[{"_1":2,"_3":-5,"_4":-5},"loaderData",{"_5":6,"_7":8},"actionData","errors","root",{"_141":-5,"_142":-5,"_143":144,"_145":146,"_147":148},"routes/clips.$id.$slug",{"_9":10,"_11":12},"clip",{"_13":14,"_15":16,"_17":-5,"_18":19,"_20":-5,"_21":22,"_23":24,"_25":26,"_27":28,"_29":30,"_31":32,"_33":34,"_35":36,"_37":38,"_39":40,"_41":-5,"_42":-5,"_43":-5,"_44":45,"_46":-5,"_47":48,"_49":50,"_51":-5},"canonicalUrl","https://howleaderslead.com/clips/3423/attract-great-talent-by-creating-meaningful-work","id",3423,"title","Attract great talent by creating meaningful work","subtitle","transcript","WEBVTT\n\n1\n00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.520\nThe last stat I heard about was it's harder to get a job at Allie Pop than to\n\n2\n00:00:05.520 --> 00:00:09.310\nbecome a professional NBA player in the United States, which is like kind of a\n\n3\n00:00:09.310 --> 00:00:11.000\nwild, kind of a wild outcome.\n\n4\n00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:15.120\nAnd I'm, you know, again, I'm very grateful for that. I think it is a\n\n5\n00:00:15.120 --> 00:00:21.080\ncombination of, I think word has gotten, has gotten out about the fact that we\n\n6\n00:00:21.080 --> 00:00:24.000\nhave a really differentiated culture.\n\n7\n00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:28.320\nAnd we take really good care of our employees, you know, we just won inks best\n\n8\n00:00:28.320 --> 00:00:32.260\nplaces to work for the second year in a row and I have a particularly high\n\n9\n00:00:32.260 --> 00:00:37.000\namount of, you know, pride that we accomplish that so the culture is good we\n\n10\n00:00:37.000 --> 00:00:38.000\ntake good care of our people.\n\n11\n00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:42.390\nIt helps to be a successful and highly visible business, because people would\n\n12\n00:00:42.390 --> 00:00:46.970\nrather join something that's that's successful than that's not and then I think\n\n13\n00:00:46.970 --> 00:00:52.000\nour mission is really resonant. I think, you know, there was a, the largest\n\n14\n00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:56.000\npiece of research done on employee satisfaction\n\n15\n00:00:56.000 --> 00:01:02.250\nwas, it was something like 12,000 employees across 700 companies, and I think\n\n16\n00:01:02.250 --> 00:01:06.780\nit was three years long. They have these, these people keep a daily journal,\n\n17\n00:01:06.780 --> 00:01:11.000\nand they found that they were the most satisfied and engaged with their work\n\n18\n00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:14.000\nwhen they were feeling like they were making progress.\n\n19\n00:01:14.000 --> 00:01:26.020\nOftentimes under difficult conditions against work that they found meaningful.\n\n20\n00:01:26.020 --> 00:01:27.640\nAnd there's a million things that we can do in this world just to bring in a\n\n21\n00:01:27.640 --> 00:01:30.620\npaycheck and live our lives, but the actual opportunity to do work that's truly\n\n22\n00:01:30.620 --> 00:01:31.000\nmeaningful\n\n23\n00:01:31.000 --> 00:01:36.120\nthat like actually, you know, changes the world for the better, and is visible\n\n24\n00:01:36.120 --> 00:01:41.050\nand is, and is on a successful trajectory where you'll also be a typically well\n\n25\n00:01:41.050 --> 00:01:46.000\ntreated. I think that combination has attracted a lot of talent\n\n26\n00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:46.500\nHoly pop.\n","pretty_transcript","start_time",2138539,"end_time",2245089,"keywords","Talent, hiring, culture, meaning, purpose, NBA, mission, job satisfaction","slug","attract-great-talent-by-creating-meaningful-work","origin","cms","mux_playback_id","oGvgJqCOW2Mi6blLUuHAwEP5q1ggPhV5Dps202eDxoMc","mux_asset_id","AN024QYJ8ra5LaVHvt4eucuB644XBuMfqvjT8PT4QpK4","leader_id",292,"episode_id",441,"updated_at","2026-08-06T17:03:27.000000Z","meta_title","meta_description","og_image_media_id","web_url","https://www.howleaderslead.com/clips/3423/attract-great-talent-by-creating-meaningful-work","og_image_url","leader",{"_13":36,"_104":105,"_106":107,"_108":109,"_25":110,"_111":112,"_61":113,"_58":113,"_114":115,"_68":116,"_39":117,"_118":119,"_41":-5,"_42":-5,"_43":-5,"_120":121,"_91":122,"_44":123,"_124":125,"_126":127,"_46":-5,"_128":129,"_130":131,"_95":132,"_51":-5},"episode",{"_13":38,"_15":52,"_27":53,"_17":54,"_55":56,"_18":57,"_20":-5,"_58":59,"_60":-5,"_61":59,"_62":-5,"_63":64,"_65":66,"_67":-5,"_68":-5,"_69":70,"_71":72,"_73":74,"_35":36,"_39":75,"_41":-5,"_42":76,"_43":-5,"_77":78,"_79":80,"_81":82,"_83":84,"_85":-5,"_86":-5,"_87":88,"_89":90,"_91":-5,"_46":-5,"_92":93,"_94":-5,"_95":-5,"_51":-5},"og_image_media","The power of emotional intelligence","the-power-of-emotional-intelligence","Yes, you need a great product. But to truly build something extraordinary, you need to be great with people – emotionally aware, caring, and connected. That's as key to your bottom line as your product.","summary","

It’s statistically harder to get a job at OLIPOP than it is to go pro in the NBA.

And after this conversation with CEO and Cofounder Ben Goodwin, you’ll see why.

OLIPOP is a prebiotic soda Ben formulated and built from the ground up. So how did he go from creating tasty soda products to building a culture that everyone wants to be a part of?

It all comes down to emotional intelligence.

You can have the best product in the world. But if you lack the emotional intelligence to connect with people and create a mission they want to be a part of, your bottom line will suffer.

This episode is for you if:

You’re an entrepreneur (or thinking about becoming one)
You want to attract better talent
You do any kind of product development work
You want a few fun facts about soda to drop at parties

","WEBVTT\n\n1\n00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.160\nHello everyone and welcome to another episode of How Leaders Lead with David\n\n2\n00:00:04.160 --> 00:00:05.360\nNovak. Today,\n\n3\n00:00:05.360 --> 00:00:10.590\nwe have Ben Goodwin on the show. He's the co-founder and CEO of Ollipop, a preb\n\n4\n00:00:10.590 --> 00:00:11.520\niotic soda that he\n\n5\n00:00:11.520 --> 00:00:17.170\nformulated and built from the ground up. It is statistically harder to get a\n\n6\n00:00:17.170 --> 00:00:18.560\njob at Ollipop that\n\n7\n00:00:18.560 --> 00:00:25.370\nit is to go pro in the NBA. And I believe this episode will show you why. And\n\n8\n00:00:25.370 --> 00:00:26.240\nthis conversation,\n\n9\n00:00:26.240 --> 00:00:31.340\nyou'll learn how Ben has gone from creating tasty soda products to building a\n\n10\n00:00:31.340 --> 00:00:31.680\ncompany\n\n11\n00:00:31.680 --> 00:00:36.720\nthat everyone wants to be a part of. Enjoy this conversation with David and Ben\n\n12\n00:00:36.720 --> 00:00:37.440\n, and I'll see you\n\n13\n00:00:37.440 --> 00:00:49.310\nat the debrief. You know, I have had a lot of Ollipop lately. I had to tell you\n\n14\n00:00:49.310 --> 00:00:50.400\nand, you know,\n\n15\n00:00:50.400 --> 00:00:55.630\nI love your fruit punch. I mean, I love that. Okay. I had that for lunch today,\n\n16\n00:00:55.630 --> 00:00:56.560\nwhich was terrific.\n\n17\n00:00:56.560 --> 00:01:00.630\nAnd today is a little bit of an afternoon pick me up. I'm having this, this\n\n18\n00:01:00.630 --> 00:01:02.400\norange cream, you know,\n\n19\n00:01:02.400 --> 00:01:06.310\nwhich is, which is also sensational. You know, what's your favorite? What's\n\n20\n00:01:06.310 --> 00:01:07.280\nyour favorite?\n\n21\n00:01:07.280 --> 00:01:14.160\nOh, man. So yeah, I'm the formulator, right? Which means they're all, they're\n\n22\n00:01:14.160 --> 00:01:14.880\nall my little,\n\n23\n00:01:14.880 --> 00:01:19.280\nspecial. I mean, each one is such a journey. So I've got, I've got a rotating\n\n24\n00:01:19.280 --> 00:01:20.320\nlist of kind of my\n\n25\n00:01:20.320 --> 00:01:23.600\nfavorite at any given moment. It, it's a hard question to answer. I'll tell you\n\n26\n00:01:23.600 --> 00:01:24.800\nwhat's even harder\n\n27\n00:01:24.800 --> 00:01:29.120\nis when it comes time for skew rationalization. And folks start to talk about\n\n28\n00:01:29.120 --> 00:01:30.160\nthe tail and do\n\n29\n00:01:30.160 --> 00:01:34.290\nwe need to cut some stuff? And I'm like, Oh God, every one of them is like a, a\n\n30\n00:01:34.290 --> 00:01:35.760\nchapter in my life.\n\n31\n00:01:35.760 --> 00:01:41.520\nI mean, so yeah, I think Ridge Rush is top for me. Classic grape is excellent.\n\n32\n00:01:41.520 --> 00:01:43.520\nI peaches and cream\n\n33\n00:01:43.520 --> 00:01:49.210\nis really fantastic. Here you go. All your babies. I'm not going to let that.\n\n34\n00:01:49.210 --> 00:01:50.320\nWe only have so much\n\n35\n00:01:50.320 --> 00:01:54.340\ntime on this. I literally end up listing half the flavor. Watermelon lime. Don\n\n36\n00:01:54.340 --> 00:01:55.200\n't sleep on watermelon\n\n37\n00:01:55.200 --> 00:01:59.600\nlime. You know, like you say, you, you're, you are the formulator. You're not\n\n38\n00:01:59.600 --> 00:02:00.800\njust the CEO. You're\n\n39\n00:02:00.800 --> 00:02:04.800\nthe formulator of these great products that you've developed. When did you\n\n40\n00:02:04.800 --> 00:02:06.000\nrealize that this was\n\n41\n00:02:06.000 --> 00:02:12.190\nyour superpower? I'm in a somewhat classical, you know, semi stereotypical kind\n\n42\n00:02:12.190 --> 00:02:13.760\nof entrepreneurial\n\n43\n00:02:13.760 --> 00:02:19.000\nmold. I dropped out of college at 20. And I helped a friend start a kabucha\n\n44\n00:02:19.000 --> 00:02:19.840\ncompany,\n\n45\n00:02:19.840 --> 00:02:22.720\nwhich is, you know, how I got into the beverage industry and how I first\n\n46\n00:02:22.720 --> 00:02:23.840\nstarted to learn about\n\n47\n00:02:23.840 --> 00:02:28.940\nthe microbiome and digestive health. Even back then, I recognized coming out of\n\n48\n00:02:28.940 --> 00:02:29.760\nthat first venture,\n\n49\n00:02:29.760 --> 00:02:38.930\nlike, oh, wow, I have a knack for this. And between that company and starting\n\n50\n00:02:38.930 --> 00:02:39.920\nOB, which is, you know,\n\n51\n00:02:39.920 --> 00:02:43.490\nmy prior kind of beverage company scaled from the ground up, I did a bunch of\n\n52\n00:02:43.490 --> 00:02:44.720\nproduct development\n\n53\n00:02:44.720 --> 00:02:50.400\nacross categories. So supplements, cosmetics, beverages, food products. And\n\n54\n00:02:50.400 --> 00:02:52.160\nthat was kind of\n\n55\n00:02:52.160 --> 00:02:56.950\nwhen I realized that it was a passion point and a skill point. But then, you\n\n56\n00:02:56.950 --> 00:02:58.080\nknow, you build your\n\n57\n00:02:58.080 --> 00:03:02.280\nmuscle up over time to the point where you kind of know the science cold. And\n\n58\n00:03:02.280 --> 00:03:03.600\nthen it becomes this\n\n59\n00:03:03.600 --> 00:03:07.130\nreally interesting kind of creative expression. And that's something a whole I\n\n60\n00:03:07.130 --> 00:03:07.920\ncherish a lot.\n\n61\n00:03:07.920 --> 00:03:12.880\nTake us through your process for developing products.\n\n62\n00:03:12.880 --> 00:03:17.920\nYeah. So first, you kind of have to have a, or at least I like to have a bit of\n\n63\n00:03:17.920 --> 00:03:18.560\na philosophy\n\n64\n00:03:18.560 --> 00:03:21.990\naround how I approach what flavors we're going to go with them. And we aren't.\n\n65\n00:03:21.990 --> 00:03:23.040\nAnd I like to,\n\n66\n00:03:23.840 --> 00:03:27.570\nI kind of three tracks that I borrow from. One is, you know, what are the\n\n67\n00:03:27.570 --> 00:03:28.400\nexpectations? What\n\n68\n00:03:28.400 --> 00:03:32.260\nare the soda flavors that customers have relationships with where we know we\n\n69\n00:03:32.260 --> 00:03:33.200\njust want to offer those?\n\n70\n00:03:33.200 --> 00:03:38.070\nThat's one too. Are there consistent requests coming through from customers\n\n71\n00:03:38.070 --> 00:03:39.200\nthat we can see that,\n\n72\n00:03:39.200 --> 00:03:42.270\nyou know, we think is interesting. And we know that we're going to meet an\n\n73\n00:03:42.270 --> 00:03:44.080\nexisting latent need.\n\n74\n00:03:44.080 --> 00:03:50.080\nRoute three, which is probably my favorite, are flavors that are a little bit\n\n75\n00:03:50.080 --> 00:03:50.480\nmore on the\n\n76\n00:03:50.480 --> 00:03:53.350\nsurprise and delight side. They're a little less expected. So a great example\n\n77\n00:03:53.350 --> 00:03:54.240\nof that is raspberry\n\n78\n00:03:54.240 --> 00:03:58.230\nsherbert. I've had, you know, I had raspberry sherbert on my mind for about two\n\n79\n00:03:58.230 --> 00:03:58.960\nyears. And I\n\n80\n00:03:58.960 --> 00:04:02.000\njust couldn't get out of my head. I was like, you know, growing up, we didn't\n\n81\n00:04:02.000 --> 00:04:02.800\ngrow up with a lot of\n\n82\n00:04:02.800 --> 00:04:05.920\nmoney. So, you know, we went to the whatever, you know, conventional grocery\n\n83\n00:04:05.920 --> 00:04:06.800\nstore and you'd,\n\n84\n00:04:06.800 --> 00:04:13.200\nyou'd buy the the cube of sherverts of like raspberry lime and orange. And\n\n85\n00:04:13.200 --> 00:04:13.840\nraspberry is all\n\n86\n00:04:13.840 --> 00:04:17.050\nI was my favorite of a three. And I just was like, I bet anything people would\n\n87\n00:04:17.050 --> 00:04:19.040\nreally love that flavor.\n\n88\n00:04:19.040 --> 00:04:22.950\nAnd, you know, we had our consumer insights group running little panels, what\n\n89\n00:04:22.950 --> 00:04:23.360\nflavors\n\n90\n00:04:23.360 --> 00:04:26.000\nthat people interested in. And we got so much generic answers. And I was like,\n\n91\n00:04:26.000 --> 00:04:26.800\ncan you rerun\n\n92\n00:04:26.800 --> 00:04:32.450\nthat again? But can you put raspberry sherbert in the mix? And it blew up to\n\n93\n00:04:32.450 --> 00:04:33.840\nthe top. And I was\n\n94\n00:04:33.840 --> 00:04:39.420\nlike, Oh, cool, I have to do this. And with that LTO exploded. So I like those\n\n95\n00:04:39.420 --> 00:04:40.400\ncurveballs.\n\n96\n00:04:40.400 --> 00:04:43.850\nThe tropical punch is even a bit of a curveball, right? Because that was\n\n97\n00:04:43.850 --> 00:04:45.680\ninspired by the red\n\n98\n00:04:45.680 --> 00:04:49.000\nHawaiian fruit punch. I used to drink as a kid kind of growing up on the\n\n99\n00:04:49.000 --> 00:04:49.680\nplayground.\n\n100\n00:04:49.680 --> 00:04:54.560\nBut I wanted to kind of modernize it. That's great. You know, well, tell us\n\n101\n00:04:54.560 --> 00:04:55.200\nabout the lab.\n\n102\n00:04:55.200 --> 00:04:59.520\nWhere do you do this? I mean, you know, this is, that's got to be, I used to be\n\n103\n00:04:59.520 --> 00:04:59.840\nin a food\n\n104\n00:04:59.840 --> 00:05:03.200\nbusiness and I love going to the lab and creating things and creating problems.\n\n105\n00:05:03.200 --> 00:05:04.400\nWhere do you do it?\n\n106\n00:05:04.400 --> 00:05:09.180\nCrazy enough. And this is a big upgrade for me. I have a room in my garage that\n\n107\n00:05:09.180 --> 00:05:10.080\n's now dedicated.\n\n108\n00:05:10.080 --> 00:05:14.950\nPrior to that, the last house I had, it was just in my laundry room. And prior\n\n109\n00:05:14.950 --> 00:05:15.280\nto that,\n\n110\n00:05:15.280 --> 00:05:20.300\nit was just this thing that would just sprawl out in my kitchen. And because I\n\n111\n00:05:20.300 --> 00:05:21.520\nnow have about 20\n\n112\n00:05:21.520 --> 00:05:26.750\nyears under my belt as a product developer, you know, my process has changed a\n\n113\n00:05:26.750 --> 00:05:27.520\nlot. And so\n\n114\n00:05:27.520 --> 00:05:34.090\nI actually spend a lot of time thinking about the flavor, developing a vision\n\n115\n00:05:34.090 --> 00:05:34.720\naround it,\n\n116\n00:05:34.720 --> 00:05:38.080\nthinking about, you know, how the ingredients are probably going to need to\n\n117\n00:05:38.080 --> 00:05:38.880\ncome together.\n\n118\n00:05:39.520 --> 00:05:43.920\nSo to the, to the point where by the time I sit down at the bench to actually\n\n119\n00:05:43.920 --> 00:05:45.680\nstart a formulation\n\n120\n00:05:45.680 --> 00:05:52.720\nprocess, I basically have, I throw my first version of the formula on the page,\n\n121\n00:05:52.720 --> 00:05:53.840\nI just use these yellow\n\n122\n00:05:53.840 --> 00:06:00.560\nnotepads to formulate. And I'm usually like 70% there or more before I've even\n\n123\n00:06:00.560 --> 00:06:02.880\nsat down and done a test\n\n124\n00:06:02.880 --> 00:06:09.520\nrun because I just know the ingredient relationships and the chemistry so well\n\n125\n00:06:09.520 --> 00:06:10.560\nat this point that it's\n\n126\n00:06:10.560 --> 00:06:15.850\nHow did you pick that up, Ben? You said you, you, you, you moved out of college\n\n127\n00:06:15.850 --> 00:06:16.880\nat 20 and, you know,\n\n128\n00:06:16.880 --> 00:06:22.560\nto be honest with you, yeah, I'm a neuro divergent weirdo, which comes with\n\n129\n00:06:22.560 --> 00:06:24.160\nreal benefits and real\n\n130\n00:06:24.160 --> 00:06:29.750\ndeficits. And I have a little bit of a savanti nature to me and that allows me\n\n131\n00:06:29.750 --> 00:06:31.360\nto pick up stuff\n\n132\n00:06:31.360 --> 00:06:35.360\nwithout traditional training. So I've been lucky enough to have some amazing\n\n133\n00:06:35.360 --> 00:06:37.360\nscientific mentors\n\n134\n00:06:37.360 --> 00:06:40.290\nover the course of my life, whether it's been organic chemists or flavor chem\n\n135\n00:06:40.290 --> 00:06:41.520\nists or microbiologists,\n\n136\n00:06:41.520 --> 00:06:47.920\nand so I've learned a lot from them. But I also have this weird ability to self\n\n137\n00:06:47.920 --> 00:06:48.720\n, to self teach,\n\n138\n00:06:48.720 --> 00:06:52.250\nlike the auto didactic in my approach. And then I, you know, have this weird\n\n139\n00:06:52.250 --> 00:06:53.200\nability to kind of\n\n140\n00:06:53.200 --> 00:06:57.370\npick stuff up and, and, and learn it just quickly. And that comes naturally to\n\n141\n00:06:57.370 --> 00:06:57.760\nme.\n\n142\n00:06:57.760 --> 00:07:01.520\nYou know, it comes to me, this question I got to ask you, you know, raspberry\n\n143\n00:07:01.520 --> 00:07:02.160\nsherbert, you know,\n\n144\n00:07:02.160 --> 00:07:06.180\nyou're, you're in this consumer insights group, and you say throw this thing in\n\n145\n00:07:06.180 --> 00:07:07.680\nthere. And okay,\n\n146\n00:07:07.680 --> 00:07:12.010\nraspberry sherbert, stay sorta in the middle. What do you say? Screw it. I'm\n\n147\n00:07:12.010 --> 00:07:13.600\ndoing it anyway. I mean,\n\n148\n00:07:13.600 --> 00:07:17.680\nI mean, how do you follow your intuition versus the rational?\n\n149\n00:07:17.680 --> 00:07:23.360\nI think to be a good entrepreneur, you've got to develop a really healthy\n\n150\n00:07:23.360 --> 00:07:24.480\nrelationship with your\n\n151\n00:07:24.480 --> 00:07:31.560\nimpulses and your instincts. And sometimes you just feel it. And it's this\n\n152\n00:07:31.560 --> 00:07:33.280\nweird thing where\n\n153\n00:07:33.280 --> 00:07:38.720\nyou just, you know that it's true. And literally no matter what input anybody\n\n154\n00:07:38.720 --> 00:07:39.280\nwill give you,\n\n155\n00:07:39.280 --> 00:07:43.280\nyou'll still know that it's true. Now, if as the company grows, all of a sudden\n\n156\n00:07:43.280 --> 00:07:43.280\n,\n\n157\n00:07:43.280 --> 00:07:47.050\nyou know, we've got almost 300 employees, you start to say, okay, like, you\n\n158\n00:07:47.050 --> 00:07:47.280\nknow,\n\n159\n00:07:47.280 --> 00:07:50.610\nI do need to make sure I'm getting alignment. I do need to make sure that there\n\n160\n00:07:50.610 --> 00:07:51.680\n's enough energy\n\n161\n00:07:51.680 --> 00:07:55.110\nin the team behind what we're doing. So you might kind of know stuff is true\n\n162\n00:07:55.110 --> 00:07:56.160\nsometimes and still\n\n163\n00:07:56.160 --> 00:08:00.020\nmake calculated risk analysis around whether you roll it out or not. But I will\n\n164\n00:08:00.020 --> 00:08:00.400\ntell you,\n\n165\n00:08:00.400 --> 00:08:05.920\nmore often than not, if I have that feeling, if I was like, you know, it's this\n\n166\n00:08:05.920 --> 00:08:06.640\nreally specific\n\n167\n00:08:06.640 --> 00:08:13.280\nfeeling I get, it's usually right. And usually I ignore it at my own risk.\n\n168\n00:08:13.280 --> 00:08:18.200\nThat's a great point, you know, and that's so true. You know, some people have\n\n169\n00:08:18.200 --> 00:08:19.040\nit, some people\n\n170\n00:08:19.040 --> 00:08:23.440\ndon't. And you do, you've got that intuitive instinct that's led you to this\n\n171\n00:08:23.440 --> 00:08:24.240\nwhole, whole\n\n172\n00:08:24.240 --> 00:08:29.920\ncategory. And you often say you didn't didn't build a healthier soda. You built\n\n173\n00:08:29.920 --> 00:08:31.200\nthe third wave\n\n174\n00:08:31.200 --> 00:08:36.960\nof soda. Explain the landscape of the category and what you mean by that.\n\n175\n00:08:36.960 --> 00:08:41.760\nIt's fascinating because soda is a kind of a construct is a couple hundred\n\n176\n00:08:41.760 --> 00:08:42.720\nyears old. It's got\n\n177\n00:08:42.720 --> 00:08:49.040\nroot structures in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East. And then, you know,\n\n178\n00:08:49.040 --> 00:08:50.480\nin the 1800s,\n\n179\n00:08:50.480 --> 00:08:55.040\nkind of mid late 1800s in Europe and the United States, people started going to\n\n180\n00:08:55.040 --> 00:08:56.400\nthese geo thermal\n\n181\n00:08:56.400 --> 00:09:01.680\nsprings for health benefits and kind of falsely contributed the health\n\n182\n00:09:01.680 --> 00:09:03.120\nexperiences they felt like\n\n183\n00:09:03.120 --> 00:09:06.850\nthey were having to the gas that was coming up out of the earth. And there\n\n184\n00:09:06.850 --> 00:09:07.840\nbecame this race\n\n185\n00:09:08.400 --> 00:09:14.630\nto force carbonate beverage, which eventually that got cracked and that, but\n\n186\n00:09:14.630 --> 00:09:15.680\nthat started the kind\n\n187\n00:09:15.680 --> 00:09:19.770\nof commercial soda industry that we know of that really popped up in the late\n\n188\n00:09:19.770 --> 00:09:21.040\n1800s. Now,\n\n189\n00:09:21.040 --> 00:09:28.960\nall soda was originally a health product, whether it was the the attribution of\n\n190\n00:09:28.960 --> 00:09:29.680\nthe carbonation,\n\n191\n00:09:29.680 --> 00:09:35.600\nor whether it was these old formulations that came up even through the colonial\n\n192\n00:09:35.600 --> 00:09:36.000\nera. I mean,\n\n193\n00:09:36.000 --> 00:09:40.790\nthere was this saying in early colonial America, where you you get your piece\n\n194\n00:09:40.790 --> 00:09:42.560\nof land, you plant\n\n195\n00:09:42.560 --> 00:09:47.360\nyour elderflower or elderberry tree, and then you build your house because this\n\n196\n00:09:47.360 --> 00:09:48.320\nlike elderberry\n\n197\n00:09:48.320 --> 00:09:54.800\nand slash elderflower is this indigenous American tree where almost every part\n\n198\n00:09:54.800 --> 00:09:55.360\nof the tree is\n\n199\n00:09:55.360 --> 00:10:00.150\nusable for kind of herbal medicinal. So there's a big focus on that. And early\n\n200\n00:10:00.150 --> 00:10:00.960\nsoda was just\n\n201\n00:10:01.680 --> 00:10:06.200\nall these botanicals and fruits with water. And then sugar was added to\n\n202\n00:10:06.200 --> 00:10:07.040\nfacilitate\n\n203\n00:10:07.040 --> 00:10:11.060\nfermentation, which made the, you know, made it more bioavailable and helped to\n\n204\n00:10:11.060 --> 00:10:11.520\nprotect it,\n\n205\n00:10:11.520 --> 00:10:14.260\nbut then they didn't want it to become alcoholic. So they'd stop the\n\n206\n00:10:14.260 --> 00:10:15.440\nfermentation early. So there\n\n207\n00:10:15.440 --> 00:10:19.460\nwere sugar in it. So that was the root structure that led to commercial soda\n\n208\n00:10:19.460 --> 00:10:20.400\nand coke and Pepsi\n\n209\n00:10:20.400 --> 00:10:25.180\nin the early days. And it wasn't until 1943 that the federal government stepped\n\n210\n00:10:25.180 --> 00:10:25.920\nin and said, hey,\n\n211\n00:10:25.920 --> 00:10:29.270\nyou can't actually call soda a health product anymore. Like, people didn't\n\n212\n00:10:29.270 --> 00:10:30.080\nrealize up until\n\n213\n00:10:30.080 --> 00:10:35.180\nthe early 1940s. So it was still being touted as a health product. Now, that\n\n214\n00:10:35.180 --> 00:10:35.920\nthen, when they\n\n215\n00:10:35.920 --> 00:10:38.400\ncouldn't call it a health product anymore, it actually wasn't that long. It was\n\n216\n00:10:38.400 --> 00:10:39.680\nonly 20 years\n\n217\n00:10:39.680 --> 00:10:43.340\nbefore the advent of non-nutritive sweeteners and the start of the diet soda\n\n218\n00:10:43.340 --> 00:10:44.080\nmovement,\n\n219\n00:10:44.080 --> 00:10:48.380\nwhich then rose and kind of peaked up in the 90s. And then, you know, that's\n\n220\n00:10:48.380 --> 00:10:48.800\nhad a certain\n\n221\n00:10:48.800 --> 00:10:52.700\nshare of the category, but the bulk of soda still sits in full sugar soda. And\n\n222\n00:10:52.700 --> 00:10:54.480\nso the kind of functional\n\n223\n00:10:54.480 --> 00:11:04.020\nsoda category, which Allie Pot did, did create, is this idea that that we have\n\n224\n00:11:04.020 --> 00:11:04.960\nthis opportunity\n\n225\n00:11:04.960 --> 00:11:10.440\nfor these drinks to not just be better for you or less bad for you, but we have\n\n226\n00:11:10.440 --> 00:11:11.440\nthis opportunity\n\n227\n00:11:11.440 --> 00:11:15.610\nto make them actually structurally healthy. And, you know, I don't know, maybe\n\n228\n00:11:15.610 --> 00:11:16.080\nwatch too\n\n229\n00:11:16.080 --> 00:11:21.160\nmuch Jetsons as a kid, but this idea that like things should be able to be\n\n230\n00:11:21.160 --> 00:11:21.920\ndelicious and really,\n\n231\n00:11:21.920 --> 00:11:25.780\nreally good for you, because the food technology exists in the nutrition of\n\n232\n00:11:25.780 --> 00:11:27.040\ntechnology exists now.\n\n233\n00:11:27.040 --> 00:11:30.900\nAnd so that, and that's one place where Allie Pot does take a little bit of a\n\n234\n00:11:30.900 --> 00:11:31.840\ndifferent stall\n\n235\n00:11:31.840 --> 00:11:35.440\nthan where the rest of the functional soda category is gone, right? The rest of\n\n236\n00:11:35.440 --> 00:11:36.320\nthe formulas are\n\n237\n00:11:36.320 --> 00:11:40.180\narguably kind of more better for you formulas where Allie Pot actually has a\n\n238\n00:11:40.180 --> 00:11:41.280\ngood for you formula.\n\n239\n00:11:41.280 --> 00:11:44.580\nAnd we have the research to really back it up, whether it's the partnership we\n\n240\n00:11:44.580 --> 00:11:46.000\n've done with Purdue,\n\n241\n00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:49.990\nthe human clinical trials, we finished on blood sugar stability, A1c levels. I\n\n242\n00:11:49.990 --> 00:11:50.560\ncan't talk much\n\n243\n00:11:50.560 --> 00:11:54.420\nabout it until we go and publish the study, but we just finished a human GLP\n\n244\n00:11:54.420 --> 00:11:55.360\none study that I'm\n\n245\n00:11:55.360 --> 00:12:02.230\nreally proud of. So that's kind of this third wave of soda. I really, my intent\n\n246\n00:12:02.230 --> 00:12:03.280\nwith the category\n\n247\n00:12:03.280 --> 00:12:07.680\nis for functional soda to really be the third leg of the stool. And I think it\n\n248\n00:12:07.680 --> 00:12:09.760\nthat of overall CSD\n\n249\n00:12:09.760 --> 00:12:14.740\nand to occupy a similar space as, you know, diet soda does today and just kind\n\n250\n00:12:14.740 --> 00:12:15.760\nof own its own\n\n251\n00:12:15.760 --> 00:12:20.550\nterritory there. And I think that that's in alignment with where the future of\n\n252\n00:12:20.550 --> 00:12:22.240\nfood and beverage is\n\n253\n00:12:22.240 --> 00:12:27.760\ngoing for global consumers. So you created this new category and we got all\n\n254\n00:12:27.760 --> 00:12:28.800\nkinds of flavors that\n\n255\n00:12:28.800 --> 00:12:32.370\nyou've developed. And one of them is this one right here. It's the it's a\n\n256\n00:12:32.370 --> 00:12:33.920\nvintage cola. Okay.\n\n257\n00:12:33.920 --> 00:12:39.150\nSo just to kind of educate people on what you're doing, it's different. How's\n\n258\n00:12:39.150 --> 00:12:40.640\nthis vintage\n\n259\n00:12:40.640 --> 00:12:47.680\ncola different than a Pepsi or or or a Coke? Yeah, so there's three main ways\n\n260\n00:12:47.680 --> 00:12:48.400\nin which is different.\n\n261\n00:12:48.400 --> 00:12:54.970\nObviously, number one, it, you know, it doesn't have the 40 grams of sugar that\n\n262\n00:12:54.970 --> 00:12:56.480\na traditional soda\n\n263\n00:12:56.480 --> 00:13:02.880\nwould have. It also doesn't have the artificial non-nutritive sweeteners that a\n\n264\n00:13:02.880 --> 00:13:03.840\ndiet Pepsi or\n\n265\n00:13:03.840 --> 00:13:07.270\nPepsi zero or Coke, Diet Coke and you know, Coke zero would have. There's a\n\n266\n00:13:07.270 --> 00:13:08.800\nbunch of mixed data\n\n267\n00:13:08.800 --> 00:13:12.660\non how good the aspartains of the world, you know, good or bad they are for you\n\n268\n00:13:12.660 --> 00:13:14.320\n. But there's a lot\n\n269\n00:13:14.320 --> 00:13:18.480\nof folks who would feel a lot more comfortable with more natural offerings. In\n\n270\n00:13:18.480 --> 00:13:19.600\nour case, for example,\n\n271\n00:13:19.600 --> 00:13:24.890\nwe use Stevia. So number one is the sugar and the lack thereof, because we have\n\n272\n00:13:24.890 --> 00:13:25.920\ntwo to five grams\n\n273\n00:13:25.920 --> 00:13:32.150\nper can versus zero for diet, but the artificial non-nutritives or 40 plus\n\n274\n00:13:32.150 --> 00:13:33.840\ngrams for full sugar\n\n275\n00:13:33.840 --> 00:13:42.400\ncode. Number two is differences in let's call it the severity of the of the\n\n276\n00:13:42.400 --> 00:13:43.520\nunnatural ingredients\n\n277\n00:13:43.520 --> 00:13:48.840\nthat you utilize. So for example, we talk a lot about sugar or non-nutritive\n\n278\n00:13:48.840 --> 00:13:50.000\nsweeteners when it\n\n279\n00:13:50.000 --> 00:13:54.520\ncomes to soda. We don't really talk about things like phosphoric acid. So there\n\n280\n00:13:54.520 --> 00:13:55.600\n's phosphoric acid\n\n281\n00:13:55.600 --> 00:14:02.170\nin all the traditional colas and all the traditional root beers, Mountain Dew.\n\n282\n00:14:02.170 --> 00:14:03.760\nIt's wildly acidic,\n\n283\n00:14:03.760 --> 00:14:08.540\nlike it's just some crazy ingredients in there. And you know, that comes with\n\n284\n00:14:08.540 --> 00:14:08.560\nthis\n\n285\n00:14:08.560 --> 00:14:12.860\nzone set of challenges. So basically the liver has to take all that really\n\n286\n00:14:12.860 --> 00:14:14.160\nconcentrated acid\n\n287\n00:14:14.160 --> 00:14:20.350\nand it has to convert it to a neutral pH. And so what's in the body that is\n\n288\n00:14:20.350 --> 00:14:21.040\npresent for that\n\n289\n00:14:21.040 --> 00:14:25.340\nconversion is magnesium, phosphorus, calcium, and the greatest source for all\n\n290\n00:14:25.340 --> 00:14:26.240\nthose minerals,\n\n291\n00:14:26.240 --> 00:14:30.540\nfor example, is in the bones. And that's one of the indicators behind the link\n\n292\n00:14:30.540 --> 00:14:32.800\nbetween osteoporosis\n\n293\n00:14:32.800 --> 00:14:37.200\nand traditional soda consumption or diet soda consumption. So and that and the\n\n294\n00:14:37.200 --> 00:14:38.000\nflavors take a\n\n295\n00:14:38.000 --> 00:14:40.950\nsimilar route or some of the different preservatives that you might find. And\n\n296\n00:14:40.950 --> 00:14:41.600\nwe don't have any of\n\n297\n00:14:41.600 --> 00:14:46.830\nthat stuff. We use actual like lemon juice and citruses, more natural\n\n298\n00:14:46.830 --> 00:14:48.880\ningredients in order to\n\n299\n00:14:48.880 --> 00:14:53.010\nkind of build the taste profile. Then the third piece, which is also really\n\n300\n00:14:53.010 --> 00:14:54.000\nenormous is the fact\n\n301\n00:14:54.000 --> 00:15:00.830\nthat then our product has an entire functional component to it. So we have an\n\n302\n00:15:00.830 --> 00:15:02.560\nambient version of\n\n303\n00:15:02.560 --> 00:15:05.740\nthe product, which is more for pantry loading. We have a refrigerated version,\n\n304\n00:15:05.740 --> 00:15:06.400\nwhich is a little\n\n305\n00:15:06.400 --> 00:15:10.260\nmore premium. The ambient version of the product is six grams of fiber in it\n\n306\n00:15:10.260 --> 00:15:11.200\nfrom three different\n\n307\n00:15:11.200 --> 00:15:16.300\nsources. They're periodic fibers and the refrigerated version has nine grams\n\n308\n00:15:16.300 --> 00:15:17.200\nagain for three different\n\n309\n00:15:17.200 --> 00:15:20.570\nsources. And then we have this whole blend that goes inside of called Ollie\n\n310\n00:15:20.570 --> 00:15:21.440\nSmart, which has\n\n311\n00:15:21.440 --> 00:15:24.800\nbotanical extracts and other kind of functional ingredients. And, you know, by\n\n312\n00:15:24.800 --> 00:15:26.160\nthe way, every\n\n313\n00:15:26.160 --> 00:15:30.460\nversion of our functional formula gets run automatically through an in vitro\n\n314\n00:15:30.460 --> 00:15:31.200\npipeline we\n\n315\n00:15:31.200 --> 00:15:35.280\ndevelop to Purdue that looks at microbiome and digestive health outputs. And\n\n316\n00:15:35.280 --> 00:15:36.080\nthen we've done a\n\n317\n00:15:36.080 --> 00:15:40.240\nbunch of other human research on them. But those are the big three pieces. So\n\n318\n00:15:40.240 --> 00:15:42.000\nyou're getting to skip\n\n319\n00:15:42.000 --> 00:15:47.760\nthe sugar or the artificial non-nutritive. You're getting to skip the chemicals\n\n320\n00:15:47.760 --> 00:15:48.800\nand the harsh\n\n321\n00:15:48.800 --> 00:15:53.590\nacids and all the other kind of, you know, concerning ingredients. But then you\n\n322\n00:15:53.590 --> 00:15:54.240\n're also\n\n323\n00:15:54.240 --> 00:15:58.960\ngetting something that is holistically beneficial for so many different aspects\n\n324\n00:15:58.960 --> 00:15:59.920\nof your body. The\n\n325\n00:15:59.920 --> 00:16:05.150\nmicrobiome has a lot of systemic benefits that it confers to overall health and\n\n326\n00:16:05.150 --> 00:16:05.840\nobviously blood\n\n327\n00:16:05.840 --> 00:16:09.370\nsugar stability and its relationship to obesity and metabolic disease is really\n\n328\n00:16:09.370 --> 00:16:10.080\n, really important.\n\n329\n00:16:10.080 --> 00:16:14.860\nSo in a lot of ways the product is a little bit of a Trojan horse. It contains\n\n330\n00:16:14.860 --> 00:16:16.560\nthe experience of\n\n331\n00:16:16.560 --> 00:16:22.130\ndrinking a soda. It hits that craving like right where you want it to. But it's\n\n332\n00:16:22.130 --> 00:16:22.480\nnot\n\n333\n00:16:22.480 --> 00:16:26.550\npulling from your health is contributing to your health. You had a lot of nays\n\n334\n00:16:26.550 --> 00:16:27.360\nayers, you know,\n\n335\n00:16:27.360 --> 00:16:31.220\nearly on, I could tell as you were talking about, you know, the people say, why\n\n336\n00:16:31.220 --> 00:16:31.680\nare you going to go\n\n337\n00:16:31.680 --> 00:16:36.230\ninto this category? And I read somewhere where somebody said you were wasting a\n\n338\n00:16:36.230 --> 00:16:37.360\nGod-given talent.\n\n339\n00:16:37.360 --> 00:16:43.760\nYou were so stupid to do this, you know? Where do you get the resilience or\n\n340\n00:16:43.760 --> 00:16:46.800\njust the stubbornness\n\n341\n00:16:46.800 --> 00:16:50.000\nto follow your instinct? Where does that come from as a leader?\n\n342\n00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:58.340\nYeah, man. I've had a lot of those events or events where I had to make very\n\n343\n00:16:58.340 --> 00:16:58.880\ndifficult\n\n344\n00:16:58.880 --> 00:17:04.480\nfinancial decisions to preserve, you know, basically keep struggling and not\n\n345\n00:17:04.480 --> 00:17:05.120\nknow how\n\n346\n00:17:06.800 --> 00:17:12.030\neverything was going to work out financially when I had opportunities to take\n\n347\n00:17:12.030 --> 00:17:12.320\nthat would\n\n348\n00:17:12.320 --> 00:17:16.530\nhave shored me up. But I didn't feel that they were going to ladder up to the\n\n349\n00:17:16.530 --> 00:17:17.600\nbest long-term\n\n350\n00:17:17.600 --> 00:17:23.600\noutcome for preservation of the mission. I mean, you know, I think ultimately,\n\n351\n00:17:23.600 --> 00:17:26.960\nI have a pretty\n\n352\n00:17:28.400 --> 00:17:36.960\natypical set of principles in a lot of ways that I really am very serious about\n\n353\n00:17:36.960 --> 00:17:36.960\n.\n\n354\n00:17:36.960 --> 00:17:43.200\nAnd I think in a lot of ways, to me, they're kind of linked to having living a\n\n355\n00:17:43.200 --> 00:17:44.080\nlife effectively\n\n356\n00:17:44.080 --> 00:17:48.480\nwith an adequate underlying sense of meaning. And there's a lot of ways in\n\n357\n00:17:48.480 --> 00:17:49.840\nwhich a life that\n\n358\n00:17:49.840 --> 00:17:54.220\ndoesn't have adequate meaning for me, and this is going to be a little melodram\n\n359\n00:17:54.220 --> 00:17:55.200\natic, but it's like\n\n360\n00:17:55.200 --> 00:18:00.800\nthat's kind of a face fade as bad as death. It's like, I really just can't. I\n\n361\n00:18:00.800 --> 00:18:02.480\njust can't live that\n\n362\n00:18:02.480 --> 00:18:06.880\nlife. And so, and I think there's some other kind of stuff you have a little\n\n363\n00:18:06.880 --> 00:18:07.440\nbit of maybe a\n\n364\n00:18:07.440 --> 00:18:15.260\nsense of destiny, or you know, I have such a robust desire to make a positive\n\n365\n00:18:15.260 --> 00:18:16.960\nimpact. I think that,\n\n366\n00:18:16.960 --> 00:18:20.980\nyou know, in my early 20s, coming out of a challenging childhood, in my early\n\n367\n00:18:20.980 --> 00:18:22.480\n20s, I had gotten to a\n\n368\n00:18:22.480 --> 00:18:28.800\nplace where I kind of felt great about my quality of life. Like I felt, you\n\n369\n00:18:28.800 --> 00:18:29.520\nknow, and everybody says,\n\n370\n00:18:29.520 --> 00:18:34.110\nit's in your early 20s, when basically it's you just eat reasonably well and do\n\n371\n00:18:34.110 --> 00:18:35.040\nsome exercise and\n\n372\n00:18:35.040 --> 00:18:38.900\nlike you're fine. That's all you need. But I had kind of come to this\n\n373\n00:18:38.900 --> 00:18:40.160\nperspective that, you know,\n\n374\n00:18:40.160 --> 00:18:44.660\nI kind of like have figured out how to live a great life here. And but then I\n\n375\n00:18:44.660 --> 00:18:45.840\nkind of purposely\n\n376\n00:18:45.840 --> 00:18:51.600\ndecided to re expose myself to stress under this idea that it was all fine and\n\n377\n00:18:51.600 --> 00:18:53.120\ndandy that I had\n\n378\n00:18:53.120 --> 00:18:57.340\nfigured out how to do that. But there was still just like a lot of people\n\n379\n00:18:57.340 --> 00:18:58.400\nsuffering and a lot of\n\n380\n00:18:58.400 --> 00:19:02.950\nstuff in the world that was dysfunctional and that, you know, I kind of owe it\n\n381\n00:19:02.950 --> 00:19:04.640\nto the world to use\n\n382\n00:19:04.640 --> 00:19:10.550\nmy whatever talents I have to just try to make it better. And so, when that is\n\n383\n00:19:10.550 --> 00:19:11.200\nyour\n\n384\n00:19:12.320 --> 00:19:20.880\nphilosophical foundation, you know, stepping into the actual arena and just\n\n385\n00:19:20.880 --> 00:19:21.840\nabandoning those\n\n386\n00:19:21.840 --> 00:19:27.730\nprinciples defeats the whole purpose of why you started in the first place. And\n\n387\n00:19:27.730 --> 00:19:28.160\nI've never,\n\n388\n00:19:28.160 --> 00:19:35.040\nI've never lost sight of that. I think there's certain parts of me that are a\n\n389\n00:19:35.040 --> 00:19:35.920\nlittle more\n\n390\n00:19:37.120 --> 00:19:45.600\nworld wary than when I first started. But also, that's come with an enormous\n\n391\n00:19:45.600 --> 00:19:47.040\namount of operational\n\n392\n00:19:47.040 --> 00:19:51.130\nknowledge that allows me to, you know, gain more leverage and lean into my\n\n393\n00:19:51.130 --> 00:19:51.840\nsuccess.\n\n394\n00:19:51.840 --> 00:19:56.920\nHello friends. I hope you're loving this conversation. Be sure to stay tuned to\n\n395\n00:19:56.920 --> 00:19:57.760\nthe very end of the\n\n396\n00:19:57.760 --> 00:20:01.430\nepisode. As always, David and I are going to debrief some of the concepts that\n\n397\n00:20:01.430 --> 00:20:02.400\nhe talks about\n\n398\n00:20:02.400 --> 00:20:06.880\nwith this week's guest. So stay tuned to the very end and I will see you soon.\n\n399\n00:20:06.880 --> 00:20:13.120\nAnd here you are, Ben, you know, you're creating this new category and you just\n\n400\n00:20:13.120 --> 00:20:13.760\ngave me a good\n\n401\n00:20:13.760 --> 00:20:19.200\neducation on it. You know, how do you get the customer to really understand\n\n402\n00:20:19.200 --> 00:20:19.840\nyour difference?\n\n403\n00:20:19.840 --> 00:20:24.920\nOh, this has got to be a hell of a challenge. That's the $10 billion question,\n\n404\n00:20:24.920 --> 00:20:26.080\nDavid, because,\n\n405\n00:20:26.080 --> 00:20:30.560\nyou know, it's been a fascinating part of this journey. We originally started\n\n406\n00:20:30.560 --> 00:20:31.200\ndoing research\n\n407\n00:20:31.200 --> 00:20:33.480\njust because I thought it was the right thing to do. You know, you've got a $\n\n408\n00:20:33.480 --> 00:20:34.560\n300 billion health\n\n409\n00:20:34.560 --> 00:20:38.010\nand wellness industry between food, beverage and supplements and like less than\n\n410\n00:20:38.010 --> 00:20:39.280\n1% of these brands\n\n411\n00:20:39.280 --> 00:20:43.830\nare doing any independent research on whether this premium product that they're\n\n412\n00:20:43.830 --> 00:20:44.080\n, you know,\n\n413\n00:20:44.080 --> 00:20:47.170\ncharging customers for is actually conferring a real benefit. And so I just\n\n414\n00:20:47.170 --> 00:20:48.400\nthought that that\n\n415\n00:20:48.400 --> 00:20:54.760\nthat wasn't great. Now it gets complex because the challenges that, you know, I\n\n416\n00:20:54.760 --> 00:20:55.440\nalways have this\n\n417\n00:20:55.440 --> 00:20:59.860\nkind of, I call it like, you know, this average customer in my mind of just\n\n418\n00:20:59.860 --> 00:21:01.200\nlike a Walmart shopper\n\n419\n00:21:01.200 --> 00:21:04.800\nin Ohio. And sadly, because of where we kind of are with the level of\n\n420\n00:21:04.800 --> 00:21:06.320\nnutritional education we have\n\n421\n00:21:06.320 --> 00:21:09.360\nas a country, your average person running around doesn't know what a clinical\n\n422\n00:21:09.360 --> 00:21:10.160\ntrial is. And so\n\n423\n00:21:10.160 --> 00:21:15.260\nthat makes getting some of the benefit from all the work you're doing at the\n\n424\n00:21:15.260 --> 00:21:16.000\nconsumer level a\n\n425\n00:21:16.000 --> 00:21:20.810\nlittle more difficult. Now there's some of that you can still communicate or\n\n426\n00:21:20.810 --> 00:21:21.760\nfind more clever\n\n427\n00:21:21.760 --> 00:21:24.970\nengaging ways to communicate. Those are all things that we've been working on\n\n428\n00:21:24.970 --> 00:21:25.520\nand we're continuing\n\n429\n00:21:25.520 --> 00:21:28.590\nto work on. And for example, like fiber education campaigns, stuff like that\n\n430\n00:21:28.590 --> 00:21:30.640\nlittle more digestible\n\n431\n00:21:30.640 --> 00:21:35.870\npun intended. But then there are other kind of intermediary steps where I think\n\n432\n00:21:35.870 --> 00:21:36.560\nyou can get a\n\n433\n00:21:36.560 --> 00:21:41.350\nlot of value. So we've already gotten snap waivers in multiple states for the\n\n434\n00:21:41.350 --> 00:21:42.720\nkind of junk food ban\n\n435\n00:21:42.720 --> 00:21:47.820\nagainst the snap. There's snap benefits. There's FSA HSA programs that are\n\n436\n00:21:47.820 --> 00:21:48.560\navailable to us.\n\n437\n00:21:49.280 --> 00:21:54.150\nWe already are in the Medicare Advantage supplemental benefits programs of over\n\n438\n00:21:54.150 --> 00:21:55.280\n10 million Americans.\n\n439\n00:21:55.280 --> 00:22:02.240\nSo, you know, if we can find these associations or the certifications or these\n\n440\n00:22:02.240 --> 00:22:03.200\ninsurance programs\n\n441\n00:22:03.200 --> 00:22:07.400\nthat we can interact with, which are beneficial for the credibility of what we\n\n442\n00:22:07.400 --> 00:22:08.000\n're doing,\n\n443\n00:22:08.000 --> 00:22:12.480\nbecause you don't get to participate if you don't have a base level of science.\n\n444\n00:22:12.480 --> 00:22:13.200\nBut there are also a\n\n445\n00:22:13.200 --> 00:22:18.430\nway to show up, subsidize the product for consumers who need the product, and\n\n446\n00:22:18.430 --> 00:22:19.600\nalso should drive\n\n447\n00:22:19.600 --> 00:22:23.460\ncredibility because obviously the other options are not showing up in all of\n\n448\n00:22:23.460 --> 00:22:25.440\nthese different conduits.\n\n449\n00:22:25.440 --> 00:22:27.680\nWell, one of the things you've really done is you've kind of done what Jim\n\n450\n00:22:27.680 --> 00:22:28.080\nCollins,\n\n451\n00:22:28.080 --> 00:22:32.480\na good new grade talks about the magic of the end. You've got great taste and\n\n452\n00:22:32.480 --> 00:22:33.600\nyou happen to be\n\n453\n00:22:33.600 --> 00:22:38.400\nsomething that's healthy and which is kind of shocking to people. But you know,\n\n454\n00:22:38.400 --> 00:22:39.200\nit's like,\n\n455\n00:22:39.200 --> 00:22:44.060\nI think you really use your packaging well, very well, to really get it across,\n\n456\n00:22:44.060 --> 00:22:44.320\nyou know,\n\n457\n00:22:44.320 --> 00:22:49.550\nsupport digestive health. You've done a great job on that. And the other thing\n\n458\n00:22:49.550 --> 00:22:49.840\nthat I was\n\n459\n00:22:49.840 --> 00:22:56.310\nreally intrigued by, Ben, is that you've said that Alibaba is a mission\n\n460\n00:22:56.310 --> 00:22:58.080\ndisguised as a soda\n\n461\n00:22:58.080 --> 00:23:02.720\ncompany. I love that. It sounds cool, but what do you really mean by that?\n\n462\n00:23:03.440 --> 00:23:08.670\nWith the kind of weird brain wiring I have, you know, I wasn't somebody who\n\n463\n00:23:08.670 --> 00:23:10.160\nwanted to\n\n464\n00:23:10.160 --> 00:23:15.380\nand actually talking about this ink magazine just gave me an article or a\n\n465\n00:23:15.380 --> 00:23:16.160\ncolumn and I just\n\n466\n00:23:16.160 --> 00:23:21.240\nwrote my first article for it. And I talk about this in there, which is I wasn\n\n467\n00:23:21.240 --> 00:23:22.000\n't somebody woke up\n\n468\n00:23:22.000 --> 00:23:27.230\none day and was just like, you know, I need to be a business person. For me,\n\n469\n00:23:27.230 --> 00:23:29.840\neven the having a\n\n470\n00:23:29.840 --> 00:23:33.830\nbusiness is kind of the first layer of the Trojan horse, right? Because I think\n\n471\n00:23:33.830 --> 00:23:34.400\nyou can want to\n\n472\n00:23:34.400 --> 00:23:40.190\ncreate a positive impact. But if you can't make it something that really seems\n\n473\n00:23:40.190 --> 00:23:42.000\ngrounded and practical\n\n474\n00:23:42.000 --> 00:23:47.890\nintegrates with kind of society's expectations and it doesn't lend itself well\n\n475\n00:23:47.890 --> 00:23:49.360\nto people's survival.\n\n476\n00:23:49.360 --> 00:23:53.040\nIt's not a replicable model. It's going to have limited utility. It's going to\n\n477\n00:23:53.040 --> 00:23:53.600\nbe standing on\n\n478\n00:23:53.600 --> 00:23:58.000\na soapbox advocating for something, but not making it adequately integrated\n\n479\n00:23:58.000 --> 00:23:58.800\nwith society.\n\n480\n00:23:58.800 --> 00:24:04.310\nAnd similarly with the product, it's, you know, it's by the time you know, I\n\n481\n00:24:04.310 --> 00:24:05.280\ngrew up drinking soda,\n\n482\n00:24:05.280 --> 00:24:10.340\nbut by the time I was working on this category, I hadn't had a soda in, you\n\n483\n00:24:10.340 --> 00:24:12.000\nknow, decade plus.\n\n484\n00:24:12.000 --> 00:24:18.080\nBut I really thought to myself, if you know, if my goal is to help human health\n\n485\n00:24:18.080 --> 00:24:18.800\nand consciousness\n\n486\n00:24:18.800 --> 00:24:25.200\nscale, there really isn't anything more positive I could do in beverage than\n\n487\n00:24:25.200 --> 00:24:27.280\nactually be a Trojan\n\n488\n00:24:27.280 --> 00:24:32.790\nhorse that replaces traditional soda consumption. And that, you know, it showed\n\n489\n00:24:32.790 --> 00:24:33.520\nup in some of the\n\n490\n00:24:33.520 --> 00:24:38.030\nearly advisors I had for my prior business when I first decided to go down this\n\n491\n00:24:38.030 --> 00:24:38.480\nroute.\n\n492\n00:24:38.480 --> 00:24:45.280\nLike the data didn't, the data argument did not make sense. The data argument\n\n493\n00:24:45.280 --> 00:24:46.080\nwas, wait, so\n\n494\n00:24:46.080 --> 00:24:51.600\nyou're going to go into a declining category that's guarded by some of the\n\n495\n00:24:51.600 --> 00:24:53.200\nlargest, most powerful,\n\n496\n00:24:53.200 --> 00:24:57.280\nmost well marketed brands in the entire world, when you could go after\n\n497\n00:24:57.280 --> 00:24:57.840\nsomething kind of\n\n498\n00:24:57.840 --> 00:25:03.750\nmore niche and easy to access. And I was like, yes, because the mission is to\n\n499\n00:25:03.750 --> 00:25:05.440\ncreate that maximum\n\n500\n00:25:05.440 --> 00:25:09.540\nimpact. And so, you know, don't tell me the odds going for the, you know, the\n\n501\n00:25:09.540 --> 00:25:10.800\nDeath Star shot.\n\n502\n00:25:10.800 --> 00:25:14.210\nAnd look, I mean, I don't know if you saw, obviously Pepsi's got a prebiotic\n\n503\n00:25:14.210 --> 00:25:15.280\nproduct out.\n\n504\n00:25:15.280 --> 00:25:21.600\nCoke is launching a prebiotic soda under brand Coke and brand Sprite. And if\n\n505\n00:25:21.600 --> 00:25:23.040\nthat's, and by the\n\n506\n00:25:23.040 --> 00:25:28.270\nway, their packaging looks shockingly like ours, but it's like, if that's not\n\n507\n00:25:28.270 --> 00:25:30.480\nmaking an impact,\n\n508\n00:25:30.480 --> 00:25:34.160\nI don't know what it is. Well, you definitely are. And, you know, people are\n\n509\n00:25:34.160 --> 00:25:34.960\nreacting because\n\n510\n00:25:34.960 --> 00:25:38.340\nyou've, you've unlocked a lot of growth and people follow, people follow a\n\n511\n00:25:38.340 --> 00:25:39.280\ngrowth. There's no\n\n512\n00:25:39.280 --> 00:25:47.090\nquestion about that. And, you know, you've, you've, you've been this formulator\n\n513\n00:25:47.090 --> 00:25:48.560\n. And now you're the\n\n514\n00:25:48.560 --> 00:25:55.720\nCEO. And how are you developing the other skills you have to be to, you have to\n\n515\n00:25:55.720 --> 00:25:56.240\nhave to be an\n\n516\n00:25:56.240 --> 00:26:01.290\neffective CEO of what is now is, yeah, I think your, your enterprise is valued\n\n517\n00:26:01.290 --> 00:26:02.320\naround $2 billion,\n\n518\n00:26:02.320 --> 00:26:07.550\nI mean, you've come a long way, baby. It's true. It's true. And I'm really,\n\n519\n00:26:07.550 --> 00:26:08.400\nreally grateful because,\n\n520\n00:26:08.400 --> 00:26:14.410\nI mean, we really have achieved between a .01 and a .001 result. So the reality\n\n521\n00:26:14.410 --> 00:26:14.880\nis like,\n\n522\n00:26:14.880 --> 00:26:18.410\nyou could be a beverage, you know, entrepreneur for a thousand years and not\n\n523\n00:26:18.410 --> 00:26:19.440\nmake it. So no\n\n524\n00:26:19.440 --> 00:26:23.430\nmatter how hard you worked or how insightful you've been, there's obviously a\n\n525\n00:26:23.430 --> 00:26:24.400\ncertain amount of luck\n\n526\n00:26:24.400 --> 00:26:30.150\nthat is attached to the success. And, look, I think that, you know, one, this\n\n527\n00:26:30.150 --> 00:26:31.200\nis the least of my\n\n528\n00:26:31.200 --> 00:26:36.000\nexecutive coach told me. So it's true or not. But, you know, one of the things\n\n529\n00:26:36.000 --> 00:26:37.440\nthat, you know,\n\n530\n00:26:37.440 --> 00:26:40.480\nshe said to me, and she's an amazing human being, and I'm really lucky to work\n\n531\n00:26:40.480 --> 00:26:40.720\nwith her,\n\n532\n00:26:40.720 --> 00:26:45.810\nbut, you know, that learning is one of my superpowers, which I think is really\n\n533\n00:26:45.810 --> 00:26:46.240\nimportant to be a\n\n534\n00:26:46.240 --> 00:26:53.040\nsuccessful entrepreneur. And when you can learn at an accelerated rate, you don\n\n535\n00:26:53.040 --> 00:26:54.960\n't have, you can also,\n\n536\n00:26:54.960 --> 00:27:00.190\nyou can also, you can observe your environment, and you can adapt. And I think\n\n537\n00:27:00.190 --> 00:27:03.280\nwhat the, the struggle\n\n538\n00:27:03.280 --> 00:27:09.920\nis very common that entrepreneurs with successful brands go through is the life\n\n539\n00:27:09.920 --> 00:27:11.840\nand death rapid,\n\n540\n00:27:11.840 --> 00:27:18.320\npivot dynamics that are attached to your survival early on in your business\n\n541\n00:27:18.320 --> 00:27:25.920\nactually become counterproductive as you scale. And so, you know, you have to\n\n542\n00:27:25.920 --> 00:27:26.800\nbe able to turn on a\n\n543\n00:27:26.800 --> 00:27:33.040\ndime from zero to 50 or zero to 100, at 500 plus with hundreds of employees,\n\n544\n00:27:33.040 --> 00:27:33.920\nyou need to become\n\n545\n00:27:33.920 --> 00:27:38.400\na systems engineer. What's it like now, you know, competing against the big\n\n546\n00:27:38.400 --> 00:27:39.680\nboys all the way? I mean,\n\n547\n00:27:39.680 --> 00:27:43.280\nyou know, you're not just starting something. Now you're, they don't look at\n\n548\n00:27:43.280 --> 00:27:44.160\nyou as some little\n\n549\n00:27:44.160 --> 00:27:48.150\nRicky dig competitor now. I mean, you are, you're, you're a deal, they got to\n\n550\n00:27:48.150 --> 00:27:48.720\ndeal with.\n\n551\n00:27:48.720 --> 00:27:53.010\nYeah, I mean, look, I will say one thing that's been a not to dance on graves\n\n552\n00:27:53.010 --> 00:27:53.520\nhere, but one thing\n\n553\n00:27:53.520 --> 00:28:02.460\nthat's been a really nice trajectory this year is, despite Poppy going into a\n\n554\n00:28:02.460 --> 00:28:03.520\nvery powerful\n\n555\n00:28:03.520 --> 00:28:08.750\nDSD system, we have retaken the category lead by share, which is, which is\n\n556\n00:28:08.750 --> 00:28:10.320\nreally satisfying,\n\n557\n00:28:10.320 --> 00:28:15.850\nobviously. And, you know, we're also in a place now where we've kind of\n\n558\n00:28:15.850 --> 00:28:16.720\ndeveloped\n\n559\n00:28:16.720 --> 00:28:22.160\nnew brand world assets design and kind of like pack architecture, which I think\n\n560\n00:28:22.160 --> 00:28:23.200\nis early signs\n\n561\n00:28:23.200 --> 00:28:26.390\nor that's really resonating with consumers. And we've got a bunch of new,\n\n562\n00:28:26.390 --> 00:28:28.240\nreally effective marketing\n\n563\n00:28:28.240 --> 00:28:32.560\nassets. I think we're about to go into a phase in our kind of life journey,\n\n564\n00:28:32.560 --> 00:28:34.400\nwhat we will tell the\n\n565\n00:28:34.400 --> 00:28:38.600\nollipop story from an identity standpoint, the best that we ever have. So I\n\n566\n00:28:38.600 --> 00:28:39.680\nthink all of those,\n\n567\n00:28:39.680 --> 00:28:44.910\nall of those things are really important. I think, you know, at the end of the\n\n568\n00:28:44.910 --> 00:28:45.200\nday,\n\n569\n00:28:46.560 --> 00:28:52.480\nwe obviously need to be aware of what the competitors are doing and make sure\n\n570\n00:28:52.480 --> 00:28:53.600\nthat we're adequately\n\n571\n00:28:53.600 --> 00:28:57.830\ncompetitive, right? So this is a category where a lot of brand discovery and\n\n572\n00:28:57.830 --> 00:28:59.600\nbrand shopping happens\n\n573\n00:28:59.600 --> 00:29:05.490\nand displays. There's a lot of pricing pressure as, you know, there's a lot of\n\n574\n00:29:05.490 --> 00:29:06.960\ntrade spend. I mean,\n\n575\n00:29:06.960 --> 00:29:10.820\none of the things that helped Poppy get into an advantageous position is they\n\n576\n00:29:10.820 --> 00:29:11.840\nspent about six\n\n577\n00:29:11.840 --> 00:29:15.240\ntimes that we have historically on marketing. And they spent two to three times\n\n578\n00:29:15.240 --> 00:29:16.000\nthat we have on\n\n579\n00:29:16.000 --> 00:29:20.080\ntrades brand. They've always been a little bit more of a push brand. The thing\n\n580\n00:29:20.080 --> 00:29:20.960\nthat we have that's\n\n581\n00:29:20.960 --> 00:29:27.280\nunique is we have, we're kind of the brand that's always had the biggest poll\n\n582\n00:29:27.280 --> 00:29:29.040\nas the center of gravity\n\n583\n00:29:29.040 --> 00:29:34.260\nfor how we built the company. And that's on product quality. That's on brand\n\n584\n00:29:34.260 --> 00:29:35.040\narchitecture.\n\n585\n00:29:35.040 --> 00:29:39.520\nI think that, you know, we've done a lot of kind of head to head taste tests.\n\n586\n00:29:39.520 --> 00:29:40.000\nWe have the best\n\n587\n00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:44.550\ntasting product. We have the most efficacious product. If you're a customer who\n\n588\n00:29:44.550 --> 00:29:44.960\n's, you know,\n\n589\n00:29:44.960 --> 00:29:48.320\ngoing to roughly spend the same amount of money on any of these different\n\n590\n00:29:48.320 --> 00:29:49.200\nofferings and\n\n591\n00:29:49.200 --> 00:29:54.590\nyou're really a label reader or you've really got a health, a health goal in\n\n592\n00:29:54.590 --> 00:29:56.320\nmind. Ollie Pop is kind\n\n593\n00:29:56.320 --> 00:30:02.080\nof the unequivocal winner. Now, you're not really a, you know, so you've been\n\n594\n00:30:02.080 --> 00:30:03.360\nleading with product,\n\n595\n00:30:03.360 --> 00:30:09.120\nokay. So, but in you recently launched this campaign, as I understand it,\n\n596\n00:30:09.120 --> 00:30:10.080\ncalling yourself\n\n597\n00:30:10.080 --> 00:30:15.680\nthe field goods soda, what's the strategy behind that and how involved do you\n\n598\n00:30:15.680 --> 00:30:16.400\nget in marketing\n\n599\n00:30:16.400 --> 00:30:20.880\nyourself now? Yeah, so I've been getting increasingly involved with marketing\n\n600\n00:30:20.880 --> 00:30:22.160\nover about the last\n\n601\n00:30:22.160 --> 00:30:26.280\nyear. Part of that's tied to the new leader we've had driving marketing, a\n\n602\n00:30:26.280 --> 00:30:26.960\nwonderful woman\n\n603\n00:30:26.960 --> 00:30:32.200\nnamed Tara, who's done a great job engaging me and engaging the team and\n\n604\n00:30:32.200 --> 00:30:33.120\nlistening\n\n605\n00:30:33.120 --> 00:30:38.800\nand really building expressions of the brand that are more authentic. And my\n\n606\n00:30:38.800 --> 00:30:40.160\njob isn't to sit over\n\n607\n00:30:40.160 --> 00:30:45.390\nevery piece of shop or marketing and every digital asset and every campaign and\n\n608\n00:30:45.390 --> 00:30:46.560\nit's minutiae.\n\n609\n00:30:46.560 --> 00:30:53.060\nThe way I view my job is to really ensure that I'm helping tend to the\n\n610\n00:30:53.060 --> 00:30:54.800\ntranslation of the brand\n\n611\n00:30:54.800 --> 00:30:59.580\nspirit or the mission spirit and what we actually go communicate to consumers\n\n612\n00:30:59.580 --> 00:31:00.320\nat a high level.\n\n613\n00:31:01.040 --> 00:31:04.900\nAnd what about this new campaign, what are you trying to accomplish with the\n\n614\n00:31:04.900 --> 00:31:07.680\nfield goods soda?\n\n615\n00:31:07.680 --> 00:31:12.910\nYeah, so the field goods soda is kind of a simple way of articulating a fairly\n\n616\n00:31:12.910 --> 00:31:13.600\nlayered\n\n617\n00:31:13.600 --> 00:31:19.520\noffering. You know, one of the things that has always been a bit of a challenge\n\n618\n00:31:19.520 --> 00:31:19.760\nfor us\n\n619\n00:31:19.760 --> 00:31:25.060\non the marketing side is, you know, we actually have so much depth to the\n\n620\n00:31:25.060 --> 00:31:26.800\nproduct and the efficacy\n\n621\n00:31:26.800 --> 00:31:33.260\nand the philosophy that in a kind of, you know, low attention span world, it's\n\n622\n00:31:33.260 --> 00:31:33.920\nhard to\n\n623\n00:31:33.920 --> 00:31:39.940\nlay that full stall out. And so field goods soda is a way of speaking to it\n\n624\n00:31:39.940 --> 00:31:41.600\nfeels good\n\n625\n00:31:41.600 --> 00:31:45.680\nbecause you're drinking something that tastes just like a soda and it crashes\n\n626\n00:31:45.680 --> 00:31:46.160\nthat itch,\n\n627\n00:31:46.160 --> 00:31:50.390\nit's experiencedly lovely in the moment. But then that you get these layered\n\n628\n00:31:50.390 --> 00:31:51.840\nbenefits because now\n\n629\n00:31:51.840 --> 00:31:54.640\nyou feel good because you're putting something in your system that helps to\n\n630\n00:31:54.640 --> 00:31:55.440\nstabilize your blood\n\n631\n00:31:55.440 --> 00:31:59.300\nsugar that doesn't give you the sugar crash that doesn't make you regret your\n\n632\n00:31:59.300 --> 00:32:00.000\ndecision,\n\n633\n00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:03.010\nyou know, 30 minutes later, something that you feel good about giving to your\n\n634\n00:32:03.010 --> 00:32:03.280\nkids.\n\n635\n00:32:03.280 --> 00:32:08.560\nAnd then the final piece of it, which really expresses itself in the main ad\n\n636\n00:32:08.560 --> 00:32:09.280\ncampaign that's\n\n637\n00:32:09.280 --> 00:32:17.040\nattached to the field goods soda componentry is that society, a society where\n\n638\n00:32:17.040 --> 00:32:17.760\npeople are having\n\n639\n00:32:17.760 --> 00:32:23.180\npositive experiences and feeling good in their bodies leads to more friendly\n\n640\n00:32:23.180 --> 00:32:24.480\ncommunal pro-social\n\n641\n00:32:24.480 --> 00:32:30.080\nbehavior. And sometimes I think as a society, we don't see the link between the\n\n642\n00:32:30.080 --> 00:32:31.680\nfact that 40 to 50\n\n643\n00:32:31.680 --> 00:32:34.890\npercent of the population according to the CDC has prediabetes or type 2\n\n644\n00:32:34.890 --> 00:32:36.320\ndiabetes. We don't see the\n\n645\n00:32:36.320 --> 00:32:41.110\nlink to the fact that we're overworked and we're stressed and feeling, you know\n\n646\n00:32:41.110 --> 00:32:43.440\n, less than our\n\n647\n00:32:43.440 --> 00:32:47.790\nbest in a million different ways and how when we're overloaded with all of that\n\n648\n00:32:47.790 --> 00:32:49.120\n, it leads to\n\n649\n00:32:49.120 --> 00:32:53.720\njust lower quality social connectivity. And so that's that Trojan horse piece\n\n650\n00:32:53.720 --> 00:32:54.640\nwith OLLIPOP,\n\n651\n00:32:54.640 --> 00:32:59.430\nwhich is soda such an enormous cultural force. Well, what if soda was giving\n\n652\n00:32:59.430 --> 00:33:01.600\nyou better longitudinal\n\n653\n00:33:01.600 --> 00:33:05.260\nhealth and what if soda was giving your family better longitudinal health and\n\n654\n00:33:05.260 --> 00:33:06.000\nhow would that\n\n655\n00:33:06.000 --> 00:33:10.960\nend up affecting how you operate it in the world? What I like Ben about it is\n\n656\n00:33:10.960 --> 00:33:11.760\nin the real simple\n\n657\n00:33:11.760 --> 00:33:16.170\nterms is that by being the feel good soda, your rear position and everybody\n\n658\n00:33:16.170 --> 00:33:17.120\nelse is not so good.\n\n659\n00:33:17.120 --> 00:33:23.120\nNot so feel good. That's what I like. You know, you recently said something\n\n660\n00:33:23.120 --> 00:33:24.160\nthat really got my\n\n661\n00:33:24.160 --> 00:33:31.760\nattention, which is I will be either one of the biggest unlocks for the company\n\n662\n00:33:31.760 --> 00:33:33.360\nor I'll be the\n\n663\n00:33:33.360 --> 00:33:39.130\nbiggest bottleneck. Explain what you mean by that. Yeah, look, so you can't\n\n664\n00:33:39.130 --> 00:33:40.800\ndeny that founders that\n\n665\n00:33:40.800 --> 00:33:45.200\nare still involved with the business will always have a very, very influential\n\n666\n00:33:45.200 --> 00:33:46.480\nvoice inside the\n\n667\n00:33:46.480 --> 00:33:55.040\nbusiness and outside of the business. And so, you know, my ability to adapt and\n\n668\n00:33:55.040 --> 00:33:55.920\nis really,\n\n669\n00:33:55.920 --> 00:34:03.420\nreally critical for staying in a, in a like, you know, quote, a zone of genius\n\n670\n00:34:03.420 --> 00:34:04.960\nthat evolves\n\n671\n00:34:04.960 --> 00:34:09.430\nwith the business. So I continue to unlock unique value for the business that\n\n672\n00:34:09.430 --> 00:34:10.000\nevolves,\n\n673\n00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:12.850\nyou know, continuous upgrade. I mean, a great example of how I brought that to\n\n674\n00:34:12.850 --> 00:34:13.200\nlife is\n\n675\n00:34:14.320 --> 00:34:19.550\nwe have we're on our fourth year of a business initiative called OLLIPOP\n\n676\n00:34:19.550 --> 00:34:21.040\nLeadership University.\n\n677\n00:34:21.040 --> 00:34:26.270\nSo we've got a, you know, really fantastic facilitator. We kind of overhaul the\n\n678\n00:34:26.270 --> 00:34:26.720\ncurriculum\n\n679\n00:34:26.720 --> 00:34:30.300\nevery year. And I'm just a big a part of that is anybody else. I mean, I\n\n680\n00:34:30.300 --> 00:34:31.680\ncreated it because\n\n681\n00:34:31.680 --> 00:34:34.490\nit was really important to me that we had the highest quality, highest\n\n682\n00:34:34.490 --> 00:34:35.600\naccountability, most\n\n683\n00:34:35.600 --> 00:34:40.120\nemotionally healthy communication throughout the business, but that we are also\n\n684\n00:34:40.120 --> 00:34:40.960\ncontinuously\n\n685\n00:34:40.960 --> 00:34:46.240\nteaching people leadership skills. But it was just as much for me as it was for\n\n686\n00:34:46.240 --> 00:34:47.360\nanybody else.\n\n687\n00:34:47.360 --> 00:34:51.520\nYou know, the business has its own brand and it has its own mission and that\n\n688\n00:34:51.520 --> 00:34:52.560\nhas taken\n\n689\n00:34:52.560 --> 00:34:56.860\non a life of its own that's outside of me. But from a, you know, human\n\n690\n00:34:56.860 --> 00:34:58.720\nembodiment of the mission\n\n691\n00:34:58.720 --> 00:35:04.030\nand the vision, that's rests on my shoulders. So my ability to continue to\n\n692\n00:35:04.030 --> 00:35:05.360\narticulate that\n\n693\n00:35:06.000 --> 00:35:11.080\nand do it in a way that's emotionally healthy inside of the business is is\n\n694\n00:35:11.080 --> 00:35:11.920\nreally, really\n\n695\n00:35:11.920 --> 00:35:17.390\nimportant, whether I whether I like that or not. You know, you you now have 400\n\n696\n00:35:17.390 --> 00:35:19.520\n,000 people\n\n697\n00:35:19.520 --> 00:35:25.600\na year apply at OLLIPOP to get a job. Now that's that's almost, you know, it's\n\n698\n00:35:25.600 --> 00:35:26.240\nhardest getting\n\n699\n00:35:26.240 --> 00:35:33.280\ninto Harvard, you know, harder. What is it about what's what you're creating\n\n700\n00:35:33.280 --> 00:35:34.560\nthat attracts\n\n701\n00:35:34.560 --> 00:35:39.350\nso many people? Why do they want to join you? Yeah, I it was the last that I\n\n702\n00:35:39.350 --> 00:35:39.760\nheard about.\n\n703\n00:35:39.760 --> 00:35:45.780\nPlus, it's harder to get a job at OLLIPOP than to become a professional NBA\n\n704\n00:35:45.780 --> 00:35:46.320\nplayer\n\n705\n00:35:46.320 --> 00:35:49.760\nthat states, which is like kind of a wild kind of a wild outcome. And I'm, you\n\n706\n00:35:49.760 --> 00:35:50.160\nknow, again,\n\n707\n00:35:50.160 --> 00:35:56.130\nI'm very grateful for that. I think it is a combination of I think word has\n\n708\n00:35:56.130 --> 00:35:57.920\ngotten out\n\n709\n00:35:57.920 --> 00:36:03.440\nabout the fact that we have a really differentiated culture and we take really\n\n710\n00:36:03.440 --> 00:36:04.000\ngood care of our\n\n711\n00:36:04.000 --> 00:36:07.530\nemployees. You know, we just won inks best places to work for the second year\n\n712\n00:36:07.530 --> 00:36:09.040\nin a row. And I have a\n\n713\n00:36:09.040 --> 00:36:14.120\nparticularly high amount of, you know, pride that we accomplish that. So the\n\n714\n00:36:14.120 --> 00:36:14.800\nculture is good.\n\n715\n00:36:14.800 --> 00:36:19.820\nWe take good care of our people. It helps to be a successful and highly visible\n\n716\n00:36:19.820 --> 00:36:20.000\nbusiness\n\n717\n00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:23.700\nbecause people would rather join something that's that successful than that's\n\n718\n00:36:23.700 --> 00:36:24.560\nnot. And then\n\n719\n00:36:24.560 --> 00:36:30.080\nI think our mission is really resonant. I think, you know, there was a the\n\n720\n00:36:30.080 --> 00:36:31.520\nlargest piece of research\n\n721\n00:36:31.520 --> 00:36:37.840\ndone on employee satisfaction was it was something like 12,000 employees across\n\n722\n00:36:37.840 --> 00:36:38.480\n700\n\n723\n00:36:38.480 --> 00:36:43.270\ncompanies. And I think it was three years long. They have these these people\n\n724\n00:36:43.270 --> 00:36:44.800\nkeep a daily journal\n\n725\n00:36:44.800 --> 00:36:49.200\nand they found that they were the most satisfied and engaged with their work\n\n726\n00:36:49.200 --> 00:36:50.560\nwhen they were feeling\n\n727\n00:36:50.560 --> 00:36:54.860\nlike they were making progress. Oftentimes under difficult conditions against\n\n728\n00:36:54.860 --> 00:36:56.000\nwork that they found\n\n729\n00:36:56.000 --> 00:37:02.080\nmeaningful. And there's a million things that we can do in this world just to\n\n730\n00:37:02.080 --> 00:37:03.280\nbring in a paycheck\n\n731\n00:37:03.280 --> 00:37:08.510\nand live our lives. But the actual opportunity to do work that's truly\n\n732\n00:37:08.510 --> 00:37:09.760\nmeaningful that like\n\n733\n00:37:09.760 --> 00:37:15.150\nactually, you know, changes the world for the better and is visible and is and\n\n734\n00:37:15.150 --> 00:37:16.800\nis on a successful\n\n735\n00:37:16.800 --> 00:37:20.660\ntrajectory where you'll also be a typically well treated. I think that\n\n736\n00:37:20.660 --> 00:37:22.480\ncombination has attracted a\n\n737\n00:37:22.480 --> 00:37:28.080\nlot of talent for Alibaba. I want to shift gears for a minute and go back to\n\n738\n00:37:28.080 --> 00:37:28.800\nsomething you said\n\n739\n00:37:28.800 --> 00:37:34.030\nearlier that you you kind of grew up in a difficult environment. You know,\n\n740\n00:37:34.030 --> 00:37:35.920\nlooking back, you know,\n\n741\n00:37:35.920 --> 00:37:41.280\nwhat did growing up in hardship teach you that that really is becoming an\n\n742\n00:37:41.280 --> 00:37:42.400\nadvantage in your\n\n743\n00:37:42.400 --> 00:37:48.290\nleadership? Yeah, so I talk about it a bit in in the how I built this podcast.\n\n744\n00:37:48.290 --> 00:37:48.640\nBut yeah, I mean,\n\n745\n00:37:48.640 --> 00:37:53.860\nmy debt father died a year and a half old. My mom got with an abusive narciss\n\n746\n00:37:53.860 --> 00:37:54.560\nist drug addict.\n\n747\n00:37:54.560 --> 00:37:58.550\nWe grew up super super poor and I went through a lot of, you know, poverty and\n\n748\n00:37:58.550 --> 00:38:00.160\nabuse and a lot\n\n749\n00:38:00.160 --> 00:38:05.380\nof exposure to a lot of difficulty. And I talk about it publicly because I don\n\n750\n00:38:05.380 --> 00:38:06.000\n't think it's\n\n751\n00:38:06.000 --> 00:38:09.990\nanything to be ashamed of. I think a lot of people go through difficult\n\n752\n00:38:09.990 --> 00:38:11.120\nenvironments and\n\n753\n00:38:11.120 --> 00:38:14.870\nit doesn't have to be a stigma and you can work through it. You can be\n\n754\n00:38:14.870 --> 00:38:16.400\nsuccessful irrespective of\n\n755\n00:38:16.400 --> 00:38:22.120\nit. And, you know, I think that it certainly gave me a lot of tenacity and res\n\n756\n00:38:22.120 --> 00:38:23.360\niliency. I mean,\n\n757\n00:38:23.360 --> 00:38:28.720\nthat's for sure. But it also gave me this deep sense of striving, you know,\n\n758\n00:38:28.720 --> 00:38:32.000\nknowing that a lot\n\n759\n00:38:32.000 --> 00:38:37.220\nof businesses kind of spring to life because they identify like a white space\n\n760\n00:38:37.220 --> 00:38:38.240\nand they're trying\n\n761\n00:38:38.240 --> 00:38:42.540\nto make some money off the white space. And I think that going through a lot of\n\n762\n00:38:42.540 --> 00:38:43.120\npersonal\n\n763\n00:38:43.120 --> 00:38:47.200\nsuffering, living through what, you know, certainly felt like life or death\n\n764\n00:38:47.200 --> 00:38:48.960\ncircumstances just gives\n\n765\n00:38:48.960 --> 00:38:54.470\nme a completely different vantage point for how I think about the importance of\n\n766\n00:38:54.470 --> 00:38:55.600\nbenefiting human\n\n767\n00:38:55.600 --> 00:38:59.590\nbeings and the importance of benefiting society. It also is why, you know, I\n\n768\n00:38:59.590 --> 00:39:00.400\nrefuse to have an\n\n769\n00:39:00.400 --> 00:39:04.300\nauthoritarian command and control environment inside of Ollipop. It's like I\n\n770\n00:39:04.300 --> 00:39:05.680\nactually have to lead\n\n771\n00:39:05.680 --> 00:39:09.870\nthese people and inspire these people and take care of these people because if\n\n772\n00:39:09.870 --> 00:39:11.120\nwe're trying to\n\n773\n00:39:11.120 --> 00:39:15.420\ncreate health for the outside world, it's kind of started at home. And, you\n\n774\n00:39:15.420 --> 00:39:16.400\nknow, and then you go\n\n775\n00:39:16.400 --> 00:39:19.050\nout in the world and you start to talk to people about the benefits of\n\n776\n00:39:19.050 --> 00:39:20.400\nnutrition and self-care and\n\n777\n00:39:20.400 --> 00:39:23.970\nyou realize that they're really caught up in their own stories and their own\n\n778\n00:39:23.970 --> 00:39:24.880\nhabits. And so,\n\n779\n00:39:24.880 --> 00:39:31.520\nyou know, this product in this category should exist to make that transition\n\n780\n00:39:31.520 --> 00:39:32.880\neasier for folks.\n\n781\n00:39:32.880 --> 00:39:39.280\nAnd now you're an entrepreneur and I've heard you say that you have to have\n\n782\n00:39:39.280 --> 00:39:41.680\nindependent fuel in\n\n783\n00:39:41.680 --> 00:39:46.560\nyour tank. What do you mean by that? Well, it goes back to your other question.\n\n784\n00:39:46.560 --> 00:39:46.880\nI mean,\n\n785\n00:39:46.880 --> 00:39:54.050\nintrinsic motivation and grit are two of the most important characteristics\n\n786\n00:39:54.050 --> 00:39:55.520\nthat you can have\n\n787\n00:39:55.520 --> 00:40:00.620\nto be successful as a person, but certainly to be successful as an entrepreneur\n\n788\n00:40:00.620 --> 00:40:00.800\n.\n\n789\n00:40:01.680 --> 00:40:07.760\nWell, how do you keep your tank full? It goes back to having, first of all, you\n\n790\n00:40:07.760 --> 00:40:08.800\nhave to try to live\n\n791\n00:40:08.800 --> 00:40:12.680\nin a way where you're making conscious. You have conscious strategies for\n\n792\n00:40:12.680 --> 00:40:13.840\ntaking care of yourself,\n\n793\n00:40:13.840 --> 00:40:18.890\nright? So I've got a therapy session later today. I use my son and my cold\n\n794\n00:40:18.890 --> 00:40:20.080\nplunge. I\n\n795\n00:40:20.080 --> 00:40:24.250\nwork out a lot. I go hiking. I have a music studio across the hall that, you\n\n796\n00:40:24.250 --> 00:40:25.440\nknow, I take time to\n\n797\n00:40:25.440 --> 00:40:29.660\nstimulate myself from a variety of angles because I know enough about myself\n\n798\n00:40:29.660 --> 00:40:31.040\npersonally that I need,\n\n799\n00:40:31.040 --> 00:40:36.810\nyou know, variable stimulus inputs or I go stir crazy. But, you know, beyond\n\n800\n00:40:36.810 --> 00:40:38.000\nthat, it's about\n\n801\n00:40:38.000 --> 00:40:42.000\nconstantly seeing the bigger picture and the meaning behind what you're doing.\n\n802\n00:40:42.000 --> 00:40:42.800\nAnd also sometimes\n\n803\n00:40:42.800 --> 00:40:47.670\nrealizing that when you're going through a difficult environment, you know, if\n\n804\n00:40:47.670 --> 00:40:49.040\nyou are somebody who\n\n805\n00:40:49.040 --> 00:40:54.430\nhas a sense of mastery of craft, you know, the reality is that you are the base\n\n806\n00:40:54.430 --> 00:40:56.240\ntool in any form\n\n807\n00:40:56.240 --> 00:41:01.810\nof craftsmanship. And so there are times when you need to temper yourself as\n\n808\n00:41:01.810 --> 00:41:02.560\nthat tool\n\n809\n00:41:02.560 --> 00:41:07.350\nin order to be able to have skills to help you have mastery of craft after a\n\n810\n00:41:07.350 --> 00:41:08.080\nlong time. But you\n\n811\n00:41:08.080 --> 00:41:11.610\nstart to package all these different perspectives and all these different\n\n812\n00:41:11.610 --> 00:41:12.640\nstrategies together.\n\n813\n00:41:12.640 --> 00:41:17.240\nAnd you've got this really robust landscape by which to kind of keep that fuel\n\n814\n00:41:17.240 --> 00:41:17.920\ngoing.\n\n815\n00:41:17.920 --> 00:41:21.460\nYou know, Ben, this has been so much fun and I want to have some more with my\n\n816\n00:41:21.460 --> 00:41:22.320\nlightning round of\n\n817\n00:41:22.320 --> 00:41:25.930\nquestions. So are you ready for this? Yeah, I am. The three words to best\n\n818\n00:41:25.930 --> 00:41:27.040\ndescribe you.\n\n819\n00:41:27.040 --> 00:41:33.840\nAdaptable, philosophical and complex. If you could be one person for a day\n\n820\n00:41:33.840 --> 00:41:34.720\nbeside yourself,\n\n821\n00:41:34.720 --> 00:41:38.770\nwho would it be? I don't know. This is a little bit boring, but it would be\n\n822\n00:41:38.770 --> 00:41:40.160\ngood to like take\n\n823\n00:41:40.160 --> 00:41:43.840\na ride through Tony Robbins brain or something for a day and just like absorb.\n\n824\n00:41:43.840 --> 00:41:45.760\nI'd either find\n\n825\n00:41:45.760 --> 00:41:51.200\na musician I really liked or somebody like a Tony Robbins or, you know,\n\n826\n00:41:51.200 --> 00:41:52.160\nequivalent where\n\n827\n00:41:52.160 --> 00:41:56.150\nyou just be like, Oh, I just uploaded all that information and I got to take it\n\n828\n00:41:56.150 --> 00:41:56.880\nback with me.\n\n829\n00:41:56.880 --> 00:42:03.920\nYour biggest pet peeve, like a lack of vision or a lack of self-awareness. I\n\n830\n00:42:03.920 --> 00:42:05.760\nthink that it leads\n\n831\n00:42:05.760 --> 00:42:12.720\nto a lot of limbic system behavior that gets backfilled by a narrative\n\n832\n00:42:12.720 --> 00:42:14.800\nstructure and that\n\n833\n00:42:14.800 --> 00:42:20.030\nand it leads to people doing really dysfunctional things that they don't really\n\n834\n00:42:20.030 --> 00:42:20.560\nhave the ability\n\n835\n00:42:20.560 --> 00:42:24.880\nto take accountability for. Who would play you in a movie? Benicio del Toro.\n\n836\n00:42:24.880 --> 00:42:31.920\nYour favorite non soda beverage to drink. I drink a lot of spin drift and I\n\n837\n00:42:31.920 --> 00:42:32.320\ndrink a lot\n\n838\n00:42:32.320 --> 00:42:36.630\nof electrolyte water and I drink a lot of plain carbonated water. What's\n\n839\n00:42:36.630 --> 00:42:37.760\nsomething you've been\n\n840\n00:42:37.760 --> 00:42:42.100\ncurious about lately that has absolutely nothing to do with work? I mean, I\n\n841\n00:42:42.100 --> 00:42:44.720\nspend an enormous amount\n\n842\n00:42:44.720 --> 00:42:50.960\nof time thinking about trying to answer unsolvable questions in my own mind.\n\n843\n00:42:50.960 --> 00:42:59.520\nI am really fascinated by the mechanics of the universe as they relate to the\n\n844\n00:42:59.520 --> 00:42:59.920\nentire\n\n845\n00:42:59.920 --> 00:43:03.910\nto the universe. I'm really fascinated by like multiple dimensions. So kind of\n\n846\n00:43:03.910 --> 00:43:04.720\nlike metaphysics\n\n847\n00:43:04.720 --> 00:43:10.640\nmeets physics meets astrophysics meets existentialism. The one thing you do\n\n848\n00:43:10.640 --> 00:43:12.240\njust for you. I mean,\n\n849\n00:43:12.240 --> 00:43:16.720\nI think that the whole musical side of my life is really for me. I think back\n\n850\n00:43:16.720 --> 00:43:16.880\nin\n\n851\n00:43:16.880 --> 00:43:20.560\n18 years, I either wanted to go down the kind of health and wellness business\n\n852\n00:43:20.560 --> 00:43:21.600\njourney or I wanted\n\n853\n00:43:21.600 --> 00:43:26.700\nto go in the musical direction. I ended up going the direction I did because I\n\n854\n00:43:26.700 --> 00:43:27.760\nfelt like I could make\n\n855\n00:43:27.760 --> 00:43:33.660\nI had a higher chance of creating positive impact. So by proxy, the music side\n\n856\n00:43:33.660 --> 00:43:34.560\nof my life,\n\n857\n00:43:34.560 --> 00:43:38.090\nI don't worry about how that relates to how I'm perceived or certainly like\n\n858\n00:43:38.090 --> 00:43:39.040\nmaking income.\n\n859\n00:43:39.040 --> 00:43:43.440\nAnd so that's really a recharge, a recharge for my creative juices.\n\n860\n00:43:43.440 --> 00:43:48.720\nYou've been a DJ for over 20 years as I understand it. What's your dream music\n\n861\n00:43:48.720 --> 00:43:49.520\ngig?\n\n862\n00:43:49.520 --> 00:43:54.300\nProbably playing like an all-nighter at the club, fabric in London or something\n\n863\n00:43:54.300 --> 00:43:54.560\nlike that,\n\n864\n00:43:54.560 --> 00:43:59.920\njust like a legendary venue with an incredible sound system and a world-class\n\n865\n00:43:59.920 --> 00:44:01.200\nbuilt-in following\n\n866\n00:44:01.200 --> 00:44:06.710\nand just the chance to just really explore. If I turned on the radio in your\n\n867\n00:44:06.710 --> 00:44:07.920\ncar, what would I hear?\n\n868\n00:44:07.920 --> 00:44:14.790\nElectronic music, my friend. I was in a 98%. Not the kind of stereotypical\n\n869\n00:44:14.790 --> 00:44:16.320\nmainstream EDM stuff\n\n870\n00:44:16.320 --> 00:44:22.020\nthat's taken over, but a really wide range of underground electronic music from\n\n871\n00:44:22.020 --> 00:44:22.640\nambient and\n\n872\n00:44:22.640 --> 00:44:27.150\ndown tempo to techno. What's one of your daily rituals, something that you\n\n873\n00:44:27.150 --> 00:44:27.840\nnever missed?\n\n874\n00:44:27.840 --> 00:44:34.160\nThere is something that moves my blood flow every day. So whether that's\n\n875\n00:44:34.160 --> 00:44:36.560\nexercise or a hike or the\n\n876\n00:44:36.560 --> 00:44:44.480\nsawn in the cold plunge, I have to get a sweat in and my heart rate accelerated\n\n877\n00:44:44.480 --> 00:44:44.880\nevery day.\n\n878\n00:44:44.880 --> 00:44:48.480\nAll right, last question here. We're out of the lightning round, but I've got\n\n879\n00:44:48.480 --> 00:44:49.200\none more question\n\n880\n00:44:49.200 --> 00:44:52.140\nfor you and I know you've got a tight time schedule, so I'm going to let you go\n\n881\n00:44:52.140 --> 00:44:52.640\nhere.\n\n882\n00:44:52.640 --> 00:44:57.430\nWhat's one piece of advice you'd give to anyone who wants to be a better leader\n\n883\n00:44:57.430 --> 00:44:57.680\n?\n\n884\n00:44:57.680 --> 00:45:05.280\nIt's really important to embrace your own three-dimensionality as a human\n\n885\n00:45:05.280 --> 00:45:08.880\nand to see and work with the three-dimensionality of others.\n\n886\n00:45:08.880 --> 00:45:16.050\nI think that humans are each human's unique as are you, and in order to really\n\n887\n00:45:16.050 --> 00:45:16.720\nlead them,\n\n888\n00:45:16.720 --> 00:45:20.250\nyou need to be able to see them and they need to feel seen and they need to\n\n889\n00:45:20.250 --> 00:45:20.400\nfeel\n\n890\n00:45:20.400 --> 00:45:26.970\nsupported so they feel safe being vulnerable and so that they feel safe with\n\n891\n00:45:26.970 --> 00:45:27.840\nyou leading them.\n\n892\n00:45:27.840 --> 00:45:33.070\nSo on a person-to-person basis, it's really, it's stepping into that kind of\n\n893\n00:45:33.070 --> 00:45:34.560\nmessy three-dimensional\n\n894\n00:45:34.560 --> 00:45:39.600\nterritory at a broader scale as an individual to large group.\n\n895\n00:45:39.600 --> 00:45:46.240\nIt's really becoming very good with narrative style storytelling and narrative\n\n896\n00:45:46.240 --> 00:45:48.720\narcs that simplify\n\n897\n00:45:48.720 --> 00:45:55.280\nand make complex contextualization simpler.\n\n898\n00:45:55.280 --> 00:46:00.720\nAll right, before I let you go, I want to let you know that you and I have a\n\n899\n00:46:00.720 --> 00:46:01.200\nmutual\n\n900\n00:46:02.640 --> 00:46:05.520\nfriend and acquaintance, and that's Indra Nui.\n\n901\n00:46:05.520 --> 00:46:14.960\nShe's an investor of all of them, you know, and so she crossed the line and is\n\n902\n00:46:14.960 --> 00:46:17.120\nin business with\n\n903\n00:46:17.120 --> 00:46:20.320\nyou. What have you learned from Indra?\n\n904\n00:46:20.320 --> 00:46:25.550\nYeah, you know, actually it's so funny because I almost quoted her earlier in\n\n905\n00:46:25.550 --> 00:46:26.400\nthis interview\n\n906\n00:46:26.400 --> 00:46:33.360\nand I had a great Zoom with her a couple of years ago at this point. One of the\n\n907\n00:46:33.360 --> 00:46:34.160\nonly calls I had\n\n908\n00:46:34.160 --> 00:46:37.480\nthat I was nervous for, I don't know why, she's just such a powerhouse, I just\n\n909\n00:46:37.480 --> 00:46:39.520\nread her autobiography,\n\n910\n00:46:39.520 --> 00:46:46.240\nbut she spent the first 90% of our conversation basically saying, \"Ben, you can\n\n911\n00:46:46.240 --> 00:46:48.080\nhave good for you,\n\n912\n00:46:48.080 --> 00:46:51.940\nbetter for you and fun for you. There's good for you, better for you and fun\n\n913\n00:46:51.940 --> 00:46:52.160\nfor you.\n\n914\n00:46:52.160 --> 00:46:55.930\nYou're going to better for you and fun for you. You cannot have good for you\n\n915\n00:46:55.930 --> 00:46:56.640\nand fun for you.\"\n\n916\n00:46:56.640 --> 00:47:01.940\nAnd then by the time we got to the end of the conversation and I laid out, you\n\n917\n00:47:01.940 --> 00:47:03.840\nknow, my stall,\n\n918\n00:47:03.840 --> 00:47:09.570\nshe was like, \"You know what? You might be the first brand that's ever done,\n\n919\n00:47:09.570 --> 00:47:10.960\ngood for you and\n\n920\n00:47:10.960 --> 00:47:16.060\nfun for you, and if that's the case, you deserve to win.\" And I really took\n\n921\n00:47:16.060 --> 00:47:17.360\nthat, I really appreciated\n\n922\n00:47:17.360 --> 00:47:20.320\nthat and I took that to heart. Yeah, I was listening to those three things. I'm\n\n923\n00:47:20.320 --> 00:47:20.480\nsaying,\n\n924\n00:47:20.480 --> 00:47:26.080\n\"I don't think you're going to agree with that.\" Well, I got to tell you, I\n\n925\n00:47:26.080 --> 00:47:26.960\nreally have enjoyed\n\n926\n00:47:26.960 --> 00:47:30.320\nthis conversation. I enjoy what you're doing on the product front. I enjoy the\n\n927\n00:47:30.320 --> 00:47:31.360\nnoble cause of your\n\n928\n00:47:31.360 --> 00:47:35.760\ncompany and good luck as you go about trying to change the world. David, thank\n\n929\n00:47:35.760 --> 00:47:36.320\nyou so much for\n\n930\n00:47:36.320 --> 00:47:39.760\nhaving me and honestly phenomenal questions. I really enjoyed myself.\n\n931\n00:47:45.520 --> 00:47:49.040\nDavid, I feel like I just had a chemistry lesson and creating soda.\n\n932\n00:47:49.040 --> 00:47:56.240\nWell, you know, the first thing that I would take away from this whole episode\n\n933\n00:47:56.240 --> 00:47:57.360\nis how important\n\n934\n00:47:57.360 --> 00:48:01.120\nis for a leader to understand where they can make the most difference. Okay?\n\n935\n00:48:01.120 --> 00:48:02.400\nYou know, he's a\n\n936\n00:48:02.400 --> 00:48:08.970\nformulator. He loves developing products and so he understands that knowing\n\n937\n00:48:08.970 --> 00:48:10.240\nwhere you make the\n\n938\n00:48:10.240 --> 00:48:15.020\nbiggest difference is where you should spend the most of your time. And, you\n\n939\n00:48:15.020 --> 00:48:15.920\nknow, he develops\n\n940\n00:48:15.920 --> 00:48:21.200\nthose products and they are excellent, by the way, you know, at home, you know,\n\n941\n00:48:21.200 --> 00:48:22.400\nin his laundry room.\n\n942\n00:48:22.400 --> 00:48:26.450\nI mean, this guy, but he's so passionate about it. And the fact is, is that he\n\n943\n00:48:26.450 --> 00:48:27.520\n's self-taught.\n\n944\n00:48:27.520 --> 00:48:31.400\nThat's the other thing that really impressed me about him. But, you know, now I\n\n945\n00:48:31.400 --> 00:48:32.320\nCEO, he has to\n\n946\n00:48:32.320 --> 00:48:37.690\ndevelop different skills and he's working on developing them. And, you know, he\n\n947\n00:48:37.690 --> 00:48:38.560\n's trying to build\n\n948\n00:48:38.560 --> 00:48:43.940\nhigher self-awareness and, you know, he has his own executive coach and, you\n\n949\n00:48:43.940 --> 00:48:44.640\nknow, I thought that\n\n950\n00:48:44.640 --> 00:48:48.400\nwas very, very impressive. So while he's trying to round out and he's very,\n\n951\n00:48:48.400 --> 00:48:49.440\nvery smart and there's\n\n952\n00:48:49.440 --> 00:48:53.990\nnothing that this guy will not learn, you know, he knows where he brings home\n\n953\n00:48:53.990 --> 00:48:55.520\nthe most bacon is by\n\n954\n00:48:55.520 --> 00:48:58.820\nmaking some great products. Well, of course, David, it's important to know\n\n955\n00:48:58.820 --> 00:48:59.920\nwhere you as a leader can\n\n956\n00:48:59.920 --> 00:49:03.450\nmake the biggest impact for your business and for your people. Another theme\n\n957\n00:49:03.450 --> 00:49:04.320\nthat really stood out\n\n958\n00:49:04.320 --> 00:49:07.490\nto me from this conversation with Ben is the importance of emotional\n\n959\n00:49:07.490 --> 00:49:08.400\nintelligence.\n\n960\n00:49:08.400 --> 00:49:11.760\nWhat's your take on that? I mean, is there a connection between emotional\n\n961\n00:49:11.760 --> 00:49:12.400\nintelligence and\n\n962\n00:49:12.400 --> 00:49:15.950\nyour impact as a leader? How do you view that? Hey, you know, I always talk\n\n963\n00:49:15.950 --> 00:49:17.040\nabout the importance\n\n964\n00:49:17.040 --> 00:49:21.030\nof the soft stuff driving the hard results. And I think if you have a high\n\n965\n00:49:21.030 --> 00:49:21.680\nemotional\n\n966\n00:49:21.680 --> 00:49:26.910\nIQ, you know that people will not care about you until unless you care about\n\n967\n00:49:26.910 --> 00:49:28.240\nthem. They know the\n\n968\n00:49:28.240 --> 00:49:33.750\nmore you know the more you care. They know that you're going to do everything\n\n969\n00:49:33.750 --> 00:49:35.040\nyou can to lift them\n\n970\n00:49:35.040 --> 00:49:39.600\nup and help them achieve their full potential. And it's that emotional\n\n971\n00:49:39.600 --> 00:49:41.040\nintelligence that really\n\n972\n00:49:41.040 --> 00:49:47.560\nmotivates people. And I think what Ben is doing too is that he realizes that he\n\n973\n00:49:47.560 --> 00:49:48.320\n's got to have an\n\n974\n00:49:48.320 --> 00:49:53.060\narmy of leaders that do that as that company grows. And it just can't be him.\n\n975\n00:49:53.060 --> 00:49:53.920\nAnd that's why he's\n\n976\n00:49:53.920 --> 00:50:00.110\ncreated a leadership program that he wants his leaders to go through with\n\n977\n00:50:00.110 --> 00:50:00.640\nemotional\n\n978\n00:50:00.640 --> 00:50:04.400\nintelligence being the big thing that he wants people to walk away with.\n\n979\n00:50:04.400 --> 00:50:06.080\nBecause it's very easy\n\n980\n00:50:06.080 --> 00:50:11.600\nto know your function. Okay, because that's what you've been schooled in. That\n\n981\n00:50:11.600 --> 00:50:12.640\n's the rational part\n\n982\n00:50:12.640 --> 00:50:18.960\nof life. You know, oftentimes it takes people a long time to really understand\n\n983\n00:50:18.960 --> 00:50:19.840\nwhat makes people\n\n984\n00:50:19.840 --> 00:50:24.390\ntick and how to motivate them and how to relate to them. And you know, I think\n\n985\n00:50:24.390 --> 00:50:25.360\nthat's where emotional\n\n986\n00:50:25.360 --> 00:50:29.880\nIQ is the big differentiator. Another thing that stood out to me from this\n\n987\n00:50:29.880 --> 00:50:31.440\nconversation with Ben\n\n988\n00:50:31.440 --> 00:50:35.200\nis this idea of, you know, to be a good leader, you have to develop a really\n\n989\n00:50:35.200 --> 00:50:36.560\nhealthy relationship\n\n990\n00:50:36.560 --> 00:50:40.560\nwith your instincts and with the data. So what your impulse is telling you\n\n991\n00:50:40.560 --> 00:50:41.760\nversus what might\n\n992\n00:50:41.760 --> 00:50:46.060\nbe seen as rational or what your customers are asking you for. How do you think\n\n993\n00:50:46.060 --> 00:50:46.640\nabout that?\n\n994\n00:50:47.200 --> 00:50:53.200\nWell, I think he captured it very well when, you know, I asked him about if he\n\n995\n00:50:53.200 --> 00:50:53.760\nhas a great\n\n996\n00:50:53.760 --> 00:50:57.120\nflavor idea that he wanted to do. But I said, what if the customers told you\n\n997\n00:50:57.120 --> 00:50:58.160\nthey didn't like it?\n\n998\n00:50:58.160 --> 00:51:02.390\nWould you do it anyway? And he says, yeah, probably, you know, because, you\n\n999\n00:51:02.390 --> 00:51:03.920\nknow, he believes that he\n\n1000\n00:51:03.920 --> 00:51:09.510\nknows more. He's got the gut that built the company knows what the core values\n\n1001\n00:51:09.510 --> 00:51:10.320\nare of the\n\n1002\n00:51:10.320 --> 00:51:15.350\ncompany, what he's trying to do. So he's gonna he's gonna err on the side of\n\n1003\n00:51:15.350 --> 00:51:16.800\nreally trusting his gut.\n\n1004\n00:51:16.800 --> 00:51:20.880\nAnd but what I liked about it here in what Ben said is if the rational facts\n\n1005\n00:51:20.880 --> 00:51:22.160\ncome in that he's\n\n1006\n00:51:22.160 --> 00:51:25.260\nwrong, you know, he'll move on to the next one. And this guy has a lot of\n\n1007\n00:51:25.260 --> 00:51:26.080\ncreativity.\n\n1008\n00:51:26.080 --> 00:51:31.040\nThe other thing is, is that I think where he really shows the power of the gut\n\n1009\n00:51:31.040 --> 00:51:31.840\nis that when he\n\n1010\n00:51:31.840 --> 00:51:36.630\nfirst wanted to get into the soda business and compete against the the likes of\n\n1011\n00:51:36.630 --> 00:51:38.000\nCoca-Cola and Pepsi\n\n1012\n00:51:38.000 --> 00:51:42.020\nand a category that was declining, he had naysayers tell him that he was\n\n1013\n00:51:42.020 --> 00:51:44.000\nwasting a God-given talent.\n\n1014\n00:51:44.000 --> 00:51:49.310\nOkay. And he followed his gut and said, I'm going after this anyway. And sure\n\n1015\n00:51:49.310 --> 00:51:50.480\nenough, he's got a\n\n1016\n00:51:50.480 --> 00:51:56.550\n$2 billion business right now. So I think those that that that's kind of how\n\n1017\n00:51:56.550 --> 00:51:58.800\nyou got to do got a role\n\n1018\n00:51:58.800 --> 00:52:03.610\nas a leader. You know, if you really feel deep down in your gut, this is a huge\n\n1019\n00:52:03.610 --> 00:52:04.480\nidea. You owe it to\n\n1020\n00:52:04.480 --> 00:52:10.240\nyourself to push push the boundaries and until someone shows you otherwise. And\n\n1021\n00:52:10.240 --> 00:52:11.920\nI think he gets\n\n1022\n00:52:11.920 --> 00:52:16.970\nthat. I love how he says that Ollipop is a mission disguised as a soda company.\n\n1023\n00:52:16.970 --> 00:52:17.600\nAnd I think that\n\n1024\n00:52:17.600 --> 00:52:21.630\nthat part of it plays into the belief that you were just talking about, David.\n\n1025\n00:52:21.630 --> 00:52:22.640\nI mean, he truly\n\n1026\n00:52:22.640 --> 00:52:25.420\nthinks that it's a mission. Yeah, he thinks he's changing the world. He's\n\n1027\n00:52:25.420 --> 00:52:26.480\nmaking the world a better\n\n1028\n00:52:26.480 --> 00:52:30.150\nplace. He's making the world healthier. For the first time in life, you can\n\n1029\n00:52:30.150 --> 00:52:31.040\nhave a healthier,\n\n1030\n00:52:31.040 --> 00:52:36.270\nhealthier soda. And that that's not just something that's going to be better\n\n1031\n00:52:36.270 --> 00:52:37.120\nfor you. It's something\n\n1032\n00:52:37.120 --> 00:52:40.510\nthat's going to actually help you live your life in a much more positive\n\n1033\n00:52:40.510 --> 00:52:41.840\nfashion, much healthier\n\n1034\n00:52:41.840 --> 00:52:47.600\nfashion. So that's great. So I really think this this episode is chock full of\n\n1035\n00:52:47.600 --> 00:52:48.640\nreally good insights.\n\n1036\n00:52:48.640 --> 00:52:53.150\nBut the three here that we've talked about that are most important is number\n\n1037\n00:52:53.150 --> 00:52:54.480\none as a leader,\n\n1038\n00:52:54.480 --> 00:52:57.710\nknow where you make the biggest difference and make sure that's your core\n\n1039\n00:52:57.710 --> 00:52:58.640\ncompetency. And you\n\n1040\n00:52:58.640 --> 00:53:04.320\ndeliver that in spades and then broaden out and learn the things that you need\n\n1041\n00:53:04.320 --> 00:53:06.160\nto learn to take on,\n\n1042\n00:53:06.160 --> 00:53:10.950\nyou know, bigger and bigger responsibilities. The second thing is you got to\n\n1043\n00:53:10.950 --> 00:53:12.080\nget a really good\n\n1044\n00:53:12.080 --> 00:53:17.310\nemotional intelligence built into your rational world. Okay, it's not enough\n\n1045\n00:53:17.310 --> 00:53:18.240\njust to know your\n\n1046\n00:53:18.240 --> 00:53:23.030\nfunction, which is very, very important. But you also need to know people and\n\n1047\n00:53:23.030 --> 00:53:24.080\nyou need to know how\n\n1048\n00:53:24.080 --> 00:53:29.840\nto motivate people and inspire them. And that requires a learning of the soft\n\n1049\n00:53:29.840 --> 00:53:31.280\nstuff that drives\n\n1050\n00:53:31.280 --> 00:53:37.380\nhard results. And the third thing is is that, you know what, if you've got the\n\n1051\n00:53:37.380 --> 00:53:39.200\njob, you got the job\n\n1052\n00:53:39.200 --> 00:53:45.510\nfor a reason, you know, you've earned that job. So if you're gut tells you that\n\n1053\n00:53:45.510 --> 00:53:46.640\nthis is really an\n\n1054\n00:53:46.640 --> 00:53:51.590\nimportant thing, follow those gut instincts until you get the data that tells\n\n1055\n00:53:51.590 --> 00:53:52.720\nyou that, hey,\n\n1056\n00:53:52.720 --> 00:53:58.930\nI'm going in the wrong direction. But you know, your intuition is one of your\n\n1057\n00:53:58.930 --> 00:53:59.840\ngreatest strengths.\n\n1058\n00:53:59.840 --> 00:54:04.240\nIt's one of the reasons why you you take on more and more responsibility, you\n\n1059\n00:54:04.240 --> 00:54:04.720\nknow,\n\n1060\n00:54:04.720 --> 00:54:11.040\npush your intuition to the limits. And also, you know, don't be limited by the\n\n1061\n00:54:11.040 --> 00:54:12.160\nfact that you have\n\n1062\n00:54:12.160 --> 00:54:15.770\nthese strong beliefs. You know, sooner or later, the customer's going to tell\n\n1063\n00:54:15.770 --> 00:54:16.560\nyou whether you're\n\n1064\n00:54:16.560 --> 00:54:20.330\nright or wrong. And in the meantime, make that raspberry shirtboard flavor oll\n\n1065\n00:54:20.330 --> 00:54:20.880\nipop because that\n\n1066\n00:54:20.880 --> 00:54:27.500\nis a great flavor. Well, thank you so much, David, for another episode of How\n\n1067\n00:54:27.500 --> 00:54:29.280\nLeaders Lead. Thanks\n\n1068\n00:54:29.280 --> 00:54:32.940\nto Ben Goodwin for spending some time with us. And thank you, of course, to our\n\n1069\n00:54:32.940 --> 00:54:33.680\nlisteners.\n\n1070\n00:54:33.680 --> 00:54:36.160\nTune in next Thursday. And we will see you soon.\n","is_pinned",false,"pinned_at","is_featured","featured_at","mix_url","https://chtbl.com/track/DCB44F/traffic.megaphone.fm/DVL4642882373.mp3","dx_media_id",4185,"video_media_id","thumbnail_image_media_id","published_date","2026-08-06","itunes_episode_id",303,"youtube_id","ToVFkVj99JY","2026-08-19T18:03:42.000000Z","Listen to this leadership podcast with Ben Goodwin, Cofounder, CEO & Formulator of OLIPOP, and discover the power of emotional intelligence to build better products, teams, and results.","dx_url","https://dnl.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/uploads/df4yQV4zu4f5k30I4f4REdwItcMqR5yieNB9u1Jl.mp3","dx_filename","df4yQV4zu4f5k30I4f4REdwItcMqR5yieNB9u1Jl.mp3","dx_mux_playback_id","gdr7epX2ebnhSzCZI4YDNex402DD02I01EG00SCeGRXpCT8","dx_waveform_url","https://dnl.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/uploads/waveforms/4185.json","video_url","video_mux_playback_id","duration",3286012,"thumbnail_url","https://img.youtube.com/vi/ToVFkVj99JY/maxresdefault.jpg","thumbnail_image_url","dx_media",{"_13":66,"_96":80,"_97":78,"_98":99,"_31":82,"_33":100,"_101":-5,"_102":84,"_87":88,"_103":-5},"video_media","thumbnail_image_media","filename","url","status","ready","csOBU01irkvYHLRv00T2FNU02Hp3ZfroOmeNPmK92wXQjc","mux_upload_id","waveform_url","preview_media_id","first_name","Ben","last_name","Goodwin","job_title","OLIPOP, Co-founder, CEO and Formulator","Ben Goodwin, OLIPOP, CEO, Founder, entrepreneur, beverage, food and beverage","external_links","https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-goodwin-olipop,https://www.bristolfarms.com/founders/mtf-ben-goodwin-david-lester-olipop",0,"image_media_id",4136,4137,"2026-07-28T20:39:39.000000Z","send_push_notification_at","2026-08-10T19:00:00.000000Z","image_url","https://dnl.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/uploads/CrY9QNZbTH6mt9vnSkITI8lf9cj41kdJQJrYuDx0.jpg","https://dnl.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/uploads/zcoviMowLZtDeBwVkM4AY1fTyztpGcGqxmVU8cnm.jpg","https://www.howleaderslead.com/leaders/292/ben-goodwin","industry_id",8,"industry",{"_13":125,"_136":137,"_138":140},"industries",[135],"image_media",{"_13":115,"_96":134,"_97":121,"_98":-5,"_31":-5,"_33":-5,"_101":-5,"_102":-5,"_87":-5,"_103":-5},{"_13":116,"_96":133,"_97":122,"_98":-5,"_31":-5,"_33":-5,"_101":-5,"_102":-5,"_87":-5,"_103":-5},"zcoviMowLZtDeBwVkM4AY1fTyztpGcGqxmVU8cnm.jpg","CrY9QNZbTH6mt9vnSkITI8lf9cj41kdJQJrYuDx0.jpg",{"_13":125,"_136":137,"_138":139},"name","Food and Bev","pivot",{"_35":36,"_124":125},{"_35":36,"_124":125},"user","token","favorites",[],"collections",[],"env",{"_149":150,"_151":152,"_153":154,"_155":156,"_157":158},"GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID","644017954836-qpllhu38r0tsrtfq85ukntcvsb0akbht.apps.googleusercontent.com","APPLE_CLIENT_ID","com.howleaderslead.webapp","APPLE_REDIRECT_URI","https://www.howleaderslead.com/auth/apple-callback","APP_URL","https://howleaderslead.com","GTM_ID",""]