't know anything about this place, but it's in the middle of the woods, and they're never gonna let me in because it's ranked number one. So to be a jerk, I applied to the one school that I was like, I had no chance of getting into. And but if I do, by some miracle get into this place, it's in the middle of the woods and I can go have some fun.

SPEAKER_03 21:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

And um they let me in. Uh why didn't they let you in?

SPEAKER_02 22:00

So interesting. I mean, I think you're playing yourself short, but but why do you think you you got got in based on your application and background?

SPEAKER_00 22:08

So I was a B student in college. Um so yeah, from that perspective, I never should have gotten in. Um I ended up, you know, you've got to take the G map to get into business school. I took it once, didn't do very well. And I was like, all right, didn't study it all. Let me take it again just to make, you know, to make everyone happy. And I swear they might have mixed up my score with uh with the kid next to me, and I ended up having this amazing score, and all of a sudden I was like, well, I guess maybe there's a chance. And I think the only reason that they let me in was, you know, A, the, you know, the score helped, but I had been out of college for five plus years, maybe five or six years. And I had had a very successful career on paper, right? Like, and I had I'd advanced um, you know, very quickly. And I think, you know, and I and obviously the opportunity to go and do an interview and stuff. And so I think they weighed that um, you know, quite a bit in regards to letting students in because that shows that this is a human being that might actually build a deep sum in the world. And um, you know, I uh they let me in, and so next thing I know, Paige and I packed up and got married and moved back to the east, uh, moved to New Hampshire. We looked in like a trailer uh in Hanover, New Hampshire, and she ended up doing a second career herself. She was going to nursing school, I was going to business school.

SPEAKER_03 23:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

We had no money, we had a dog, and then we're uh sounds like a perfect start of an entrepreneur. Yeah. So then um I ended up like starting, uh, you know, taking a bunch of entrepreneurship classes, like trying to meet other entrepreneurs, trying to know like and the only thing that kept coming back was I love the idea, like I'm not that smart. And so I had to do something that was manageable for me. And so I love the idea of making a product, yeah. Right. And so something that you can touch and feel and have an experience with. And so the only real place you can do that that's um, you know, is all around us is in consumer products goods. And so um, you know, I'm not like an avid consumer buying strategy, but I just that to me was simple enough that uh I thought I could figure out how to block and tackle and try and become the best in the world at something.

SPEAKER_03 24:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

And I wasn't too concerned about scale, about yeah, I was just like, wouldn't it be cool to be the best at something? And you know, I was playing around with a whole bunch of um ideas, and yeah, the crazy thing is people ask me the question all the time, like, how did you have such a great idea? And I'm like, dude, I make burritos. Exactly. Like, that's the world's worst idea. Um, in fact, when I got I went back to speak, uh, I go back to Darwin and interact or speak at the entrepreneurship class of the room. Swan, my professor, he didn't tell me this during school, but after two or three years later, and introduced me to the class, saying this was the worst idea that we thought had ever come across his desk in the 10 or 15 years that he'd been running the program. And I was like completely shocked um that I had like the hardest time getting going during the presentation. But I was like, I like really the worst idea? Like you've seen a lot of ideas, but the point was he was trying to make was that idea, idea doesn't matter. It's all about execution. Right. And and I firmly, firmly believe that. And and I do think though, that starting businesses or being an entrepreneur is just being in the mindset of being looking, right, being open, and um you know, allowing those like narrow pathways to really um exercise and and allow them to because it's not gonna be like a light bulb that goes off. Uh for the most part, I mean that does happen, but you're gonna have to work at it, yeah, you know, and you're gonna have to flush out a bunch of bad ideas until you find one that you really are passionate about.

SPEAKER_02 26:18

So, what what more do you say to entrepreneurs, especially the ones that are at that stage where they've got a product that they're in a competitive market? But your story is really cool because you've just persevered, like even your application to grad school, college, and majoring in history, but you went at something and just hostful, like is that still possible these days with with especially in an oversaturated market with so many people trying to service businesses or product businesses? How how do you really the work you have to do? Like, like talk about that, like because even in the beginning of care, it's like what was that experience like?

SPEAKER_00 26:55

So, um, you know, the one thing that I tell um uh entrepreneurs all the time, um, and I try to remind myself and and you know, and and my organization all the time is it's you've got to be the best at what you do, and that's the product, right? And at the end of the day, you don't have the opportunity to meet most of these consumers, and so they're gonna have an experience with that product, and they're gonna think this was um, you know, they're gonna make a mental note of like value, quality, perception, experience, taste, mouthfeel, like the whole, and you have you have to deliver on the product. And so if you went and you know and interviewed uh virtually every single person that's worked in Reds, you know, the last 15 years or so, you I think unanimously they would say that I had a constant obsession with the product. How do we make the product better? Even when we were number one or number two in whatever categories, how do we make it better? How do we make it better? How do we make it better? And that DNA, you know, has got to be something that is very, very you know, deep within an organization because it's really easy when all of a sudden you start having a bunch of success to start thinking about all the other things. How do we get better at marketing? How do we get better at selling? How do we get better? But all of those things inherently become exponentially easier if the product delivers. So I find people are so excited to get into the world and start selling and marketing, building a brand, and how many followers do I have? And I've got this big, you know, social media ecosystem or whatever it is. Um, I mean, I'm not even on social media. Like, I don't do interviews, I don't do podcasts, I don't do anything because I'm like, but we thank you for this. Yeah. Um, like it's not something that I'm I'm not the little trying to do to build my own personal brain. Um because you know the product is the key to the business. And then once you figure out the product, focus, you know, an innard amount of time at trying to make the best product you possibly can. Then is it the right price point? Is it the right packaging? Is it the right communication? You have the right name, is the name of the company they're at with all of those other pieces resonating with the consumer. And if they're not, change. And then customer service, right? So like you have to deliver on time and full, it's gotta be a good value. That customer is absolutely king, no matter if they're acting like a four-year-old child and demanding all sorts of crazy stuff. Like in our world, we have two customers, right? I have the grocery stores that buy you know from us, but then the consumer, the end consumer, is the one who's interacting in the product. And so we've got to relentlessly try and make both of them happy. Um, and make it really, really easy for you know our buyers to deal with us, being like, yeah, and they I know if I'm gonna buy some of them from Brett's, they're gonna deliver, it's gonna be good value. My customers are gonna load it, and they can innovate, they can come up with new stuff, like it's easy. Yeah, and whatever they put in front of these sells, right? Right? You want to make them look good. Um, and you've also got to be brutally, brutally honest with yourselves that if it's not, you've got to be in front of them, you're like, we've got two items that I'm outperforming, and we'd like to do something about it, we'd like to swap them out, we'd like to um, because yeah, that shelf space is very, very, very competitive and valuable. And if it's outperforming, you're good to go.

SPEAKER_02 30:50

Well, talk about that system. I mean, the quality control. I mean, you start you're growing a business already, we're past the oil, you're pushing, and now you have to start taking your hands off the wheels. You can't be in every room, you can't check every little burrito's coming off the line. Like, when did you start the shift to where I could be hands-on and make sure everything all is quality that I know I'm a stickler, I want the best, I want perfection. But when did you start having to take that off and trust? And so you can talk about you know, the hiring people in that space and trusting them, but in your own mind, how you were able to let go to to help to grow.

SPEAKER_00 31:28

Um, yeah, that is a really, really good, really tough question. Um and bring entrepreneurial struggles with it.

SPEAKER_03 31:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:38

Because yeah, there's a part of you that just thinks no one's gonna do it as good, no one cares as much as you do. And to me, this is one of the things that I didn't do well enough early enough, which is you can't do everything. And you have to as you start seeing your point of recognition that this is working, you have to focus anywhere from 10 to 30 percent of your time on finding and hiring amazing unities to work with you to focus on X or Y or Z. Because to your point, you know, you can't do it all. And the only thing that I learned um repeatedly over time is I probably care the most, but that doesn't mean I'm the best and anything. Um, and I will be the first to tell you that, you know, I'm a very good journalist, but I'm not the expert in anything that we guilt. Um, you know, there's areas that I probably, you know, I'm better, certainly better than I am in others, but you've got to find those people, and you've got to, it takes the biggest challenge that entrepreneurs have is they don't think they have enough time to to hire, right? To be recruiting, to be interviewing, to be, because there's so much shit to do, right? Right? Like I should be in the plant, I should be online, I should be innovating, I should be selling, I should be marketing, I should be whatever. And you can't do it all. And and that, you know, that part of growth is what kills you know, that and inventory cash flow management, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Those are the pieces that end up, you know, to me being some of the most heartbreaking because there's nothing worse than succeeding at all of the first part, which is statistically in our world, is like, you know, one, two, three percent make a product that's gonna work that people want, and then the business, you know, failing because they um, you know, they how them take the next step, then how do I figure out how to actually grow and skip this thing?

SPEAKER_02 33:54

So as you built out that leadership team that you were leaning responsibilities to, what are some of the top characteristics that you look for based on your background and how you were raised and how you think as an entrepreneur, like that these they have to have at least one or two these things?

SPEAKER_00 34:12

So there's not um, you know, as a small organization, you know, I'll take passion um and execution all day, every day. That's right. So yeah, yeah, if you give me a resume of you know, somebody that's been super successful at climbing accourt the ladder, and they've got all these IV uh or you know, our top college, you know, grad school, whatever it is, that doesn't necessarily translate into being really good at a business like the ours, right? Like I can't tell you exactly what you're even if you're the head of finance or head of marketing, head of that doesn't mean you're just doing finance and marketing or sales all day every day. Like it is a small organization, you're wearing a lot of hats, you know, and you may end up having to pack a bunch of bags on a weekend in order to get, you know, gift bags out to a customer for an event or set up a booth for a trade show, you know, at 2 a.m. on a Tuesday morning. Like those are the things that if somebody is super passionate, they're not above or below anything, and they can actually get shit done. Um that person is that's a passion, execution.

SPEAKER_02 35:31

So, so talk a little bit about just res in general. Just, you know, you don't have to give numbers, but more around the successes and things that you're proud about about the company. Um, a little bit more of the origin story with the dog, but really the marketing when you blew up, just just you're I I'm proud of you. Like, you know, it's been proud to know you. And the fact that you've done something that Americans do and you're still doing something that we have a product, a manufacturer is so rare to meet the manufacturer of something in this country with all the service business now with AI, like you should really hold hold proud of that. And and um, if you do something else, do a product that you have to start from scratch because you you've like we just need that trade, you know, and have something to our kids. So talk about that, man, because it's this it's a really cool, cool story. Uh well, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 36:23

Yeah, I appreciate it, Don. Um so I think if I had I always joke that if I had known the odds of being successful, that's a new. Getting past 50 is like one, getting past 100 million is like you know, point something. You know, and we're now in the hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. And um, but uh I you know, there's like I'd be super arrogant not to admit that we definitely have had a lot of luck along the way, and you have to. You know, whether you get the right buyer that's willing to partner with you to, you know, to innovate and to get the right product on the shelf and support you through a bunch of failures, we've had a ton of those. Um, and you know, I'm I'm in such debt to those human beings that helped, you know, helped me as I was like tripping over myself, failing them, just about anything, everything. Um but you know, the only thing that um I think the only reason we made it is is tying back to the product is like I was never that committed to um I was never that committed to building my own brand. I was never that committed to you know trying to spend all of our time and energy on building the Reds brand. I mean to this day, it's one of the biggest criticisms we have is we only have like four or five percent household penetration. Like not a lot of people know the name Reds. And it's the you know, I think we're the second largest, you know, frozen breeder company in the world. Um, you know, I think we're um like it's become big and we're you know we'll we're making and selling a lot of minutes, but uh I think it's because we focus on the product so much. And you know, to me, I mean I was like, I don't really care if we're number one, number four, number five, like I want to be really proud of the product that we're putting out in the world. And so we spent a disproportionate amount of time on that. And to your point on the manufacturing piece, we use co-manufacturing partners for the first seven or eight years, and starting manufacturing is a lot. Like, yeah, I can't last capital. Oh my gosh. The capital is, you know, is one piece, but there are just thousands of moving parks going on all day, every day. And you know, we have like close to 300 people hiring and managing 300 individuals all trying to get them to do something, doing it the best that we possibly can in order to get, you know, a really amazing product at the door. That's a lot. And you know, when I started this business, I thought I would spend, I didn't know anything about manufacturing. I'm like, I'll probably spend, I'll hire some manufacturing dork to do that. And I'll spend my time on selling marketing, thinking, you know, my finance background that that might translate. But yeah, I have spent at least 80% of my time over the last 15 years on operations. Operations, whether it's from developing and finding best raw materials, um, you know, and and then we opened the plan 10 years ago to just trying to hire and find amazing human beings, you know, to get them to, you know, to execute in manufacturing is and that like the only thing that kind of kept us was like, A, I was obsessed with a product, and B, I just refused to give up. Um, I just refused to fail. And, you know, you can ask my you know, wife and kids like the amount of years where in the beginning of manufacturing, when we would like lines would be down, and it's like the 4th of July, and all of a sudden I'd walk in the kitchen and my bags would be packed. And my wife and kids are like, Where are you going? And I'm like, I gotta go to South Dakota, and I don't know when I'm coming back, and I would go for six, seven, eight straight weeks, and I would take over running the plane, and I'd run it for 20 hours a day for you know, five, six, seven days a week, and do that for a couple months straight. And but sometimes you have to do things like that, and who else is gonna do it? Yeah, there's no overnight success to ours, man.

SPEAKER_02 40:52

No, not too much, man. No, everyone sees the glitz and glamor, but man, 20 hours, seven weeks away from your family. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's great. That's great. Um, I I want you to narrow it out for a minute about organic, yeah, and why you chose that route, which is technically a little bit more costly, uh, but the importance of healthy foods, healthy frozen foods, the challenges you've had with buying products. And I've heard so many stories. I just think it's really interesting your commitment to that as someone who tries to eat healthy. Um, but just the way the world's going and still having a product like that now, it's and it's frozen. But that whole organic movement, how it can be sometimes just too commercial and people don't believe in it. But really, what you've proven out to be successful, and why you stick with it?

SPEAKER_00 41:43

Yeah, I think the word organic, um, you know, it's it's like a lot of the labels in the grocery store, right? It's like supplements. Like, how the hell do you not get food? What supplement I'm supposed to take and not. And for me, um, you know, I'm not a food scientist. I don't think I was ever smart enough to figure out what what was what, right? What are the right additives or preservatives that are, you know, good or bad. And so there's a couple of things that I learned very early on as I started down this path was, you know, we as a society somewhere, you know, 67 years ago, decided like we're too smart for Mother Earth, right? We're going to start altering the way in which we grow food. And that led to genetically modified organisms, which, you know, was well intentioned in the way that it started, right? So, you know, basically, I think it was Nixon that was like, we're going to cure Wolf Hunger and ask um, you know, big farm organizations or excuse me, big ag organizations to come up with seeds that can grow anywhere in any climate. And so they did. You know, and the first uh the big the first big piece of genetically modified was um genetically modified against poison. Right. So you know the the same problems we've been having with growing food are the same problems we've been having for tens of thousands of years, which is weeds, um, you know, water and bugs, right? It's so interesting. And we have all of the worlds, yeah. Um matter what you're growing, where you're growing it, how you're growing it, like those are the three things that you're always fighting against. So they developed um, you know, basically seeds that would grow in uh Roundup or um glycephate is what it's called, which is poor and kills the weeds, but it doesn't kill the plant. So that led to us being able to spray old fields with you know massive amounts of glycephate and not actually having an impact or the you know, the so everyone was so proud of themselves, and it, you know, and and this is kind of right about the same point that you know synthetic fertilizers will come in with the factories from World War II all of a sudden they had nothing to do. So they started making um synthetic fertilizers, which had you know previously been way too expensive for farmers to use it. So combined synthetic fertilizers, you know, which are high really petroleum-based um fertilizers, and then you've got uh genetically modified seeds, and then they want to step further and genetically modified them to be a pesticide. So the actual plane itself kills bugs or pests. So now you've got your fields of whatever is growing, right? It's primarily corn and soy, and there's, you know, and there's a handful of crops that are like 90 to 95 percent of non-genetically modified, they now are sprayed with, you know, the whole field sprayed with, you know, the oxygen kill all the means, and the plant itself is actually a pesticide. So the plant itself kills the inside itself. So that became our main source. So that's more education than I got along the way, but I guess with organic is basically a certification that is just saying this is the way we grew food for tens of thousands of years.

SPEAKER_02 45:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:13

Like it's the simple sweat, right? You're just using um you know the same things or resources that we have, uh the you know, for thousands of years, it's simple. Yeah, and so to me, I was like, I'm not smart enough to understand all of the you know the mankind technology that we're using to to try and trick or modify human nature or mother nature rather. And so I was like, this is we just want to buy the ingredients that I want to eat. I want to feed my family, right? And so to me, that was being able to look at a label and understand what everything is. Um that's clean label. Um, and then you know, a step further trying to buy everything because that was certain vibrant because all of that meant was that that's the way it has been grown. Right. We know that it's not genetic modified, we know that it's not grown in the field of poison, we know that it plants itself are not pesticides. So to me, that was like you know, and and same with antibiotic hormones-free, there's like there's so much language that confuses them in regards to like what they're supposed to be buying and eating, and it's not that it's overwhelming, but you know, like the the root of it, you just gotta try and find brands that are doing the best they can buy the highest quality stuff. Yeah, um, and let's do the work for you, right? Because all we're trying to do all day every day is find the highest quality stuff, but we can put in cards with the make so that you don't have to you know you feel good getting able to eat it, and I just bring it for breakfast, make candy, bring it some breakfast and all day. Yeah, yeah, I feel good about that. Um and again, that just goes back to like I don't care how big we get, but I want to feel good about the product that we make.

SPEAKER_02 47:06

Yeah, and you and you care, and I think that goes back to being a founder that actually cares. Yeah. See, that that I think that's the differentiator. That's why you scale because you actually care and that intentionality on organic is really.

SPEAKER_00 47:19

I mean, I think that's what's the case. Yeah. You know, a lot of entrepreneurs are there's tons of different kinds, right? And to me, if money is the goal, you're gonna cut a lot of corners along the way in order to get there. Right. If money is not the goal, if being on your deathbed, being proud of what you built is the goal, you're not gonna fit in those corners, and you know, hopefully uh money eventually will follow that. But that to me is an important part of being like no money to know it.

SPEAKER_01 48:11

Mike has a really great history and it doesn't hardly microphone. So mic is a bit more than it's already feed. So it's eight if you need it to add a bit of a net, it's hard to get out, it's like in building this in the episode two bit wrapping the biggest treaty and take it to let's get iron shop and start.