FreeMind Network: Unveiling The Grit

Rob Day: Building Better Crafted Business and Community | EP83 - FreeMind Network Podcast

Join Rob Day, the founder of Better Crafted Business, as he shares his journey of building a community and fostering entrepreneurship. Discover his early ventures, lessons from the corporate world, and experiences in the craft beer industry. Perfect for aspiring entrepreneurs, community builders, and anyone interested in personal growth.

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction and Background
02:00 Early Entrepreneurial Ventures
04:00 College Decisions and Business Passion
08:00 Lessons from the Corporate World
20:00 Transition to Craft Beer Industry
36:00 Founding Better Crafted Business

Follow Better Crafted Business:
LinkedIn: Rob J Day
Website: Better Crafted Business
#BetterCraftedBusiness #RobDay #CommunityBuilding #Entrepreneurship #PersonalGrowth

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Duration:: 49m
Broadcast on:: 17 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

(upbeat music) ♪ You know my story, right? ♪ ♪ Rise the fame from the pain, glory, right? ♪ - Great to be talking to you today. I am Rob Day, the founder of Better Crafted Business, started a whole two months ago right now. So we are fresh into this new adventure and excited to share it with you today. - That's perfect, man. And you know in your backstory, and I'm excited, it's very ready to be able to hear it on the show today, let's go, like your business started two months ago, but let's go back 'cause your history is very well deep. So let's start back into your line of work, and when was your first job, period? When was the first time you made a dollar? - Ooh, let's go that far back. All right, strap in, this is a six hour podcast, put this on like 1.75 speed, and I'll talk like a chipmunk for the rest. I way back, I was a paper boy at nine years old. So I like, when I say like earned a dollar, that teaches you a lot hauling 40 pounds on your shoulder in a rickety bike down rainy streets in a small suburban town. So my first dollar goes way back, always loved business entrepreneurship. My parents always thought I was a hustler, like I would exchange naps for cash, always wanted like try to get that edge. It's always been in me. And yeah, that kind of drove me a long term, I'll skip forward a little bit. My college decision was really split. I kind of didn't know what I wanted to do, I think is most don't by that point. And I had worked in restaurants now, I had worked in landscaping and paper boy, odd office jobs, I'd already done a random amount of work for a high school kid. And then my very whole brain approach to work and architecture and business really stood out to me at that point. And I think they both sort of tease both sides of your brain, you get to be really creative and really analytical and find the points where those meet. And that's naturally what I found myself doing at that phase of my life. And I did, I picked schools based on what had both. And I started in business 'cause it was an easier track to jump into and switch from. And then I fell in love immediately. My first course was organizational behavior, which is arguably marketing adjacent, but I don't mind. - I still have a book. - Yeah, I do too, there's bookshelves all around that. The way it was administered, the idea like people fall into these personality types and act a certain way and you can structure teams and be like, ah, my mind was blown from day one. It was really fun. I learned a lot about myself and how I operate. Good and bad. I always ended up in the small cohort when we broke up in the subgroups, like why there are only three of us. Like, oh, it's kind of a rare personality type to be doing what you're doing. And it was always a surprise. It was like, okay, cool. This is great. I'm definitely with my people. And the longer that went, consumer behavior courses, the branding courses, the advertising work, I was taking courses outside of the marketing department that just related to psychology or advertising was weirdly in communications. So like grab a bit here, but that really sparked me. And of course I did basic jobs during college, but we also got the opportunity our daily newspaper decided to start selling ads my senior year. And I pioneered that program. I sold advertising for the high school, the high school, the college newspaper, which is just like unbelievable when I think back on it. 'Cause we were in, I went to USC. So we're in South Central LA and I threw a little briefcase on and walked up and down the street selling the businesses. Not safe. I should not have done any of that. But, you know, you're invincible in college and you do things a little bit differently. Should have been possibly more aware of my surroundings. But, you know, we all survived here. I am talking about it quite a bit later. And part of that led to the combination of those two things led to my first job out of college, which was with news corporation selling consumer package goods, advertising here in Boston. So my first job offer was back home where I'm from, which is kind of a shock 'cause I thought I'd stay in LA for sure. But job offer back here, hard not to take it. And I think most people are familiar with that world, one way or another, maybe younger consumers, less so. But newspapers always have these coupon books in stores. There's coupons attached to a shelf or signage. Like that's what we sold. So all the biggest consumer package goods brands bought that type of advertising. And we sold that all across the country, but my office here in Boston. Going into the first recession over the past couple of decades, 2008, that was a big one. And it was a pretty big unknown. It crashed a lot around in big companies like news corporation, they just closed offices, like they just ate hunger fast. And it's sort of my first lesson that you can't plan this stuff. And that will come back to starting a company two months ago as well, I promise. You're good, man. This is perfect. This is exactly where we need to go get context, man. Because it's all making sense now, what you're doing now, yep. Yeah, if nothing else, I think everyone would be like, OK, my day hasn't been as crazy as that. Exactly. The first job. The people who understand the volume you have to work to achieve what you want to achieve. Yes, happy accidents and mistakes all about. And that's how we get here. But the 2008 recession hits pretty hard. I'm just under a year into that company. They just shut the office down and boot all the younger employees out pretty typically come to learn in the world. And I back ended into sort of product development marketing, which at the time, USC didn't even teach this. There wasn't a course on it. I didn't know what it was. Out of my first job, recession looming, if it says marketing in the title, I'm applying. Desperate at that point to keep my apartment, not move back in with my parents, and knowing I'm capable, but not knowing what to do so fast. That's a lot has changed. You see they actually have a program founded by Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine that is all about product development, especially going back to Beats and the company they found it together. So that's really cool that exists now. It didn't exist for me back then. But I found this job where I'd be doing consumer research, testing product, doing packaging, developing product over time. Thought it was neat. Didn't really understand it, but it was super junior role. And I dove in. It was a juvenile products company, which is the industry term for baby stuff. So doing baby gates, monitors, pot heat products. And I'm like 23 years old. I don't know anything about babies, but you're in marketing. You like research, you like consumers. You just dive in and you start figuring it out. And for that period of time, it was really eye opening. I never thought about how things were made. How does an item go from someone's head to a shelf? It's just there as a consumer. You find out there's this whole world, multiple years of ideas, testing, development, factory work. And it's wildly interesting. It's much less brand creative than I wanted to do. But there it is. It's a fun job. Did that for three years was poached by a company that did outdoor grilling. Same type of work, a little bit more communications that that Cuisinart Outdoor Grilling was operated by an independent company here in Massachusetts. And for six years, I did that category, which was a blast and learned a lot and got to test and try a whole lot of skill sets over that period. All the while, craft beer had been calling me basically since college back to, was your first dollar, what's your first craft beer? I remember having Sam, Sierra, and Stone, my older brother, and just being blown away yet again, like this. This is possible. And that's 2005, six around there. So you don't really notice now that that would be remarkable. But in those years, the options, they were limited. The jobs more limited. You either did sales or production. They weren't tap rooms. They weren't marketers. Like, I was knocking on that door basically from college up until 2017. So it took me 10 years to break into the craft beer business. And I did everything around it that worked. Met people, learned the Ciceroan, Brute Beer. I ended up, I was a director of marketing during the day. And I was a brand rep at night. You see those people in the grocery store like, come sample. I did that for companies just to learn and get in there. And eventually I found my crossover with a company called Lord Hobo Brewing Company here in Massachusetts. They're a relatively large brewing company, and they were on a crazy trajectory at the time growing at leaps and bounds above everybody else. And they had a role called Director of New Markets, which didn't exist in many craft breweries. But they had an ambition to make a national presence as fast as possible with a very limited portfolio of popular beers. Today, with the right amount of cash, it could work. Really, really difficult during those times where breweries are just cropping up everywhere. And eventually, that came to a head and hit a wall after about two years. And I shifted over to pick up running marketing for Jacks Abbey. So I had left doing sort of that combo of distribution sales marketing, standing up markets, and going really deep into that. I think we opened 10, 11 states during a two-year period, which is wild. Cross over to Jacks Abbey just to run the marketing team. And did that for five years through a bit of a crazy time. Obviously, COVID kicked off for five months after I joined. And that arguably eliminates like two and a half years, almost three full years of marketing work. All the work I did prior to COVID, it was all planned for a different world, just delete it. Then you stick your claim during the COVID time. Like, how do we make it work month to month to month to month? And then post-COVID, you start really constructing the new world that's arguably been the past two and a half years in beverage. But do that for a while, but the pressures of the industry are such there's clamps around marketing leadership and professional marketing and budgets. And if you read any of the news coming out, that's sort of the industry trend. That's really what led to my departure from Jacks Abbey. And I'd been doing some small consulting bits for friends here and there. But I was thinking, I love small business. I love this type of industry. How can I help? And is there a place for me to still do work? So while I was betting my future, people did raise their hand and ask for some assistance. And I kind of backed my way into it. And when it became real to me, within 24 hours, stood up the LLC through the website together. I already had five clients locked in just by accident. And I was like, OK, this is a real thing. This is what the world's telling me to do next. So if you trace all that back, I say that happy accidents, not really having to troll, a lot of these moments really being open to what the world was telling me to do was super important because I see a lot of people out there struggling 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 months a year on the job boards, just hammering it and really taking their energy down. I was like, I just want to put my energy to doing something rather than that. And that's the very, very long story of how we get here today. No, you're perfectly fine. And that's, again, that context is perfect. And what it did is, for me, knowing you, but not knowing you as long, knowing you recently in the past couple of years, but not knowing you in the back story, it makes a lot more sense as to everything you're doing. And what you're doing now, would you, fair to say, is kind of a-- you were exactly the same age. It seems like I'm 39 years old. So it sounds like simply-- yep. So right now, do you have the same feeling like you're grabbing all the best pieces of your career and formulating them into your business? You know what I mean? All the best features and all the best professional skills in making kind of a mutant service package for people in a good way, in a good way. Now, it's a total mutant, 100%. Yeah, I feel. That's what I'm trying to-- I feel exactly that way, is I've literally just skimmed the surface of the past 20 years and put it all into what I'm doing now. Yeah, and if I look back, one of the biggest differences between early Rob 1.0 and Rob 5, 6.0, wherever I'm at in my life, is-- and I've heard other smart people say this, but the more I learn, the more that I know I don't know everything, the less I know, it's sort of that weird thing in your 20s, you're coming out of college, you're doing work, I know this, I know better than the boss, I know better than that. Experience matters a lot, and I've understood my natural curiosity keeps getting the best of me, and every time you open a door to a new world, you're like, oh, shit, there's so much stuff I don't know, and I can learn. And so for the services I'm offering, I know what I like and what I'm really good at. And when someone calls and asks for something adjacent to that, I'm like, we've got to be honest. We're going to be either learning together or you may be better suited elsewhere, because I am great at these things, and I can flip a switch on them and do them for you really effectively, but I'm not great at everything. No one is, that's what teams are for. So knowing how to balance yourself and pass those off, it does become this sort of mutant. And rather than starting this really complex company or really narrowly focused company, my network is super important to me, always has been. So even if I don't offer services, I know where to put people most of the time, or they need a partnership and a category. I'm like, oh yeah, I know this. If you follow my LinkedIn, I think last week, I referenced a 12 year old article in Fast Company. Some things just stick with me and I'm like, oh yeah, like read this, like people have been talking about this for over a decade. And that's a mutant for sure. - Yeah, no, and that's the best part is speaking to business owners like yourself that are open to things and being like, you know what, I'm not the one that can do it, but also there's ways you can build these networks and referrals and all kinds of stuff. So what you can do is because of your extensive network and being a connector. And that's the fun part about talking to people like yourself, that there's business owners, but then there's business owners that are also connectors. And those are the types of people that remember 16 year old articles and go back up. And I think that that's another superpower in a different lane on the highway. And so like talk to me a little bit about like some of the services and projects, you can talk, you don't speak about the brands. - Yeah, of course. - Like some of the types of projects you're working on and then some of the types of aspirations and stuff for the future for it. - Yeah, it's a good variation. One that's extremely public is I'm a fractional CMO for an organization called Finance Kind Brewing. And they are a roll up of three craft brewery brands and one can't cocktail. So it's a really fun portfolio because two of those brands are 30 year old legacy brands that have just been through the ringer of different ownerships and troubles and industry pressures. And they have a group now that's just really motivated to dig up all the important parts of the business and put them on highlight. I think it's a little overused but sort of the home renovation concept here is really true. Like there's good bones here. There's hardwood floors under the linoleum. Like let's pull back the linoleum and polish the floors. That's what we're doing for those types of brands. And I've done that type of work in the past. And when you're a professional marketer versus just an entrepreneur, you kind of know the mechanisms to dig those things out of people. Like, you know, anyone can kind of decorate their own home but might want a professional to do these big Renault projects. And that's sort of my analogy that I've drawn because it makes a lot of sense to me. But that's what I'm doing on that half. I've got some startup firms that they want systems around branding and marketing. They kind of dope their floating in newness. And that can be daunting for someone who's like really creative or really good at product or really analytical but doesn't have to pull it all together and say, "This is where we go with it." The other skill that has been, you know, I think under you so far that I've been offering but a couple of times been super helpful is professional development of people within marketing teams. I think with tighter budgets, you end up with a lot of unseasoned people in the roles that they need to be in where they're promoted from outside of marketing or they're just young because that's obviously going to be a little bit more affordable. I have an ability to turn those people into professionals a lot faster. Social media is a really great place for that. You might have a great content creator but maybe they don't understand the back end analytics reasoning behind what they're doing or how to even review what they did and know what's working or not. That's a great place where I can drop in and be a big help. And then with the network, I think there's my goal in this kind of consulting, I joke I'm a consultant without the con because I want to do things for people and as fast as possible, I either want to save you money that makes up for what you paid me or earn you money that makes up for what you paid me. I generally want the success of the clients I'm working with and with, sometimes they're just overspending in a category that I've done before. You know, look at a budget and be like, oh, you're way too much there. Let's go to this vendor, do this exact same thing, you're save a ton or I know you can negotiate that vendor down to this amount. Whatever it might be, it could be advertising, it could be web services, it could be physical goods. We've both been in beverage, people spend a lot of money on stuff that goes out to the market. If you're spending a lot of money on stuff, there's a good chance I've worked on that stuff in my past and know where to get it as best as possible as cheap as possible. So yeah, that's an ideal world. If I can jump in, save you my entire fee in 60 days and do cool work with you, like, what a dream project for both of us. - That's the thing that when you're signing on as a consultant and I do have to give the dark side of it, which is like, fortunately a lot of people have a lot of, there's a lot of shit people in the world that have just destroyed the industry of consultants and being one that's been striving for trying to get through different areas and the eyes and lows, I can tell you that the, like I love the fact you said I'm a consultant without the time and really that's really what it comes down to and I can't tell you how many times in the past 20 years I've been presenting stuff to people and like literally they'll be like, no, we got burned doing that before and I'm always like, I'm always like, I tell people I'm like, I don't pay for other people's sins, you know what I mean? Like it's like, we've got conned before, that's great. But here's my history and the granted, now I started this business when I was a senior at Drexel. I had no reason to be walking in but in 2008, I was laughed out of and I make this joke 'cause I call him out on it. I got laughed out of a Riglio beverage. I got laughed out of all these places 'cause in 2010 I saw the future of Facebook and all social media and I had a meeting with all these different wholesalers and only one ace distributing, I'll give them credit at that time, bought into my concept but I had dozens of wholesalers I presented saying, you guys need to be on social media, you gotta be promoting your brands, you gotta be building, this is 2009, 2010. Literally they were laughing me out of their buildings. And then finally ace distributing signs on in 2010 and then everybody is like off to the races except for those people that were laughing. And then it took them two years to kind of catch up and then they caught up. But I always look back at those years that we started out in the years that, especially in craft beer and you're on the consumer side of things then but that's also a cool lens to see as well because I saw it from behind the scenes during that time of like '03 to 2010, that big boom and it was just nuts. I can't even imagine from a consumer side and then you said that's, you said your first beer '06, you said or something, '05, first craft beer? - First craft beer, 2005, somewhere around there, yeah. - It's about the same time for craft beer for me as well, like I was in the Reglio but I was selling middle light and quartz light and stuff like that. But I would say, yeah, my first craft, like I thought at that time, left and stellar were craft beers. So that, you know, I was, I was in the brand. - I'm not allowed to say 2003 for legal reasons, right? - Yeah, yeah, there you go, there you go, yeah. (laughing) Somewhere around there, you know, around there. - I started, yeah, dude, that's what a lot of people don't realize, like when I tell my story, I started working at a Reglio, I was 19 years old. - Yeah. - I worked in that warehouse at 19 years old, fixing broken cases of beer. I worked there for two years before I could legally drink. (laughing) - That's, you know, it's, it's so true. And people don't think about that side. The brands are visible, the restaurants, which is what I worked in during those years are visible. You're around the stuff you see what people are doing interacting with, like you have a lens on it and you're also, you're the next generation. Like you're, you're combining, hey, I'm fixing the case in the warehouse. Also Facebook is a thing. Hey, these people aren't doing it. Like it's an obvious connection point for you. And like you said, you got laughed at 'em, most places. And you know, I don't think they're laughing anymore. - No, not at all. They have entire departments for what I was offering them. (laughing) And I've had some of them, I won't share their names, but in, whether it was late night drinking at different conferences around the country or wherever we were, they've all validated me in saying that I was ahead of my time. Is it what they've all said? - Yeah. - So you're too early, man. And I was like, I don't know. - Where's that check? - Exactly, exactly. You'll love this though. Back then what the concept was, it was called cities on tap. And I own the domain and everything. And basically the website was gonna be a map. And basically you could go to every city and I was selling each city's page to each distributor. And you could go in and it would aggregate all the happy hours and all the events and everything like that. It was before, now this is a great thing. But what I was creating did not exist. And everybody thought I was batshit crazy. (laughing) - Excellent, excellent. - So let's talk a little bit about your time. When you went in from, so from Kuzuina to Lord Hobo, like that, well, some people might say, well, that's a big jump. I actually don't see that at all as a big jump 'cause I see it as a great transition 'cause you're in somewhat of a corporate structure. They probably had some sales training. They had some formatting. So you were able to understand the structure of sales and marketing and things like that. So when you got to Lord Hobo, you weren't learning sales and marketing at that time. You were just learning the brand, right? - Yeah, the biggest thing for me is no matter, we talk about this as a bubble. If you're outside of the beer beverage bubble, there's a different language. There's a different mechanism. We just spent a lot of time talking about distributors. There's, again, I'm opening new markets. My first job is vetting distributors and along with building the analytics tool that shows what markets we went to and why. But going to a distributor and having that conversations, it's a whole nother vocabulary. It's not how we talk about products or categories or what's important. And so being able to absorb that language as fast as possible and understand how the core functional sets of sales and marketing apply to this world, yes, foundational work already done in that business, you're selling to Target, Walmart, Lowe's, Home Depot. Way bigger retailers than even these large distributors are really talking to for the most part outside of maybe a few key accounts people. So crossing over and saying, "Hey, I've sat in Walmart headquarters and sold them multi-million dollar programs." Like, you're talking about a regional grocery store with six locations. Like, we can handle this. We're just going to change the language around what we're doing. But the few fundamentals are always there. Who cares about what at each chain of your decision process? We have consumer, retailer and distributor in this case. So it's adding some extra layers, but who cares about what and why and where are my solutions meeting those needs? That's ultimately never going to change in all of sales and marketing. So once you know that, you're really just trying to apply it to the next place. It's going to have its own challenges, of course, but 100% was just transferring that knowledge into an industry-specific use case and doing it fast. But other than that, I think you're dead on. Foundational work will carry you through and the better you get at it, the faster you switch gears. So if I switch, like I said, to my own company, great. I'm still doing a lot of similar industries and industries I know. You throw me into industry, I've never touched before. I can at least fix up certain things up to a certain point. And then by the time we've gotten the foundational stuff done, I've probably learned a lot about this industry that we're gonna get some really creative stuff done. - That's, no, and when you came in, I mean, I have to give you a lot of credit too, 'cause when you came in, it was like a time, it was like right at the end of the heat, and then it was like the time of turmoil. So somebody like yourself in turmoil state, you're also looking at opportunity. And I think that that's a crucial part to where you, I can guarantee that whatever brands you were tied to on those times when the industry was changing, they were better off with you than anybody else, because you were able to look at opportunities in a downside. And I think that there's a situation right now that I fear for the craft beer industry, not the beer industry. The beer industry as a whole has its issues, and I think we don't need to get into that. That's pretty obvious about where things are going, and that's trajectory. But for the craft beer industry, right now, people like yourself are the key to the future, because a lot of breweries, not a lot of breweries, let me rephrase this. There are breweries right now that are coming to the realization that good beer and a great t-shirt design is not going to get you through the rest of your life. And the need for people like yourself is so crucial that once we get to that place for yourself where everybody starts to realize it and gets past their ego before the bank starts calling, and they start to invest in people like yourself, I'm not trying to give a fear-mongering. I'm trying to give a state to where I've been doing, what you're doing since 2017, and the amount of people that said I don't need it, and those same people are now calling and asking for the help, and it's too late for some of them. Because there's some magic you and I can work, and other people like us can work, but there's some magic that just can't fix it. And I think maybe have up, talk to me a little bit about, without giving your secret sauce, like what are kind of two or three key issues you see from an industry-wide thing that can be addressed as far as that goes? Or things that we took away, let's say, like we're existent but are not existent anymore, and feel like should probably come back. - Sure, and I don't think this is secret sauce, and what all, I'm gonna preface this with, I will give up almost any mechanism idea, 'cause I don't think it's secret. I think everyone could go Google half of the stuff we'll talk about. The real secret is executing it and doing it creatively. So I think I could tell you every quote-unquote, overarching strategy I do, but no one can do it the way I can. So I have zero fear in sharing all of it, and you'll see that if you read my LinkedIn page. It's exactly how I think about a dataset and article, a challenge with action items. I'm sharing it for free, I don't care, because it's not that you can just copy, paste that, and do it, someone has to do the work, and there's how you do it within your group and your structure, and how you do it creatively, and you can't just make that appear out of nowhere. So take it for what it's worth. All of this is relatively free advice, but it's also available elsewhere. I'm not the only person who understands this, so you just do something. I wanna be on the other side of this industry, 'cause in the macro data, let's start with the mindset of people in our shoes. In the macro data, it's ugly. Who gives a shit? I don't care. Within every bad set of data, there's winners and losers. I wanna be a winner. My team to feel like winners. So we're gonna go sort where we can win, and go claim those wins. And that's different for every business. So that's one of those moments where, if I'm behind the curtain with you, we can diagnose what that is. If I'm on this side, I'm just gonna tell you, if you got this far, you get something that matters. It's like, fuck, you gotta dig in and find out what matters and why, and I think that's where a lot of people have not spent the quality time with their brand. And you can do this as a founder. My friends over at CODO Design, they write books on the topic. You can go read their books. You could talk to people like me, but understanding your why, and why anyone who give a shit, why you do what you do, who you are, why you exist. Getting to that point is the most crucial thing. I think I said this too many times on podcasts to this date, but understand that, and get to that point of residence with your consumer. It's, I don't know how to say it any more bluntly. People have not spent that time because they didn't have to. So if you have, let's go with sort of a classic story. A finance person falls in love with beer, has the cash, starts a brewery in 2013. - Well, I heard a few of those stories from the boardroom. - There's a few. You're probably accidentally doing great for four years. Around 2017, something changes. The industry starts to get more saturated. You may not notice it then. 17 about into 18 for sure. It starts, the curve starts going up, up, up. And now you're not competing with the David Goliath craft versus macro story, which was the myth we built for ourselves for so long. You're competing against all breweries, and there's a lot of them, especially in certain markets. Not only that, naturally speaking, if you look at the curve of types of consumers, not everyone gives a shit about the innovation and the nerdy stuff, that's like that. Those are the people that you started. So the old adage, what got you here won't get you there. Craft beer is finding that out now, the hard way. You got to 13, 15% market share on what got you here. But what gets you from here, there? You need to talk to more people in different ways. Wine is struggling with this a little bit. Craft beer arguably became synonymous with IPA and the flavors of IPA. It is in some markets 45, 48% market share of all of craft beer sales. So we did this for ourselves. It was fun, got on the hype cycle, made IPA, IPA, IPA. It was working. But at some point, if that becomes synonymous, the ceiling for our industry and people who care about that, around 13 to 15%, we're finding where that ceiling is. How do we get past that? And you look at the Harris poll data from the BA most recently, flavors the number one reason. People who don't choose craft beer don't choose craft beer. And because they're saying, it's IPA, or maybe they have some other designation for it. But that association is a major, major problem. And the whole industry has to start turning that perception around. We have to start thinking about the occasions people drink and the flavors they're chasing and how we live up to those moments. And then layer in the secret sauce of each brand is what's valuable to your specific consumer? Are you doing things differently than your competitors that you need to trumpet? Is there something special about you that they should care about versus the other players? Those are things that people generally need to do. That's, again, you could pick up some basic marketing books, business books, and they're all gonna say those type of things. I think people just been chasing newness and they still haven't gotten off of that cycle. Newness without purpose no longer matters. It did for a while. You could have done pretty well with that model. That's just burned out. So now you need to cut down the newness and increase the purpose. - I appreciate the way you said it too because I remember and I give him credit every time I tell this story, but it was probably 2011, maybe 2012, and my buddy Mike Dudley, he now works for Amazon. But he told, we were sitting at Earthbed Eric Fred Brewery outside of Philadelphia. And he was like, you know what? The future of this is, and he goes, his story. He goes, none of these guys have a story. He's like, they all have awesome beers or coke, okay beers, but great logos. But the story of me and my buddy were drinking in the garage and we had an epiphany moment. Like there had to be more to the layers of it. And I think what's interesting is that when you look back at it, story always has been the crucial piece to every CPG brand of success and sustainability. And we were riding that wave for so long. And I find it concerning though, to be honest with you, some of those that have not yet realized that taking a day and what you said is exactly the issue because I have the same philosophy. I share all my secrets because I have the Gary Vee mentality that 99% of you are gonna do shit about it. So I don't really care. And I offend a lot of people when I say that 'cause people will be like, oh, what's the secret? And I'm like, I literally tell them, do this, do this this week, do this this week and this this week. But I bet you won't. And they get offended when I say I bet you won't. And then six months later, I'll be like, did you ever do it? Oh, we're getting to it. And I'm like, yeah, Monday's coming. I know, Monday's coming and so is Christmas. So it's like one of those things that when I look back at like certain breweries and certain things like, it was an incredible time where when you think about it, I sold six figures for some people and more, seven figures or something, but some of these little guys, six figures that came out of the sky for them and really they didn't do anything for it because they just put it into the distro market as if everything happened. But I go back to the initial, when I was in that board room and I was the brand manager and I was the one receiving. I was like, everybody would come in and do their pitches and I decided whether or not they were in the network. And there were guys that came in with a growler and a piece of duct tape. And I was able to turn that around and sell six figures worth of product for them with my team and everybody else executing and there's 105 people involved. So I'm not taking credit for any single action but the people that worked with me and everything like that. But I go back to like name and industry where you can fucking, you can make that kind of money by taking a growler with a piece of duct tape into a board room and then come back and 12 months later have that much money in your bank account. 'Cause some of this didn't do anything. They didn't do tasting rooms. They didn't do meet the brewery nights. They didn't do monthly business planning meetings. They just gave us the distribution rights. - Yeah. - 'Cause we were in a rural market. You know what I mean? Nobody wanted to come out there. We weren't in the fun area. We weren't, we were in between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. We were in Pennsylvania. And we were selling 5 million cases a year but nobody, we weren't selling 20 million cases a year like everybody else was. So I guess what I'm trying to say is there's not a lot of interest in industries that have that low of a barrier of entry. And when you have an onslaught of a tidal wave like we saw when those brands came in, how exciting is it now to actually sit down with these people and let them come to realize what I'm trying to get at is all of them have a story. I'm not around here complaining about them. What I'm complaining about is they don't see their story and they just want to focus on the marketing and the branding and the gimmicks because they think that cornhole board's going to sell in those pallets. It's going to get them through the next day. And it's really not. It's these kind of conversations where it's like, you know what, tell me about the day that you sat down and filed for that paperwork. Don't tell me the story about you and your buddies drinking and you say everybody's had that stuff. Everybody's had their buddies and said they wanted to start a brewery. But let's focus on the psychological reason that you actually did it. And if there's a good story there, that's your business. 'Cause I agree too that what's wild is, you know, we see things like Sierra Nevada and you and I grew up with Ken Grossman's story. I got his books right here, like "Living Legend." But it's like they even have that situation now where they're trying to figure out, okay, Ken's story is Ken's story, but how do you continue to make Ken's story relevant to today's story? Absolutely. And you can't do that sometimes via a generational or linear or anything like that. So sometimes brands are tied to an individual that struggle to keep that sustainability. And then also some brands are tied regionally that struggle to make them expand. So I think not to use them as an example for both of them, but I guess that kind of coincidentally worked. But talk to me a little bit about when you sit down with these brands, you know, are a lot of them coming down, what are your discovery meetings like right now? And I don't want, I do not want any brand's names as far as this, but are you feeling like anecdotally for your experience, things are clicking from the business side of things for Bruce or do you think it's still like the passions and the liquid and it's, 'cause I think that's what's always struggling is the back end of the operation was always what struggled. Like it was the structure, yeah. It's both, we're not there yet. If you think about the phases of beer, you know, first it was just getting your doors open, quality became a major touch point, who cares what years, but over a period of years, pretty recently just tuning up the quality of the beers being offered. - I didn't even get into all the recalls and bottles. - Yeah, so this is, I mean, that's a real thing. And that, that sours everybody. So like there's this period where quality became like the beating drum of the BA and everybody else. And I think people tune that up. I think we're in the third phase of the evolution of a market and the maturing of a market. And that's the business side, both finance, which is a little bit easier for operational people to grasp. So I think they've leaned into sort of the finance contracts, negotiating, supply chains, getting just their actual financials and accounting sets. So I think that feels more like a production mind and maybe more comfortable for a lot of people who've been in an industrial sized building and operating that way. So finance and administration becomes so important 'cause you can sort of see the immediate tangible results of saving a little bit on chipboard here or buying these ingredients longer term there. That, that's like very discreet work. It's very tangible. And I think that's part of the evolution. I think if you talk to some of the professional accountants out there, they're probably amazed at the flow, like people paying attention to their P&L finally and cash flow and all these different things that are really important in the business side, but it's also tangible. Brand is less tangible and it's longer term investment. So our goal as great brand people is to build those intangible assets. So if you talk to actual finance people investors, your brand has value and you are the ones who determine what that is by what you invest in it over the years of building it. It is the product, the price, the placement, the promotion. It's everything you do to support your brand starts putting it into this invisible bank of intangible assets. So when you plan to sell the company or not, part of the value of your company and a line item on your sheet is the intangible assets. And that's your brand. Doesn't look as obvious. It's a little bit more opaque and people have a hard time grasping it. And the same people who will look at a liquid death and go, why is water worth so much? And it's all brand. It's all intangible assets. And it's my job as a marketer to do those things for you and with you. And it's your marketing team's job to deep that and start to the top of vision. And where your question started is, where are people? And I think they're currently all over the map. I am amazed at the people coming without prompting other woodwork saying, I know I need help. I've heard this from the BA now. I've read enough articles. I get it now. You have a middle tier that is I need help. And then they go to look for it and like, oh, I don't know if I can invest in that. And then if you're compared with their investing their money in, it's all the safe old stuff that's not working anymore. You feel like you can, you just, you have to stop doing something else. Of course, money's not infinite, but you can't not invest in this anymore. You have that middle group that's really on the fence. And there is still a massive cohort of people out there that think the beer should sell itself. I can't give you percent. No one can, but having heard. - They're also in my mind. They're now in the category of flat earthers. - Yeah, that's an extreme take, but you're not wrong in a way. - I'm a little jaded when I comes to that, but yeah. - Show me, right now show me one beer selling itself. - But that's the point is I don't, there's no one, and not even Bud Light can't even sell itself right now. So if that's the case, Bud Light can't sell itself, type brands, if they sell themselves, it's usually for a limited window. It doesn't last as long as it used to. Even the brands that you're like, oh, it's just like the rate of sales going crazy, they're doing so well, and they're not really doing anything, they are. You just don't know what they're doing. All these details, like nothing is selling itself anymore, but we did come up in a period where you couldn't make enough beer to sell. So I get, that's, again, going back, I'm not knocking anybody for that. And if you were conditioned over eight years of profitability where your beer did sell itself, and then I come in like, pay me money 'cause your beer's not selling itself, that sounds a little shyster, fair enough. - Well, and like you just said, though, and like the B.A. is talking about, this is just reality, and this is just maturity of markets and maturity of industries. I mean, I hate to like minimize it, but it's like, you and I, we've grown up and like, it's like you're talking about the heyday of high school when you were like, you know, you scored that touchdown. It's like, hey, those days are over, man. Now it's time to like, if you wanna continue to play football, you got to be in the NFL or you got to be on a Sunday league with your buddies. Like, you're, there's no more organized sports for you. And it's the exact same thing right now. It's like, it is now, it's the big show now. The stage is set, and it's, it's, you got to spend money to make money and there's no more organic stuff in, and that's just not in beer, to be honest with you, because I'm in also, I'm in spirits, I'm in cannabis, I'm in multiple industries. And even the cannabis industry, you know, everybody's talking about, it's infiltrating the craft beer industry. It has its own issues. You know what I mean? And it's on the opposite end where it's restricted for marketing. So like, it's one of those things where the cannabis industry, when it comes down to where people are consuming marketing, they're consuming on their phones. Well, the cannabis industry is very regulated and very restricted on how they can market themselves on social media. So one of the biggest opportunities for marketing for the cannabis industry is blocked. So they're in the exact opposite scenario where like, they wanna get their story out there. They wanna do these things. And ironically, what I'm telling people is, in the cannabis industry, they can circumvent the social media laws by just telling their business story because we're still in America and you can still tell your story. So that's one of the things that I'm starting to get these cannabis people to understand is they're actually in a situation where the only way they can market on social media is only by telling their story and not talking about their products at all. So it's a very weird juxtaposition of the craft beer industry that's claiming that marijuana is infiltrating them and has all the opportunities to market themselves. Yet, the marijuana industry is just hand to mouth and organically word them out for something itself. - Yeah, anyone who's listened this far, some free advice on all this topic. There's a book. It's the easiest read you'll ever have and it actually has worksheets and everything. It's Building a Brand Story by Donald Miller. What are that book on Amazon today? You talk about people probably not doing this, but what are that book for a few dollars? Do the exercises in it and you have a framework. That's ultimately-- - And look at that. Is Simon Sennick starting with why? - Exactly, so either one of these, both take your weekend to read either of them. Incredibly valuable and they have practical guides on building your story brand, understanding your why. All the things we've just talked about on our marketing high horse, like if you don't want to hire people like us, please go do this thing yourself because that will get you there. And beer's not as regulated as cannabis, but up until recently you couldn't advertise on TikTok. So, okay, is it as valuable as the others? It's like a great story always breaks through. Like, if you're not gonna be talking about your products and you have all these other rules around what you could do on the platform, go tell your personality story. Like go turn the lens on yourself and who you are and what you're all about. And if you tell that story well, it'll connect with the right audience 'cause stories always connect. - I want to support that free advice there as far as TikTok goes. I'm 39 years old. I have children and I'm one TikTok, all right? And we're on TikTok as a business. I'm not on TikTok dancing. I've never danced on TikTok, but I want to tell every brewery that's out there, when that law changed, if you've not set up a TikTok account since that law has changed, wake up and get your ass off the couch or get your ass off that tank and get down into there and set up an account because there is free marketing, there's free stories, and it is an insane place. And I can tell them that I flipped on a TikTok live one time just being like tell me your story. I had 1,800 people on within five minutes communicating directly with me. It is not anybody that shuns TikTok. It is full of dances, but there is an underbelly of entrepreneurs and an underbelly of people that just want to experience business to business. So it's definitely something not to sleep on. Rob, I want to close out. I want to actually, I want to spend 10 more minutes with you afterwards off the camera 'cause I have something I want to share with you. But also I want to close out with a new thing and I'm going to have it first be with you. All right, I want to close out. I was always trying to think of like, I have an idea for a podcast down the road. So I'm going to give context. It's called your like last soundtrack where basically as you're dying or on your death bed, what are three songs that kind of you feel like exemplify your life? - Three songs. - We're coming to one, I know it's on the fly. I'm going to do this better and like send it to somebody 24 hours and a minute. - Yeah, right, you throw me under the bus here. - That's right, I'm from the race, you're good. - Let's see, I'm trying to think. Exemplify my life. So this is a tricky one. I think I'm going to go with a niche one to start because arguably it's my pump up song, but it's got a lot going on. Sir Roosevelt, nothing's going to stop us. Sir Roosevelt is a side project with a bunch of talented musicians, including Zach Brown. And that song, both musically and just like what it's trying to say. Go back to my long intro to this. Like a lot should have stopped me by now. And it hasn't yet. So let's keep going with nothing's going to stop us. Let's see, there's like, I need something just like really upbeat and happy. I'm insanely optimistic. I just, I don't have it on the top of my tongue. - You're good, and I'm going to cut this story. Yeah, I realized I put you on the fly. - Yeah, no, that's fine. The problem is like, not that I don't have options. It's like, I love music so much. - That's why honestly I was like, no one, I'm going to start with Rob 'cause he's a musical. - Yeah, you know, I think Thomas Rhett has "Die Happy Man". Like that's, talk about a swan song. Like that doesn't have that upbeat tone, but that's sort of where my brain goes. And let's, I'm just going to stick in this realm 'cause my brain started there. We're going to go leave Bryce Park and Lot party. 'Cause there's just has to be something pure fun to this because that's, you know, I packed my life with fun and it's exhausting and great. And I get up for the next round every time. And yeah, something just jamming like Park and Lot party. And that's simple, fun and not overly complicated. The other two have like deeper meetings that I'm like, nah, yeah, big chunk of this. I'm here for people and fun. So I could probably do a better job of prep, but those hope to paint a nice, weird picture. - That's perfect, man. - That's perfect. Well, hey, as we're closing out, give everybody your handles on social media, your website and where they can find you to get in touch. - Yeah, the website's simple. It's bettercraft@business.com. LinkedIn is the number one place to find me. It's where I interact the most, it's Rob J. Day. So find me on LinkedIn, pop over to the website if you feel like it. LinkedIn's number one, I'm not going to bother it with the other social medias. Talk to me there, you know, connect with me, interact with the posts. I try to, I pretty much respond to everybody I would say. So if you go way back, I actually have a thing about how not to sell me on LinkedIn. And I don't think anybody read it 'cause I still get everybody doing like, they connect immediately and I get like the four paragraph pitch and the first message from these people. I'm like, already deleted. It's not how I operate. Meet me, talk to me, engage. And if we find a place where you and I can do something together, whether it's me, for you or you or me, that's awesome. But it's very weird for me to get a pitch, like as the immediate, it's a spam email to me, it's just deleted, so. Yeah, go there. - We've all been there and I've probably said 20,000 to 100,000 to live on my day, but I definitely have changed my ways in the past few years, so. - If you're an aspiring entrepreneur, one that's looking to expand, contact the free mind network today and we'll help you scale, we'll help you start,