Brainstorming $100M Ideas with the $1B+ King of Brands

So we have with us today the king of commerce, the titan of Target, the big man of the brand. Eric Ryan is here.

I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel.

You are the co-founder, the inventor of products that sit on a lot of people's shelves. There's some in my kitchen right now. Method soap, uh, Ollie gummies that my kids have every day., Welly Band-Aids, and then you're investor and a whole bunch more. So you are here and you're kind of, uh, the magic man when it comes to reinventing consumer categories. So when we did our call before this, we agreed to do two things. I said, I want to know your playbook. How do you do this? How do you go into the category and figure out which product to select and how to disrupt it? And you have this like four-step process or whatever you outlined to me. And the other thing is we agreed that we would each bring a couple of ideas of kind of half-baked ideas of brands that we think an entrepreneur could go do. And we're going to kind of pitch them back and forth to each other. We didn't tell each other beforehand, and so we'll see what, what we came up with. How's that sound?

Amazing. That sounds great. And that is way too kind of an introduction. So thrilled to be here. And— Way too kind. Thank you.

How big were some of these businesses? Just so we understand the, the magnitude here.

They are— they're both probably getting close to billion-dollar brands now. But would you go in and see like even 10 million of soap or vitamins sitting in a warehouse? That's what always blows me away of like how many units we actually move of these products and that are sitting in people's homes today.

And I've been looking forward to this because I remember Sam used to host this conference called HustleCon, and he would invite founders, entrepreneurs come speak. I didn't know your story at all. I was sitting there in the crowd and I remember you got on stage and you talked about how you started Method. How you started Ollie, how you started Welly, and you had all these little phrases. You were like, I walk through the aisles and I look for— and I saw just a sea of sameness. And you had a picture of the soap aisle or the dish soap aisle. It was like every single one was green and looked like, you know, green packaging and looked just like an old school, like my mom's cleaning product. And then you had this like totally different shape of a bottle. It was like, you know, blue or purple or whatever. And it was and it stood out. And I remember the way you talked about it. I really had never thought about how much thought goes into which category to go into. How do you actually bring something fresh and new to the table? And then how do you hustle to get it off the ground? You had a great talk that day. And so I know that was like, whatever, a decade ago, but if we can get even close to that, this will be a success, uh, from my perspective. And you said it in passing just now, but Method is, you know, probably a billion-dollar brand now. Ollie Gummies is also, um, uh, Ollie the vitamin company is, is also probably half a billion to a billion-dollar brand. And so that's pretty amazing. And I think like one of the other claims to fame is Target loves you, don't they? I feel like somebody told me this. They go, Target loves that guy.

Oh, I love Target. So it's a mutual love affair.

You've like launched brands with them, like even from the start, right? You have like a kind of a unique relationship with them. Is that right?

I do. I mean, what we did back in, oh God, 2002 when we pitched this idea of designer commodities, like no, it, it was at a time where no mass retailer worked with startups. And so, uh, through a lot of Hail Mary passes and some, some good luck, we were able to be the first to kind of go in there. And it's just, it's been an amazing partnership ever since.

So can we do your, your process before we brainstorm the ideas? I wanna hear the, the process you outlined. And I took a couple notes so I can kind of prompt you, but you basically had told me these 4, 3 or 4 things that you do when you go in. Because I was like, you've done this not once, not twice, but 3 times. And I was like, can I nerd out with you a little bit?

So like I keep my Method soap next to my, my faucet. So just like looking good when it's on my counter.

Exactly. Which is because you look at it more than you actually use it. So it's a pretty meaningful part of the experience of buying a dish soap.

At that time, did you see what else did you see where you're like, oh, that's new, that's new. But and then you applied that to Dish Soap. So what else were people doing that you— where you noticed the shift before you did it?

Okay. So first thing you said was you look for a cultural shift that's happening. That a category has missed. So it's happening and it's maybe happening elsewhere because what do they say about the future? The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed.

So, you know, I love that.

It's started to happen, but maybe it hasn't hit in, in the home care aisle yet or hasn't hit.

Oh my God, I gotta steal that from you. That's great.

Uh, that's not an original. Uh, that's, uh, a bunch of VCs like to say that one. All right. So, so that's the first thing you do. And are you looking for a new category or you're looking for a preexisting big category? What do you like to do? So like some people would say, oh, that's already done, it's already saturated. I need to go find something that doesn't exist yet. And they're making bets on what doesn't exist. And seems like what you did was you went into things that already existed and you weren't scared of the saturation or that it's already been done for 50 years.

No, that's right. I think it's much easier to make money by creating an iteration off of something that already exists because then you don't have to drive all the consumer education. To educate and explain something that's wildly new. And I was living in the, uh, in London in the '90s. I was super inspired by Richard Branson as, as many entrepreneurs are. But what I liked about, he, he had a model and I think that's what inspired me to create a model. His model is an entertainment model, right? So you'd go in these really unsexy industries like airlines and you would apply his entertainment model, um, that he really understood well. And so I was always inspired by this idea and I looked at, you know, if you looked at any successful serial entrepreneur, they typically had a model. But what I also loved about what Richard did is he went into like really well-established categories that were easy to understand and just put his twist on it. And so that very much became a lot of the way I thought about how I would approach entrepreneurship.

And then you talked about being a thief. Can you, can you give a couple examples there? So you said, I go to a big category, I walk through the aisles, I look for the sea of sameness. I look for a culture shift. Oh, sorry, you told me one other thing that was great. Uh, you go, you said something, you go, have they made it unnecessarily over, overcomplicated? And you go, I think they're hiding something. There's an insecurity there if they've made this product category feel overcomplicated and that they take themselves— and, and another one was taking themselves too seriously. Can you talk about those two attributes also?

I saw that you, um, you said that one of your favorite ways to come up with ideas is to travel abroad. We had this guy named Kevin Ryan on the podcast. Kevin has founded this thing called MongoDB, which is like a $30 billion software business. But very interestingly, he, he also started Gilt. Which is, you know, Gilt Group, the women's clothing thing. And he was like, I got the idea for Gilt when I went to France. And I think I saw this thing called the Vendi, I think, I think it was called where it was basically like flash sales for clothing. And so he would, he'd talk about that as well of going abroad. When you go abroad and you like to travel, do you like, are you, are you going on trips just to find ideas?

Yeah, totally. It's a, I think by far For me, it's where I get my best ideas for a couple reasons. One, I just think better when I'm in motion. So, you know, walking retail with a cup of coffee in your hand, there's ideas flow better than ever sitting at a desk. Two is we do these like trend trips where we also take designers with us. And so our goal is not only to spot ideas, but translate it immediately into a design idea that we can bring back. But also when you're, you're in a, you know, a foreign country, You're jet-lagged, which means nobody's bothering you. I think you see when you're, when you're jet-lagged too, you look at things a little bit more fuzzier, which can be a good, good thing, but also just opens up new pathways when you're, you're walking retail where everything is foreign, you don't understand the language. And for me, like trying to connect the dots between seeing what somebody's doing in one category, could we apply that to another space? It's so much easier to do when you're out of your home market.

So what's an example? So where would you go and what's an example of maybe an idea you had while you were on one of these trend trips that turned into like a, a success with one of your brands?

Yeah, I mean, some of, I think one of my most favorite was, and this was like 20 years ago, so this was before collaborations became such, you know, a mainstream part of building any brand. But we got Orla Kiely, who is really known for very expensive handbags and patterns, to do a collaboration with us at Target, which As far as I know, is the first ever designer collaboration and somebody who is known for very expensive items being able to bring those patterns into a product that sold for $3 and was the first time I think Target ever did a designer collaboration like at that price point. So that was out of London, was a, was a huge success. Uh, there was a building we saw in Japan that we absolutely loved the way it was skinned. We turned that into a hand wash design.

Like the shape of the building or what do you mean?

Yeah, it was like the texture of the building had this, uh, it was in Tokyo and just had this incredible kind of like pillowed, um, texture on the outside of it. And we turned that as inspiration into a bottle.

And you're saying that like really simply, like, oh, we, we saw the texture of a building in Tokyo and then it turned it into a hand wash. Like that doesn't even, like those dots seem really far apart. Can you describe your actual process? So you, you go to Japan. Presumably, right? You're then gonna do what? You just do it. He said whiskey.

He said the texture of the building. That's like when you, when you're like on drugs, you're like, can you feel this building? Wouldn't it be great if that was a bottle of soap?

Okay, so I try to design everything like an object because it's all about creating these like little objects of desire, especially when you're doing it in a category like soap that you have to buy and you're trying to turn into something you want to buy. So I look at everything kind of through this idea if it's an object. So I looked at a building, the building looks like an object and it was easy for me to think about like, oh my God, that pattern, that shape, that texture is amazing. What if that little object was sitting on a shelf at a store versus in the ground as a building? So it's like trying to look for those types of patterns or, um, the original Method bottle was this camping fuel bottle I found in Norway., and I just loved the shoulders on that, that, that bottle. So we translated that into our first, our first ever product, 'cause we couldn't afford a Dusseldorf cider at that point. So I had to find something we could just, uh, riff off of.

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You told me something that I loved. You said, my favorite question when I'm doing these trips is, what if this, but for that? And you said something, you go, you know, I'm trying to take one dot over here and then say, what if that was connected to this dot over here? And you said something cool. You go, the further apart those two things are, the more powerful the potential idea. Like, it's not always going to work, but like, if you just look at your competitors, you say, oh, we could do that too. That, that's not a very powerful idea. But if you take something from a whole different country or industry or like different genre and you bring it to your genre, all of a sudden you have something, right? By the way, an example that just came to mind, I got little kids and the most popular show right now on Netflix is K-pop Demon Hunters. And they basically did like K-pop music, but then like kids cartoon, American kids cartoons, which like wasn't what people were doing before. Like you were doing Cocomelon, it's like a baby singing American nursery rhymes. And right now the most popular songs for like, you know, 5 to 8 year olds, half the lyrics are in Korean, but they love it and it worked. And they, you know, they connected two different dots that seemed far apart, but it created a pretty powerful idea when it works.

I'm not sure what percentage of Welly or Method soap you would say was to just the fact that it was a different colored Band-Aid or a different shaped bottle. But if it's a high percentage, it's sort of insane. That's sort of— that's kind of a— that's kind of a hard— you're like this. It's almost like this seems too easy a little bit, right?

It's— I think I saw a quote with you and Simon Sinek with his— on his podcast. He said, if it's hard, it's probably wrong. And then he said, I know I have a good idea when I can't believe others aren't doing it. And I think that when a lot of entrepreneurs want to grow their companies or start a new company, I know I fall victim to this all the time. I somehow think that there's a correlation between this sounds controversial, but there's a correlation between how hard I work or how hard something is and how much value a customer will get and or how valuable my business can get.

That's a really good insight. That's a really good insight about the, to, you know, just change one thing. Do you think that that applies across software companies or internet companies, or is that just commerce or, or fashion? Like things that are more consumable and that I touch and feel and wear?

I think it applies to everything, whether you're launching, I mean, even if you are, you know, within a B2B business, arguably you're just as distracted as a consumer as you are when you're, you know, I think, I guess a real consumer, and I don't know that world as well, but I would imagine again, just creating simple iterations off of a successful model is way more likely to, to succeed than trying to create something radically new from scratch. Or when something radically new from scratch has started, I mean, think about like in the social space of, you know, MySpace, Friendster, it was really the third that got it right, but it was just kind of simple iterations off of that first model.

I did a call the other day with an AI company that's raised a ton of money and they have this huge valuation, this closer, basically a billion-dollar valuation. And they initially grew because in AI, AI is so hot, there's so much attention that people were willing to try a bunch of things. But now they're like, hey, how do we grow from here? So they're like, hey, really respect your growth ideas. We want to do a growth session. I was like, I don't know, guys, it's not really my You know, like, I don't know if I can solve your problem, but cool, I'll jump on a call. And we get on the call and they start telling me all about this, all the stuff. And I just kept asking the same question and I was like, cool, so why would somebody choose to use you? Like, why? Because most people today are using Tool A, you want them to switch to Tool B. And I was like, awesome. So like, why is Tool B better than Tool A? And then they were like, oh, it's way better. Like in all these other, all these different ways. I was like, awesome. So just like, tell me the one that like is the biggest one that would immediately convince me. And they were like, well, well, there's not really like one. And I was like, cool. Okay. So let's say there's 3. Just tell me one of them first. They were so focused on we're better that they forgot to say we're different. Like, how are you better? In a sense, and like they were trying to throw 4 eggs and I was like, none of those eggs were very convincing and they all just cracked on me. Right. And I wish they had just thrown me one egg that said, listen, for this type of person, here's the problem with the tools that you're currently using and we can, we do it this way instead. And I say, I, you know, that that would resonate. That would be obviously the ideal scenario. So I definitely think this applies to not just consumer products.

I, I think it is ego, but there is something strange. I think that like, it's easy for you to think this because you've done it so many times, but there is something strange where it's like, wait, so if I just change the color of the Band-Aids, it's gonna win. And that's obviously you've done, you've done a lot more than that. But like within my company, I run a— within, within, within my company with my employees, they'll be like, we have to do this, this, this, or this. I'm like, but what if we just like don't do any of that and just make better ads? Or, you know, like you just like just do one thing. But for some reason that's hard to conceptualize that like just a minor change on one thing can create a significant amount of value because you think to yourself, I have to work $1 billion worth of work or put $1 billion worth of effort in order to have a $1 billion idea. But it's oftentimes it's, it's, that's not the reality.

Well, can we do an example here with, you talked a little bit about Method. I want to talk about OLLIE. Maybe it's because I take it every day. Maybe my kids take it. So it's like very like in my life. And you went into the vitamins category. So let's imagine, let's take you back. I don't know what year this was. You walked into the vitamins category. You're looking there and you see, you know, a bunch of sort of nature-made type of looking things. You got maybe Flintstone vitamins, you're still hanging on for dear life. And you saw an opportunity. I just want to give you one prompt, which is he said something on the pre-call that was hilarious, Sam. He goes, I went into the aisle and I saw, okay, cool. Um, you know, first thing I observed, all of them were round. So I thought, okay, I guess we're going to have a square packaging. And I just thought that's literally the funniest, like the funniest way of like, well, I guess that's that then. Everybody's round, so we must be square. If everybody was square, then we would have been round. Like, it's as simple as that.

And there's no focus for groups. There was no— it was like, yeah, okay, they're all, they're all round, so we have no choice but to be square.

That's awesome.

So I, we'd, I'd sold Method. Um, but I was still involved and I, I, first of all, like I had for the first time in my life, I'm, I'm pretty optimistic, happy by default person, but for the first time in my life, I felt a little rudderless. 'cause I was like, I'm an entrepreneur. And suddenly I, I was, did not feel like an entrepreneur anymore. I was working for somebody else. And I was also doing a project for, for Target to create what we called Made to Matter. And the, and the goal was to get them to have credit for having all these natural brands. And so we were looking for these, uh, brands that connected with millennial moms and we couldn't find any, we couldn't find one for the vitamin category. So I just went and literally walked the aisle and first thing I noticed was people stressing out trying to choose something that was healthy for them. Since I think I was studying the aisle, people assumed maybe I knew what I was doing. And so like people would just randomly ask me like, do you know what magnesium's for?

Um, they thought you worked there.

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A box.

But like, you know, the cool thing about it—

a beautiful box though.

Don't get me wrong.

The best box.

Best box. People love this box. So you— but you know, all entrepreneurs, they're typically not like the best in the world at a single thing, but they're like pretty damn good at a couple of unrelated things. So, you know, maybe there's better designers than you or product designers than you, but you also have the entrepreneurial hustle to be like, I'm going to go now stand outside of this natural grocery store and pass out samples, or I'm going to go do a thing that's like I'm going to keep showing up in some way that, like, other people would have given up 5 days ago, but I was still here. And that was the thing that gave me the break. You know, you're top 20% in 2 different things rather than being top 1% or top 0.1% in a single category. I'm just assuming that. Is that true? And are there any stories of the hustle that it took to get, to get into the stores, actually get the momentum?

Do you look at a company like a project? Like, this is my art project and I'm gonna jump from thing to thing to thing. Do you acknowledge, like, or, or are you more of a, are you more operational?

I, I both, I, I'm a project guy at heart. I love the start, middle, and finish of creating something. But also to build great companies, the operating side of it is, is so important. The kind of my kind of core philosophy of building companies is this idea of artisan operators. So I wanna build companies that have incredible imagination, creativity that can innovate, but also run a really good predictable business with great supply chain finance controls. And doing both, like if you think about it, there's so few companies in the world, Apple, Nike, that do both really, really well at scale. And so I try to build teams and cultures that have this idea of being great artists and operators. Um, but I do, you know, at the heart of it, I do love, you know, I, I heard Tim Koogle, who's on my board, say once he referred to Yahoo as a project, you know, which he started as employee number 6, the CEO, scaled it through an IPO and beyond. And when he referred to Yahoo as a project, I thought that was pretty cool.

Do you have like an open, an open check from Unilever or Target and they're just like, whatever you got going on, uh, get after it and come see us in 2 or 3 years and we'll look at the traction and we'll just buy your company?

I wish it was that easy, but no.

I get a great— in his chair with a cat on his, on his arm, right?

I mean, we've had a lot of success. We've had a lot of failures as well. It always, like every Every one of them is hard and, and hard in their own way. I do. So I'm moving over, I joined Greycroft and we're launching a new, uh, Greycroft Consumer Brands Fund. So I'm moving into the, the VC space and kind of what you're talking about too. It's, I realize like my superpower of working with entrepreneurs is to, to, to help infuse them in energy because, you know, I, I've sat in their shoes so many times and understand how hard it is. And so I, I love now not being the, the quarterback on the field, always throwing the passes, but actually being the coach on the sidelines and like coaching these these young founders. And, um, it's, it's just a thrill to do that now.

You told me something kind of amazing. You said that you went on your trend trips, let's say to Tokyo or wherever you're going, and you took some people from Target with you during this kind of like brainstorming phase. But you had this, this system that was kind of like going to wow them. Can you tell this story about how you, the 24-hour cycle that you had that would like wow them?

That's like how South Park makes an episode. Have you guys seen that? Where like Matt and Trey will like write all day and then they'll like send it to their Korean editor editing team and then the next morning they like, oh cool, thanks. And they like run with it.

I saw the podcast version of this, Sam. So we, we do a thing where, uh, whenever we have a guest on, or like, especially when we do them in person, we will bring a gift. And because I was just like, oh, you know, like, this person took time out of their day, they did this. Like, I want this to feel like a great experience. Like, what makes a great experience when you, when you have, when you, when you are with somebody? I think giving a gift is a nice thing, right? Steve Bartlett, who's another podcaster, he, he was on Jimmy Fallon the other day, and Jimmy was talking about how his experience on the show, he goes, you guys do this incredible thing. I did the podcast with you, and when we got up and the episode was done, somebody from your team came and handed me this book. And it's a photo book of printed photos from the podcast that they were just doing like moments earlier. And he was like, I've never seen anything like this. And this guy's been doing TV production with Hollywood stars for, for years. But like, creating, like going the little bit extra to create a wow. And in that case, it's the speed of the turnaround, similar to what you were saying with your the speed of the turnaround. I'm sure a lot of people will come up with mockups or product ideas 2 weeks later at a follow-up meeting, but the emotion's gone and the wow factor is gone at that point. Doing it in the 24-hour cycle is, is that little extra, that entrepreneurial juice that like I think most people wouldn't, wouldn't even think to go. They wouldn't— they would think that's— that's— there's an invisible fence that you can't do that.

Well, it's a little bit of that state of make. And also, I love that line by Steve Jobs of, I trust people, just not in groups. And so it allows you to keep a really small team that's agile, that isn't overthinking things and just living in that state of make. And that's, that's where magic— and I'm, I'm such a huge student of SNL and how Saturday Night Live, their entire creative process, any, any of the former actors on it that's written an autobiography, I've listened to. I think, I think I know it by heart now of like what they do Tuesday morning through. But there is something so powerful about being in that state stay to make. And now that we have between AI and digital tools where we can build and make things in such real time, I think it's even more powerful. And it's also where you see real talent, um, versus people who, who don't know how to actually do anything. They know how to manage. And so it's a place where like builders and doers really thrive and managers kind of just get in the way.

I don't, I don't, I don't know if we should do it right now. We should maybe have a part 2, but it would actually be awesome. I never realized. For like, you know, Sean has an e-com brand and for all the people who are in the, in the more physical space, it would be really fun to see how you use AI to ideate. That would be really interesting. I've never thought about, about, you know, folks making physical products, being able or not being able to use it.

Oh, I'm using— I'm so bad with ChatGPT right now. Like last night, just I use it as a whole creative team and partner. It's, it's absolutely amazing what you can do now.

I want to get to the brainstorm. So we did, we did promise. I basically said outline your method and then let's use the method to try to come up with some ideas, which I think is fun. Living in the state of make on the podcast too, right? Because how many podcasts would actually try that? Okay, so you just outlined your, your process was find a big category, ideally an already big category, so you don't have to educate the consumer about something new they haven't thought about buying. You want to find a sea of sameness where everybody's kind of doing the same thing. You want to look if there's a cultural shift elsewhere that hasn't applied to this category. Ideally, it's something that's overly complicated. They're taking themselves too seriously. Then to come up with your idea, you be a thief. You find unrelated things. You say, what if we did that over here? And you're trying to come up with a single stroke that cuts through the noise. That might be your packaging or your, your colors, your positioning, whatever it may be. This, the square bottle when everybody else is round. Um, and then you gotta hustle to get the momentum going. All right. So I came up with a couple of half— I'm calling these half-baked ideas. I don't think they're— I think one might be good, but the others are, are, uh, are pretty tough. Uh, did you have a chance to come up with some? And if so, let's— we'll go back and forth.

Yes. Yep. I got a couple. Okay.

I'm going to pitch you one and then I want you to, to, you know, give me the, the, the thumbs up, the thumbs down, uh, feel free to be brutally harsh. It makes for better content. All right. All right. I think this, this first idea I think is genuinely good. The other ones I don't really have a lot of faith in, but this one I genuinely believe in. All right. So I think about products that my mom takes that I'm going to take because humans are not, if like the world, you know, feels like it's changing really fast, but biologically we're not changing that fast. Right? And so when I see my parents, I'm seeing a future window into what I might look like or things that they prioritize that I don't really think about today. And my mom was just over at my house, and one thing my mom takes religiously is fiber. She drinks fiber every single day. And I've, you know, I'm in a world where I hear about gut health and microbiome and fancy stuff, but she's like, I need to take this to poop. Okay, so that's what I'm going to do. And I need to take this to poop. You got that? I'm like, yeah, that's simple enough. And so then I looked, I looked at the brands that she's using and I walked through the aisle. So preparing for this podcast, I went to the grocery store and I walked through and I see Metamucil, which to me sounds like a disease. I see Benefiber, which sounds like an Obamacare, you know, spinoff. And I just thought the brand, the leading brands in the fiber category, I think are completely outdated. But I do think that there's something familiar about fiber. So like, I get pitched a lot of products that I don't really know if they'll work or not. But if somebody said, hey, this increases the fiber in your diet, I would personally have pretty high conviction that that's like good for me. I just don't want to take a grandma product, right? Because that's not really— that wouldn't— I would feel unhealthy taking the product. So I want a fiber brand that I feel like I'm— the same way when I take, you know, protein or amino acids or something, something that's like, yeah, I'm at— I'm trying to be peak performance right now. And so I want to reinvent the fiber category. That's the point of view. And I have an idea for how to do that, which is to get out of this kind of grandma product category and do a fresh take on fiber. Sharks, where do you, where's that land with you?

Well, let's start with the space because it's, if it's the wrong category, then there's, it's pointless to go any further. I think he found great white space. Like, I agree. Fiber is the new protein as protein gets more and more saturated in the record, you know, uh, we're, we're seeing huge growth across all, all areas of higher fiber. If you, the place I would look is if you walk Costco and what fiber products are available there, and you're right, it's the legacy brands and nobody's really put a fresh spin on it. You could do it like, where would you steal from? I would steal from juice bars of like that wellness, appetite appeal, like a green juice. Like, what is a green juice? Modern green juice look like as a fiber product. And then you can innovate on flavors around it. And the other thing is it's a really great margin category, right?

We— I have this friend. Do you guys know what Kegel exercises are for men?

I don't know how to do it. You're supposed to, like, squeeze something inside, but it's like—

so, like, women have— women have— women— anyone the few women who listen to this, they know what that is. But for men—

all four of you listen up, this part's for you.

Yeah. For, for the men, people apparently do Kegel exercises so they don't like premature ejaculate basically during sex. I think that's the main thing. But they're— but I have a— I've got a buddy who made a—

that's commitment, by the way.

Well, I've got— yeah, yeah. Like, you must— you really need it. And I have a friend who created a Kegel exercise app for men, and he was like promoting this, and I was like, Man, I see why young or any man wants this. That's great. It sounds like you're doing great for the world, but my honor costs too much. I don't want to be an influencer or a promoter for this. And I wonder if there's like a little bit with fiber where it's like, I don't know if I want to talk about like, you know, pooping more.

So I did think about this and I have two possible angles. We either lean in or we swerve out.

Okay, lean in.

Here's the lean in path. The lean-in path is going to be, look, poop is, yeah, poop, poop, poop. It's kind of could be funny. And so I actually pitched this to our friend who came on the podcast, Hasan Minhaj. I said, Hasan, I got a product for you because I was like, this guy's so funny that like his ad creative would be like, would perform better than anybody else's ad creative. And it's almost like, you know, any celebrity who hawks a product, there's a little bit of a sellout nature. And so it's almost funny to sell out for something that's like so, like so clearly silly and in that way that it might actually work for him. Like he gets a license to like promote the product because it's kind of a silly product. So one, one way is to lean in and actually have a comedian who you kind of have as a face of the brand that actually leans into the fun of it.

You can be the dude wipes. Right.

Leaned into that, to the use case. All right. So then there's the swerve out path, which was you're right. Maybe it's not about, maybe it's not about, maybe the framing is a little more on metabolism or digestion. Like you, you may, can you work, can you use a different word? Cause I don't know anybody that loves metabolism.

Yeah. Like cleaner system.

And I've never heard really of that many products that like talk about like this, this improves your metabolism. Right. And so you get away from the sort of like the, the lower intestine area and you sort of like, you move up towards more like the stomach and you get a little away from the gross stuff and you talk about metabolism. So those are my two ideas.

I love it. And what I would do if I were you, and I would then create two very different concepts around that. So I would do like, like, like dude white potpourri approach that just completely, like, unabashedly claims that, that function. And then your point, then I would go to a really elevated, almost like beauty-like approach.

And then what would you do? Would you test those in some way, or you just look at it and feel which one feels right? Like, what would you do once you come up with two very disparate concepts?

So I, I like to solve the work in the creative. And so I take those two concepts, I'd work with, with a designer and creative team, really bring 'em to life. And then first I'd be like, what one am I most excited about? Back to that idea of energy, like which one am I like personally excited? I would share it with friends and family. 'Cause if they don't like it, why would anybody else? And then if I was really torn, I'd do consumer auditions, not for the consumer to like choose A versus B, but just so I can hear feedback from consumers, like in a qualitative focus group to help kind of guide my decision of which direction I want to go. And then I would also put it in front of retailers. I don't ask the buyers. I think most people go into buyers with the intent of like, I'm going to sell to you. I'm here to prove myself versus I'm here to improve myself. And when I sit down with buyers, I always try to go in to improve and really invite their feedback into the process.

That's interesting. Consumer auditions. I never heard that. That, that sounds good. I like that. That sounds way cooler than focus groups.

All right, rookie. Uh, what do you, what do you got to pitch, Eric? Let's hear it.

Okay. So I'm going to pitch arguably one of the most important institutions in America and arguably one of the lost institutions of America. And that is the American diner. At one point, these beautiful, you know, silver, and it was really the third, you know, the first third place before Starbucks. And in a world where more and more, I think we'll see a backlash to AI of understanding what is real and what is not. We're gonna want these places of human connection and just deep authenticity. And there's also no better place than to really start your day. So my pitch is, I'm gonna go back to SoulCycle again. I would create the SoulCycle of the diner. It would only be open from morning through lunch. So it's one shift, so it's a really good economic model. But when you walk into it, it feels incredibly vibrant. So I would do probably like the entire thing would feel almost like a modern barn of like white beadboard with yellow accents. I would have a standalone grab-and-go juice bar, coffee bar. Uh, but the rest of the restaurant would be how a diner is set up where it's all stool bar seating. But I would have it so it moves throughout, you know, so the counter, there's no separate tables. The counter kind of flows so you can get everybody around the counter for that communal, but also so it's really efficient for the staff too to move through it. And then when you pop in at 7:00 AM, like it's popping, like it's got great, great energy. It's just a place you would wanna start every morning.

Right.

With that level of optimization.

So the seating is kind of like those sushi bars where you, where you, where they wrap around like the, the, you know, those conveyor belt sushi bars. You're sort of stealing from that, but applying that to the American diner.

Yes, there's that. I forgot the name of it, that Parisian restaurant that, where the entire restaurant is built like a counter, but the counter kind of meanders. So you have a full view of the kitchen and it's very communal. It's in and out. You don't have to seat anybody. And it's also about creating this amazing energy. So what I would want to do is take on Denny's and IHOP with that model.

That's awesome.

I have a, since we're in a creative brainstorm here, I got a what if for you. I got a how might we for you. You know what I mean? I feel like I need, I feel like I need a hacky sack or something creative with me here. But okay, so in mobile gaming, I tried to make a mobile game once. And so before I even made the game, I went and talked to a couple guys who made really popular mobile games. And I sat down and I showed them a prototype and they go, Oh dude, you have a TTF problem. And I was like, I don't know if that's an STD. I don't know what you're talking about, but I don't want a TTF problem. But I'm sure, I'm absolutely certain I have one based on the way you just, he was like disgusted with my—

Or you're like, uh, oh thanks. Like I worked really hard.

You're like, how am I? You're like, what's my TTS? Like, never. The fun never came.

There was no fun. And he was showing me like, you know, if you open up like Mario is one of the classic examples of this, like if you start Mario, first level. There's no tutorial, there's no nothing. Like, Mario starts and a small Goomba starts walking towards you, and the easiest enemy to defeat. And you jump on his head, you get a satisfying, like, yeah, I squashed that bug. And then the next thing you do is there's a brick above your head, you jump up, you punch it, and you get a coin. You jump up, you punch the next one, you think it's a coin. No, a mushroom comes out. You're like, oh my God, do I want this? And you go get it and you grow. And so in the first 15 seconds of Mario, you have learned all the controls, you've defeated an enemy, You've gotten money and you grew bigger and stronger. And it's like the greatest first 15 seconds of your life. So I have an idea for you, 'cause I went to a diner this weekend.

Where, hold on, can we use like that time, time to fun? Like that's a new metric I'm gonna use for everything now. Whether you're like, and it's like getting a restaurant, airline, my marriage, like, honey, your time to fun is off right now.

Yeah, exactly.

But it's like, yeah, removing all the friction to get to that experience. Time to fun. Yeah.

Okay. Can I front load a little bit of the fun? Right? I'm not going to give you all of it, but can I get a piece of it here now? Because I need to, you know, hook you. And so I thought— I went to a diner this weekend, and from the time we got there and we were all excited to get there and my kids wanted pancakes and all this good stuff, to the time we actually had anything fun, like any food or drink on the table, was like 22 minutes. And I get it, they were totally busy. But I wonder if there's some way where right when you walk in, there's something. Because the right after the diner, we went to Costco. And right when we walked in, there was like a Costco sample person and my kids got something and they were like, hey, what is this place? We like this place. Uh, because they instantly got like a cracker when they walked in. And so I just wonder if with the diner you could do one thing, which is like eliminate the wait and bring that TTF down, which is what we want. We want low TTF.

I love that. Okay. So what I think is like, you know, like Dunkin' Donuts Munchkins, we do like a really great, like, gourmet cinnamon munchkin. So when you walk in, like, it's almost like a sample. You grab a munchkin as you walk in to go sit down. So you get that first, like, little taste.

Do they have a smell too? Because that would be nice. Double— to get two senses.

But you could do a smoothie shot next to it. So it's a tray of smoothie shots and munchkins. So it gives you that little— and also takes the edge off your customers while they're waiting as well. So the wait time will never feel as long.

Two other little culinary Steals, maybe.

Okay.

One other steal we could do. Five Guys, they have the barrel of peanuts, which I think is kind of what you're talking about, right? You go in and there's just free peanuts you could scoop. Again, I love that. Who doesn't love that? The other thing, my first business was a sushi restaurant and in a sushi, a traditional sushi restaurant. When you walk through the door, the entire kitchen staff, they don't turn to you, but they hear the door chime go and they go, irasshii! Like the whole, like the whole crew. Is like, oh, wassup? It's basically like the Japanese what's up? And it basically means like a customer is here, like, hey, like pay attention or whatever, or welcome. I don't even know what irasshaimase means, but like, that's what they all say. I think you could also like kind of if you talk about SoulCycle, I think there's a way to make the experience of the customer interesting when you walk in. Like, I just wonder what ritual we could have when somebody walks through the door that would be welcoming and unique and interesting as well.

We're just such neanderthals. Like, you know, we're going to talk about like Aristotle and the philosophy, philosophy of life and all this stuff. And it turns out you just got to throw a bunch of nuts at my face when I walk in to get a burger.

Like, dude, I love a good high five.

Yeah. You just got to say what's up in Japanese. I'm like, I'm good.

I mean, you can picture the playlist in this place, right? Of like the best morning music. And there's something of like they hit something and like a good morning, good morning comes over as people walk, as each time somebody walks in the door. Right. I love that. Time. I'm so fascinated with time to fun now. I think about like vacations, like going skiing. Time to fun could be really low. You're schlepping to get to the hill.

It sucks.

Yeah. But everything now I'm going to measure in TTF.

Well, like, you know, you arrive in Hawaii and they give you the lei right when you get out the door, right? Like a hotel check-in process, right? So that normally the fun is when you get to maybe your room. In Hawaii, as soon as you get out of the door, lei, blue drink. Fun, instant. Do you just—

Sean, do you just have like a notepad of like all load— like, do you have a ranking of load?

He said travel, so it just, you know what I mean?

Creative. The arrival. There's— my boyfriend always say there's nothing better than arrival drinks. Yeah, like that's the best moment of a vacation.

Would you ever get into a non— I mean, you've done the same category forever. Would you ever get into a, uh, a restaurant business or something that's not what you've done?

Well, I just tried building a retail business and, um, was, I, I think what we built was amazing and I was super proud of it and it was working with the consumer. It was just impossible to fund in this, uh, in this current capital cycle. So what I tried to do is reinvent the American jewelry store. And my theory was I always wanted to do retail record, you know, geek out on every expression from the playlist to the scents, which we did. And even the way you're greeted. Um, and I, I'm a huge, you know, student of like Danny Meyer and the way he thinks about it at each restaurant, like 15 seconds, right? To be greeted and, and even the service manual of where does the salt and pepper go and how do you think every, every detail through. But when you walk into a jewelry store, I found it to be like the most intimidating experience. Like you never felt like you belonged there. You had to like ask for the world's smallest price tag to be turned over, and then you have to give a reaction to something you thought was $5,000, but it's actually $50,000. And the insight there was women self-purchasing is driving growth in fine jewelry, but nobody was really creating an experience for them. So we created this brand called Cast. Um, we opened up 3 stores in the Bay Area and I wanted like, you know, Willy Wonka pure imagination to play in a consumer's head when they walked in and, and feel like a kid in a candy store again. Um, but again, get being able to sign leases, uh, build out stores, omnichannel. We had incredible partnership with Nordstrom who put capital in the business, but it was so capital intensive that like a path to profitability. And then raising capital in this market was just incredibly, incredibly difficult. So that's where those, one of those situations you're like, all right, I'm sitting at the wrong, Tony Hsieh would say sometimes you gotta move poker tables and just, I'm at the wrong table. And you know, gold pricing was spiking, diamond pricing was crashing. You couldn't sign a lease in these A-class 'cause LVMH had eat up so much of the, these leases. So I realized like it was just back to like, if it's hard, it's wrong. Um, it was a long business.

How long did you work on Yalt until you were like, all right, it's, it's, it's dead?

I worked on it from launch to it's dead, uh, 3, 3 to 4 years.

Oh, a lot.

Um, a lot. Yeah. No, we worked, we worked out hard at it. It was a fun business, like designing jewelry and our team, you know, incredible culture. Our team, Issa Rae was part of it. And, uh, we were on the White Lotus Season 2. Um, the cast was wearing our product. We had a, you know, we had a profound mark on the industry in a very short amount of time, but it just was a business that nobody wants to put capital into, unfortunately.

And there's never been really great access. It's not like the easiest pitch at the moment. Like, okay, so how are you an AI company? Yeah, I mean, it's not like very appealing.

Sam, you know, he has like great phrases. He had one on this when he was telling about the jewelry shop. He goes, it was like a plane made of gold. Like, I love, like, it was a great idea, but it was like a plane made of gold. You couldn't, it couldn't get liftoff. It couldn't get off the ground.

It was too heavy. And then how fast does he went down the runway? Like, just could not get airborne. And, but if you look at it, it's Cast Jewelry, our store. I mean, I was super proud of what we built, but I picked a, I picked the wrong space to try to innovate in.

All right, let's take a quick break because I got to tell you a story. Let me tell you about the first time I tried to run payroll for my team. I was using a traditional bank and you know the type. It's got a janky interface. It's built like a 2002 tax form and it was open only during business hours. And I hit send. And it froze. They flagged the transaction, they locked my account, they put me on hold for 45 minutes, and then they told me I gotta visit my local branch. And that was the day I started looking for a new banking solution. Uh, after asking a few founders what they were using, I found out about Mercury. And so now my payroll is 2 clicks. I can wire money, I can pay invoices, I can reimburse the team all from one clean dashboard. That's why I use it for all of my companies. And so do 200,000 other startup founders. And so if you're looking to level up your banking, head to mercury.com and apply in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Columbine, and Evolve Bank and Trust, members FDIC.

Do you want to tell them more of your horrible ideas or? Yeah.

Okay. I got it. I got another one here. You think I had one bad idea? I'm a volume guy.

No, your first one is a great idea. I would invest. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. So now here's, it's about to fall off a cliff here.

Okay.

So, uh, I walked through the grocery store looking for that sea of sameness and honestly, like, You know, shout out to the grocery store. There's, there wasn't a whole lot of categories that I saw. One that stood out to me because I'm looking for everyday products. I'm looking for repeat purchase. I'm looking for everybody buys this, but I'm looking for something where there's not a brand. I don't have a favorite brand. I don't have even like, I don't even, couldn't even tell you the name of 4 of the brands in the category. That's kind of what I was looking for. So I'd like you to, like to introduce you to my, uh, company, White Label Chicken LLC. And White Label Chicken LLC is getting into the chicken game. And what we're going to do is we're going to white label someone else's chicken. So we're going to take chicken from somebody else. We're not going to get into farming, but we're going to put our own brand on it because they're like, Sam, what's your top 3 favorite chicken brands?

I don't know.

Don't know. Eric, you got a favorite chicken brand?

We're talking about like packaged chicken.

Packaged chicken.

Like grocery store.

You're going to go buy like breast meat or whatever. It's like $9 for the little mini tray.

Yeah, that's a real, that's a weird, inspiring name.

Well, we're not getting the front-facing brand is not White Label Chicken. It's a, it's a working title. And so we're White Label Chicken LLC. And so then I don't even know the angle yet. I, all I knew was I can't believe there's no like, like there's no Oatly for chicken. No, you know what I mean? Like there's, there's no, there's no, I can't believe there's just not a favorite, like not like distinct chicken brands that stand for something and mean something like whether it's Whether it's about the flavor or it's preseason, whether it's about like, this is man's chicken and like, you're going to get your protein from this meal. Like, this is what we do. We give you a little extra. I don't know what it is, but I just kind of saw that white space and I wanted to open the floor to you gentlemen to help me kind of workshop this.

Point. This is where it goes like familiar and, uh, novel. So this is very familiar. So how do you add novelty? It's interesting. You're right. As soon as it gets like put in a dinosaur shape and breadcrumbs around it, it becomes, you know, dino sh— like, right. It becomes dino nuggets, becomes incredibly well branded, or it gets served at a restaurant as a sandwich, Chick-fil-A. But the chicken itself, I mean, it was fought— like, Foster Farms did a pretty good job of this, um, on Cal— out in California, but it was really not the product. It was just their advertising was so good. Right. That Goodyear did years ago. Okay. So I think you gotta go back. I would sell, I would turn it into an origin story. I wouldn't sell the chicken. I would sell the farm. And I would, that sounds so smart, right? This farm design.

That just sounds cool.

I wish I had said that. Yeah. As if Don Draper wore hoodies.

Yeah. Don't sell the chicken. Sell the farm, baby. I might say that to my wife later today in any context.

Eric, do you have like a pack of cigs that you could light up right now?

Because if you took out a cigarette right now, you would be the coolest man I've ever met in my life.

Put your feet up, smoke a cig, and tell me about selling the farm, not the chicken.

Because the— because we don't want to think about the chicken because we murdered it, right? We want to think that the chicken had a good life on this farm before it was killed, right? That's going to make us feel good about the quality of the chicken. It's going to make us feel good about the chicken's short life. And so I would build the whole brand around this heaven, this heavenly farm for chickens.

What if we create an Instagram account? We actually pour all our energy into the Instagram account of this incredibly aesthetic farm. And it's like Truman Show. It's just totally a set. Uh, cause again, we're White Label Chicken LLC. So I'm starting with inauthenticity here, but like, I'm just thinking, what if we— what if you started with the social and you just made everybody's favorite farm? And then from there you're like, of course, if you're going to buy chicken, you'd buy it from your favorite farm.

Dude, I have a— I've got a friend that exited a, a multibillion-dollar consumer brand. And I was like, yeah, so he's—

he thinks you're his best friend, but he's just a friend.

Yeah, he might— he might use the A-word, acquaintance. And I use, you know, close friend. Yeah, close friend. Yeah, we're a little bit different. But we— he was like telling me this idea for his new business and presumably he's very smart because of his previous success. But he was like, do you know what free range means? Like free range chicken? And I was like, I guess that means they're running around a farm. And he was like, no, the definition is like they've got like a cage the size of like 5 by 5. It was— I forget the exact definition, but it was like shockingly small. And he's working on this thing where he's putting RFID— is it called RFID tags? Is that what it's called? Uh, yes. The, the, is that what it is? He was putting them in cows and in chickens. And as they are scanned, so the whole farm has like the, the, um, technology to see how far away they're running. And as they go to the kill, you know, the kill bin or whatever they got to go to, their, their RFID thing is scanned. And so a consumer can, on his chickens, and this is a real thing that he's, he already built, you can see how, like what radius they were running around. This was his whole premise is that people, which it kind of, that could maybe, that actually might be interesting, but you could actually see, is this truly free-range chicken or were they just like in a small pen where they were just in their own feces? Like, you know, like, cause there's like a correlation between how, how like healthy the farm was and how they actually followed the rules.

And I think to build on that too, I always say the framework of like, you gotta find that intersection of altruism and narcissism. So the case of Method, you bought it for very narcissist reasons. You love the fragrance, you love the design of it, but the altruism, it's good for me, good for the planet, brought you coming back. And if you can deliver on both, I think is real power. We try to do that in all of our brands. So in the case of our chicken farm here, we need to sell the narcissism that this is the most organic, good for you, great tasting chicken. But the altruism that you can feel good that this chicken, while they had a short life, it had a really good life.

And I think it was a great 6 weeks.

Yeah. You know, it's almost like you, you, you steal from children's books. So you, you, you do the whole branding. Like it's a children's book of this magical farm. And even like you make the farmers who work there kind of, you know, part of the overall like iconography, the brand, and you make them heroes in it as well.

Old MacDonald had a farm. It's called Bingo Chicken.

Is Old McDonald's available? Check it. Old McDonald's would be great. Old McDonald's, if that's available. Does anybody own that?

I think because McDonald's, you'd have to be like old, you know, McDonald's. You have to like do something weird with the spelling. Do you guys ever buy these eggs?

Yeah, all the time.

Yes.

So like, yeah, they're in my fridge right now.

This is like what you're talking about of like the sea of sameness, or like the commodities that they made. Like, look at the bottom here. Medium brown egg is literally the name of the product. It's like a transparent medical packaging, like sterile packaging. And you just see these eggs and then this Vital Farms thing on top because they literally draw like flowers and like, you know, hay or whatever on the thing. I'm like, oh, farm.

Good.

Farm to table. I'm doing good.

Now that he says see a sameness, I'm like, oh, I do this all the time. Like the other day I bought yogurt the other day because instead of Greek yogurt, this yogurt was Icelandic. Right. Like, I don't know.

I don't know what that means, but I'm in.

Yeah.

Yeah. I was like, for some reason it's all Greek and this is from Iceland.

And do you have a theory on naming? Because like you've named your products extremely well. Yes. How do you come up with names?

So the holy grail of naming is one word, four letters, if you could do it. That'll really, really hard. Naming a brand is the most difficult part of a startup because everything is taken.

Do you use like an agency? Do you just sit there and think?

You're like ripping through this story and it's like insight, insight, insight. And like you, you, you make it, you, you have what I call the knowledge, like the curse of knowledge, which is you think that this is, you're like, oh yeah, I just did this. And then I just did that.

Like, you didn't even tell us that. And that was so interesting. And what if we hadn't asked the question? We wouldn't have known that. Like how many more of those you got? Uh, 'cause like you're like, oh, well I just do this. Of course, as one does. You pick a jump-off word and then you, I was like, oh, I don't do anything like that.

I just look things up online. But like, you know, someone's a master when they, when they're fluid, they're fluid with this. And, and, and it's incredibly clear when you describe the simplest things that you are a master.

What was the jumping-off word for, uh, for Welly?

So for Welly was, uh, I wanted something about healthcare. And so we actually came up with Nightingale. So Nightingale, 'cause of the idea of like Nightingale is like, she is like this icon. And it's all about caring for you. And, uh, uh, Anthony Sperduti and Partners and Spade came up with Wellie, and I was like, you're like, eh, done. Most every time I've never, every name, like Cast we came up with for jewelry for, again, each time we, I, I saw the name, it was like no debate. It was like, that is it. And then it's all hands on how do we secure this name.

Amazing. Do you have, uh, another idea?

One of my favorite, foods, and I watch my kids go through it, is packaged cheese. So I think Kraft Singles, mozzarella sticks. I have never seen anybody do anything really. So there's this big delta in cheese too. You go to like the artisanal cheese, uh, counter, right? It is, it's art form. And we have this place, we live on Shelter Island in the summer, and this guy Andrew runs the Cheese Wagon. It's literally a wagon. And my wife and I will go there every few days just 'cause we'll sit there and taste the cheese with him. And it's like wine, he just romances it. So the, the gap is, if you look at all the categories that have, have taken a more artisanal approach, and then you go shop packaged cheese, it's the same thing. It's cheddar, it's ch— like mozzarella. It has not changed. And I love, my favorite packaging form in the world are those Babybels. Right? In the wax, like little Pac-Mans that you split apart. So my idea is I want to create a line of gourmet cheeses in the, you know, in the prepackage in those Babybel wax forms, but do really like take what they've started and go super gourmet with different flavor profiles in it and make that packaging form. I'd make it slightly bigger too, different colors. Um, but I would, I would, uh, build a whole line of gourmet cheeses around it. And if anybody wants to do this, please reach out to me.

Sorry, this is this for, you say it's for kids or it's not for kids? You're just saying I want to do the gourmet cheeses, but in the, in the, in the, this new packaging and in that aisle.

Yes.

Like my, my boys love the Babybels. I want to do that for adults again, taking something that's a kid product, but then elevate it as an adult product. And there's just something so fun about opening up that little wax. It's very satisfying.

Sam, you're a man-child. Where does this land with you?

Dude, I had 3 of these. So I do what I do, what I call redneck fitness food. So last night I just had 3 Babybells for dinner and I wrapped it in salami and just piled them in my mouth. I call it Balls of Fun.

And so time defunds really fast on that one.

Who are you telling this name to?

What's that? You know, Sam's mouth surprise. I don't know. We're still workshopping it. I'm not sure yet. Uh, but you could even squirt a little mustard at this, at this ball. Uh, but yeah, this is great. I love those cheeses and I think they only make Gouda and like the normal one.

What is it about that packaging? Does it actually, cause it's kind of softer inside, right? Is it, is that because of the type of cheese or does the packaging do that?

Well, I think it's already like that, but you could just like grab it. It's just like I'll grab them and I'll literally put it in my pocket and like as I'm walking, I'll eat it.

Oh, like grab and go cheese.

Okay, gotcha.

And it's a single serve. It's a single serve. So like it's like super easy. But yeah, it's definitely a convenience thing, not necessarily a it's better tasting thing.

But I think there's something very primal too about opening it. So it feels natural.

It's very relieving.

Pulling back the wax, like opening an orange, like you feel like a little monkey just getting into your snack. So it's in a time to fun on that is 3 seconds.

Yeah, it's oddly, it's oddly satisfying whenever I peel back that wax. And then when you peel back the wax, Sean, I don't know if you've ever done it, the two things open up and like the top part doesn't fall off the bottom part of the wrapper. Yeah.

You ever seen those?

Have you? Yeah. It's like an oyster. Have you guys seen those new Coke bottles where you twist the cap off and then it peels back and the cap like stays on the bottle?

Oh no, I haven't seen that.

Oh man. It's kind of like that. I love that.

Just delightful.

I was going to say, you can fully recycle the bottle then because the caps usually don't get recycled.

Now we might be breaking the laws of physics here, but one of the most satisfying food experiences in the world is cracking the top of a Coke can. The sound and the, like, literally it's like an iconic sound of the tab. Um, I wonder if there's a way to like create some sound or satisfying, uh, crack here, but, but I, I think I'm, I think I'm making a good idea bad here.

You've over-innovated it. Yeah.

One iteration. Yeah. It just. Blue Bell or Babybel, whatever it's called, but fancy cheese.

and now your mother-in-law is the man of the house.

Well, I think she already was, and I just was in denial for a period of time. But I too have now bent the knee like the tech CEOs, like sucking up to Donald Trump, basically. Like, that's me now, where I'm like, yes, mother.

Love mother.

Can we get more gold in this room? Love it. Um, you know, so, so basically my cheese idea is basically instead of just slices of cheese, you include a stamper. And the stamper is like shapes that they can stamp the cheese into so they can play like Play-Doh, stealing from Play-Doh. And you basically get the Play-Doh shape cutters, but you apply it to cheese and you sell it together as a little pack, basically. I think my kids would love that.

I don't know how scalable that is. You gotta add—

that's the problem. I don't know how you're gonna—

what about my mother-in-law? Did that come through? Was the audio good on that?

When, when, when, slash, when we sell 10 million versions of this, I, I don't know if we can afford The operations.

That's—

I agree with the insight of change your presentation. I don't know if I agree with the application of it there.

Turning it into a toy. So like giving them a little thing that they can do to the food. I like that idea.

That I like as well. Again, it's like it could be a durable— it's to your point of like, how do you make it a consumable so it's an annuity so people keep buying it?

See, he's in the cheese, but he's a competitor now, so he doesn't like this idea because he's like, all about his like artisanal cheese. This is—

I'm going to do this.

Babybel, look out. His cheese comes with a little stamper and he's like, yeah, the haters said it wasn't scalable.

Um, did Shaw just pitch, uh, uh, Kraft singles that come with a cookie cutter?

Exactly.

I think he overcomplicated it. I think The story is key to the understanding of the idea. In fact, the label is going to include the entire story that I said in verbatim in size 8 font.

Instead of buying the chicken to support the chicken, you know, or like the good— a good farm, we're going to be supporting Sean to stick it to his mother-in-law.

What happened to the safe space where there's no bad ideas? You're like, watch what I do if you bring a weak, wimpy idea in here. Let me give it a wedgie. So I want to leave you with a big picture question. You've, you've obviously done it. You've proven yourself. So that's good. You've made money doing what you have. You know, you're financially, you know, secure and free and all that. What is like the end of the story for you? Like, what are you trying to do? Do you have somebody in mind, like a hero? You're like, oh, I kind of want to be like them. Do you think like 30 years down the road, like, I want to have done X, Y, Z? Do you not think about that at all? Like, how do you think about your life? Because like, you could just keep doing this. Sounds fun. Is there a big picture?

Yeah, no, I'm a planner, so there definitely is a big, a big picture for me. I, at the heart of it, I love building and creating, and if I wasn't doing that, I think I'd be really miserable. But what I don't want to do anymore is, you know, be a CEO.

Were you the CEO before?

I've been CEO of my previous companies, yes. And I love like being in it with a team and building it every day. Uh, and in the trenches with your team and helping steer the ship. Like, I, I absolutely love that as well, but I'm at the stage of my career that, you know, the pressures of raising capital and being able to answer to that capital, I want to be able to work, you know, going back to projects, work across more things. So I'm splitting my time between, you know, continuing to incubate new ideas, but then I hire CEO and team and I work alongside that team. And then moving over to joining Greycroft to, to launch this consumer brands fund. Really now being able to, you know, be more of a coach and help work with entrepreneurs.

We've had a bunch of people come on here with that, the dream to have your cake and eat it too. It's like, I want to be part of the idea and like the start, but then like the grind for 10 years, like I really want an operator to do that part. And some people have come on here and told us how they do that well. So other people have been like, I don't know how to— I can't incept my idea and my energy into somebody else. That's a really hard transfer to do. Do you have like a talent strat? Like how do you, how do you get the CEO to then like run your thing? Do you have a strategy around that or is it?

You're amazing. You know, every once in a while we have episodes that we're like, we have to have a part 2 and sometimes a part 3 and a part 4, and hopefully that will be the case with you.

No, let's do it. I would love to. And I feel the same. I'm walking away on Monday morning here with more energy. Um, so I really appreciate it. And it's been such a fun conversation and if anybody loves our idea, ideas out there and wants to pursue it, please, uh, please reach out.

Where? The ericrhine.com, and then there's like a contact button. Is that right?

Yeah, you could go to, uh, um, gobstop.com. G-O-B-S-T-O-P.com. It's for this idea that I try to build these everlasting gobstoppers and brands that continue to be able to refresh themselves and stay on trend. And like, you try to bake that into the, into the center when you create something new.

You're a ridiculous human being. You're awesome. Like, you have, like, silly, crazy ideas, and yet you've been able to make potentially hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars off it. I mean, that's the dream. So thank you so much. You're the best.

You guys are great. Thanks for a lovely conversation. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel. Travel never looking back.

This episode is brought to you by HubSpot Media. They have a cool new podcast that's for AI called The Next Wave. It's by Matt Wolfe and Nathan Lanz, and they're basically talking about all the new tools that are coming out, how the landscape is changing, what's going on with AI tech. So if you want to be up to date on AI tech, it's a cool podcast you could check out. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts.