Welcome to How Leaders Lead, where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the best leaders in the world. I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple that you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Today's guest is Brittany Fuse, the founder and CEO of Malibu Milk. Building something from scratch is not easy. Whoever leads the business and the mindset they approach their work with is a key ingredient in the success of a company. In my conversation with Brittany, you're about to see a unique mindset on full display as she tells the story of launching Malibu Milk. Brittany has what I call a startup mindset. What I mean by that is she's absolutely passionate about what she's created. She's going to make sure that it is a success and she's willing to do everything it takes to make it happen. I'm telling you, this startup mindset is a real asset to any leader regardless if they're in an actual startup or running an established business. You see, the great leaders I know, the ones who help businesses thrive, they never lose the startup mindset. There's a lot for us to learn from this founder story and I'm excited for you to listen in. Here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours, Brittany Fuse, the founder and CEO of Malibu Milk. You know, Brittany, you've literally built the Malibu Milk brand from scratch. Tell us about the brand and what inspired you to create it. Yeah, Malibu Milk is the world's tastiest, healthiest plant-based milk. It's made from the whole ground organic flax seed. I really started this journey a few years ago, about three years ago and it was connected to me trying to get pregnant. I was struggling to get pregnant like many young couples do and I went to see a doctor here in LA, a fertility doctor and she recommended I take a really hard look at my diet and take a really hard look at the things I was consuming. She ended up recommending an autoimmune protocol, an elimination diet where I had to eliminate all major allergens. So dairy, nuts, gluten, soy and you can imagine when you've eliminated dairy, nuts and soy, you've wiped out the entire milk aisle, both traditional cow's milk and plant- based milk. So I was pretty discouraged and frustrated and I was looking for an allergen- free, really healthy option because when you're trying to get pregnant, I think it's one of those times in your life when you're all of a sudden, hyper aware of what you're consuming because you're going to be building another human being. And I was literally driving in the car one day and I had this kind of light bulb moment and I thought, "What if I make milk for flax seed? I've always loved flax seed. I would add it to smoothies or oatmeal, constantly looking for ways to get more fiber in omega threes into my diet." So I went home that day, I pulled out my blender and I have a pretty good understanding of cooking because I went to culinary school several years ago and I started playing with a few really simple ingredients. Flax seed, Himalayan salt, a little bit of organic vanilla extract and I was getting this incredibly creamy milk because flax seed is a natural emulsifier. And so at that point, I was really excited and I think I did what any aspiring entrepreneur would do. I reached out to Whole Foods to the local buyer here in Southern California. Oh, come on. You don't just create a product. Oh, I'm going to call Whole Foods now and get distribution. I mean, come on, give me a break. But I did. You know what they say, David? They say ignorance is bliss. So I didn't know all of the stuff that I didn't know about CPG and margins and pricing. And I figured it would take six to eight months to get on this person's calendar and I could figure all of that other stuff out. I want to ask you about that later because I want to come back. That's your first account. But how do you, I love your brand name Malibu milk. It sounds, that's cool. How'd you come up with that? So I grew up in Malibu. I was actually born in Ohio. So I have nice Midwestern roots, I like to say, but my parents were entrepreneurs. They moved out to California when I was about seven for their business and we went from, if you can believe it, a little tiny town in Ocarber, Ohio to Malibu, California. And so I had the good fortune of being from seven to 18 in Malibu. It was a wonderful place to grow up and I loved the alliteration of Malibu and milk. And Malibu, it's such a health conscious place. You know, a lot of my friends were coming to school with homemade breads and produce from their parents' gardens. And so, you know, that's where I really learned about health and wellness was when we moved to Malibu. So it just seemed fitting for this organic flax milk. I love that, David. It makes a lot of sense. Obviously, you know, you know, I grew up drinking whole milk like, you know, most people in my generation and now all you'll find in my fridge is still common milk. What's going on in the milk category? And you talked a little bit about how you're differentiating yourself, but tell us about the dynamics of the milk category itself. So the milk category right now is really interesting because the dairy milk industry is valued at $800 billion. It's a huge number, right? But it's actually shrinking. So the amount of people consuming cow's milk has declined drastically, like 40% per capita since 1975. Meanwhile, the amount of people who are drinking plant-based milk, so not milk, soy milk, flax milk is growing rapidly. And over 50% of American consumers drink plant-based milk regularly. It's like yourself. And what's really interesting is when you dive in and you look at the different plant-based milks and you want to understand the nutrition behind them, the growing methods behind them, they're actually all very different. And that was one of the things that I dug into as well when I was considering flax. So take almond milk, for example, because you know, David, you said you do consume almond milk. Almond milk is made by blending almonds with water and then you strain the almonds out. So most of the nutrients and the protein that are found in those almonds are actually thrown out and you end up with almond-flavored water. There's not a lot of nutrients. It's mostly just water. And the problem is almonds are incredibly unsustainable. It takes 20 gallons of water to produce one single glass of almond milk. It's a lot of water. Water is a natural resource that we need, you know, we depend on. Almond milk is not. So when you're considering, okay, well, I'm not really getting a lot of nutrition from this almond milk and it's also quite the strain on our natural resources. All right, let's see what other choices there are. Let's go to oat milk. Oat milk is having a heyday right now, right? A lot of people are leaning into oat milk. Oat milk is interesting because, you know, they say no added sugar, but the truth is the way that the oats are processed in oat milk, it ends up gram for gram having a higher impact on your blood sugar than a can of Coca Cola. Oat milk is filled with calories. It's filled with carbohydrates. And most of the oats in this country are covered in glyphosate, which is otherwise known as weed killer or Roundup. You're kidding me. No, no, I'm very serious. And so all right, almond milk is out. Oat milk is out. Soy milk, most soy is genetically modified. You know, there's all this movement with non-GMO. You want not I don't even know if people really know what it means, but they know they want it, right? What is what is GMO non-GMO? Well, I know I want the non-GMO. Most soy is GMO. It is genetically modified. That means it can cause hormonal imbalances. Not good for your health. We are using 100% organic flax seed. We're not adding anything that's, you know, no weed killer, no oils, most oat milk, a lot of soy melts have oils in them because it gives them a thicker texture and helps them froth better. We're not adding any oils. We're just keeping our ingredients as clean as possible. And the beautiful thing about the flax flower is the only water required is natural rainfall. So from a health point of view, it's the best choice for you. And from a mother earth point of view, it's the best choice for our planet as well. Wow, that's so interesting. You know, Brittany, you're already getting accolades for being a great brand builder. And you got a great brand name. We just talked about that. Your packaging is absolutely beautiful and very distinctive on the shelf. What advice can you give to others who want to build brands and make them stand out? Get started. You know, I think it's one of the hardest things is, well, where do I start? And what do I do next? And there's not really a roadmap for when you get started, but you have to start somewhere. And you have to just keep going. And I, for a long time, was trying to, I had a day job. I had a full time day job. And I was like, well, I can do both, you know, I'll kind of do a little bit of this project on the side here and there. For me, it was really hard to do. And I'm pretty type A and I'm pretty cool oriented. And yet, until, you know, I didn't have the full time job anymore until I was able to really focus on this, it just didn't move forward. I needed to sit down every day in front of my computer at 8 a.m. and say, all right, how am I moving this forward today? And I knew nothing. I knew nothing about the industry. I mean, when I say nothing, I have no family that's worked in consumer packaged goods like this. I was coming in totally blind, but what I had was a passion. And I also think that the blindness, in a way, one of my early investors and advisors said, you know, make sure that you're kind of leaning into that. It's your newness and your ignorance to the category that's giving you such a great perspective because it's different than somebody who's, you know, been in the industry for a really long time. Having a beginner mindset, I think works in any business and for any person, you know, and it's obvious, Brittany, that you don't sit around and wait for others to tell you what to do. Tell us what you think makes a great self-starter. And what would you tell others on how to cultivate a skill like that? Oh, that's such a great question. You know, I think having goals does help. Having realistic goals and putting your mind to something, you can then break those goals into things that you're just going to achieve today, you know, or that week. Okay, this week, I'm going to achieve X, Y, and Z or one, two, and three. You know, for me, the first step was finalizing this formula. I had this idea, I made this, you know, great kind of product in my kitchen, but I really needed to hone in on the formula. And it was really hard to do alone. So I had like an intern sort of friend come over and just sit with me and write down different recipes as we tinkered and honed in on the recipe. That was first and foremost. That was before I met with Whole Foods. That was before I did anything else. I wanted to have a formula that I was like, okay, this is unique, this is special. And then I would also say do your homework because it's so easy nowadays with technology to understand your consumer at the very beginning. I did a huge survey monkey with everyone that I knew. I created a survey monkey. It was free. It didn't cost me a single dollar. I sent it out to family in Ohio, to friends on the East Coast, to friends on the West Coast. I wanted to understand how people were drinking and buying plant-based milk. What did they like about it? What did they not like about it? What were they paying for it? Were they buying flavors like vanilla or chocolate? Did they just want it plain? Did they want it sweetened, unsweetened? Figure out what your consumers are looking for. Make sure that there's a need that actually exists, but do your homework, do the research and then build around that. I think that's really important when you're a self-starter. You didn't have any consumer package goods experience. You've never run a company before. How have you gone about building the skills that it takes to run this business that you now have? I have leaned on mentors like yourself, David. David has been privy to more than one or two phone calls about asking for advice with how to grow a team and how to lean into the team that I do have. I read a lot of books. I listen to a lot of podcasts, including this one. I try to learn from people who have done it before me because I haven't run a business before. This is my first time managing a team and making business decisions and even we 're launching in Albertsons in Texas, Ralphs in Southern California and Stater Brothers in Southern California, three really important brands for our business. I've never launched in a conventional grocery store before. Even this is something completely outside of my wheelhouse. I've only launched in natural grocery stores with the milk so far. I am leaning on my brokers, my other advisors, and I'm saying, "Tell me about your learnings. What have you seen when you've launched a natural product in a conventional space? Where can I be strong? What do we need to lean in on?" I am asking a ton of questions. I always will take the opportunity to speak to somebody, especially another founder within the space, because there is always something to learn. It's not always easy because we're really busy. I'm a mom, I'm pregnant, I'm running this business. I've got a really small team. Time is my most valuable asset right now and there is just not enough time in the day. I put my son to bed, I get back on email. I'm on email at 6.30 in the morning. Sometimes even earlier, I ask my team, but carving out that 30 or 45 minutes to speak to another founder, I always find something valuable. If you don't find something valuable, it's because you're not engaged and you 're not asking the right questions. Mifting gears, I'd love to hear a story about your upbringing that will tell us the most about the kind of leader that you are today. As a little girl, I used to play, I had one of those treehouses in my nothing fancy, just a regular old treehouse that you can buy, I think, preassembled and pop in your backyard. I would have these clubs and I always wanted to be the leader of the club and I would make the club rules and I would invite certain people to be in the club and they had to follow the rules. I think for whatever reason, from this really early childhood age, I understood the idea of structure and how that could be effective in any sort of setting where you wanted there to be rules and you wanted to have progress. I remember doing that at eight, nine years old and then as I grew in school, I always welcomed the opportunity of leadership from a really young age. I was class president multiple times. I ended up being student body president at my high school. I was captain of my volleyball team. I was consistently leaning into these leadership opportunities and maybe part of it is because I'm a control freak, I don't know. I think it also gave me really valuable opportunities to learn. Even more so, I'll tell you another story, David. My parents were entrepreneurs. It was ingrained in me from early childhood. When we moved out to California from Ocarber, Ohio, I think our population was less than 20,000 people in Ocarber. Really tiny, tiny town. Everybody knew everybody. My parents somehow got the guts and the motivation to move out to California where they knew no one and it was for their business and it was because they were chasing opportunity. I didn't know fear. I saw that you take risks. You take risks. You leap and the net will appear. That was a quote that I remember seeing in my mother's office, like always growing up. She's a best-selling author and her and my father built this incredible business. It wasn't easy. There were a lot of really scary ups and downs. I think being privy to that as a child, seeing the ups and downs, knowing how hard they were always working, but they were working from home. Being able to see that firsthand was incredibly valuable. You've also had some excellent and relevant prior business experience. How's that background helping you now? I did study business at Georgetown University. Actually on my team call every week, we're all working remote. We even have a team member in another state and we have a weekly team call early in the week. We start out this call with a personal question and it can be anything. A different person on the team chooses the topic every week. Maybe it's what's your favorite flavor of ice cream? It's been a real question or what are your New Year's plans? One of the most recent questions from my new national director of sales, she asked, "Who was a teacher or professor that was really influential in your life?" It was a great question because it took us all back. We're all thinking about these people who we haven't thought about in a while. I thought about my teacher at Georgetown. He taught entrepreneurship. He was just a part-time teacher. He was doing it for fun. He would teach one class a semester on entrepreneurship. I thought about him and I thought about that class and I thought about what I'm doing now. In the class, we had to make a business plan. I can't even remember what my business plan was. I have no idea. It definitely had nothing to do with milk. I ended up reaching out to him as a result of this team call last week. I sent him a note on LinkedIn. I found him on LinkedIn. I reached out to him. I asked if he's drinking plant-based milk. He is. What kind of milk he's drinking and I'm sending him some alibou milk. Even then, even it, I must have been 20 years old when I took that class, it got my mind thinking in the right way. It got me thinking differently. It got me considering that there were options outside of just the normal trajectory of getting a job and then working for other people, which I did do. One of my mentors who's been incredible is Padma Lakshmi. She's the host of Bravo's Top Chef. She's been incredible and I actually met her randomly at it. I bumped into her physically at a store in New York City and then I backed up and I realized it was her and I went over to my mom and I said, "I just bumped into Padma Lakshmi." I was a huge fan. I still am of Top Chef and my mom said, "Go introduce yourself. Tell her that you want to work in food." I said, "No, no, I don't want to bother her. I'm not gripping Malibu. You don't bother celebrities. You leave them alone." But I did. I went up to her and I had these little business cards because I had a little food blog and I said, "If you have any time, I would love some advice for an aspiring food person." She called me a week later. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was driving in the car on the freeway. She called me and she said, "My number one piece of advice for you, you need to go to culinary school if you want to do anything in the food world." I said, "No, no, I don't want to go to culinary school. I had just finished Georgetown. I was done with school. I was not interested in being a cook. I didn't want to be in a kitchen. I knew I wanted to do something with food, but something more editorial or product development wise or restaurant development wise." She was adamant. She said, "This is the number one piece of advice I could give you. If you want to be able to have any authority, you need to go to culinary school ." But at the time, I had a full-time job, I quit. I enrolled in culinary school a week and a half later. I started in January, it must have been like 2010 or something, and I started at Le Corden Blue here in LA. It was one of the best pieces of advice that I was given. Culinary school is hard. I was on my feet eight hours a day in chef whites, but I learned the basics of cooking. I learned about flavors. I learned about developing my palate. I wouldn't have been able to pull out my blender eight years later and come up with this flax recipe and understand the way flavors worked without that culinary school experience. That's a great story. You develop this recipe from scratch, and then you've got to commercialize it. Tell us how you went about the process of commercializing this product. I'd love to hear how you did land that Whole Foods account. Commercializing your recipe is challenging because all of the ingredients that you're buying at the grocery store, they don't necessarily translate. You can't necessarily buy those wholesale in bulk. If you're looking to develop a food recipe, go to a conference. Go to one of these huge conferences where all of the ingredient suppliers are there, and they all give out samples. You walk the floor, and you get samples, and you're getting samples of ingredients that you can buy in bulk and that you can use to mass produce. That's the best way to figure out how to bring something at scale. Then there's another piece of talking to a manufacturer and trying to explain to them what you were doing with your blender and how that can translate to the large- scale equipment that they're using for blending and pasteurization and all of that. You might need to bring in an expert. There are consultants, and some of them are crazy expensive, and some of them will rip you off, but ultimately you want to find someone, a scientist, who knows what they're talking about and can help you scale this recipe and understand the equipment. I am not a scientist, so know what you don't know. Find someone who knows the things that you don't know who can help you, because there's certain things where you are going to need an expert. Did you ever have any quality issues with the manufacturing process? Yes. Yes. Tell us about that. I'll tell you a really, really great story. My first production run was in December of 2018. It was supposed to be earlier, because I had already met with Whole Foods a few months earlier, they wanted the product, and they said, "Can we get it in the next couple of weeks?" I said, "No. Let me go find a manufacturer, but we can do the next couple of months." I was supposed to have the manufacturing run in November. It just kept getting pushed back, and this is how it goes with manufacturing. It's one of the most frustrating things, especially when you're small. They walk all over you. They treat you like crap until you're one of their best customers. They kept pushing my run back, kept pushing it back. Finally, I got a date. They said, "All right. We're going to start batching your product at 9.30pm on a Tuesday." Luckily, it was close enough that I was able to drive to the facility. It's 9.30pm. I'm there. I'm alone. It's dark. It's cold. I'm in this huge plant trying to process this milk. I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm looking at things like pH and bricks, and I don't even know what they mean. I'm there with their night shift, their night team. I ordered everybody pizza because I wanted them to keep working and be happy and full. Then, we ran three flavors. I had my original, which recently shifted to my slightly sweetened. It's a product you can still buy today on our website. I had my unsweetened, and then I had a barista. I wanted a flavor that was specifically made for coffee. That was a little sweeter, that would froth a little more. The first we ran the unsweetened, then we ran the original, which had a little bit of sugar. We recently shifted that to organic date sugar, so it's refined sugar-free. Then we ran the barista. Last. At this point, it was probably 3.30 or 4 in the morning. I was exhausted, and I hadn't slept. The barista is running. It's on the equipment, and they bring out the first couple of bottles for me to taste. When David, I kid you not, I tasted this product, and it tasted like rotten eggs. It smelled like rotten eggs. I was just horrified. I'm just like, "Oh my God." They're looking at me, the quality control team, and they're like, "Well, what do you want to do?" They wanted to know if I wanted to keep filling it, or if I wanted to toss it. If I tossed all of the liquid that had been put in these very large tanks, at least I would save money on the bottles, because we wouldn't be using the bottles and the labels. Again, it's 4 in the morning. I haven't slept. I had to make this really hard decision, because we're talking about thousands of dollars worth of product. This is my only chance. You only get one trial run with these folks. The next run is 10 times more expensive, and you need to have 10 times more gallons. I decided to toss it. I knew I couldn't present anybody with a milk that smelled like rotten eggs if I wanted to be a business for very long. I told them to throw it out. That was the end of the run that day. I got in my car, and I cried the whole way home. I was devastated, and I thought this isn't going to work. I had dumped all of this money that I had, money that I'd been saving for a house or something in my life. I had dumped all of this money into this business. Here it was for the morning, and I was just crying home sobbing. I got home, and I slept. I had the unsweetened and the original. I remember my husband came and woke me up around 11 a.m. It's like I tasted them. They're good. Come downstairs. I'm no go away. I was just so upset about this barista flavor. I came downstairs finally, and I tried the other two flavors, and they were really good. They were really on point. Then I got a call from the manufacturer. Their head scientist, who doesn't work the night shifts, was calling me to let me know that the egg smell was completely normal, and it was just sulfur, and it would disappear within two to three days. Even then, I was even more devastated. I didn't actually have to throw it out. It would have just gone away. The truth is, the product actually didn't froth correctly. I had a couple of bottles that I had held. It wasn't frothing correctly. It wasn't where it needed to be. Throwing it ended up being the right decision. It's these moments where you're at your wit's end because you're exhausted and you've spent all this time and this money and you see no way out. That was a tough day, but it ended up working out. You're obviously resilient. I would like to hear the story now, how you now go to Whole Foods and you sell them on this product. I did get the meeting with Whole Foods about a week and a half after I asked for it, which was really fast. It's still really fast. That doesn't happen in this industry ever. I panicked and I called a friend who has products in Whole Foods and I said, "I think I need to cancel this meeting. I'm not ready. I don't have a packaging provider. I don't have a manufacturer. I don't understand distribution. I don't have a distributor. I don't know margins. I knew nothing." He said, "Don't cancel the meeting. You might never get this chance again." I do know now, if you cancel on a buyer, it might be your only shot. A buyer says, "They'll take a meeting. You may get work." Hell or high water. You figure it out. I took the meeting. I had mock bottles made from this mock bottling company in Texas. I went in with little plastic bottle samples from my kitchen. I let the buyer taste the milk. Within a few minutes, she said, "I want this product in stores in the next couple of weeks." It's a moment in your life you don't ever forget. It ended up being perfect timing because I got to go into my first production run knowing that Whole Foods would be a customer. Usually, you're going to produce all this product and hope to God you can sell it, but I already knew Whole Foods was going to buy it. That was really incredible. The product ended up launching at Whole Foods on my birthday the following year , just a couple months later. The timing was really special. Now, you're going into traditional grocery stores and you've got distribution in New York and California. You're really starting to take off. You also created a subscriber model. What drove that thinking and how's that doing? That's a great question. One of my lead investors had said to me, "Well, why aren't you selling this product online?" At the time, all I had was refrigerated cold, heavy plastic bottles. I said, "What do you mean? Why am I not selling this online? These are impossible to ship. It's a nightmare. They need ice. They said, "No, no. I see an opportunity here to sell this online." I went home that weekend and I set up on my little Wix website, a shopping button. I started shipping cold milks from my garage, which was a total nightmare. Let me tell you, "Oh my God, the amount of problems." We did it for the first few months because we needed to make sure that people were willing to order flax milk online. What's been incredible is people were willing. What was happening is they would discover the milk locally at a grocery store, maybe their own vacation in Southern California. We had one customer who was buying it here at Whole Foods and then he moved up to Seattle. He was obsessed with the product and him and his wife make so many smoothies every morning and they were going through a bottle a day. He started ordering it and ordering it and he couldn't get enough of it. I figured out a way to manufacture the product with the same exact formula but in a shelf stable carton. The only difference is the carton. We did our first production run for that product just over a year ago. Now we have a shipping partner who's at a warehouse and they ship these milks all over the country. What's really cool is a ton of customers have subscribed. You go on once, you sign up, you say, "Okay, I want a six pack of milk to come once a month." You don't have to worry about it again. It arrives at your front door. You literally get to forget about it. You know that your milk will arrive once a month at your front door and it's ready to go and it doesn't take up a whole bunch of room in your refrigerator because these shelf stable cartons you store in your pantry until you open them and then you put one in your refrigerator at a time. People are loving it, we're shipping it all over the country. We get inquiries all the time if we can ship international which we're not doing quite yet but there really is no other product quite like this. So people love that they can subscribe, buy it online and it's been incredible. I noticed that you've just gone into these coffee brand basically where you have a flax plus oat milk coffee and a flax plus oat milk matcha. It's interesting, your position these things as your digestion's new bestie. Does that mean it helps you go to the restroom? It's just exactly what it means, David. Now that's a bold positioning, I've got to tell you that. I don't know if anybody that has ever come up with that kind of positioning for a product. Now what gave you the courage to do that? So my mother got another personal story here. My mother was talking to me about her bathroom struggles and she was having her coffee in the morning and adding Malibu milk and I was like add more Malibu milk, you need more fiber, you need more fiber. And I realized with talking to some friends that there's a ton of people who have digestive issues that this is not an isolated problem. And the problem is you need more fiber in your diet. And people are having their coffee in their morning, they're trying to get things going and I figured, well, let's create a Malibu milk coffee. Let's load it with fiber so that it will work. So these are the number one way to go number two if they're gentle, yet effective and they really work. And they're just like, I got to ask you, you got this great brand. It's people already like the base products. And now you're coming up with the number one brand that helps you make number two. Are you worried about people making fun of you? Are you worried about it diluting the power of this great tasting brand that you've already created? No, not at all. People are loving it. I've never gotten more laughs, smiles, people want to tell me all about their bathroom routines. It's hilarious. You've got to be kidding me because I saw that and I thought this woman's crazy . I got to go back to marketing school because I meant the last thing I would have done when I was running Pepsi and say, hey, this is the number one product that's going to make you go number two. Yeah. I thought KFC's original recipe was that. Oh my God, that's so funny. Let me tell you, it's a different day and age in marketing, David. People are being more bold and you got to be bold if you want to stand out. You're in the process of building a small but mighty team. Tell us about the most recent hire you've made and why you hired that person. Yes. So the most recent hire was super recent. I needed a new national sales director. It's really tough when you are a young company like mine because you want somebody with experience, but somebody who has sales experience is often coming from a team where they were one of five salespeople. So you're asking them to come into this little company, take a risk for themselves and their family and do all the work, a lot more work than they've ever done before. And so it's a really particular sort of person who is willing to do that, who is eager to join a startup and who's willing to do the amount of work it takes. The most recent sales hire is incredible. She has beverage experience. She worked at a canned beverage company before this and prior to that, coconut water. And she's a mom and it's funny because I'm a mom. I get how hard it is to balance career and family and I breastfed my son for a year. And it's really, really hard to be a mom and to work full time. And this woman that I hired, boy, is she on it. She has the sort of drive and ambition that I hope I have myself. We are on emails all the time, weekends, way past, kids bedtime early in the morning and just constantly going after it. And that has been an incredible addition to my team. And I am so grateful that she has joined our team and that she is as amped up about it as I am. And the truth is for these first few employees, the opportunity is also huge because they get equity. And if things go the way that I'm working my butt off to make sure that they do , this is going to be a great payday for her in the end. She'll do very, very well. And everything that she does is so measurable. That's the other beautiful thing about a small team. When you're in a big team, sometimes other people get credit for what you're doing and it's hard to know really who did what. That's not happening at Malibu Mill. It's like, we know exactly what you're doing. We know if you're hustling and everybody on my team is hustling. And because we're all working so hard together, there's no task too small. When we started shipping milks out of my garage, I was shipping them. I was boxing them up, loading them in my car, driving them to FedEx. There is no task too small. There was a point when my milks, there was something on the label that had been misprinted. I had to go down to our distributor's warehouse at three in the morning with a label gun and label 3,000 bottles of milk. I did that myself. There is no task too small. And you need to be willing to own that and show your team that if you want them to behave that way as well. And so you really jumped into this business without having a whole lot of experience in managing people. What are you learning about yourself as a leader? Because you have to lead your team. You also have to lead your broker network. You have a big leadership job. I do. Again, I think it goes like lean on your network. Learn from your network. Read. I know there is not always a lot of time to read, especially when you are a busy founder and a parent. We have all got our long list of things that we are doing. But it is the constant learning. I am constantly learning. The phone calls I have had with you and the advice you have given me. Invaluable advice. And it is about being willing to ask. Because a lot of us have access to smart people who have built something, even if it is not exactly what we are trying to build. They have built a team. Reach out and ask. And maybe you will get a no or maybe they will not make the time. But even if you get a yes one out of ten times, it is worth the ask. Absolutely. It is so important to create a work environment where people really feel valued . Have you articulated what kind of culture you want to have and your team on board? Or is it just by the fly? I would say it is somewhere in the middle. Last year we set out a list of brand and team ethos that we wanted to guide the team and guide the year ahead. What is really fun about doing it this way with a small team is everybody on my team gets to choose something that they want to be a part of this. So I am not sitting there high in my D.O. I am the founder. Let me choose these seven things or five things. I am reaching out to my team and saying okay we are having this call. We are going to talk about our brand ethos and our goals, who we want to be and the culture that we want going forward. And they all get to contribute. And it is such a beautiful thing because some of their ideas are so helpful and so inspirational and they are different than the ones that I had. One of my top ones was no task too small. Every single person on my team when they go into a grocery store, if the milk is not proper on the shelf, if it is missing, if the tags are wrong, I want all of us to stop and go back, ask for the dairy buyer and fix it. Anyone on the team at all times. Let me tell you, it is not always easy to do, especially if you are shopping with a toddler and you have all your stuff for the week in the cart. But that is really important and I think everybody on the team lives that belief and it is really powerful. You obviously are really smart and you are really passionate, purposeful in terms of the brand you are building. Share a story of how you make sure that you get healthy debate to make healthy decisions because I can see you being like, hey, we have to get it done this way now. Yeah, it is such a good point. I guess you would call me type A, strong personality. I think it is who you hire and letting them know that their voice matters. Every voice on my team matters. If I wanted to do it alone, I would be doing it alone. I do not want to do it alone. I started alone and let me tell you, it is very lonely and it is totally overwhelming. Two heads are better than one, three heads are better than two. I let my team know that. We do have debates. I will tell you a story, David, about a debate we had in the last six months. We were using vanilla flavor in our vanilla milk. Vanilla flavor is one of those things that can get a bad rap because natural flavors, even though they are called natural, are not necessarily natural. They can be derived from animals, they can be derived from a whole bunch of different things, but they taste really good. They can give you the essence of sweetness without any added calories. If you are sourcing them correctly, you can source them organically, you can use all vegan natural flavors. We were using a vegan organic natural vanilla flavor in our vanilla milk and it tasted great and it was affordable. My head of operations came to me and they said, "I really think we need to switch to organic vanilla extract." It is his job to cut our costs. He is head of ops. It is his job to make our costs go down and help improve our margins. Here he was coming to me saying he wanted to swap one of our ingredients on our best-selling product to a much more expensive ingredient. Vanilla extract costs more than silver by the pound. It is so expensive. I thought he was out of his mind. I really thought he was out of his mind, but he presented his case and then we went to the board and discussed. At first, I was really adamant against doing this change. I just didn't see it being the best choice from a cost standpoint, from a taste standpoint, and ultimately he convinced me and we ended up going with organic vanilla extract. The reason being is because at Malibu milk, we are all about transparency. I am a mom. I am pregnant again. I was a nursing mom. I will be a nursing pregnant or I guess a nursing non-pregnant mom in the near to immediate future. We are incredibly concerned with the quality of ingredients that we are using. We want our customers to be able to trust us without any questions, without any hesitation. Natural flavors give some people pause. We wanted to eliminate any pause that anyone would have for any reason with Mal ibu milk. We switched from natural flavors to organic vanilla extract. It is the right decision because of who we are as a brand. We should tell that story on your website. That is how we make decisions at Malibu milk. This has been so much fun. I want to have a little bit more fun. I always do a lightning round of Q&A. Are you ready for this? The one word to best describe you. Driven. If you could trade places with one person for a day, who would it be and why? Oprah. I would love to just be within her mind. She has built a so incredible. I would like to see how she did that. What is something about you that few people would know, Brittany? I bungee jumped off the second highest building in the world in Macau, China when I was 18 years old. I am into Macau. I think I know what building you are talking about. You have any hidden talents? I am an epic skier. If you could get advice from one leader to help you grow your business, who would it be and why? Maybe somebody at a big dairy company, CEO of a big dairy company, I would love to see what they are doing and how they are adjusting to declining dairy sales. What is your favorite Malibu product? It changes all the time, but right now I am really excited about our slightly sweetened, which again just has a little bit of date sugar, so no refined sugar, super low in calories, but it is a little sweet and it is phenomenal in every fabulous product. I will vouch for that myself. That is fantastic. A couple more questions and we are going to wrap this up here. You had one child about a year and a half ago and now you are pregnant with a second. How do you just grasp with all of this that is ahead of you? That is just so many different demands. It is a really hard thing. I have a therapist that I see via Zoom once a week. I think that is really important. I walk every day. I try to get three miles in a day to clear my head. I go to bed at 9 p.m. every night because I need the sleep. I eat pretty healthy and I take care of myself. I think there are certain things that give when you are in the stage of life that I am in and working like that and have young children. For my husband and I, we are both founders and we are both working this hard. It is our social life. There is no social life anymore. It is out the window. Is your husband as he started his own company as well? He started his own company before me. He has a tech company. So you are both founders. What is that like? Also hard. But you know what? It is actually really nice because in my darkest hours when I have moments that are really tough and I had a tough moment a couple of weeks ago where I was upset about something with the business and I was emotional, really emotional. He is able to give me business advice and he knows how hard it is and he knows what it is like to fundraise and he knows what it is like to build something from the ground up. So he is my best friend and I am able to give me more relevant advice than almost anyone else in my life because he is right there with me. He is a few steps ahead of me because he has been doing it a little longer. He is doing something different. It is tech. But in a lot of ways I am really grateful for his help and support. Absolutely. If you could give leaders and entrepreneurs just one bit of advice, one thing based on your journey so far, what would it be? Listen, you are going, going, going. You are so fast. You have your own ideas. You have your vision to stop and listen. Listen to your team. Listen to your mentors. Listen to other people within the space. Stop and really listen. Otherwise you are going to miss something. Brittany, you are not going to miss much. You are on top of your game. You are doing a great job. Congratulations on all the success you have had. Malibu milk is on its way to national distribution and big time fame just like you. So thank you very much. Thank you David. I really appreciate it. Well, it is crystal clear that Brittany is 1000% passionate about making Malibu milk a success. And I feel the same way about David Novak leadership and how leaders lead. We have really applied a startup mindset because that business has basically been a startup. I am just as passionate as she is about making the world a better place by developing better leaders. But I also applied a startup mindset to a very established business. In 1997, PepsiCo spun off its restaurant brands, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC. Now these brands have been around for decades. But I brought the team together and said, look, we are starting a brand new company. We have these brands that have tremendous equities, but let's treat them like they are brand new. What if this was a startup? How would we really launch Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC all over again? And we looked at this business with a fresh set of eyes and we uncovered all kinds of opportunity. And I have to tell you, thinking like an entrepreneur, thinking like a founder really, really was powerful in terms of unlocking the potential we had in brands who had been around for years. So let me ask you, are you thinking about your business like an entrepreneur would? The energy and the passion that self-starter approach to your work. Let's bring some of that back into your life this week. This is important because your mindset and how you approach your work significantly impacts your business. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is that great leaders never lose the startup mindset. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of How Leaders Lead where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be. See you next week. [BLANK_AUDIO] [ Silence ]