Show notes as a general guide below. Somewhat in order and not written in perfect grammar because we want you to actually listen to the show!

Topics Discussed:

• Cloe Breena’s Musical Opening
• “Beautiful Soul” Performance
• Benza Maman’s Introduction and Duet
• “Walk Each Other Home” Performance
• Introduction to “Generation C”
• Pillars of Conscious Capitalism
• Elevating Workplaces and Self
• Jenna Roth’s Breathwork Session
• Panelist Introductions
• Early Consumer Insights in CPG
• Wellness Market Trends
• Personal Wellness in Business
• Fun and Balance in Brand Building
• Pivotal Growth Decisions
• Sustainable Scaling and Structure
• KPIs and Planning for Growth
• Managing Cash Flow and Inventory
• Marketing Strategies and Advocacy
• Financial Pitfalls and Sophistication
• Culture as a Financial Asset
• Assessing Brand Culture
• Internal Rituals and Leadership
• Stakeholder Engagement and Feedback
• AI and People-First Approach
• Traits of Conscious Leaders
• Audience Q&A: Retention
• Audience Q&A: Choosing Investors

Connect with Ramya on Instagram

Connect with Hannah on Instagram

Connect with Susan on Instagram

Connect with Cloe on Instagram

Connect with Benza on Instagram

Connect with Jenna on Instagram

Connect with Sebastian on Instagram

SebastianNaum.com

Below is a transcript of the video podcast created by Seb’s Robot buddy, Zekton. He tends to make mistakes so please forgive him if you find errors or some funky sounding sentences. For the real deal, watch the video or click on your favorite audio Podcast platform above! Enjoy!

Benza 00:00:03  So I’d like to welcome to the stage Cloe Brina, who will be starting off this event with an amazing original song that she wrote. So please give it up for Cloe. I think your mic is not on yet. Let’s fix that. where’s our magical sound man? There he is. Guitar. Sounding good.

Cloe 00:00:39  Hello, hello.

Benza 00:00:41  So if we can quiet down the conversation, please. It’s an acoustic performance by Cloe. Brina. You don’t want to miss it.

Cloe 00:00:49  Thank you. Benza. Yeah. Thank you all for having me. It’s an honor to be here. Wow. So many beautiful faces. I just want to invite everyone to close your eyes for a moment. And just take a deep breath into your body. Just come to a place of softness and stillness. I know there’s a lot happening in the room. Maybe you were just meeting some exciting people. Maybe you’re feeling nervous. Maybe you’re feeling just happy and excited to be here. But I treat my songs and my performances as little ceremonies.

Cloe 00:01:50  And this song for you all is a moment of peace. So I invite you to keep your eyes closed throughout the song, if that’s what feels most peaceful for you. Just take this as a moment of rest, a moment to tune in to what you might be needing right now. I’m going to invite you to take a deep breath and make a sound with me. Oh. Yeah. Okay. Take another deep breath in and make a sound that encapsulates the way you’re feeling right now. Ooh.

Cloe 00:02:47  Ooh ooh.

Cloe 00:02:51  Ooh. You. Know? Oh, your smile is, like, the best thing I could see. Yeah. You’re lying. It means everything to me. Yeah. You’re so lovely. In every single way. Even when you let your darkness out. I still won’t go away. And I know you may not see. And I know you started Again that you’re a beautiful soul. Divine product of creation. You’re so wonderfully full. Can you feel what I am saying? When I tell you how special you are.

Cloe 00:04:24  I’m like. Oh, oh. I wanna hug you. Okay? You can hug someone. You can ask your neighbor if they would feel comfortable with you hugging them. Yeah. Look at all the love. I want to hug you And hold your little face right in my hands and tell you if it’s not quite going how you planned it. Oh. That you’re feeling a little scared? Yeah. I don’t have all the answers. But I’ll show you that I care about your beautiful soul. Divine pride of creation. You’re so wonderful. Oh, can you feel what I am saying when I tell you how special you are? And my love. I. Start. Out. Your song. And we are all. Like a child. Like a little tough. Yeah. You’re special. Yeah you are. Don’t you forget it. Don’t you forget it. And I’ll sing you this song every day until you get it. You’re a beautiful soul. Divine product of creation. Your soul under force. Can you feel what I am saying? When I tell you how special you are.

Cloe 00:07:09  In my life. I hope you can sing it with me if you want. Your song. I’m. Your son. I’m. Your star. I’m your star. Ooh hoo! Who’s. Your star. Thank you. You’re all beautiful stars in the galaxy of love.

Benza 00:08:03  Thank you. Cloe. So I’ll ask some of, some of you in the back. Might want to come fill out some more of the seats. We got some awkwardly spaced ones in the front. Perfect for meeting some new friends. And we’ll do another song here in just a second. Okay. So as soon as I hit the button, it’s going to start. So, My name is Ben Zimmerman, Zimmermann. And this is an original song that I wrote that Cloe was kind enough to sing on with me, and I’m very excited to share it with all of you. So I invite you to just look within for this one.

Cloe 00:09:24  We’re here to walk each other home. We’re here to walk each other home. Were you to walk each other home?

Cloe 00:09:54  Oh.

Cloe 00:09:59  We’re here to walk each other home.

Cloe 00:10:11  Take my hand. I’ll walk you home. Take someone’s hand if you want to.

Cloe 00:10:22  Take my hand. I’ll walk you home. Take my hand. I’ll walk you home. I. Take my hand. I’ll walk you home. Take my hand. I’ll walk you. Oh. We’re here to walk each other home. I’ll walk you. We’re here. I’ll walk each other home. Take my. Where he and I walk each other. Are. You working a walk each other home? Where you don’t walk each other.

Benza 00:12:20  Thank you so much. Cloe is performing on Friday. If you want to, just invite people to your show.

Cloe 00:12:31  I have a show called The Sacred Spaceship. It’s going to be a fully immersive and interactive concert experience that brings you to your heart, that brings you into your voice. That’ll be like group singing and inner child’s play and dancing, and it’s going to be very freeing. So come talk to me after if you’re interested at the Zula den.

Benza 00:12:53  Yeah. Perfect. And again, my name is Ben Zimmerman. You can find me on Spotify. You can find Cloe there. And thank you so much.

Seb 00:13:04  Thank you. Benza. Thank you. Let’s give another round of applause to musicians. That was lovely. How many of you all have heard of generation C? That’s C, not Gen Z, not a lot of us. So this is actually a term in the in the medical field that’s starting to be used a lot. And it stands for the cancer generation. So it’s actually referred to as this huge generation of people that are getting cancer, particularly under the age of 50. And also the amount of people that are going to be cancer patients in the future from this generation. So it’s quite alarming. It’s kind of a gnarly thing that this is even a term, right. And I bring this up because we’re here at a wellness event at better for you CPG event with conscious capitalism. A lot of you most likely care about wellness. You most likely care about the foods that you eat.

Seb 00:14:08  And the whole Gen Z thing is mostly due to processed foods, bad lifestyle, stress, and all those kinds of things. Now, you most likely live in Los Angeles or Southern California. So you really do most likely care about wellness. You’re here tonight. Now, the fact that wellness is actually becoming mainstream right now, wellness is really just. It’s really like a lot of brands are having better for your products. Wellness practices. Yoga is very mainstream all around the country. Meditation is becoming mainstream. But just because something is mainstream doesn’t mean that the majority of people are taking care of their bodies or caring about the foods that they eat, right? It’s the same thing with companies and businesses. So just because there are more and more better for you, CPG brands and better products doesn’t mean that the majority of products out there and the majority of companies are putting out truly better and cleaner products. It doesn’t mean that just because it’s mainstream, that the majority of businesses have conscious leadership, or that they care about their stakeholders.

Seb 00:15:32  Well, mainstream excuse me, doesn’t mean that the majority of businesses don’t have a conscious culture. And so these pillars that I just talked about, these are the pillars of conscious capitalism, conscious leadership, stakeholder orientation, a higher purpose other than just making money and conscious culture. The four pillars of conscious capitalism. And I like to add in a fifth one, I think it’s really important to add in fun into the workplace. So these things, yeah, these things, they really go for everybody. It’s not just for leaders. It’s not just for CEOs. It’s not just for entrepreneurs, it’s for C levels. It’s for employees of all levels. Because when we can incorporate these pillars of conscious capitalism into our businesses, we can really elevate our workplaces. And when we elevate our workplaces, we create work environments that people just straight up want to work for, right? You want to have a job that you want to show up for and you’re excited for because it has a greater mission, because it’s got a conscious leader, because it’s got great culture.

Seb 00:16:42  And when you build a company where people really want to show up, what you’re doing is you’re increasing trust and fulfillment. And when people feel trust and they feel fulfilled, it increases creativity and productivity and it lowers turnover. So I really think it’s our mission to elevate capitalism, to elevate our workplaces. And in order to elevate capitalism in our workplaces and our in our businesses, we must elevate ourselves. And when we elevate ourselves and elevate our businesses, I think that’s truly the formula for creating impact at scale and truly make the world a better place. So tonight, when we have this amazing panel, I want you to think about what is that one nugget that I’m going to take away tonight from this panel, from a conversation I have with somebody from with one of the brands that I talked to from a connection I create. What is that one nugget that I’m going to take away tonight that’s going to help me elevate myself and elevate my business so that I can truly be part of creating a better world.

Seb 00:17:57  So I’m going to go ahead and invite our panel up here. Let’s get some chairs. And I’m going to invite my dear friend Jenna Roth, who’s going to take us through a short little breath exercise that will encompass a bit of what we’re talking about today here.

Jenna 00:18:22  Right here. Okay.

Jenna 00:18:28  All right. Here, here. Yeah. Doesn’t matter. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I need my hands for this. Can you guys hear me without the microphone? Oh. Never mind. Okay. We’re going. Mike. I might need you to hold the microphone at some point like you did last time. Okay. Hi, everyone. My name is Jenna. Thank you so much for being here. And I’m so excited to be guiding you through just a short little ten minute breathwork exercise. Is that anyone’s first time ever doing breathwork? Hell, yeah. Okay, cool. Well, this one will be super simple.

Jenna 00:19:08  Okay, here we go.

Jenna 00:19:10  This one will be super simple. It’s going to be a four part breath.

Jenna 00:19:14  Part one and four are energizing and activating. Parts two and three in the middle are very soothing and relaxing. When you put them together, it creates a breath that is balanced. So we’re going to do them together for balance. We are going to do part one and four to activate and energize part two and three to soothe and then come back to balance. And I think it’s really important in today’s world, with so much going on, to be able to not only have the tools, but how to best utilize them to create whatever energetic state best supports you in how you want to show up in the world. So. Oh yeah. Great. Thank you. All right, so you can close your eyes. Please place your hands on your body so that can be on your thighs, on your belly. One hand on your belly, one hand on your heart, or anywhere else that feels nurturing for you in this moment. Relax into your chair. Tether your sit bones into the surface of the chair beneath you, And then lift up through the crown of your head.

Jenna 00:20:37  Notice how you feel in this moment. And take a body scan a brain scan, a heart scan. Make an O shape with your mouth and like you’re sucking air in through a straw. Go ahead and breathe in. Suck it in. Pause at the top. Notice what it feels like to be full of air, energy, vitality. Control the exhale out through your nose, a slow, deep breath out of the nose and pause at the bottom. Feel that little squeeze of your low belly. Expel all the stale air and a slow, deep breath in through your nose. Hold again at the top, and this time push it out through your teeth. Feel the contraction of your abdominal wall. Squeeze every last drop of air out. Fantastic. That’s the pattern. We’ll do a little bit quicker now. Make an O shape with your mouth. Breathe in. Exhale through your nose. Inhale through your nose. Push it out through your teeth. And sip the air in through the straw. Exhale through your nose.

Jenna 00:22:07  Inhale through your nose and push it out through your teeth. SIP it in through the straw. Exhale through your nose. Inhale through your nose. Push it out of your teeth. Good. One more round. SIP it in through the straw. Exhale through your nose. Inhale through your nose. Push it out through your teeth. Release the breath pattern. Observe how you feel. And so. Now go ahead and open your eyes. We’re going to put parts one and four together. Stick your arms out in front of you. Palms face away. Make the O shape with your mouth. This time it’s like you’re grabbing the air. You’re going to suck it in. Pull your elbows back and exhale. Push it out. Press your palms away through the teeth. Yeah. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Continue. You’re welcome to close your eyes again. You’re welcome to adjust the pace. Again this is an energizing activating breath. So you may get a little lightheaded.

Jenna 00:23:36  That is totally normal. Observe what is presenting to you in this moment. As you continue, maybe there’s one word that embodies whatever you’re pulling in and another that represents whatever you’re pushing out. Work with that. Pull it in. Push it out. Good for four. Three. Two, one. Inhale. Suck the air in through your mouth. You can relax your hands on your lap and keep the breath held. Exhale. Sigh it. I’ll let it go. Close your eyes. if they were open, and take that moment to address how you feel, to observe, to make any little mental adjustments. And to really sit with sensation. You can keep your eyes closed for this next one. You’re going to breathe in and out of your nose, and all you have to do is breathe. To my count. Inhale for four, 321. Exhale. 654321. Inhale. 4321. Exhale. 654321. Inhale 4321. Exhale 54321. Deep breath in four. 321. Exhale. 654321. Last time.

Jenna 00:25:37  Breathe in 4321. Breathe out 654321. Notice how you feel. So often we go through the day looking for these massive shifts in our state. This is subtle. And finally we’ll come back to the breath pattern we started with. Make an O shape with your mouth that suck the air and exhale through the nose. Inhale through the nose. Push it out through your teeth. Suck the air in through the straw. Exhale through your nose. Inhale through your nose and push it out through your teeth. And suck the air and exhale through your nose. Inhale through your nose and push it out through your teeth. And suck the air and exhale through your nose. Inhale through your nose and push it out through your teeth. Last time suck it in. Breathe it out through your nose. Inhale through your nose and push it out through your teeth. Pause and feel. And as Sebastien beautifully said, there’s always a little nugget that you can take with you. So maybe one of these breath patterns took out more than the other.

Jenna 00:27:17  And that may be exactly what you need at this point in your life. The activating breath provides action to step up two things with passion and motivation. The grounding breath allows you to self-soothe in points of chaos or uncertainty, and the balancing breath that brings you to equilibrium. One more time, deep breath in and a deep breath out. Go ahead and open your eyes. Thank you so much.

Seb 00:27:49  That was beautiful.

Seb 00:27:51  Thank you. Jenna, that was so lovely. I needed that.

Seb 00:28:00  Anyone else need that? Yeah.

Seb 00:28:06  All right. That was so lovely.

Seb 00:28:11  Do you start a lot of the events like that, Susan Chase? Is that how you all start meetings? Little breathwork. Little music. Where? Where are your mics? oh. Team. Where do we have our mikes? Over here. Marco. Just that one. Got it. Thank you.

Susan 00:28:31  Okay.

Seb 00:28:31  Okay. There we go. I just wanted to make sure. We’ll pass it along here.

Benza 00:28:35  Not up there. Not down there.

Benza 00:28:37  Like. Yeah, like right there.

Susan 00:28:39  Okay.

Seb 00:28:40  All right. Well, just in case everyone here didn’t already stalk each of you. If you don’t mind introducing yourself, talking about your role, and perhaps a little humble flex of some fun achievements that you or your company have recently done.

Susan 00:28:53  Okay, thanks so much. Wow. You know, my name is Susan. It’s really nice to be here. I was just thinking you asked me that question on the last panel that I was on was in one of those hotels by LAX. You know, where you go, and it’s like heavy carpet and pink and orange and green and drapes and fluorescent light. Nothing like this. Nothing like this. And like an audience of salespeople, investment bankers and, Yeah, it was like tight. It was, you know, grip kind of thing. And the exact opposite of what I feel right now, which is I feel so great and relaxed. I’m Susan, I am with, high growth consumer products at JP Morgan.

Susan 00:29:36  So, I work to, enhance enterprise value for my brands to that through market spend analysis, KPI analysis as it pertains to finance and capital structure. I also seek out, mission driven companies that invest in the intentionally in the success of diverse brands. I am proudly the stripe lead for female founders. So any female founders out there, please come and say hello. Introduce yourself to me. I would love to meet you.

Seb 00:30:16  Thank you. Susan. Ramya.

Ramya 00:30:19  Hi everyone. I’m Ramya Velusamy. I work as CFO at Bloom Nutrition and if you guys haven’t heard of Bloom Nutrition, it’s one of the fastest growing CPG brands. And we have nutrition category and we are in beverage. You will find us in almost all the stores like target, Walmart, Sam’s Club, Costco and I have been there as a CFO for two years, and prior to that, I have always been working with high growth CPG brands like Dollar Shave Club and Thrive Market. one of the fun things that I always say I do is as a CFO, I’m working with founders and kind of bringing their stories into numbers and building the brands.

Ramya 00:31:06  That kind of stands on the pillar of conscious capitalism as we are trying to work today. Marrying profit with purpose is what basically I call as my role.

Seb 00:31:18  Lovely. Thank you. Ramya. Hannah.

Hannah 00:31:21  Amazing. I’m really excited to be here and to connect with all of you guys today. My name is Hannah. I’m the co-founder and brand visionary at Seac. We’re a clear protein brand, really focused on shaking up the way that we’ve taken traditional proteins. So seek is a clear protein. I’m sure you guys have tried the vanilla and chocolate shakes. Our protein is more like a Gatorade, so it’s a lot more light and refreshing and easier to digest. So it’s been really fun to create approachability in a space that’s been very intimidating in the past. Something that’s been really exciting for us this year is we launched nationwide into targets, so it’s been a whole new ball game for us in the last few months of doing that. And literally today we just closed a raise. So we’ve been working on that for like damn near a year now.

Hannah 00:32:07  If anyone’s been through that process. You know how rigorous it can be. So we’re really, really excited about that.

Seb 00:32:13  So if you need money, you know who to head up. Thanks, Hannah. My name is Sebastian Nam. I’m the president of conscious capitalism. I’m also the co-founder and CEO of Go Global Agency. If you have a tote bag, that’s the agency. It’s an end to end marketing agency. We work with wellness and CPG brands, and I’m also the host of a podcast that now you’re a part of. This is a live recording of the Aware With podcast, so if you enjoy tonight’s conversation, you’ll most likely enjoy others. So it would be an honor if you tune in on that. So first question I’d like to start with Hannah and Ramya. What early consumer insights sparked your entry into the CPG space, and what was the first sign that you were really onto something big?

Hannah 00:32:58  Yeah, a great question. I feel like for me it comes back to being a consumer myself.

Hannah 00:33:02  I personally have been growing up in a very wellness based environment. I was an athlete growing up, played soccer my whole life. And then there was an inflection point after graduating high school, and I no longer have these sports that I was participating in, so I needed to find different types of movement. And for me, entrepreneurship was a was really the precipice of like what I wanted to do in my life and doing it in a way that aligned with the wellness aspect of what inspired me from the very beginning. So I started working at a supplement store to really just get knowledge behind the wellness space. And through that, I got to really see people’s perspectives shift by learning nutrition. And that was a big kind of inflection point in my own journey of of taking supplements and caring about health and wellness. So for me, being a consumer, the insight for me when when Ben, my co-founder, who’s back here today, me and him worked together at an agency and he came in with this clear protein product and I had never heard of something.

Hannah 00:34:06  And again, protein has been and just the supplement space has been very intimidating and very positioned towards the, the, the gym goer, the strength trainer, the bodybuilder. It’s been a very typically hypermasculine space that’s not as inclusive or approachable. And when I tried this product, I was like, this is incredible. This is this is this is something that it gave me the moment. So I think that insight alone for me was one of the reasons why we decided to go deep in this one product. and that’s where we’ve been for the last few years since we’ve launched.

Seb 00:34:38  Amazing. By the way, how many people have heard of Clear Protein before tonight? So maybe like 15%. So that’s actually more than I thought. Well, that just shows you how much of a like how much of a market space there is for it. And you guys are already growing so much. So that’s super exciting. Love it.

Ramya 00:34:56  All of the untapped market is right here. wellness has been one of like the growing consumer categories.

Ramya 00:35:07  I used to work in private equity. I would always see those numbers, but it never really translated into a brand as per se. And basically being in LA and having those conversations around, I clearly saw that wellness was growing. I was working for an online grocery brand and month over month we saw that when we put a product over there that’s more wellness based, like whether it’s organic, non-GMO, or talking about allergen free. We would see that the consumers were like lapping it up. So I kind of like saw that trend very early on. Then I consciously made the decision that I’m going to start working for more wellness based brands so that it was it was what I call it as very number based approach on how I wanted to work and with whom I wanted to work. But also in my personal journey, I saw that I was seeking out brands that were more wellness focused. I was moving towards more organic based. I was starting studying labels. I was visiting like co-op stores when I was in Midwest.

Ramya 00:36:10  So slowly I started seeing that there was a market that was kind of like growing over there. So consciously I moved into that space. But also I saw a lot of founders that were interested in growing those brands. So for me, it was a very conscious decision of moving into wellness and more specifically into women’s wellness, because it’s actually the women in the household that makes the decision for the family, for the better halves and for the kids. So we know that there was a key decision making that was going on over there. So we knew that even though wellness for a family was at the top of the hierarchy for women in the household, their own wellness was not a king a priority. So we knew it was just a matter of time that there are going to be brands that would kind of like launch into that category and start talking more. so now in a decade. I’m kind of like seeing that evolution coming into it. So I kind of call it as democratizing the wellness for women is going to be like a trend that’s going to accelerate much further.

Seb 00:37:14  Exciting trend, exciting trend. Susan, how do your personal wellness values influence how you show up professionally when it comes to relationship building?

Susan 00:37:25  I that’s a great question. I’m a practicing Yogi. I have been for years and years and years, and I think that, I’m like the hallmark banker. I get in there just my. I cry all the time. That’s what that means. I cry for success. I cry for their their their hiccups and their failures. And I, you know, I have never seen the boundary between becoming friends with clients and not. That just didn’t make sense to me. it’s. Yeah, it’s just it’s just how I am. And I think when you’re talking to a lot of bankers, you know, you don’t feel that energy of someone who really cares. It’s just the bottom line. It’s just the numbers. It’s just, you know what? You know, can you do for me? You know, take my orders, whatever. And I think a lot of my success has been because I’m just like, where are my emotions on my sleeve? And I just I’m really obsessed with the CPG communities and the innovation that I’ve seen happen, the disruption, the way it’s changed my life.

Susan 00:38:31  And so I lead with that. When I talk to people, you know, I, I at this stage in my career, it’s like I wouldn’t want to do it any other way.

Seb 00:38:41  Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Hannah, what about you? When it comes to your personal wellness and brand building specifically?

Hannah 00:38:49  Yeah, I think for me, it’s it’s rooted in a few things. Movement is absolutely one of them. I think being in the wellness space, it’s hard to ignore movement. but knowing that movement can look different. Like I was saying earlier, it’s not just going to the gym, it’s it’s choosing to move your own way, whatever that means to you. So movement is is absolutely one of them. Balance is a huge key pillar of of our core values and what we try to permeate in our culture at Seac. And then ultimately, I loved when you mentioned fun because we bring that up in everything that we do. It’s like ultimately, you know, we’re doing all these things.

Hannah 00:39:21  We’re hitting our bottom line. We’re doing everything that we need to do to grow and scale the business. But are we having fun doing it? Like so many businesses are so rooted in hustle culture. And I think ultimately that’s the the stigma we’re trying to break in creating a culture that people really look forward to showing up to, and they want to stick around for the long run.

Seb 00:39:38  Yeah, that’s the thing. And I think having that fun implemented is it helps you stick around for the long run because people, if they want to work with you, they’re going to help you achieve your mission more. They’re going to be way more involved. Personally. They want to have fun. It’s just it’s kind of a easy thing to forget, though, you know, to have fun. So I love that. That is a that’s a thing for you guys that that you’re doing. and I’ll just keep it on you. What pivotal decision has most accelerated your growth, and was it a risky decision at the moment of making it?

Hannah 00:40:09  Yeah.

Hannah 00:40:09  I mean, I mentioned target, that was probably the the biggest pivotal decision we’ve made in the lifetime of Sikhs so far. it came out of nowhere for us when we when we got the opportunity to pitch target, they were having an innovation summit last January, and, we got a cold email from a broker. Some cold emails are good. I recommend opening them all because you never know what opportunities are lying in some of those. And for us, it was target and it wasn’t on our game plan of 2024 at all. And when we got this opportunity, we we were based out of Minneapolis at the time. We’ve now transitioned and we’re all SoCal based. But we were like, this has been our dream to to launch into target, and we can’t say no to this opportunity to pitch them. So ultimately, we shifted our game plan a week after presenting it to the team and we’re like, we’re going all in and target, and this is the game plan now and ultimately a huge risk because we had to launch.

Hannah 00:41:04  If anyone has been around the block with retail, we had to launch a new product that was a smaller serving size at a certain price point to compete with the other proteins on the shelf. But it was an opportunity that we knew we were ready to swing big for. And I think that’s ultimately what you have to do as an entrepreneur is know the right risk to say yes to.

Seb 00:41:25  That’s epic. Congrats on that. That’s an awesome move. Awesome move.

Seb 00:41:29  Yeah.

Seb 00:41:30  Give it.

Seb 00:41:31  Up. Love it.

Seb 00:41:33  Ramya, what about you guys at bloom? Was there a specific pivotal moment that was a risky decision that catapulted growth, or was it more of a steady growth?

Ramya 00:41:45  I think for us, getting into retail was one of the pivotal moments of growth, and I think it’s true for any CPG brand that has been mainly digital. So when you are in digital, you kind of are going to reach a ceiling at some point in time. So you want to be conscious about that.

Seb 00:42:01  What percentage I would interrupt you? What percentage was direct to consumer at that time?

Ramya 00:42:06  I think we were 100%.

Seb 00:42:08  100%.

Ramya 00:42:08  On e-commerce. That’s where the brand grew. Our founder, Marie, was an influencer, and that’s where like our community was. So we were very much 100% digital for the first couple of years. And we made a conscious decision that in order for us to reach the consumer, we need to be present where the consumer is going into shelf. So for us, it was a very conscious decision to kind of accelerate and take that risk and being able to double down. The second one is obviously launching beverage for us. We knew that there was a white space over there. We knew that our consumer wanted a product, and that’s where we kind of like doubled down on our second innings, as I call it, as in beverage business. But all of them were very thoughtfully thought about to be, and we knew what the risks were. We knew how to balance it. So there were decisions that were made with all the ROI analysis behind it, to ensure that the brand growth is very sustainable in whichever category we choose to go.

Seb 00:43:11  And there’s definitely some beverage companies out here today, so I’m sure they’re going to come right after you with some questions.

Ramya 00:43:16  Yes, please. Any time.

Seb 00:43:19  Susan, from your vantage point, from a finance standpoint, what separates brands that truly scale sustainably from those that sort of burn out.

Susan 00:43:29  Yeah. You know I think the things the, the pillars I spoke of market spend KPI analysis and capital structure, you’ve got to have a good working capital structure. It’s the lifeblood of the health of a company and its ability to compete and to sustain. And, today, you know, watching the market trends is really important. it’s very hard today to scale profitably. direct to e-commerce only when one channel. But it happens and it’s very interesting when it happens. I’ll give you an example. The the Hailey Bieber sale that J.P. Morgan, was the lead bookrunner on and ran that process. The reason why she got that attention and she got an almost billion dollar value, 600 million in cash, 200 million in stock options and a $200 million payout.

Susan 00:44:30  That’s a good deal for a single channel. Beauty company beauty has a short lifestyle cycle, not so much like beverage, but she was profitable from the from the gate. That makes a difference. Retention is the second really important trend. Retention is the new growth right now. you take overnight. Oats is another company that has 90% subscription with first time customers. That’s phenomenal. But when you have that kind of subscription, you get to profitability really quickly. Your customer acquisition cost is always high. But if you can measure the, profit coming back per cohort and retention per cohort, you can see very quickly those two KPIs. You can see profitability in a matter of months. So keeping that in mind, you know, getting a subscription is is the way banks now. That’s everything.

Seb 00:45:36  Everything with subscriptions. And that’s going to bring up the lifetime value massively. So yes that’s what makes a huge difference there. We were just talking with Rami earlier too, about how for a long time there was this idea of it doesn’t matter if you’re profitable, as long as you’re just moving units, because then someone’s going to want to buy you out anyway, right?

Susan 00:45:55  Yeah, it’s.

Seb 00:45:56  It’s.

Susan 00:45:57  It’s meaningful profitability and top line sales. The days of a top line number as a multiple are are gone. You just don’t you know, it’s it’s profitability EBITDA at 15%, which is, you know, not hard to achieve. But that’s that’s what we’re looking at. So and I’m glad as a banker I never prescribed to top line sales revenue.

Seb 00:46:23  That’s good advice. Yeah. Good advice. Thanks, Susan. Ramya. When it comes to KPIs, models or planning frameworks, what is essential when preparing for a major move, such as launching a new SKU or going into retail distribution, or even just raising capital?

Ramya 00:46:39  one of the strongest things I would advise is unit margins, unit economics of product. the pricing that you decide on your product. You need to start thinking about the long game. You might have healthy margins on the DTC right now because your kayak is slow. But in the future, if you are planning to go to retail, it’s a completely different unit economics. So you need to understand what are some of the pivots that you need to do 18 months from now to be able to capture those retail market? I’ve known several brands that have an excellent unit economics on B2C, and then Facebook changes the algorithm and then that’s it.

Ramya 00:47:20  You have to fight again every single morning. So it’s the case with Amazon. You might have an excellent reviews on Amazon. But the Amazon algorithm changes brands changes, your review structure changes, and you’re back to fighting that battle again. So you need to start thinking about what that unit economics is at the end of the day. The other one I still want to play on is your retention. I have seen brands that tend to grow just for the sake of growth. Right? Like your cash is increasing, but you still want to double down. You still want to kind of like grow faster because you would think that you’re going to attract the right kind of investor, or you’re planning for an exit. This is where I absolutely advise the founders that think of it as sustainable growth. Any decision that you’re making, think of it as whether it’s short term or long term. What are your stakeholders? Is it really going to benefit them? Is your consumer going to get benefited with this decision or not? If not, back up because you want to play the long game, you will have several chances of being able to show up to a consumer the way you want, as long as you have cash in the bank, when you are growing at whatever pays you want.

Ramya 00:48:37  You’re depleting the one of the most important reserves that you have, and it’s going to be very hard to bring that back up. So that’s why the first 18 months of the brand spend the time to make sure that you have a really true product market fit, and you’re able to scale sustainably. That’s like the most important one. Start thinking about your kayak is going to increase your year one character. Year two kayak is always going to go up. So you have to start planning some of those right away. One of the biggest advice I always say is like, get a really good financial advisor, a fractional CFO in your corner, because most of the time you are growing marketing so fast that you don’t have a sounding board that says that, okay, if you’re doing this, these are going to be cons if things don’t work out. So that’s another one that I always come back and say is as long as you have those fundamentals ready, and that’s one of the first diligence questions that always comes up is what’s your unit economics.

Ramya 00:49:36  Let me see your cohort. And that’s it. Like no one wants to see the PNL. As long as you’re able to see that, they know that your PNL will be able to make sense and be able to be profitable. So those are the ones that I fundamentally say that every founder should know. Every founder should educate themselves because these are the biggest levers that you will be pulling as you’re growing.

Seb 00:49:59  So much good advice right there. I like that you touched on stakeholders, which was one of the pillars of conscious capitalism that I was talking about earlier in terms of stakeholders, meaning everybody that’s involved and not just, you know, the customers, but your vendors, your communities, like everyone that is involved. And there’s a touchpoint, if you can, you know, figure out a way to to really take care of everybody, it’s going to help you scale sustainably. Absolutely. Hanna, how did you manage cash flow and inventory constraints early on if you ever had any?

Hannah 00:50:33  Yeah, yeah. Great question.

Hannah 00:50:34  Ben knows the story far too well, but we launched, October of 2021, and we launched with 4000 units of our product and put it all in Ben’s parents living room. We turned their whole house into our our shipping and fulfillment and inventory, like holding space. and we thought we would be sitting on that inventory for, you know, maybe six months, maybe a year. we had no money to spend in marketing at the time. We launched the business, and invested with Ben’s parents, into the first round of inventory. And our marketing plan was sell this on TikTok. Truly. And at the time, in 2021, that’s really when, you know, virality was hitting for no apparent reason for a lot of creators. And for us, we we were like, okay, we really want to build this brand authentically and we want to build it through a person. So we really leaned in to Ben as the face of our business, and we still do to this day, and ultimately we we had been doing all of these storytelling videos of how we’re building the product, how we’re building the business.

Hannah 00:51:45  And then when we finally got product in our hand, we saw other on the street videos going viral, and we were like, I think we could do the same thing with our product. So we went on the streets of Minneapolis. We poured up samples of our clear protein and gave it to people on the street. And before you know it, we went viral in our first week of launch and we sold out of our product at the end of November. Mark Cuban son got his hands on the product, and Mark Cuban himself ended up posting a video saying, get these guys on Shark Tank. This product is incredible. And product was out and we were like, oh shit. Well, now what? Because it was post Covid supply chain was, you know, really messy at that time. And lead times were really they were unsure of of when we would actually get product in hand. They would tell us, you know, 6 to 8 weeks, okay, great. That’s what we plan for.

Hannah 00:52:35  And then they’re like, oh, it’s going to be delayed another four weeks. And that’s our first moment of learning. Never tell your consumers when the product is being launched, because there is nine times out of ten something that’s going to go wrong and there will be a delay. So we ended up being out of stock for, basically three months, and we launched pre-orders. We continued to build in public through storytelling on on TikTok to really just hone in on the demand. We started an email list and really tried to capture as much as we could during that time. and then we we came up with a new flavor to launch to also just create more demand behind that. But inventory for us was a big hurdle. Basically, through that first 12 months of our business, we were out of stock for probably six months. and it’s just incredible to to think about what we could have done during that time. But ultimately, I think being out of stock allowed us to really professionalize the business and figure out what is the vision.

Hannah 00:53:32  Where are we going from here? What’s the 3 to 5 year plan instead of just, you know, growing for the sake of growth, but really doing it in a meaningful way. And thankfully, we didn’t have to worry too much about cash flow because Ben was living at his parent’s house and had no, no bills to pay. I was running a small marketing agency in Minneapolis at the time, so I was running that behind the scenes, but I had an employee kind of doing most of the day to day so I could be all in on Seac. And when we sold out of that first round of inventory, we kind of saw that light of when we could start paying ourselves to become full time in this. But knowing we were going to turn all of those profits back into the business. and then we hired Ben’s younger brother and younger sister and their friends and got a warehouse and ordered a little bit more inventory each time, but continued to churn cash into our business and have been profitable since day one, which has been something we’re really proud of.

Seb 00:54:25  That’s awesome.

Seb 00:54:26  That’s an epic story. Yeah. Thank you. Give her a hand. That is awesome. While you’re on some of those marketing trends, I I’ll ask you about that right now. You know, at the agency, we do all kinds of things, right. Paid ads. We work with very much aligned influencers, making sure that they could really align with the brand to tell the story. and, you know, TikTok shop is blowing up so many things that are going on. You could really you could go after like 20 different marketing strategies. Where are you at right now? What’s working best for you right now from a marketing standpoint? Are you still going hard on TikTok and really going all in there? Do you have something else that you’re going after right now?

Hannah 00:55:02  Yeah, our marketing strategies have shifted since launching the business. You know, we 100% leaned on organic content when we first launched brand building storytelling. And then we we shifted into our own media channels through through text message, through email, as well as launching an app where we can really hone in and speak to our consumers that are coming back time and time again, but then also leaning into people that are brand advocates.

Hannah 00:55:28  So the people that are coming back time and time again, how can we tap into them more for them to share their story with our products? So you talk about affiliates through TikTok shop as well as we use another third party agency to run affiliates through our Shopify. So really turning our brand loyalists into salespeople for us has been a huge turning point in our business. And then now we’ve brought in some more experts around us. We now have a full time team of ten people, and one of those people that we recently brought in as a marketing director, that comes from a very IRL background and building. You know, that moment for us, it happens in person. So how can we translate the moment that we experienced when we went out on the streets in Minneapolis for the first time and hit virality with, with sharing our product with people? How can we do that in more ways through in real life experiences like events like this, but then ultimately translating that back into content? So that way we’re really getting the most out of of what we’re building.

Seb 00:56:27  Love it. Love that. Susan, what are some red flags or financial pitfalls that founders should actively avoid? And on the flip side of that, what should they really focus on?

Susan 00:56:40  Working with founders is very, very interesting to me. I’m a banker, as you all know, and I think some of the red flags, one of the biggest ones is sophistication, the seduction of sophistication. It’s a trap in thinking that because you’ve, you know, got a viral product, you know how to do this. And, I’ve seen mistakes where, you know, the company is scaling. It’s in a, it’s gone from the early stage to a growth stage. But the C-suite, the CFO, the CEO are not scaling with the business. And you get to a point where you need supply chain education, you need distribution. You need relationships. You need community, and a lot of founders don’t see that they want to. They value loyalty, which I do too. But when you’re building a business and you’re in that growth phase, getting to the later stage, which could potentially be a capital raise and exit, you know, or taking some cash off the table for your hard earned, you know, lifestyle for that brand.

Susan 00:57:51  for the founders, it’s a critical mistake. Founders who look at me and see me as a wealth of knowledge, being at JPMorgan or any of the big banks. You know, I’ve gotten the privilege of seeing big capital raises, big minority stakes. We just announced today we did a $1.2 billion block trade of chewy, the pet company, $1.2 billion for a pet company. we’re we’ve done skims. We’ve done, you know, Spindrift. We’ve done lollipops, poppy, Athletic brewing Celsius. So all of that. I don’t care what business school you go to. The school of experience is everything. And I’ve been able to sit with founders who created an innovative product in their living room. The mom’s, the bookkeeper, all the way to $1 billion exit. And I’ve gotten the privilege of sitting right there, being involved in that scene, that, breathing that. And, you know, the perception of me as an order taker sometimes limits people, you know, and they don’t see that. And, you know, I’m a sales person, so I’ll be out there saying, hey, you know, I have this information, but if you don’t take it, if you’re not community based, if you’re not looking at all of the networks, you know, and the ecosystem around you, your peers, that’s a big that’s been a big mistake.

Susan 00:59:23  The converse is that you do you embrace all of that as bloom has, as Hannah and Ben have, and and stayed away from being too sophisticated to not to to not ask the question.

Seb 00:59:37  Yeah, that’s great advice and some great stories. Those are some unbelievable numbers. Rami, we talked about this one on one, and you told me that you truly believe that culture is a financial asset. And I mentioned conscious culture as one of those pillars of conscious capitalism. And what I believe is a big thing that helps businesses survive and keeps people coming and less turnover and all those good things. Right. So how is that a financial asset for you when you think about culture?

Ramya 01:00:08  I think I always say this like anytime when I’m trying to take up a new job, the first thing I’ll say is like, can I come to your office? Can I look around people? Can I talk before I sign? Because I am a firm believer of culture Eat strategy. And for me it is a financial asset at the end of the day.

Ramya 01:00:27  And you know what? It’s one of the least capital intensive financial assets that you can actually put on your books at the end of the day, right. You being nice to people in your company, making sure that they have a career growth, investing in their development, being transparent about what you want to do and having a purpose for the company and being able to get that first 30 employees that can buy into the purpose and come into the company and work for you. That’s the biggest asset because when you are building a company, everything is not going to be a bed of roses. You’re going to have fire drills on Friday nights, you are going to call your team and be like, hey, did we get the shipment out of the door to the retailer or what’s going on? And people are not going to respond to you if you don’t build a culture around it. But that doesn’t mean that you need to burn your people either. So being very conscious about that is very important. And the second one I always say is it’s very easy to put purpose for marketing.

Ramya 01:01:37  You can do a marketing message and then you can be like, hey, I’m doing this purpose because I’m spending 6% of it. You know what? Who’s the first people that find out your employees, the people that you how are working in trenches to build the company? They are the first ones to know whether you’re truly being held to that purpose or it’s a marketing message. For me, if there is a disconnect, you are consumer is going to know about it at a later stage, so you’re not going to see that reflected in the numbers, right? It’s a kind of what I call it as your numbers are going to come, but it’s a lagging indicator. But your culture is your leading indicator that you’re living and breathing at any point. So for me, that’s like one of the biggest assets, is to kind of look at attrition rate, right? Like, you know, how much time does it take for you to hire people? Are the people that you hired like two years later, three years later, are they still sticking to it? And then even managing out your employees like the one of the first things Susan said is, as you’re growing, the person that gets you from 0 to 20 is not going to be the person that gets it from 20 to 60 mil.

Ramya 01:02:52  So a lot of empathy in the leadership, and being able to communicate as the culture of a company becomes very, very important as founders and as leaders of the company.

Seb 01:03:03  That’s fascinating, truly, because I think about what you just talked about in terms of purpose washing. We most of us have probably heard about greenwashing and purpose washing is what you were just talking about. You can’t just put a mission out there and a purpose just for marketing purposes, right? Because like you said, the first people to find out are going to be the employees and that’s going to mess with the culture. So I love the concept of culture as a financial asset. So, Susan, how do you assess the strength of a brand’s culture? We’re considering them as a partner or a client. Is that something that matters to you all as bankers, like mission, purpose, culture? Or is it just kind of like woowoo talk?

Susan 01:03:42  Well, we do have to look at the numbers, and we do have to crack the whip on, you know, capital structure.

Susan 01:03:47  At the end of the day, that’s very, very important. And that’s my world. That’s what I live and breathe. But culture is everything to me, too. I have been an employee in places where the culture sucks and, you know, the retention. It’s not sustainable to me that when someone, when I’m looking at I can see culture because I can see accessibility to the founders, I can see, you know, they’re they’re rock stars, but they’re also engaged with the CFO. They want to hear they see a press release. You know, on some big transaction that happened. And they’re like, how would you structure that if we wanted to do that? You know, it goes back to that humility and that openness which translates and trickles down from the top. All the time. I’ve seen it for years. And, does that answer the question? Yeah.

Seb 01:04:43  Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Hannah, what internal rituals, communication styles, or team practices help you embody conscious leadership as you’re in a fast paced, high growth environment?

Hannah 01:04:58  Great question.

Hannah 01:05:00  I think clarity is a big one. That’s that that we’ve been rooted in since the very beginning of, of seek. we used to model our business off of the EOS model. some of you guys may be familiar with the book traction, but we really use that to kind of think about everything when it comes to our annual planning, and then revisiting that each week and then each quarter, revisiting it in a more broader perspective of how are we actually getting closer to these bigger goals? And that’s shifted, and we’ve molded it into a way that really works for us now, today. But making sure that us as a leadership team continue to come back and define that clarity. So that way we can then instill it with the team, because at the end of the day, we’re all getting hit up with all these ideas and we all think they’re amazing. And shiny object syndrome is so real in entrepreneurship and in life. so ultimately defining that clarity and making sure that the team really feels it and knows their part in the bigger mission is something that we come back to every single quarter, every single week as a leadership team.

Hannah 01:06:03  And then I think also, from from a more conscious perspective, removing the work from, from some of the things and figuring out ways to get the whole team together. so we had our first retreat this last year in San Diego, where we brought the whole team out for a four day during the week retreat, where we really just got to connect on a personal level and in a much deeper way with with one another. And I think when you can do something like that, then building something together becomes that much sweeter. And so getting those moments to really connect deeply with, with the people that you’re building with is something that we find very important. And that’s something that we want to continue to do in small ways, even today. So those are just a couple rituals.

Seb 01:06:46  Yeah, I love that. And that goes back to the culture thing we were just talking about. That really creates a culture and camaraderie. So I’m sure that that translates ultimately into productivity and creativity and better culture, which ultimately brings in more profit.

Seb 01:06:59  So it’s kind of like all of these things that may sound a bit woo from the whole conscious capitalism aspect and things that it has actually helped make more money in the end because it helps the long term game. Ramya, what about you guys? Are there any specific rituals or things? Like what Hannah was talking about that will that help with the culture aspect?

Ramya 01:07:22  Yeah, I think when I joined bloom we were 15 to 20 people and we are almost like 100 people right now. one of the most important things is like feedback loop. as leaders of the company, doesn’t matter which business part you’re sitting in, whether you’re sitting in like marketing or whether you’re sitting in supply chain, taking the time out and getting the feedback about you, your team, and being vulnerable about it and really being able to make those changes is one of the most fundamental things you want to do as a business, and you want to set that foundation right. Because when the foundation is not right, or you hire a person, that’s not probably a good fit for the company culturally, You can see like the cracks in the foundation.

Ramya 01:08:14  So for me, one of the most important is like feedback loop. I still take the time to go and meet people that are not in finance to understand what’s going, how, whether it’s working, what’s working for their company, or all the priorities of the company. The same is everyone working towards the same three priorities for this quarter. So that fundamentally is a ritual that no matter whether I’m working in $1 billion brand or I’m working in a startup that has hardly hit 1 million, I still kind of like take the time out and being able to have that conversation, and it’s just not internal conversation, right? It’s like, yes, you have your team, you have all of that. But going back, we also have stakeholders. We have vendors that we worked with for like more than half a decade. So spending time with those vendors and understanding, hey is like, what are you trying to achieve? What your goals are, how can we help you get there, right? So being able to have those conversations with all your stakeholders is very, very essential because I think a lot of the things when we talk culture, it’s very rooted in team culture and company culture, but it’s also how you show up to your investors, what kind of conversations you’re having with your investors, what kind of conversation you’re having with your vendors, your consumers, all of that kind of add up.

Ramya 01:09:35  So taking the time, no matter how busy you are to have those touch bases with all these different stakeholders, does give you a very, very strong framework of what’s the next thing you want to do. So that’s a ritual that I have always been doing, and I still take the time out to do it.

Seb 01:09:53  That’s so key. That’s great. I mean that’s clearly showing, you know, for you guys just having a lot of success and growth. That’s awesome that you all are doing that. I’m going to ask you just a couple of more questions. And then shortly I’m going to open it up for a few questions out here and also stay till the end. And we’ll have Katrina, our events chair, come up here and we got some giveaways as well too. So, I so I everyone’s got a little bit of anxiety like, so it’s obviously changing the game on everything. How we lead, how we create, how we scale things. So this question goes for all of you. what is one way that you’re already using AI at scale, and what is something that you’re planning to use in the near future with the people first approach, so that everybody’s not freaking out about their jobs, essentially?

Hannah 01:10:45  Sure.

Hannah 01:10:47  yeah, I can start, for us right now, you know, we’re using AI more as, like an assistant to each of our own individual roles. And I think it’s ultimately a tool to be able to get more things done. Like I said, we’re a team of ten full time people. We just brought on two people. So this is new growth that we’re experiencing right now. But I for me, truly allows me to wear a dozen hats all at the same time without facing burnout. And I think when you can start to use AI in a way that really bleeds your brand ethos and your culture and everything that you’re, you’re trying to permeate through the brand and you’re able to teach your, your AI, what you sound like as a brand, who your audience is, you can really be dangerous with with how you’re using it. Just as in a day to day way. We’ve used it here and there for content, but we still really lean on on real content creators because I think ultimately people are able to see through all of that, and it’s becoming very, very quick for people to just swipe past it when they know that it’s AI.

Hannah 01:11:47  So we really want to continue to lean into the the human realness, but ultimately still using it as a way to get more things done and scale the business faster without burning out.

Seb 01:12:02  Thank you. Hannah. Ramya.

Ramya 01:12:04  I think this is a question that Sebastian and I talked on over one on one, and I was like, this does keep me awake at night, right? Because, it’s very easy to kind of start thinking about AI coming in and taking everyone’s job and then like, you know, trying to figure out a new world. but that doesn’t mean that you have to adopt AI slower. I think a more conscious approach would be, hey, what are some of the tasks that we are doing in the company? How can I automate it? Like how can I get AI as an assistant to the people? And when the time frees up and when the resource is free up, this is what, as leaders, you can decide where you want to invest that resource, right? You’re saving people’s time.

Ramya 01:12:48  They get like an extra five hours in a week, then figure out what they should be learning to kind of like go and step up themselves. I think that’s a very conscious way of thinking of how to roll out AI. AI is not going to stop. We all know that it’s a force that’s going to come out of nowhere. The question is, how can we be better prepared? Not just as like in the company, but we as a community? How can we be better prepared to make sure that we are resilient when things roll up? So one of the most important one is upskilling ourselves, right? Like, doesn’t matter where you are, how you are, there is always something you want to kind of like upskill yourselves and your team. So start thinking about it. And the other one that I’m also very conscious about is AI doesn’t have an ethics behind the scene at the end of the day, right? Like there is not a moral compass behind it. The algorithm and everything is not built into it.

Ramya 01:13:48  And it’s very, very well known in the Silicon Valley when there is a lot of bias based decisions that are made by AI. So being very conscious about it is like when you give something to AI, you still need to oversee it on what you want to do and how you want to do. So for me, this is like the one of the biggest ones, because I know I might need a team of two dozen people now, but I know five years from right now I probably just need a team of ten. So I need to make sure that my team is upskilling themselves and be ready for this AI revolution that comes in.

Seb 01:14:26  Thank you. Ramya. Susan, do you want to speak to that?

Susan 01:14:31  Yeah, just in terms of what I’ve seen. And we had launched an AI platform for matching investors to consumer products, and it was a horrible failure. It did not work. Had all the data pulled, thousands and thousands of, you know, pages of digital data, data, at the end of the day.

Susan 01:14:55  you’re you’re, you know, a family office and you’re really wanting to wanted to get into the beauty space or into the beverage space, and you punch it into, you know, your open eye or whatever chat bot you use and it will, you know, it can refine the process. But do you know to sell your baby is such an intimate and long and arduous process that I’ve never seen someone who wanted to rely on a technical platform as opposed to, you know, a human being you’re going to get in bed with and you’re going to trust to do you right in a transaction. And so I’m not too worried about it. It can help. I can, you know, pour numbers into it and say, hey, can we lend $10 million to this company? And it makes my job, makes me more efficient, makes my team more efficient. But and, you know, I think it’s going to help with fraud. All of the big financial institutions are focusing AI in terms of fraud.

Susan 01:16:00  So yeah.

Seb 01:16:03  Yeah, I mean I anxiety is real. I’m sure most of you all have felt it at some point, and I think that’s completely okay. there’s just a lot of uncertainty in the world in general, and there’s a lot of chaos going on beyond AI. So I think there’s just a lot of uncertainty. And I think it comes back to having a sense of trust and fulfillment in the workplace. When we can incorporate some of these conscious practices in them, is what’s going to make those workplaces or those brands or businesses outlast in the long run. So I think it’s something that’s going to help in a way, battle that uncertainty and feel like you’re a part of something bigger with a bigger mission. so I think that’s a big piece, in my opinion. finally, I’d like to ask you, what are two traits that a conscious leader. And by the way, when I say a conscious leader, it doesn’t have to be a CEO. You don’t have to be a founder. We’re all leaders.

Seb 01:16:56  Your leaders of your own lives. So what are two traits that a conscious leader must embody today?

Susan 01:17:05  Switching from the knowledge space to wisdom. Someone you know who’s wise. to me, a growth mindset is improving versus proving. I see that a lot with young founders. It’s about proving, proving, proving. The successful sustain founders are switching that dynamic to I’m improving, daily practice, daily rituals of, you know, what we’re bombarded with in the world and what is the actual evidence in my life? I think I suffer from overthinking a lot of my friends do, and the only way I combat that is to look at the evidence in my life. In my life versus what you know. The overthinking is going on. And I think leaders, leaders do that to successful founders. Remain humble. Again, I’ll go back to the sophistication trap. It doesn’t happen to them. And they really do. You feel that they care.

Seb 01:18:14  I love that. Thank you. Susan. Ramya. Two traits that are conscious leaders must embody in today’s world.

Ramya 01:18:19  I think one of the most important one is resilience. So no matter what you build today, I think an year later a new brand is going to come up and take up the space, right? Like it’s going to happen. So instead of avoiding that, it’s better to kind of start building resilience as one of the core principles, whether it’s you, your community, your team, whatever it is. Because then you’re giving them a mindset that, okay, if things break down, we can pick up the pieces and build again. And that’s like one of the most important ones. So that’s like one of the top things I always think about, because you’re going to have people in the team that are going to do mistakes, right? Then. Do you give them a chance to kind of like pick it up and show up again and be the best version of themselves? Absolutely, yes. Because they are going to be one of your most loyal employees to kind of help build a brand. the second one I always come back and say is empathy.

Ramya 01:19:15  The power of empathy is one of the most important things you’re going to use to build a brand, whether it’s the consumer, whether a vendor, or whether it’s your own employee. It’s like one of the most important things, being able to drive decisions with an empathy as one of the prioritization at the top of the matrix really kind of helps make those decisions, which is a long term sustainable versus doing something short term for short term gains.

Seb 01:19:42  Beautiful. Thank you Ramya. Great life advice period. Not just from a conscious leader standpoint in business.

Hannah 01:19:48  So yeah, I love what you guys shared. I was going to hit on empathy, but I’ll think of a different one. I think discipline is is a big one for me personally that has gotten me through my entire life. and ultimately being clear about the vision and what you are really trying to do with your product and business and staying disciplined to that because you’re going to be told from so many people, you should do this. You should do that.

Hannah 01:20:11  Have you thought of this? And staying disciplined is something that can be really difficult. And that’s something that me and Ben talk about all the time is I think that’s it’s so easy for people to lean into a direction that they don’t maybe believe in, in their gut, but they, they see the value because other people that have been around the block are telling them. But sometimes trusting your own vision is the most important thing. so having that discipline and trust, I think another one is, I don’t know if this is necessarily a trait, but, the balance of, of life, and having that balance and coming back to, you know, yes, working hard, but ultimately, like, do what feels good. making sure that you are filling your cup every single day. So that way you can show up and be the best version of yourself for your employees, for your community, for your brand, for your business. And I think that’s ultimately something that that we hold very high in our business is making sure that our employees feel that deeply and that we we acknowledge that through, you know, hey, go work out in the afternoon.

Hannah 01:21:12  You know, we don’t have a strict 9 to 5 get your work done. But like, do what feels good and make sure that that you feel empowered doing it.

Seb 01:21:19  I love that. Those are some great ones. Growth mindset, resilience. what was the first thing that you said? discipline. So those three things are so important. And within all of those having flexibility, you know, I think about back in the day, just as humans, you could literally learn one trade. You could just learn how to fix shoes and you could be a shoesmith. And that could essentially feed your family and you could have a home. And then that, you know, shifted into people, you know, switching companies maybe once in their lifetime and then once every ten years. And then all of a sudden, tech came around. I was like, I could switch careers once every three years where I could go get paid more. And now it’s like with AI, there’s there’s so much change that you have to be resilient.

Seb 01:22:02  You have to be flexible, you have to have discipline. You have to have a growth mindset so you can keep learning and keep growing. And it’s just something we’re going to have to do and keep reinventing ourselves kind of have no choice. So reinventing ourselves is just part of the the new DNA that we have as human beings. so I’m going to go ahead and open it up to some questions. in the meantime, while somebody decides who wants to go up, I do want to tell you that we at Conscious Capitalism, we now have an insider pass. There’s some QR codes and some of the tables, and we’ll also email it to you tomorrow. There’s some. Anyone that works here at Conscious Capitalism can please share that with anyone interested. it’s just $100 for the whole year. You help support the movement of conscious capitalism, and then you get 50% off at all of our events. So we’d love for you to join us there? question. Anyone? Question. We’ve got drew right here. can we actually.

Seb 01:22:52  Here, let me give him this mic. Thank you.

Audience Member 1:22:57  Thank you. Seb. Susan, you had mentioned retention is the new growth. And this question is really for anyone, I suppose. But what would you say is the number one value add or factor that leads to, high retention?

Ramya 01:23:17  You go ahead.

Susan 01:23:21  Well, I’m talking about retention specifically in terms of subscription. You know, from that early first customer purchase, it’s going to affect the customer acquisition cost, the CCaC tremendously. And the lifetime value when you are measuring also the payback of customer acquisition costs. I hate saying the word cack, so I’m not going to say it. sad. you will see quite quickly how you can get to profitability. And I’m telling you, that is the most important thing for the early stage companies. It’s all we care about now. And and it’s not that hard if you use the other components. We’ve talked about loyalty, you know, true caring. You know, the you know the viral what did you call it something I don’t know, something viral.

Susan 01:24:13  but that’s that’s what it is. You know, in your business strategy, I see two points for a consumer product that are essential subscription and big box retail. Why big box retail? Because you can unleash capital through supply chain finance. A lot of people don’t know about that. You don’t have to credit qualify for it. You can be an early company. You get a deal with target six months later, you can actually take that cash out of your sitting in your inventory, and the banks will give it to you because they have such a strong relationship with the Costcos and the Walmarts and the targets of the world. All of those that I just mentioned are in emerging brands. They’re launching emerging products with no proof of concept. And so it’s really a wonderful way to improve your cash conversion cycle. You know, you’ve got your inventory on a boat. It’s coming in. All of your money is tied up in that million dollars, 10 million, 50 million. It doesn’t matter. How can you release that cash? Put it towards, you know, infrastructure or the components of your business and have a, you know, guaranteed, shelf space.

Ramya 01:25:37  For me, ultimately, it ties down to if you’re really, really hitting a white space in the market, right. Is there like a niche consumer base that you can scale that ultimately is like the true definition of retention? And it depends upon whether you’re selling like a barbecue grill or whether you’re selling like a vitamin. Right. Like it’s totally two different ends of it. But I think most of us are in CPG over here, so I’m assuming we won’t repeat rates. So for me, if you’re selling something and three months later your consumer does not want to come and buy a product, it’s probably better to go back to the drawing board and really think about, is there a need for this product that I can scale or not? That’s the fundamental one. As long as you have first thousand consumers are coming back and buying, then you know, you have kind of hit a product that has repeatability built into it, right? Like consumers are taking it. And you’re ticking off those promises that you said, whether it is like feeling better or it cleans better or it’s great on skincare, whatever it is.

Ramya 01:26:39  Right? That’s the most important one. Fundamentally, is your consumer happy? Is your consumer coming back and buying more? At what rate do they want to buy? Skincare? Probably they’re coming and buying once every six months. Vitamin. They will show up once every 30 days. So you kind of need to understand what your natural cycle of repurchase looks like and think about how you’re sizing the product. What kind of, claims that you’re making that the consumer is able to see? For me, fundamentally, it kind of like comes back to that and see if it ticks off. If it’s not, no shame. Take it back. Reinvent the wheel and go back. You get like a thousand chances to be able to do it and get it right.

Seb 01:27:21  Thank you for that, ladies. We’ll do one. We’ll do just one more question. So you guys all have some time to connect afterwards and connect to the different vendors and with each other and all that good stuff. Yeah. Right here.

Audience Member 01:27:34  Oh.

Audience Member  01:27:34  Thank you. I guess this is directed more towards Hannah, but I’m sure you all have experience with this. You know, I’m typically seeing panels where the investors are sitting up there, the VC firms, the private equity firms, and everyone’s wondering, what do you look for when you invest in a business, right.

Audience Member  01:27:50  And especially Hannah, you strike me, you know, as a person that maybe you don’t prioritize valuation, right? Maybe you’re looking for the right partner who believes in your mission. So what do you look for when you’re looking at investors and partners in the company? What are the key traits that you’re looking for?

Hannah 01:28:04  Yeah. Yeah, I think you nailed it. We definitely care more about that. That personality that fits our culture, the people that ultimately we want to hang out with. We say all the time, like, do I see myself getting dinner with this person and not having to, you know, put on a different face? I think that’s something that is really big on my own integrity is building in entrepreneurship is, you know, at one point in my life, I thought I needed to wear a pantsuit and talk a certain way and walk a certain way, and I couldn’t wear ripped jeans to a.

Seb 01:28:33  Feel for you. I can’t see you that.

Hannah 01:28:35  Oh, I love you. I’m. I’m a wild card. I have very, very many versions of me that exists in this lifetime, but this is the version of me that feels the most authentic and working with partners that that, you know, you don’t need to put on a face. And ultimately they are going to respect what you have to say and what you’ve built just by being who you are. So that’s, I think, a really key, key thing as we were finding the right partners and then also getting them to believe in what we’re building, like believe in the mission and the vision that we are going to be the face of clear protein. And no, we’re not going to be a generalist when it comes to, you know, coming out with all these different products. Yet we’re not writing it off forever, but making sure that the vision is, is aligned and that ultimately the path for us and the opportunity that exists is, is aligned with theirs as well.

Hannah 01:29:25  So making sure that, you know, hey, if we want to sell the company in 3 to 5 years for this valuation that we’re we’re sticking to that and we’re not we’re not being pushed outside of our own boundaries. Because ultimately, again. Growth for growth sake is not what we’re trying to build. We’re trying to build something sustainable that ultimately creates freedom for for us and the people that we get to work with.

Seb 01:29:48  Thank you. Hannah. Thank you. Well, let’s give these ladies a round of applause, please. That was wonderful.